Proper 20 Year C

Proper 20

Amos 8.4–7
1 Timothy 2.1–7
Luke 16.1–13

Whatever is going on in this strange parable of the dishonest manager? Whichever way you read it, it is confusing. Luke has obviously decided that it is about attachment to wealth, and he has put it with a couple of other stories about the dangers of money, and stuck in Luke 6.16–18 as well, which just heightens the sense of this as a ragbag chapter. You get a picture of Luke, sitting at his desk with a bundle of papers in front of him. He has got the overall structure of his book sorted, and he knows where all the main stories and sayings fit, but now he is left with his file labelled ‘miscellaneous’. ‘What do I do with these?’ he asks himself. ‘The old chap who told me the story said he’d been there when Jesus had told it. But I can’t help thinking that he must have missed some of it, or wandered off before the end. Jesus just can’t have told it like this.’...