Difficult Scripture

Homily for Sunday, September 18, 2022
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 16:1–13

The parable of the “dishonest manager” that we just heard has long been the problem child among Luke’s parables, for it is defiant in precluding easy explanation.  While there exist many supposed “explanations”—for example, “In New Testament times there was a different payment system in which the manager’s ‘cut’ was added to the bill, and all this manger did was to forego his usual ‘cut’ and was not therefore dishonest”; or, “Notice how the manager had the debtors write the new amount in their own hand; so it was the debtors, and not he, the manager, who were ‘on the hook’ for any dishonesty”; or, “Well, if we considered the Greek, we would see how the Greek tells us that the manager isn’t so much ‘shrewd’ as he is ‘prudent,’ and therefore Jesus here teaches a lesson about prudence”—none satisfy, and for none is there consensus.  And—I must say—I like it that way; I like this defiant, “problem child parable” of Luke’s.  How do I like it?  Let me count the ways; there are nine….  (Ready?)

1. Scriptures that defy easy explanation help us better come to know God.  Grant Wyeth, the Australian journalist and sometimes travel writer, says that, “The only way to truly get to know a region is to travel through it by the most inconvenient means.”  One could likewise say of God that “the best way to truly come to know God is to travel through the Scriptures by the most inconvenient means.”  “Inconvenient” passages, such as today’s parable, help us better come to know God. [Grant Wyeth, “On Water Matters,” in The Interpreter, August 1, 2022]

2. Scriptures that defy easy explanation help us better come to know each other.  Recall how in Acts chapter 8 Philip, while travelling between Jerusalem and Gaza, encountered the Ethiopian eunuch reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah while seated in his chariot.  “Do you understand what you are reading?”  Philip asked.  The eunuch replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?”  So Philip climbed in, sat down next to him and began to explain to him the scriptures (Acts 8:26–40).  Scriptures that defy easy explanation help us better come to know each other.

3. Scriptures that defy easy explanation keep us from becoming bored.  God gives easy scriptures, says Augustine, to keep us from starving; and God gives difficult scriptures, he says, to keep us from becoming bored.  Scriptures that defy easy explanation keep us from becoming bored.

4. Scriptures that defy easy explanation help keep us humble.  “Knowledge puffs up,” warns Paul in 1 Corinthians (8:1); and knowledge does not help us to come to know the God who “made foolish the wisdom of the world,” he adds (1:20).  But when we take his yoke upon us and learn from him who is “gentle and humble in heart,” it is there that we will find rest for our souls (Matt 11:29).  It is not in our intellect or in what we know but in humility that we will best discover him whose “yoke is easy, and [whose] burden is light” (Matt 11:30).  Scriptures that defy easy explanation help keep us humble.

5. Scriptures that defy easy explanation help us appreciate the Scriptures more.  Again to cite Augustine, we tend to value those things more for which we have had to work more.  If, when we encounter a difficult passage, we spend time with it, and wrestle with it and pray about it—as we have had to work for this passage more, so will we come to value that passage more.  Scriptures that defy easy explanation help us appreciate the Scriptures more.

6. About scriptures that defy easy explanation there is something attractive and even erotic. “Text that is alluringly cryptic or elusive,” writes the New York Times’ poetry editor, Elisa Gabbert, “slows readers down, making them search for what can’t be found. The encounter is almost inherently frustrating, as though one could not possibly pay enough attention.”  But “This is useful,” she adds, for “frustration is erotic.”  It’s in the chase, in the pursuit, in the frustration in “making us search for what can’t be found” that difficult passages can make the scriptures attractive and even erotic.

7. Scriptures that defy easy explanation help to preserve the mystery that is God. These defiant scriptures remind us that we cannot control or in any way domesticate God, that only God is God.  As Walter Brueggemann writes, “We live our lives before the wild, dangerous, unfettered and free character of God.”  Scriptures that defy easy explanation help to preserve the mystery of God.

8. Scriptures that defy easy explanation make us (to borrow from Rilke) “bees of the Invisible,” “Invisible,” capital “I,” referring to God.  We know there is “honey” in these passages, and this honey keeps us returning to these passages and also to God again and again and again.  Scriptures that defy easy explanation keep us faithful in our return to God; they make us “bees of the Invisible.”

9. Lastly, scriptures that defy easy explanation are a source of joy.  In his poem, “The Delights of the Door,” 20th century French poet Francis Ponge writes: “Kings don’t touch doors; they don’t know this joy, to push affectionately or fiercely before us one of those panels we know so well…”  They don’t know “of this swift fighting, body to body.”  “Kings” may not know the joy of difficult scriptures, but we who “push affectionately or fiercely” against them, we know of their joy.  Scriptures that defy easy explanation, that we must push against and with which we must swiftly fight, body to body, are a source of joy.

Today’s parable of the “dishonest manager” has long been the “problem child” of Luke’s parables, defiant in precluding easy explanation.  And I like it that way; I like this defiant “problem child parable” of Luke’s.  How do I like it?  Let me count the ways; there are nine.  

1.   Scriptures that defy easy explanation help us better come to know God.

2.   Scriptures that defy easy explanation help us better come to know each other.

3.   They keep us from becoming bored.

4.   They keep us humble.

5.   Having to work at them more, they help us to appreciate scripture the more.

6.   There is something attractive and even erotic about scriptures that frustrate.

7.   Scriptures that defy easy explanation help to preserve the mystery of God.

8.   Scriptures that defy easy explanation make us “bees of the Invisible” who return again and again to God.

9.   Difficult passages, as we push against them fiercely, “body to body” are a source of joy.

Though we may be inclined to send this defiant problem child to his room, away from us, why not instead embrace him?  Why not take him in and surround him with love and see what unfolds?  For it is these defiant “problem children” scriptures that have the potential to greatly enrich us, and can be a source of deep, deep satisfaction.

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