The Fragrant Aroma of Christ

Homily for Sunday, September 21, 2025
The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Luke 16:1-13

In the 13^thcentury at the University of Paris, at the beginning of each of his lectures on a book of the Bible, St. Thomas Aquinas cites a verse of scripture from another book of the Bible that for him sums up the author’s message.  For example, to begin his lecture on Isaiah, which many understood to foretell Jesus, Aquinas quotes Habakkuk:  “There is a vision for the appointed time...  If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come” (Hab 2:2-3).  Or again, to begin his lecture on Galatians, which many understand to argue that faith in Christ replaces the Law of Moses, Aquinas quotes Leviticus chapter 26:  “You shall have to clear out the old to make way for the new” (Lev 26:10).  Or yet again,to begin his lecture on St. John’s Gospel, which many understand to be a glimpse into “heavenly things,” Aquinas quotes Isaiah chapter 6:  “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple” (Is 6:1).

In order to better understand today’s challenging Parable of the Dishonest Manager from Luke chapter 16 (which many consider to be the most challenging of Jesus’ parables), I will take a cue from Aquinas and will begin today’s homily with a citation from 2 Corinthians chapter 2:

Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing:  to the one group a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. (2Cor 2:15-16)

For centuries it has been the goal of Bible translators to – and here I quote from the Translator’s Preface to the King James Version – [to] “remove the scales from our eyes, the veil from our hearts,” to “open our wits that we may understand God’s word.”   We see this effort toward transparency and clarity expressed in the prefaces of other, more modern translations of the Bible as well.  The translators of the New American Bible speak of trying to “translate as accurately as possible, and rendering the result in good contemporary English.”  The translators of the New International Version write of trying, “to be true to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek… to be grammatically correct… [and to] be understandable.”  And the New Revised Standard Version, the text we use for our worship, is translated “on the basis of accuracy, clarity…and current English usage.”  

But in more recent Biblical translation, a movement has arisen to “let the text be the text,” not stripping it of its ancient, hoary messiness.  This school of thought is perhaps best expressed by Robert Alter, Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley and himself a Bible translator. Alter writes:

The unacknowledged heresy underlying most modern English versions of the Bible [is] the use of translation as a vehicle for explaining the Bible instead of representing it in another language, and in the most egregious instances, this amounts to explaining away the Bible.

And so, for example, Alter’s translation of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 aims not so much for clarity but for the effect the text has in the Hebrew.  For example, Alter highlights the tenderness between Abraham and Isaac by faithfully repeating again and again (as does the original Hebrew) the many times Abraham says “my son” and Isaac “my father.”  And instead of Abraham’s rather culinary-sounding “knife,” more faithful to the brutality of the Hebrew text,in Alter’s translation Abraham takes up a “cleaver.”  Or consider, too, Alter’s translation of the story of Balaam’s Ass in Numbers 22.  Alter picks up on the humor found in the Hebrew, whose repetitions and alliterations highlight this “seer” who could not see but whose donkey could.  Alter’s intent in translating these stories is not clarity and explanation, but rather (in the words of another commentator) to leave the text “pungent.”

Which brings us to today’s Parable of the Dishonest Manager.  Whatever does today’s text mean?  How could the master possibly have commended the manager for his dishonesty?  How could the manager have thought that his dishonesty would lead “people... to welcome him into their homes”?  How could Jesus tell us to “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth”? Nothing about today’s parable make sense.  Historically preachers have focused on the last line, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” More recently, preachers have attempted to construct an historical context in which the parable might make sense, like:  at a time of great disparity between the rich and the poor, Jesus’ listeners would have sided with the manager, and to them (somehow) the parable would have made sense.  Even Luke seems not to know what to do with Jesus’ parable, for at the end of the passage he offers three possible interpretations:  1) that the “children of light” should learn from their corrupt neighbors, 2) that we are to make friends for ourselves by means of dishonest wealth, or 3) that if we wish to be entrusted with “the true riches” we must first be faithful with “dishonest wealth.”  

A possible way forward might be not to better translate but to “de-translate” this passage, to let go of the clarity we so earnestly want to give it and to simply let it be “pungent.”  For example, in the translation we just heard,Jesus speaks of “dishonest wealth.” The Greek behind “dishonest wealth” is “μαμωνᾶ,” which also means just “wealth.”  Perhaps because of this ambiguity, the King James Version chose to leave μαμωνᾶ untranslated:  “Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,” it reads; and, “You cannot serve both God and mammon.”  Leaving μαμωνᾶ untranslated, letting there be some obscurity about this parable – letting it “stink” – cues us the readers that there is mystery here, that language cannot fully explain Jesus’ truth, and that to strive for greater clarity might be not to “explain” but to “explain away” the text.

When we acknowledge that we do not understand this passage, when we cease to try to fix its “meaning,” when we can set aside our desire for clarity and learn to simply “be” with the Bible’s obscurity, with its “pungency,” we set aside our desire for control.  And when we can set aside our desire for control, we are ripe for becoming in a more full way “the aroma of Christ to God,” who then can “lead us in triumphal procession and through us [can better] spread in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him.”

Aquinas seems to acknowledge the obscurities in Luke’s Gospel, for at the opening of his commentary on Luke, Aquinas quotes Isaiah chapter 50:  “I clothe the heavens with blackness,” Isaiah writes, “ and make sackcloth their covering” (Is 50:3).   Might I suggest in regards to this morning’s passage that we try not to explain it away,but rather allow it simply to be in its “darkness?”  If we can respect that this parable’s pungency is not a stench but a fragrance, and that this fragrance has the power to carry the mystery of Christ past the mind’s demands for clarity and thus seep into the soul, then perhaps, with this fragrance in our soul, we will more fully be “the aroma of Christ to God” and more fully be in the world a“fragrance of life to life.”