The Coronavirus Pandemic II

Appendix

The parable of the unjust steward according to Luke 16, 1–9

He also said to His disciples:

There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods. So he called him and said to him, What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.

Then the steward said to himself, What shall I do? For my master is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg. I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.

So he called every one of his master's debtors to him, and said to the first, `How much do you owe my master?' And he said, A hundred measures of oil. So he said to him, Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty. Then he said to another, And how much do you owe? So he said, A hundred measures of wheat. And he said to him, Take your bill, and write eighty.

So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.

And I say to you, make friends with the unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.

This parable is certainly somewhat “awkward,” because it is difficult to reconcile these words of Christ with the other virtues known as “Christian.”

It may also be because nowadays we are no longer familiar with the kind of Pharisaic-Sadducee sophistry of those times, whereby one often spoke in a roundabout way, so to speak. The master obviously resorted to it here for his purposes. I mean that one may understand this passage basically quite “simply” and interpret it more or less as follows:

Obviously this parable is not about the teaching of economics, but — as written — it is a parable, which is why it is not about earthly, but about spiritual goods.

The preceding parables (in Luke 15) all refer to the soul-spiritual return from the diaspora of aberration to the divine-spiritual home based of the insight of the person concerned. For even though in the first parable (unlike in the two that follow) it is the shepherd who brings back his sheep, the occasion for this parable was that the “tax collectors and sinners” “continually drew near” to the Lord, that is, expressed a longing of their own accord for his instruction and help, whereupon the scribes criticized His dealings with them. It is true that the parable of the unjust steward is addressed “also” to the disciples, as it says, but the scribes are still present, and before their eyes and ears Christ advises the disciples what they should think of the conduct of these scribes, how they should classify it, evaluate it. Then He turns again to the

Pharisees with the clear words: “It is you who make yourselves appear righteous before men, but God knows your hearts ...” (Luke 16:15)

In this overall context, then, the parable of the unjust steward is given, and one may become aware that in terms of content and style, it is similar to the parables in Matthew (“But the kingdom of heaven is like ...” or the parable of the owner of the vineyard).

With the example of the unjust scribes, the disciples were to learn something about how to handle the spiritual gifts given to them by God. For it is they, after all, who will be sent out to proclaim the Gospel, the New Covenant of God, to the peoples in all the world. Since the Lord had chosen them to be His apostles, because they had known Him and had therefore been given to Him by the Father (John 17 Farewell Prayer) — according to the Prologue, that is, as “children of God” “who received Him” — it was indisputable that these Twelve were initially ahead of their human brethren in the knowledge of Christ and the aims of the New Covenant. They had been given special gifts, but at the same time this brought with it equally great responsibilities. (Attention is already drawn to this fact in the main text ).

“To whom much is entrusted, more will be required,” Luke 12:48

But before the disciples (uneducated in the study of the Scriptures, but whose hearts were directly trained by Jesus Christ) were entrusted with the administration of the Word, an administration that had been taken over by the scribes — a notoriously degenerate connection to the tradition of the Old Covenant, when spiritual matters were still in the hands of a designated group, which was able to receive Yahweh's instructions instead of the people, and was thus kept “pure” as a priestly lineage through bloodlines. As initiates, this group administered a knowledge that was withheld from the others.

This was to fundamentally change with the establishment of the New Covenant. How else should we understand the words: “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing hidden that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” (Matthew 10:26-27) or “No one after lighting a lamp hides it in a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a lampstand, so those who enter may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not be revealed ...” (Luke 8:16 f)

Against this background, the “rich man” in the parable of the unjust steward seems to be God himself (his wealth is the “kingdom of heaven,” divine wisdom and love), and the “steward” of his property is the one who is chosen to have a certain insight into or participation in this property, which in return obliges him to manage it in a right way. The way in which the steward “squanders” the master's “property” however, consists in using the spiritual goods entrusted to him for himself alone, that is, in misusing them and, moreover, making others dependent by demanding interest and keeping it for himself.

Then, when the steward is admonished by his master, he devises a clever bargain to buy himself free by giving away the master's goods (in form of the forgiven debt). And this is what the master praises in response!

What are the disciples (those who want to follow Christ) to learn from this?

Toward those to whom they are sent out, they should deal in the same way with the gifts given to them as the steward deals with the rich master's property toward the indebted trading partners — but for opposite motives. (“For the sons of this world are wiser in their generation than the sons of light.”) In this parable, the unjust Mammon stands for the keeping for yourself of spiritual goods, which are actually entrusted to you for the purpose of increasing them by giving them away (“... I have appointed you to go and bear fruit, and that your fruit will last, so that the Father may give you whatever you ask him in my name,” John 15:16, see also the parable of the entrusted talents. Luke 19:11 ff and Matthew 25:14 ff). If the unjust steward's behavior is applied to the handling of spiritual gifts, the Gospel will spread and the apostles and all the witnesses to the reality of Christ will bear “fruit.” By giving away the Lord's spiritual property, it is increased among the people.

“Make friends with the unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.”

If we apply the “model” of the unjust steward to the spiritual, we are “wise” but “without falsehood,” and we will make friends both among the people, to whom we will give the possessions (which we have wrongfully kept for ourselves), and at the same time make friends with the angels, who will one day admit us to their dwellings in return.

The present passage can be understood in this sense. It fits with a sentence which is taken from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in “Background to the Gospel of Mark,” where it is written as a concluding remark. Whoever is familiar with the meaning of the gospel passage touched on here will perhaps also see this connection: “But what lies dormant in the future can come to life if there are enough people who know that knowledge is a duty, because we may not return our souls to the world-spirit undeveloped; for then we will have taken something from the world-spirit itself which it has incorporated into us.” (GA 124)