The man was robbing a clerk in a California convenience store and when he grabbed the money, he also aimed the gun and pulled the trigger. The gun failed to go off. The robber, for some reason known only to God, turned the gun around to inspect the barrel and pulled the trigger again. This time the gun worked. We can only wonder at the man's stupidity. Someone invented a trophy that should go to dumb criminals, and they called it the Darwin Award. I think the name recognizes that the recipient did not quite climb high enough on the evolutionary ladder. Like the crook who robbed a gas station and as he was leaving, at the clerk's suggestion, entered a contest for a free oil change by leaving his name and phone number. He was shocked when he got him to find the police waiting at his door. A moral of these stories might be, "If you are going to be bad ... at least do a good job." Maybe that's not the sort of thing you want your children to hear from the pulpit but hey, don't shoot the messenger - I'm just taking my cue from Jesus! "If you are going to be bad ... at least do a good job."

I attend a weekly clergy Bible Study and this past Wednesday we agreed to a parson, this has to be one of the most difficult parables to preach. I've looked over my past sermons on this text ... and I've taken a variety of interpretations over the years. What was the meaning of the parable? I take small comfort in the fact that if you consult ten scholars you'll get eleven opinions on the point Jesus is trying to make. Jesus tells about a fellow who cheats the boss and then not only does the boss commend the man ... it's like he wants to give the guy the key to the city - the very fellow who just misused the key to his safe. What's going on here? However, there is general agreement on this point: Jesus is not praising the manager in the parable for his dishonesty. Jesus is commending the man for his shrewdness. To that, every interpretation of the parable would say "amen." Let me repeat: Jesus is not praising the manager in the parable for his dishonesty. Jesus is commending the man for his shrewdness.

I'm going to paraphrase a bit how one pastor, Barbara Beam, described the scene: Oh, the cleverness of this fellow in today's Gospel! OK, so he wouldn't have scored well in the honesty department, but you must admit he was quite clever. It seems that he was dishonest many times over. He worked for a rich man, managing his property. Probably he was well enough paid for this service, but not being quite satisfied with his salary, he had been squandering the property, and when the rich man found out, it was pink slip time for the manager, who was given something like the classic 'two weeks notice.'

The employee had evidently been living it up on his ill-gotten gains. Now he was really in a pickle! He didn't know what to do. How was he to continue to live in the manner to which he had become accustomed? He had lost his job, and now he had to give his employer a final accounting. It was not bad enough that he had been cheating his rich employer for some time, but now he proceeded to cheat him some more, destroying the old bills and writing ones for lesser amounts for his employer's debtors. This, of course, was also dishonest, but it was clever. Even the rich man who had been cheated admitted that. Probably this dishonest manager thought that when he left for browner pastures, he might find work with one or more of the creditors whose bills he had altered. "I'll scratch your back and you scratch mine." Would you hire the guy to tend your property?

It seems that the point of the parable of Jesus is that we ought to work just as hard ... to do good, as dishonest people do in order to cheat. We have to make a distinction between his dishonesty, which is not being commended, and his shrewdness, which is. His whole future depended on quick thinking and immediate actions. This manager is no fool, drowning in the shallow end of the gene pool. He'd never be a recipient of the Darwin Award. In the face of adversity the manager did what he needed to do to survive in this world. It's a messy world in which we live, and cunning and conniving, for many, are a way to get by and survive. And in a sense, Jesus says, "Go and do thou likewise."

I'm not going to be any more successful than the scholars I've read or the colleagues I've talked to, any more successful in tying up all the loose ends into a nice neat knot than they were. But knowing Jesus as well as I do (though not near well enough), he seems to be saying that in this messy world with so much gray area, it is in the way we handle the gray areas, the morally ambiguous situations we face from day-to-day, our true character is revealed in how we handle them. Beyond that, Jesus calls us to serve our God and act on behalf of our neighbor with the same fervor and creativity that we use to serve our own ends!

As the Darwin Awards point out: some people do bad things poorly. As our parable points out: the manager did a morally ambiguous thing with craftiness and creativity. And as I'll point out: we, we who children of God are entrusted with true riches ... our relationship with Jesus Christ. Therefore, we pray for the wisdom to be wise in our "use" of that sort wealth, as we are about the business of doing good - well.

A final story. A pastor tells the story of the congregation she serves in Florida. It had once been a great congregation in the heart of the city. But the city changed, the neighborhood declined, and now the congregation was made up mostly of those coming from the suburbs. Like many such congregations, they had a problem with vagrants, homeless men around the church. They put locks on the doors. At night, the homeless broke the locks. A meeting was held to discuss further security measures, bigger locks, better doors. What could be done to keep these vagrants from damaging their building? One woman on the Council said, "I'm bothered by the church locking doors and shutting out, especially people in need." Another Council member responded, "What do you want us to do - just throw open the doors and tell 'em, 'come on in, help yourself'?"

"Why not?" came a voice from the back of the room. The voice belonged to one of the older ladies of the congregation, a lady respected for her wisdom and vision. "We've been having a tough time attracting folk to this church. Here are people who are so eager to get into the church they break the doors down. Let's let em in." Someone responded, "I move the question! said someone else. They took a vote. That night, they left the doors unlocked, wide open. Twenty homeless men showed up. There were problems, the pastor admitted, but gradually the church did what was necessary to accommodate them. "Those men have given new life to our church. They helped us be a real church."

What a cunning and crafty way to deal with a very real problem. Their deliberations, inside the church led to thinking, outside the box. Jesus, surely would have approved. They did good - well. To this he would surely repeat, "Go, and do thou likewise!"