Proper 20: Amos 8.4-7, Psalm 113, 1 Timothy 2.1-7; Luke 16.1-13

THIS Gospel is a complete package: parable, plus interpretation. Three times, Jesus uses a peculiar word to describe the dishonest steward. But, unless we are reading the passage in the AV, we will not find that word. Modern translations use equivalent terms, which evoke the general idea, but lose the specific concept — “mammon”.

Mammon is a loan word, derived from Hebrew and Aramaic, but repackaged in Greek for Luke’s Gospel (and Matthew’s). It means “money” or “wealth”. Augustine once mentioned that the word “mammon” was also found in the language of North Africa, Punic, and that it meant “gain”.

“Money.” “Wealth.” “Gain.” The world does not think that these things are bad (I would call mammon “bad” rather than “evil”, because evil suggests intentional malice). Even most Christians feel no guilt about wanting a pay rise, acquiring property, or choosing the highest-interest savings account. Augustine’s mother, Monica, was utterly desperate for her son to become a Christian, and yet she and her husband, Patricius, still put every penny of the family cash into buying him an education so that he could better himself financially and socially.

Two factors in the text confirm the negativity of mammon. The first factor is verbal: Luke twice links the word mammon with another word, “unrighteousness”, which is indisputably bad. Literal as ever, the AV reveals the theological bone-structure: “Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness.” NRSV goes for something less alien, “dishonest wealth”, as does NIV, with “worldly wealth”. Linking wealth and unrighteousness, or dishonesty, or worldliness, suggests that mammon is inherently morally negative, not just potentially negative depending on how it is used.

The second factor confirms this view: in verse 13, Jesus declares that serving mammon is incompatible with serving God. That puts the nature of mammon (however it is translated) beyond doubt. It is bad, in its essence as well as in its effects.

If we preserve the word “mammon” here, it becomes easy to see that what Jesus is denouncing is a particular type of wealth or gain. Greek already has perfectly good words for wealth (ploutos) and gain (kerdos). But Luke — supposedly the Evangelist to Gentiles rather than Jews — plumps for a Hebrew/Aramaic word that means “bad money”, “bad wealth”, “bad gain”.

In the parable, the master of the dishonest steward praises him because he has used mammon in a way that is “shrewd”. This time, a Greek word is being translated: phronimos, meaning homely, practical wisdom. Jesus makes the point directly in Matthew 10.16, saying, “be practical[/shrewd]” like serpents: a sign that even something bad by nature (Genesis 3.14) can be turned to God’s good purposes.

On this point, AV is less helpful. It has “The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light”; and “Be wise as serpents.” But the shrewd, practical approach that Jesus means is not highfalutin philosophical Wisdom, but something more homely: common sense.

We Christians can always do with a bit more common sense. Our high theological ideals sometimes make it seem as if we are above humble practical wisdom. Still, the book of the Bible which contains the most exalted language about theological Wisdom — Proverbs — also contains by far the largest proportion of common-sense advice, including advice about money: “Many seek the favour of the generous, and everyone is a friend to a giver of gifts” (19.6 NRSV).

If you have mammon, Jesus says, do not waste it on stuff. Use it to make friends, getting people on your side by doing them favours. It could seem Trumpily “transactional”, this way of (effectively) buying friendship. But, whether we like it or not, human friendships are transactional: they cannot be one-sided. If all the giving is on one side, and all the taking on the other, then we are in the world of do-gooding and dependency, not friendship.

Real friendships demand mutuality: give-and-take — or, as a psychologist might think of it, a balance of demands and satisfactions. What the dishonest steward did for the people whose debts he recalculated was common-sense, practical wisdom.

Finally, a marvellous 18th-century English word for common sense: the steward had the gumption to invest the mammon he had access to in people, not things. How splendid it would be to see “gumption” used in the next revision of the NRSV and NIV, for teaching us that “people before stuff” is truly the gospel way.