Ugly Betty and the Manager
You know what today is? OK, it's Sunday, but more important than that, it's only four days until the new season of Ugly Betty begins! We'll ride the subway with Betty Suarez of Queens as she hangs onto her integrity and navigates through the selfishness and manipulation of everyone else at Mode magazine in glamorous Manhattan.
Who is the biggest manipulator of all? There are many contenders, but the winner is Wilhelmina Slater: a stunning former model, she is Creative Director of Mode. Driven by ambition and pumped up on Botox, Wilhelmina will stop at nothing to become the magazine's editor-in-chief. Episode upon episode have shown the one thing you can count on with Wilhelmina: deceit. Her character is so clearly and finely drawn that we know she'll go to any length, will carry out any subterfuge, to get what she wants. Should she suddenly appear to turn over a new leaf, should a softer, kinder Wilhelmina emerge, we'll know better than to trust her. We know she'll be back at her backstabbing, power-driven tricks soon enough. She's b-b-b-bad to the bone (1).
This year, we have been sharing another series, this one called The Gospel of Luke. In today's episode, Jesus tells a parable of another who is bad to the bone, a very early example of a white-collar criminal, the manager of a large concern owned by a very, very wealthy man. We can fill in the blanks about this manager's past. He's made at least one enemy – the whistleblower who reports his dishonesty to the property owner. We don't know if he's only bilking the tenant farmers indebted to the owner, or the landowner, or all of them, but it's gotten the manager fired.
Like Wilhelmina Slater, he's a resourceful fellow. Is he going to be out on the streets, or will he manipulate the same poor debtors he's been taking advantage of all along? I can see him figuring out a new angle, erasing and rewriting the account book, figuring a way to cover his tracks and to provide himself a golden parachute for his future. He'll maneuver the story so that the debtors think he's a hero protecting them from the evil rich owner.
He meets with each debtor. He is magnanimous. He doesn't mention that he's been fired. He doesn't tell them that he had padded their original debts to make a pile of money for himself.
"Yeah, Jacob, I know I told you to pay 100 barrels of oil, but let me handle the old man. You pay 50 and I'll get him to agree. Don't worry about it; what am I here for if not to be your friend? And you, Nahum, forget about the 100 measures of wheat. Make it 80 and we'll call it square. How's that?"
With tributes and taxes, needing a reserve of seed for next year's crops, and wanting desperately to have something for the Temple, the debtors are relieved. They are obligated to this slimy manager, but they are relieved.
The manager has bought himself some friends. Even better, the rich man commends him for his shrewd actions. Commends him! If he only knew!
The disciples and anyone else within earshot would have had enough of this system. Far too few people benefited. Jesus' followers would know people – they would be people – driven into grinding poverty by it. They'd have had enough.
Just when we expect to hear something along the lines of the Beatitudes, we hear something very different. It sounds as if Jesus is counseling his followers to act like the manager! He sounds impressed by the machinations, the sly, pragmatic behavior. Can that be right? He says, "the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light." Or as the New International Version of the Bible puts it, "for the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light".
That makes more sense to me: people skilled in deception and greed, people willing to put their hearts and souls into making it at any cost, are more skilled at it than are the people motivated by justice. People motivated by the light don't have much practice in bilking and debasing others. Betty Suarez is no Wilhelmina Slater. Couldn't be a Wilhelmina Slater unless she gave up her self, her heart – and her soul.
Have you ever lost your soul? I'm serious. It's the kind of thing we may not even notice as it happens. It disappears like a balloon released when our attention is elsewhere. It seems to evaporate while we distract ourselves with other things. It is our very being, the image and likeness of God in us, the holy connection among us all, and we let it slip away in silence. Like the manager, we lose our soul while we impress ourselves with our own cleverness. And then it is gone. And then we are the manager. We are Wilhelmina Slater. We are empty sepulchers.
When I lived in New York, my friends and I would sometimes meet a man we referred to as "an empty suit." He looked good, but there was no one inside. There was no soul.
We lose our souls when we have lost our God within.
We lose our souls when we "make friends for [y]ourselves by means of dishonest
wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome [us] into the eternal homes."
This is one of those times when we need a video recording of Jesus as he tells this parable. We need to see and hear Jesus and the disciples breaking up in laughter at the idea of buying friends with dirty money and playing the shrewdness game better than those who have dedicated their souls to it. We need to laugh with them at the absurdity of choosing wealth gained dishonestly rather than God. We need to laugh with them at the absurdity of trading off our souls.
How can we hold on to life and light? We have the choice – day by day – to choose between God and dishonest wealth, between God and mammon, between life and death, between using our gifts for God or for gain. The thing is that our choice determines who we are –disciple or manager, Betty or Wilhelmina. Let's be sure to tune in, day by day, to see what choices we make, what kinds of stewards we are, and to be the image and likeness of God for one another as we make those choices.