Monopoly Money
Luke 16:1-13
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’
And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly, for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”
“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
Sermon
Jesus is a real bummer of a guy sometimes. He just doesn’t stop talking about wealth, money, poverty, and the sharp divides between the “haves” and the have-nots. Like come on man, you’re really killing the vibe.
It’s also a bummer that Jesus talks about it so much, because I heard a rumor that this congregation really doesn’t like talking about money. Even more disappointingly, the lectionary has Jesus talking about money this week, and then the first epistle to Timothy talking about it next week.
So… let’s try this out… see how it goes. If you’re eager to talk about money, great, but if you’re a little nervous, or your hands are a little clammy, we’re going to get through this together. And if today’s sermon doesn’t land, that’s okay, we’ll course correct for next week.
So…
Do you remember the McDonalds Monopoly games? The last one was in 2015, but I have a hunch most of us recall how it worked.
You’d go to McDonald’s, you’d grab some fries, a drink, a burger—whatever—and see a couple of little stickers attached to the packaging. Each of those stickers were either monopoly pieces or instant wins, where you’d get a free apple pie or something. McDonald’s even printed little paper boards that you could put your stickers on.
There was a promise attached to the Monopoly game: if you played along, and you collected those properties, you could win a million dollars.
But!
Really bad news: none of us were going to win. Well… unless we have connections to the Columbo crime family. And unless we happen to know a seedy guy calling himself Uncle Jerry. You see, they orchestrated a massive conspiracy, picking the winners each year. In exchange for being picked to win, those winners gave a cut to Uncle Jerry and his cronies.
The saga was sordid and ugly, involving theft, deception, fraud, and exploitation. The extravagant wealth corrupted more than Uncle Jerry and the Columbo crime family; it corrupted the winners, too.
They had to lie not just once or twice, but repeatedly. When they “won” their prizes, they had to sign an affidavit swearing they found each piece by themselves. Relationships were destroyed; families were broken; and criminal records were forged. Many of the “winners” ended up poorer after winning than before.
Every person who won the game found themselves in a nightmare they couldn’t escape; sudden, exorbitant, exploitive wealth had wrapped its tentacles around them. Those McDonald’s Monopoly winners found themselves beholden to money literally overnight. When money and nothing more than money is driving the car, there’s no steering wheel, no brakes, and just a gas pedal.
Today, as Jesus often does, he’s pretty blunt when it comes to wealth and poverty. He shares today’s parable that goes hand in hand with McDonalds Monopoly, a parable which culminates in a stern warning about money: money can corrupt. But just as certainly as it corrupts, we learn it can become a vehicle for a kinder, relational, vibrant community of God.
“When money and nothing more than money is driving the car, there’s no steering wheel, no brakes, and just a gas pedal.”
If we were to look back in our Bibles to the chapter before this one, and to look ahead as to what comes next, we’d see that this teaching is one in a series.
Immediately prior to this, Jesus offers one of the most well-loved parables in the Gospels: the Parable of the Prodigal Son. We remember that in this parable, a son goes to his father, asks for his inheritance early, and blows it pretty quickly. A famine sweeps across the land, and the son returns to his father, tail tucked between his legs. The parable concludes with a joyful feast, an unexpected welcome, and a bitter older brother.
We almost always hear that story as a parable about God’s wide-open grace: God always welcomes us home no matter who we are or what we’ve done.
But that’s not the only thing baked into that parable. There’s more to it than that; the parable of the prodigal son is also a transition into Jesus’ teachings about money. We would be remiss if we didn’t see the economic dimensions of it.
Because what happens? What is the character in that parable that we miss? It’s money.
Life was good, but once the son receives his inheritance, we see him ensnared by it. Though he becomes destitute, it is the same snare that’s clawed onto him; he’s trapped in poverty after the ecstasy of wealth.
Money can corrupt. Money can entangle. Money can ensnare.
If we keep reading to the verses after today’s, the same theme gets sharper in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man.
There is a poor man, who Jesus named Lazarus in this story, who desperately hoped to get the scraps from a rich man’s lavish feasts. Both him and the rich man die, and Jesus says that the rich man falls into Hades, finding himself in torment. In Hades, the rich man begs Lazarus for a drop of water. Their roles reversed; money executed a coup in the rich man’s spirit, even without him knowing.
We see themes repeat throughout these parables. Money can corrupt. Money can entangle. Money can ensnare.
What’s different in today’s parable is that the shrewd manager does something unlike the others.
“But just as certainly as [money] corrupts, we learn it can become a vehicle for a kinder, relational, vibrant community of God.”
To break it down a little bit, this shrewd manager has cooked the books of his master. By cooking the books, he builds his master’s wealth, albeit dishonestly. We don’t know the details, but someone makes an accusation, and the master is getting ready to fire him. So this shrewd manager, seeing the writing on the wall, hatches a plan to save his butt. He goes debtor by debtor, pulling up their financial record, and without them even asking, he tells them “hey, there’s a “fire” sale… you’re on the hook for 100 jugs of olive oil? Let’s cut that in half.” In doing so, this manager makes more than a few friends; he’s celebrated, adulated even. The master is angered, but doesn’t want the bad PR of reneging on the bargain his manager made. It’s so shrewd, that the master has to let it slide.
When there the books are cooked, Jesus says, go and uncook them. In righting what is wrong, in forgiving what was owed, do it for the sake of mending relationships and forming new ones.
And so… this parable stands out from the others, because it shows us that money can also be used to sculpt new relationships, mend the breaches of our community, and give unexpected freedom to those who are burdened.
“Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth,” Jesus says.
Even when money is flooring the gas pedal, veering off course, and blasting circus music from the radio, there is another way.
Even in the midst of dishonest wealth, Jesus says, “make friends for yourselves.” Not only is there an exhortation to undo the economic exploitation of others, and for the wealthy to have special regard for the poor, but there is also an exhortation to repair relationships while doing so. It’s not merely about the money going to the right places; as translated in our Bibles, Jesus is pointing us to “true riches.”
“[Today’s] parable stands out from the others, because it shows us that money can also be used to sculpt new relationships, mend the breaches of our community, and give unexpected freedom to those who are burdened.”
The Presbyterian Church has not always come to its wealth by honest means. This past week, my former presbytery, the Presbytery of Baltimore, voted to establish a fund for the repair of relationships with its Black congregations. The presbytery studied its history, and uncovered that its wealth was in part due to enslavement. Not only had it profiteered from slavery, but it underfunded Black congregations, mismanaged their properties, and directly violated trust repeatedly.
The executive presbyter said this: “Through this fund, the Presbytery of Baltimore is aligning its resources with its faith, living out God’s call to mend what has been broken.”
This is a story about becoming faithful with dishonest wealth. Bout repairing broken relationships. About the path to finding true riches.
Jesus says if “you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?”
…
The kingdom of God isn’t trying to get a bank account. But the kingdom of God is trying to bring all of us into a kinder, gentler, sweeter, more gracious world. The kingdom of God is trying to sever our toxic relationships with money and dishonest wealth for the sake of deep, abiding relationships.
That’s what Jesus wants. If we boil it down, Jesus wants all of us: our wealth, our poverty, our love, our anger, our imagination, our despair. That most certainly includes the way we steward our money.
…
By the time the McDonalds Monopoly game was exposed as fraud, there was about 24 million dollars that was siphoned off. It was a lot, a lot, a lot of dishonest wealth.
But as this fraud spiraled out of control, and as this fraud was exposed, it did result in a new relationship. The FBI agent assigned to the case, Special Agent Rick Dent, worked closely with a McDonalds corporate employee named Amy Murray. They fell in love. They got married.
In that unexpected place, surrounded by dishonest wealth, we see what Jesus meant — that when it is melted down and reshaped, even dishonest wealth can become the truest of riches.
Sources
“Presbytery of Baltimore Approves Groundbreaking Reparative Justice Fund,” accessed 20 September 2025, https://baltimorepresbytery.org/reparative-justice-fund/
Dan Rodricks, “Baltimore Presbyterians offer reparations for the slavery Trump wants to erase,” 17 September 2025, The Baltimore Brew, accessed 20 September 2025, https://baltimorebrew.com/2025/09/17/baltimore-presbyterians-offer-reparations-for-the-slavery-trump-wants-to-erase/
John T. Carroll, 21 September 2025, WorkingPreacher.org https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-25-3/commentary-on-luke-161-13-6
