‘I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.’  (Matthew 10:16 NIV)

This is Jesus’ advice to the twelve disciples as he dispatches them on their solo mission across Galilee, it may be obvious they go as sheep before wolves, in that people will vilify them; and in bringing the gospel of love and, in that vulnerability, they must necessarily be as ‘innocents’, unjudgmental, prepared to trust and risk rejection or worse, but what does Jesus mean when he says the must be as shrewd as snakes?

The Greek word translated as ‘shrewd’ is the adjective φρόνιμος pronimos and is derived from the verb φρονέω proneó, which in turn comes from φρήν, phrén, the noun for the midriff.  In one sense, then Jesus is literally saying to ‘trust your gut’, but in the usage, pronimos means ‘knowing’, possessing cunning as opposed to naivety.

To understand this better, Jesus also gave a parable on the subject in which…

The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are shrewder in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.  (Luke 16:8)

The parable is widely seen as the most difficult to interpret and much of this is because unlike the horticultural and familial analogies, this is more specifically cultural.  

It is set in the context of ‘wealth’ and seems to directly follow on from the parable of the prodigal son, but this time the profligate is an employee who wastes the possessions of a rich man.

The plot is simple, the rich man has in his employ a steward or property manager, who handles all his business dealings on his behalf and decides to sack him.  The steward realises he is in a real bind, saying to himself…

‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.’ (ibid 16:3)

He then has a eureka moment, and decides to settle all his master’s debts at a lesser price, those endearing himself to the debtors, so that they ‘may receive me into their houses’.  To understand these transactions, we need the context of Jewish Law and practice.

Lending money or goods was permissible under the Law of Moses, but charging interest in return was not.

If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.  (Leviticus 25:35-37)

This injunction applies to the distribution of all wealth or surplus, including commodities and is given in the context of poverty.  Put simply, it says do not profit from others people when they are in straightened circumstances – in fact, the Law obliges to step and help.

This then is the context of the commercial practice being exercised by the steward who is managing the master’s estate.  This is a deliberately arms-length arrangement, or to take a phrase from Jesus and use in a different context, so as the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing (Matthew 6:3)

Imagine then you are the owner of an estate that produces surplus wheat and oil, you could sell but then how do you invest the money (remember you cannot benefit from interest on loans) – how do you make this wealth work for you, that is the conundrum?

The answer is to engage a steward, a factor or property manager, to manage this wealth.  He finds people in need and lends them some of your surplus, say one bushel of wheat, but on the docket for repayment, he says it is two bushels.  That then is the amount to be given back.  Crucially, as seen from the outside, this means the owner is complying with the Law by lending when others around him are in need, but there is no record of usuary.  Only the steward and the borrower know the actual amount that was given, and it is in both their interests to represent the transaction as written.  As for the owner, he is further enriched but has complete deniability. 

Here we should notice that this practice although getting around the Law is not the infringement he is accused of, it is one of waste not misrepresentation or obfuscation – that is him actually doing his job correctly,

The steward, facing ruin, comes up with plan, that actually defrauds no one but secures his future.  In setting the debts at a lower tariff, the owner of the estate still makes a profit, while the borrower is advantaged by having less to pay back to redeem the loan and for which the soon-to-be-redundant steward achieves a debt of gratitude he is in hope of realising sooner of later.

And this is the shrewdness that the owner commends the steward for, and which Jesus then says ‘the sons of the world’, the unenlightened, can serve as a model behaviour for the spiritually enlightened, ‘the sons of light’.  In what way?

‘I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth (mammon) so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.’ (ibid 16:9)

This undoubtedly advices people to use their worldly (unrighteous) wealth, for which the Aramaic is mammon, for Godly causes; but surely this is also about the spiritual capital.  If we accept that ‘they’ is the convention where plural pronoun is used to avoid naming God, it is God that will welcome and honour any that work for Him.

Effectively, Jesus is saying (figuratively, of course) put God in your debt in conducting earthly affairs.  

Perhaps then as now existed the current misunderstanding, that Jesus expects altruism, which it to say, to give without expectation of personal gain.  Nowhere in the Bible does God expect people operate without the prospect of reward; for example, take the most extreme self-sacrifice:

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.  (Matthew 5:11-12)

The apostles were persecuted and all but John are thought to have been martyred.  They gave their all for Christ, but they did so ‘shrewdly’ in that they were given expectation of reward.  In this way even the persecuted might be motivated.

Or, to state the negative, Jesus wants to allay any notion that his followers be somehow ‘super-spiritual’, when even he was given the prospect of reward:

Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

While it is the case, Jesus is teaching in the parable of the shrewd steward and other parables that his disciples should renounce mammon, he merely expects them switch their business model to one that accrues heavenly reward.  A shrewd person is one who seeks to ‘lay-up treasures in heaven’ (Matthew 6:20) in this way all will function in complete harmony with respect to their God-given humanity.  Only the nature of the rewards is different, not human nature, the urge to seek them.