SKENE 23: "Everlasting Tents" - the parable of the unjust steward.

Almost all the remaining instances of the noun ‘skene’ and the verb ‘skeno’ (4 of each) are found in Revelation, so – take courage ! – the end is in sight. The one exception, an instance of ‘skene’, is an interesting pointer to its use in Revelation, and also, as in so many of its other appearances, an intriguing paradox in itself. It occurs in the parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16. 1-9 – or “the shrewd manager”, as the NIV more charitably describes him – a parable which already has enough problems and paradoxes of its own. The steward is accused of squandering his master’s property. The word ‘accused’ here is ‘diaballo’, which usually means to ‘accuse falsely’ or to ‘slander’; it is the word from which ‘diabolos’ is derived, the title of the Devil, the “accuser of the brethren” (Rev 12.10, though this is a different word in Greek). Still, the master believes the accusation, and tells the steward to present a full statement of his accounts before being ‘let go’. The steward has no pension, he cannot dig and will not beg: what to do ? He calls together all his master’s debtors, and alters his accounts so that they appear to owe much less, “so that, when I am sacked from my stewardship, they may receive me into their homes”. His master, unexpectedly and paradoxically, congratulates him on his ‘shrewdness’ in forward planning, and Jesus uses the parable as the basis for the following injunction: “You make for yourselves, too, friends out of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that, when it fails, they may receive you into their everlasting tents”. More or less from the beginning of this study we have taken it as axiomatic that a tent is temporary, the symbol of impermanence, of the transience of life on earth, as opposed to the eternity of heaven. Surely ‘everlasting tents’ is a contradiction in terms ? A parable is, in essence, a comparison; the Greek word ‘parabole’ means ‘putting (two things) beside each other’; and a comparison can make its point by drawing attention both to similarities and to dissimilarities. In this parable (as in the parable of the ‘unjust judge’ in chapter 19), the dissimilarities seem to predominate, but there is one striking parallel: the second half of verse 4 and the second half of verse 9 are alike both in structure and in meaning. The steward makes plans “so that when I am deposed from my stewardship they may receive me into their houses” (v.4); and Jesus tells his disciples to use “the mammon of unrighteousness” to make friends for themselves “so that when it fails they may receive you into the (or “their”) everlasting tents”. The similarity is clear: the repeated phrase “so that when” implies forward planning and the recognition that, sooner or later, the window of opportunity will be closed. The difference is expressed in the word “everlasting”: the ‘unjust’, or ‘shrewd’ steward will be received into earthly, and so temporary, homes, but the stewards of God, and so of the gospel message – the message that all are debtors to God through sin, but that all may have their debt fully forgiven through Christ – will find a welcome in tents which will never be taken down and folded up. On earth, houses tend to be more permanent than tents, but a heavenly tent is more permanent than the sturdiest house on earth. The paradox makes the point.