The Gospel passage you’ve just heard is a part of a series of parables dealing with spiritual crises that are generated when we misuse our possessions, when we end up being possessed by our possessions. The lesson today involves, as you all know, the devious and clever wicked steward who doctors the accounts of his master’s books in order to win friends, who will care for him as he faces his impending firing.
Today’s parable needs to be understood in the realization that it was against Jewish law to charge interest on loans of money. Instead of bankers, the Jews earned interest by borrowing produce instead of money. Here in this particular case the rich man was probably an absentee landlord who loaned olive oil and wheat to his debtors expecting to receive more of each commodity in return than what he loaned, the difference being the equivalent of interest charges on his loans. It was understood that the master’s steward would also earn his commission out of the differential amount, the amount between what was borrowed and the amount of the payback.
Jesus is not commending the steward’s dishonesty. The steward’s dishonesty had been discovered and was obvious to everyone. Jesus didn’t concern himself with the obvious. The steward squandered his master’s property. But he also took the necessary steps to secure his future. What Jesus is concerned with is the lack of spiritual foresight on the part of His followers.
The point is that we all ought to be as foresightful and prudent in planning ahead for our spiritual future as the worldly-wise are in planning ahead for their financial and material future. Jesus, clearly, is not commending the wicked steward for his deviousness. He was, after all, establishing a conspiracy to defraud the owner of the interest on his loans while at the same time returning the master’s principal amount on his loans, making friends with his master’s debtors, and securing his own future along the way. But Jesus was presenting His followers with the example of the zealous foresightfulness of the wicked steward and wishing that His own followers would be at least as enterprising in caring for the future of their souls.
And so the immediate question confronting you and me is: How zealous am I in providing for my spiritual future? Do I assume that God is a sort of Sugar Daddy in the Sky who is going to take care of me no matter what I do? Is it my unspoken assumption that what I do or what I don’t do in this life really doesn’t matter in the long run because a loving and infinitely merciful God will provide for me anyway? That insults God.
There is another aspect in today’s Gospel that I want to draw to your attention. That has to do with what we consider to be our possessions. What we have we do not own outright; what we have belongs to God. We only hold what we have in trust; it’s all eventually going back to God, the true owner of all that we think is ours.
Years ago a woman came to my office to tell me that she wanted me to refuse to marry her daughter to a young, prospective groom she was engaged to. Well, I refused, telling her that her daughter is the only one who could persuade me not to perform the marriage. The mother went into a whining, tearful pout, and then a rage during which she cried out: “My daughter is my proudest possession!” In no uncertain terms I informed her that her daughter was not her possession and the sooner she came to that realization the quicker she would return to being a mother instead of an owner. That didn’t sit well with her. But the woman was evidently used to doing business that way.
We have our children from God, they are His, not ours, we should remember that when we raise them. We only hold them in trust for a while and then we give them over to Him. We better do our job to make sure that God will have a good return.
Not only our children, all that we have is really God’s; it’s all eventually going back to Him, even our own life, which is God given gift to us and we should not have an attitude that we deserve something from God. We for sure can ask for healthy, long and prosperous life, but if God will give us one that is not as healthy as we wish or not as long as we wish or as prosperous as we wish, his gift of live is still worthy of living. Those who advocate mercy killing would have us overlook that fact. Abortionists fail to understand or deliberately avoid the truth that a baby is not its mother’s possession. Our lives and all that we have, including even our children are God’s and have been entrusted to us to be cared for so that they might eventually accomplish His purposes, not ours.
The religious understanding of the Pharisees was a very meticulous spiritual bookkeeping exercise. Jesus had a different understanding of our value in God’s eyes. Well, to understand this parable we have to step back and see what preceded it. Jesus has been addressing the biggest question: eternal life. Do you remember when they ask Jesus “Will only a few people be saved”? Jesus replies, “enter through the narrow gate”. Jesus later tells us we cannot be his disciples if we love parent, spouse or child more than him. Finally last Sunday Jesus tells three parables about redemption: the lost coin, the lost sheep and the lost son. We are lost and we need to be found. We are in a high stakes game. The stakes in fact could not be higher. But you know, most people say, ” that will wait, I’ve got more important business.” They are like the ones Amos describes in the first reading. They ask “When will the new moon be over…and the Sabbath, that we may display the wheat?” So anxious to get back to business, they chafe at the Sabbath observances.
Today of course many people don’t even realize there is a Sabbath – a day dedicated to the Lord. They barely think about God. For sure most don’t deliberately reject God. They ignore him. They think that even if he does exist, he doesn’t matter. In face of this apathy Jesus tells a parable meant to deliberately shock. It’s about a steward – a kind of financial administrator – who’s about to lose his job. He’s too weak for manual labor, too ashamed to beg. So he does something desperate. “I know what Is shall do,” he says, “that when I am removed from stewardship, they may welcome me into their home.” He cook the books, reducing a few people’s debts. He hopes that when the master puts him out, somebody will remember what he did and take him in. It’s crazy. But the master praises him. Why? Because he takes action. He assesses his situation, realizes he could lose everything and so he acts. That’s the situation you and I are in. We can only enter through the narrow gate. Jesus says it clearly, “You cannot serve both God and mammon.” Mammon means money and the stuff money can buy. A couple weeks ago Jesus said that to be his disciple we have to renounce our possessions. This means everything we possess we place at Jesus’ disposition – like the early Christians did in the Acts of Apostles. This becomes harder as we get older because we have more stuff. We won’t have it long. When multi-billionaire John Rockefeller died someone asked his accountant, “How much did he leave?” The accountant answered bluntly, “All of it.” So will you and I. Despite great medical advances the mortality rate is still 100%.
Jesus says, “make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so when it fails you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings”. What must have scandalized them was the realization that the foresightful steward in today’s parable was being praised by Jesus precisely for his prudent vision of what lay ahead of him, not because he was a cheat but because he was a sinner who dared to hope for redemption.
The passage concludes with three morals for the listeners.
The first exhorts the listener to be prudent about the use of wealth. Like the steward in the parable, those who would follow Jesus must put transitory affairs in proper perspective. Christians should handle the affairs of temporal life with an eye toward eternal life.
The second concerns trustworthiness. Those who can be trusted in small things can also be trusted in great things. If Christians handle money and other passing things responsibly, then they can also be trusted with the affairs of the Kingdom of God.
Finally, Jesus tells his listeners that no one can serve two masters simultaneously. God must be put ahead of money or every other thing we have.