25th Sunday Year C - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2010

If today’s story puzzles us, we’re not the only ones. Most commentators seem to disagree with each other about what it means. Even St Luke seems a bit unsure. After telling the story, he connected five different moral conclusions to it, none of which is connected to the other, and all of which hardly seem to clarify the story. 

One explanation says that the steward was prepared, under extreme pressure, to take a punt on his master’s generosity and at least escape whatever punishment he deserved. Even if that is not quite what Jesus meant, it may still have a valid lesson for ourselves. We can see the master as a stand-in for God, and put ourselves in the shoes of the steward.

As far as God is concerned, we are guilty of numerous sins. We also know, at least in theory, that God is generous and forgiving. I know that some people may exploit God’s goodness – never facing the reality of their sin. never facing the reality of God’s love, never really repenting, never changing.  On the other hand, I also believe that a lot of people are frightened of God. A lot of people feel under enormous pressure to somehow try to get God on their side – by special devotional practices, by bargaining, by promising to be good, etc. They struggle to take the punt on God’s gratuitous forgiveness. They lack the bravado of the dishonest steward. Yet, not unlike those others who exploit God’s goodness, I fear that they never really face the reality of God’s love, never really repent – in a life-giving sense – and never change.

Most people find it hard really to believe that God loves them. They tend to keep at some emotional distance from God. They hesitate to relax into the tender mercy of God. They hesitate to get really close. They pray; they plead; but they fall short of spending quiet time with God, doing nothing, just letting themselves be loved.

There is perhaps another lesson that we could draw, and it is related to the Gospel comment: Use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into the tents of eternity. The friends in question are the poor, and when it fails you means when you die. Interesting thought, isn’t it, that Heaven’s gatekeeper is not St Peter, but the poor!

Jesus has a problem with wealth – not so much in itself, but because of other issues often associated with it: How did we get it without oppressing or exploiting others? How can we keep hold of it and still be in genuine solidarity with others? Does it become addictive? Does it create the dangerous illusion that we are in control?

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught us to pray: Give us this day our daily bread. I don’t think it is necessarily a prayer to an interventionist God – asking God to pull a few strings for our benefit. Rather, it may be a prayer that God foster within us the sense that enough is enough: Give us this day our daily bread. To be content with enough is a wonderful freedom – even if in today’s world it is so counter-cultural. In fact, it could well undermine the whole capitalist economic system.

Why is it so difficult to be content with enough? We are sometimes so brainwashed by the whole advertising industry that we don’t even realise the strength of our addictions to the new, the latest, to the superfluous. Might it be that, as St Augustine once said, many long years ago: O God, our hearts are restless until they rest in thee? Until our hearts rest in God, we shall always be restless, seeking substitutes to fill the emptiness of our lives.

Yet, we know that God loves us – gratuitously, without reserve, personally. Perhaps, today’s story invites us to take the punt, to believe God’s goodness and to surrender trustfully into God’s love.

And that, I believe, is what every Eucharist is about.