25th Sunday Year C - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2016

What a great parable today! It does what any good parable was generally meant to do. It leaves us uncertain, wondering; and challenges us to see things for ourselves with new eyes, from a different viewpoint, from God’s viewpoint. It is particularly confusing for us because we are not familiar with how rural society in Galilee worked in those days. Even Luke was confused, and not sure what it was driving at. In desperation he appended four different moralistic conclusions drawn from the tradition that had no obvious relationship to each other and did not help to identify Jesus’ message. Specialist commentators have many interesting things to say about the parable; but they cannot agree with each other.

A large part of the problem comes from where precisely the parable ends. Most, but not all, agree that the story stopped with Jesus observing, “The master praised the dishonest steward for his astuteness”. That really leaves us scratching our heads.

One respected commentator draws attention to the fact that today’s parable has a number of details similar to ones in the parable immediately preceding it – the parable often referred to as “The Prodigal Son”. The steward was denounced for being wasteful with his master’s property. In the earlier story, the younger son was denounced by his brother for swallowing up the family property. Both accusations were accurate enough. The younger son was moved by gross self-interest and self-preservation to return to his father, not from any particularly evident love for his father. The steward, similarly, was motivated by gross self-interest and patent self-preservation, not by any particular concern for his master - quite the contrary. The younger son was aware of his father’s goodness – after all he had agreed to prematurely dividing up the property and thereby becoming the laughing stock of his neighbours. The steward had experienced his master’s goodness, too. The master could have had him imprisoned until he had repaid his debts, but had chosen simply to dismiss him, and similarly risked in the process becoming the laughing stock of his neighbours for being soft on the man whose conduct had so seriously dishonoured him.

Both parables detailed how son and steward thought long about their choices, and carefully reviewed their options. The younger son did not expect anything much of his father, beyond taking him back as a servant. In some ways, he even exploited his father’s generosity. The steward expected nothing of his master at all, and had simply schemed to put him in the unenviable position where he could not countermand the steward’s outreach to the debtors without irreparable loss of face. 

So let us look at the father of the prodigal son. He forgave his son, before even allowing him to finish his carefully rehearsed speech, and without demanding prior genuine repentance. His forgiveness, and his acceptance of his son, were total, unconditional and undeserved … and surprising. We are left to wonder if the younger son learnt to recognize his father’s love for the first time, to move to genuine repentance, and to grow up. What about the master of the unjust steward? All we are told in the story is that he praised the steward for his astute behaviour. Surprising, confusing, to say the least! Was it genuine personal praise or merely reluctant recognition of smartness? Did he in fact forgive the totally undeserving rogue steward? 

We generally see the story of the prodigal son as giving us a window into the heart of God. Does the story of the unjust steward give us a further, slightly different, window into that heart of God? Might it provide an even greater challenge to check our too casual acceptance of the totally undeserved, but equally gratuitous, readiness of God to forgive [never mind the cost! or the risk!] what is undoubtedly sin? No vengeance, just startling acceptance, allowing time and creating fertile ground for unexpected insight and change of heart.