25th Sunday Year C
See Commentary on Luke 16:1-13
Homily 1 - 2007
To make sense of today’s story requires a familiarity with the attitudes and customs of the Middle Eastern world at the time of Jesus. It would take too much time to explain adequately.
Anyhow, the outcome of the story was that the dishonest manager took a punt on his employer’s patience, set up a situation where he had him over the barrel, and managed to set himself up for a reasonably comfortable future. Under pressure, he was smart – he was a quick thinker, and his employer couldn’t but admit, no doubt begrudgingly, that he was astute.
Jesus used the story somewhat wistfully – if only his disciples would be as resourceful, single-minded and focussed about working for God’s Kingdom as the dishonest manager was in looking after his own future. As Jesus said: The children of this world are more astute in dealing with their own kind, than are the children of light.
Luke then adds no less than four different comments of Jesus, all connected with the theme of how we use our money. I find that the first one haunts me somewhat. Use money to win you friends to make sure they welcome you into the tents of eternity. I think that Jesus is saying that our use of our income, and our treatment of the poor will determine our fate in eternity.
There are real disadvantaged in our own nation, particularly in some Aboriginal communities, and 850,000,000 in our world, our global village. Despite the humorous stories about St Peter, Jesus seems to indicate that the heavenly border controls are determined by the poor. I am not sure of the value of an Australian Passport when we come seeking asylum after our deaths. Our treatment of refugees, and of asylum seekers generally, might make sense in a world governed by self-interest and national interest. It doesn’t wash in a world governed by the values of God’s Kingdom. Our treatment of the poor will determine our status in eternity. As Jesus said:Use money to win you friends to make sure they welcome you into the tents of eternity.
If we can’t use our incomes in ways that reflect a faith-enlightened sense of human dignity – of everyone’s dignity – what chance have we of growing in the ways that really matter: as people who love, who are free, whose hearts can genuinely care? As Jesus said: If you can’t be trusted with money [to share our wealth justly and generously], who will trust us with genuine riches [with love, joy, peace and freedom, for example]?
The world and its resources are there to be shared by all. No one owns the world – it belongs to all. We have to work out practical ways so that all can share fairly. If self-interest, or national interest, interferes with God’s provision for all, then self-interest and national interest must be changed. As Jesus said: If you can’t be trusted with what is not yours [not ours to withhold from others in need], who will give us what is our very own [what flows from our dignity as human persons loved by God, namely, once again, love, joy, peace and freedom]?
The problem is, as Jesus sees it, that we let ourselves be mesmerised by money, by consumer goods, by our exaggerated desire for security. We become addicted to them and compulsive about them. We find ourselves serving them.
There is only one alternative – to be clearly focussed on God and the values of God’s Kingdom. Once more, Jesus was quite clear: You cannot be the slave both of God and of money. Either we voluntarily give our all to God, and sit lightly with the things of this world, or we finish up addicted to them, and effectively their slaves.
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.
Homily 3 - 2013
I think that the message of today’s parable is very similar to the message in the parable of the Prodigal Son: Take a punt that God is good, and be ready to be surprised that God’s goodness exceeds even our greatest hopes. Probably, tonight’s parable was no more about the use of money than the parable of the sower was about careful crop management. But Luke uses the parable, nevertheless, as a peg on which to hang three or four different and unconnected teachings of Jesus on attitudes to wealth and income. Many of us burn up lots of physical and nervous energy on issues of wealth and income – or at least on life-style issues that are dependent on them.
In dedicating his life to what he called the Kingdom of God, Jesus ultimately was concerned to show us how to live life to the full, and how to blossom and grow in a social order where people trust each other, help each other and are safe. History shows us how hopeless we have been at all that - though it is not all doom and gloom, despite the daily TV news programs.
I find the Lord’s Prayer a consistent corrective, calling me, as it does, to prioritise, and to make the centre of my life, the Kingdom of God – a truly better world. It invites me to align with God’s will [which is no great mystery, but simply unadulterated, no expectations, undeserved, consistent and relentless love, not just for me but for everyone].
Then I pray: Give us this day our daily bread – not, give me my bread [which is unfortunately what I often mean] but give us our bread. In fact: Give us this day our daily bread. I see that as a prayer for “enough”, but not for “more than enough”. How much is enough? Enough for what? Enough to live life to the full, to blossom and to grow. And God hears our prayer. Our earth is wonderfully fertile.
In a few minutes, as Mass continues, a couple of you will bring some bread and wine to the table, and I shall pray to God, as spokesperson for all of you, Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands. The work of human hands is important, but those hands work with what is already fruit of the earth, of this fertile earth, that is not of our making, but is simply so – gift of the creative God.
Ultimately, everything is gift – gift to be used, but, firstly, to be appreciated. Our approach to life is so much richer when we accept everything simply as gift. A thankful heart is not a heavy heart. Seeing our world as gift means not seeing it simply as mine, to be possessed and accumulated and to be hung on to selfishly – but as given to us by God. Give us this day our daily bread – Be appreciative; Be generous.
Luke reported Jesus’ saying: If you cannot be trusted with what is not yours [but gift], who will give you what is your very own [integrity, love, faithfulness, etc.]. If we can start with the unassuming attitude of being appreciative and content with enough, we are on the way to life to the full, to human blossoming and wonderful personal growth. But we cannot have it both ways. We cannot live “in a world of our own where no one else can share” – a world dominated by money – and at the same time blossom into the beautiful persons God calls us to be. We cannot be slave of God and money.
Perhaps, it all boils down to whether we are prepared to trust God and God’s goodness; whether, like the prodigal son and the unjust steward, we are prepared to take the punt that God is good.
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.
Homily 5 - 2019
It has been a mixed week – beginning with the three articles that appeared in the Age about Corpus Christi seminary. Nothing new – but rugged reading all the same. Part of me prefers that everything would simply quieten down. But then I think – No! We as Church haven’t done nearly enough to repair what can be repaired of the past, or to safeguard as best we can the future that awaits us. Without articles like the ones that were published during the week, we could easily do nothing. They are humiliating. They hurt. But the hurt we feel is nothing compared to the trauma experienced by the abused victims and by their families. The protocols that have been set up are good, but protocols are not enough. As Church we have not yet been converted. The culture behind the offending needs to be understood and addressed. Some in the Church have begun to do so, but infinitely more needs to be done. I wonder, and I hope that the Plenary Council may take a significant step in the right direction.
The week finished up better. I am very much encouraged by the young people all around the world, but also here in Australia, who marched on Friday to focus attention on the immediate need for the whole world to respond urgently to the threats of Global Warming. So many young people seem determined and well informed and articulate. Not long ago Pope Francis had a conversation in the Vatican with the sixteen-year-old young woman, Greta Thunberg, from Sweden who is heading up the youthful non-violent protests against the pathetic inactivity of so many world leaders. Pope Francis himself has not been slow to express his concern for our world, for its increasing degradation, and for the devastating effect especially on the poor and defenceless. He has scheduled to start on 7th October a special Synod of Bishops to consider, among other things, the issues involved in the appalling exploitation that has been destroying the priceless but fragile Amazon region of South America.
Sadly, many of those who do care about Global Warming feel helpless and discouraged – tempted to shrug the shoulders, accept that it is all too hard, and get back to business as usual. I believe that today’s Gospel can be relevant to this current situation.
The story Jesus told is magnificent. It has everyone scratching their heads, wondering. Did he mean what he seems to have said? Did the “master” really “praise the dishonest steward”? It depends on the translation. Jesus’ comment could have had the master saying something like, “Well, you have got to give it to the scoundrel. He is certainly a smart operator.” When telling parables, Jesus was usually intent on stimulating people to think, to try to work out what he could have meant. Luke, however, less trusting teacher that he was, was not content with leaving things up in the air. So, in his puzzlement, he added to the parable five or six possible moral conclusions, gathered no doubt from remembered sayings of Jesus, uttered in different settings at different times – but not all relevant.
The comment that I think does apply to our present situation is this: “the children of this world are more astute in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light”. How have so many world leaders managed to back out of their commitments that they agreed to in Paris in 2015 to lessen carbon emissions - and the rest of us let them? There is a cost, of course, to climate change commitments. It also means change. It certainly disrupts “business as usual”. And it calls for cooperation – international cooperation. Too hard? Not for those who undertake “to love their neighbour as themselves”. Not for those who, like the prophet Amos in today’s First Reading, have understood God’s “preferential option for the poor”; or those who take to heart another of today’s Gospel conclusions, “Use money ... to win you friends, and thus make sure that … they will welcome you into the tents of eternity”.
Discipleship can have surprising, and demanding, consequences.
Homily 6 - 2022
I find tonight’s Gospel passage really teasing, and yet having a great depth and relevance. It comes from a different age, with different customs, yet can still be as stimulating for us today as it seems to have been for Jesus’ actual hearers.
I shall first clarify a few points. There is the master, a rich [possibly newly-rich] landowner. His debtors were probably former small-time owners now leasing the land that had previously been their own. The steward was the middle-man charged with negotiating the terms of the various leases, apparently adjusted year by year depending on the seasons — not unlike the way some farmers today [I think!] deal with future’s trading, or their annual insurance payments on their crops or livestock. Personal interactions in those days were determined less by law, than by the culturally sacrosanct unwritten obligations of their “honour code, where “losing face” in the community was a worse fate than losing life.
In this situation, the steward unexpectedly, unbeknown to anyone else, renegotiated downwards the contracts entered into earlier, individually, privately, with the each of the various small-time farmers. Such renegotiation was not uncommon when seasons turned out unpredictably. Each debtor would have been thrilled, even though the “honour code” would have obliged him to “return the favour” to the steward in some way in the future. By doing this, the steward assured his peace of mind for the years ahead. What the debtors interpreted as an act of genuine concern on his part, however, was in fact an act of sheer self-interest
No doubt word got around, and the master’s honour would also have risen correspondingly. For him to proceed with his intention to dismiss and perhaps charge the now popular steward would then have led to a great “loss of face” on his part in the small community. The steward had effectively silenced him. All he could do was to remain silent, to shake his head, acknowledge to himself the steward’s astuteness, and accept the outcome.
There, Jesus’ story probably ended — and the listeners were left to work out for themselves what Jesus was getting at by telling it. That, I presume, is how Jesus wanted the story to end: open-ended, confusing, yet also teasing — and inviting his hearers to make sense of what on earth he was driving at within the context of their personal individuality and their ever-changing and often-challenging life experiences. Luke used the story as a hook on which to hang a number of sayings of Jesus dealing with the general issue of the proper use of wealth. Most of the sayings have some tenuous relationship to the story, but little connection to each other.
Personally, I suspect that Jesus is reminding me — again! — to prepare my homilies out of genuine concern for his truth, and to share them as an act of love for you all, and, unlike the steward, not out of self-interest and the hope that you will be favourably impressed.
As you listen now, each of you can well ask, ”What might Jesus want to say to me tonight through this story?” And if tonight is not long enough to work out why Jesus wanted you to hear the story and what light he wants to throw on your life now, then keep on chewing it over for the next week or so. If you think through the story again in a few months time, you may hear Jesus challenging with some other quite different insight, just for you.
That is why Jesus told parables. He wants to treat me and you as the intelligent and responsible adults and unique individuals that each of us is, in the ever-changing “here-and-now’s” that comprise our lives. How he challenges or invites you will, quite probably, be quite different from how he challenges or invites me or anyone else.