Homily for 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Sept. 21, 2025
Luke 16: 1-13
The Fountains, Tuckahoe, N.Y.
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

When my father returned from overseas after WWII, he got a carpentry job in a firm on W. 31st Street in Manhattan.  They designed and built displays that department stores and other businesses would put into their street windows or elsewhere, e.g., at Christmas and Easter.  These were shipped all over the country.  The shop foreman was running his own little business on the side.  He would get orders on the sly for window dressers he knew, and the shop crew would build the displays according to his orders.  One morning the owner came to work very early and saw a delivery truck picking up displays.  He didn’t recognize any of the names, and upon checking, discovered the cheating that was going on.  He fired the foreman there and then.[1]

The Dishonest Steward (A. Miranov)

I recalled that story in connection with Jesus’ parable today:  “A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property” (Luke 16:1).  The steward is the rich man’s property manager.  We’re not told precisely how he’s “squandered” his boss’s property, whether thru bad management or some form of corruption.

The rich man’s upset.  Commentators suppose he’s well informed, at least after hearing reports and probably looking around a little.  So he dismisses the manager on the spot.

The steward’s in a pickle.  In a few hours, everyone in this rural 1st-century Jewish community—this isn’t 20th-century Manhattan—will know he’s been fired for either incompetence or dishonesty, and he’s not going to find another decent job.  He knows he can’t become a common laborer, and he’s unwilling to become a beggar, like people we often see at certain intersections or in the subways.

He comes up with a plan that will rely on his employer’s generosity and desire to be in good standing in the community.  Before anyone else has a chance to know he’s been fired, he calls in the estate’s debtors—tenant farmers.  They’ve contracted for some substantial rents; the landowner would be aware of the arrangements.  But for the moment the steward holds the accounts:  “Prepare a full account of your stewardship” (16:2).

So he offers each renter a hefty reduction in payment.  One commentator states that the deduction of 50 measures of olive oil, about 300 gallons, would have been worth about 500 denarii, and ditto the deduction of 20 kors of wheat, about 130 bushels.[2]  Our lectionary usually renders 500 denarii as 500 days wages.  It ain’t peanuts!  The dismissed steward defrauds the landowner again.

The supposition in the parable is that the renters would’ve understood that the steward was still acting in the name of his boss, and the master was granting them a reduction in rent as an act of noble generosity.  They and the wider community would be greatly impressed.

And that, in turn, puts the rich man in a pickle.  If he tells his tenants that the reduction in their rents was done without his approval and is invalid, his reputation in the community will be ruined; he’ll be seen not as generous and noble but as miserly.  He can maintain his noble reputation by accepting what his crafty former manager has done.  “And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently” (16:8).  He commended him for being shrewd, for his skill in self-preservation,[3] for securing for himself a “welcome” into someone else’s household (16:4).

Jesus isn’t commending dishonesty.  He’s telling his disciples, to whom the parable is addressed (16:1), to act prudently to secure their future—to provide for a “welcome into eternal dwellings” (16:9).

God has given each of us an estate to manage.  That estate is our various material, intellectual, and spiritual gifts, even our very lives.  The day will come when our Master will tell us, “Prepare a full account of your stewardship” (16:2); he’ll review our accounts and determine whether we should be fired—cast out of his house into the outer darkness—or welcomed as “good and faithful servants” worthy of the Lord’s good pleasure (cf. Matt 25:14-30).

Therefore, Jesus cautions us to be “trustworthy with what belongs to another” (Luke 16:12), namely, to God, the owner of our lives and all that we have, and to use them in faithful, reliable service to him.  Serve God and not the world’s passing values, “dishonest wealth” in Jesus’ words (16:9).  Wealth, pleasure, power, and fame are fleeting.  Only God’s love lasts forever.

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[1] Ms. memoir, pp. 49-50.

[2] G.B. Caird, The Gospel of St. Luke (Baltimore: Penguin, 1963), p. 188, cited by Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet & Peasant (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), p. 101.  Measures based on Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, ed., The Jewish Annotated New Testament, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford UP, 2017), p. 775.

[3] Cf. Bailey, p. 106.