25th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Sept. 19, 2004
Luke 16: 1-13
Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle
It was the deacons’ turn to preach this week at Holy
Cross. Here’s a homily from the archives, very lightly touched up.
“The master commended that dishonest steward
for acting prudently” (Luke 16: 8).
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We read today one of Jesus’ more difficult
parables. Even the word master,
or lord, in that verse is ambiguous.
Does it refer to the steward’s master who has called him to account, or
to Jesus hinting at an interpretation?
There’s no way to be sure.
The situation Jesus speaks of would be well
known in his audience—in this case, his disciples. Palestine had many great landowners who were
absentee lords. They left managers in
charge of individual estates, like the steward in this instance, while they
dwelt in one of the cities or on another of their estates.
The steward is being dismissed for
“squandering” his master’s property (16:1).
That’s the same word used in the previous parable to tell us what the
younger son did with his inheritance (15:13).
In itself, this doesn’t suggest criminal behavior or dishonesty as much
as carelessness, perhaps incompetence, perhaps overspending, perhaps living it
up on his master’s income. It’s not bad
enuf that he should be charged with a crime like embezzlement; Jesus does tell
a couple of parables where jail is involved.
It’s not even urgent enuf that the steward should be thrown out on his
ear. He’s been given notice.
This is a crisis for
a man of position; and the steward of a great estate is a man of position. He’s not capable of hard manual labor, which
would be demeaning after he’s been in management. You don’t expect Michael Eisner to ride a
sanitation truck in L.A. after he leaves Disney. Even more shameful would be to sit at the
town gate begging for alms, like the blind man on the outskirts of Jericho
(18:35). Everyone would laugh at him, a
big shot brought down.
So the steward comes
up with a plan. His master has debtors,
and as the property manager he’s probably the one who arranged the loans to
these well-to-do neighbors who found themselves pinched for cash to pay their taxes
or buy seed back at planting time or equipment for the olive oil. Or, if they’re tenants on the great estate,
he handled the leases.
The sums of produce
are huge: the oil of about 150 trees,
the wheat of about 100 acres. These
gentlemen aren’t the poor of the land.
They’re doing all right. They’re
in a position to have managers of their own—to give our unfortunate steward a
place to land when he’s cut loose.
So he’ll put them
into his debt by reducing what they owe to his master. Most commentators are of the opinion that
he’s removing his own cut—his commission, if you will—when he alters the
contracts. If they were really hard
pressed when they borrowed, he may have driven them to a hard bargain, so that
now he has room to ease up without hurting his master. That doesn’t explain why the steward is
called “dishonest” (16:8). But perhaps
we probe too far when we try to dissect everything.
Whoever it is that
commends “the dishonest steward,” either his master or our Lord, commends his
prudence, his foresight. He has come to
a personal crisis, and he’s devised a workable plan to deal with it.
What’s Jesus’
point? The parable is addressed to his
disciples. Were the parable in a
different context, say the end of the next chapter where he speaks of the
crisis of the coming of the Son of Man, we would say the point is that all of
us must render an account of our stewardship, and we need a good plan for that
day. The parable might be a summons to
conversion.
But in the context
where Luke has put the parable, the concern seems to be wealth, what one does
with the material goods entrusted to him.
Bear in mind that whatever is given to a person is given in
stewardship: “The Lord God took the man
and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it” (Gen
2:15). The series of short sayings
immediately following the parable speak to that issue. The worldly-wise, like the steward, know how
to use their material assets, their positions, their influence, to take care of
themselves, to advance their interests, to cover their rear ends if need
be. They may even be expert at cheating,
stealing, and abusing their fellows for their own aggrandizement, like those
denounced by Amos (8:4-7), the Michael Milkens, Enrons, World Coms, and Bernie
Madoffs of the ancient world.
Christians also need
a certain wisdom in using material goods, using them to protect their own
interests, secure their long-term objective.
“Make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth”—literally, “the
mammon of iniquity”—“so that when it fails”—as all material goods must—“you
will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (16:9). Wealth, influence, all worldly advantages
must someday fail. If we have used them
prudently to make true friends, then a place will be ready for us in the
kingdom of God, the Lord’s eternal dwelling.
How does a disciple of Jesus use “dishonest
wealth,” untrustworthy wealth, to make the right kind of friends, to prepare
for himself an eternal dwelling? “No
servant can serve 2 masters” (16:13), so the disciple must 1st of all direct
wealth and its associated benefits toward his true Master and not toward
himself, much less toward wealth for its own sake, like a miser. William Barclay suggests that one could use
wealth with an eye to eternity:
The Rabbis had a saying,
“The rich help the poor in this world, but the poor help the rich in the world
to come.” [St.] Ambrose, commenting on
the rich fool who built bigger barns to store his goods, said, “The bosoms of
the poor, the houses of widows, the mouths of children are the barns which last
forever.” It was a Jewish belief that
charity given to poor people would stand to a man’s credit in the world to
come. A man’s true wealth would consist
not in what he kept, but in what he gave away.[1]
An earlier episode in
Luke’s gospel gives us a parable in action conforming to this theme. A centurion, a pagan, sends to Jesus a
message asking him to cure his dying slave.
His couriers are the Jewish elders of the town, who intercede for
him: “He deserves to have you do this
for him, for he loves our nation and he built our synagog for us” (Luke
7:2-10). The centurion used his wealth
to make worthy friends who then stood by him before the Lord.
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The Centurion & Jesus
(Paolo Veronese)
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2d, the disciple must
use his wealth and authority in a manner that serves his master—as of course
the steward in the parable failed to do, and so was dismissed. The disciple must be “trustworthy with
dishonest wealth” (16:11).
For us religious, who
of course have no fortunes at our disposal, let’s distinguish between the
individual and the community. The
individual religious with her vow of poverty puts herself and her worldly
goods, such as they may be, at the disposal of the community and of the
kingdom. She’s frugal. She doesn’t horde. She shares.
She accounts to the superior.
The superior—meaning
one with financial responsibility—uses the common goods carefully, and not just
for the community but for also the needy—a few verses on comes the parable of
Dives and Lazarus—and for the apostolic work.
Competent people are appointed or hired to manage property and
programs. The community’s assets are
taken care of, maintained, stretched—buildings, vehicles, appliances,
utilities, church goods, etc., lest we “squander [the Master’s] property.” What’s necessary is provided. What’s luxurious is avoided, lest we “squander
[the Master’s] property.”
All disciples of the Lord Jesus must live in
this world, as complex as it is. If
we’re apostolic religious we have to deal with the world—with the educational
bureaucracy, business people, lawyers, contractors, mechanics. As aging religious, we also have to deal with
the medical world and the world of Social Security. We can’t run from all that and be prudent
stewards. We have to handle goods
responsibly and not carelessly. But we
can deal with the world in such a manner that our eyes are ever on “true wealth”
(16:11), on our relationship with Jesus our Lord.
