[Salvation]

25^th Sunday: How much do I owe?

 

 

 

"The children of this world are more prudent . . . than are the children of light."

 

The Word for Sunday: http://usccb.org/bible/readings/092213.cfm

Am 8:4-7
1 Tm 2:1-8
Lk 16:1-13

Our Gospel this Sunday is one of the most complex and disturbing of all Jesus' parables but I think is also one of the most clever. Maybe a lesson from life is helpful to understand Jesus’ words.

 

As children, my father would often remind us: “I was raised in the school of hard knocks!”  We heard his axiom often enough that we would sarcastically finish the phrase for him when he would begin to speak.

 

When older, wiser, and more mature, we realized that my father, as so many of his generation in the 1920’s – 40’s, did indeed have to make many sacrifices and endure the “hard knocks” of the depression and the Second World War in order to make it. That experience formed them to be practical, realistic, no nonsense and careful with money. Even my Dad’s approach to religion was more pragmatic but at the same time very sincere.  Over time, he became clever in business yet at the same time faithful to God. Life often teaches us more than can be learned in any classroom.  

 

As life experience does, the parables of Jesus sometimes comfort us but other times they confuse us or may even shock us into serious reflection.  Our three parables last week, for example, from Luke 15 were comforting: the lost sheep, the coin of great price, and the ever inspiring story of the wayward son and the merciful father.

 

However, this Sunday we find an image from the Gospel that indeed may cause us to do a double take. The images are realistic. We can imagine such self-serving behavior as was found in the steward.  But it takes a turn:  Did Jesus really say: “. . . make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth?” (Lk 16: 9). The story speaks of a wily steward who cleverly turns the tables to his own benefit. He deliberately reduces the amount owed to his master from his master’s debtors in order to gain a benefit to himself rather than to his master who just fired him due to his own dishonesty.  To our surprise, the master commends him for “acting prudently!”

 

The fired steward, through his act of debt reduction, favored the debtors who now owe him a good turn. In that way, though fired by his master, he still has certain benefactors who owe him a good.  On face value, very shrewd. The steward is popular with the debtors as they thought he was speaking on behalf of a merciful master and the master, though he will now come up short on his own debts, wins the esteem of his debtors due to what they perceived as his generosity. Honor is everything. Clever.   

 

Jesus points out that, “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. I tell you make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”  (Lk 16: 8-9).  In other words, learn a lesson from the shrewdness of even the self-serving steward.  Use such skill and ingenuity in pursuing true wealth and value as “children of light.” Jesus implies that money isn’t everything.  It can be used for the good and should not be simply stacked up and hidden away for one’s own selfish purposes but to bring benefit to others. Yet, never at the cost of distracting us from the greater benefit that God offers us. Wealth should be a means to a higher good and not an end in itself.   

 

In the case of the spiritual life, the wealth which God offers, its value is more than anything the world can give. Then, in our spiritual life of prayer, good works, participation in the sacramental life of the Church, regular gathering with the community in worship, generosity and good stewardship of material wealth for the works of faith, personal sacrifices and humble service to others in Christ’s name, we find the true master whom we serve.

 

Our Eucharist reminds us of God’s generosity with us. How in Jesus’ own death and resurrection, whatever we owed to God is reduced and even more is possible to be wiped out through his mercy and forgiveness.  What he asks of us in return is that we be wise and faithful disciples.

O God, who founded all the commands of your sacred Law
upon love of you and of our neighbor,
grant that, by keeping your precepts,
we may merit to attain eternal life.

[Salvation]

Insight Scoop

Parables, Puzzlement, and Prudence

"Prudentia" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (mid-16th century)

Parables, Puzzlement, and Prudence | A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for September 22, 2013 | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Am 8:4-7
• Ps 113:1-2, 4-6, 7-8
• 1 Tm 2:1-8
• Lk 16:1-13

How difficult is the parable of the dishonest steward, heard in today’s Gospel reading? “Of all of Jesus’ parables,” writes New Testament scholar Dr. Craig L. Blomberg in Preaching the Parables (Baker Academic, 2004), “this is probably the most puzzling. It is certainly the one on which more scholarly ink has been spilled than any other.”

There may be no need for “probably”; in my opinion, this is the most puzzling of the parables. The parable has a similar structure to the parable of the unforgiving, or ungrateful, steward (Matt 18:23-35; Lk. 7:41-43), with three levels of social status: the master, the steward, and the debtors. But whereas the parable of the unforgiving steward is straightforward in its moral message—if you wish to receive forgiveness, you must extend forgiveness—the moral and message of the parable of the dishonest steward is not immediately clear.

First, the steward, who has misused his master’s money and so faces the loss of job and status, uses dishonest means in order to open doors for future prospects. He doesn’t admit his guilt, ask for forgiveness, or attempt to make matters right. Secondly, having changed the amounts due on the promissory notes (and thus ingratiating himself to the debtors), the steward is—shockingly—commended by his master. Why? Because he had, Jesus said, acted prudently.

At this point, many readers might understandably move from being puzzled to being perplexed. It seems that Jesus not only presented a parable condoning dishonest and self-serving behavior, but had actually praised it! But St. Augustine, in preaching upon this parable, stated that Jesus “surely did not approve of that cheat of a servant who cheated his master, stole from him and did not make it up from his own pocket.” So why, he asked, “did the Lord put this before us”? We must be careful to not miss what Jesus indicated was a key point of the parable: “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

And, in fact, Augustine writes that the parable is not meant to praise the sins of the steward but to extol him “because he exercised foresight for the future. When even a cheat is praised for his ingenuity, Christians who make no such provision blush.” Put simply, the parable extols shrewdness and ingenuity, and urges Christians to employ them for the sake of the Kingdom. It is very much a commentary on Jesus’ statement, “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves” (Matt. 10:16). The Greek word denotes the virtue of prudence, that virtue which “disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1806).

Unfortunately, we can sometimes reject such shrewdness and prudence out of a sense of false piety, naivety, or fearfulness. Yet the Catechism, in speaking of prudence, says it “is not to be confused with timidity or fear, nor with duplicity or dissimulation.” As children of the light, we should seek to use every good and moral means available to us to build up the Kingdom of God, to proclaim the Gospel, and to defend the Catholic Faith. Yet, if we are honest, we recognize how timid and unsure we often are, especially in the face of the questions and attacks presented by the children of this world. “Instead of being as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves,” Blomberg rightly states, “we become as wicked as serpents and as dumb as doves!”

In order to have and to increase prudence, we should always keep in mind Jesus’ concluding exhortation: “No servant can serve two masters.” Prudence is “right reason in action,” which means it is rooted in right priorities and the knowledge that we are not of this world, but are children of light and children of God.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the September 19, 2010, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)