Lk 16:1-13
Dear Friends,
Today’s parable of the dishonest servant is one of the most puzzling in all of the Gospels. In the end, however, the message is clear and strong. We need to use our money and possessions to help us enter into the Kingdom. You can call it a plea for Kingdom economics. It is an invitation to a rather difficult task: how to use our material gifts to facilitate, not obstruct, our journey to the Kingdom and ever-lasting life.
The key to understanding the parable and its forceful teaching is to determine where the steward committed the injustice. On reflection, it had to be in the earlier use of the owner’s goods. This is why he is being dismissed. The heart of the puzzle is the owner’s praise of the seeming theft involved in the steward’s reduction of the bill to the various debtors. This had to involve the steward’s personal commission on the deal. Thus, the owner commended his foresight and action. This is our call: act to enter the kingdom.
Jesus is inviting his followers to use their time, treasure and talent with similar foresight. Like the steward, we have to realize that our possessions have a mortgage on them. Their actual ownership belongs to another. In the disciples’ case, and in our case, God is the owner. The material blessings are to be shared to benefit the Kingdom. The wise use of wealth that Jesus is calling for needs to include the priorities of the Kingdom. This places the poor, the forgotten and the marginalized in a position of privilege that is far different from the reality of our consumer society.
In this section of his Gospel, chapters ten to nineteen, known as The Road to Jerusalem, Luke is showing Jesus teaching the consequences of his Messiahship as the Suffering Servant. To be a follower of Christ demands a deep price. Discipleship comes at a real cost.
Discipleship demands a total commitment. Luke is consistently bringing up the challenge of wealth and the role of money for the followers of Jesus. How we use our possessions reveals our priorities. If Jesus is truly our priority, the approach to wealth and its trappings will be measured by how it draws us into the Kingdom values that Jesus proclaims.
Jesus’ message in today’s parable is strong and simple: we are called to make a clear-cut choice. The steward did this in his short-run vision of reality. As disciples, we are called to the wisdom of a similar decisive conclusion in the long -range vision of the Kingdom.
In the fourth century St. Ambrose had a great insight about wealth and the poor. He was commenting on the rich man and his barns (Lk 12:16-21): “The bosoms of the poor, the houses of widows, the mouths of children are the barns that last forever.”
Luke’s message today, as with the rich man’s barns, and throughout his Gospel, offers a test for the true disciple to make the wise decision. We are constantly confronted to choose between what is necessary and what we want. This is no easy choice. We are engulfed in the possessive claws of a multibillion-dollar advertising industry. We are constantly being bombarded with a definition of happiness that is rooted in values far removed from the Gospel of Jesus. We are being told that our total satisfaction is at our fingertips if we just buy the next product which surely will gratify all the hungers in our heart.
On the other hand, in the depths of our being, we have the gentle but unyielding whisper of the Gospel message. A faithful response to the word of God will be like the mustard seed in the heart, growing steadily in the wisdom and power of God. The discipleship called for by Jesus is a long and arduous trip. This perennial battle of the heart is the stuff of our way forward in the footsteps of Jesus.
Today’s parable is an invitation to begin the process of embracing the Kingdom economics of Jesus. Our garage sales need to constantly grow more expansive as we seek funds for those in need. In the Kingdom that Jesus is proclaiming, less is actually more, much more!