sunday 19 september 2010

Homily for 25th Sunday in ordinary time year C 19 September 2010

Today’s Gospel is really such a strange story, I wonder if you found it rather confusing, rather odd – is it really recommending a bit of imaginative accounting, a bit of sharp practice, a bit of dishonesty, a bit of cheating, as the way to get on? And not just the way to get on, but also the way to win the approval of the master, who is presumably the Lord himself?
In the first centuries of the Church this parable, unique to Luke’s Gospel, except for the last verse 13, bewildered people too. In the early 5th century St Gaudentius, Bishop of Brescia, calls this story “a very difficult parable” and laments that “none of our treatises seem….to offer an adequate explanation”. And his contemporary St Augustine, after agonising over how it could be that Our Lord praises someone “who has acted deceitfully”, anxiously tells his congregation that although Our Lord commended the steward for making provision for the future, “nevertheless we are not to imitate him in all that he did”.
At first glance it does seem to be saying cheating can be quite a good idea, being smart, maybe a bit too smart, with money, and perhaps it doesn’t seem so jarring if we remember the same sort of worldly advice in the Old Testament, in those collections of good advice and reflection on the ways of the world that we call wisdom literature - the book of Proverbs comes to mind. And not only in the Old Testament, but the in New also – is this the kind of cleverness we can do with when we’re up against the hostile world? All this stuff about astuteness- “the children of this world are more astute in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light” (Lk 16 viii) Our Lord seems to be suggesting this in that famous verse in Matthew’s Gospel when he says “I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Mt 10 xvi).
Actually I don’t think that is what this particular parable is about at all. It is certainly partly about money, that’s for sure, because it ends with the dictum we all know so well: “You cannot serve God and mammon” or as the translation we use at Mass has it: “You cannot be the slave both of God and of money” (Lk 16 xiii). This story comes at the start of a section of three chapters where the evangelist collects together several stories on the theme of riches, and the dangers they often provoke- money, and the trouble with it! Nothing wrong with money, especially if we’ve earnt it, and we all know what a difference it can make to have enough money to go round, or even, joy of joys, to have a bit left over at the end of the month to put away! But it’s when we start to think that money can solve everything, fill every gap, plug every hole in our lives, that’s the danger- or when we have so much of this world’s possessions that we feel completely cushioned from anything that could possibly go wrong- because then we can easily begin to forget God, and to forget that things in our life are actually in his control and not in ours! And being too fond of all the things we have accumulated around us thanks to our money, that can really hold us back too – later in chapter 18 we will have the rich young man who just can’t bring himself to part with anything, and so has to refuse Our Lord’s call. (Lk 18 xviii- xxx)
But there is more to this parable than money. What I really want to reflect with you about is this whole business of the changing of the amounts that the debtors owed. Now in Palestine in the time of Our Lord, there were many absentee landlords, rich people who owned estates, farms and so on, which they almost never visited; they would leave everything to do with their estate in the hands of an oikonomos, that is an agent, a manager or as the gospel calls him, a steward. These were not just servants but professional men- accountants really- who enjoyed considerable independence and could more or less do what they liked with their employers’ funds. They often lent out their employers’ property, land etc, for perhaps a number of years, and always of course with a commission built in for themselves, or with interest on the loan. Now the normal way of doing this all over the Mediterranean world at this time was to write out a bond and just mention the final total you owed, not splitting it up into the amount borrowed and the interest. So, what we have here in this parable is the steward deciding to rewrite the bonds of the people who are in debt to his master, rewriting them and subtracting his commission, the interest he was charging them for his own profit as the middleman. This is what lies behind this business of crossing out a hundred barrels of oil and writing fifty, or a hundred measures of wheat and writing eighty. The steward who has done all these transactions, not dishonest but just normal practice, is making sure that what he has done for others has not brought him any advantage himself. We are to do good, not for what we can get out of it, not for any tangible rewards here and now, but for an eternal reward, when as the Master in the parable says we will be welcomed “into the tents of eternity”. That is, I suggest, what Our Lord is trying to say to us in this parable: if we think of our own advantage all the time in whatever we’re doing, in our good deeds, in our attempts at the good life, if we keep thinking to ourselves “Yes, lovely, but what’s in it for me?” “Where’s the pay off?” “What am I getting out of all this being a good Catholic?” then we have got something terribly wrong. Our Christian life must not become a calculation- but one long act of love, one long demonstration of our love for God- and of course we know that real love is never calculating, it is just giving and forgiving. You remember that lovely prayer of St Ignatius: “to give and not to count the cost, to labour and not to look for any reward, save that of knowing that we do thy will….” Only then, when we have written ourselves and our own interest out of our good deeds, will we “win friends”, as the gospel has it, and they will be the friends that really matter- Our Lord and his Holy Mother- and we can be sure that they “will welcome (us) into the tents of eternity”. O Jesus, when we must leave this life and give an account of our stewardship of ourselves, help us to have lived our lives in such a way that we will find in you and your holy Mother and all the saints “some who will welcome (us) into their homes”. Amen.