TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY HOMILY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR C
Am 824-7 lTim 2:1-8 Lk 16:1-13
Social Justice
Christian Cleverness; Money and Religion; Wealth Possessing the Possessor;
Can We Have Both Money and God?
1st Reading – Amos 8:4-7
4 Hear this, you who trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land!
5 “When will the new moon be over,” you ask, “that we may sell our grain and the sabbath, that we may display the wheat? We will diminish the ephah add to the shekel and fix our scales for cheating!
6 We will buy the lowly for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals; even the refuse of the wheat we will sell!”
7 The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Never will I forget a thing they have done!
Responsorial Psalm – Psalms 113:1-2, 4-6, 7-8
R. (cf. 1a, 7b) Praise the Lord who lifts up the poor.
or:
R. Alleluia.
1 Praise, you servants of the LORD,
praise the name of the LORD.
2 Blessed be the name of the LORD
both now and forever.
R. Praise the Lord who lifts up the poor.
or:
R. Alleluia.
4 High above all nations is the LORD;
above the heavens is his glory.
6 Who is like the LORD, our God, who is enthroned on high
and looks upon the heavens and the earth below?
R. Praise the Lord who lifts up the poor.
or:
R. Alleluia.
7 He raises up the lowly from the dust;
from the dunghill he lifts up the poor
8 to seat them with princes,
with the princes of his own people.
R. Praise the Lord who lifts up the poor.
or:
R. Alleluia.
2nd Reading – 1 Timothy 2:1-8
Beloved:
1 First of all, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone,
2 for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life
in all devotion and dignity.
3 This is good and pleasing to God our savior,
4 who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth.
5 For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and men the man Christ Jesus,
6 who gave himself as ransom for all. This was the testimony at the proper time.
7 For this I was appointed preacher and apostle – I am speaking the truth, I am not lying -, teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
8 It is my wish, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands, without anger or argument.
Alleluia – CF. 2 Corinthians 8:9
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
9 Though our Lord Jesus Christ was rich, he became poor,
so that by his poverty you might become rich.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel – Luke 16:1-13
1 Jesus said to his disciples, “A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property.
2 He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be my steward.’
3 The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.
4 I know what I shall do so that, when I am removed from the stewardship,
they may welcome me into their homes.’
5 He called in his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’
6 He replied, ‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’
7 Then to another the steward said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’ The steward said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note; write one for eighty.’
8 And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently. “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.
9 I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
10 The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.
11 If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth?
12 If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours?
13 No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.”
Jesus said to his disciples:
10 The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.
11 If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth?
12 If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours?
13 No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.”
Homily
You might dislike sharp business practices, but you can’t help but admire the cleverness of some of them. They range from the rather simple level of bait and switch techniques and loss-leader bargains in department stores to sophisticated stock market put-and—call options, bankruptcy proceedings for personal profit, corporate take—overs, and speculations in commodity market futures — sometimes making deals that are hard even to understand, much less perpetrate.
It was on a middle level of sophistication that we find the main character in today’s Gospel, which consists of as interesting a group of knaves as you will see outside a rogues’ gallery. To begin with the manager, he was not only not a nice person, he was a villain. He had full authorization to make binding contracts for his master — a common custom of the time. He had to show a profit for his master, but he could make some profit for himself, too, by adroit loans and loan-shark rates of interest. He could find many ways around the Mosaic Law against taking interest on a loan, one way being to accept payment in commodities instead of cash.
Under the blow of his disgrace in having his sharp practices reported, he showed himself lazy, accustomed to deference from his master’s workmen and customers, and soft — not strong enough to dig, and ashamed to beg (v. 3). A wily wheeler-dealer who was far from feeling repentance when he was caught, he turned to embezzlement, theft, and forgery to escape his predicament. But he managed it so cleverly that he made others commit the actual forgery. He directed a debtor who owed the yield of about 150 olive trees to write that he owed only half that. He reduced the obligation of the debtor who owed the yield of about 100 acres of wheat.
The debtors, too, were scoundrels. They were ready to take advantage of every opportunity they could, moral or not. But the manager knew that now they couldn’t inform on him; on the contrary, if he were dismissed by his master, he could go and ask favours now of one, now of another, and if they didn’t oblige him willingly they would have to do so unwillingly lest he report them.
The master also was something of a knave. When he entered the picture, he wasn’t shocked by what the manager had done and, rather than giving attention to his devious employee’s dishonesty, he gave him credit for being enterprising (v. 8). Jesus went on to point out that the children of this world are more astute in dealing with their own kind of people than are the children of light. That is the point — the only point — that Jesus praises.
An up—dated but innocent example of the children of this world being enterprising is the department—store clerk who had broken all sales records. Modestly disclaiming credit, he explained to his boss, “A customer came in, and I sold him some fishhooks. ‘You will need a line for those hooks,’ I said, and sold him some line. Then I told him, ‘You have to have a rod to go with the line,’ and I sold him a rod. ‘You ought to have a boat so you can use your new rod in deep water,’ I suggested, and sold him a boat. Next I told him, ‘You’ll need a boat trailer,’ and he fell for that, too. Finally, I said, ‘How will you pull the trailer without a car?’ And guess what? He bought my car.” And the boss said, “But I assigned you to the greeting-card department.” “That is right,” the salesman nodded. “This customer came in for a get-well card for his girl, who had a broken hip. When I heard that, I said to him, ‘You haven’t got anything to do for six weeks, so you might as well go fishing.’ ”
Often the other-worldly — those who believe in God, attend church, and try to live morally — don’t give anywhere near as much attention to donating their services to God’s work as the worldly give to making more money, living in the correct neighbourhood, and hobnobbing with the right people. Why is that? Is religion “the opium of the people” that ‘provides an escape into a dream-like trance? Or do the “children of light” have phlegmatic personalities? Or are they lazy? Or without courage? Or smug? Or do they fail to see the wisdom of the axiom that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing”?
Perhaps they don’t see that evil people hate the light because it reveals themselves to themselves. They hate goodness because it reveals their badness; they hate love because it reveals their laziness.
They will destroy the light, the goodness, the love in order to avoid the pain of their own awareness of their state. The Lord wants us to be even shrewder than the Children of this world. He wants of us day-by-day fidelity — saying that the person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones (v. 10). And he wants total dedication — telling us that we can’t serve two masters, both God and mammon (v. 13). Like fire, money can be a good servant, but a bad boss.
Money is such a tyrant that the prophets frequently used it as one of the main barometers of religious concern. Today’s reading from Amos (who’s sometimes called “God’s angry prophet”) is an example. The earliest writing prophet, Amos wrote from near Bethlehem about 750 years before Christ. At a time of an ever-widening chasm between the wealthy few and the destitute masses, he had the courage to protest openly against the materialistic, rich, and sophisticated leaders who were so greedy as to exploit the poor. Amos is a prophet for our time.
Many of the Israelites were so greedy that their worship of God was only an empty ritual. Like Scrooge at Christmas, they couldn’t wait, for the end of the holy days so that they could get back to work for business profits (v. 5). Not only that, they would make greater profit by cheating their customers. They would short-weight the bushel by adding stones to tip the scales. They would sell debtors into slavery for failing to pay for even a pair of sandals (v. 6). They would mix the refuse of the wheat with the good grain they sold.
Amos spoke of social injustice as being blasphemy against God and today’s reading from a pastoral letter of St Paul to young Timothy reminds us that when we worship, it must be with blameless hands (v. 8). “Blameless hands” means positive involvement as well as distinct attempts at fairness. The silence of ordinary people has been the most decisive political act of our time. A short time ago, a church was broken into and desecrated. The tabernacle was forced open and the Sacred Hosts scattered and trampled underfoot. A shocked group of people went to inform the pastor. “Father,” they said, “even the Body of Christ was trampled upon.” “That is certainly awful,” replied the pastor, “but what about the other Body of Christ, the poor? They are trampled underfoot every day, and nobody complains.”
Christianity isn’t a rushed three-quarter-hour attendance at worship once a week followed by a week of commitment to mammon. It has been estimated that an average Westerner of 70 years of age has spent 6 years eating, 11 working, 8 amusing himself, 24 sleeping, 51/2 washing and dressing, 3 talking — and six months in church. Split personalities who try to serve two masters are always running — running after things. Such people isolate themselves from others in a world of none—concern. And they slowly wind up with a numbness — a numbness which shows up in their relationship to other people. And Christianity is about people — respecting people, loving people, helping people. It is by helping people that we can cure the running and the numbness — especially the numbness.
The liturgical prayer of the faithful community, Paul’s letter insists, should show justice as well as charity to all people, up and down the social scale, from the rich and the powerful to the poor. Although there are laws against the most egregious injustices, lack of charity is not an offence against law — even though charity is the greatest of the virtues. Let us remember that money is an article which may be used as a universal passport to everywhere except heaven, and as a universal provider of everything except happiness.
In front of the Brooklyn Museum in America is a huge statue of a lady who was intended to allegorize Manhattan. She strokes a peacock with her hand and rests her foot on a locked cash box. Many people think that the sculptor, Daniel Chester French, got the ethos of Manhattan just right, and extended the pride and greed to the rest of the contemporary scene. We still have short-change merchants, people for whose lives the bottom line is money, embezzlers, petty thieves, executives who cook the books, crooked managers of widows’ investment portfolios, and business people who sell products they know to be harmful, even fatal. Our age has gone way beyond today’s Gospel manager to such “big con” business methods as subliminal suggestion, pressure advertising, the creation of useless needs, market rigging, and the exploitation of weakness. Many people, if they had their way, would choose the front of the bus, the back of the church, and the centre of attention.
We must see to it that that way of thinking is removed from our personal lives. Though we can’t escape the economic and political world in which we live, we must apply Christian principles to the world. Living well lavishly may be the best revenge in some people’s minds, but living well lovingly pays greater dividends in the long run. People remember Francis of Assisi, the “poverello” better than they do his money-centred father.