Homily for Sunday Ordinary 25 C

The steward realizes that generosity is the best investment. He gets himself out of a hole by building social capital. It is irrelevant, apparently, that he gives away what does not belong to him.

I have Mass at St. Isidore on Sunday, September 21 @ 7:30/9:30 am

The 7:30 am Mass will be live-streamed. https://stisidore.church/worship-online/

frjoedailey@gmail.com

Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. 

Jesus said to his disciples, "A rich man had a steward, who was reported to him for squandering his property. 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.' 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. I know what I shall do, so that when I am removed from the stewardship they may welcome me into their homes.' He called in his master's debtors one by one. To the first he said, 'How much do you owe my master?' 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.' Then to another the steward said, 'And you? How much do you owe?' He replied, 'One hundred cores of wheat.' The steward said to him, 'Here is your promissory note. Write one for eighty.' 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. I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. 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. If therefore you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours? 

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. 

The Gospel of the Lord. 

A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. Luke used the word squandering in the previous chapter, the story we call the prodigal son. The younger son gathered up all his property and went off to a distant land where he squandered all his property. The younger son is called prodigal because he was wastefully extravagant. But isn't the father who welcomed him home and restored his inheritance just as guilty of extravagant wastefulness? 

In Luke chapter 8, Jesus tells the story about the sower who went out to sow seed, which sounds a lot like squandering. Some seed fell on the footpath and was trampled underneath or eaten by birds. The seed on the rocky ground as well as the seed that fell among the thorns never had a chance. But some of the seed fell on good ground where it produced a hundredfold. Both of Luke's squanderers are scattering generously or carelessly and acting as if what belongs to whom is irrelevant. 

At the end of the parable of the prodigal son, the father tells the elder brother, "My son, you are here with me always. Everything I have is yours." In today's parable, we have a steward who seems to regard all that his master has as his own. The steward realizes that generosity is the best investment. He gets himself out of a hole by building social capital. It is irrelevant, apparently, that he gives away what does not belong to him. By reducing their indebtedness, the steward is making the debtors socially indebted to him, and therefore will be able to drop by for free meals. 

More importantly, the steward has been treated generously by the master since he was only fired instead of being more severely punished. The steward spends his master's generosity. The debtors were not aware that the steward had been fired, so they presume he still represents the master. If the master renounces the actions of the steward and demands full payment of the debts, he will lose honor, both for reneging on a deal made by his agent and for not properly controlling the actions of his agent. On the other hand, if he accepts the actions of his agent, he will gain honor for his generosity in forgiving a portion of the debts. The master shrewdly opts for increasing his honor and publicly praises his steward for his actions. 

In Romans chapter 8 verse 28, Paul states, "We know that all things work together for good." Is it really true that all things work together for good? We can hardly imagine that God could even use the bad things we do for good. Perhaps God does not care as much as we do about dividing humankind into good and bad, righteous and unrighteous. Chapter 15 of Luke's Gospel begins, "Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus, and the Pharisees and scribes were grumbling and saying, 'This fellow welcomes sinners,' and eats with them." 

In Luke chapter 5, some friends brought a paralyzed man to Jesus. They had to lower him through the roof, and when Jesus saw their faith he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven you." The religious leaders complained, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" 

In Jesus, God has forgiven our debts, so we are free to do the same. The dishonest steward whom Jesus commends did just that. He forgave debts. He forgave things that he had no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons, for personal gain, and to compensate for past misconduct. But that's the decisive action that he undertakes to redeem himself from a difficult position, one in which it seemed he couldn't be reconciled either to the master or to the debtors. It's a moral of great emphasis for Luke. Forgive. Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive it for any reason you want, or for no reason at all. 

Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer uses these words in the sixth petition. Forgive us our sins as we forgive the monetary debts of our debtors. Why forgive someone who's sinned against us, or against our sense of what is obviously right? We don't have to do it out of love for the other person if we're not there yet. We could forgive the other person because of that whole business of what we pray in Jesus' name every Sunday morning, and because we know we'd like forgiveness ourselves. Or we could forgive because we've experienced what we're like as unforgiving people. Or we could forgive because we think it will improve our odds of winning the lottery. 

It boils down to the same thing. Deluded or sane, selfish or unselfish, there is no bad reason to forgive. Extending the kind of grace God shows us in every possible arena, financial and moral, can only put us more deeply in touch with God's grace. How much do you owe me? How much do you owe my master? I can't remember.