Readings: Amos 8:4-7; Ps 113; 1Tim 2:1-8; Lk 16:1-13
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An angel appears at the faculty meeting of a large Catholic university and tells the academic dean he’s come to reward him for years of devoted service. He tells the dean to choose one of three blessings: infinite wealth, infinite fame, or infinite wisdom. Without hesitation, the dean asks for infinite wisdom.
“You got it!” says the angel, then
disappears.
All heads turn toward the dean, who
sits glowing in the aura of wisdom. Silence fills the room, but finally, one old
professor leans over and whispers to him, “Say something wise.”
The dean looks out at them all and
says, “I should have taken the money.”
I guess academics can occasionally be
funny.
Some years ago, when I was working at a Catholic college, I was involved in a conversation about the Gospels with an English professor. An agnostic, he claimed he'd lost his faith because he found the Bible “too depressing.”
“There’s no humor in the
Bible,” he said, “even the Gospels. Everything is about sin and damnation. And
Jesus never laughs. I can’t worship a God who doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
Well, before I could stop
myself, I blurted out, “What do you mean? He created you, didn’t he?”
Ok, it was neither charitable
nor well-received, but it was one of my better one-liners. Of course, I regret
it to this day…kind of.
In truth, Scripture is full of humor; just read the book of Jonah. It’s a very funny book. And we actually encounter a lot of humor in the Gospels. I’ll admit, much of it is subtle – after all the four Evangelists weren’t stand-up comics – and recognizing it demands some knowledge of the culture and the times on the part of the reader.
The parable in today’s Gospel passage from Luke is a good example. It’s really a very funny story. Jesus surely meant His listeners to laugh at this steward, a complete scoundrel – lazy and dishonest, until it all finally caught up with him.
Although his boss fired
him, he first demanded a full accounting of his stewardship.
Jesus doesn’t applaud the dishonesty of the steward, and the steward doesn’t get his job back. No, Jesus praises him only for acting shrewdly in response to his personal crisis. The punch line of the story is where Jesus says:
“…make friends
for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be
welcomed into eternal dwellings.”
In other words, take your assets, your
gifts, your cleverness, your self-knowledge, and your drive for
self-preservation and spend it on that which is lasting -- that which has true
value -- that which can’t be stolen or taken away by others.
Jesus isn’t telling us to imitate the dishonesty of the steward. Not at all. No, Jesus is telling us that to navigate our way in this world successfully, we must use our wits, the gift of our intelligence. We must focus on the important, lasting, holy road to salvation, a road paved with acts of love.
It’s the same message we find in John’s Gospel where Jesus tells us to act fully in the world, but not to be of the world. Jesus is telling his disciples, and He’s telling us: Use money, tainted as it is, to win friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into eternity.
Is He referring to the fair-weather friends who are sure to appear when we throw our money around? No, do we really think they have the power to welcome us into the Kingdom of God? Not hardly.
Neither is He referring to the parable’s
dishonest merchants, the kind who work on the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” principle.
So, who are these friends that we should cultivate and who will welcome us into God’s Kingdom? The answer’s right there in today’s first reading from the Prophet Amos.
Amos, not one of the professional
prophets, was a simple fig-farmer and shepherd in Judea when God called him to
prophesy to His people in the wealthy northern kingdom of Israel.
There he focused God’s message on these
wealthy folks, on those who played a hypocritical role in the ritual worship of
God, while at the same time ignoring God's will and exploiting the poor.
Amos uses powerful language, accusing
the exploiters of buying up the poor as if they were just another commodity to
be traded.
Yes, he told them, God sees what you do
and will not forget your deeds.
Amos lived almost 2,800 years ago and
yet his words have lost none of their impact.
The Gospel proclaims the same message, what
the Church calls the preferential option for the poor.
How fitting that the first to hear the Good News
were the poor shepherds of Bethlehem.
Yes, Jesus announced the Gospel first to the lowly,
not to the great and powerful, and His public ministry continued that pattern.
He consistently sought out those on society’s outskirts:
the poor, the helpless, the public sinners, the lepers, the despised, the
world’s rejects and outcasts.
His Church, that’s us, struggles to do the same
today, continuing His ministry to the poor and outcast of the world.
And the "poor" are not simply those
deprived of material goods.
The poor are those who have no defense, those who
cannot help themselves, those who have only God…and God's people.
Of course, Jesus ministered as well to
the rich and powerful, but more often than not, it was to correct them, to tell
them to let go of their greed, their pride, their hypocrisy.
And to remind them that everything they
have is a temporary gift, one that belongs to God, not to them. They are mere
custodians, stewards of God’s creation.
Yes, Jesus spent most of His time with
the poor and calls us to do the same.
It is among them that his continual ministry
of healing is mainly carried out.
It’s through this ministry that He
continues to encourage them and console them and heal them.
And so, the friends Jesus is telling us
to cultivate are the poor and helpless of this world, for it is they who will
welcome us into the Kingdom.
There’s a perfect echo of this in chapter
25 of the Gospel of Matthew: Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers
that you do unto me.
Here Jesus specifically identifies
Himself with the poorest of the poor. He makes it the clear duty of the
disciple to serve his master by serving them.
Now we can serve them, by sitting down
in our comfortable homes and writing checks to Catholic Charities. And that’s a
good thing to do. After all they need the cash.
But how about really serving the poor,
by getting up-close and personal with the least of our Lord’s sisters and
brothers?
That doesn’t come natural to a lot of
folks, but even if we’re a long way from being at ease with everyone, I can
promise it’s well worth it, for them and for you.
The soup kitchen, the food pantry, our
outreach ministries, our jail and prison ministry, our Eucharistic ministry to the sick and homebound, and so
much more.
Ronald Knox, the English convert and theologian of the
last century, referring to this Gospel parable, wrote:
“This parable is
only meant to emphasize a single point – that we must make proper use of our
worldly goods while we have still time to do it.”
And in this parish, many of us don’t have a lot of time – the time to gain the only thing that matters in the end: the kingdom of God. We are in the time of grace; we are in the time when God has mercy on us and gives unsparingly. But when the time comes, at the end of our lives, for us to appear before God, the time of grace will have ended.
Mary, our Blessed Mother, prophesied in her wonderful prayer, her Magnificat, that Jesus would lift up the lowly. And to Mary we acknowledge our sinfulness when we surrender “the hour of our death” to her care. We will then face the moment of divine justice and mercy.
But unlike the steward in the Gospel, we don’t have to wait until the last minute. We can and should begin today.
If Jesus can love those who are
despised by the world, then so can we.
If Jesus can speak words of
encouragement and healing to those who need it most, then so can we.
If Jesus can touch the leper and
forgive the sinners He encounters, then so can we.
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