The sayings of Jesus which Luke has
collected into today’s gospel reading are comments on what we heard in
yesterday’s reading. That was about the unjust steward who realized that he was
about to lose his job because of mismanaging his employer’s property. To assure
himself of friends who would be indebted to him, and might offer him future
employment after he was let go, he calls in the people who owe money to his
master’s estate and settles their debts for fifty cents on the dollar. To our
surprise Jesus commends the steward “for acting prudently.” Jesus does not praise the man’s dishonesty. He
praises his prudence. Realizing that the knife is at his throat, the man acts,
desperately, to ensure his future.
Today’s gospel continues Jesus’
teaching about money, for which he uses the ancient Hebrew word mammon. This culminates in the sayings,
“No servant can serve two masters. … You cannot serve God and mammon.” Jesus is
not saying that money and possessions
are bad. Nothing that God has made is bad; indeed everything that comes from
God is good. It participates in some measure in the absolute goodness of God
the Creator. What is at stake is how we use
money. Used to support people and causes we love, money is
good. Given the central place in our lives by trying to amass more and more and
more, money makes us unhappy and frustrated (as people who give money the
central place in their lives soon discover) – because we find we can never get
enough.
Jesus’ personal religion taught the
law of tithing: giving the Lord out of gratitude, the first claim on our money and possessions. For most Catholics that
seems so out of reach to be almost preposterous. There is one place in our
country, however, where tithing is a reality: the diocese of Wichita , Kansas Wichita Wichita
diocese has almost as many seminarians as does our own archdiocese of St. Louis – which has five times the Catholic population
of Wichita
Think
about that, friends. Above all, pray about it.
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