25th Sunday C September

Today’s parable, usually known as the parable of the unjust steward, is considered by most commentators to be the most difficult of all Jesus’ stories to understand. As one writer puts it: “This passage brings before us a new Jesus, one who seems inclined to compromise with evil. He approves a programme of canny self-interest…He bases his teaching on the story of a shrewd scoundrel who feathered his own nest at the expense of a man who had trusted him and then appears to say to his disciples. ‘Let this be your model.’ ” So what’s going on this parable? What’s the background to it? And what is Jesus trying to say to us in it? Well, businessmen two thousand years ago, like businessmen today, were often involved in shady dealings and financial slights of hand, two of which could well explain what’s going on behind the scenes in this story.

In the first scenario, the rich man is a landowner who has rented out his land to tenants at a fixed price to be paid in kind according to the crops they grow. They must pay him this amount come what may and anything they make over and above they keep. Except that the rich man’s agent has to get his cut too. And so the shrewd thing the steward has done is forego his own share in the hope that it will stand him in good stead; a kind of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,’ ‘you owe me one,’ kind of arrangement, common in the world of business.

And the second scenario, a bit more sinister than the first, is that we are dealing here with moneylenders. Usuary, the charging of interest, was forbidden and one of the ways people got round this law – and where there is money concerned people have always found ways round the law – was to liquidate debts and reinstate them as oil or wheat which were not covered by the usuary laws. The unusually high amounts involved – reminiscent of loan sharks everywhere – add support to this interpretation in which the unjust steward, the debt collector, would be doing basically the same thing as he did in the first case.

But as I reflected on all this and thought about it, it sounded very familiar somehow. Where had I heard it before, and very recently? And then the penny dropped. I was seeing it every time I switched on the News. There it was, right there on TV, as people queued up at Northern Rock branches all over Britain. It wasn’t exactly the same, but behind it, lay the same kind of wheeling and dealing that has gone on for centuries. Banks in America hand out mortgages to people who can’t afford them. They then, as I understand it, sell the debt on at a reduced price, say 80% of what it is worth, to other banks and financial institutions who hope to get maybe 90% of it back. And as long as it lasts, everybody makes money. Except that it doesn’t last. Eventually people realise the emperor has no clothes, the banks, worried about potential losses, stop lending money to each other, Northern Rock, which has lent out far more money that it takes in, can’t get its hands on the cash it needs to keep functioning, the queues start forming and within no time the Bank of England has to step in to prevent financial meltdown. Except that, as always happens, some people somewhere will have got very rich. And it’s never the ordinary folk at the bottom of financial food chain.

And we see the same thing in the first reading. The prophet Amos rails against similar things in his day as those with money ‘lower the bushel, raise the shekel and by swindling and tampering with the scales buy up the poor for money and the needy for a pair of sandals.’ And against this background, what Jesus is saying is really quite simple. He is telling us to be careful with money and make sure we use it well. As Jesus himself says, it is a tainted thing which can be profoundly dangerous. And so, as even the unjust steward in his own dishonest way knew, we must learn to use it well if it is not to corrupt us and lead us away from God. But what does it mean to use money well. What’s money for? What’s its purpose?

Well, first and foremost, money is a means to an end. It’s not something to be acquired for its own sake. It’s meant to be used, and the experience of people such as pop stars, lottery winners, footballers and others shows over and over again that neither money nor the pursuit of it guarantees happiness. If anything, in fact, it’s more likely to bring unhappiness, something many ordinary people who increasingly over the last thirty years have put work and money before family and relationships have also discovered. And yet we need money. The real tragedy of abject poverty in the world is the fact that so many gifted and talented human beings live unfulfilled lives, the converse of that being that the purpose of money in our lives is to help us live our lives to the full. Life is for living and enjoying and the purpose of money is to make that possible. We have it so that we can live healthy balanced lives, enjoy music, appreciate beautiful things, visit beautiful places and ultimately be able to answer yes to the question the God of the old rabbinic story will allegedly ask us at the end of our lives. Well, did you enjoy my creation?

But, of course, that’s not all. On its own it would be profoundly self-centred. And so money has a community aspect too. It’s a means by which we are able to reach out to others. It makes it possible for us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless and do all the other things Jesus speaks of. In his Encyclical of the 1960s, Populorom Progressio. Pope Paul VI went as far as to say that the right to own private property must give way to the needs of others. In other words, if another human being is starving or living in abject poverty, then the money we have acquired ceases to be ours. It does not belong to us. It belongs to the person who needs it, an idea which, not surprisingly, did not go down too well in our western capitalist society where the right to make lots of money and keep it for ourselves, the right to private property, is the whole basis of our economic system.

So spend time this weekend reflecting on the role of money in your life. Is it enriching or empoverishing you?


BIDDING PRAYERS


In Britain today the vast majority of people enjoy a level of prosperity previously unknown in history. All but a handful of us have a degree of comfort which even kings and princes in past ages would envy. Technology has opened up to us things that would have seemed miraculous to our grandparents and great grandparents. And so we pray that, in the midst of this world, we will not be seduced or misled into losing sight of what really matters in life………….Lord hear us

Our prosperity, of course, is based on past exploitation of other people, their countries and their natural resources. It was financed largely, too, by the slave trade. And so we pray for the wisdom to see that the prophet Amos’s crticism of those who exploit the poor for money applies to us today, and that we will finally have the courage to make the changes without which the world’s poor will continue to be exploited by us on a daily basis....Lord hear us

Hanging over humanity, of course, is the spectre of climate change and the inimaginable disaster which potentially lies beyond it. And so, remembering St Paul’s words in today’s second reading, we pray for all those in positions of authority throughout the world that they will have the courage to tell us truths we would rather not hear and lead us to places we would rather not go, regardless of the short-term political implications for themselves………………..Lord hear us

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells calls money a tainted thing. Only the other day, in the daily readings, St Paul told us that the love of money, rather than money itself, is the root of all evil. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to see the destructive power of money in our lives and in the world. And we pray for the grace we need to use whatever money we have well, for the long-term benefit of ourselves and others, especially those who are in need both at home and abroad………..…………….Lord hear us

We cannot be the slave of both God and money Jesus tells us today. On another occasion, he reminds us that where our heart is, there will our treasure be too. And so we pray for the courage and honesty to face these two very fundamental questions today. Whom do we serve, God or money? And what is our heart set on, human riches or the riches of the kingdom?………..Lord hear us

Money has always had the power to corrupt. And so we pray for the insight and sensitivity of conscience to see any way at all in which it is currently corrupting us at a personal level. And, in the face of any such corruption that may exist in our lives, we ask God to give us the grace we need to live more honestly and more transparently wherever money is concerned………Lord hear us