Homily for the Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C
The power of a parable lies in its ability to shock us, or to suddenly flip things upside down. Parables make us sit up and pay attention because they challenge our view of the world.
For example, the Parable of the Sower puzzles us because the farmer throws seeds everywhere, on the path, on rocky ground, among thorns.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan shocks us because the Samaritan passer-by takes care of the Jew who’s been robbed.
But today’s Parable of the Dishonest Steward may be the most puzzling of all.
The steward spends his master’s wealth wastefully, and when he’s brought before the master, he’s told he’s going to lose his job, and the master wants a list of everyone who owes him money. So before he gives that list to the master, the steward shrewdly reduces the debts that others owe his master so that these debtors will be kind to him after he loses his job.
The steward’s cleverness puts the master in a tough spot–if the master reverts the debts to their true value, he comes across as ungenerous; if he leaves things the way they are, he loses even more money.
We expect the master to be angry with this cheating manipulator, but instead the master praises him for his prudence.
The parable turns our expectations upside-down. Just at the moment we expect the master to send him off in chains, or cast him in a fiery furnace, the master commends the steward.
What are we to make of this? Is this how Jesus wants us to act? Does God admire us for our cleverness with money? What does this puzzle mean?
As I began to contemplate and pray over this parable, one of the resources I turned to was a daily prayer guide called Give Us This Day, published by the Benedictines in Collegeville, MN.
Like other daily prayer guides, this little magazine has prayers for morning and evening, along with the Mass readings for each day. I’ve been using it in my own prayer life since the first issue came out two years ago because the daily reflections really speak to me.
Sometimes the reflections come from the writings of saints, sometimes they come from contemporary lay spiritual writers, and sometimes they come from nuns, priests or bishops.
This month’s issue, for example, has reflections by St. Augustine, Blessed Pope John Paul II, Dorothy Day, and Henri Nouwen.
As I flipped through the pages of this issue, I wondered what poor soul had been given the task of explaining this most challenging of parables.
Imagine my surprise when I turned to the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time and saw that it was written by our very own Bishop Cupich.
This is the third reflection Bishop Cupich has written for Give Us This Day.
Now ideally, as shepherd of the Diocese of Spokane, Bishop Cupich would be the celebrant at every Mass in the area. In fact, the best expression of Mass on Sunday would be to have only one Mass in the diocese with Bishop Cupich as the main celebrant and every Catholic in the area present. We would all gather around the altar together and Bishop Cupich, our shepherd, would open up the scriptures and explain how they were fulfilled in our hearing.
Now I suppose it’s not practical to gather as one diocesan community, but at least this weekend we can hear our bishop’s thoughts about this challenging Parable of the Dishonest Steward.
In his reflection, Bishop Cupich explains that there are three keys to unlocking this puzzling story: the first reading, the second reading, and the placement of the parable in Luke’s gospel.
In the first reading, through the words of the prophet Amos, we see God vehemently on the side of the poor.
On the other side are those who can’t wait for the religious holidays to end so they can open up their shops again and cheat the poor out of more money. They brag about the power they have over the oppressed and needy. “We will buy the lowly for silver,” they gloat, “and the poor for a pair of sandals…” In response, God says, Never will I forget a thing they have done.
God’s commitment to the poor is permanent. It is everlasting. That’s our first clue: God’s permanent commitment.
What does that commitment look like? How does it take shape?
Bishop Cupich goes on to explain that in Paul’s letter to Timothy, we see that God isn’t just promising to be an objective referee, standing on the sidelines making sure everything stays balanced. God is a loving Father who gives his only Son as a ransom for all. God is personally involved with the poor in a way that Bishop Cupich calls “audaciously extravagant,” and “shamelessly excessive.”
It’s in the light of God’s extravagant, excessive love that we are able to understand the steward’s outrageous behavior in the Gospel. In the first reading we see God’s never ending commitment to the poor; in the second reading we see how that commitment is a radical, extravagant involvement in our lives through the sacrificial gift of his Son. And now we come to the third key, the position of this parable in Luke’s gospel.
The Parable of the Dishonest Steward follows immediately after last week’s Parable of the Prodigal Son, which might also be described as the Parable of the Extravagant Father. The father is extravagant in his mercy to the younger son, and the father is extravagant with the elder son, telling him, “You are here with me always; everything I have is yours.”
Luke seems to place these two parables together deliberately. There’s a connection between the extravagance of God and the outrageous behavior of the steward.
The steward in today’s parable believes the Father when he says “Everything I have is yours,” and he acts on that belief. That’s the reason he’s admired.
He trusts that his master’s wealth has been given to him as if it were his own. He spends it and he also helps others by lowering their debts.
As Bishop Cupich concludes, “This is the outrageous faith we are called to have, one that fully trusts God is shamelessly excessive and holds nothing back.”
Today’s good news is that when we trust that “God is audaciously extravagant with us, we will have all we need; and others, the community, will be enriched and blessed by our actions as well.”
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