RBWords

     One of the constant themes of the Gospel of Luke is the danger of material wealth for Christian life.  Jesus rejected the common belief of his time (and ours) that material prosperity is a sign of God's favor.  I recommend going back to the beginning of chapter 16 of Luke today because the passage for today is the second half of a scene that was displaced by the feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica.  Those earlier verses set the scene.  A dishonest steward is caught and is about to be dismissed.  He realizes that if he loses his job he will be in very bad shape, so he gets in touch with his master's debtors and rewrites their contracts so that they owe less.  (What he does, in essence, is to write off his commission!).  This makes him friends who will "owe" him when he is fired.  He also makes himself AND his master look good in the eyes of the community.  The point of all of this, however, is not to praise dishonesty but to show the wisdom of using wealth to benefit others.  We see a similar idea in the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in which the Rich Man suffers because he failed to use his wealth prudently to help Lazarus.

     Jesus' statement that a person cannot love both God and money:  "No servant can serve two masters." is sneered at by Pharisees who think that wealth makes a person superior to others and should not be "wasted" on lesser beings.  Jesus confronts them with their selfishness. The person who is generous with wealth shows that wealth is not the end-all/be-all of his life - not his/her master, but an instrument for good.  The dishonest steward is not praised for dishonesty but for prudence in the use of what wealth he had.  Recent studies in American life have shown a growing gap between the very rich and very poor.  The timeliness of Jesus' teaching is obvious, but apparently unnoticed!  AMEN