Gospel & Reflection for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Luke 16:1‐13
Jesus said to his disciples:
‘There was a rich man and he had a steward denounced to him for being wasteful with his property. He called for the man and said, “What is this I hear about you? Draw me up an account of your stewardship because you are not to be my steward any longer.” Then the steward said to himself, “Now that my master is taking the stewardship from me, what am I to do? Dig? I am not strong enough. Go begging? I should be too ashamed. Ah, I know what I will do to make sure that when I am dismissed from office there will be some to welcome me into their homes.”
Then he called his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, “How much do you owe my master?” “One hundred measures of oil” was the reply. The steward said, “Here, take your bond; sit down straight away and write fifty.” To another he said, “And you, sir, how much do you owe?” “One hundred measures of wheat” was the reply. The steward said, “Here, take your bond and write eighty.”
‘The master praised the dishonest steward for his astuteness. For the children of this world are more astute in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light.
‘And so I tell you this: use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into the tents of eternity. The man who can be trusted in little things can be trusted in great; the man who is dishonest in little things will be dishonest in great. If then you cannot be trusted with money, that tainted thing, who will trust you with genuine riches? And if you cannot be trusted with what is not yours, who will give you what is your very own?
‘No servant can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or treat the first with respect and the second with scorn. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.’
Reflection
Friends, there is a fascinating story told about Henry Ford, the Car manufacturing tycoon, and how on one of his many visits to his ancestral home of Cork, he made an apparent bequest to charity. The story is known across the world; written of in books and has even been recited on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Unfortunately, due to lack of proof more locally, the lines between fact and fiction have become so blurred, that it is now thought to be a ‘tall tale’ arising from something less momentous. However, as one of my closest friends always says to me before he starts telling me anything, “Richard, I don’t know if what I am going to tell you is true, but it’s a good story!”
The tale goes that during their 1912 trip to Ireland, Henry, his wife Clara, and their son Edsel, were staying at the Metropole Hotel in Cork city, when there was a knock on their door. When he opened it, Ford was met by trustees of a local hospital building project. They cut right to the chase. “Mr Ford, we want to welcome you to Cork, the home of your father. We are building a hospital and thought in memory of your father, you would like to donate.” Ford loved the idea and went looking for his cheque book and immediately wrote out an order for £5,000. It was extraordinary kindness, but an act of incredible generosity that quickly went awry.
The next morning, at breakfast, Ford opened his newspaper to read the headline: ‘American Millionaire Gives Fifty Thousand to Local Hospital.’ Ford wasted no time in summoning the two hospital trustees. The men apologised profusely, calling it a “dreadful error.” They promised to get the editor to print a retraction the very next day, stating that the great Henry Ford had not given £50,000, but only £5,000. Ford had been long enough in the game to know that a correction like that could be a public relations disaster. He asked the men for the original cheque back and then offered them the other £45,000 saying “Have this in memory of my father and mother, on one condition, that over the portal of the hospital, I want an inscription that says: ‘I came among you, and you took me in.’”
Well, if it is all true, then like the rich man of Jesus’ parable, Henry Ford may not have appreciated been ‘taken in’ by that seemingly simple mistake which proved beneficial to those looking for his money. But he may have had a grudging admiration for their ingenuity, if that is what it was?
Our Gospel parable is one of the strangest and in some ways, disturbing, of all of Jesus’ stories – the tallest of all His tales. It is unsettling because the story seems to imply that Jesus is praising dishonesty and deception. However, it is a character in the story that praises the steward, not Christ Himself. The parable simply describes a person whose secrets have caught up with him. When he finds himself in this state of humiliation, with his life in ruins and the crisis overwhelming him, he acts, and he acts with cleverness in the only way he knows how. Very shrewdly, he uses his connections to care for himself in the future.
His dishonesty with money has revealed his indiscretions, but he then uses money to win himself friends. He realises quickly, that he needs all the friends he can get, not all the money he craves. While in winning these friends he defrauds his master for a second time, his master still praises him because maybe he would have done the same to avoid a similar fate.
In telling this strange parable, the Lord is calling on the people of God, challenging all of us with the question: are we shrewd and wise enough with what we have, to be the best disciples we can be and for us to secure a place with God in the world to come, Eternal Life? Are we sensible in our attention to our spiritual wellbeing, as much as we are sensible about our well-being in many other aspects of our lives?
So, what is it about our time, our talents, our opportunities; what is it about our health, our gifts, our education; what is it about our nature, our love, our care that will count in our favour when we face the light of God? God is never ‘taken in’ by any of us, but He knows sincerity and effort. May such sincerity and effort allow us all to shine in God’s light for ever.
Fr. Richard
