This Sunday we get another of Jesus’ puzzling parables. A rich man’s steward (i.e., his chief financial officer) is being fired for mismanaging the money. So before the guy cleans out his desk, he forgives loans owed to his boss in return for payoffs that will support him for life. What puzzles us is that Jesus seems to praise the crooked steward: the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently (cleverly). For the children of this world are more prudent (clever) in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light (Luke 16:8). The key is to realize that both the steward and the debtors are “in cahoots” in cheating the rich man. The steward robs him directly; the debtors rob him by agreeing to pay less than what they justly owe.
In 1932, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a classic book, Moral Man and Immoral Society. His thesis has produced plots for many books and movies since then! Niebuhr wrote that the human person is capable of moral reasoning and self-sacrifice. But people in groups behave more selfishly and even violently, and so the self-interest of groups (societies, races, economic classes, etc.) often overcomes the individual goodness of “children of light.” The unjust steward knows this. He knows the debtors will act in their self-interest, and that’s how he gets them to help him feather his nest. Jesus praises the steward’s cleverness but then he adds, perhaps sarcastically, that those “mammon of wickedness” will fail, and then you’ll be stuck with them in their eternal wicked tents! This parable sets forth a problem we Christians have always known: We as individual persons need to operate in groups, and yet it is hard to be a good individual “in the world.” Pope Francis upset people by continually writing about how our current “world” subverts the Gospel message. Vatican Council II called on the Church to give its members all the help they need to be those children of light in the world. Perhaps Pope Francis felt the Church needed to do more to help! Perhaps also we need to do more personally, by persistently talking with one another, and especially talking with young people, about how we reflect, confer, and choose so as to remain children of light in our lives “in the world.”
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia
The post September 21, 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, In Cahoots: a Sunday Scriptures blog first appeared on Sisters of the Precious Blood.