Homily Notes 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time 2019
25th Sunday of Ordinary Time……/ “The Steward Who was Rich in Mercy”
An atheist was arguing with a young man about whether God existed. The two of them began to discuss the story of Jonah and the whale. The atheist insisted that a whale could not swallow a man because its throat was too small. The young man insisted it was true because it was in the Bible. Finally, the young man said in exasperation, “Well, I guess when I get to heaven, I will just have to ask Jonah how it happened.” The atheist said in reply, “And if Jonah is in hell?” The other man responded without hesitation, “Well then you can ask him.”
The parable we have just read is one of most difficult passages to understand in the scriptures. Probably the reason this is so is that it was meant to be a humorous story or a sarcastic story.
Once it was said, that the most difficult thing to transmit across time is humor. The same thing could be said about humor and culture. What is humorous on one side of the world is not necessarily funny on the other side of the world.
We have all had the experience of being part of a conversation where there is a bunch of old friends reminiscing. Maybe they laugh uproariously but we don’t get the joke. Why? Because we are not part of the friendship circle. We do not share the common experiences of the group.
We have a sense that religion is a serious business. But Jesus’ stories were not all somber. Unfortunately, we hear of Jesus weeping in the scriptures on a couple of occasions, but we never hear of him laughing. In our life we laugh a lot more than we cry. Unless Jesus was a peculiar human being, he laughed a lot too. We can also surmise that people came to listen to him because he was entertaining.
He had surprise twists in his parables. Some of them were based on jokes with which his listeners were very familiar. Who can forget the story of the good Samaritan? We can imagine the story began with the lead……..Three men were walking down the road……one was a priest, the other a Levite, another a Samaritan. The Samaritan was the buffoon who is supposed to make a mess of everything, but in Jesus’ story he is the hero who helps a man that lies beaten in the ditch.
We have the same sort of dynamic in the parable we just read. What was the setting for the story? If we read one more verse in Gospel we just shared, we would understand better. Jesus was telling this story to the Pharisees. The verse says, “The Pharisees who were avaricious men, heard all this and began to deride him.” Jesus was speaking about the need for compassion. The Pharisees, it seems, would give nothing away for free not even God’s mercy.
Jesus saw the hardness in them which led to this story about the reckless steward. A steward managed a master’s property. The steward in question, was not a very practical one. He was supposed to give workers materials to farm with so they could raise a crop. He did this, but he got carried away. He lent out too much of his master’s property. He was hoping that his investment would pay off at harvest time. The master was more cautious in his approach. When he began to investigate what his steward had done, he was appalled. Where was his property he asked? He called the altruistic steward in for an accounting.
If we were the steward, we probably would have run out to gather in as much of the mater’s property as we could. But what does this steward do? He gives more resources away. He gives up his commission. He cuts down the debt that his owed his master.
And then the real twist in the story comes? We would expect the master would have been livid. But instead the master compliments the steward for being enterprising. He is happy with his benevolent spirit.
Jesus looks squarely at the Pharisees. He seems to be saying. As religious leaders you should be the ones that are generous with God’s forgiveness. You are the ones who should give charity without worrying about how you are going to be repaid. But there are criminals who have a more generous heart than you.
Jesus challenges all of us who are his followers with this parable. If the crafty steward makes us uncomfortable, maybe we need to look at our own cool calculations. Are we too worldly? Or, are we able to let go of the things of this world to help others so we might enter fully into the Kingdom of Jesus?
Grammar may not be perfect....homily notes.