November 4, 2022
(St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop)
Jesus said, “the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than the children of light.” Lk_16:1-8
When I was a kid, I was never really big into sports. But, since we lived only 15-miles from New York City, and everyone else in our world seemed to have that sports bug, I had to make at least some kind of effort to show an interest. And just like Columbia, with its devotion to either Kansas City or St. Louis, New Jerseyites were either die-hard Yankees or Mets fans.
Of course, the Yankees reveled with its’ Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle. And then there were the Mets. Those Mets truly were the underdogs of the 60’s. And, you know what, ever since I was quite young, I always had a heart for the underdog. So, naturally, my team was the Mets, at least until they became the world’s hot favorite, and I had to move to the Dodgers.
And, you see, that was pretty much how everything in my life continued, never really 1st string myself, but I’d try my heart out – to always support the downtrodden, the underdog.
So you can imagine, that whenever I ponder this parable of the dishonest, but prudent steward, my sympathy doesn’t necessarily go out to the chumps who allowed themselves to be hoodwinked into paying double for whatever it was they were buying. Although in today’s world, between the gas and food prices, we’re actually sitting right here in their own shoes.
And neither did my sympathies go out toward the rich master: making his decision based on gossip, not consulting with the steward before handing him that pink slip, and then watching him turn 180-degrees, when we realize that it wasn’t the dishonesty that provoked him, but the jealousy – that the shrewd steward was making more friends and money than him.
You see, save for the dishonesty, it’s the story of my entire working life. And I could never quite figure out where they dug up all those horrible bosses, or why the good ones always had to leave. Kind of just like baseball, and politics, and life!
But then of course we have that mystifying conclusion, in Jesus’s parable today, that went: “The children of the world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than the children of the light.” Did that mean that “the children of the light” are not very prudent themselves, or that the “children of the world” are not very prudent with the children of the light? Or maybe, we, as humanity, have all just forgotten the meaning of prudence. You see, the entire basis of the parable, the underlying Force Majeure, is money!
The boss was jealous, the steward was dishonest, and the customers were cheated, all because of money. And when push came to shove, the boss was shoved by the gossips, the steward was shoved by the boss, and the debt-ridden customers were shoved into tattling on the Steward to the boss . . . ALL because of money.
And all of that drove the steward to stepping-down from his profit gouging to preserve his working reputation – in order to make more money – in another job. To his former boss, that “stepping-down” was considered his Prudence.
You see, the two points that Jesus was making in this parable were these: First, it all prefigured his own demise by the imprudent, money and power-driven Sanhedrin. Proving that the world of darkness truly doesn’t know how to handle the “children of the Light.”
And, Second, that we, as the children of the light, must be able to discern our true Force Majeure, not as money or power, but as God! Leaving us with the question: “What are WE willing to step-down from – in order to secure our righteous reputations, our Eternal Salvation, in Christ Jesus our Lord?”
Tomorrow, we’ll hear Jesus’s final conclusion to this parable, in answer to that question, where He says, “You cannot serve (both) God and mammon.” Hopefully, as Joshua professed to the Israelites at the border to the Promised Land, we too will proclaim: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Js_24:15 He is our Team, forever!
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Whispers to the Wind 