![]() It doesn’t matter to Jesus that He’s accused of giving away God’s grace too cheaply. He comes to us as one who “mismanages” the Father’s goods, throwing away God’s mercy and forgiveness on us. The steward desires to be received by them, and the way that happens is by forgiveness, by debts being cut and taken away. And to the one who owes 100 measures of wheat, his bill is reduced to 80. Do you see? He’s talking about Himself and the way things are in the kingdom of God.įor what does the steward do in today’s Gospel? He goes around to everyone forgiving debt! To the one who owes 100 measures of oil, his bill is reduced to 50. And now He tells a parable about a steward who was supposedly mismanaging goods. Jesus had just been accused of wasting His time and efforts on tax collectors and sinners, throwing away His Father’s “goods,” mercy and forgiveness, on people such as that. Jesus had just finished telling the story of the prodigal son in chapter 15. For remember what occurred right before today’s Gospel. However, I would suggest that in a deeper sense, the steward in the parable actually represents Christ Himself, the eternal manager of the heavenly Father’s goods. Have we always used the money and possessions and abilities that we’ve received from God to serve our neighbor and to help build up the Church and the ministry of the Gospel? And when we have done that (because we know it’s the right thing to do), has there still been a struggle against the flesh which wants to use our resources for other things? Isn’t it usually harder to give a significant amount of money in offerings to church or an anonymous charitable gift than it is to spend the same amount for entertainment or a trip or some new thing you’ve always wanted? Or in our stewardship as parents and grandparents, have we encouraged our children’s devotion more to extracurricular activities or to the Word of God, pleasing their peers or pleasing the Lord? Are we more concerned about them making a good living or having eternal life? And are we ourselves more concerned with how we look to family and friends or how we look to God? More interested in our physical health and appearance or our spiritual health and endurance in the faith? The truth is, if we were called before the Lord to give an account of our stewardship, to lay out not only our bank statements but also the dreams and desires and motivations of our hearts, there also would be cause for us to be dismissed from our stewardship. To begin with, we should ask the question: whom does the steward represent? First of all, he represents us according to our old Adam, who have often been poor stewards of the goods of the Master, the things the Lord has entrusted to us. ![]() So what are we to learn from this? What is Jesus’ point? That unexpected and unusual thing is the key to this parable. Jesus actually holds up as an example a man who mismanaged his master’s goods and then cheated the master out of what the people owed him so that after he was fired they would give him room and board. In the parable of the Sower and the Seed, it’s the Sower scattering seed recklessly on all types of soil–doesn’t He know better? And in today’s Gospel parable it’s that the one being praised is the unjust steward. In the parable of the Good Samaritan it’s the fact that the good guy is not the respected priest but the despised foreigner–what’s up with that?. In the parable of the Lost Sheep, it’s the shepherd who leaves the 99 alone in the wilderness just to go after the one–that’s odd. If you want to understand the meaning of a parable, one of the things you can do is to look for the part that seems a little bit strange and unexpected. ✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠
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