First Friday Reflection

Friday, Oct. 28, 2016

As I contemplated the Gospel reading for the first Friday of November – (Luke 16:1-13, the Parable of the Dishonest Steward), it occurred to me that whenever Jesus talks about “a rich man” it’s usually in a negative sense. For example, the rich man in the parable about Lazarus goes to hell, and Matthew 19 has Jesus saying “it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.” 

Yet Jesus also holds up some wealthy men as worthy examples: The father in the Parable of the Lost Son is obviously a man of means, and the Good Samaritan must have had some money, as well, because he could pay the innkeeper to care for the man beset by robbers. However, Jesus never describes the father of the prodigal son, or the Good Samaritan, as rich. I think it’s because their focus isn’t on money, it’s on being compassionate to others.

This brings us back to the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, which is the exception to the rule because even though the man who employed the steward is described as rich, Jesus doesn’t comment on him; rather, Christ’s focus is on the steward. 

While reading the passage, I said a prayer of thanks for my annotated Bible, because I had a completely inaccurate understanding of the parable – I thought the steward was cheating his master. He wasn’t. Instead, according to the footnotes in The New American Bible, he was probably engaging in usury, which was a common practice for stewards in Jesus’ time. If that’s what the steward in the parable was doing (and the text never explicitly states in what way he was being dishonest), then he was gouging his master’s clients, not his master.

The footnotes also explained that, when the steward is caught and tells his master’s debtors to rewrite their promissory notes for lesser amounts, this indicates that he is removing his commission so that the debt reflects only what is actually owed. When the master learns what the steward did, “he commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.” 

With this interpretation, the comments that Jesus makes after he tells the parable make sense. He advises his disciples to “make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” By saying this, he’s not suggesting that they – or we, who are his modern-day disciples – engage in usury. Instead, he’s recommending that we act prudently, using the money with which we have been entrusted in an honest way. By doing so, we will make friends and be welcomed into heaven.

The parable puts the lie to the concept of prosperity theology, which is the false belief that if we have faith and donate financially to Christian organizations, then God will increase our worldly wealth. That this is untrue is driven home by another of the comments that Jesus makes. He says “If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth?”

In other words, Jesus considers worldly goods to be dishonest wealth, which is the kind that has a tendency to lead a person to untrustworthiness, according to the footnote in my Bible. If God wants to reward us, wouldn’t he do so with true wealth – a welcome into heaven – rather than treasure that “moth and decay destroys, and thieves break in and steal”?

All of which makes me strive anew to stop serving the master of worldly wealth and instead use the treasure I have been given to serve God, because this is yet another way to seek the kingdom of heaven.