21/09/2025
A reflection on the Gospel for Sunday 21st September 2025, The Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Luke 16: 1-13.
This is an unusual parable. It seems as though Jesus is condoning sharp practise by the steward. In the Palestine of Jesus’ time, many large estates were owned by absentee landlords who left the running of the business to a steward (a little like the situation that existed in Ireland for so long). These stewards usually ran the business to their own advantage. Provided the owner received what he considered a regular income, he wasn’t too bothered about any sharp practice the steward might get up to.
In this parable, the landowner decides that his steward’s shady dealings have gone too far and calls him in and fires him. Faced with ruin, the steward assesses his options. Hard work is out of the question. So too is begging. Both would entail a loss of status in a community where a person’s reputation was paramount. The only option left is to call in all the favours that are owed him.
Jewish law forbade earning interest on a loan. But there was a way around it. The rabbis knew that unless the lender could foresee some return on the loan, he was unlikely to lend his money with no hope of reward. This might mean more hardship for the poor who couldn’t borrow to get them out of a hard time. The solution went along these lines: when someone wanted to borrow something, they agreed on the amount to be repaid but a larger amount was handed over. The difference constituted the interest.
In the parable we see several examples of this practice. The person who borrowed 50 measures of oil agreed to repay 100, the borrower of 80 measures of wheat agreed to repay 100, and so on. The extra 50 or 20 was probably the steward’s ‘take,’ as it was he who negotiated the deals. By inviting the borrowers to write smaller sums on their bonds, he is doing them a favour but losing out himself. He is calculating that favours done demand to be repaid. Known perhaps in the past for driving a hard bargain, he is now acquiring a reputation for fair play and generosity, and won’t lose out by the rise in his public esteem. If the borrowers have gained a little money, they have also taken on a new obligation to take care of him. He manipulates the money to make friends for his forced retirement.
Instead of feeling cheated, the landowner is forced to smile at the steward’s ingenuity. This leads Jesus to comment that ‘the children of this world’ are more astute business people than ‘the children of light.’ He goes further in advising wealthy Christians to make the best use of their wealth for the sake of the kingdom. Jesus is no champion of money. He regards it as ‘that tainted thing.’ Some older translations use an unusual phrase here, ‘the mammon of iniquity.’ Mammon means something like possessions. On the only other occasion when the word is used in the Gospel (Matthew 6:24), it also points up a tension between serving God and making wealth the centre of one’s life.
We need to be astute in our use of material things and not become a slave to them. We need to be as clever in safeguarding our spiritual future – and the salvation of our souls – as the smart people of this world are when their financial future is in peril.
We know that money makes the world go round. We know the power of Wall Street and big business. We know how seductive it is. Today’s Gospel challenges us to think about our attitude to money, power and material things. Jesus is not opposed to money, power or material things. He knows they are necessary. But he says they are dangerous because they can easily lead us astray. They can become our obsession, our goal, our number one focus. They can become false gods.
So, like the smart steward, we need to take stock, to rethink our priorities, to consider what’s really in our best interest going forward. The steward sought to protect his future by making friends for his forced retirement. We also must protect our future by making sure that it is God - and not money, possessions, fame, self-indulgence or anything else - that comes first in our lives.
“Lord, help me to put you first whatever the cost. Amen.”
