One late evening, a gunman accosted a finely-dressed man who just parked in front of an expensive jewelry store in Washington DC. Pointing the gun at him, he demanded, “Hand me all YOUR money.” The man was indignant and busted out: “Do you know the person you’re threatening? I’m a US Congressman!” “Oh,” replied the gunman, “in that case, hand me MY money.” That sounds like what the rich man in today’s Gospel wanted: his money (J. Robinson).
The gospel story sounds complex but it actually isn’t. The shrewd and unjust steward of the parable might have done some other thing because of which his master is sending him packing. The gospel passage was silent about this. But that he lowered the value or amount owed by debtors to his master was nothing unusual in the commercial circumstances of the time. What he did was subtract a substantial amount of his commission so the debtor could pay only the amount that the master merited. Technically, it was he who lost money. You can compare it to the prudence of a baseball team that trades away a good player because he is eligible for free agency and will leave anyway. You remember when the Thunder made the blunder of letting Kevin Durant’s contract expire, allowing him to walk free to any team he wanted? They should have sold him a year or so before the expiration date. That’s being shrewd.
The servant in the Gospel was astutely working his way into another job; in fact, he created many opportunities for himself by the favor he did to the debtors. We do that ourselves in many ways when making business deals—whether it is selling our used car or house or equipment. You don’t spend money to paint the house you’re putting on the market because you want to do a favor to the buyer. You do so because you think it’ll raise its value and bring in more cash. Businesses psychologically manipulate the buyer by marking a product $19.99 to create the illusion that it’s less than $20. Sprinters try to anticipate the gun so they get one false start. A center on a football team will almost always try to get a couple inches out of the referees’ blind spot. In a soccer match few seasons ago, Messi deceived the goalie by not shooting a penalty straight to the post, but rather passed it to his teammate, Suarez, who scored cleanly. It’s a trick of the game that isn’t necessarily bad.
Here’s Jesus’ concern in the parable: we do not apply this same ingenuity to the one thing that really matters, namely—our eternal salvation. He’s asking how often we sit down to plot how to use our talents to become better Christians? How many times have you thought out ways to circumvent moral problems when they arise? What’s your best tactic for defeating the temptation to pornography? Have we sat down to plot how to implant the practice of faith in our family? We do these in mundane areas like commerce and politics but are less resourceful in planning for our eternal salvation.
Amos decries the astuteness with which people cheat with scales, inflate money in order to pull a windfall from the poor. But when it involves the things of the spirt, people surrender their cleverness. Hence, the Gospel centers on 1) the condition of the rich before God; 2) the abuse of riches; and 3) how to make reparations for this abuse. The rich person who may be a CEO, a manager or a store-man is not the absolute owner of wealth. Its true owner is God. We’re only secondary, relative and dependent stewards of God’s gifts and talents. We should not abuse, rather use them in distributive justice to advance the good of all, especially the poor. The poor beg in God’s name for charity and justice in the allocation of God’s gifts to all. Am I advocating that you give all your money to the first guy you find standing at the street corner? No! But we must give until it hurts, recalling this epitaph on an English tombstone: “What you kept, you lost; what you spent, you had; but what you gave, you have.”
Fr. Chukwudi Jo Okonkwo