25th Sunday of Ordinary Time - September 18, 2022

Let’s be honest with one another….as 21^st Century Christians living in a world driven primarily by Capitalism, this Gospel pericope is confusing at best and perplexing at the least.
Why would Jesus have the landowner praise the steward for being shrewd?
And then why turn around and seemingly say one cannot both make money and serve God as well.
The whole pericope is filled with seeming contradictions and confusions.
First…there is a context for the story….it falls in Luke amidst a whole flurry of parables….stories that are meant to teach us a moral lesson.
You see Jesus did not live in a narrative of Capitalism….but rather in what we would most likely call feudalism.
A land owner has folks who live on their land…..they make their payments  in one of three ways….
One is by a percentage of the harvest.  One is by a fixed amount of the fruits of their labor and Finally the other was by money.  Money was not the predominant means of payment, unlike our present world.
Jesus world was one that was controlled by who owned the land, and who produced what from it…or agricultural production as we would call it.
Every land owner had a steward.  Stewards made their money by exacting a percentage of the harvest, or the production—or the money given in rent.  A stewards percentage was public record.  So exacting a 50% tariff would be unheard of…but as we all know from economics…if you spread out losses across the assets then one can dissipate the pain and lessen the loss.
Many refer to this story as the story of the dishonest steward, or unjust steward….but that is a western modern mindset….this is really the story of the shrewd steward.   The steward basically cut his profits to almost nothing in order to save his job.
And he gave a break to those who often suffer the most, namely the poor…
So what Jesus has the landowner praising in this story…is not dishonesty or injustice, but rather exactly the opposite…the steward built relationships using the money, the goods and the crop as the means to achieve what was expected in the first place…namely justice…right relationship.
The verses regarding who can be trusted with dirty money most biblical scholars agree was added later, in a misinterpretation of the story.
Finally the closing verses….the Gospel points out we simply can not serve two masters.  It doesn’t mean that one is good and one is bad, it simply means we will find great difficulty in serving both if we try. 
To that end, I believe this Gospel does encourage us to consider the many ways that our capitalistic society tends to ignore the needs of those whom Jesus sees as most demanding of our time and attention, namely the poor. 
To that end I am offering myself and everyone a challenge for the coming weeks.
I am going to be going through my clothes, and the stuff I have managed to collect over the years, and when I touch it, I am going to ask myself this question.

1. How does this help me in my relationship with God?
2. Do I really need this object.
3. When did I last use it?

If the answer to those questions is in the negative or if I have not used an object for over a year…I am then going to look at a way that I might give it to someone who may either benefit from it, use it, or need it.  Josephs Coat, Salvation Army, Good Will or some other local charity…I will search a way to let my stuff, my benefit from over the years, find its way into the lives of someone else who it may help.
Maybe you would join with me.  Maybe we can begin to change our own little corner of the world to be most just like the Shrewd Steward of our Gospel and in doing so, lift someone else from the burdens they may have.
We, like the Shrewd Steward, have nothing to lose and everything to gain.