Homily For the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Lessons From The Unjust Steward

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily For the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, September 18, 2022

What we see throughout the Gospel is that Jesus rarely preached in a systematic and doctrinal way. His preferred method of teaching is the parable. He uses disquieting and disturbing stories to shock us and wake us up from our spiritual dormancy, aridity and sleepiness. He uses parables to get us into a whole new way of thinking. One of the most puzzling and mystifying parables of Jesus is our today’s Gospel— the story of the unjust steward. The steward is responsible for caring for his master’s goods and money. But his master has caught him lining his pockets, squandering his property and money. So, the master said to him, “…you can no longer be my steward.” At this point, the unjust steward panicked. Why did he panic? First, the Palestine of Jesus’ time was a very poor country. Secondly, in that society, there were no unemployment benefits, no insurance and no welfare payments. When someone loses his job, especially an older man, he is in serious trouble of becoming homeless unless he has a wealthy family member to support him. So this man is facing a very dire situation. What’s he going to do? He made an assessment of himself, “I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.” If he lost his job, especially for malfeasance in a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business, his chances of getting another job is quite small. What he is left with is the possibility of doing the most menial kinds of labor of which he said he is too old and too weak to do. He is in a very dire and desperate condition. So he called in his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He replied, one hundred measures of olive oil. He said to him, ‘Here is the promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’ To another the steward said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘one hundred kors of wheat.’ The steward said to him, ‘Here is the promissory note. Write one for eighty.’ 

What is he doing? He’s calling the people he has been dealing with for years and then cheats his master further in order to find favor with them so that when he finally loses his job, they will give him a softer landing. He is about to be fired from his job for stealing, but he is doubling down his immorality to get ahead. At this point, Jesus shocks us all. He says the master praised the unjust steward for being clever. Praise him? This parable is in the middle of Luke’s Gospel where Jesus has been telling us over and over again not to cling to the things of this world, to let go of our possession, to find our treasure in heaven, and live the radical life of the Gospel. And now in this story, he seems to be saying, I approve of this man who clings to wealth in an immoral way. What changed? Like all parables, this one is meant to shock us and teach us something about spiritual life. Jesus is not praising him for his immorality, rather for his cleverness. 

Now this parable is meant to teach us three great spiritual lessons. First, the unjust steward is in serious trouble and he knows it. The crisis in his life has woken him up. In Latin, the word crisis means “decision” or “judgment.” Throughout the Gospel, Jesus compels a choice. In Jesus, God has come. God is now here. You are either with him or against him. You have to choose. There is no room for complacency. In Jesus’ inaugural address in Mark’s Gospel, the first words out of his mouth is, “The time is now. Therefore repent and believe the good news.” And he repeats these very words in all his preaching. The time is now! Wake up from your current spiritual aloofness. Connect your life unto the power of God. End the complacency and the lack of care for your spiritual health. In this parable, Jesus is urging us to wake up to the crisis that we are in spiritually and the need to make a clear and unambiguous decision about our life. We don’t have to wait until we hit rock bottom to wake up. Wake up now and make a decision. 

The second lesson. The unjust steward makes a very honest assessment of himself. He knows he’s about to be fired. He tells himself the truth: I am not strong enough to dig and I am  ashamed to beg. He is admitting his own physical weakness. When you are in a crisis, you are compelled to be honest about yourself. Most of us go through life living complacently, inventing lots of lies about ourselves. We say to ourselves, “I’m okay! I’m doing alright! But when the moment of crisis comes, there is no more room for dishonesty. Consider someone who has gone through most of his life eating poorly— eating big marks for dinner, French fries for breakfast, preferring highly processed food over organic one, drinking whatever he wants and whenever he wants, smoking and not exercising at all. Then comes the heart attack or stroke. It does not kill him per se. But the tragedy wakes him up and there is no more room for self-deception and lies. Right there he realizes that he has not been eating well and not exercising. He realizes that he needs to stop smoking. He says to himself, ‘I have to change.’ ‘I’m not alright.’ What Jesus admires in the unjust steward is his honest self-assessment. He is able to assess that things are not alright in his life. In a spiritual crisis, we should say, ‘Lord, I know all is not alright with me. I know my spiritual life is not where it should be. I am not praying the way I should. I know my relationships are not alright. I know I am not caring for the poor. I know I am not doing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  I know I am not participating in the sacraments.’

The third lesson. The last quality that Jesus wants us to see is the fact that the unjust steward acted. Yes, he acted immorally, and Jesus is not telling to be immoral. But what he admires is his resolute action. He’s in crisis. He knows he is in crisis. He accesses himself honestly, and then decides to act. Imagine someone who is awakened to his spiritual crisis: he knows that his relationship with God is the most important thing. Secondly, he is aware of his weaknesses, and decides to act. If your prayer life is weak, start praying now and today. If you have been staying away from Mass and the sacraments, get back to them. If your relationship is weak, fix them. If you are not charitable, start being charitable now. That’s what Jesus wants us to see today. There is no time for wishy-washy in spiritual life. You are either with me or against me, so says the Lord. The time for judgment and decision is not tomorrow, not next week. It’s today. So act!