Chaplain’s Corner The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
Readings: Amos 8.4-7; 1 Timothy 2.1-7; Luke 16.1-13
Theme: Olive Oil
“You cannot serve God and wealth” is the closing line of our gospel for the fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. In other words, we need to make up our minds about the focus of our lives. What is my goal? Why do I do what I do, and to what end do I do it?
These sorts of questions are fundamental ones, but our capacity for burying them under the busyness of daily life with its varied sets of ‘intermediate goals’ is really quite astonishing. It is often, and regrettably, only at the end of life, sometimes through an illness, or the death of a loved one, that these questions come to the fore. However, that is rather late in the day to be making real and substantial changes to the orientation of our lives. It is ‘shrewder’ to listen to the scriptures now, and then to begin to make any necessary changes for having a clear focus to life based on God.
The readings for today invite us to do just that. They counsel us to stand back for a moment and to ask these fundamental questions about our lives. However, there is, as so often with the scriptures, a twist in the tale. The gospel comes at these questions from the side of those who actually place money as their goal in life, because they seem to be ‘shrewder’ than those who decide for God. But why is that? What is it about the religious quest for God that can make us so apparently ‘otherworldly’ as to be unfit for life in this world, and ultimately even for the religious quest?
Part of the confusion here is a certain notion of God and ‘heavenly’ things as being disconnected from life in this world. There has been a tendency in religious traditions to want to escape the messiness of life, so as to enter into a pure land uncontaminated by the complications and compromises of daily life. This image, in Christian terms at least, came into dominance through an adoption of Plato’s philosophy into the Christian worldview. Plato, or at least a dominant reading of his work, has a view of reality as built on two levels. The level on the ‘top floor’ is the transcendent ‘heavenly’ realm, which is separated from the ‘ground floor’ of the immanent ‘worldly’ realm. The purpose of life, in Plato’s view, as some have read his most famous work, The Republic, is to escape the ‘ground-floor’ level of the shadows of the cave, which the activities of daily life has trapped us in, so as to be able to emerge out of these confines into the bright light of the day, on the ‘top level’, through living the contemplative life. The world of ‘daily life’ with its cares and concerns, in this view at least, is the unreal world of the shadows. The world of the transcendent light on the ‘top level’ is the true world that we should try to find through a contemplative escape from the activities of daily life on the ‘ground floor’, if we wish to come to know the truth that never changes.
The adoption of this ‘Platonic’ image of ‘otherworldliness’, in some strains of Christianity, has been used to paint a picture of Christians, and Christianity as a whole, as detached from reality. However, the Jesus of Luke’s gospel paints a very different picture of God and the heavenly realm. This, what we might call ‘incarnate’ account is clearly on view this Sunday, which recounts the parable of the dishonest manager—a tale about the need for shrewdness in the Christian life. As the rich man in the parable comments, about his dishonest manager, “the children of this age are ‘shrewder’ in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light”.
This quality of ‘shrewdness’ is explained later in the parable by the words, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much”. In other words, learning to use well the things of the world, the “very little”, is a condition of being able to make the proper use of the gifts from heaven, the “much”. In the case of the gospel, the dishonest manager uses the favour acquired through quite a ‘dodgy deal’, involving reducing the amount of olive oil and wheat payments due to his master by his debtors, so as to buy the friendship of the debtors. He is shrewd enough to know that once he is dismissed by his master, for squandering his property, he will have to rely on the mercy of the debtors of his master so as to make ends meet. In giving them a discount now, one which was not his to give, he buys their friendship, and so hopes to secure his future after being dismissed as the manager of the business interests of his master.
For the Christian, the shrewdness, required in our dealings in ‘worldly’ matters, is to realize that all wealth and goods are to be seen as the “little things” that God provides us with. They are not ours to squander, because all is God’s. When we realize this truth, we are in a better position to receive the “much” of the heavenly gifts. As the first reading from the prophet Amos reminds us, those who have God as their focus do not exploit the poor, but share their wealth with the needy.
So, whatever our own business in daily life is, we are to do it well, so that we can share the proceeds with those who are in need. When we do this, we learn that the things of the world are not abolished by the things of heaven, but are rather transformed. In other words, whatever our ‘olive oil’ business may be, we are to manage it well, so that we can share the proceeds with others. When we do this, heaven transforms earth, and we come to realize that when we are faithful with ‘little’, God will shower us with ‘much’. In other words, in using our wealth to serve others we serve God.