No Servant Can Serve Two Masters

A reflection on the Gospel for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time by Fr Sean Sheehy

How Are You Securing Your Future?

In the story of “The Wily Manager” (Lk 16:1-13), is Jesus praising dishonesty as a means of securing one’s future? No. So what is His point? He is saying that worldly people use their intelligence more than religious people when it comes to managing for their future. The word ‘manage’ originally meant the handling or training of horses. An intelligent manager handles his resources and responsibilities wisely. To be wise is to make good judgments. A good judgment is one where we gain more than we lose, especially in the long term. We’re faced with managing all sorts of things – ourselves, relationships, time, use of gifts, business, work, family, money, home, property, etc. The way we manage is determined by our personality because each of us is endowed with a personal management style. Our ultimate goal in management is to handle what’s available to us in a manner that benefits us or those for whom we care. The question for each of us is, who or what is our greatest benefit?

If we’re not motivated in our management by what God wants us to do we will be guided by what we want to do. Selfishness means that we focus primarily on personal gain by using others to achieve our own ends, which makes our relationships purely utilitarian and loveless. It’s a fact that even when we primarily focus on helping others we know that there’s something in it for us also, even though that isn’t our driving motivation. To make sure that we’re not acting for purely selfish reasons we need to daily examine why we say and do what we do and say. Am I saying this to be admired or because it is the truth? Am I doing this to be rewarded or as a gift to another without expecting anything in return?

Competent Management

We’re born with a built-in tendency toward self-preservation and that makes us prone to sin, which is the refusal to give God and others their due. Jesus came to save us from our sinfulness. He gave His Church the Sacrament of Baptism to free us from the grip of sin and restore us to God’s likeness, which means developing a charitable attitude. This is why we constantly need the Holy Spirit to join our spirit to purify it so that we’re motivated by freedom, justice, love, and truth in our dealings with others at home, at work, in Church, or at play.

We need to reflect on, “Whom am I serving?” “Am I managing my time, talent, and money to take care of myself or to give glory to God? Jesus is the model and the standard for competent management. Jesus managed everything in a manner that benefited those who received Him into their lives. For Jesus, good management is all about using our gifts to serve others. “Anyone among you who aspires to greatness must serve the rest, and whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all. Such is the case with the Son of Man who has come, not to be served by others, but to serve, to give his own life as a ransom for the many” (Mt 20:25-28).

Managers of the Earth

God created man and woman to be managers of the earth on His behalf. God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish, birds, and all living things that move on the earth” (Gen 1:28). You and I are designated by God to be the stewards of the earth on His behalf, and that means using it to glorify Him and not to feed our greed. It also means that we’re accountable to God for our management of the resources with which He has provided us. Are we managing the earth for our own selfish ends, like those who want to reduce the population through promoting a culture of death, or are we managing it according to God’s will, “to take care of it and work it” (Gen 2:15) for the benefit of all? Will our management bring us happiness or sadness in the end when God asks us to account for how we used what He gave us? Time and again God accused His people of mismanaging what He gave them by using it to satisfy their pride, lust, greed, envy, sloth, and jealousy. He warned them through the prophets, “Hear this, you who trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land! …Never will I forget a thing they have done!” (Amos 8:4, 7). God called Amos to preach justice by giving everyone their due, including God, and expose the abuse of the poor by those motivated by greed and the illusion of self-salvation. Nothing escapes Divine Justice. We’ll all have to account for our use of what God has given to each of us.

Managers Are Accountable

As a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so a community is only as just as its treatment of its weakest members. Are we treating the weakest members of our communities with compassion and justice? Abortion and euthanasia would indicate that we don’t. Only by recognizing that God has made us the managers of His creation, will we appreciate the importance of knowing and following His rules by which He will judge managers, namely adhering to Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy. An executive with a religious organization noted that viewing your life in terms of management is like driving a leased car. “You can do what you like with it, but you must return it to its owner at a certain time. You will be held accountable for the condition in which it’s returned.” Many people think that their life and possessions are their own, that their body is their own, their gifts are their own, the resources available to them are their own, and are unaccountable to anyone for how they use them. But that isn’t the case. The Holy Spirit informs us: “You are not your own. You have been purchased, and at a great price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor 6:19-20) through managing what you have, knowing that you will be held accountable by God who is your Creator and the Giver of all gifts.

Shrewd Management

God “wants all men and women to be saved and come to know the truth” (1 Tim 2:3). The truth is this: “God is one. One also is the mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ who gave Himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:5-6). Jesus teaches us that, to follow Him, our motivation in all things must be charity. Charity is all about sacrificing oneself for the benefit of those in need. He uses the story of the unjust steward who is fired for mismanagement to show how the dishonest use their shrewdness to look out for their future security.

On the other hand religious people take for granted that God will take care of their future without them having to use their intelligence to do their part in God’s plan of salvation. Finding himself jobless the steward uses his wits to endear himself to his master’s debtors by reducing what they owed their master. The master credited him for the use of his intelligence in looking out for himself. Jesus uses the story to teach us that, “‘The worldly take more initiative than the other-worldly when it comes to dealing with their own kind. Make friends for yourselves through your use of this world’s goods, so that when they fail you, a lasting reception will be yours” (Lk 16:8-9). Jesus wasn’t praising dishonesty but He was highlighting the importance of using our intelligence to do our part in God’s plan to save us, namely by not taking our future security for granted. Jesus’ lesson is that just as the unjust steward used his intelligence, though dishonestly, to make friends for himself to secure his future, so we must use our intelligence to make friends with those who will help us to secure our future in Heaven when our body fails us. Intelligent management treats people and the world in a manner that nurtures friendship with Jesus to whom we’re accountable as the stewards of God’s earth. Jesus doesn’t want us to be dimwits!