Ordinary 25

The Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113; 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13

Money makes the world go round, the world go round, the world go round… So sang Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey in Cabaret. Were they correct? Money may or may not make the world go round but it sure dominate many aspects of our lives.

Consider how often money is at the center of contemporary issues: the averted train strike, the disparity between what we pay teachers, police, firefighters, and medical personnel in relation to entertainment celebrities, professional athletes, and people on tell all book  and lecture tours. Soaring college debt. Gate money. [What we offer a person as they leave imprisonment to begin again. It goes from $10.00 in Alabama to $200.00 in California. Could you start a new life with $10.00 in 2022?] Inflation. Credit Card debt and the poverty that ensues for many families. The addiction of gambling. Sleepless nights, anxiety and suicide.

Money gains people access to areas of life such as education, to people in positions of power, travel, transportation, friendship [albeit surface friendship], and entertainment. Areas where the poor, the underemployed, the underpaid, cannot even dream of entering. Money influences political elections and trade deals. Money is privilege. How many of us realize how privileged we are?

This week without thought I had new brakes and calipers put on my car. You just put down the plastic on the counter. I am privileged. I have plastic and credit. I am privileged. This week, I am leaving for two weeks in Paris. I am privileged. I have no debt. I am privileged. I never have had a college or car payment. I am privileged. What about you? Are you privileged?

With the ascension of Charles III to the throne of the United Kingdom, the issue of privilege is front and center. And what about the responsibility that comes with privilege. If you realize and accept that the privileged have responsibilities.

And that may be why money is such a precarious spiritual issue. Luke and Amos are very conscious of the power, privilege, and responsibility that ensues with the possession of money. Amos minces no words to those who “trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land!” For God will not forget our attitudes toward the poor and how we deal with the less fortunate. Luke’s Gospel is filled with individuals who are poor. “Blessed are you who are poor, hunger, and weeping!” [Luke 6:20-26] Luke do not spiritualize the words of Jesus nor let us off the hook in our responsibilities to the less fortunate.

Our relationship to money is not morally neutral. Consider where money can lead us if we allow it to devour us: greed, theft, coldness of heart, hoarding, blindness to those in need, keeping people in poverty, and selfishness. Literature opens doors of insight for us. Ebenezer Scrooge. Albrecht in Wagner’s Ring cycle. David Mamet’s play, Glengarry Glen Ross. King Midas of Greek mythology. Consider the manager in today’s Gospel. He has squandered his master’s money. Then he steals even more by having his debtors lower the amounts of what they owe making them complicit in his thievery and lies.

In our culture we believe money provides satisfaction, justice, and happiness. Isn’t that what many civil lawsuits are about…money? You can’t obtain justice, or what you think you deserve as justice, in the legal courts so at least you can get money in a civil trial. Will money bring the dead back to life? Restore a broken human life? Offer happiness?

Our relationship to money is not morally neutral. Have you ever considered that a budget is a moral document? It clearly presents what are the priorities of an institution, a nation, a parish, a family or an individual. Look through the register of your checkbook. What does it reveal to you about yourself?

That is why it is so odd that Jesus places before us the example of such an unscrupulous individual as this manger. Would that we Christians had the ingenuity, the desire, the courage to deal with wealth as he did.

For you see, is our possession and use of money and wealth at the service of ourselves or God? Are we trustworthy?