Our first two readings today seem to contradict one another. The prophet Amos criticizes the political leaders of his day for taking advantage of the poor, but the First Letter to Timothy encourages us to respect and pray for our political leaders. Our gospel passage is even more challenging. As St. Augustine of Hippo, arguably 1 of the 3 most influential Christian theologians of the last 2,000 years, wrote, “I cannot believe that this story came from the lips of our Lord.”
At the heart of today’s gospel is a parable. A parable is a story of wisdom with an unexpected twist, and the ending to this parable is so surprising, most of us think that we’ve heard it wrong. Rather than trying to tie the parable to the sayings of Jesus that come immediately after the story we hear today, I think it makes more sense to compare it to the story directly preceding it, which we usually call “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.”
I believe that the main point of today’s parable is the same as the previous parable: we do not deserve God’s mercy, but God freely gives it to us anyway. Everything is a gift! Let’s take a moment to celebrate that!
I’ve been told that in pedagogy, it is always best to emphasize the good behavior that you want people to do, rather than to highlight the wrong behavior. You would think that the Church would have learned this in the past 2,000 years, but when it comes to this story, we usually call it “The Parable of the Dishonest Steward.”
Let’s summarize this confusing parable one more time. A steward has been given control of a wealthy person’s estate, he squanders that person’s resources, and the steward is now about to lose his job. The steward knows that he’ll need to rely on his neighbors after he’s fired, so he cut deals with everyone in the neighborhood who owes a debt to the estate owner. Instead of being angry, the estate owner praises the steward for his shrewdness. I think this story should be called “The Parable of the Merciful Estate Owner.”
This parable has so much in common with the one that comes immediately before it, the one we usually call “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” but we should probably call “The Parable of the Loving Father.” In both parables, main characters squander things entrusted to them by their superiors and engage in sinful behavior. In both, the main characters realize that they must rely on others because they have no other options. In both, the main characters are surprised to be welcomed by their superiors.
Remember: a parable is a story of wisdom with an unexpected twist. The twist in both of these stories is the same: the father and the estate owner respond to egregious sins with mercy. The message is clear: God’s ways are not our ways. There is absolutely nothing we can do to merit God’s love. But God loves us anyway.
Hopefully, we’ve heard about God’s mercy at Church and from family and friends throughout our lives. We know intellectually that God loves us… but so many of us struggle to believe it. Many of us think we’ve done something so terrible in our past that God cannot forgive us. But think about these stories. Jesus says that the father can truly love and forgive the son who squanders his entire inheritance. Jesus says that the estate owner can praise the steward even after the steward takes irresponsible risks. [Pause.] Take a moment to close your eyes. Is there anything you’ve done in the past that causes you a sense of shame? [Pause.] If the merciful estate owner can forgive the dishonest steward, and if the loving father can forgive the prodigal son, surely God can forgive us whatever we have done.
Many of us are quick to tell everyone else that God loves them just as they are, but we hold ourselves to a higher, more stringent standard. We believe that God loves us for what we do. Yet that is not what Jesus teaches. To quote a dear Paulist brother of mine who passed away earlier this year: “God doesn’t love you because you are good. You are good because God loves you.”
Paulist Fr. Ron Roberson, who died earlier this year.
Can we come to believe this in our mind? [Pause.]
Can we come to believe this in our heart? [Pause.]
Can we come to believe this in our bones? [Pause.]
Back in 1999, the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, declaring, and I quote: “[Christians] cannot rely on their own good works or boast of their own merits as though they were not still in need of mercy.” Since then, the World Methodist Council and the World Communion of Reformed Churches have signed onto it, too.1That means that leaders representing more than half of the world’s Christians have reached an agreement on this…
… but do the people they represent truly believe that we must rely on God’s mercy? Sadly, surveys consistently show that the majority of Catholics in the United States don’t believe in God’s unconditional love.2 For example, a study revealed that a whopping 84% of teen-aged US Catholics believe that, quote, “by their own efforts… people earn their place in heaven.”
Even though that study was conducted over 30 years ago, the data jives with my own experience as a priest. I talk with a remarkable number of people who think that they are not good enough to deserve God’s love. But the reality is: God is wildly in love with each one of us, as individuals. No, I’m not talking to the person sitting next to you. I’m talking to YOU! [Take the time to point to at least ten people individually; point to people on the livestream, too.] God loves YOU, no matter how unworthy you think you are!
And even if we don’t think that God loves us unconditionally, we can still act like we believe it. Anyone who belongs to a 12-step program, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, knows the second step is that “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” May this year be the year that we all get off the merry-go-round of perfectionism, and accept that God’s merciful love is available to us right here, right now, unconditionally.
Here’s a prayer that might help us talk with God about our struggles:
The OTHER Serenity Prayer (author unknown)
GOD, grant me the serenity
to stop beating myself up for not doing things perfectly,
the courage to forgive myself because I’m working on doing better,
and the wisdom to know that you already love me just the way I am.
Amen? Amen!
Notes:
According to various Wikipedia pages accessed on 17 September 2019, there are 2.42 billion Christians in the world. There are 1.3 billion baptized Catholics, and the Lutheran World Federation, the World Methodist Council, and the World Communion of Reformed Churches represent 74 million, 80 million, and 80 million people, respectively. ↩
Lilly Endowment, “Toward Shaping the Agenda: A National Survey of Catholic Religious Education, Survey of Religion Teachers/Catechists,” 1993. ↩
