Christian Reflections on the Market, Marx, and the Monarchy - Homily for Sunday 18th September 2022 - 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, on the parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-13). First Reading Amos 8:4-7, Second Reading 1 Timothy 2:1-8. Preached in St Patrick's Church, and Our Lady of the Assumption, Jersey.
Unlike most of the men I was in seminary with I didn’t go to a Catholic School; I went to an ordinary state school, a comprehensive. So unlike my peers, my Religious Studies were not directed by nuns, or priests, or even by believing Catholics, but by a lovely and (truth be told) sometimes quite eccentric non-conformist named Mr C. Mr C, to match his eccentric personality, had quite an eccentric religious background; his dad was a Methodist, his mum was a member of the Plymouth Brethren, he had grown up flitting in and out of those churches and the established church before eventually studying theology in a Methodist university.
There are a great many memories I have of Mr C’s Religious Studies classes. He told me at the age of sixteen “Edward, you’re writing a GCSE paper not a second catechism of the Catholic Church, you need to be more balanced!” I’m not sure I ever really learned that lesson!
Once, in a more surreal moment, he was presenting us with different images used to represent the various world religions and when presented with a lotus flower, one of my classmates suggested it represented “Freedom for Frogs” which had Mr C leaping all over the classroom yelling out “Yeah! Freedom for Frogs!” as if this wasn’t the most absurd thing he’d ever heard.
One lesson, however, stands out to me. He was talking about the hymn, All things bright and beautiful. He told us that his Methodist father adored that hymn, but there was one verse that his father refused to sing. Today that verse is almost always omitted from the hymn books, and it goes like this;
The Rich man in his castle,
the poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
and ordered their estate.
This verse in this popular hymn, and the fact that today we usually leave it out, highlights an uncomfortable problem for us, do we actually believe that it is God’s will that some should be rich and live in luxury, and that some should be poor and live in destitution? The rich man in his castle, and the poor man at his gate? It seems wrong, and certainly this verse calls to mind the parable Jesus tells about the rich man and the poor man Lazarus; which is actually in the same chapter of Luke’s Gospel as the Gospel we read today. In that parable, Jesus puts these words into the mouth of Abraham;
In your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted and you are in agony, and between us and you a great chasm has been put in place
Lk. 16:25-26
If we take Jesus at his word in this parable, that verse from All things bright and beautiful seems absurd; perhaps we would be better to believe the radical priest John Ball, who at the time of the peasant’s revolt preached a sermon containing a memorable line that harked back to the creation story;
When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?
In the days since the death of her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth, and the accession of King Charles III, people have already begun to ask this question again, asking whether there is any justice in even having a monarchy. Questions about wealth and privilege are again part of the national conversation and no doubt, after Her late Majesty’s funeral, there will be some in Britain and the Commonwealth who will want to do away with the system altogether.
When her Majesty came to the throne in 1952, the same disharmony over wealth divided the whole world; the Capitalist West dominated by an America that idolised the Market, and the Communist East, led by the USSR and China, which preached the abolition of all private property and common ownership (which really meant state ownership). The Iron Curtain that split the world in two came down in 1989, and yet we are still living with the ideological fallout; there are still those who idolise the Market, and still passionate Marxists, and still millions who suffer in between them both.
What then is the authentic Christian voice in all of this? How do we as the Church of Jesus Christ engage in these national debates? Is it right that some are wealthy and others poor? Is it God’s will? Or is it a grave injustice that needs to be righted? Are we for the Market or for Marx? As with everything else, the answer is complicated.
Jesus, in today’s Gospel, offers us a confusing parable, which we call the parable of the Unjust Steward. What makes it so odd is that, unlike in other parables, the unjust steward doesn’t get his comeuppance at the end of the story, not like the wicked tenants, or the servant who buried his gold talent in the ground. Instead the Master seems to praise the Steward for his unjust behaviour. When we read a parable like this, we have to understand that Jesus isn’t trying to impart some earthly wisdom, but to tell us something about salvation, and with this parable in particular it’s important to understand that the point of the story is the sayings at the end. Specifically, these three;
Use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends so that when it fails you they may welcome you into the tents of eternity
The man who can be trusted in little things can be trusted in great… if then you can be cannot trusted with money, that tainted thing, who will trust you with genuine riches? And if you cannot be trusted with what is not yours, who will trust you with what is your very own?
No servant can be the slave of two masters; he will either hate the first and love the second, or treat the first with respect and the second with scorn. You cannot be the slave of both God and of money
The sayings are the key to understanding why the servant in the story was praised and not punished; it’s because this story is an allegory, it’s about wealth and stewardship of our own goods. As with many of Jesus’ parables, the Master is a stand in for himself. In this parable, the Steward is us. This is the meaning of the second saying - wealth doesn’t belong to us; we are not it’s owners. Everything we have, be we rich or poor, belongs to God and He will call us to account for our use of it. The Steward in the story then might be seen as a rich man; a rich man who has been given care of much but has done very little with it. When it comes time to give an accounting for his failure to make the most of what was given him, he realises the bind he is in, and uses that wealth to buy friends; to go to those in debt and relieve them of the burden, as much as he can. The Church Fathers are unanimous in their reading of this passage; the allegory here is giving open-handedly to the poor – to those of whom Jesus says, whatsoever you do to the least of these, that you do to unto me.
The 19th Century Biblical commentator and priest George Haydock, commentating on this passage brought together the Fathers' reading of this passage;
what a consolation to the rich man, when the term of his mortal existence is approaching, to think that he shall have as many advocates to plead for his admittance into the eternal mansions of rest, as he has made friends among the poor by relieving them of their temporal wants
George Haydock commentary on the Douai Rheims Bible
Sourced via the 'Catena' App
The duty of the rich is not to let their wealth be their master, nor to let it make them proud, but to be the servant of God through the poor; to understand that they are not the owners of their wealth, but the stewards of it for the good of others. God, in his providence, has allowed them to be born wealthy, the rich man in his castle, because he wants them to be instruments of His benevolence; to give generously to the poor man at the gate.
Pope Leo XIII in the encyclical letter Rerum Novarum, explains how this translates into rights and duties, and gives us a foundation for Catholic Social Teaching. If we are wealthy, we have an obligation to provide dignified work for a fair wage, allowing workers rest, decent conditions, and time to offer worship to God and to care for their families. If we are workers, we have an obligation to give an honest day’s work for an honest day's pay.
When we think about the obligations of the wealthy and fortunate, we could perhaps have no better role model than our late Queen Elizabeth. She understood that the fortunate position to which she was born was a gift of God not for her own sake but for the sake of others. It was a strong sense of Christian duty that drove her to work tireless hours well into her nineties, giving all her energy and all her resources to the service of the people entrusted to her care. We might remember how she personally pushed for stronger sanctions against the Apartheid regime in South Africa, or how she patronised many charities and British businesses, helping those in the most need. We might also remember her detachment from her wealth; not being fussy, eating cereal from Tupperware containers, living as simple a life as was possible within the confines of monarchy, without embracing false modesty and dismissing all the staff and servants (and robbing them of their livelihoods). She shared advice and counsel with no fewer than fifteen Prime Ministers, and acted as the point of unity for her subjects over seventy years. She used her wealth and position, not as some of her ancestors did, for her own pleasure, but as a good Christian steward, in the service of the higher calling given by that design of God’s providence that made her Queen. When, tomorrow, we pray for the Queen, we might thank God for having had such an exceptional role model, and join our prayers with all those whose lives she benefitted, in so many ways and for so many years.
We were fortunate, to have had such a good Queen for so long; but many people around the world (even in our own country) experience the indignity of poverty and the injustice of systems and people who keep them in poverty and treat them without dignity. How do we as Christians answer these situations? The answer is not found in the pages of the Communist Manifesto, in confiscations or revolutions, but in today’s readings; our call is to first prayer and second to prophetic witness.
Paul reminds us in the letter to the Bishop Timothy; we are to pray for everyone, especially for Kings and others in authority, so that we may live religious and reverent lives in peace and quiet. So we pray for our King, our Duke, and his ministers, that they will try to guarantee dignified work at a fair wage, and for the wealthy, that they will use their wealth generously in the service of others. In addition to praying for the wealthy and the powerful, we must also be witnesses to the Truth. We pray that they will treat workers and the poor with respect, but we also insistently demand it. We remind them, as the prophet Amos in our first reading reminds them, that when the poor are exploited God’s warning is this:
Never will I forget a single thing you have done.
Amos 8:7
God sees all the good we do, and all the evil. So as we go away from this place, called to Glorify the Lord by Our Lives, we might adopt some of the lessons from today’s readings, so well embodied by our Queen;
Be thankful for what we have, and be generous in our use of it, even if we have very little
Pray for those in authority, for our King and our government, that they will be agents of peace, prosperity, and justice
Always do the duty we have been given; if we are leaders to lead wisely and well, if workers to work hard and honestly, if students to study hard, if we do not have work to pray for those who provide for us.
Above all, we are asked to be good stewards of what has been given to us, using it for the benefit of others; our love for one another is the measure of our love for Christ and for the Father. As we come to the Eucharistic sacrifice, when we hope to receive Christ, we might remember the warning attributed to Saint John Chrysostom;
If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the Church door, then you will not find him in the chalice
So let us ask Christ to give us a spirit of generosity, even to the least of his brothers and sisters. That we will win friends in heaven, and not useless wealth on earth.
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