Today’s gospel lesson is tangled up. It is like one big riddle. We wouldn’t be able to understand what it means unless we find one clue that can unlock what’s kept hidden. We can easily name a few things that either doesn’t make sense or sounds confusing. Here they are:
1. In the parable of the dishonest manager, the rich employer does not fire his manager immediately. This is very different from Corporate America. I have seen in the hospital that people can be laid off right away. 2. The dishonest manager, even after being told he would get fired due to his squandering of the property of his employer, continues to squander. He reduces the amounts of debts owed to his employer, which is of course illegal. He has no authority to do that. He clearly abuses the power granted to him, and damages his employer’s assets for the last time to save himself! 3. Now the weirdest thing in the parable happens when the employer commends his dishonest manager for being shrewd, for being practically clever and showing sharp powers of judgment. The employer who is about to fire his dishonest manager praises him for how he is able to accurately assess his desperate situation and how he uses his power that will soon be taken away for his own sake. Logically speaking, there’s no reason for the employer to praise his dishonest manager for being shrewd since the manager is still damaging him financially. I suspect there’s a bit of wordplay Jesus is doing here. The employer who is commending the dishonest manager is no longer the employer but Jesus himself. It makes more sense that it is Jesus who is praising the dishonest manager’s good sense of judgment. 4. Is wealth dishonest? Throughout today’s gospel lesson, Jesus describes wealth to be dishonest. We might wonder how wealth can be honest. It seems Jesus knows money is just money, but the very nature of how people do with it or what they make out of it is the problem. 5. Lastly, Jesus says something that is puzzling. He says, "If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust you to you with the true riches?" He is telling his disciples to be faithful with the dishonest wealth. What does it mean? This idea of being faithful with the dishonest wealth is troubling because it sounds like we need to be faithful to something negative, something dishonest. Doesn't that make us dishonest by being faithful to something dishonest? This last confusing point that I would like us to reflect on this morning helps us to solve the big riddle that Jesus shares with us. In Jesus's mind, we can be faithful with the dishonest wealth without becoming dishonest ourselves. It all depends on how we handle wealth or “mammon” which is translated as wealth in the passage we hear today. Mammon has a broader meaning than wealth. It is more accurate to call it possession. So how to be faithful with the dishonest wealth is about how we handle possession or our deepest desire to possess. The way we manage what we possess and how we handle our desire to possess determines whether we are dishonest or not before God. Jesus tells us how we can do that. He says at the end of our gospel lesson today, “You cannot serve God and wealth or possession.” Serving God is the only way for us to be faithful with possession. This can simply mean we don’t let possession possess us. We do not allow ourselves to be possessed by our possessions or our desire to possess. Underneath this desire to possess lies our fear of death or losing ourselves. Let’s ask ourselves, “Why do I want to possess something or someone or some situation?” What prompts me to desire to possess? Where is that desire coming from? This chain of reflective and soul-searching questions ends with “What am I really afraid of?” The answer is death. Losing oneself is what we are most afraid of. Our ego always feels deficit. It’s never enough. It’s always hungry and thirsty. It’s always anxious and nervous. It’s always unsatisfied. Possession is then our ego’s natural craving to fill in. Possessing something or someone is to have a total control over someone or something or some situation. It becomes our human project to become a god of our own just like building the Tower of Babel. So, when Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and possession,” this actually means, “You cannot serve God and yourself together. You can only serve one or the other.” From this perspective, the reason why the dishonest manager is praised by Jesus in the parable is not really about how he takes his last advantage to use his employer’s money to make friends. It is because he finally realizes what matters to his life the most. It’s not money. It’s not all his possessions or power he had. He believed he had some power over things like a god but not any more. As he accepts his inability to control his current situation as he used to like a god, he sees what matters to his life the most after all is his life itself. He accepts his reality in which he is not that powerful. He is no longer a god. He’s just a mere human being, a creature. He faces his life on the verge of poverty and chooses life by making friends with forgiving their debts. This time, he does all this not as a god, but as a human being who is created by God. He’s about to lose his job but he gains something much more essential. He becomes human again. Jesus’s teaching then challenges us to reflect on our lives. What is your mammon? What do I do when I feel emotionally anxious and afraid, spiritually thirsty and hungry? With what do I fill in the voids that my ego creates? Or what masks do I put on or want to wear to hide my insecurity? For clergy, it may be a collar as if wearing a collar makes him or her look better or give more power and authority. For a wealthy person, it may be all about what one owns and shows off all the luxurious items one has or spends some money on the poor occasionally to feed one’s self-righteous and self-serving desire. For a middle-class American, it can be all about minding no one’s business, even the poor and the oppressed, but solely focusing on paying off mortgages and keeping one’s territory more secure. Whether one is wealthy or not, whether one is seen more religious and spiritual or not, without the naked mind one cannot serve God. Christians are the ones who are completely naked before God just as Jesus is on the cross. Christians are the ones who accept and believe that nothing in this world remains eternal but only God. However we define ourselves and whatever we wrap up ourselves with do not last forever. They change. Whatever we possess cannot protect us or save us from death. Only God does. I can go on with this conditional and finite nature of this world we live in as well as with God’s eternity. But it doesn’t matter so much unless we ourselves decide to be naked before God in us. From this place of the naked mind, we can truly serve God and the world that God has created. From this place of the naked mind, we can truly talk about God’s will on earth. From this place of the naked mind, we can truly become Christ’s hands and feet. Then, how do we have this naked mind? We begin by asking fundamental questions about ourselves. How do I see myself? What is it that I would like to be identified with? What spiritual cravings do I have? Where do I find dissatisfaction and satisfaction? After all these questions are asked and responded, what we are left with is that they all change as our life situations change. Then we can finally see the one who is not changing. That is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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