Friday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Scripture

Occasionally, it happens. Not often, but enough to make it memorable and not simply a fluke. Someone cuts me some slack when I least expect it - even, sometimes, when I don't deserve it. The cashier who says, "Oh, you don't have the correct change? I'll cover it." The doctor who says, "I know you're paying for this appointment totally out of pocket so we'll bill this at the lowest level." The police officer who lets me off with a warning. The harried receptionist who detects a note of concern, even panic in my voice, and figures out a way to get an appointment on the books.

For sure, these are serendipitous moments, and they don't come often enough to cover all the times things go awry. But they come just often enough to remind me of the virtue of generosity, and its importance, especially in our world today. As a people, I think we are not as generous with each other as perhaps we should be. And each time one of these serendipitous things happens I am reminded that I, too, am called to be generous.

It is events like this, too, that help me make sense of confusing scriptures like today's gospel reading from Luke (16:1-8). Jesus tells a parable about a dishonest steward and we readers are surely left more than a little confused. The parable begins with the landowner firing the steward; in the middle, we see the steward actually cutting in half the money people apparently owe the landowner; by the end, we see the landowner praising the dishonest steward for his tactics. What is going on?

Biblical commentators suggest several possibilities, particularly the thought that the steward might have been overcharging the tenants in order to pad his own pockets - and perhaps it is this dishonesty that gets him in trouble in the first place. But even if we go with that thought, this is still a confusing parable, for remember, the tenants are responsible to the landowner, not the steward - and the steward has been shown the door! If a tenant dared show any sort of allegiance to the steward by going along with any sort of pay scheme, what's to prevent the landowner from throwing that one out along with steward? The tenants have nothing to gain by going along with the steward.

Except for this: when the steward cuts each tenant's bill in half, he is exhibiting a kind of generosity - a generosity exhibited by the landowner himself when he didn't jail the steward immediately upon discovering the dishonest actions. And moreover, the steward's generosity reflects back on the landowner himself. The tenants get a break they weren't expecting - and the accolades get spread onto both the steward and the landowner.

I'd like to think (though I am no Biblical scholar) that Jesus' parable is suggesting to each one of us that we, too, are witnesses to God's generosity, love, justice, et cetera. Jesus fully recognizes that we, like the steward, are not perfect people, nor are we good all the time. Even so, can we be even a little like the dishonest steward - who in spite of everything, showed some grace, mercy, and goodness?

In order to do that, we have to keep developing our relationships with God and each other. We find out from today's epistle reading (Romans 15:14-21) that any witnessing we do for Christ, any bit of goodness we have is only because we have been obedient to Christ, in spite of being imperfect people who are liable to do the wrong thing. We are witnesses when we reflect God's own generosity - and we can do that by paying closer attention to those times when people are generous to us - and then witness to God by doing likewise.

- Jana M. Bennett