A dishonest ‘manager’ has been caught in the act of stealing. He sees his life unravel and visits to the jobcentre don’t hold out much hope that things will improve. Then, like the wasteful son in the Parable of the Prodigal Father, this man reviews his situation and comes up with a survival strategy. His back is to the wall and he’s not going down without a fight. His strategy is to seduce others to collude in his dishonesty. He tells himself, that once the trap is sprung, he can enjoy their support for a long time to come. Sound familiar?
With His usual creativity, the Beloved Son of God – having just painted a surprising portrait of what God is like for the wasteful son – portrays the dishonest managers’ employer in a strange light. His only response to the loss he has endured is to praise the dishonest manager for his cleverness and cunning! A bit like those scenes from a mystery film where the detective from Scotland Yard gazes into the empty bank vault and says of the robbers, “Credit where credit is due. They knew what they were doing”.
Keep in mind that the Parables of Jesus are about spiritual matters. The dishonest manager knew how to survive when his physical and social life was threatened. The disciples of Jesus need to have the same ‘wisdom’ to act decisively when their hearts are at stake. The Children of the Light appear to Jesus to be lacking in this regard. They are threatened on all sides. Powerful internal and external forces are at work to lead them astray. If they are not alert to these, if they do not have a plan which galvanises them into action, they might be swept away by the darkness.
Specifically, the Divine Teacher suggests that we should not allow money to make us dishonest. Put simply, if we use it for the service of Love, we will have mastered it. But if we swap the first commandment and make money our first love it will have mastered us! And He knows that if we try to build our security on what we own it will fail us. It’s only use, in Kingdom terms, is to see it as a resource that builds community. If we use our resources to relieve the suffering of others, and to strengthen the bonds of friendship in our community, we will have used them in the way God intended.
Our trustworthiness with the baubles of earthly ‘wealth’ is a sign that we are doing well with the genuine riches of the Kingdom. Becoming a person who can be trusted is a step in the right direction, which will allow the Spirit of God to reveal the deeper richness in our own soul. In both cases, it seems that for Jesus, our spiritual growth cannot be pursued in isolation from the life that we are living, and the people we are living with here and now. We have to choose, in this context, what is most important to us and make everything else a servant of that choice.
This choosing is very important. We must choose friends who are not just spiritually surviving but thriving! Instead of hanging around people who collude with our sin, we have to hang around people who inspire us to be the best that we can be. Sometimes our friends, if we let them, can see us more clearly that we see ourselves and sometimes they have the answers that we cannot yet see. This is why, in our friendship group, we should have at least one person who loves us unconditionally and at least one person who can challenge us to continue to grow. These guides will help us to be more alert to what is destroying our spiritual development and help us to act effectively to guard the treasure in our soul.
If, after reading this, you are asking yourself if you have lost some of the music of the Gospel in your soul, stop what you are doing and don’t go on until you find it again.
