A Tale of Two Masters

In today's gospel (Luke 16.1-19), we are presented with the rather puzzling parable of the unjust steward. This is the estate manager who suddenly finds himself out of a job for cheating his master. Too weak for manual labour, and too proud to beg, the wretched man must devise a way to provide for himself by other means. His master has ordered that the steward should draw up a balance sheet, and the steward has a flash of inspiration: the way to provide for himself is by visiting his master's debtors, presenting them with the records of their debts, and inviting them to substitute lesser for more substantial figures, knowing that those who agree will thereafter be under an obligation towards him.

Eventually, of course, someone spills the beans, and the steward's master learns what's been going on.

Now comes a surprise, for you might have expected the master to be furious, and the steward to be in even hotter water than before. Not a bit of it: instead the master 'commended the steward on his dishonesty because he had been shrewd in what he had done.'

In a remark that immediately follows, Jesus says that, according to their lights, worldly people show themselves shrewder than more spiritual people, and that spiritual people would be wise to use their wealth, (which he calls 'the mammon of iniquity') to get themselves friends. 'so that when it is gone, they may be received into an eternal home.' (Luke.16.9).

In any parable in which there appears a figure of authority, such a a father, a master, or a landowner there is a natural tendency for the reader to see that figure as representing God, whereas any subject figure, such as a member of the master's household, a debtor, or a slave is likely be seen as representing Man.

Of course, it is possible to suppose that the Master here is an exception, and that he is not to be regarded as the divine at all, but as that force which represents the pole to which Men will swing when they forget God, and worship possessions instead. In that case, the Master may be considered as representing the Prince of this World, or Mammon (whose name, says St.Augustine, meant 'greed' in Punic), and Mammon's endorsement of the steward's double-dealing may be taken as cynical amusement at a subordinate who knows how to make the best of a losing hand.

But whether it is right to make that identification or not, the fact remains that there is only one Master of this World, and that He made it, and, as the Psalmist says, everything that therein is'. (Psalm 24..1).

To a person who accepts that fact with any degree of commitment, Man's petty assumptions of ownership can easily come to seem a kind of blasphemy, particularly where such a usurpation is at the expense of God's creation and God's other creatures.

The majority of the Churches have, in some way, had to accommodate themselves to the vicious system along which godless power has tended to organise the World, but most would accept that the whole essence of biblical teaching is against it, and the increasingly obvious consequences of the wholesale abandonment of any restraint in the pursuit of material advancement should encourage them, like nothing else, to preach against it.

What then, are we to do, given that everything belongs to God, and that everything we pretend to own is not ours at all, but His?

The answer, surely, is to be found in the two greatest commandments that require us to Love God with all our hearts, and all our souls and all our minds, and to love our neighbour as ourself.

If evil men can use money to secure themselves in this fallen world, we may nevertheless console ourselves that what is properly God's can be put to God's service, and thereby cease to be mere property and become instead a powerful instrument for the fulfilment of the Will of God.