Fourteenth Sunday After Trinity
“No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth”
Summary
I doubt that anyone would choose Jesus to be minister of finance: Last week he commends the actions of the shepherd who abandons 99 of sheep to look for one that’s lost. This week, in Luke 16:1-13, he commends a dishonest land manager who squanders his master’s wealth.
At the heart of these parables is a call to prioritise the relational above the transactional. Like the first reading, Amos 8:4-7, they are a plea for solidarity and unity which stems from an understanding of the deep interconnectedness of all life.
Both Luke and Amos were written in the context of great economic inequality in which poor tenant farmers often ended up enslaved as bonded labourers who could, in the words of Amos, be bought for the price of “a pair of sandals”.
Despite his dubious motives, the manager in the parable releases people from their debt and so sets them free. At the start of the parable, he is solidarity with the rich landowner, he too desires to increase his own position at the expense of others. It is only when he experiences insecurity that he can begin to empathise with the experience of the vulnerable and stand in solidarity with them.
Both Amos and Jesus invite us to embrace a life that is relational: to acknowledge that all that we are and all that we have come from God and that we flourish when our lives are used for the well-being and building up of all of God’s creation. In the words of Desmond Tutu, it is “in seeing the many ways in which we are similar and how our lives are inextricably linked, we can find empathy and compassion… ultimately, it is the humble awareness of our own humanity that allows us to give and to forgive.”
FIRST READING
Exodus 32:7-14
The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ” The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation.”
But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.
GOSPEL
Luke 15.1-10
“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
