Daily Reflection
November 7, 2025

That God’s love is perfected in “whoever keeps the word of Christ” … “Alleluia!” But how do we proclaim “the Gospel of Christ” and perfect the love of God in times such as ours: governance - and our life together - treated as a business, a zero-sum game of deal-making calculated to bring “the win”: wealth accumulation for the power-players?

Luke gives us many a “word of Christ” to keep. His prophetic Jesus can be counted on to provoke minds and turn hearts with parables that more often than not reflect familiar realities of daily life, then and now, in this case, the “worldly ways” of systems of shocking economic inequality. In today’s gospel text Jesus is on his way to the central point in this section of Luke 16: “No servant can be devoted to two masters.… You cannot serve God and wealth” (16:13). In other words, what is my, your, our deepest desire, which is revealed by our DOings?

In this lead up to that point, here Jesus sets before us “children of the world” (or “of the age,” aion) who are, in Jesus’ eyes, distinct from “children of light” (those committed to the transformative reign of God): a rich man, his multiple debtors, and a “manager” (better translation) responsible for handling the master’s business affairs. The designation “master” reflects the ancient reality: “managers” were often slaves, whose employment in the service of elite landowners afforded a bump in status and a way out of the precarious existence of non-elites in the system. The sizeable amount of wheat and oil owed by debtors reflects the extreme economic disparities, driven by greed (the desire for more and more and more profit), that Jesus targets in numerous parables (Luke 6:20-26; 12:13-15; 12:16-21; 14:7-24; 16:9-15; 16:19-31). The reduced payments that the wily manager extracts from the debtors apparently are no threat to his very rich boss’s profit margin.

Victims of the manager’s practices squeal on him to the rich man. Precisely what the manager has been doing is not clarified. Jesus’ intended audience, however, knew well the predatory ways of “the children of this age.” Upping the interest on loans or prices on basic goods to pad one’s own pockets, cooking the books, skimming off the top for a boost of one’s own income - all were familiar practices. Self-interest as the driving motive in economic deal-making hardly a modern invention!

The master’s call for accounting and threat of dismissal brings a rude awakening, the kind that sharpens the mind – hence, “Oh my, what shall I do?” - and a “turn” of sorts: the manager now sees rightly the stark realities to which privilege, even minimal privilege, blinds, realities soon to be his own dreadful reality. Mammon forbid! “What shall I do?” Be reduced to manual labor, to begging by roadsides? Mammon forbid! A fall from elevated status in the economic hierarchy, relegating him to the ranks of the non-elite people he had mistreated in his “dirty dealing” for the master, and worse yet, to a share in their precarious existence, one defined by manual labor, begging, captivity to crushing debt? Mammon forbid!

With that sobering prospect in mind comes the “aha” moment, “I know what I shall do … “: make friends with those who might soon be my neighbors, so that, if I fall into their plight, they will welcome me into their homes. He’s familiar, apparently, with another worldly reality: the neediest share the coin of compassion more readily and generously than Mammon’s coin collectors. His strategy - call the

debtors in one by one for payments, but with a debt reduction “deal” - would afford them a bit of economic relief - a righteous/just thing to do with what Jesus terms “dishonest wealth” (“unrighteous” or “unjust” wealth/mammon; Luke 16:9,11). It turns out to be a “win-win-win” (at least by worldly standards): welcome debt reduction for some debtors, wealthy boss gets immediate repayment on the deal, manager has won friend-insurance for any future fall and seemingly keeps his job.

Unsurprisingly, Jesus and the wealthy boss see the manager’s deal-making differently: the boss commends the manager’s shrewdness, but Jesus refers to him as “that unjust manager.” From the perspective of “the children of light” (those seeking to serve the coming of God’s reign into our ways), the small redistribution of wealth that occurred is an instance of “accidental justice,” for, as Jesus’ telling makes clear, the manager’s motivation was not compassion for struggling debtors and the desire to make right (justice), let alone to reform unjust ways in the system. His strategy is patently self-serving, one of the shrewd ways of “children of the world.” Hence, the need to consider Jesus’ immediate follow-up application of the parable in 16:9-13, with its prophetic admonition: “You cannot serve God and wealth” (16:13).

How do we keep “the word of Christ,” guided by this parable-word of Luke’s prophetic Christ? Inspired by the victims of injustice in this parable, perhaps in part by recognizing and calling out dishonesty, rip-offs, injustices, when we see them, as apparently some did in this case. Blowing the whistle on the manager’s unjust practices in his service to the wealthy boss made the manager face his own share in the precarious human condition, to which his own privileged status blinded him, and so, his need for more than whatever wealth and status his business role afforded him, above all, his need for human bonds, built not on wealth but on true humanity, reflected in desire for shared well-being. Better yet, it caused him, albeit out of self-interest, to do something “right(eous)” that benefited the needy (i.e., those who need justice).

Perhaps by reflection on our own identities: am I, are we, simply children of this world, accepting and acting in accord with the “shrewd” ways of the world and these times, the ways and means of mere self-interest? Or are we “children of light,” who bring the perspectives of the prophetic Jesus to life in these times? What are we doing to live the light of the gospel for the sake of the shared well-being that our Creator God wills for all?

Perhaps by reflection on our own economic realities: what is my/our relation to unjust wealth? What is my relationship to money? How much wealth accumulation is enough? Every budget is a moral document, and so, what does my personal budget indicate about my values and priorities? What do our state and federal budgets reveal about our values our, priorities, and whose needs count for us? How am I/we complicit, albeit often inadvertently, in the “ways of the world” that drive poverty, exclusion, hard-heartedness, hatred, violence to others and to our earth-home?

Perhaps by reflection on the recurring Spirit-question in Luke’s Gospel: What shall I do? What shall we do together?