Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Sep­tem­ber 19, 2010

PRE-PRAYER­ING
 

Last month I had a sin­gle heart by-pass which went very well - thank God and the doc­tor. The recov­ery time gave me plen­ty of mind-space to reflect on the short­ness of life and those kind of things. Of all the sur­pris­es though my expe­ri­ence of myself at the Rehab Cen­ter took the cake.

I have been going three times a week and from the very begin­ning and even today, I find myself not want­i­ng to asso­ciate with all those “oth­ers” on the tread­mills and bikes. It has been all quite embar­rass­ing not want­i­ng to be “old” or “out-of-shape”. I have been a jog­ger for over thir­ty years and took the right med­i­cines and was care­ful about eat­ing healthy things. Now I am just like “oth­ers”. I smile as I write this, because it is so sil­ly, but real. I would wish the Spir­i­tu­al Life could raise me above being like, well, you and them.

The Eucharist is the con­tin­u­a­tion of the Divine embrace of all that is human in us, even that which we would rather not admit. The Spir­i­tu­al Life is the way we live with the phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, psy­cho­log­i­cal self and the Eucharist embeds itself right there. I would like to be above the human con­di­tion often. Jesus came to that very con­di­tion to stay there and is urg­ing us to stay there as well. There is more going on at the Car­diac Rehab Cen­ter for me than the nurs­es sus­pect. My heart and soul are get­ting reac­quaint­ed. We can pre­pare for the Eucharist by being hon­est about our per­son­al and com­mu­nal condition. 

REFLEC­TION

The prophet Amos has had four visions grant­ed him by God con­cern­ing Israel. A swarm of locusts, a drought, a mea­sur­ing plumb-line and the one which opens the chap­ter from which our First Read­ing comes, a bas­ket of fruit. All four visions indi­cate that Israel has not been faith­ful to their rela­tion­ship with God. They lit­er­al­ly do not mea­sure up. The fruit in the bas­ket is rot­ten and God means to pun­ish Israel.

Amos has been announc­ing their crooked ways and has been charged not to speak any fur­ther. Of course he has to, because the Word is in him. What we hear is such a denun­ci­a­tion of the unjust busi­ness prac­tices of the times. When Amos had plead­ed with God not to send pesti­lence upon the peo­ple, God had relent­ed, but through the preach­ing of Amos, things have not improved. What we hear today is anoth­er warn­ing to those prac­tic­ing crooked deal­ings. Amos mim­ics their usu­al com­plaints, “When will the Sab­bath be over, the cel­e­bra­tion of the new moon so we can get back to work.” There are cor­ners to be cut, the cheat­ing to be extended.

Then Amos speaks for God that God will remem­ber every lit­tle cheat­ing cor­ner they have done. Amos is no longer going to try to argue God out of the divine plan as pic­tured in the visions, but he will not dis­con­tin­ue his prophet­ic warnings.

The Gospel con­tin­ues Luke’s chal­leng­ing of those who are greedy and cen­tered on wealth. We hear first a para­ble which does need some study for under­stand­ing. A trust­ed ser­vant has betrayed his mas­ter and not dealt well with the master’s prop­er­ty. He is sum­moned and his job is ter­mi­nat­ed. He reflects that he is in bad shape in terms of the future. He makes lit­tle deals with his fel­low ser­vants by which He asks var­i­ous fel­low ser­vants how much they owe the mas­ter. He tells them to con­sid­er the debt offi­cial­ly much less. In this way he makes good friends with these fel­low ser­vants who in turn will remem­ber him in the days of need ahead. The mas­ter, upon find­ing out about this, com­mends the trick­i­ness of the ser­vant which he says is pru­dent.

Jesus fin­ish­es the para­ble and then says some­thing seem­ing­ly a bit crooked too. He affirms that the sin­ful peo­ple of this gen­er­a­tion are more pru­dent in their usu­al deal­ings, than are the “chil­dren of light.” Then Jesus says that all should make friends with wealth, because it will fail in the long run and the result­ing wis­dom will lead to the eter­nal dwelling. The Gospel clos­es with proverb-like say­ings about those who are faith­ful with the small­er things will be trust­ed with the larg­er and the oppo­site is true as well. These say­ings, while oh so true, are not as con­fus­ing as the larg­er por­tion of the read­ing for today.

Mon­ey, when it is not our mas­ter, can do great and won­der­ful things. The “chil­dren of light” are those who try to live toward the good, the Light. As chil­dren of the light we are invit­ed to be pru­dent about what is impor­tant ulti­mate­ly to us as those who are of “this gen­er­a­tion”, who like the unwor­thy ser­vant, are pru­dent for what they think is the “long term”.
 
This is not an easy para­ble, but it does fit into Luke’s basic theme of liv­ing wise­ly with the gifts the Giv­er or Lord has giv­en us. “Wise­ly” for Luke has to do more with our dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth than its accu­mu­la­tion. The stew­ard was unwise in his use of the master’s wealth. He was wise, accord­ing to Jesus, by mak­ing friends with the master’s oth­er ser­vants by reduc­ing their debts. A good ques­tion might be asked here. Did the stew­ard cheat his mas­ter by this reduc­tion, or did he reduce their debt by the exact amount his mas­ter was owing him? What­ev­er was going on, Jesus reflect­ing on the sto­ry reminds His fol­low­ers to try to make life-long friends with wealth, because when they do, they will find out how short-lived that friend­ship real­ly is. 

I would like to think that Jesus well knew the lust for iden­ti­ty through wealth that was in the hearts of His fol­low­ers. He is telling them and us to try to find peace and true life by mak­ing mon­ey a per­ma­nent deity. The life that Jesus offers is but one of many forms and we will have to try them and be dis­ap­point­ed by them. We will come to His ways and to Him per­son­al­ly with many expe­ri­ences of frus­tra­tion, aban­don­ment, and empti­ness. We pay trib­ute to the Giv­er by our desire to dis-trib­ute all that we have, includ­ing our gift­ed selves.

“You have laid down your pre­cepts to be faith­ful­ly kept. May my foot­steps be firm in keep­ing your com­mands.” Ps. 119 4-5