Homily - Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time - September 19, 2004

 

 

 

Kent Nerburn in his book “Letters to My Son” talks about possessions

 

He tells about living simply in a small cabin in Oregon. He had pared down his life to almost nothing. Everything he owned could be squeezed into the back of a car. What remained was precious. Letters.  Books. A typewriter. A camera. A stereo. Photographs and manuscripts and diaries and poems. A favorite bowl and some pots and pans. So little and yet so much.

 

When he returned to his little home after being away for a Christmas vacation, all of it was gone.  The papers were torn up, the typewriter smashed. The camera and stereo had disappeared. The photographs were defaced.

 

The thief he said had been a cruel teacher, but had taught me something about possessions.  “From that moment forward I vowed”, he said,” that they would never own me; I would own them.”

 

Nerburn suggests:

“Look around you.  Look at your possessions.  How many of them have you used in the last week?  How many of them have made a difference in your life?  How many of them have made you happy beyond the few minutes immediately after you acquired them?

Probably not very many.

Yet how many of them would you willingly give away?

Probably very few.”

 

He continues:  “What are we to do?  Unless we want to live lives of day-to-day survival or want to dedicate our lives to some higher ascetic ideal, swearing off possessions is not going to make us any clearer or wiser.  It will only make us obsessed with our own poverty, and that is no better than being obsessed with our own possessions.  Neither the self-absorbed poor nor the self absorbed rich are doing themselves or anyone else any good.

Somehow, we need to find a true measure of value for our possessions so we can free ourselves from their weight without denying them their rightful value.

There is one test we can use.  Does a possession help me give more of myself to other people?  In its beauty or utility does it raise my vision of who I am and what I can do?.....

Most of all I want you to know that possessions become what you make them.  If they increase your capacity to give, they become something good.  If they increase your focus on yourself and become standards by which you measure other people, they become something bad.  It is in your hands to give them meaning.”

 

Perhaps Kent Nerburn reflects the heart of what Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel.

 

Missionary author and educator Herman Hendrickx in his book The third Gospel for the Third World, tells us that Jesus is talking about “Kingdom economics”.  Kingdom economics comes into play when disciples make appropriate use of this world’s goods to alleviate the crisis of poverty.  Up to this point in the Gospel of Luke, many of Jesus’ teachings have bee set against a backdrop of table fellowship, and his disciples were challenged to include outsiders such as sinners and tax collectors among their dinner companions.  But as we move on in the Gospel, in this sixteenth chapter, Jesus grounds his message about table fellowship more fundamentally in his overall teaching about possessions.  Jesus taught that wealth should be used to welcome another cluster of outsiders – the poor, who are unable to reciprocate or help to advance their own status.  In order to explain how this kingdom economics might work, Jesus holds out the example of the wily manager in today’s Gospel.

 

In the story the manager has been caught mishandling or neglecting his employer’s property.  He makes no argument about his innocence or about keeping his job. He knows the jig is up. And so he shows his shrewdness.  By telling the debtors to reduce their debt he was not stealing; rather, her was willingly forfeiting a percentage of the commission that would have been rightly his for collecting the debt.  For being daring enough to take such a risk, the manager was praised by Jesus. And how is this kingdom economics?

 

If the manager had lost his job it would be tantamount to a death sentence. It wasn’t that he was unable to dig or ashamed to bet but because the loss of his position meant a loss of status in society.  He could never have competed with the stronger – He would know long bouts of hunger interspersed by an occasional meal; his plight was sad indeed.

 

And so he acted quickly and with an eye to securing his future – because he showed himself capable of good managing skills in a crisis perhaps others would hire such a man to steward their properties….this, it seems, was the manager’s hope, and it is for this that Jesus recommended him to his disciples.

 

Like the manager who found himself in a crisis, faithful disciples who live in the interim between Jesus’ leaving and coming are in a crisis that requires willingness to risk all for the sake of a share in God’s reign.

 

Kingdom economics, therefore, would demand that the poor be attended despite the cost, despite the risk, despite a loss of personal status and without the benefit or reciprocity.  By using the goods of this world to alleviate the suffering of the poor, disciples show themselves trustworthy and duly equipped to take on greater responsibilities.  After all, wealth is elusive and non-transferable from this world to the next.  Therefore, those who use this world’s wealth shrewdly, with one eye on the poor and the other on the coming reign of God will prove themselves worthy disciples here and hereafter.

 

Just as Jesus challenged his disciples to be careful – to be shrewd perhaps – about their salvation – Just as Amos in the first reading underlines the fate of those who neglect the poor – so you and I, if we are to be followers of the Lord, if we would be saved, we have to be careful, focused, and risk-takers.

 

The front of the Asbury Park Press today talks about Affordable Housing here in Monmouth County – or the lack of it.

And certainly there are so many in our midst who make excuses – If people only worked harder – or “I had nothing once and pulled myself up”.  Or its their addiction or their excesses that is the problem.

But Jesus would challenge the excuses by saying that the fact of the matter is that the poor are our way to the kingdom – and we’d better find ways to link with them, even use them to get there.

 

There are people in Iraq and in the Sudan and in so many other places in the world who suffer because of the wars of the powerful – including the US. And we might think they are expendable so that we might be safe – so that we might have our own security.  But Jesus would tell us that those poor who live in fear of their lives – who have nothing to eat and nothing to wear – no matter their beliefs or their politics are close to him – and if we would get close to him we need to sidle right up to them.

 

There are people in our own country who are oppressed – the handicapped, the marginalize by their sexuality, the imprisoned, the children of abuse and neglect – and they might frighten us and we might feel unable, incapable of doing anything about their plight. But Jesus would tell us that we’d better find a way – we need be crafty enough about our own salvation to risk whatever we have to be aligned with them. It is a matter of our life and death.

 

Kingdom economics doesn’t work the way other economic systems work – it gets us to the kingdom.

Let’s be careful about our salvation.