Homily [2]25th Sunday of Year C: Fr. Michael U. Udoekpo
·
Amos 8:4-7;
·
Ps
113:1-8;
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1 Tim
2:1-8
·
Luke 16:1-13
Serving God In the Poor
Today’s readings are quite interesting. They focus on the need for us
to always treat one another especially the poor and the margin of the society
with dignity, a message that Pope Francis continues to run home with, since
taking the seat of Peter. It is also about the need for us to wisely make good
use of all the material things God has blessed us with, including our money.
Wealth has to be gotten honestly. The readings again invite us to always act,
even in living and preaching the gospel message with a spiritual foresight and
pursuit of spiritual security.
Christ particularly passes on this message to us in this parable of a
rich steward who plans to fire his corrupt steward. Finding this out, the
steward tells all those who owe his master some money to forget about the
interest. By doing this the cunning and dishonest servant acted with worldly
foresight and shrewdly bought friends for himself in the future, knowing that
soon he would be unemployed. Again he was not punished by doing this. Perhaps
he made his master also look good by writing off the debts of all the
borrowers.
Towards the end of the parable, Jesus reiterate, “You cannot serve both
God and mammon,” referring still to dishonest and inordinate wealth, wrong
profits-making, ill-treatment of the poor, worldly foresight and behavior of
the shrewd steward for buying off future friends with money. How wish we can
channel our energy, our smartness in spiritual insight, and in matters that does
good to everyone in the light of Christ Jesus. Unfortunately, it is always, me,
me, me, that selfishness, that neglect of the poor—those acts of corruption and
injustices!
This type of behavior is not limited to the time of Christ. In the mid
Eight century BC, during the time of Amos of Tekoa, when Jeroboam the II was
the king of Samaria, and Amazia served as his priest, injustices, corruption,
ill treatment of the poor was also prevalent. There was greediness everywhere
as well as hypocritical practice in worship. And the widow’s head and the poor
were trampled into the dust and some were sold out with a pair of sandals or
for just a little silver, as the shrewd steward of the gospel parable(Amos
8:4-7). Amos was called as we are called today to challenge the ugly ills of
the society.
In the US Senate and Congress now, and I believe in many other parts of
the world as well, there is a constant debate on how to bridge the yawing gap
between the rich and the poor. How do we help those on food- stamps? What do we
do with our brothers and sisters without job, employment and health insurance?
Is it necessary for some to keep 10 or more homes or cars when others have
none, especially homes or those material goods gotten in a wrong and dishonest
manner? Pope Francis recently has also demonstrated in words and action the
need to reach out to the poor—the essentials of the message of Christ.
In the face of the disparity between the rich and the poor today what
would Jesus have done? He would reach out to them because in the beginning of
his ministry in Galilee, in the same very Luke’s gospel, Jesus proclaims “the
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings
to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, and recovery of
sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaimed a year
acceptable to the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19).
From then on Jesus reached out to the sick, the leper, the blind, the
poor, the widow, the needy, the rejected, men, women and children. Jesus wants
everyone to eat. He wants every to be clothed. He wants everyone to be
healthy. He wants everyone to have a roof over their heads. As
Saint Paul would put it in the Second Reading, He wants everyone to be saved (1
Tim 2:1-8).
Money especially wrong use of money is not everything. There is a story
of a very hungry and starving rich sick man who received a huge parcel in the
mail, which he presumed was food. He greedily tore open the box and proclaimed,
“Oh my God, it is not food, but gold.” The poor man would have preferred food,
instantly, than gold.
We need Christ-like values, good
choices, steward- like approach and spiritual insight in our preaching, in our
daily living, in our government decisions, in our relationship with God and
with our neighbors, recognizing that material things, particularly money is not
everything- selfishly used, but was meant for the common good, for the service
of God and our neighbors- especially of the poor!
