Money: Indispensable but Tainted

On the readings of the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

The Church offers us readings today (25th Sunday in ordinary time), with which we will feel quite at home. The first reading is the condemnation by the prophet Amos of the dishonest and exploitative business practices of his day. The Gospel tells us the story of the dishonest manager and how he manages to get out of a difficult situation.

Dishonesty, squandering, bribes, exploitation, pyramid schemes: our newscasts are full of them. We turn on our computer and we get messages addressed to “Dear Friend” inviting us to various kinds of shady deals supposed to get us large sums of money, but which in fact are meant to steal our personal information and even to extract sums of money from us. From very early on humans have used money for their transactions rather than direct barter. We would not be able to do without this monetary system of exchange. The worth of the money that circulates is in large part based on trust, for example, that those we lend to will make enough profit to repay their loans. But then trust is mixed with greed, with false advertising, and, as has recently happened, many loans and mortgages have defaulted, banks have gone bankrupt, and the system is threatened with collapse. Collapse has not taken place, thank God, but we are now in a definite period of financial belt-tightening and anxiety as we try to work ourselves out of the crisis.

Another reason for the blight which affects money is that much of the capital that drives our economy is at the expense of people who live on the margins and who continue, like the poor in the first reading, to be exploited. So while indispensable – in order to live we have no choice but to buy, sell, borrow, save, invest -- money is tainted, and that taint rubs off on all of us, inasmuch as we enter into the exchange system. Thus in the Gospel reading the adjective “dishonest” is attached to “wealth”, in the original “mammon, or mammon of iniquity”, which means money as that in which we falsely trust.

Is Jesus telling us not to use money? No, even if it is dishonest, we are to use it creatively and generously, thus making friends by helping others with our resources, by being faithful in administering it. But we are warned that we cannot serve both God and wealth. Money is not an end but a means. Unfortunately for many in the world it is an end not a means. At times money might evoke feelings of confidence, of solidity: if I have plenty of money invested, and I trust the system, I can rest secure. But now I feel that the money I have set aside might not be enough. I am anxious. But the upside of this present crisis is that we all realize that our system of monetary exchange is fragile, that it could collapse like a castle of cards, and we hope for a way forward out of our present situation which is based not on more economic sleight of hand but on solid principles anchored in God’s will for us. Recent papal encyclicals such as Benedict’s Caritas in Veritate keep on reminding us of that. Jesus is asking us to put our trust not in wealth, or “mammon”, the term he uses, but in God, the wisdom God imparts to us and the providence with which God guides our lives.

The Gospel text for the 25th Sunday, from Luke 16, is at first reading strange. Why would the master praise his dishonest manager for trying to cut back the obligations of those who owed money for goods purchased? One explanation which makes sense is that the common way in Jesus’ day for someone to make a profit was not to increase the price of what was sold, in our terms grain for $50 a bushel rather than $30 a bushel with a profit of $20 a bushel, but to increase the number of bushels on the bill. If the person pays for 50 bushels, but only gets the delivery of 30, there is a net profit corresponding to the value of the 20 bushels left. So the dishonest manager is basically remitting to the customers the extra units which he added on to their bill to cover his own cut, which seems exorbitant, and this is something the master is able to praise.

The point of the story is that we are to imitate the dishonest manager not in his practice of extortion but in his cleverness in dealing the fallout of losing his job. He finds a helpful tactic to use, and he uses it. We are to be as clever, resourceful, and prudent in our dealings with others with a view to achieving our own ultimate goal, which is not a fat investment account but our place in the eternal homes. And that resourcefulness goes against the grain as far as the ways of the world are concerned: as the first reading bids us, we are to refrain from exploitation; as the Gospel bids us, we are to be generous to others, making friends with them, because we know that when we are generous to them we are imitating Christ’s generosity to us, and, even more, in being generous to those in need we are being generous to Christ of whose body they are especially precious members.