Proper 20 (25) – Year C
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost: September 21, 2025
Gospel Lectionary Text
Luke 16:1-13
16:1 Then Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property.
16:2 So he summoned him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.'
16:3 Then the manager said to himself, 'What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.
16:4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.'
16:5 So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'
16:6 He answered, 'A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.'
16:7 Then he asked another, 'And how much do you owe?' He replied, 'A hundred containers of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill and make it eighty.'
16:8 And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.
16:9 And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
16:10 "Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.
16:11 If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?
16:12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?
16:13 No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."
Context
Welcome to the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost. This week’s Gospel is one of Jesus’ strangest parables — a story about a dishonest manager who cooks the books and then gets praised for it. What’s going on here?
At first glance, the manager looks like a cheat. He reduces debts behind his master’s back, cutting a hundred jugs of oil down to fifty, a hundred containers of wheat down to eighty. But if we peek behind the curtain, something else comes into focus. Those inflated numbers were padded with interest. It was legal in the civil courts but forbidden by God’s law. By slashing the bills, the manager wasn’t stealing; he was stripping away the excess that enslaved debtors, restoring the contracts to their rightful size.
In doing so, he sacrifices his own cut, salvages his master’s reputation, and wins friends among the poor. Jesus calls that shrewd.
God is in search of shrewd managers (let’s call them ministers) who recognize that God is not a bookkeeper running a cosmic balance sheet. God isn’t waiting for us to pay down the interest on our lives. In Christ, the ledger is torn up. The debts are forgiven.
What’s needed are ministers who refuse to use inflationary fear tactics to line their pockets and secure their livelihood. When we refuse to play the game, it undoes the whole transactional system from within until, eventually, it collapses under its own weight. This is how we become free.
That’s why Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” The way of wealth is transactional. It always keeps score. It demands what is owed, in every sense of the word. The way of God is transformational. It throws out the spreadsheet. If there has to be a loser, then God will absorb the loss. Which master will we serve?
Question
If God isn’t keeping score, why do we so often insist on doing so with ourselves and others?
Reflections
Faithful With What Belongs
By Scott Dewey |
I have a dear lifetime friend, gifted and brilliant. The headwinds of life have resulted in her employment being menial at best, and degradingly exploitative at worst. After a stretch of sex work that dangerously devolved into coercion and trafficking, a few of us who loved her hatched a plot. Her escape involved a ransom,...
Burn the Ledger
By Kris Rocke |
Harry always insisted on buying the pizza. He was one of six kids from the neighborhood who would gather each week for a Bible study to see if Scripture had anything to say to their lives. Even though I knew his money wasn’t exactly honest,
The Gospel Hustle
By Lina Thompson |
In my neighborhood, this would be called a hustle. I see it every day. This parable sounds like a contemporary situation — a person is about to get fired for mismanaging resources that were given to him to steward (this sounds familiar doesn’t to the prodigal son story just verses before?). Of course he should…
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
This week, we invite you to reflect on William Stafford's "A Ritual To Read To Each Other."
A rather famous journalism company describes their brand as "smart brevity." Human attention spans are getting shorter, they reason, so why not get the most important information to people in as few words as possible?
It's a noble goal, meeting people where they're at. But Stafford casts a different vision. He not only resists the shortening of attention, he also sees attention as a communal effort. As something we can model. We can call others to a higher standard of empathy and complexity by proving, with our own lives, that such things are possible. Preferable. More beautiful.
How do these two visions of the common good resonate with Jesus's own words about being faithful with both "dishonest wealth" and "true riches"? What new life emerges from this parable?
A Ritual To Read To Each Other
by William Stafford
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
Prayer
This week, the call to prayer comes from the Street Psalms Centering Prayer:
Come, Holy Spirit, wild and free. Do as you please. Shine your light on me that I might see things as they are, not as I am. Free me to act in your name with courage, creativity, and compassion.
