How much do you owe my master?
How do you invest the gifts
God has given you?
In the time of the prophet
Amos, the merchants' concern is more about making money than anything else; their
exclamation, we will fix our scales for
cheating! is a statement of how far they have fallen from the relationship
God set up for them. The merchants have
forgotten who they are; they neglect the fact that relationship is not about
money but about all the love they have received, love they should then, in turn,
invest in those around them. But their so-called justice is far from the
life-giving justice of God, who loves all he has created, and in whose eyes human
distinctions count for nothing, as Psalm 113 proclaims: He
raises up the lowly from the dust… to seat them with princes. Such is the life-giving justice of God.
One might imagine that the
dishonest steward in Luke’s Gospel should be classified with the merchants in
the Book of Amos, but the steward’s methods are in fact internally logical. The steward has earned commissions on his
work, but, when threatened with the loss of his livelihood, he must turn around
and invest instead in relationships, using the means he has to connect to those
in need (even if they are, in fact, not exactly honest). In his First Letter to Timothy,
Paul speaks of prayer in similar terms, as a way to connect with others, urging
the community to pray for everyone as
a way to invest in the good of all.
We are stewards of all that
God has created; we must be sure to invest all that we are given with an eye to
the eternal. Ultimately, God gives each
of us gifts; we are all the beneficiaries of God’s generosity. Our lives are therefore gift, and we, in
turn, must be gift for other; we must ourselves invest in love so that God’s
gifts grow into life-giving justice for all.
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture Class.
Image source: Wordle
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