Are you a little confused by this Gospel?  I am too.  It’s a rather complicated parable in which Our Lord seems to approve of dishonest behavior, and almost recommend it to us.  This unfaithful steward performs a bit of a shady maneuver in order to cover up his poor financial management.  Why did our Lord present this parable to his disciples, and to us?  He surely did not approve of that criminal of a servant who cheated his master, stole from him, and failed to make it up out of his own pocket.  On top of that, this man caused his master even further loss by embezzling a little nest egg for himself for the time when he would inevitably lose his job. 

Well, Our Lord is a brilliant story-teller.  He catches our attention with this vivid and at-first confusing little tale.  It’s a story about urgency, and about preparedness.  The Lord gives us this steward to consider, both as an example, and as a warning.  The steward is an example because he reminds us of the importance of preparing for the future, anticipating the dire straits that we might find ourselves in, because of the various complications that come up in life.  The steward very shrewdly sees trouble coming down the road and makes preparations.  Sacred Scripture is full of images encouraging us to plan ahead and save for the future, especially to save for the future in a spiritual way.  These images have appeared in the last several weeks’ worth of readings at Mass.  “Build your house on rock, not on sand; it won’t get blown away in the wind.”  “Fill your lamps with oil so that you’ll be ready for Christ if he comes in the darkness.”  “Store up your treasure in heaven where neither moth nor decay will destroy.”  It’s very natural for us to run to God in times of uncertainty and pain and loss and fear.  But there’s a great wisdom here in this Gospel, a call to prepare ourselves before things get rough.  The Church embodies this wisdom by inviting us to attend Mass every week, go to confession regularly, to pray, to fast from time to time, to give alms and do works of charity.  Our faithfulness to these things in the good times, reminds us that we need God always even when the going is good; these things also brace us, so that we are stronger when the difficult times do arrive.  Even very simple things can be incredibly strengthening for us: things like saying a prayer before our meals, like praying a single Our Father when we wake up to dedicate our day to God, or a short prayer at the end of the day as a way of consecrating what’s gone before.  These little things can make a real difference in our lives.  The Unrighteous Steward is an example of this forward-thinking and preparedness. 

He’s also a warning.  The Lord knows that it is very easy for us to pay him lip service, but then turn money, or the flesh, or career, into the gods that we really care about.  Our Lord is telling us: Don’t pursue wealth in this world to become wealthy.  Pursue wealth to become generous, generous with our families and with those entrusted to our care and concern.  Generous with the poor.  Generous for the many needs of our world.  Generosity is every bit as good for the giver as it is for the recipient.  It protects us, inoculates us against a very natural and tempting error: to think that we are the masters of whatever we happen to possess.  But we’re not.  We come into the world with nothing, and we leave the world the same way. A small child needs his parents for everything.  And we’re all children before God.  We truly rely on him for everything, including our very lives.  He’s not just a concept to make us feel better about the uncertainties in our life.  He is alive, he is love itself, and he watches over us with a Father’s care.  

So this fellow, this unrighteous steward: what does he teach us?  He shows us, as Our Lord says elsewhere, that we are called to be “wise as serpents, but innocent as doves.”  Prudent, but never venomous.  Gentle, but never naïve.  We are called to proclaim the truth always both by our words and by our way of life.  But always out of love, never out of fear or malice.  We live our lives, make our choices, interact with others, always remembering that we are called by God to know him, love him, and serve him here in this life, and be happy with him forever in heaven.  May we truly embrace all the many ways that God is giving us to know and love him more deeply, especially as he gives us his very self in the Blessed Sacrament today, to prepare us not only for the joys and sufferings that we might experience on this earth, but also as a foretaste of our eternal life with him in heaven.