Jesus tells a parable this Sunday about the careful use of money and resources. The parable begins with a wealthy landowner who will be firing his manager because he is wasteful. The manager obviously wants a comfortable next position. He decides to secure it by starting to make careful use of money and resources – but for his own gain. The manager privatizes his acquisition and use of money and resources. Jesus commends the manager’s initiative but marks it as a selfish concern over a “little thing,” money. People who use money and resources for their private gain “cannot be trusted.” It is in that context that Jesus encourage us toward communal initiatives and being “trustworthy,” by taking care of a “little thing’ like money or resources.
Communal initiatives secure people’s needs, little and big, like food, clothing, and shelter. Cooperatives thus create democratic relations, economic equality, and generative ethics to secure those needs. History is filled with great adventures in cooperatives; house churches, the Beguines, Vincent de Paul Societies, and trade unions. The first official cooperative was formed in 1844 in Rochdale, England consisting of poor weavers working in local textile mills. Another important cooperative was the 1864 Raiffeisen Credit Union for farmers. Like the weavers, the farmers sought freedom from selfish capitalists with excessive care toward money who were untrustworthy, and used money for private gain. The farmers’ initiative led to the modern day credit union. These communities or cooperatives live on, as do so many others; Koinonia Farm, Catholic Worker Communities, Apple Farm, and Holy Wisdom Monastery. They are all an extension of the community or cooperative that is our origin – family and friends; people taking care of each other. They all give witness to the appropriate care of money, being trustworthy with it, and using it for community.
People like the privatizing manager in Jesus’ parable who lacks communal sensibilities about money and resources, sometimes gravitate toward government. They deny government its communal or cooperative element. They strive to privatize government. Ironically, some self-title as Christian. As a result, we who live in a supposedly Christian nation are subject to a specifically non-Christian privatization of money and resources. As such, we fear old age, disability, or infirmity because managers repeatedly tell us that money is great but we are little. They repeatedly tell us that privatizing is good but communalizing is bad. Let us work on freeing ourselves from the capitalist privatizers and thus free ourselves for courageous community.
Prayer: Spirit of Freedom, fill us with the courage to create community.
Question: How do I lean toward selfishness and inhibit community?
September 18, 2016 Gospel Luke 16:1-13 Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time