| |

Lenten Reflection- Day 11 of the Great Lent

ByJobin

You Cannot Serve Two Masters – St. Luke 16:1-13

“He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much.” (16:10)

Yesterday Christ taught us to pray. He gave us the Lord’s Prayer. He told us about the shameless friend who kept knocking at midnight. He promised that the Father would give the Holy Spirit to those who ask. Prayer, we learned, is not a technique. It is a relationship. And the Father is not asleep.

Today Christ tells a story that has puzzled readers for two thousand years. It is the parable of the shrewd manager. A man about to lose his job makes a desperate, clever move to secure his future. And Jesus, shockingly, holds him up as an example.

Not an example of dishonesty. An example of urgency.

The question this parable asks is simple. It is also uncomfortable. You know you are going to die. You know this life will end. You know you will stand before God. What are you doing about it? Are you living with the urgency of someone who knows the clock is ticking? Or are you drifting through the fast as if you have all the time in the world?

We are eleven days into the Great Lent. The first rush of devotion has settled. The routines are in place. The danger now is not failure but autopilot. Going through the motions. Fasting out of habit rather than hunger for God. This parable is a slap in the face to anyone who has started sleepwalking through the fast.

Wake up. The master is coming. What are you doing with what you have been given?

The Story (vv. 1-8)

“There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods. So he called him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’” (16:1–2)

A rich man has a manager. The manager has been wasting the master’s property. The master finds out. He tells the manager: you are fired. Hand over the books.

The manager panics. He knows he is about to lose everything. He is not strong enough for manual labour. He is too proud to beg. So he does something clever. He goes to each of the master’s debtors and reduces their debts. One owes a hundred measures of oil. He makes it fifty. Another owes a hundred measures of wheat. He makes it eighty. He is using the master’s resources to make friends who will take care of him after he loses his position.

“So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.” (16:8)

Here is the shock. The master does not condemn the manager for his cunning. He commends him. Not for his dishonesty. For his shrewdness. For his ability to see the crisis coming and act decisively. For his refusal to sit passively while his future collapsed.

And then Jesus makes His point. The children of this world are smarter about their affairs than the children of light are about theirs. Worldly people plan ahead. They see the danger coming and they act. They use every resource at their disposal to secure their future. But the children of light? The people who claim to believe in heaven and hell, in judgment and eternity? They drift. They delay. They waste the resources God has given them on things that will not last.

St. John Chrysostom, in his Homily 3 on Lazarus and the Rich Man (which draws on the broader context of Luke 16), makes this point with characteristic force. He says it is absurd that a merchant will spend sleepless nights planning how to increase his profit by a few coins, while a Christian who believes in eternal life will not spend ten minutes planning how to use his wealth for the kingdom of God. The merchant believes in gold that rusts. The Christian believes in treasure that lasts forever. And yet the merchant acts on his belief and the Christian does not. Who is the fool?1

More Reflections Are on the Way

This blog is a work in progress — a journey of learning and sharing, one article at a time. Subscribe to be notified when new reflections are published.

Make Friends with Unrighteous Mammon (v. 9)

“And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.” (16:9)

This verse confuses people. It sounds like Jesus is telling us to buy our way into heaven. He is not.

“Unrighteous mammon” means worldly wealth. Money. Property. Possessions. Jesus calls it “unrighteous” not because money itself is evil but because money belongs to a system that is passing away. It is temporary. It is unreliable. It cannot save you.

But it can be used.

The shrewd manager used his master’s resources to secure a future for himself. Jesus says: do the same thing, but better. Use your worldly resources to invest in eternity. Give to the poor. Fund the work of the Church. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Visit the prisoner. Every act of generosity made with earthly wealth is a deposit in the treasury of heaven. And when this life ends and the wealth is gone, the people you helped will welcome you into the eternal home.

St. Basil the Great, in his Homily to the Rich, puts it in terms no one can miss. He says: you are not the owner of your wealth. You are the steward. God gave it to you to manage, not to hoard. And one day He will ask for an accounting. “What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship.” The question the rich man asked the manager is the question God will ask every one of us. What did you do with what I gave you?2

This is directly relevant to the Great Lent. The fast is not only about food. It is about everything we hold. Money. Time. Energy. Influence. Talent. All of it belongs to God. All of it is on loan. The Lenten season is the annual audit. It is the moment when God taps us on the shoulder and says: show Me the books. Where did it all go?

And the answer, for most of us, is uncomfortable. It went on ourselves. On comfort. On entertainment. On security. On things that will not survive the grave.
The shrewd manager saw the crisis and acted. The Great Lent is telling us the same thing. The crisis is coming. Act now. Use what you have for something that lasts.

Faithful in Little (vv. 10–12)

“He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own?” (16:10–12)

Three statements. Each one cuts deeper than the last.

Faithful in what is least. The small things are the test. Not the big decisions. Not the dramatic moments. The small ones. How we handle the change in our pocket. Whether we return the extra change when the cashier makes a mistake. Whether we give our full attention to the person talking to us or check our phone while they speak. Whether we pray on the mornings when we do not feel like it.

The person who is careless with small things will be careless with big things. The person who is honest in small matters will be honest when the stakes are high. Character is not built in the crisis. It is revealed there. It is built in the thousand small, invisible choices of ordinary life.

On Day 9, we learned that the seed grows in secret. Today we learn something related but different. The seed grows in secret, yes. But the soil is prepared by what we do with the small things. Every small act of faithfulness prepares the ground. Every small act of carelessness hardens it.

St. Dorotheos of Gaza, in his Instructions, uses the image of a person building a wall stone by stone. We met this image on Day 4 in the context of Abba Dorotheos’s teaching on daily obedience. Here it applies differently. Each stone is not an act of obedience but an act of stewardship. A coin given honestly. A promise kept. A small sacrifice made when no one was watching. Over time, the wall becomes a house. And the house stands when the storm comes.

But Dorotheos also warns about the reverse. Each small dishonesty, each small compromise, each small theft of time or attention or truth removes a stone from the wall. We do not notice one missing stone. Or two. Or five. But eventually the wall falls. And the collapse always surprises the person who caused it, because each individual stone seemed so small.3

Faithful in unrighteous mammon. If God cannot trust us with money, why would He trust us with spiritual gifts? If we are careless with something as crude and temporary as cash, why would He give us something as precious and eternal as the true riches of the kingdom?

This is a hard word for anyone who has tried to separate the “spiritual life” from the “material life.” We want to believe that our prayer life and our bank account are unrelated. That what we do with our money on Monday has nothing to do with what we do with our hearts on Sunday. Jesus says they are the same thing. How we handle mammon reveals how we handle everything. Money is the test. Not because money is important. Because faithfulness is.

Faithful in what is another man’s. Everything we have belongs to God. Our money is His. Our time is His. Our bodies are His. Our talents are His. We are managers, not owners. The question is not “what should I do with my stuff?” The question is “what does the Owner want me to do with His stuff?”

St. Ephrem the Syrian, in his Hymns on Paradise, teaches that the human being was placed in the Garden of Eden as a steward, not a proprietor. Adam’s sin was not just disobedience. It was the act of taking what belonged to God and claiming it as his own. The fruit was not Adam’s to take. The garden was not Adam’s to rule on his own terms. Every sin since has the same shape. We take what belongs to God and treat it as ours. The Great Lent reverses this. Fasting is the act of handing back. Giving back the food that was never ours to begin with. Giving back the time. Giving back the control.4

Two Masters (v. 13)

“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Here is the climax. The whole passage has been building to this sentence. After the parable. After the teaching on faithfulness. After the warning about stewardship. Jesus delivers the verdict.

You cannot serve two masters.

Not “you should not.” You cannot. It is not difficult. It is impossible. The two loyalties will always pull in opposite directions. Sooner or later, we will have to choose. And we will choose. Every day we choose. Every time we open our wallet, we choose. Every time we decide how to spend our evening, we choose. Every time we ignore a need because meeting it would cost us something, we choose.

On Day 5, James warned about the double-minded person. The heart divided between God and the world. On Day 8, James said friendship with the world is enmity with God. Now Christ says it in the plainest possible language. Two masters. One choice. No middle ground.

“Mammon” in Aramaic does not just mean money. It means the entire system of material security. The belief that if we have enough, we are safe. The belief that wealth can protect us from suffering, from loss, from death. Mammon is not just a bank balance. Mammon is a god. A false god. And we cannot bow to that god and to the true God at the same time.

St. Macarius the Great, in his Spiritual Homilies, teaches that the divided heart is the fundamental human problem. Not ignorance. Not weakness. Division. The heart that tries to face two directions at once. Macarius says that the whole work of the spiritual life is the unification of the heart. Bringing every desire, every loyalty, every attachment under the lordship of Christ. Not destroying the desires. Ordering them. The person whose heart is unified around God is free. The person whose heart is divided between God and mammon is a slave to both and at peace with neither.5

The Great Lent is the season of unification. The fast strips away the competing claims on our hearts. The prayer reorients us toward God. The almsgiving breaks the grip of mammon. Day by day, choice by small choice, the heart is being gathered. Pulled together. Focused on one Master.

What This Means for Day 11

We are eleven days in. The question is not whether we are fasting. The question is whether the fast is changing how we handle the small things.

Are we more generous this week than last? Are we more honest? Are we more attentive to the needs of others? Or are we fasting from food while hoarding everything else?

The shrewd manager saw the crisis and acted with everything he had. He used the resources available to him, however imperfect, to prepare for the future. Jesus is not praising his ethics. He is praising his urgency. And He is asking us: where is yours?

We believe in eternity. We believe in judgment. We believe that this life is temporary and the next life is forever. So why are we living as if this world is all there is? Why are we investing everything in a currency that will be worthless the moment we die?

The Lenten fast is practice for dying. Not in a morbid way. In a practical way. Every meal we skip says: I can live without this. Every coin we give says: this was never mine. Every hour we spend in prayer says: there is something more valuable than productivity. The fast trains us to hold the world loosely and to hold God tightly. And that is the only way to face what is coming.

For Our Journey Today

Audit one area of our life. Pick one thing. Our money. Our time. Our phone usage. Our words. Look at how we spent it over the past week. Honestly. Without excuses. Is this how a faithful steward would manage the Master’s resources? If God asked us for an account today, what would we say?

Be faithful in one small thing. Do not aim for a dramatic gesture. Aim for a small, honest one. Return the favour we owe. Keep the promise we made. Pray the prayer we skipped yesterday. Give the five pounds we were going to spend on something we do not need. The small things are the test. Pass today’s test.

Choose your master. The choice between God and mammon is not made once. It is made daily. It is made in the grocery aisle, in the bank app, in the decision about how to spend your Saturday afternoon. Today, in one specific moment, choose God. Not in a vague, general way. In a concrete, costly, specific way. Give something. Serve someone. Surrender something we were holding too tightly.

Lord Jesus Christ, who had nowhere to lay Your head and yet possessed all things, teach us to be faithful stewards of what You have entrusted to us. We confess that we have wasted Your gifts. We have spent on ourselves what belonged to the poor. We have hoarded what was meant to be shared. We have served mammon while calling ourselves Your servants. Forgive us. Give us the shrewdness to see the crisis and the courage to act on what we see. Unify our divided hearts. Free us from the tyranny of money and the illusion of security. Teach us to hold this world loosely and to hold You tightly. For You alone are the Master worth serving. By the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos, the holy Evangelist Luke, and all the saints, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.

  1. St. John Chrysostom: On Wealth and Poverty, translated by Catharine P. Roth (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Popular Patristics Series, 1984). This accessible volume collects the six homilies on Lazarus and the Rich Man. Also in NPNF, Series I, Vol. 9 (available at newadvent.org and ccel.org). ↩︎
  2. Saint Basil: On Social Justice, translated by C. Paul Schroeder (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Popular Patristics Series, 2009). ↩︎
  3. Dorotheos of Gaza: Discourses and Sayings, translated by Eric P. Wheeler, Cistercian Studies Series 33 (Cistercian Publications, 1977). ↩︎
  4. St. Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns on Paradise, translated by Sebastian Brock (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990). ↩︎
  5. St. Macarius the Great – Spiritual Homilies – Pseudo-Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter, translated by George A. Maloney, Classics of Western Spirituality (Paulist Press, 1992). ↩︎

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply