September 20 |
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25th Sunday in Ordinary Time Lk 16/1-13 |
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| Background: Why the people who put together the lectionary try to crowd so much into one Sunday gospel is a matter for, to put it mildly, puzzlement. There are three separate parables in today's gospel, the story of the clever servant, the saying of the man who can be trusted in little things, and the saying about the two masters. All three of these pericopes are opaque. That we have heard them so many times doesn't make them any less opaque. The congregation shakes its head and pays no attention to what seems very bizarre and strange language from Jesus. Perhaps the parable (which for some other puzzling reason is omitted in the shorter reading) is the most interesting and challenging topic for preaching. Jesus is patently not approving of dishonesty. He is rather using the shrewdness of the crooked servant as a model for how shrewd we ought to be in His service, planning, conniving, concentrating intensely. |
read the padre |
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Story: Once upon a time two girls joined Molly Whoopy's girl's basketball team at Mother Mary High School. They were very good players, but they didn't like to practice hard. One of them became a starter and the other sixth person. During games they played real hard, but because they didn't practice much and didn't listen to the coach's talks, and made all kinds of mistakes. The coach goes to Molly, like, maybe we should throw them off the team. Sondra and Sonia, for that were their names, began to campaign to stay on the team. They were cute and funny and charming. They talked to every girl on the team, they tried to charm the coach, they had a party for the team, they gave the other players presents, they even showed up on time for practice, though they didn't practice very hard. They took Molly to the ice cream store at the Mall and bought her a double chocolate malt with whipped cream because they knew Molly was a chocolate freak. Finally, they're like, "Molly, you know, we've been real dweebs, you know, but we, you know really want to stay on the team." But Molly's like, "if you had put in as much time and energy on practice as you have on charming everyone, then we'd be in first place. I'm like telling the coach you should be 11th and 12th on the team and earn your way back up. they weren't very happy with that decision because, you know there are only ten players on team. But Molly goes to her boyfriend Joe, "Why didn't they work at basketball." And Joe's like "it's easier to buy you a double chocolate malt." And Molly's like WELL, it didn't do them any good." |
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