NOTES for Luk 16:10-15

"You cannot serve two masters" - what is this about? The body? The world? The love of money? And most important: if one cannot serve two masters, how can one live at all in a world that, as we know from the same Gospel, "lies in evil"? What is to be done? Run from the world, flee into the desert, as monks, hermits, and desert dwellers have done in every age?

But is that really a way out? Even in the desert and in the forest one will have to think about feeding oneself somehow, at least minimally. And there this may prove even more difficult than in the city. Nor is food the only issue; the matter is one of principle: if one cannot serve two masters, then one also cannot live by the laws of the world in which we live. Wherever you run, it is still with you, because any one of us is part of it, and the evil in which it lies has to do with us.

But if the Kingdom exists, if it has already entered our world in order to transform it, then not everything is lost. If there is an alternative, then it is possible to live in this world without submitting to it, to live according to the laws of the Kingdom and not be divided, not serve two masters. Of course, it is not easy to live this way, but in principle such a life is possible. And this means that there is an alternative to the world that lies in evil. The main thing is to find it, and, once found, not to lose it.

"So if you have not been faithful in unrighteous wealth, who will entrust you with the true?" Why be faithful in unrighteous wealth? It sounds strange. The point is that today the Church has appointed the reading for us in a somewhat special way, offering only the last lines from the parable about unrighteous wealth, which must be distributed. Thus, as we read it today, we turn out to be somewhat separated from this meaning, although of course we are free to return to it. But if we do not return to it, we may recall a very "original" interpretation, in the words of Archimandrite Zacharias, of "unrighteous wealth" by Elder Sophrony Sakharov, disciple of Elder Silouan the Athonite:

"Our ontological union with the God of Love presupposes the merging of two wills: God's and man's. The union itself is accomplished in a state of love. God, the Personal Spirit, and man, the person (persona), are united into one in the eternal Act of Divine Life. Thus God is known by us. To acquire this Love is the final goal of the Christian struggle. The attainment of this goal is connected with a long and difficult path. But it is possible to experience God's visitation in great power as a gift from Above at certain moments, when the soul, in a surge of repentance for sins, becomes receptive to the Light descending upon it from God. Yet these first visitations are not yet the state of the saved acquired forever. They are only still 'unrighteous wealth,' which can still be taken away because of unfaithfulness. But to preserve this grace, to remain faithful to everything it has taught us, is impossible without deep mourning for years" (Archim. Sophrony Sakharov, To See God as He Is, chapter "On Spiritual Mourning").

Thus every sensation of grace we have is still unrighteous wealth, in which we must be faithful only to the Lord and not to ourselves, even though this state can be so intoxicating. And if we remain faithful to God in this, then one day we will receive the true wealth.

Faith and faithfulness are single-root words not only in English language, but also in the biblical language. Faith always implies faithfulness in a biblical sense. If Christian faith is something that opens to us the possibility of uniting with Jesus, and consequently the way in the eternal life, it is in particular faithfulness to this faith that keeps us on this way, whereas unfaithfulness throws us off into the darkness of this world. So, our entire fate is defined with the acceptance of God's salvation by faith and faithfulness.

But is it possible to accumulate on one hand faithfulness in this so important line of life for us, and on the other hand unfaithfulness in anything more partial and less important? There is a joke which was very popular in Soviet Union which says: "if you deceive your wife today, tomorrow it will be the motherland" the words of Jesus show that He wouldn't have taken it just like a joke. Faithfulness is a property of man's personality, not so innate, as we can learn and develop it; the level of development of this property is reflected in all the spheres of the human character. How many times we had to observe with sadness how people, unfaithful to their own word, turn out later unfaithful in friendship, marriage, membership in Church.

The Savior's words about responsibility for one's own and for another's may at first glance seem strange: everyone knows that a person always treats his own more responsibly than another's, whether the issue is property or anything else. But this is how it appears only at first glance, if one does not think about what responsible treatment of anything actually is, whether it is one's own or another's.

What, indeed, is responsibility? Where does it come from? True responsibility is impossible without a free and conscious choice, when a person spiritually defines himself with respect to his own life. Responsibility is the reverse side of the freedom of choice realized by a person.

But for a choice in a concrete situation to be truly free, a person's whole life must be conscious. For this a person must be aware of every desire and striving, every intention directed toward someone or something. If nothing of the kind exists, then there will be no conscious desire in a person's life. Yet, it would seem, everyone desires something, and most people desire quite strongly, while very few, alas, are aware of themselves and their life. What, then, should one think about the desires of the majority? As can be seen, it is hardly possible to call them conscious.

But such desires can hardly be considered desires in the proper sense of the word: a real desire is always spiritual; it is an act of will in which a person gives account to himself completely and to the end. An unconscious desire, however, is merely a passion, emotion, affect, a force that has seized a person and that he can neither understand nor control. And when it seizes a person, the thing toward which he passionately strives seems to him unconditionally his own, absolutely necessary, and even absolutely inseparable from himself.

A person cannot imagine himself without "his own," not because he has understood and become aware of what place in his life the object of his desires should occupy, but because he has merged with it to the point of almost complete indistinguishability and certainly complete inseparability. To take such a "one's own" away from a person is the same as cutting off his arm or leg, or even worse, a part of his soul. In such cases people most often say, "he tore it from his heart."

But of course there can be no talk of any responsibility in such a case: what responsibility can there be where a person seized by the desire to obtain or hold on to "his own" does not even possess himself? With another's, however, with what is "not one's own," nothing of this sort can exist by definition. To treat responsibly what is not the object of one's own passion, what is indifferent to you, precisely real responsibility is needed.

And if it exists, a person will be able, first, to distinguish his own from what only seems to him to be so, and second, to treat his own as consciously and responsibly as everything entrusted to him. This is no surprise: a person who lives consciously cannot fail to understand that even his own is only entrusted to him by God, that it is given to him for use, not for unconditional and absolute possession. And he treats it accordingly, just like everything given to him and entrusted to him.

Are money and devotion really so incompatible? Don't we meet rich Christians who are at the same time good and generous? Haven't we met brutal criminals out of poverty? Keywords here are surely: "serve", "love", "be zealous ". Which of these dominates in our heart? Who or what do we serve? Wealth - but which wealth do we have - money - it is a purpose or just a means? If it is the purpose then we have to be treated from kleptomania, and not fool oneself that everything is well. And if it is a means, then it is a means for what? Money brings new possibilities in our lives, but all these possibilities are not useful for our salvation. We can use this money to have power on others (power is the most terrible drug), for various self-satisfaction (food, sex, comfort, travelling etc.), to calm our conscience (almsgiving, beneficence), in brief to indulge oneself. How can money be used as a way of serving God by us (without being at the same time a self-exculpation) – here is surely the question which each of us should answer in his relationship with God. Two persons cannot sit at the same time on a throne…

The Pharisees who mocked Jesus when He said that it is impossible to serve God and wealth think about the Kingdom of God the way we usually do. Only when someone dies do we say, "May the Kingdom of Heaven be his"; to wish the "Kingdom of Heaven" to a living person is psychologically impossible for us. A stereotype formed over the centuries places the Kingdom "afterward," beyond the bounds of this life. The Pharisees thought the same way, hoping for the resurrection of the dead and expecting the Kingdom in a historical but distant future. The Pharisees regarded wealth, honor among those around them, and family well-being as the only, or in any case the chief, manifestation of God's favor in this life. Our stereotyped religiosity matches the Pharisaic one here too. This is visible when we reproach God for injustice, seeing swindlers prosper and the righteous suffer.

But the Lord tells the Pharisees, and us who think as they do, that the proclamation of the Kingdom of God as something belonging to a distant future was valid only until the time of John the Baptist. From the moment his witness to the Lamb of God sounded, to the beloved Son in whom the Father's favor was given to people, from that moment the Kingdom of God has been proclaimed as a present reality. And therefore, the Lord says, to enter it only effort is required: the effort of faith and resolve. The Pharisees do not want this nearness and openness of the Kingdom; for them it has come too unexpectedly and too early. Alas, here too we do not differ from them. To His disciples, however, the Lord speaks of the need to forgive people without limit, as God forgives. This is an essential mark of the Kingdom, into which we are called to enter here and now.

One often hears people complain about work. They say, how can anyone take it seriously, everything is tiresome, routine. If only one could drop everything and do something useful for humanity, something bright and beautiful. But there are no such occupations, and while there are none, one has to sit out and wait out a boring and uninteresting job, treating it accordingly.

But Jesus tells us that He cannot entrust us with a great and important work if we cannot show ourselves faithful in something small and unimportant for the fate of humanity. How can people be entrusted to someone who cannot be responsible for things? If we do not begin to treat each day as a test that reveals whether we are fit to do something great and important, we can spend our whole life sitting in dreary expectation.

In the Gospel, parallels are very often drawn between earthly and heavenly wealth. This is no accident, because life always works out so that some people always have more of something (material or spiritual) than others.

Perhaps the central words in this chapter are verses 9-12. Do we realize that everything we have is not ours? That it has been given to us only as stewards, who must rightly manage what they have? And Christians (and human beings in general) can have only one goal: to make God's eternal love real in their own place, that is, to serve one another. Therefore, if we use this wealth that belongs to another rightly (guided by love), then in return we will receive what is truly our own: the fruits that grow out of such relationships, abiding in God's love and light.

Another funny anecdote about a resourceful scoundrel and, as always, a strange and frightening conclusion: "the sons of this age" know their business better than the "sons of light." Always and in every age, people seeking wealth, fame, and power know how to get what they want, by fair means and foul, by deception, force, cunning, and ingenuity. But those who seek the "Kingdom of God and His righteousness" sink into laziness, slackness, and indifference. It turns out that money and power are stronger incentives, if for their sake a person is ready to give up anything and devise any scheme, just to achieve the goal. So much for "spirituality." Spirituality, however, also finds a place: it serves as one form of leisure, since one cannot work for "unrighteous wealth" all the time. Of course, like every parable, this anecdote is told not so much to accuse as to make a person, after rejoicing over the resourceful thief, think about what he wants in life and how he goes about obtaining it.