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

 

 "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?  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."

Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him.  And He said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.  For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.  

 

"The law and the prophets were until John.  Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it.  And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail.  

 

"Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery."

 

- Luke 16:10–17 (18) 

 

Yesterday we read that, after preaching three parables to the Pharisees and scribes about God's desire to save the lost (see the readings from Wednesday and Thursday), He also said to His disciples:  "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.'  Then the steward said within himself, 'What shall I do?  For my master is taking the stewardship away from me.  I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg.  I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.'  So he called every one of his master's debtors to him, and said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'  And he said, 'A hundred measures of oil.'  So he said to him, 'Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.'  Then he said to another, 'And how much do you owe?'  So he said, 'A hundred measures of wheat.'  And he said to him, 'Take your bill, and write eighty.'  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.  And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home."

 

"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?  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."  My study Bible comments that the test as to whether God will bestow heavenly blessings (true riches) on a person is directly related to how one spends one's money.  The money which we consider to be our own, my study Bible notes, is actually another man's.  That is, it belongs to God, or at least to the poor.  In patristic texts, there is a universal view that a person's failure to give money to God's work is stealing.  Theophylact calls it "nothing less than embezzlement of money belonging to someone else."

Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him.  And He said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.  For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God."  My study Bible notes that the things which are highly esteemed among men include money, power, position, and praise. 

 

 "The law and the prophets were until John.  Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it.  And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail."   A tittle is the smallest stroke in certain Hebrew letters.  So, what Christ teaches here is that the whole of the Law is affirmed as the foundation of His new teaching, the gospel of the kingdom of God.   

"Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery."  Here is a teaching on divorce, which was a highly debated topic in Christ's time, particularly among the Pharisees.  My study Bible comments that in contrast to the easy access to divorce under the Mosaic Law, and because of the misuse of divorce in that time (a topic also important to the Pharisees), Jesus repeatedly condemns divorce in the Gospels (see for example, Matthew 5:31-32; 19:8-9), and He emphasizes the eternal nature of marriage.  The disputes over divorce often centered on the misuse of dowry money and remarriage for that purpose. 

It's important to understand Jesus' mentioning of the teaching regarding divorce in what seems to be an out-of-context mentioning of a different subject.  But, first of all, as noted above, divorce was also a matter of the misuse of marriage for purposes of financial gain, due to concerns about the way dowries could be manipulated through remarriage.  This was an important concern for the Pharisees also, and it distinguished them from the Sadducees.  So Jesus quite knew to whom He was preaching.  But, as is so often true in the Gospels, there is a kind of poetic "rhyming" [if you will] of subjects on a more abstract level.  Jesus is speaking of fidelity to God, to God's purposes, to God's will.  In that context, we can also consider the subject of marriage and divorce as touching upon the meaning of fidelity, of being true to something, upholding something.  This topic can also be extended to Christ's words on the Law:  that "it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail."  As with the subject of divorce, the Pharisees were the ones who endlessly debated the fine points of the Law and believed they zealously upheld its commandments.  So here Jesus preaches about His gospel of the Kingdom, that it is founded upon the Law, in which a violation of one part of the Law meant a violation of all of it.  Fidelity to the commandments of God was the whole foundation of the Pharisees' belief in their traditions that they had built up; but Christ's preaching is always to emphasize that this fidelity must be true to God's purposes in the Law, otherwise it is a failure of fidelity to God.  In other words, the emphasis is on faithfulness.  So, in these perhaps abstract senses, Jesus' preaching here on divorce reminds them all that our loyalty is above all to God and to God's purposes, not to our interpretation of traditions that may hinder the practice of mercy, which is prized above all.  As part of today's daily lectionary readings, we're also given a passage in the Epistle of James (James 2:1-13).  In that passage, James also speaks of fidelity to the Law, but he speaks also of what he calls the "royal law" :  "If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' you do well" (James 2:8), and the chapter finishes with the following:  "So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment" (James 2:12-13).   In His conversation here in Luke, addressing both the Pharisees and scribes who complain that He receives and eats with tax collectors and sinners, and in Christ's address of yesterday's parable of the Unjust Steward to His disciples, Jesus has embraced on the whole this topic of mercy and justice.  In His preaching against divorce, He has also brought mercy into the equation.  In Matthew 19, Jesus prefaces the same words He teaches here against divorce with this sentence:  "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so" (see Matthew 19:8-9).  So in the teachings in this chapter on the use of money, on forgiveness and sin, even on good stewardship in its broad sense, all echo themes of love, mercy, and the practice of God's justice:  fidelity and faithfulness to God's purpose in all things.