Jesus tells us in the Gospel today tells us the servant who is trustworthy in small matters is trustworthy in great ones and the servant who cannot be trusted in small matters cannot be trusted in great ones. Most of us know from human experience that this saying is certainly true. Employers tend to put new employees who they think may have some special potential to work in a smaller project to determine some of their abilities before entrusting them with greater responsibilities.
When we meet someone new and enter into friendship with them, usually our inclination is to have smaller engagements with that person until we come to understand that we can trust them to allow that person deeper into our lives and personal affairs.
Jesus, however, is taking this very human reality a step further to explain to us a far more real and more serious kind of trust.
Jesus is using the example of the less-than honest steward to show not that we should be dishonest, but that we should be prudent in our business with the things of this world, and not overly attached to them.
You cannot serve two masters, Jesus declares to his followers. It is enough of an important biblical phrase that it is frequently repeated as a regular antiphon in the cycle of the Liturgy of the Hours , the official prayer of the Church, during Vespers or Evening Prayer. And why does the Church place so much stock in this statement? Most people who read this passage think that Mammon simply refers to money or wealth.
Money or wealth is a very clear part of what Mammon is-or at least what it can be , indeed St. The Church has always interpreted Mammon to mean an undue and inappropriate attachment to the things of this world and the accumulation of those things, whether those things be money and wealth, or our material possessions, or our work, or our hobbies, or our success and the worldly pleasures that come with it.
People can become attached to the things of the world in a way that actually takes away from their relationship with God. People can become addicted to their Hobbies or pleasurable things, and obsessions with things which in and of themselves are not evil can lead to the occasion of sin and to sin itself.
There are all kinds of things that I enjoy which in and of themselves are not sinful- Sports is one example, I am a former radio sportscaster I did this in college , and I love sports, especially this time of the year.
What Jesus is telling us is similar to what St. We cannot take them with us to meet God, they are of no concern to Him. We can choose to serve the things of this world which are passing away and which leave us nothing in the end, or we can choose to serve God and do his work and his will and reap the benefits from doing so that are eternal and will never pass away.