This essay first appeared in our weekly Scripture reflection newsletter on September 20, 2025.
Amos 8:4-7; 1 Tim 2:1-8; Lk 16:1-13
You can find the readings for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time here.
“The book is addressed to a sharply stratified society with a large economic gap between the rich and poor, a situation that could have prevailed either during a time of economic prosperity or in a period of gradual economic decline, which would have hurt those with the least resources.” Sound familiar?
This line from the HarperCollins Bible Commentary brought me up short. It’s a description of the Book of Amos, from which our incendiary First Reading is drawn. And both the commentary (written by Julia Myers O’Brien) and today’s reading echo two common themes in the Old and New Testaments: caring for the poor and God’s judgment against those who do not.
Still, the directness of the language of Amos today is stunning: “Hear this, you who trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land!” Amos then speaks in the voice of the rich, who cheat to make even more money at the expense of the poor (as happens even today with financiers who press legislators to give the rich favorable financial packages and tax cuts while cutting aid to the poor): “We will diminish the ephah, add to the shekel, and fix our scales for cheating!”
Pope Leo XIV: “CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving, the last figure I saw, it’s 600 times more than what average workers are receiving.”
The rich, says Amos, will “buy the poor for a pair of sandals.” It’s vivid imagery. Think of wealthy CEOs paying barely subsistence-level wages to those who work in factories overseas, while jacking up their own already stratospheric salaries and buying gargantuan houses and showy “toys.”
Pope Leo XIV mentioned this in an interview published this week on Crux: “CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving, the last figure I saw, it’s 600 times more than what average workers are receiving. Yesterday the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world. What does that mean and what’s that about?”
The Lord’s judgment will be harsh, says Amos: “The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Never will I forget a thing they have done!”
The Bible couldn’t be clearer about God’s command to care for the poor.
Lest we think this is only an Old Testament admonition, Jesus says essentially the same thing in the Gospel of Matthew: all who failed to care for the poor failed to care for Jesus and will thus be rejected by the Father and sent to hell (Mt 25:31-46).
The Bible, then, couldn’t be clearer about God’s command to care for the poor.
So what are we to make of today’s Gospel, in which a crooked steward, faced with being fired for supposedly cheating his master, decides to settle his master’s accounts by calling in all the debtors and writing down their debts? Why does he do this? Why does he write down their debts before he’s fired as the steward? Basically, to ensure that after he leaves his master’s household, he’ll have people in his debt. He’s feathering his nest before he leaves his job. He is one of what Gerhard Lohfink calls Jesus’ “immoral heroes.”
We’re meant to be singlehearted, like the crooked steward, and do anything for the reign of God.
But the point is not that we’re supposed to be unscrupulous stewards or people who cheat to get ahead financially. (In this scenario, the master is cheated.) Amos wouldn’t like that at all. The point is that we’re meant to be singlehearted, like the crooked steward, and do anything for the reign of God. The point is not the cheating or the acquisition of money; it’s the man’s focus.
Taken together, these readings show that both the Old and New Testaments say that when it comes to money, our focus should be clear. It should not be about acquiring more; it should not be about showing it off; it should definitely not be about trampling on the needy. It should be about helping the poor as much as we can, so that when we give an account to the Lord at the end of our lives, we may not be found wanting. The Lord doesn’t forget that kind of thing.
