Take Heed, and Take Heart

This morning, when we prayed the Collect, we heard a single, urgent petition: “Grant to us… the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful: that we, who cannot do any thing that is good without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will.” That petition is the hinge on which the whole of today’s readings turn. The parable of the unjust steward and the parable of the prodigal son are not competing sermons — they are two illustrations of the very same lesson.

That lesson is this: we must act in a righteous manner, and we must realize that we need the Almighty Lord to guide us in that action not at some future, nebulous time, but right this moment. We cannot foresee how long we have, or when we will be called to answer for how we have lived and what we have done. This is the urgency of the Gospel message — the kingdom will come, and will we be ready to take our place in it?

It may not be widely known that the 1928 Prayer Book presents the parable of the prodigal son as an alternative to that of the unjust steward. Let us take a moment, then, to see why both are illustrations of the same central theme.

The Steward’s Reckoning

The unjust steward was, to borrow a colloquialism, living “the life of Riley.” He had wealth and security as a result of his position — but in truth his life was full of reflected glory. The wealth was not earned by his own hands; he was merely an administrator, a manager. Then one day he was told it was all over. Perhaps there was good reason for his dismissal; perhaps it was only a capricious act of his master. Regardless of the cause, he found himself facing a future where his accustomed comforts had vanished, and the security he had built his whole identity upon was stripped away. In that moment of sudden, cold clarity, he realized that his past was gone and his future was a terrifying, blank slate. He stood at the door, not knowing what he was going to do.

Then he had an idea. He went round to all his master’s debtors and reduced the amounts they owed. Why did he do this? That is the conundrum worth pausing over. We are not told that he did it out of spite toward a master who, in any case, probably had so much money he would never miss it. No — he did it to win the favour of these debtors, hoping they might take him in and keep him from ruin, for he had no other skill, and begging might well be in his future.

The master’s reaction is telling. He does not condemn the steward he has just dismissed; he commends him for what he has done. It seems the master sees a man who has helped the poor — blessed are the meek — and so approves. But that reading, though not wrong, is incomplete, for it passes over the real moral ambiguity of the scene. The heart of the parable is not the cleverness of the steward’s scheme, but the radical shift underneath it. He moves from self-preservation — concerned only with his own survival and comfort — to a dawning recognition that his true security lies in the relationships he cultivates with others. It is a profound reordering of values, in which the accumulation of wealth is set beneath the deeper claim of communal bonds.

The Father’s Embrace

What of the prodigal? He made his own mistakes in his reckless pursuit of independence, yet his story is defined not by his failure but by his father’s unconditional welcome. It is not merely a lesson in morals; it becomes a meditation on reconciliation and the restoring power of love.

Here the two parables converge — not in the mechanics of their plots, but in a shared recognition of one truth: that human life is incomplete when lived in isolation. The way back to wholeness is rarely won by solitary striving. It is found, instead, in the humbling act of returning. When we have done wrong, we must be willing to make amends, and admitting fault requires a kind of vulnerability — but it is precisely that vulnerability which bridges the distance back to the community we once left behind. The return is not only a journey of the feet; it is an inward transformation, a shedding of the self-importance that has stood between our true selves and the grace we so desperately need. When we relinquish the need to be right, we open ourselves to being understood, and in that shared space of vulnerability we find the true meaning of reconciliation.

Let Him That Standeth Take Heed

Saint Paul supplies the reason for our urgency. Israel had been given every privilege — led through the sea, fed with manna, given drink from the Rock, and that Rock was Christ — and still, with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Their privilege bought them no exemption. It only raised the stakes. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. None of us knows the hour of our own final account — whether it comes at the ordinary end of an ordinary day, or at the Last Day itself. That uncertainty is precisely what should make us urgent, and never idle.

Let us pray. O Lord and heavenly Father, who through thy Son our Saviour hast taught us that we cannot serve both God and Mammon: Deliver us, we pray thee, from the love of money; and grant us grace to use wisely and faithfully all such possessions as thou hast entrusted to us, for the furtherance of thy kingdom, the relief of those in need, and the supply of our own necessities; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. May we carry this spirit of stewardship into the week ahead, seeking to align our hearts not with the fleeting treasures of this world, but with the imperishable riches of thy kingdom; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen ✟