In 1897, in the middle of a depression, Cornelia Bradley-Martin put on a costume ball at the Waldorf Hotel in New York City. Hundreds of people attended dressed as various members of European nobility throughout history. Cornelia, for instance, wore a necklace belonging to Marie Antoinette although she was dressed as Mary Stuart. It was a spectacular event; the “splendor of Versailles in New York” is how Cornelia’s brother put it. Cornelia Bradley-Martin, daughter of an Albany banker and part of Manhattan’s super-wealthy elite, wanted to outdo Alva Vanderbilt’s party which she had thrown just a few years earlier. Cornelia wanted her party to be the one people remembered.
And it was, but not the way she wanted it to be remembered. Almost immediately after her personal secretary put the details of their plans for the party in the newspapers—who would be invited, the scope of the party and the costs involved—the backlash began. Again, the economy was not doing well. Many were suffering. The criticism generally was that such extravagance was at best out of place; at the worst, it was grotesque. The Bradley-Martin’s defended themselves saying that all the preparations for the party would stimulate the economy, but that did not help. The preachers of Manhattan preached against it, convincing the likes of J. P. Morgan to decline his invitation. Many others of New York’s elite would also politely decline. On the night of the party, there was fear of unrest and anarchist violence. Teddy Roosevelt, Police Commissioner at the time, assigned 250 officers to close the sidewalks around the hotel as his wife danced inside.[1]
It was the end of Cornelia Bradley-Martin’s social life. The party did not go as she had hoped. Defiant, the Bradley-Martins moved to London, selling their Manhattan mansion. Their daughter had married into British nobility; the infusion American wealth into European aristocracy by way of marriage was, of course, not unusual by this time; it was a done thing, one of several financial transactions available to the super-elite. But Cornelia Bradley-Martin was done in New York.
Now I tell this story because I like stories, and the story of Cornelia Bradley-Martin is a good one; but also, because it illustrates the moral of the quite complicated parable Jesus tells in today’s Gospel about the “dishonest steward.” The dishonest steward, you see, did the exact opposite of what Cornelia Bradley-Martin did. Which, simply put, is the moral of the parable. “I tell you,” Jesus says, “make friends for yourself with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”[2] That’s the simple lesson: With the wealth that one has, make friends that will last, friends that will welcome you into heaven. And those friends that you should make, they should be the poor. That’s what Cornelia Bradley-Martin would have never thought to do. She was chasing Vanderbilts and Rockefellers and Morgans; I doubt she would have ever entertained the notion that she should have been friends with the poor; the best she could promise to do was “stimulate the economy.” Anyway, it all fell apart on her; she went into social exile; she’s not remembered well.
The very next story Jesus tells in Luke is the story of the rich man and Lazarus. That’s why we know Jesus is talking about the poor when he says we should make friends with those who can welcome us into heaven. The rich man ignored the poor man all his life, but when he died, the rich man was in hell whereas the poor man was in heaven; and between them was a “great chasm.” The rich man had been content to keep his distance from the poor man while he lived, so God rewarded him by making that distance eternal; it’s just that the rich man found himself “in Hades, being in torment.” And by that time there was nothing that could be done, because he had not made friends with the poor while he lived, and so that was that.[3]
This, by the way, is the moral of that little hymn, the In Paradisum, which we sing at the end of Catholic funerals, the assumption being that Catholics would have heeded Jesus’s teaching here and have become true friends with the poor. “May the choirs of angels receive you and with Lazarus,” we sing. That’s the Lazarus, the poor man of Luke 16; the Church assumes that a Catholic would be welcomed into heaven by the poor people he or she helped in life, with whom they had become friends. Sometimes when we sing this hymn, however, the hymn doesn’t ring true.
Which is the urgent question. If we had your funeral here tomorrow, and if we sang the In Paradisum about the angels and the poor welcoming you into heaven, would that be true? Have you helped the poor, become friends with the poor, such that they would welcome you into heaven? Or would that little hymn be more a polite little lie, just a nice little song in Latin? You see what I’m getting at?
At this point in the conversation, we usually get sidetracked talking in our confused and heated terms about economics and politics—socialism and capitalism, party politics, and stuff like that—all of it conveniently abstract. But that’s not the preacher’s game; that’s not my job, to arbitrate those arguments. My job simply is to repeat to you the teaching of Jesus Christ, and to tell you that Jesus did in fact mean what he said when he told us we should make friends with the poor if we ever want to get to heaven.
I wish the message wasn’t so blunt, but there it is. I am obliged to tell you this, blunt as it is, so that at the judgment, I can tell the Lord I was faithful and that I told them. Brothers and sisters, you’d better be generous to the poor. You’d better not delay, keep making excuses about it. You’d better make friends with the poor while you still have air in your lungs. Because it will not go well for you or for me if we don’t. Again, that’s just pure Christianity. That’s simply the truth of Jesus Christ.
So, whatever your wealth position, you should think about how this applies to you. The greater your wealth, the greater the responsibility. But, of course, it’s not just the wealthy who are on the hook here; all of us are. We are all called to give, to volunteer, to make friends with the poor. Christian people are called to think intentionally about their relationships with the poor; it should be a topic at front of mind, not the back. How can you be friends with the poor? That’s the practical question the Church wants you to ask yourself. What does that look like in this parish? What does that look like in Dallas?
The question is whether we want to be truly wealthy. I’m thinking here of that Victorian writer, John Ruskin. His definition of wealth, I think, is the best. He said wealth is the “possession of the valuable by the valiant.”[4] That’s another way to put it. We’re called to be valiant with the wealth we’ve been given, wealth great or small. The mere fact of wealth signifies neither good or evil, Ruskin said. Rather, its “real value depends on the moral sign attached to it,” he wrote.[5] Yes, it is possible to see these passages from Luke as threats, and they are certainly frightening; and they should be a little frightening. But another way to look at it is that God is calling you to be valiant, to be morally beautiful; he is welcoming you into heaven. All you got to do is give away your possessions and love the poor. Which is small thing if you think about it. Or at least it should be. Amen.
[1] Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent, 4-6
[2] Luke 16:9
[3] Luke 16:19-31
[4] John Ruskin, Unto This Last, Essay IV, Ad Valorem
[5] Ibid, Essay II, The Veins of Wealth
© 2025 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield
