gregoryjenks

Author: Gregory C. Jenks

  • There are none so blind

    Lent 4 (A)
    St Andrew’s Church, Lismore
    19 March 2023

    There are none so blind [video]

    Today we have the latest in a series of significant encounters in the Gospel of John where Jesus meets and confounds various people. 

    Time after time he cuts across the grain of the accepted religious and social assumptions of his own culture.

    Time after time fresh wisdom breaks through.

    Time after time the people he engages misunderstand what Jesus is about.

    This is a characteristic of how John likes to tell the Jesus story.

    It is very different from the way that story is told in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

    Then as now there are different ways to understand Jesus. Different ways to appreciate him. Different ways to follow him. Different ways to tell the Jesus story. Different ways to live God’s truth.

    Two weeks ago, we had the story from chapter 3 as Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. He is seeking insight but fails to grasp what Jesus is saying.

    Last week we had the story of Jesus at the well, where he meets a woman from Samaria; an outcast. Eventually the woman seems to understand the message of Jesus, but we are not told that she became one of his followers (although she is Saint Photine for the Orthodox). Such a story of conversion and discipleship might be told in the Synoptics, but John has little place for women disciples trekking the paths of Palestine. And yet the women were there!

    Imagine what this woman and Mary the Magdalene could have discussed, had they ever crossed paths!

    Now there is an idea! If you remember nothing else from this morning, imagine a conversation between Mary Magdalene and the Samaritan woman. Two outsiders. Women with “reputations,” as the respectable religious folk would say. Both were condemned by centuries of male scholars as promiscuous women and scandalous sinners. Both were misrepresented. Take some time this week to imagine them catching up for a chat after Easter morning, when Mary has encountered the risen Lord.

    Today we have the story of the man born blind, and next week the story of Lazarus. Controversy and misunderstanding are in full flight in both those stories, as well as in other chapters from John that we have not been reading this Lent.

    In the Gospel of John, we find the tensions between the followers of Jesus and “the Jews” at a high pitch. In the Synoptics, almost everyone in the story is Jewish, and the opponents of Jesus are Pharisees, Sadducees and Herodians. But in John suddenly the opponents of Jesus are simply, “the Jews.” Here is the seedbed of Christian anti-Semitism that would climax with the horrors of the Nazi death camps.

    Like the Letters of John, the Gospel of John is written within a framework of fear, hatred and division.

    We see this so very clearly in today’s Gospel:

    His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore, his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” 

    John 9:20–23

    So, we find that although this is supposed to be a story about Jesus healing a man born blind, that element only takes up 12 of the 41 verses. The bulk of the passages is about the hostility of the Jews towards Jesus and anyone who would be his follower.

    Running through this long story is the unspoken question: Who is blind here?

    Who is unable to see God’s love at work in their midst?

    So, what wisdom for everyday life might we discern from this complex story?

    I think the first insight is to embrace the idea that we need to look with fresh eyes. We need to remove the blinkers. We need to change the lenses through which we look at others.

    And given the tragic history of hatred between Christians and Jews, not to mention Christians and Muslims, we need to look at each other differently. We need our sight to be healed.

    Enough of the convenient circles we draw about people who make us feel uncomfortable.

    Jesus hates such circles and will never stay inside the religious boundaries that we create. He erases the circles we draw. He leaps over the walls we erect.

    Over the past year or so I have been coordinating an international project called, the Afterlives of Jesus. It is being published in three volumes, the first of which was released about 6 weeks ago, and the typeset pages of volume two are on my desk waiting for me to review them before they go to the printer. Volume three is not far behind.

    What comes through clearly in the 30+ essays in those three volumes is that Jesus does not belong to the church. He means different things to different people and to different faiths. But he means a great deal to so many people, communities and cultures across time.

    We no longer have a monopoly on Jesus, but we are a community that exists to live his wisdom and share his grace with everyone around us.

    If only we had the eyes to see …

    No more hatred of the Jews …

    No more fear of the Muslims …

    No more disdain for people with disabilities as somehow to be blamed for their situation …

    No more insiders and outsiders …

    No more them and us …

  • Come to the water

    Lent 3 (A)
    St Andrew’s Church, Lismore
    12 March 2023
    video

    What a feast of Scripture we have been served by the lectionary this week!

    It may just be drinks, but living water is still a powerful theme for us to reflect upon in this third week of Lent.

    John says that Jesus rested by a well on his way north to Galilee after a stint at the southern end of the Jordan River where John had been drawing crowds for his religious renewal project. 

    Jesus, of course, was among the crowds drawn to John.

    That detail is not in the portion of John 4 we just read, but it puts the episode by the well in context.

    The religious renewal project led by John was calling for people to do more than attend major festivals at the temple in Jerusalem. In that context, baptism in living water (that is fresh water running down the river) was a key symbol. 

    Living water was on the mind of Jesus as he rested by the well, and not just any well. This was the well that people believed had been first dug by Jacob, the father of the famous twelve sons of Israel who purchased land at this location (Genesis 33:18–20).

    Again, as an aside, notice that the ancestors purchased the lands they came to possess, in this part of the story. The concept of conquest and ethnic cleansing derives from the Joshua traditions.

    “Israel” was the name given to Jacob after he spent an anxious night wrestling with a divine figure prior to his reconciliation with Esau. See Genesis 32:22–33:17.

    So there is a powerful back story to this well and to the encounter with the local woman.

    Wells

    In fact, throughout the Bible, wells feature as the sites for important encounters, and often ones that have a critical role in the story of salvation:

    • God reveals a hidden to Hagar (Genesis 16) 
    • Abraham has a well at Beer-sheba (Genesis 21)
    • Abraham’s trusted servant goes to a well when seeking a wife for Isaac (Genesis 24)
    • Isaac digs his own well at Beer-sheba (Genesis 26)
    • Jacob will meet Rachel at a well (Genesis 29)
    • Moses famously meets his future wife at a well (Exodus 2)
    • In early Christian tradition Gabriel meets Mary at the well

    Here in John 4 Jesus rests by a well and the informed audience knows that he is about to meet someone and that something important is about to occur.

    As we still see in many developing societies, collecting water from the community well was women’s work, and usually done early in the day or late afternoon.

    The well—like the Furphy & Co water cart in WW1—was not just the place to get water. It was also the place to share news, hence the expression: a furphy (informal information and possibly false news).

    The woman at the well

    Jesus rests at the well around midday, while the disciples go into the city to look for something to eat.

    Then the woman comes out to draw water.

    Why at midday?

    This is usually understood as a sign that she was not on talking terms with the other women from Sychar, but we can never know why she turned up at the well at the hottest time of the day.

    Jesus does what men often do: he asks her get him a drink!

    She is happy to do that, but notes that he seems to be Jewish and that people like him would not normally even touch a cup that has been handled by a Samaritan.

    She is not inclined to cross cultural boundaries.

    But Jesus is a repeat offender in that score.

    He is talking with an unrelated woman, and he is asking a Samaritan to serve him a drink!

    Living Water

    The story is a long one, as is often the case in the Gospel of John. It goes all the way to verse 45! (I have spared you the joy hearing me read the whole thing.)

    In this opening scene, Jesus opens up a conversation about living water.

    In the sentences that follow directly after our excerpt ended, we have this exchange:

    Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” [John 4:13–15 NRSV]

    A few chapters later, in John 7—when we find Jesus in the temple that will feature in later parts of his conversation with the woman at the well—we find Jesus saying:

    On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive … [John 7:37–39]

    That, surely, is our request as we gather around the Table of Jesus today.

    • Open a spiritual well deep within us!
    • Let us drink from the water of eternal life; life that reflects eternity, not life that lasts forever.
    • Quench our innermost thirst.
    • May your Spirit surge within us and become a stream of living water for others.

  • Called to be a blessing

    Lent 2 (A)
    St Andrew’s, Lismore
    5 March 2023

    Video of this sermon

    As a general rule, I preach on the Gospel since that is the biblical text which points most directly to the risen Lord among us, within us, and between us as the gathered people of God.

    But today I start my locum ministry here by breaking my own rule!

    ABM Sunday

    Today is being observed across the Diocese as ABM SUNDAY, so I want us to reflect more on the mission into which we are being called by God, so I should perhaps declare my own personal interest.

    I am a member of the ABM Committee for the Diocese of Grafton, and when I was serving as Dean of St George’s College in Jerusalem I was serving as a missionary sent to that post by ABM.

    In addition, the special focus for the ABM Lent Appeal this year is the Diocese of Jerusalem. As always our Good Friday offerings will be sent to Jerusalem to be used for the work of the Anglican Church in that region.

    I am a Canon emeritus of St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem, and I have very close links with people and parishes in that Diocese. That place matters to me and those people matter to me.

    But there is another reason for my sermon this morning being grounded in the Abraham story from Genesis 12.

    The 2022 floods

    This time last year, our city and our local region were devastated by massive floods.

    During the past week various events have recalled the floods, the devastation, the loss, the courage and the resilience of this amazing community.

    Yesterday morning I sat in a steamy white plastic tent at the Quad with a small crowd to watch the documentary about the Tinnie Heroes.

    Those events last year, all that has happened in between times, and the challenges we face right now are yet another reason to go with Abraham this morning and not with Nicodemus.

    The people of the covenant

    Chapter 12 marks a turning point in the book of Genesis.

    During the opening eleven chapters, the ancient storyteller sketched the story of God’s dream for creation on a cosmic canvas: creation, paradise lost, the great flood (!!) and the tower of Babel.

    Now the focus narrows to one person (Abram/Abraham/Ibrahim) and the family that will trace its ancestry back to him.

    In this opening scene of the Abraham saga, the hero is told to go to a destination chosen by God but not yet revealed to Abraham:

    Go from your country 
    and your kindred 
    and your father’s house
    to the land that I will show you.

    Genesis 12:1

    Fortunately for Abram, that land was not Australia and the time was not now, as he would be turned away at gunpoint and sent to an offshore detention centre.

    For Abraham, the unknown destination was not Australia but Palestine.

    Like Australia, Palestine was no terra nullius.

    It was not a land without people, for a people without land, as the Zionists told each other about 100 years ago.

    Palestine had people living there. 

    They lived in homesteads, villages, towns and a number of well-established cities.

    Abraham was not sent there to displace them nor as punishment for their supposed sins. In fact, on the contrary, the purpose of Abraham and his clan coming to live among the Indigenous people of Palestine was to be a blessing for the Aboriginal peoples there.

    Verse 3 is usually translated as: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

    However, it is better translated this way:

    And all the families of the land (‘adamah) shall bless themselves by you.

    That is a fine point, but one worth pondering.

    The point of the promise to Abram was not for his personal comfort and tribal success, but to be an agent of blessing for each and every community he lived among.

    As we watch the tragic events unfolding in Palestine and Israel these past few weeks, these past 75 years, and for more than 130 years, it is clear that the promises to Abram have been sadly misunderstood. 

    Presence among has become power over.

    Being a blessing to others has become take it all for my own people.

    Religion becomes the pretext for genocide and ethnic cleansing.

    The opportunity for the descendants of Abraham to model shalom-salaam is wasted.

    The colonial wars

    It is not that we can point our fingers at the Jews in Palestine. 

    They are simply seeking to do now what our forebears succeeded in doing 100+ years earlier than them. And even earlier in the Americas and southern Africa.

    To our shame, the Christians of Europe not only persecuted the Jews but also conquered, subdued and almost entirely eradicated (murdered) the Indigenous people of those faraway lands to which we imagined ourselves to have a god-given right.

    Kyrie eleison.

    If only we had come in the spirit of Abraham in Genesis 12–25.

    If only—even now—we might have the vision and the compassion to see how badly the Indigenous people of this land, and this valley, have been treated.

    If only now we had the grace to say YES to allowing them a Voice to Parliament.

    Lismore

    We can look askance at Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians whose land and whose futures are being stolen and trashed.

    We can pride ourselves on our new-found respect for the First Australians and our intention to vote YES! in the referendum.

    But we also need to ask ourselves how our presence here in this local community has been a source of blessing, courage, goodness, hope and resilience during the past year. 

    And all the years before last year.

    That, after all, is our core mission.

    We are not here to promote the Anglican Church, but to serve the people of Lismore in the name of Jesus.

    If that is not our first priority then let’s not waste our time in seeking a new priest.

    There is no need for a church that does not become a blessing to the people where it exists.

    God give us the courage of Abram.

    God call us into the only mission that matters.

    Here or anywhere else, we only exist to be a channel of blessing to others.

  • Authentic Jesus people

    This sermon is the final in the ON THE WAY series at Casino Anglican Church, July/October 2022

    In the Old Testament, Moses led the tribes of Israel through a period of transition that lasted 40 years. During that time a community was fashioned and a covenant with God was formed.

    In the Gospel of Luke, as we have seen, Jesus had an extended journey south from Galilee to Jerusalem. Another community was being fashioned: the community of disciples. They were many more people than the twelve we typically consider when we say those words.

    As they crossed into the promised land, the people discovered that Moses had been used by God to prepare them for what lay ahead as they lived into the terms of their covenant—their relationship with God—in the place where their they were now going to live.

    After Easter, as the growing company of disciples, the first Jesus people, reflected on their slow walk south with Jesus, they discovered that he had been shaping them as agents of the kingdom of God, so they could transform the world in which they lived.

    On Thursday night we cross an invisible line between the past and the future.

    You will continue to live into the terms of your covenant with God right here in Casino, and as Jesus people you will continue the task of transforming the households, the streets, and the town where you live.

    It has been my privilege to share something of the work of both Moses and Jesus here in this church for the past thirteen weeks.

    There were no walking sticks turned into snakes, and no wine turned into water. But there has been some good work done. By us all.

    Three months (90 days) is a brief time and far too short for sustained change, but some changes have been made. I hope they can be sustained.

    There is a different atmosphere around the parish and—perhaps even more importantly—in the wider community there is also a different narrative about the parish.

    I would urge you to remain generous, hopeful, courageous and open-minded. 

    Our generosity derives from a confidence that there are good things to be done and that we are not just keeping the lights on until the last of our regular members dies. There are churches with that sense of their (non-existent) future, including some right here in Casino; but that is not our situation. 

    I hope that our 13 weeks of walking towards Jerusalem with Jesus has given us all some fresh insights into how we can be Jesus-people here in Casino. 

    We are never going to rebuild the Anglican Church of the 1950s, but then we do not live in the 1950s ourselves! We are called into the task of building God’s kingdom in the 2020s—and beyond. That is where we live and that is the future we need to shape with the faith that has shaped us.

    There is good work to be done, and we have some sense of where to begin.

    As we move further ahead under Sally’s leadership, we shall discern what comes next and God will supply the resources we need to do whatever it is that God wants to achieve.

    For sure that involves and requires a church community that is generous, compassionate, future-oriented and gentle with one another. 

    The gossip has reduced, but now it needs to cease. Completely. For ever.

    The goodwill has increased, and now it needs to be embedded in our collective DNA. 

    When there are differences over things that actually matter—as there must be from time to time if we are doing work that actually matters to us—then we can handle those disagreements with grace and mutual care. 

    Looking after each other in the process is more important than winning a vote or getting our way.

    In the Gospel of John, Jesus says that people will know we are his followers by the love that we have for each other:

    I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

    John 13:34–35

    People in Casino have been watching with dismay as this parish has torn itself apart, and they have been watching with delight as we have begun to work more happily together these past three months. 

    They are continuing to watch. 

    The downtown Ministry Centre in Walker Street gives them some hope that we are changing. What they see, and whether we offer them a safe place to find spiritual wisdom for their everyday lives, depends very much on how we treat each other in the next 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, and more.

    They want us to succeed and I think they need us to do so.

    This town—like every community in Australia—needs compassionate, courageous, engaged and safe Christian faith communities where the spirit of Jesus is expressed in the way that we do the “Jesus thing” amongst them.

    They may never feel drawn to become a follower of Jesus themselves, but their lives will be better if we are authentic Jesus people.

    We are not collecting souls, but transforming communities in the name of Jesus.

    We have some wonderful allies in that task, with our friends at St Mary’s Church and in the local Uniting Church. Together, here in Casino where all three churches already work so well together, we can offer a place at the table of Jesus and transform our town.

    I especially urge you to embrace to ecumenical challenge expressed so clearly by my colleague and friend, Michael Putney, the late Catholic Bishop of Townsville, who put these words into practice:

    We shall only do separately what we cannot in conscience do together.

    Bishop Michael Putney

    As a parish and as a community of churches here in Casino, imagine how this community could be transformed if we did the hard work to make those words come true!

  • And even the dogs

    IMAGE: Rich man and Lazarus. Illustration from the eleventh-century Codex Aureus Epternacensis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_man_and_Lazarus

    This post is part of the ON THE WAY sermon series at St Mark’s Anglican Church, Casino: July/October 2022

    Last week we heard that the manager facing dismissal felt that he was too weak to dig and too proud to beg.

    As we unpacked that story and tried to read it through first-century eyes, we noted the entrenched wealth discrepancy between the top 15% of the population and the other 85%, including those reduced to begging or forced labour.

    In today’s Gospel we zero in on that wealth gap.

    However, before we can really hear what Jesus was trying to say, we need to set aside some common misconceptions.

    Most importantly, this parable is not a lesson about the afterlife.

    It teaches us nothing about the structure of the afterlife, but only about how some Jewish people in the time of Jesus imagined it to be. This is rather like a modern preacher using the metaphor of the “pearly gates” or “streets paved with gold.”

    On the contrary, it is very much a parable about obscene wealth and abject poverty.

    Our final hymn today [Together in Song, 473] has been selected as a call for us all to take this aspect of the Gospel seriously. I will just cite verse 2 at this stage, but the whole hymn (video) is worth reading several times this week:

    Community of Christ,
    look past the Church’s door
    and see the refugee, the hungry,
    and the poor.
    Take hands with the oppressed,
    the jobless in your street,
    take towel and water, that you wash
    your neighbour’s feet.

    [Shirley Erena Murray, 1931–2020]

    In this Gospel story—and in this song—we find the spiritual wisdom that underlies our St Mark’s Downtown project.

    We meet Christ in the people who enter the OpShop, and they meet Christ in us.

    As we discern what the Spirit of Jesus might be saying to the church through this passage this morning, I want to focus on two often overlooked parts of the Gospel: the dogs, and Abraham.

    That may sound like an odd selection, but stay with me. 

    They are linked. 

    At least in my little brain!

    The dogs

    And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. [Luke 16:20–21]

    The dogs are the only creatures that display any compassion towards Lazarus.

    Like our own dogs, they tended his wounds and tried their best to heal his sores. In the end, their efforts failed and the man died. But at least the dogs cared.

    Again, we need to go back in time to hear this element of the story with first-century ears.

    For this I am indebted to a colleague and friend, Kenneth Bailey, who immersed himself in Middle Eastern culture over several decades and has helped so many of us to see the Gospel through peasant eyes.

    In the Middle East, dogs are not household pets or personal companions. We will miss the significance of the dogs, if we think of them as being like our “fur babies.”

    The dogs were strays and scavengers.

    The dogs were even more outcasts than the beggar.

    But the dogs reflect more of God’s compassion than any human being in this parable.

    Father Abraham

    He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus … (v 24)

    He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house … (v 27)

    He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ (v 30)

    This heartless rich man turns out to have some religion (not that it ever made him compassionate) and it seems that he even knows the name of the beggar who had died outside his mansion after years of seeking some assistance without any success.

    At least in the story, and it is only a story.

    How quickly we forget that!

    Father Abraham, … send Lazarus …

    Abraham is a hugely significant character in the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

    Indeed all three faith communities are sometimes described as the Abrahamic tradition.

    Compassion is a core virtue in all three religions.

    Compassion is seen as a central attribute of God’s own self.

    Compassion is the ultimate test of our faith.

    Not creeds

    Not our alms (financial contributions)

    Not even our prayers.

    None of those good things count for anything if we are not first and last compassionate people.

    Compassion is assumed to be in the heart of Abraham by the rich man’s questions.

    He appeals to Abraham’s compassion.

    If not for himself, then at least for his family who have not yet died.

    Even the rich man discovers a vein of compassion, at the end of the story.

    As children of Abraham our hallmark is compassion.

    As followers of Jesus, compassion is our core virtue.

    As we pray for the coming of God’s kingdom, compassion is the pathway we walk.

    Along with the dogs.

  • Parable of the audit

    IMAGE: Marinus van Reymerswaele, 1490–1546. Parable of the Unjust Steward. Wikimedia Commons.

    This post is part of the ON THE WAY sermon series at St Mark’s Anglican Church, Casino July/October 2022

    Gospel: Luke 16:1–9

    Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and [false/hostile] charges* were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ 

    Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 

    So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ 

    And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. 

    [Vss 10–13: Later commentary and additions by the tradition:

    “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”]

    * διαβάλλω 1 aor. pass. διεβλήθην; pf. pass. 3 sg. διαβέβληται (Just., D. 10, 1) (s. βάλλω, διάβολος; trag., Hdt. et al.; pap, LXX, Joseph.) to make a complaint about a pers. to a third party, bring charges, inform either justly or falsely. [BDG]

    Another week. 
    Another Sunday.

    Another excerpt from the Good News according to Luke.
    Another slap in the face for respectable religion.

    What exactly are we supposed to do with a Gospel like that?
    How is it good news?
    Who would ever employ a Christian bookkeeper or sales manager, if this is how they operate?

    It is rare that a lectionary passage sends me to my books, but this one did.

    Fortunately, I remembered that a colleague and friend (Brandon Scott) had written a brief commentary on this parable in his delightful little book: Re-Imagine the World: An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus.

    At the start of his brief commentary, Brandon raises two really fundamental points for us to keep in mind:

    1. The master in this story is not a metaphor for God. (Indeed, God is never mentioned in this story as Jesus first told it.)
    2. The economic system presumed by the parable is not capitalism.

    Those are both very important insights.

    First of all, like many other parables told by Jesus, this is not a religious story. It is simply a story that draws its material from the way that stuff happens in everyday life. Systems are crooked. People are corrupt. Bad stuff happens. Life goes on. God is in there. Somewhere. So are we.

    Secondly, this was an ancient agrarian society where traditional patterns of land ownership were being displaced by large-scale commercial farms owned by wealthy absentee landlords (what an interesting word that is). In that system, the rich got richer and the regular folk were squeezed. (To use a polite term.)

    This is the world of the Lord’s Prayer: Forgive us our debts …

    In that world, things look like this, according to an influential piece of social modelling by Gerhard Lenski:

    ELITE 15%

    Ruler
    Governing class (3%)
    Retainers (5%)
    Merchants (5%)
    Priests (2%–but 15% of the land)

    MAJORITY 85%

    Peasants (65%)
    Artisans (5%)
    Unclean (5%)
    Expendables (10%)

    The only movement is downwards. No-one ever goes up in this system.

    As Brandon Scott observed, “to dig” was to work in the mines – and be dead within the year. While to beg, was a fate worse than death.

    So all that may help us get inside the story with first-century eyes.

    But then what do we see?

    Everyone in this story is from the elite.
    They are all wealthy, educated, literate and have some agency.

    Someone has given the master a bad report about the manager.
    The master decides to commission an audit.

    A performance review!
    But what are the KPIs?

    The manager sets about his plan.
    He is quite clever. In the circumstances.
    He gives all the major customers a HUGE discount on their bills.

    He had the discretion to do this.
    None of the customers questioned the process.

    Eventually the master hears.
    And he is impressed!

    Not outraged, but impressed:
    “This guy is a freaking good manager”

    He has been making a very nice profit for the master.
    He has even secured the long-term goodwill of the major clients with a massive discount.
    The audit report suggests the manager is doing just fine!

    The master cannot cancel the discounts without losing face—and major accounts

    Perhaps (just perhaps) the manager has saved his job.

    Of course, we are never told.
    Such is life.

    And we are left wondering why exactly Jesus told that story to those with him on the way

    Verses 9–13 give us at least 3 failed attempts to make this story respectable
    None of them succeeds

    Sometimes life is complicated

    It is rarely black and white
    Or male and female
    Or right and wrong

    None of us are pure
    We are all implicated in past evils
    And in present privilege

    God is at work even in that complexity

    Her ways may be invisible to us
    We just have to do what we can 

    We trust that as Mary’s Song proclaims

    He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
    He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
    and lifted up the lowly;
    he has filled the hungry with good things,
    and sent the rich away empty. [Luke 1:51–53]

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