Progressive reflections on the lectionary #82

Monday 15th September 2025

Luke 16:1-13 - The point of parables; Charlie Kirk; Unite the Kingdom; and what it means to be Christian.

This week’s gospel passage is a contentious parable with some confusing sayings - in this week’s reflection I disc uss the point of parables, and briefly reckon with the contemporary issues of the Charlie Kirk shooting, the Unite the Kingdom rally, and ask what difference being a Christian makes in my life.

I’m a pacifist - which is to say I don’t believe in using violence to solve problems, whether they are political or personal. I think the alternative is both inefficient and counter productive, I also think that Jesus taught non-violence. For me, this commitment is part of what it means to ‘be Christian’ - by which I mean ‘to follow the ways of Jesus.’

I don’t think, though, that the Bible, Christian tradition, or the teachings as they have been handed down to us by the earliest Christian writers, give us an absolute set of moral teachings which need no interpretation or negotiation. I suppose to be clear I should say that I don’t necessarily think that the categories of ‘right and wrong’ are the clear binary that we would perhaps like them to be. If, for instance, someone attacked a vulnerable person and I could stop them only by enacting violence, then would it not be ‘right’ to do the ‘wrong’ thing - and hurt the aggressor?

If that is true, why would one not scale that up to a national level? “What would you have done in World War Two?” is a question I used to be asked quite frequently and it’s not a question with an easy answer. If you had the chance to assassinate Hitler before the war started, and thus to potentially save the lives of millions, would you really not do it? Such ‘trolley problem’ type fantasies are, of course, far too simplistic, but they helpfully challenge the basic notion of binary distinctions between right and wrong.

In our parable today Jesus tells an elliptical story with confusing sayings - he tells the story of a steward who, knowing he’s about to get the sack, ingratiates himself with local people by dishonestly reducing their debts - knowing that doing so will mean they will be more likely to take care of him when he loses his job.

Rather than being punished for this betrayal, the dishonesty is then commended by the master who respects his shrewdness, leading Jesus to note that:

…the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. (16:8)

Then adding:

…make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes. (16:9)

Happily the passage concludes with a more straightforward claim:

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. (16:13)

So people tend, sensibly, focus on that last sentence, and teach that rather than the confusing bits before hand, choosing to promote it while generally ignoring the fact that it is arguably the most widely flouted Christian principle after ‘love your enemy’.

I’m not going to ignore the confusing bits though - instead I’m going to ask what parables are meant to do. The best literature on parables (see William Herzog’s ‘Parables as Subversive Speech’) emphasise their subversive nature. They are intended to break down, or destabilise, conventional thinking. Jesus’ parables generally work on a number of levels, and if the meaning appears too obvious, then it’s probably not the meaning.

As well as seeing parables as inherently subversive, its important to recognise that I see them as subversive of political and economic systems. My view of Jesus is that he was addressing the exploitation and oppression of his time, this is well supported in Luke’s gospel which is full of themes of economic justice, and the priority of the poor.

Herzog would say that the steward is part of a corrupt system, where landowners profit from peasant labour and debt, and that his actions expose this injustice and restore fairness. The steward’s “dishonesty” is, therefore, ambiguous. This places the parable in a tradition of subversive, resistance, literature. The steward, facing dismissal, acts decisively to secure his future, not by violence but by economic reparations.

As such I see this parable challenging the comfortable attitudes of those who see themselves as ‘good’ but fail to act boldly in the service of others. It asks them/us/me why, if those who are embedded in unjust systems (the Steward, the Master) can act boldly to secure their own futures, those of us committed to the virtues of justice and mercy are so hesitant. Why do we hold back? As the Steward builds a network of relationships that will support him, why don’t we use what we have to build solidarity and community?

This, of course, supports my broader view that Jesus was in the business of creating radical, inclusive, communities of hospitality and sharing. Refuges within the belly of the beast.

All of which brings me to some of the issues of the moment. My reflection last week, which emphasised the importance of wholeness in an era of division was published before the shooting of the right wing commentator Charlie Kirk, a man whose commitment to a particular brand of Christianity has since been cynically exploited to create a martyrdom narrative in order to deepen divisions between already polarised communities. This has served to support the binary (good vs evil) ‘civil war’ rhetoric that has been espoused by right wing Americans for some time.

The same rhetoric is also employed in the UK - and by some of the same people. This week the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in London, attended by around 150,000 people, was addressed by various speakers including some who hold positions within the broader Church. Brett Murphy, an independent evangelical minister called for a return to ‘biblical foundations’ in society while Ceirion Dewar, a bishop in the ‘Confessing Anglican Church’ - a conservative Christian movement that blends Christian identity with far-right populist politics - led the crowd in the Lord’s prayer and declared his view that the country is ‘under attack’. These messages are none too thinly veiled.

Neither Murphy, Dewar or any of the others involved in the rally seem at all interested in creating radically inclusive communities of hospitality and sharing. They have a different agenda altogether. Theirs is a world in which there are simplistic binaries between right and wrong, its unsubtle but in a way comforting I suppose. To be quite clear, I would see their teaching as apostasy. I think they are false teachers, leading people into social, political and spiritual destruction. I also suspect they are sincere in their misguided beliefs, which is somehow all the more tragic.

The divisiveness that they teach is the opposite of what I work for every day.

For me, to be a Christian is to reckon with the dual tensions of recognising the profound moral ambiguities of our world, wrestling with their realities, and yet finding a way to call out, and work against, the harm and destruction done by neo fascist, empire, ideologies.

The way that Jesus, as Luke writes him at least, addresses these themes helps us to recognise that the ‘right thing’ is not always clear. Indeed there may not always be a ‘right thing’ in any given circumstance. The real challenge, then, is learning to live with the ambiguity of life, and finding a way to act decisively within that confusing framework.

Crucially the aim must always be to support the most vulnerable, to care for those who suffer, to recognise that the whole matters. This must supersede our concept of nations and borders, it must transcend our categories of ‘us and them’, and it must emphasise the core value of love over hatred.

With thanks to Rebecca and Abigail for your questions which provoked some of this reflection.

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Image: Photo by Salah Ait Mokhtar on Unsplash