Jesus keeps teaching us about the limits of transactional thinking — and the life-giving beauty of sacrifice in his way of love.

How we squander our most valuable resource
Proper 20C
Luke 16:1-13

By Rev. Drew Downs

If you’re having trouble making sense of Jesus’s point in this parable, then you’re not alone. This simple-sounding parable is one of the most argued-about parts of scripture.

Partly because it doesn’t really sound very Jesusy. It almost sounds like an encouragement to be dishonest, or to take advantage of someone else’s deception. That doesn’t match with Jesus’s earlier critiques of dishonesty!

This doesn’t sound right. So maybe we need to dig into what Jesus is wrestling with.

What we know for sure is that Jesus is telling a story about money and about power. That is clear. How these two things (money and power) get used…that gets a little more difficult to parse…

The full text and audio may be found here.