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Zacchaeus

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Luke 19:1-10

People like to categorize people, to file them away in the neatly labeled file folders of their minds. Conservatives or liberals, welfare moms or soccer moms, hunters or tree huggers, addicts, vegetarians, intellectuals, foreigners, gun owners, patriots, and so on. It makes things simpler, doesn’t it? Once you’ve labeled someone, you know what to expect. Again this week Jesus challenges our categories, our stereotypes, and our self-satisfied attachment to them.

We don’t know much about Zacchaeus. We’re not even 100% sure he was short. As disturbing as this might be to those of us who grew up singing about Zacchaeus as a “wee little man,” in the Greek, you can’t tell for certain whether Zacchaeus had to climb a tree to see Jesus because Zacchaeus was short, or because Jesus was short. A short Jesus challenges our categories, so we assume Zacchaeus was the short one.

All we know for certain is that Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. “Tax collector” and “rich” go together in the New Testament world. Collecting taxes in Jesus’ time meant collecting taxes for the Romans, who by this time had conquered most of the Mediterranean world, including the region known as Judea. Zacchaeus made his living by profiting from his people’s oppression. He wasn’t paid a salary. A tax collector made his money by over-taxing the people, and then pocketing the excess. Zacchaeus pocketed plenty of excess. As chief tax collector, he collected a percentage from all the other tax collectors that worked under him, as well. Everyone in Jericho knew and despised him. We, the readers, are prepared to encounter a villain in need of conversion.

Jesus is passing through Jericho. Maybe Zacchaeus has heard the rumors that Jesus is a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Whatever the reason, Zacchaeus scampers up a sycamore tree to get a good look. Jesus spots him and calls him by name, which tells you something about the notoriety of tax collectors. But Jesus refuses to be bound by labels. He invites himself over to Zacchaeus’ house for dinner, even at the risk of crossing a barrier of ritual purity. A tax collector was considered unclean because of the goods he inspected and the homes he entered. By inviting himself to Zacchaeus’ home for dinner, Jesus brings surprising, and from the perspective of the crowd, undeserved honor on Zacchaeus, the rich crook. Their jaws must have hit the ground.

In the New Revised Standard Version translation, Zacchaeus’ response sounds like a miraculous conversion. But contrary to most contemporary translations, in the Greek, Zacchaeus isn’t promising to give half of his possessions to the poor in the future. He’s saying he already does, now, as a matter of practice. The future tense might make people more comfortable because just as we like our predictable labels for people, we cling to our presumption that in the presence of Jesus, Zacchaeus, the sinner, repented, and his promises are proof. But current scholarship points out that Zacchaeus neither confesses his sin nor repents, nor does Jesus congratulate Zacchaeus for his penitence, his faith, or his change of heart. Jesus merely pronounces his blessing, not because of anything Zacchaeus has done or promised but simply because he, like those grumbling around him, is a son of Abraham. Shannon Kershner writes, “What if Zacchaeus lived in a way that was generous and kind and faithful, then all of their stereotypes, their carefully set up and well-crafted assumptions about ‘those people,’ would be blown up, destroyed, revealed as empty. As David Lose writes, if Zacchaeus’s story is not a conversion story, then it does not fit our formula.”

Our formula impacts how we hear the word “lost” when Jesus says, “For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Perhaps Zacchaeus isn’t lost because he’s an unclean sinner, but because his community has ostracized him; he is lost to them. Perhaps it isn’t Zacchaeus who is in need of repentance, but rather, the community that despises him. Or perhaps it is we, the readers who are so quick to decide Zacchaeus needs conversion, while we smugly assume we don’t.

We don’t know whether Zacchaeus was giving half his possessions to the poor. What we know is that Jesus didn’t demand this before seeking Zacchaeus out from the crowd and honoring him. The crowd had written Zacchaeus off as despicable, corrupt, greedy. Jesus did not.

Jesus does not.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Eric Barreto, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-3/commentary-on-luke-191-10-6
John Ortberg, Love Beyond Reason (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 1998).
David Lose, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-3/commentary-on-luke-191-10-2
Shannon Kershner, “Jesus Makes Things Complicated,” March 13, 2016, https://fourthchurch.org/sermons/2016/031316.html

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

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Luke 18:9-14

I’ve preached this passage focusing on grace, and that’s a legitimate approach, especially given that this is the text for Reformation Sunday (which, as far as I can tell, few people observe these days). That sermon explained the tax collector is “justified” because he recognizes his sins and can accept God’s grace and forgiveness, which he has done nothing to earn. The Pharisee, on the other hand, believes he has earned his own justification, his own worthiness, and so refuses God’s grace. He is like Jesus’ audience: those who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt” (Luke 18:9).

Given our current zeitgeist, what I notice in the passage this time around is not merely that the Pharisee believes he is righteous. He probably is. Pharisees worked hard to do the right things and be the right kind of people. If we lived in ancient Judea, we would have wanted a Pharisee as a next-door neighbor. He’d probably keep his yard neat and pick up after his dog. The tax collector, on the other hand, really has behaved deplorably. He’s collaborated with Rome and enriched himself by exploiting his own people.

But it isn’t the difference between these two men that I notice this year. What I notice is, “but they regard others with contempt.”

We are surrounded by contempt. Contempt is more than disagreement; it’s disgust, rooted in the inability to see the image of God in the other person. Schopenhauer said contempt is belief in the “utter worthlessness of a fellow human being.” Contempt is looking at someone and thinking, “The world would be better without you in it.”

This parable contains a couple of traps. The first trap we might fall into is romanticizing the tax collector. In a recent article in the Christian Century, a young woman describes years of church youth camp during which she felt like a failure as a Christian. She writes, “At youth group and church camp, I learned to perform my own unworthiness. … A sneering voice in my head whispered that I wasn’t good enough for God because I’d never been bad.” She writes that without realizing it, self-abasement had become her religious practice, and it took years to recognize the harm this caused. This kind of “performative unworthiness” becomes just another way to try to earn God’s love, when that love is freely given. Jesus never said, “You must be a broken, miserable sinner to be my follower.” The tax collector is not supposed to be our role model.

The second trap we might stumble into is our own contempt. We might wonder: After all, isn’t the Pharisee deserving of contempt? He begins his prayer by thanking God, but his gratitude immediately devolves into contempt for others. Pretty soon he isn’t really thanking God at all; he’s thanking himself as he looks at the tax collector with disdain.

Clearly, Jesus intends us to understand that contempt isn’t good. It’s not hard to see why: Contempt is not loving our neighbors as ourselves. Contempt is not loving our enemies (Matthew 5:44). But if we make this parable about how terrible the Pharisees were, or even how terrible this one Pharisee is, we’ve missed the point – or fallen victim to it by being contemptuous ourselves. Anytime we draw a line between who’s “in” and who’s “out,” who is righteous and who is not, who is acceptable to God and who is not, this parable asserts you will find God on the other side.

Read this way, the parable is not about self-righteousness and humility any more than it is about a pious Pharisee and desperate tax collector. Rather, this parable is about God: God who alone can judge the human heart; God who determines to justify the ungodly.

In 2025, we live in a what Arthur C. Brooks calls a “culture of contempt.” Brooks writes, “Nothing is about honest disagreement; it is all about your interlocutor’s lack of basic human decency. Thus, no one with whom you disagree is worth engaging at all. The result is contempt.”

As the government shutdown drags on into Week 4, it’s obvious that this culture of contempt is a serious problem in a society and a system of government that require collaboration. Contempt is encouraged by some of our leaders, but it just doesn’t work in a democracy and we do not have to buy into it. We can fight for justice without resorting to contempt. We can be the change we wish to see in the world, and start by swearing off contempt. Trevin Wax writes, “Perhaps the test of faithfulness in a day of moral degradation will be our love for people across chasms of difference. Faithfulness isn’t in showy displays that we hate all the right people.”

And perhaps faithfulness isn’t in showing we’re right and the other person or group is stupid or morally bankrupt, but rather in working toward achieving a shared objective. What objective might we share with those with whom we disagree vehemently? We’d have to speak with each other, without contempt, to find that out.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
McKenzie Watson-Fore, “Dear Jesus, Am I Broken Enough Yet?” in The Christian Century, July 9, 2025, https://www.christiancentury.org/features/dear-jesus-am-i-broken-enough-yet.
Matt Skinner, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-30-3/commentary-on-luke-189-14-4
David Lose, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-30-3/commentary-on-luke-189-14-2
Arthur C. Brooks, Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt (New York: Broadside Books, 2019)
Trevin Wax, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/silent-sin-kills-love/

The Persistent Widow and the Unjust Judge

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Luke 18:1–8

Luke tells us Jesus told this parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge, “In order that we might pray always and not lose heart.” The widow in the parable may be trying to claim her inheritance, or perhaps to recover property that her deceased husband’s family won’t give back to her. The judge, we’re told, “neither feared God nor had respect for people.” This woman may not have the means to bribe him; perhaps her opponent does. What she can do is pester. The NRSV translation of the passage says the judge doesn’t want the woman to wear him out, but the Greek verb literally means to beat until black and blue. The woman is harassing the judge until he feels like Mohammed Ali doing the rope-a-dope. Finally, the judge says to himself, “Even though I couldn’t care less about God and can’t stand people, I’ll give this woman what she wants, just to get her out of my hair.”

What on earth does this story tell us? Is it as simple as, “Even though the world may look broken, unjust, and corrupt, if we just keep praying, things will work out”? If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again?

If we’re honest, we know that many of us, including the vulnerable, outcast, and oppressed, are already praying “always” for the coming of God’s justice. We pray and we pray and we pray some more that God will transform the hearts, institutions, and structures of our world so that they reflect God’s shalom, and yet here we are. The wolf does not live with the lamb. Nation continues to lift up sword against nation. So maybe this is not a story that tells us that if we just pray long enough and hard enough, we’ll get what we want.

Maybe this is a parable about the character of God. Here’s the contrast: on the one hand, the sleazy, compassionless judge; and on the other hand, God, whose desire for all of creation is shalom, a peace that is not mere lack of conflict, but rather wholeness, justice, reconciliation, healing. If this crooked judge will grant justice to those who seek it, how much more so will God. The God of shalom is with the widow. God takes sides; God is on the side of justice, and on the side of those who need justice, and we can trust that. And we can trust that God is drawing the world toward that vision of shalom, because that is who God is. Praying, then, is asking God to be God, the God of shalom.

In a world where the powers that would threaten shalom assert themselves so constantly and destructively, it is easy to lose heart. We need support from outside ourselves, and prayer calls on that power. When we pray, we experience faith; we become more engaged in our faith. Debie Thomas writes, “I can only speak from experience, but I know that when I persist in prayer – really persist, with a full heart, over a long period of time – something happens to me. My sense of who I am, to whom I belong, what really matters in this life, and why – these things mature and solidify. My heart grows stronger. It becomes less fragile and flighty. Once in a while, it even soars. And sometimes – here’s the surprise – these good things happen even when I don’t receive the answer I’m praying for.” In other words, prayer helps us not to “lose heart.”

According to an African proverb, “When you pray, use your feet.” Prayer is our resource for the power we need to use our feet – to act in partnership with God by doing what God needs us to do. Here, the widow serves as a role model for us. She wouldn’t have had to argue her case if there had been even a single male relative in her family willing to argue for her, so there must not have been one. She wasn’t intimidated by the reputation of the callous, corrupt judge. She broke social barriers and stood up to a system of oppression in her quest for justice. She broke the mold, and the result was a just verdict.

But there’s another angle, which is that maybe Jesus isn’t talking about what Anne Lamott calls our “beggy” prayers, our “Please, please, please, God” petitions. Maybe Jesus – and Luke – are talking about something else when Jesus says, “pray always.” Richard Rohr writes, “Prayer is indeed the way to make contact with God …, but it is not an attempt to change God’s mind about us or about events. Such attempts are what the secularists make fun of – and rightly so. It is primarily about changing our mind so that things like infinity, mystery, and forgiveness can resound within us. The small mind cannot see Great Things because the two are on two different frequencies or channels, as it were. The Big Mind can know big things, but we must change channels.” Maybe Jesus is telling us to change channels. I love that Rohr included forgiveness in his short list of things that are incredibly hard to grasp without holy help, that we need to “change channels” in order to do.

Why do we pray? Maybe we pray to stay connected to God. Maybe we pray to “change channels.” Maybe we pray in order to have the faith we need to keep on keeping on. Often, I think we pray simply because we must – because we have nowhere else to turn with our longings and hopes and fears that must be given voice. According to this parable, we pray so that we will not lose heart. In the end prayer is a mystery because we are in relationship with a mysterious God. But the passage gives us the simplest reason of all to pray: Jesus said, “Pray always.”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Richard Rohr, The Naked Now (New York: Crossroad, 2009).
Debie Thomas, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2016-09/october-16-29th-sunday-ordinary-time
William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Louisville, KY: Westminister/John Knox Press, 1994).
Shannon J. Kershner, https://fourthchurch.org/sermons/2016/101616.html.

Healed vs. Made Well

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Luke 17:11-19

The story begins with ten lepers living on the edge of town, separated from their families, their livelihood, and all normal activities and company.  Ten lepers who must shout a warning wherever they go that they’re unclean.[1] They may or may not have had what we know today as Hansen’s disease, but they are lepers in that they are the ultimate outcasts. 

Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem.  When the ten lepers hear that Jesus is in the neighborhood, they come as close as they dare and call out.  Jesus tells them to go to the priest, because just as it took a priest to confirm that someone had leprosy, it also took a priest to declare that someone was healed.[2]  As the lepers head off to do as Jesus tells them, they are healed of their disease.  Imagine the joy, the relief!  As soon as the priest gives the okay, they can return to their families, return to worship in the temple, return to being productive members of their community. 

The twist in the story is that at this point in Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, he’s on the border between Galilee and Samaria, communities that were divided by generations of hatred and suspicion.  Jews considered all Samaritans ritually unclean and even would travel miles out of their way to avoid having any contact with them.[3]

Only one of the ex-lepers returns to say thank you.  This passage is often interpreted as dealing with the importance of gratitude, but the healing didn’t depend on gratitude.  The nine who didn’t return to say “thank you” were healed just the same.  I bet they felt profoundly grateful even if they didn’t express it. 

The one who turned back to praise God and thank Jesus was a Samaritan.  Before Jesus heals the lepers, they’re just ten lepers, no distinctions.  But once the ten all have been healed, the Samaritan, alone, remains unclean.  There’s no cure for being a Samaritan.  He may not even be welcomed by the priest.  Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t follow the others. 

It is only to the Samaritan that Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.”  Four people in the Gospel of Luke hear those powerful words from Jesus: “Your faith has made you well.”  Each is, in his or her own way, an outcast.[4]  Each healing is followed by a conversation about the Kingdom of God – what life and the world look like under God’s rule.  And in each case, the Greek word for “made you well” is the word that also means “to save.”  “Your faith has made you well” means something like “Your faith has saved you.” 

Ten were healed.  One was “made well.”  Maybe Jesus is talking about a different kind of wellness.  Maybe he meant that the divisions that separated Samaritans from Judeans and that continue to separate races, ethnicities, genders, nationalities, and religions are a much more serious malady than even leprosy. Maybe he wasn’t commenting on the lack of gratitude of the nine who didn’t return as much as on the system that would accept them and reject the Samaritan; all the systems that create a “Them” that we can despise or ignore because they are not “Us.”

We don’t know exactly what Jesus meant, but it’s safe to say that, to Jesus, “wellness” does not include going back to a life of “Them” and “Us.”  “Where are the nine?” asked Jesus.  The nine were right back where they came from, safely on the right side of the border, healed of their exterior problems but locked back into their prejudices.  Healed, but not well.  As Maggi Dawn writes, “We are healed not to stay the same, but to live differently.”

We are healed not to stay the same, but to live differently.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

Maggi Dawn, “Untouchables,” in The Christian Century,” October 2, 2007, http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2007-10/untouchables.

Frederick J. Gaiser, “Your Faith Has Made You Well: Healing and Salvation in Luke 17:12-19” in Word and World, Volume XVI, Number 3, Summer 1996.

Fred B. Craddock, Interpretation: Luke (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990).

[1]  Leviticus 13:45. 

[2]  Leviticus 13:2-17. 

[3]  See for example, 2 Kings 17:24-24; John 4:9.

[4]  The four people in the Gospel of Luke who hear Jesus speak the words, “Your faith has made you well”: the woman of questionable reputation who washes Jesus’ feet, Luke 7:36-50; the woman with the 12-year flow of blood, Luke 8:43-48; a blind man, Luke 18:35-43; and this Samaritan ex-leper, Luke 17:11-19.  The woman was a “sinner,” and so she was cut off from the righteous.  The others were ritually unclean, excluded from the temple by the law. 

Increase Our Faith

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Luke 17:5-10

Ever since chapter 9 when Jesus turns and “[sets] his face to go to Jerusalem,” Jesus has made it clear that that the road ahead is tough – perhaps deadly – and he’s going to stay on it. He’s just finished telling his disciples that they, too, need to stay the course, and besides that, forgive people again and again. The disciples are overwhelmed. That’s when they cry out, “Increase our faith!”

If they could just have more faith, maybe they could meet Jesus’ expectations. You may have run into someone who says if you only had enough faith, you could do anything: get the job, keep the marriage together, even keep your loved one from dying. The problem is that then when things don’t work out, it’s your fault; you failed the test of faith. This is not only cruel, but also magical thinking and it isn’t what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is thinking about faith in a very different way.

First, says Jesus, if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could command a mulberry tree to transplant itself into the sea. Why a mulberry tree in the sea? The point is that it’s absurdly impossible. But the meaning of the passage turns on the original Greek, which says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed…and you do…. .” So Jesus is saying, “You can do this absurdly impossible thing. You already have enough faith.” With the little faith they have they can do things they never, ever could have imagined. In other words, the disciples don’t need more faith; they need to make use of the faith that they already have.

Then Jesus tells them a parable: Imagine you are a master with servants. Do you thank your servants for doing what they’re supposed to do? Of course not, says Jesus. You expect them just to keep on doing it. And then he switches perspectives: Imagine you’re the servant. Do you expect reward for just doing what you’re supposed to do? Of course not.

This sounds a little harsh to twenty-first century Americans who hand out trophies to kids for just showing up. But in a different time and culture, Jesus is merely describing life as the disciples know it.

So add these two thoughts together: First, if you have only a speck of faith – and you do – you’ll be able to do unimaginable things. And second, stop expecting someone to make a fuss when you do what you’re supposed to be doing. This is Jesus’ message to his disciples: Stop worrying about whether you’re a faith superstar and get to the business at hand.

Jesus is saying that faith isn’t about perfecting yourself or becoming better than someone else. Faithfulness is simply doing what we see needs to be done. Faith doesn’t have to be heroic, or even particularly religious. Maybe faith is just being attentive to the needs around us and committing ourselves to doing what we can with what we have, trusting that God will make use of it.

We’re facing another government shutdown this week. A few years back, Anne Lamott compared an actual government shutdown to the alcoholic uncle at family holidays who has been threatening to do something rash every time he gets drunk, and he “he finally does some bizarre, bullying, irrational act that he has been threatening to do for awhile.” How does the family even begin to deal with the havoc the alcoholic has caused? Get him to bed, she says. “In the meantime,” she writes, “the praying people pray. Someone sweeps. The children and the elderly are fed, and comforted. The kids go off to school. Everyone pitches in to help clean up. … And since we are not going to figure this out today, and since ‘Figure it out’ is not a good slogan, let’s do what we’ve always done. We’ll stick together, and get the thirsty people a glass of water. I’ll remember the sticker I saw once, of Koko, the sign language gorilla, above the words, ‘The law of the American jungle: remain calm and share your bananas.’ I am going to fill a box of warm clothes and take it to Goodwill … I am going to pick up litter. I’ll send some money to one of America’s hunger projects. I’ll pray and pray and pray, all day, that we’ll all pitch in to help our most vulnerable, and that we’ll help each other keep the faith, and our senses of humor.”

That all sounds pretty ordinary. But as David Lose writes, even the simplest things done in faith can have a huge impact. Lose also writes this description of faith which has been important to me in my own journey, including naming this blog: “Faith is putting one foot in front of the other and walking toward a future we do not see yet but trust God is fashioning. Faith is heading out the door each day looking for opportunities to be God’s partner and co-worker in the world. Faith is imagining that the various challenges put in front of us — whether solving a problem at work or forgiving someone who wronged us — are actually opportunities that invite us to grow as disciples and witness to God’s presence and goodness in the world.”

Ordinary, but extraordinary. Especially when done together, prayerfully.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
David Lose, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2773
Anne Lamott, October 1, 2013, https://www.facebook.com/AnneLamott/posts/382839661845683.

The Rich Man and Lazarus

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Luke 16:19-31

Yet another challenging parable. We’re introduced to a nameless rich man and to Lazarus, the poor man who suffers from hunger and disease outside the rich man’s gates. Both men die – the first “Aha!” in this parable. Death, as the saying goes, is the great equalizer. All that money, all those fine possessions couldn’t keep the wealthy man alive.

The parable then tells us that the rich man is tormented in Hades while Lazarus seems to be lounging somewhere nearby with Abraham, the patriarch from Genesis (Luke 16:23). Let’s stop right here: This parable can be frightening because it seems to deal with our eternal destiny, and in a way that challenges what we trust about God’s grace and forgiveness. As David Lose writes, “Jesus didn’t tell parables to offer a complete definition or even picture of salvation.” Luke and Acts, written by the same author, deal again and again with the proper use of wealth, and it is wealth, not the afterlife or eternal punishment, that is Jesus’ concern here. There is very little mention of any afterlife, whether Hades, Sheol, or hell, in the New Testament other than in the parables, which were intended as metaphors; they were exaggerated and even hyperbolic stories told to make a point. As here, most often that point was to offer a glimpse into the kingdom and heart of God.

What do we see of God’s heart in this parable? As Abraham reminds the rich man, what God wants is obvious to anyone familiar with the Law of Moses and the prophets. Torah commands care for the poor, love for neighbor and stranger, and the provision of food and shelter for the needy. The prophets warn of consequences for our failure to do these things. Bottom line: We are to care for the needy because God cares for the needy. All are God’s beloved children regardless of human condition. The fact that Abraham calls the wealthy man “Child” hints that even the rich man of the parable is not utterly rejected (Luke 16:25). All, even the rich man, are precious to God.

The problem in the parable isn’t simply wealth. It is wealth combined with ignoring the fact that others are suffering because of their lack of resources. We’ve all heard of extremely rich people who achieved wonderful things with their wealth: fed the hungry, fought for justice, increased access to healthcare, built libraries, saved forests, funded the arts and sciences, endowed educational institutions, etc. But that is not the rich man of this parable. He appears to live for his own pleasure, for his fine clothes and sumptuous feasts (Luke 16:19). He doesn’t seem to know that Lazarus exists; in any event, he doesn’t care.

God cares. God notices and cares about the suffering of God’s creatures and insists that we notice and care as well, and caring means doing something to help alleviate the suffering. But just in case God’s insistence doesn’t move us to action, then let’s talk about the fact that poverty hurts everyone. Poverty, economic instability, and economic inequality are destabilizing forces in any society, and according to a recent UN report, they are wreaking havoc around the globe right now.

Why is this the rich man’s problem? First of all, he benefits from a stable society like everyone else. He benefits if the population is well-fed, well-educated, and adequately housed, because that creates a more stable, more productive society. But in addition, a recent Pew Research Center report found that a median of 60% of people worldwide believe that the wealthy have too much political influence, and that this influence contributes a great deal toward economic inequality. Poverty isn’t just about the lack of money. It’s about the structural barriers that make escaping financial hardship nearly impossible, and it’s about the lack of power to change those barriers. When the people in power don’t care for the poor, then efforts to remove barriers to opportunity – through public education, public transit, child care, accessible healthcare, affordable housing, etc. – are not given priority. Social problems such as homelessness, incarceration and crime, mental and physical health issues, unemployment, inadequate education, and even racial and gender inequality can be alleviated by addressing poverty and its many complicated tentacles – if we care. The rich man in the parable chose not to care; he ignored the impacts of poverty on the people who lived outside his gated community.

So, we could care for the poor because it’s good for everyone, including the rich. Or, we could just care for the poor because God wants us to, because Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Caring for the poor might take the form of working in jobs that improve conditions for the poor, voluntary contributions of time and money to causes that address human need, paying taxes, and political action to change the societal barriers that keep people poor. The other day I saw a man in a t-shirt that said, “Hunger is on the ballot.” It is. Always. These actions may sound sound simple but nothing about poverty is simple. What is simple is that our faith calls us to care enough to do something about it.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2013/11/luke-16-19-31/
David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2019/09/pentecost-19-c-eternal-life-now/
Richard Wike, Moira Fagan, Christine Huang, Laura Clancy and Jordan Lippert,
“Economic Inequality Seen as Major Challenge Around the World,” January 9, 2025
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/01/09/economic-inequality-seen-as-major-challenge-around-the-world/
“New UN Report Warns of Global Social Crisis Driven by Insecurity, Inequality and Distrust,” April 24, 2025 press release, https://unu.edu/press-release/new-un-report-warns-global-social-crisis-driven-insecurity-inequality-and-distrust
T. M. Scanlon, “The 4 Biggest Reasons Why Inequality Is Bad for Society,”
https://ideas.ted.com/the-4-biggest-reasons-why-inequality-is-bad-for-society/
Emmaline Soken-Huberty, https://www.humanrightscareers.com/issues/ways-poverty-affects-society/

The Unjust Steward

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Luke 16: 1-13

If you’re sitting there scratching your head after reading this parable, often called the Parable of the Unjust Steward, take heart. Commentators are all over the map in their interpretations, but they agree about one thing: it’s confusing, and maybe the most difficult of all of Jesus’ parables.

A landowner learns his manager has been dishonest. The manager fears he’s about to be fired, so he decides to do some quick dealing. He goes to a few of the owner’s clients and settles their debts at much lower rates. Collecting about half as much as they owe, the manager figures that the clients will be grateful and treat him well in the future. The owner finds out about this strategy, and this is where it gets strange.

The owner commends the manager for acting “shrewdly” as the NRSV puts it; in other translations, “cleverly.” One of the challenges of this parable is figuring out whose side we’re supposed to be on. And another challenge is that the parable is followed by four sayings offered as interpretations that sound as though Luke had a handful of random and inscrutable sayings of Jesus and decided to tack them on here. “Just put them here; no one knows what this parable means anyway.”

Some background: In Roman-occupied Galilee in the first century, rich landlords were like loan-sharks. They charged exorbitant interest rates, and when the peasants couldn’t pay up, they’d lose the family farm. Which was the landlord’s plan – to increase and consolidate his holdings. The whole enterprise violated biblical law. Both the rich man and his manager were exploiting desperate peasants.

Jesus’ hearers would know that typical debt contracts hid exorbitant interest rates from illiterate peasants. The manager was probably extracting his own cut of the profits, as well, and on top of that, Rome would take a share. When he reduced the payments, the manager may simply have forgiven his own cut of the interest.

But that doesn’t tell us whose side we’re supposed to be on or why Jesus is telling his disciples this story. One thing for certain, the rich man is not the good guy here. In Luke and elsewhere, Jesus makes it very clear: No one can serve God and wealth – other translations use the word “Mammon,” a personification of wealth that makes it more obvious that wealth really can take the place of God in people’s lives. In the Luke’s context, if you were rich, it meant you exploited others to get that way. Today, we might reasonably say that just being rich isn’t bad; it’s exploitation that’s bad.

We can look at our own economy and see exploitation in the wide gap between what CEO’s and workers earn. But billionaires aside, isn’t it incredibly easy for all of us to ignore the way our economic system exploits people, especially if we’re benefitting from it? It’s easy to enjoy cheap goods and ignore the actual cost of the manufacturing process on the workers. U.S.-made goods cost more because we have minimum wage laws and protections for workers’ health and safety. Places like Bangladesh or Guatemala that don’t have these protections, which puts the costs of industrial accidents or chronic work-related ailments on the worker, instead of passing them on to the consumers. It’s equally easy to ignore the way that the earnings of plantation owners increased the bottom line of the entire economy of our country, especially the banks. Wealth grew because of slave labor. Inheritances grew; for white people, that is. It’s easy to ignore the way systemic racism worked through the GI Bill and redlining neighborhoods to build the white middle class after World War II, leaving African Americans behind yet again. This is not ancient history: to this day, African Americans have less wealth to pass on to future generations.

So why commend the manager? Some commentators suggest that by using his position to reduce other people’s debts, the manager understands that he needs to gain them as friends and assure himself a place at their tables. Perhaps Jesus himself doesn’t commend the manager’s practices, but rather the manager’s insight into the connection between resources and relationships.

It is so easy to distance ourselves from the realities of our economic system, to ignore the fact that it’s human beings who are harvesting, creating, and building our goods and services, and to ignore the fact that they, like everyone else, need housing, healthcare, food, and basic safety. Maybe the connection between resources and relationships is what Jesus had in mind. In any event, perhaps it’s a good week to explore what compassionate capitalism might look like.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Christine Pohl, Profit and Loss, August 29, 2002, The Christian Century, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/profit-and-loss.
David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2013/11/luke-16-1-13/
David Lose, https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/money-relationships-and-jesus-most-confusing-parable
Barbara Rossing, “Commentary on Luke 16:1-13,” September 18, 2016, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2982.
Seth Bogner, “Why More Companies Should Practice Compassionate Capitalism (And How To Do It Effectively),” February 28, 2023, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/02/28/why-more-companies-should-practice-compassionate-capitalism-and-how-to-do-it-effectively/

Lost and Found

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Lesson: Luke 15:1-10

The Pharisees and scribes strive to be holy, an admirable goal. One way to do that in ancient Judean society is by sharing a meal with the right people. So, when the scribes and Pharisees see the company Jesus is keeping, they say to him, “Why do you always hang out with sinners and tax collectors? If you hang out with these unholy people, it might rub off on you.”

The parables with which Jesus responds probably rocked his listeners’ world. First, he asks them to imagine themselves as a shepherd. Shepherds were unclean. Then he asks them to imagine themselves as a woman. Women were, well, women; inferior. “Which one of you,” he says, and then tells a story so that they have to imagine what the world might look like and what their response would be as people they want little or nothing to do with.

Jesus says, “I want you to imagine that you have one hundred sheep and that you lose one of them. Now, wouldn’t you go out after the lost one until you find it?” The obvious answer is, “Of course not.” Nobody in his right mind leaves the ninety-nine to the wolves to go chasing off after the one. You cut your losses, forget about the lost sheep, and take care of the ninety-nine. Jesus’ question is ironic. Who among you would do this? Nobody would! But he goes on: “And when you find the sheep, wouldn’t you go home and throw a party?” This is crazy, too; he’s suggesting not only that they’d confess this foolish decision to their friends, but celebrate it? I kinda think Jesus is messing with them.

The parables raise the question, “Just who are the ‘lost’?” The Pharisees might assume it’s those tax collectors and “sinners.” In Jesus’ time, “sinners” simply meant people who didn’t follow the law closely, or at least not as closely as the Pharisees believed they did. There were all sorts of reasons people might not follow every one of the 613 laws of Torah; some of those reasons were economic. Affluent people could afford the proper sacrifices, the proper tithes, the exacting Sabbath expectations, the dietary restrictions; less affluent people could not.

But just maybe the lost also include the Pharisees, the scribes, the people who have an easier time hiding their struggles, their fears, their foibles. It’s easy to hide corrosive hate or anger. It’s easy to hide loveless relationships, or loneliness, or pain or fear. It’s easy to hide all sorts of things behind self-righteousness and propriety and a conviction that you’d never be like “those people.” As one commentator puts it, “I suspect that if you think you’re found, at least more found than other people, you might well be more lost than you realize.”

Jesus concludes the parable of the lost sheep with, “I say to you that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” And again, I think he’s messing with the scribes and Pharisees here, because did you ever meet anyone who needs no repentance? No repentance at all, ever?

No, you didn’t. So maybe the ninety-nine sheep are a brilliant set-up. Maybe the real meaning of the one and the ninety-nine is that the one lost sheep is all of us: the whole human race as it really is. The ninety-nine sheep who never get lost are the whole human race as we think we are, or maybe wish we were. The ninety-nine, therefore, are not really at risk here from wolves or anything else; they don’t exist; they don’t represent a real group of people. The one lost sheep stands for all of us, because in different ways, at different times, certainly to different degrees, we all get lost. We’re all in the same boat: tax collectors, so-called “sinners,” Pharisees, scribes, everybody, regardless of when or how we’re “lost” or whether we even believe we are. Not because we’re all miserable or fallen sinners as the Church has sometimes taught; that was never Jesus’ view of people. We’re all in the same boat because we’re all equally worthy of God’s love.

We’re all equally worthy of God’s love. And so, Jesus says, it is more important to God than anything else that we be found. Found and brought to the table. Found, and restored to life lived in the presence of God, so that we can be transformed bit by bit into people who live our lives, day by day, as though God is our God, instead of all the small “g” gods that we allow to rule our lives – the gods of money, status, possessions, popularity, fear, power, hatred – anything we let rule our lives instead of God. We may think of ourselves as searching for God, but it is God, says Jesus, who searches for us. Even if, like the coin, we never even know we’re lost.

God doesn’t give up on us, and so we’re not supposed to give up on each other, either. If God thinks we’re worth pursuing, then we are. And when all is said and done, Jesus’ real critique of the scribes and Pharisees is that they won’t come to the party. In the end, writes one commentator, Jesus tells the scribes and Pharisees “check your superiority at the door and join the dance.”

Or as someone once summarized the Good News of the Gospel: “Lost. Found. Party!”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Gary E. Peluso-Verdend, “Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost,” in New Proclamation, Year C, 2007 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006).
Robert Farrar Capon, “The Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin,”
http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/capon_4012.htm.
Mary H. Schertz, “God’s Party Time,” in The Christian Century, September 4, 2007, http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso.
Sarah Buteux, “Lost and Found,” September 15, 2013, http://firstchurchhadley.org/index/sermons/130915

Choose Life

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Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Luke 14:25-33

This passage in Luke 14 begins with Jesus delivering a seriously troubling description of discipleship. “Hate your family” and “Carry your cross”? Yikes. Before you run for the hills, remember that this is the same Jesus who said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Who sat down to dinner with people that the religious show-offs thought were unsavory. Who welcomed outcasts, healed the sick; who said loving your neighbor was more important than anything else, which would include your neighbor who’s a family member. Somehow, this passage must be consistent with that Jesus.

We need to figure out what “carry your cross” means before we can make sense of “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). Do you assume that maybe there’s one “correct” answer? Were you taught growing up, or maybe you absorbed it in a long life of singing old hymns, that the cross has something to do with suffering and forgiveness of sins? Have you ever wondered what the cross meant for Luke? For Matthew? For Mark or John? For Paul? The New Testament doesn’t have a uniform answer to that question. There is no one correct biblical answer.; it’s a conversation.

What Luke brings to that conversation is an exceptional concern for the poor and marginalized, and a tender heart for the outcast and the forsaken. So, for Luke, “carry your cross” could mean to carry the ministry of Jesus forward by seeing those whom the world overlooks. It could mean favoring the marginalized, even when it might lead to your own discomfort.

In my NRSV version of the Bible, the bold heading before this passage is “The Cost of Discipleship.” But is it really a cost? Or is it a choice? The verses from Deuteronomy come from a long speech Moses delivers to the people Israel after giving them the law, part of the covenant between God and God’s people. Moses explains that they have in front of them two paths: life and prosperity, or death and adversity. If they choose the path of following God’s law, treating each other fairly, welcoming the stranger and caring for the needy, and loving your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18), then the people will thrive. Imagine, for a moment, a society that makes that choice; imagine a society that chooses kindness, fairness, civility, and generosity. It’s true that the Hebrew Scriptures also include some ancient Middle Eastern rules that are odd or even repugnant to us today. But Jesus pointed out that what it all boils down to is “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Do this and live,” he said (Luke 10:28). So, Moses says that if the people choose a different path, a path of ignoring these basic rules of human fairness and kindness, they will perish. “Perish” might sound like a threat of divine punishment, but it’s just logical consequences. If you don’t live in harmony and fairness with the people you encounter, the consequence is discord, enmity, strife, and violence. If you don’t care for the needy, you’ll find yourself hunkering down to protect your stuff because you’re afraid someone will try to take it from you. If you don’t take care of the earth that is our home, it won’t take care of us. Consequences. God says, “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”

Choose life. If we think of our faith as being primarily about what it costs, about what we give up, what we sacrifice, then we’re forgetting that life – all of life – is full of choices that cost us. We’re limited beings and very often when we choose one path it means we have to give up another path. Parenthood, marriage, careers, education – anything that takes commitment and effort has a cost. But that isn’t why we choose them, is it? Even when we know our choice will impact our lives in huge and unforeseen ways, even when we know there will be a “cost,” what we’re more likely to feel when we take the job, embark on the marriage, or extend ourselves in generosity is joy and gratitude, a sense of rightness, or in Christian terms, a sense of calling.

That is what the cross means here in Luke. One commentator writes, “The cross is not unique but representative of what life is. To carry your cross is to carry the choices and burdens and realities of a life that has made a certain commitment – a commitment to a way of life that is committed to bringing about the Kingdom of God here and now. That’s certainly what it meant for Jesus.”

What about the hating your family thing? Is Jesus ignoring “Honor thy father and thy mother,” one of the Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 5:16, Exodus 20:12)? I’ve known a number of people who had to choose between a relationship with a family member and their own integrity or well-being. For Luke’s audience, following Jesus would have put family relationships at risk. And so even here, Jesus is saying, choose life; choose what will bring life, wholeness, shalom, to you and to the whole world.

What a different way of being it is if we think of the cross as a way of choosing life, rather than fixating on death. This isn’t to say Jesus’ death doesn’t matter. It’s encourages a conversation about why it matters. Maybe it matters for Luke because the cross was Jesus standing up to empire, resisting the powers that dominate, oppress, and enslave.

I quoted Barbara Ehrenreich on August 10, and I am drawn to her wisdom again. She was asked in an interview what she would give up to live in a more human world. She answered, “I think we shouldn’t think of what we would give up to have a more human world; we should think of what we would gain.”

Choose life.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Karoline Lewis, “Carrying the Cross,” August 28, 2016,
http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4706.

Make Room

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Luke 14:1, 7-14

Here in Luke 14, we find Jesus invited to dinner at the home of a leader of the Pharisees. Jesus’ relationship with the Pharisees was mixed. In the previous chapter, some Pharisees are concerned enough about Jesus’ safety that they warn him to leave Jerusalem because Herod wants him dead (Luke 13:31). However, Jesus repeatedly challenges the Pharisees’ interpretation of the Sabbath and they don’t seem to like the company he keeps (Luke 5:30). Maybe they invite him to dinner because they want to expose him to a better set of friends. Whatever the reason for the invitation, the relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees is tense enough that while Jesus is at the meal, the other guests are “watching him closely” (14:1).

At the same time, Jesus is watching them. He notices where people sit, who is talking to whom, who is present, and who is missing. This leads him to offer two related teachings.

The first concerns seating arrangements. The seating chart in this highly stratified, honor/shame culture would have placed the most important guests, the ones who could do the host the most favors or improve the host’s standing, closest to the host. Jesus paraphrases Proverbs 25:6-7, warning against social overreaching. “Do not . . . stand in the place of the great,” Proverbs warns, “for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble” (25:6–7). It would be absolutely mortifying to have your host ask you to move to a lower place at dinner, and a remarkable honor to be invited to a better seat. What Jesus says is just common sense. The other dinner guests are probably nodding their heads in agreement at this wisdom.

Then Jesus goes on to advise his host not to invite those people to dinner who could repay him in any way but instead to invite the undesirables of the world, even the unclean. At this, the guests likely stop nodding; I suspect their jaws drop. To begin with, Jesus is saying this to his host in a culture in which you are supposed to ingratiate yourself to your host. Further, this is a world in which the exchange of mutual obligations was simply the way things worked. The way you gained status was through a system of mutual patronage: you did people favors who then owed you; they did the same for you and so on. What Jesus has said is not just counter-cultural; it’s ludicrous, even offensive.

As David Lose writes, “Which is probably how you know it’s of God.”

It’s important to remember who the audience is in this text. Jesus is speaking to the guests of a leader of the Pharisees. Most of these folks are likely rather high status. Jesus doesn’t call the marginalized, poor, and often-overlooked servants at the party to humble themselves. He’s telling the privileged to move over and make room.

Programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, known as “DEI,” have come under fire recently. The argument is that these programs are discriminatory, favoring certain groups over others, thereby undermining the principle of equal treatment for all individuals. That argument ignores the reality Jesus observed: People are not treated equally in a stratified culture, and that includes our culture and pretty much every culture I’ve encountered. Some people are already privileged, already included, already reaping the benefits of high status while others are left out because of poverty, lack of education, racism, sexism, and other ways we stratify our society. Some people have the ability and the resources to achieve in whatever way a society, ancient or contemporary, perceives is important. Others do not. DEI doesn’t “discriminate,” it fixes a problem that a stratified society creates. Jesus’ advice here couldn’t be more clear: Bring everyone to the table. Give everyone a chance to enjoy God’s abundance, so often enjoyed only by a few. Make space for the people on the margins, regardless of whether that will increase your own status or success. Share the wealth. Make room.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2013/10/luke-14-7-14/.
Craig S. Keener, The Christian Century, August 10, 2022, https://www.christiancentury.org/lectionary/august-28-ordinary-22c-luke-14-1-7-14
E. Trey Clark, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-22-3/commentary-on-luke-141-7-14-6
Mitzi J. Smith, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-22-3/commentary-on-luke-141-7-14-4