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I once heard a priest say from the pulpit that she was glad there are three readings every Sunday because it meant she didn’t have to preach on the scary passages. I promised myself in that moment never to shrink away from a hard passage of Scripture. The parable we’ll be looking at today, the … Continue reading The Parable of the Unjust Steward

Last time we looked at the much beloved parable traditionally known as the Prodigal Son. Today we’re looking at the sequel to that story, which focuses on the elder brother’s response to its events. As always, if you don’t have time or interest in going through the whole study, feel free to skip down to … Continue reading The Parable of the Merciful Father and His Dutiful Son

Last time, we saw how Jesus responded to a group of religious leaders who didn’t like the crowd he was attracting by telling them a series of parables about the “joy in heaven” at finding the lost. Over the next two posts we’ll look at the third of these parables, traditionally known as the Parable … Continue reading The Parable of the Merciful Father and His Wasteful Son

Today we leave Matthew’s parables discourse behind and start another sequence of parables, scattered throughout the middle chapters of Luke. If Matthew’s were “parables of the Kingdom,” we might call these parables in Luke “parables of the lost and found.” And so, appropriately, today we’ll look at the first two of these, the Parables of … Continue reading The Parables of the Lost Sheep and Lost Coin

So far we’ve looked at the seven parables that make up the ‘parables discourse’ in Matthew 13. But guess what? The conclusion of that discourse as a whole includes another parable, and it’s the oddest of the bunch. So today, we’ll be looking at that parable through the lens of the discourse as a whole. … Continue reading Scribes for the Kingdom (And the Matthew 13 Parables Discourse in Review)