How We Live Matters

A complex little story in Luke is the lectionary reading today (Luke 16:19–end).

Briefly, the central character is a rich person who enjoys a fine life while at the gate sits a poor man who has insufficient to meet physical and medical needs. When both died, the poor man went to be with Abraham while the rich man was tormented — a classic role reversal! Later, the tormented rich man asked that the poor man be sent to his family to warn them. Abraham’s response was that there had already been enough warnings given, but each had gone unheeded.

Luke’s Gospel often carries this theme of reversal — the lowly lifted up, the mighty brought down. Mary’s song in the Magnificat (Luke 1) already set that tone. This parable is part of the same vision: a realm of justice where those long ignored are finally honoured.

The first thing I want to say about it is that it is a story and should be read that way. I don’t think it is a discourse on heaven and hell. I don’t think it is meant to give us a description of a physical place of torment with “agony in these flames” and a “great chasm” established between heaven and hell. It is a story with detail, even exaggeration, meant to hold the audience’s attention and make a point.

What strikes me first is that the poor man is invisible. He is lying right at the gate of the rich man’s house. The rich man would have walked past him every single day. And yet he is ignored, disregarded, unseen. Even more, he is unnamed. Actually, in this parable, the rich man is also left unnamed, but he is described by his lifestyle, his privilege, his wealth. The poor man is described only by his wounds, his hunger, his condition. He is defined by his suffering. There is quite a warning in that. Sometimes it is easy to reduce someone to their illness, their poverty, their struggle and forget that they have a name, a story, a history.

In a sense, this story holds up a mirror. It asks uncomfortable questions: Who do I not see? Who sits at my gate? Who is rendered invisible in my world?

Today in our culture, it would be unusual for a beggar with sores to lie at our doorsteps. I’ve never experienced that! Nevertheless, the invisible are still here, the unhoused, the lonely, the migrant worker, women — I needn’t make a long list as I have talked about those who are invisible so many times

I think at the heart of the story is the truth that how we live matters. Not in the sense of securing a reward in the afterlife, but in the way that our choices affect others here and now. Maybe the “great chasm” in the parable is already dug in life, when one person turns away from another’s need. This chasm between rich and poor is already real in this world.  Gated communities, exclusive clubs and underfunded schools. Walls are built that keep people apart.  Maybe, this deliberate segregation is why sometimes compassion feels so hard and is sometimes missing..

So, for me, this parable is not a descriptor of the afterlife but a call to awareness now. It is a story about how I allow chasms to be built in my life. It is a story about what it means to see, to name, to honour the other. 

The challenge is not to speculate about heaven and hell, but to ask: how do I live today so that no one at my gate is unseen, unnamed, or unloved?

Foolish Shepherds and Extravagant Women

The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin (Luke 15:1–10) are often read as simple allegories: God is the shepherd, or God is the woman, seeking out what is lost.

However, as I have said many times, assuming the main character in a parable is God can lead to all sorts of problems. Often God can be given some undesirable traits, which then leads to twisting the parable to explain them away.

Even in today’s text God would be portrayed as a shepherd who abandons ninety-nine sheep or imagined as a woman who seeks a single coin and then squanders the money on an expensive party. So, as much as the feminist theologian in me would love to talk about the image of God as a caring woman, I think it would be wrong to do so from this particular text. Parables should disrupt, unsettle, and provoke questions.

In this story a shepherd with a hundred sheep realises one has wandered off. Ninety-nine remain. Any sensible farmer would cut their losses, protect the majority, and accept the missing one as the cost of doing business. But not this shepherd. This shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to risk everything for the sake of one. It’s foolish, reckless—even irresponsible. And yet, when the sheep is found, the shepherd calls for celebration.

And the same disruptive logic appears in the next parable. A woman with ten silver coins misplaces one. Many people would shrug, have a brief look round, maybe hope it would turn up later, then move on—nine out of ten is still not bad. But this woman lights a lamp, sweeps her house, bends and searches until the coin is found. Then she does something even stranger: she invites her neighbours to a party that may well cost more than the coin itself. Extravagant, irrational joy.

These are parables of disruption. They push against our instinct to write off what seems insignificant, to measure value only by what’s sensible or practical. They are pictures of people who refuse to accept loss, who insist that even what looks expendable is worth the effort of reclaiming.

So, as I muse on these two parables this week, I will ponder these questions:

·       Who are the ones I write off as not worth the search?

·       Who do I quietly count as expendable to protect the ninety-nine?

·       And when the “lost” return, do I celebrate—or, like the Pharisees, grumble that the wrong people are being welcomed?

Jesus tells these stories not to describe God in human images, but to provoke us into imagining a different kind of community, where the missing are sought out, the overlooked restored, and joy erupts in places where others see only waste.

These are great parables to muse on in the church’s season of Ordinary Time—that long, green stretch of the year where nothing is dramatic or festive. Ordinary Time is about the daily work of faith: the steady growth, the slow noticing, the patient tending of what might otherwise be forgotten. These parables remind us that in the midst of the ordinary, extraordinary things can happen. A single sheep matters. A single coin matters. A single life matters. Ordinary faith means keeping watch for what’s missing, sweeping through the dust, and daring to rejoice over the smallest restoration.

So, these parables aren’t to remind us that God is like a shepherd or a woman, but that in the rhythm of everyday life there is an invitation to act with extravagant generosity, reckless inclusion, and disruptive joy.