All 47 parables provoke us to look at our attitudes towards each other. Do we behave maturely and respectfully? Will everyone know that God really and truly lives amongst us?

This ‘looking' sounds a little like Lent.

Parables are as ageless as they are contemporary. We've heard them many times yet some remain straight forward and others more complicated.

The unforgiving debtor (Matthew 18:21-35) simply asks: can we likewise play generosity forward when we didn't protest when accepting another generosity.

The unscrupulous judge & the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8) encourages us never to stop praying and hoping no matter the severity of being in a no-win situation.

The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) directly states to do the right thing is often about slicing through prejudices, financial classes and warnings not to get involved. No time for any risk assessment.

I find myself slightly defensive with the parable about the vineyard workers. (Matthew 20:1-16) I say it's unfair to give the same rate of pay regardless of hours worked. As an ex-union delegate, I would hope Jesus would be sitting on our workers side of the negotiating table, particularly presenting the argument for the living wage.

But the bottom line is this: - God's indescribable graciousness is for all. God's call to all, stretches right ‘across the board'. There's no jostling for position whether we've lived the Gospel all our lives or at a deathbed conversion.

The most touchingly beautiful parable, is about God's redeeming love contained in the parable of the prodigal son. (Luke 15:11-32)

At a family level, it's about a father and his 2 sons, tough love, selfishness, growing up pains, integration, sibling rivalry, but above all, it's about the ease with which God pardons.

One son asks for his inheritance. Heading off to live the high life in the big city, until that inevitable day arrives when there were insufficient funds. At the point of seeing what sin had turned him into i.e. acting like a pig - did he simultaneously come to realize that God's forgiving love awaits him. In that moment he decides to head home.

The father didn't drill about his bedraggled state, but rushes to greet him, embraces him, slips a ring on his finger, sandals on his barefeet, flings a robe over his shoulders and throws a party to celebrate.

"Bring the calf we have been fattening and kill it. We are going to have it to feast".

I can smell that joint of meat on the spit - can you?

The other son catches up with these unfolding events when he hears music coming from the house. The reconciliatory party in full swing, he confronts his father demanding clarification. Fair enough I say, he'd kept the farm running while short staffed.

"I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed your orders, yet you never offered me so much as a kid for me to celebrate with my friends". He protested.

"All I have is yours." (Luke 15:31) the father says back to him.

The beautiful truth stares him in the face: the need to mature from believing that the ‘law brings reward' mentality is enough to bring us to our truest inner self. It's not! God's gift of forgiveness is to be experienced. The difference between the 2 brothers is one had discovered this for himself and other had not.

You see, we are already God's gift. This is not so much earnt through obedience to the law only, but discovering at that Easter weekend, how God has loved us right from the get go. Granting forgiveness isn't solely about recognising how sin can turn us into a toxic human person, but that pardoning is so just so much greater.

It's certainly not a mystery to knock our heads against, but one of entering into it.

So now, what about a prodigal mother and her 2 daughters. That's for another time!

• Sue Seconi - is a member of the Catholic Parish of Whanganui - Te Parihi Katorika Ki Whanganui
• First published by Kotahi Ano. Reproduced with permission of the author.

Jesus Christ was the master storyteller. The people connected with his parables because they related to issues of immense personal importance, such as unjust judges, rowdy neighbours, bullying employers, disastrously dry weather. But he always left plenty of room for the imagination of his listeners to make connections. That is why, two thousand years later, his parables can still spark immense interest. People still feel Jesus is talking about them and their problems.

Take the following parable about greed and the misuse of power. It is about a rich man, Dives, and a poverty-stricken Lazarus (Luke 16: 1-31). There is the opening scene. Dives was extravagantly clothed in purple and linen garments. He daily ate excessively on the very best foods. The purple dye of his clothes was reserved only to those who were especially wealthy and powerful, a social class distinguished by its oppression of the poor.

Lazarus, however, was not only an impoverished beggar but he was also covered in weeping sores. Lazarus' sores place him well below even the status of a beggar. Lazarus was socially a non-person. Exhausted and starving, Lazarus had no energy to defend himself against the equally ravenous street dogs. They awaited his death in the hope of relieving their hunger. The storyteller notes that Lazarus lay at the gate of the rich man (v.19). He was so hungry that he had no energy to sit upright which would have given him some chance to chase the dogs away.

In scene two the roles were reversed. The rich man was in hell, "where he is being tormented…[and ] in agony in [its] flames" (vv. 23-24). Lazarus, by contrast, was at peace beside the prophet Abraham (v. 23). The rich man struggled to get things back to his past position of wealth and power by bullying. As someone used to commanding social inferiors, the rich man addressed Abraham in a lordly manner. Lazarus must intercede for him. Abraham refused. The rich man must change his entire life and become committed to justice and solidarity with the oppressed.

Dives still did not get the message. He was so accustomed to having his commands obeyed, because of his wealth and power, that he tried once more to manipulate Abraham into doing what he wanted. Wealth had blinded him to the realities of poverty and his own role in the oppression of the poor. So he pleaded for special treatment for his family: "if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent"(v.30). Abraham sharply refused. He again reminded Dives of the principle of solidarity, that is, all peoples are equal before God. His family had been warned enough. No new sign will bring them to their senses, spiritually blinded by their own self-importance.

As in the time of Jesus, we can make connections with our present world. We know that the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer. On the global scene capitalism is ruling with less and less controls and concern for the common good. Economic rationalism, as it emerged in the 1980s, takes for granted that profit is the sole measure of value and the economics profession serves as its priesthood. Think of the often staggering amounts of payouts to executives of large corporations, especially in times of economic turbulence. Little wonder that people complain that greed, not concern for the equitable distribution of wealth, is outrageously out of control in the senior levels of the business world! The moral of the story of Dives and Lazarus remains relevant. That is the sign of a master storyteller.

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Gerald A. Arbuckle, sm, is the author of Laughing with God: Humor, Culture, and Transformation (2008).

5/4/12

Since loyalty is often the pre-eminent virtue in corporate and other institutions, the pressure to maintain silence is considerable. People daring to break the code of secrecy and silence to reveal unethical behaviour are in danger of automatic expulsion from the group. It is rare indeed for a whistleblower to survive without significant personal cost to themselves. They may suffer severe consequences for their integrity.

The responsibility for exposing ethical cover-ups increases as one moves higher in the hierarchical structures of an organization. All ordinary avenues for dealing with unethical practices need to be followed before a person reveals them to outsiders. However, whistleblowers may have no option but to go public, especially when they reasonably judge they will not be listened to by the appropriate internal authorities. This is especially a challenge when the whistleblower encounters a culture of corruption so that no one in the organization can be trusted.

Jesus sets the Scene

Jesus confronted the problem of whistleblowing in one of his parables, the parable usually referred to as ‘the parable of the talents.' The parable begins simply with a nobleman about to leave for a distant country in order to be crowned king, despite the fact that his citizens hate him so much that they do not want him back as their ruler (Luke 19: 14). So he calls three of his slaves and gives them each one pound (‘talent') which in the currency of the day is a considerable amount, equal to one hundred days' wages for a common labourer. They are commanded to invest this money: "Do business with these until I come back"(Luke 19: 12).

The central stage of the drama begins when the king returns. How will the king and the slaves react when summoned to give an account of their investments. And how will the king question them? Two of them have been very active and are extravagantly rewarded: the first has made ten pounds, so is given charge over ten cities; the second made five pounds and is to govern five cities (Luke 19: 16-19).

But the third, who in fact is the whistleblower in the story, comes to the king and responds in vivid contrast to the previous slaves. He has buried the pound which evokes an incredibly harsh punishment from the angry king: "…you wicked slave! You knew…that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money into the bank? Then when I returned, I could have collected it with interest" (Luke 19: 23). The pound was immediately taken from him and given to the one who had ten and he would have suffered the same fate as the enemies of the tyrannical: "as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them - bring them here and slaughter them in my presence" (Luke 19: 27).

The traditional understanding of this parable stresses the duty that everyone has to use to the fullest the gifts given us by God.

However, this interpretation has been seriously questioned in light of contemporary social science research. Scripture scholar Luise Schottroff writes that to see the "third slave as the embodiment of people who reject God's righteousness and God's Torah is simply unbearable." In Matthew's text (Matt 25: 14-30) the parable is immediately followed by the great vision of the Last Judgement. The ultimate test before the judgment seat of God will be whether or not we have fed the hungry and clothed the naked (Matt: 25: 31-46). The investments of the two first slaves result in exorbitant monetary returns. To have achieved this they would have had to exploit peasants by demanding increases in such things as rents over property. Or the peasants would have had to take out loans from banks at ridiculously excessive interest rates to save their crops or properties with the consequence of further enslaving them. It was normal to torture and imprison defaulting debtors (Luke 12: 58; Matt 18: 28-34).

Whistleblower

But it is the third slave who refuses to collude in the financially corrupt behaviour of the king and the other two slaves. In other words, the third slave is a whistleblower and suffers the fate of one who refuses to participate in the economic oppression of the poor. The parable, therefore, is a scathing condemnation of contemporary free market economies where unrestrained greed for profits by investment bankers is considered an esteemed virtue.

Contemporary followers of Occupy Wall Street may well be reminding us of the incredible relevance of this parable of Jesus Christ, the Master ethicist (and whistleblower).

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Gerald A. Arbuckle, sm, is the author of Violence, Society, and the Church (2004).