Quick Summary:

Today’s parable from Luke has always been a puzzler. Like an E. M. Escher drawing, it both fascinates and confuses. You won’t find the story in any of the other gospels—only here—where Luke couples it with warnings about wealth that end with the summary statement in verse 13:
No slave can serve two masters; for the slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and wealth.

The wealthy and poor alike are never more visible in the New Testament than they are in Luke’s gospel, where Jesus doesn’t shy away from the economic and social disparities that afflicted the world in his time and place.

There’s a lively debate playing out in Seattle right now about the best strategies for addressing homelessness. There’s no single solution to this complex issue, and no single strategy we as people of faith are compelled to endorse, but our voices belong in the debate. IT’S TIME TO FOLLOW JESUS into the places where economic questions and practices and policies are being discussed and enacted; to ask how we can practice neighbor love in our economic relationships, restructuring public policy in order to serve the common good.