A Review of Social Justice in the Stories of Jesus

I am happy to share that the first review of my book, Social Justice in the Stories of Jesus: The Ethical Challenge of the Parables, has just been published in the journal Studies in Christian Ethics. Professor Edwina Pio concludes, “the book is a fabulous and crucial work of how the parables of Jesus are relevant at the micro (individual), meso (organisational/community), and macro (country/world) levels in our explosive, generous, wonderful world.” 

I am grateful for her careful reading and to see that the key themes of the parables come through to reviewers. According to Pio, the book “shows us how one can be contemplative and pragmatic on issues of social justice”—picking up on the focus of contemplation and action that marks the spirit of the Sisters of Mercy. In my view, one of the most exciting features of the book is the way it highlights the voices and perspectives of the Sisters of Mercy, with Sisters contributing a reflection on each parable that I explore. 

Pio also notes, “The parables are a call of sacredness, often a tiny speck of hope and light in our volatile, frequently dark world.” 

For those of us looking for light and hope today, the invitation of the parables to see our fellow humans in new ways and to engage the world through an ethic of love, mercy, and justice remains as timely as ever.

You can see the complete review here.

The Parables of Jesus: An Invitation to Reflect on Our World in 2025

I recently had the opportunity to read a brief selection from my book, Social Justice in the Stories of Jesus: The Ethical Challenge of the Parables, at a dinner. I chose to read from the concluding chapter where I drew out the shared themes of the parables, those ideas that are touched on in different ways in different parables, but seem to be reflected in the parables as a whole. With that reading in mind, I am reflecting on the impact of some of the recent executive orders that many (including me) are experiencing as disruptive, disturbing, and cruel, and some of which the courts have paused due to their being illegal or unconstitutional. I am trying to discern my own response, particularly as it is informed by my work at a Catholic university, my scholarship as a theologian, and my values as a Christian. As part of that, I thought I would revisit the themes of the parables as I explored them in my book and see what insights that exercise might offer.

Here are eight themes of the parables as I discern them:

1. The parables of Jesus assert the dignity, value, and worth of every person.
2. The parables are infused with the theme of concern and responsibility for the needs of those whose dignity is compromised or overlooked.
3. The parables show us that compassion is not merely an obligation but rather a visceral, human response to the suffering of others that motivates action to relieve that suffering.
4. Parables remind us of the reality of the interconnectedness of all persons, whether it is recognized or not. Pope Francis put it concisely this way: “We are all really responsible for all.” Theologians connect this theme with the ancient concept of the Common Good—a state of being where everyone has what they need in order to thrive.
5. Just as they promote compassion, the parables draw explicit attention to matters of justice. True mercy attends to matters of justice and injustice and seeks to remedy injustice out of concern for those who suffer as a result.
6. In many parables Jesus gives attention to the beauty and intricacy of the created world, inviting readers to see themselves as part of this larger community of life. As an expansion of the notion of the interconnectedness of all persons we encounter in the parables the interconnectedness of humans with all of the natural world. Humans, while unique, are not separate from the natural world, but actually quite literally part of it.
7. The parables highlight that the small moments, actions, and choices of daily life are, in the divine economy, the big moments. Ordinary daily life encounters and decisions may seem insignificant but they are actually where God’s kingdom is enacted or contradicted.
8. Parables do not give simple instructions to do this or that but rather invite readers to open their eyes and imagine their world differently in light of values of love, mercy, and justice, and then to live accordingly. What that looks like will be different in each new and unimagined circumstance we find ourselves in.

Ultimately the parables offer an imaginative vision of a just and merciful world in which readers are invited to contribute to human flourishing. It is a world where all creatures are reverenced and respected as a part of all that exists. It is also a world in which pain, suffering, and injustice exist and must be faced. In such a world of chaos and struggle, compassion for others and a concern for the well-being of others motivates a response of love and concern for all such suffering. In addition, the response of love is one that faces reality head on, while recognizing the limited scope of our individual grasp of it. In such a way, the person who lives in mercy recognizes their need of others, and even the need of the oppressor to receive and experience mercy, so that the community can be restored and achieve its highest potential. The parables do not seem to assume that all will embrace this mercy and live into it; but they present the listener with the reality that the time to choose it is the present moment, and the place to experience it is wherever one is at the moment.

With these thoughts in mind, my hope is that we all may find in this moment of challenge an invitation to revisit our own values, consider the forces which shape our beliefs, and discern what love, mercy, and justice might look like in 2025.

 

Social Justice in the Stories of Jesus

I'm excited to announce that my new book, Social Justice in the Stories of Jesus: The Ethical Challenge of the Parables, is now available. I wrote this book for all who have an interest in what Jesus taught and how he taught it, but who also may be interested to consider how aspects of his message have been eclipsed over the centuries through modes of interpretation that either miss the point or, worse, fit the teaching of Jesus into a box in which it really can't be contained. With an eye toward first-century culture and the role of stories in antiquity, this book examines how the teaching of Jesus has something to say to all of us today as we wrestle with some very complex and daunting societal and human rights issues.

The idea for this book started early in my time at Carlow University when I began teaching a new kind of course that is unique to Carlow: a Contemplation and Action course. These courses invite first-year students to explore a particular topic in the liberal arts as they learn about the heritage and values of the Sisters of Mercy. At the same time, they engage in a small act of mercy each day throughout the course, and reflect on that activity in conjunction with the readings about the Sisters of Mercy and the subject matter of the course. As a biblical scholar, it seemed obvious to me that the parables--short stories told by Jesus to challenge, provoke, and engage his listeners in reflection on their own values and actions--would be a great area of exploration for this course. And I was right! But the challenge for me was to find a textbook that both provided an accessible introduction to understanding parables in their original context (many students [and adults for that matter] do not even know what a parable is) as well as linkages to the possible implications of those parables in our world today. In the end, I chose Amy-Jill Levine's excellent book, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi, which provides a great entry point, but is a little advanced in some regards for first-year students with no background in the academic study of religion. As I taught the course over several years and connected the parables with the concept of mercy as lived out by the Sisters of Mercy, I began to see that there was a need for a book that could explicitly make those connections and also share them with others at an accessible level. 

And so I began working on this book in 2018. Since that time, it feels like the world has changed dramatically in some unpredictable and scary ways. Not only the world but it seems that segments of north American Christianity have been changing as well, to the point where messages of exclusion, hatred, and intolerance--things that one would think were incompatible with the love of Jesus for people in need--are praised as virtues. Writing and teaching on the parables in the context of our increasingly fragmented religious, political, and social worlds made it clear to me that this book was more needed than I originally even considered. My hope is that this book will be an encouragement to people of goodwill to engage in the kinds of contemplation and action that are needed in our world today in the face of injustice and inhumanity. 

Social Justice in the Stories of Jesus: The Ethical Challenge of the Parables is published by Wiley-Blackwell and will be in print January 9, 2024.

The Unique Contributions of Luke's Gospel

Today is the feast day of St. Luke and thus a fitting day to recognize some of the remarkable contributions of Luke’s Gospel to our understanding of Jesus and his message.

First, as is well known, the Gospel of Luke has a clear emphasis on the good news being for the poor, the sick, and those on the margins of society: the gospel is “good news” for all people, not just those who outwardly appear to be favored by God. (See Luke 4:16-21)

Second, Luke alone includes some of the best known parables of Jesus. Without Luke we would not know of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) or the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). The parable of the Good Samaritan is itself a powerful illustration of mercy and compassion for those in need, and a reminder that all people are our neighbors. It thus ties in directly with the first point above about Luke’s emphasis on the good news being for all people.

Third, Luke preserves some very early songs from the first century. These are particularly to be found in the birth narrative. In the first two chapters of the Gospel of Luke, four different characters respond to news of God’s salvation with joyful song that sounds very much like the psalmody of the Jewish Scriptures and the words of the prophets. Like characters in biblical narratives and other Jewish texts, they respond to good news with a psalm of praise. These four psalms are commonly referred to by their Latin names. Mary’s song is the Magnificat (1:46–55), Zechariah’s is the Benedictus (1:68–79), the angels’ song of praise is the Gloria in excelsis (2:14), and Simeon’s is the Nunc Dimittis (2:29–32). By quoting these four songs or parts of songs, Luke has preserved for us a rich treasure and gives us a glimpse into some of the earliest ways in which the advent of Jesus was celebrated through song and poetry in the early church.

For our vision of Jesus and the events and significance of his life, we owe much to Luke and his careful historical and literary work. We also can be thankful today that he had an ear for songs and hymns, and that he chose to include them in his Gospel for the benefit of all of his readers.

For more on Luke, see this reflection from the FaithND website.

For more specifically on the hymns in Luke's Gospel, see chapter six of my latest book.

A Guest Lecture on the Banquet Parables

Professor Jack Alverson, co-chair of the humanities department and professor of theology here at Carlow for 25 years, gave a guest lecture in my parables course. He spoke on the great banquet parables in Matthew 22 and Luke 14, and my students and I were very fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience a class session by a master teacher like Dr. Alverson.

He introduced the class to hermeneutical philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s notion of a threefold process of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. With regard to parables, the initial setting of a parable is familiar and orients the reader to the short story which is to unfold. In the case of the banquet parables, a king holds a wedding banquet for his son and invites guests. Readers and hearers are immediately drawn into the story since people know about royalty and they know about weddings, wedding invitations, and all that goes with such an event. Even accounting for cultural differences across time, space, and cultures, the setting is familiar enough to orient the reader.

Disorientation occurs when something in the parable catches us off guard, surprises us, or disturbs us. In these parables, we begin to be disoriented as the invited guests decline the invitation. Although this may not seem all that odd in our day, professor Alverson explained to the class that in ancient Mediterranean society, such a refusal would have been seen as highly insulting. But where we become really disoriented is through the violence that results, particularly in Matthew’s telling of this parable. Inexplicably, some of the invitees murder the messengers with the result that the king send his troops to kill those individuals and burn their city. At the beginning of class, my students’ reactions to this parable focused on being confused at the meaning of such details, and also of their inclusion in Matthew but their omission in Luke. Further disorientation occurs as the king invites others and eventually compels people off of the streets to come to the wedding. Finally, in Matthew, one such guest who was not wearing wedding clothes (why would he be, if he was a person just dragged in from the streets?) is confronted by the king about his clothing and then bound and thrown out to where there “is weeping and gnashing of teeth.” How such an unpopular banquet with a vindictive,  murderous, fashion loving, and unpredictable king represents the kingdom of heaven is indeed a puzzle. Disorientation has fully set in!

Reorientation then occurs as listeners puzzle over the point of the parable and begin to come to grips with the challenge that the parable presents. In this way, parables invite the listener or reader to see the world in a new way. In particular, to consider that the arrival of the kingdom, in the person of Jesus, is not only surprising but also disturbing.

Comparing the two versions of the parable in Matthew and Luke can help us to appreciate the unique emphases of each gospel, and also make sense of what the parable would have meant to the audiences that first heard it from the mouth of Jesus. By framing the parables within their narratives in different ways, and by including different details, Luke and Matthew have told it in a way that speaks to their own concerns and perhaps the issues facing their own readers, a generation or more after the period in which Jesus actually spoke this parable. Matthew thus seems to be confronting the problem of religious certainty, by framing the parable as a response to the attitudes of certain Pharisees. Those most certain that they understand the messianic kingdom and are part of it should think twice; they may actually be the ones who are outside of it. Luke, on the other hand, seems to be emphasizing the extent to which the kingdom is the place where all are welcome, particularly the poor and those of low social status: those that are brought into the banquet at the end when the rest refused. This again offers a challenge to the wealthy and privileged who think their place in the kingdom is assured, but this is a different challenge than the one put forward in Matthew’s gospel.

Naturally we were unable to address all the questions that parables of these kinds raise, and the discussion here only scratches the surface. The parables of Jesus are designed to provoke, challenge, and cause readers to question what this means and how it can be so. But Dr. Alverson helped us understand these parables a little more clearly as he reinforced many of the concepts we had been engaging with throughout the semester. He also gave the class some new language to use (orientation; disorientation; reorientation) which provides a very useful framework for identifying the challenge of each parable that we will read in the remainder of the semester.

Mercy Education as I Saw it this Week

As a biblical scholar and an educator in a Sisters of Mercy university, this past week was a particularly rich one on the Carlow campus. The events below illustrate in practical terms some of the ways that the mercy tradition infuses the Carlow experience.

On Tuesday, the Center for Mercy Heritage hosted a lecture on “Mercy in the Hebrew Scriptures” with Rabbi Bisno from the Rodef Shalom congregation, just down the road from Carlow. This is one of several special events held at Carlow this year as part of the Jubilee Year of Mercy initiated by Pope Francis. Students learned about the place of mercy in the Hebrew Scriptures as well as in the rabbinic tradition, and were able to see many similarities and some differences between Jewish and Christian views of mercy.

On Wednesday, Campus Ministry hosted a panel on understanding Islam: “The Muslim Next Door.” Two Carlow students were on this panel as well as several individuals from the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh (Wasi Mohamed, Humza Ahmed, and Kelcey Sharkas) and Dr. Sebnem Unlu from the Turkish Cultural Center of Pittsburgh. In light of some of the negative rhetoric about Muslims in the media, this forum provided an opportunity for open dialogue and a chance to understand our Muslim students and neighbors better.

On Friday, my Parables of Jesus class met in the Carlow Art Gallery to view the “Observation and Exploration” exhibit and to have a talk and discussion with the two artists whose work makes up this exhibit, Dale Huffman and Bill DeBernardi (both faculty members in the Art Department). Dale and Bill also gave a gallery talk later in the day open to the entire university community. There were many connections between their work and the work of reading, interpreting, and responding to parables. Not least of which was the way in which these works repay careful and sustained observation. What may appear as a simple detail at first actually may play an important role in focusing attention and raising important questions about the significance of the piece. My students will be discussing these kinds of connections in our next class.

Taken together, these snapshots from this week at Carlow highlight to me the great value of an education grounded in the liberal arts, and specifically in the Mercy tradition. Students (and faculty and staff) have opportunities to engage with people from a wide variety of backgrounds and traditions, to encounter familiar ideas in new ways, to challenge prevailing cultural stereotypes, and to interact about the things in our lives that connect us as humans. As a biblical scholar and educator, it is highly gratifying to work within a community that encourages questions like “what is mercy?”, “who is my neighbor?”, and “how can we learn to observe the world around us in new ways?” These kinds of questions and these kinds of learning opportunities seem essential for an education to be truly transformational. 

The Parables of Jesus: Ancient Stories with Enduring Meaning

In July I posted about the significance of contemplation and action here at Carlow University. These two dimensions of Christian spirituality and practice are integral to the heritage of the Sisters of Mercy and are also a key feature of Carlow’s new general education curriculum, the Carlow Compass. In contemplation and action courses second semester students are challenged to reflect on an issue from the perspective of a particular academic discipline, and to choose a small but meaningful act of service which they will practice throughout the semester. We are calling it “a small act of mercy.” Students will reflect on this act in conversation with the course readings, in discussion with their classmates, and in their own times of reflection. In January the first round of contemplation and action courses will be offered, and among them will be my course “The Parables of Jesus: Ancient Stories with Enduring Meaning.”

Here is the course description from the syllabus:

This course examines one of the most noteworthy aspects of the teaching style of Jesus: his use of simple stories to engage his listeners and to challenge them to consider new ways of understanding the world and their place in it. Our exploration of the parables of Jesus will consider what we can learn from them both in terms of what they teach and also in terms of how they communicate. Since justice, mercy, and virtue are prominent themes in the parables, this Contemplation and Action course allows ample opportunity for students to reflect on Carlow University’s Mercy heritage with its commitment to service, social responsibility, and ethical reasoning. In addition to course readings, reflection papers, class discussion, and the composition of their own parables, students will also engage in small act of service throughout the semester. These activities will become part of a reflective framework by which they can begin to hone their personal ethic and perspective on social responsibility in light of the Mercy tradition. 

For this course I have selected Amy Jill Levine’s Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi as the primary text. Her analysis of the parables within their first century Jewish context is very illuminating. Those familiar with her work will not be surprised to learn that in this volume she challenges a number of “traditional” readings of the parables, particularly those interpretations that present Judaism in a negative light and Christianity as a refreshing alternative to the stale legalism and hypocrisy of the Pharisees. She shows that in many cases such readings derive from a kind of latent (or blatant) anti-Judaism, and that these readings are not supported by sound exegesis. Instead, she challenges readers to hear the parables as first century Jews would have heard them, and as coming from a first-century Jewish teacher. In this way, we can hear the challenge of each parable anew, and then consider the challenge it may offer contemporary readers. While she does not always succeed in forwarding a new or better reading of every parable, her placing of each in its historical context is commendable and provides excellent background material with which to work. And though this will be my first time teaching this course with this textbook, it seems to me that this volume will be accessible to undergraduate students.

In addition to Levine’s book students will use Louise Schottroff’s volume, The Parables of Jesus, to help them do some further research on some parables of their choosing. In a completely different vein, students will read Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son in which he reflects on his sustained encounter with Rembrandt’s painting of this important scene within the parable. In many ways, his reflections move well beyond the kind of historical and exegetical work we will be doing in class. And I will be interested to see how students engage with his work at the end of the semester.