by Jean Allen So, Jesus just finished shutting up the Sadducees about life after death and along comes some Pharisees to test him some more. They ask him what the greatest commandment is and we all know his answer. His answer was in no way inflammatory; in fact, it was pretty mainstream in the Jewish religion having been given to them in Deuteronomy, which…

by Jean Allen – It has been customary to assume the king in the parable of the wedding banquet is God but many scholars question this assumption. While the king does demonstrate some lovely Godlike actions (inviting the poor and downtrodden after the rude rejection by the well-to-do), the parable also demonstrates some actions that…

by Jean Allen In this parable where the tenants, who refuse to give the landowner his produce, beat and kill the landowner’s representatives and end up murdering his son, it’s easy to assume the landowner represents God. Not so. In Jesus’s day, heavy taxation, debts and crop failures forced many peasant farmers to lose their…

by Jean Allen At first glance, this Gospel parable seems to be just encouraging us to do God’s will rather than saying we will but never getting around to it. Fair enough. That’s important. But Jesus wasn’t just giving a lesson in general to his followers…

– by Jean Allen The world operates on a certain sense of justice and this kind of justice is challenged in today’s Gospel of the landowner who paid the workers who were hired last the same as the workers who were hired early in the day. The world’s sense of justice is comparative and often…

– by Jean Allen We have all read this text about the slave that was forgiven a huge debt by his master but then went out and demanded repayment from those who owed money to him and refused to forgive them their debts and thought, “What a terrible person!” But it doesn’t occur to us…

– by Jean Allen This is one Gospel I’d be extremely leery of taking literally as written without taking into consideration the context plus Jesus’s overarching mission. Jesus told his followers how to deal with someone who sins against them: speak to them and if that doesn’t work, take witnesses to speak to them and…

– by Jean Allen “Get behind me, Satan!” Who among us has not thought, “Whoa! That’s a pretty harsh thing to say to a concerned friend!” Perhaps it would be less of an over-the-top insult and more accurate if the translation had been, “Get behind me, Peter. Don’t tempt me with your worldly perception of…

by Jean Allen The Gospel of the Canaanite woman begging Jesus to heal her daughter, arguing that even dogs eat the crumbs from the table, is a tough one to digest. However, I fully believe Jesus knew he was going to heal the daughter and his resistance to the woman was an object lesson to…