Part 2<\/a>.)<\/b><\/p>\nThe poor indentured farmers of Jesus society were once the owners of the farms they were now working, but had lost their land by defaulting on debt. Jesus called for Jubilee, for all debts to be cancelled, all slaves set free, and all land returned to its original owner. (Luke 4:19) This is where we encounter the multiple layers of this week\u2019s reading. If the poor farmers were the slaves of the elite absentee land owners, the absentee land owners were in a similar relationship to their absentee rulers in Rome. It was Rome that eventually \u201creturned\u201d to Judea, storming in and demanding an account. It was Rome that threw the elites who had failed to govern Judea peacefully into \u201couter darkness\u201d along with everyone else. If we\u2019ve correctly identified the parable\u2019s intended audience, then God is not the absentee landlord who shows up demanding an account of his servants. Rome was. These actions correctly resemble what Rome did to Jerusalem in response to the poor people\u2019s revolt and war with Rome that wealthy elite\u2019s economic exploitation had intrinsically caused. In the gospels Jesus calls for a voluntary year of Jubilee, and, for Matthew\u2019s author, that Jubilee could have circumvented this revolt.<\/p>\n
So what can we derive from this parable in our context today?<\/p>\n
The Jewish wisdom this week\u2019s parable is rooted in teaches us that with what measure we use, it will be measured back to us. If we sow the wind, we will reap the whirlwind. But we can instead sow love, and justice, and compassion, and safety.<\/p>\n
We get to choose what we set in motion. We get to choose what we sow. What kind of world do we want? However we answer that question, we have the agency in our daily choices, big and small, to set in motion the kind of world we desire. We aren\u2019t the only ones who get to choose. Others are setting in motion the kind of world they want, and those of us who desire a world with no injustice, no oppression, no violence must be vigilant. Sowing love doesn\u2019t guarantee we\u2019ll get all we want, but we most definitely won\u2019t get it if we sit back and sow nothing. I\u2019m reminded of the wise words of Dorothy Day:<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.\u201d (Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness<\/i>)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Finding](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1222\/2023\/01\/FindingJesus_CVR2-300x300-1.png\")
Herb\u2019s new book, Finding Jesus:\u00a0A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels<\/i><\/b>, is now available at Renewed Heart Ministries<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If we sow the wind, we will be reaping the whirlwind. But we can instead sow love, and justice, and compassion, and safety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4129,"featured_media":7424,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[729],"tags":[1056,3408,2976,3518,58,3521],"class_list":["post-7442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liberation-theology","tag-economic-justice","tag-harvest","tag-historical-jesus","tag-reaping","tag-social-justice","tag-sowing"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n