Beginning

Jesus: Is it permitted by traditions and the Hebrew Scriptures to heal people on the Sabbath, or is it forbidden?

Jesus: ⁵ Would any single one of you leave his son^[a] or even his ox in a well on the Sabbath if he had fallen into it, or would you pull him out immediately?

Jesus: ⁸ Whenever someone invites you to a wedding dinner, don’t sit at the head table. Someone more important than you might also have been invited, ⁹ and your host will have to humiliate you publicly by telling you to give your seat to the other guest and to go find an open seat in the back of the room. ¹⁰ Instead, go and sit in the back of the room. Then your host may find you and say, “My friend! Why are you sitting back here? Come up to this table near the front!” Then you will be publicly honored in front of everyone. ¹¹ Listen, if you lift yourself up, you’ll be put down, but if you humble yourself, you’ll be honored.

Jesus: When you host a dinner or banquet, don’t invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, or your rich neighbors. If you do, they might invite you to a party of their own, and you’ll be repaid for your kindness. ¹³ Instead, invite the poor, the amputees, the cripples, the blind. ¹⁴ Then you’ll be blessed because they can never repay you. Your reward will come from God at the resurrection of the just and good.

Guest: ¹⁵ Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!

Jesus: ¹⁶ A man once hosted a huge banquet and invited many guests. ¹⁷ When the time came, he sent his servant to tell the guests who had agreed to come, “We’re ready! Come now!” ¹⁸ But then every single guest began to make excuses. One said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I just bought some land, and I need to go see it. Please excuse me.” ¹⁹ Another said, “So sorry. I just bought five pairs of oxen. I need to go check them out. Please excuse me.” ²⁰ Another said, “I just got married, so I can’t come.”

²¹ The servant returned and reported their responses to his master. His master was angry and told the servant, “Go out quickly to the streets and alleys around town and bring the poor, the amputees, the blind, and the cripples.”

²² The servant came back again: “Sir, I’ve done as you said, but there is still more room.” ²³ And the host said, “Well then, go out to the highways and hedges and bring in the complete strangers you find there, until my house is completely full. ²⁴ One thing is for sure, not one single person on the original guest list shall enjoy this banquet.”

Jesus: ²⁶ If any of you come to Me without hating your own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and yes, even your own life, you can’t be My disciple. ²⁷ If you don’t carry your own cross as if to your own execution as you follow Me, you can’t be part of My movement. ²⁸ Just imagine that you want to build a tower. Wouldn’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to be sure you have enough to finish what you start? ²⁹ If you lay the foundation but then can’t afford to finish the tower, everyone will mock you: ³⁰ “Look at that guy who started something that he couldn’t finish!”

³¹ Or imagine a king gearing up to go to war. Wouldn’t he begin by sitting down with his advisors to determine whether his 10,000 troops could defeat the opponent’s 20,000 troops? ³² If not, he’ll send a peace delegation quickly and negotiate a peace treaty. ³³ In the same way, if you want to be My disciple, it will cost you everything. Don’t underestimate that cost!

³⁴ Don’t be like salt that has lost its taste. How can its saltiness be restored? Flavorless salt is absolutely worthless. ³⁵ You can’t even use it as fertilizer, so it’s worth less than manure! Don’t just listen to My words here. Get the deeper meaning.

Pharisees and Religious Scholars: This man welcomes immoral people and enjoys their company over a meal!

Jesus (with another parable): ^3-4 Wouldn’t every single one of you, if you have 100 sheep and lose one, leave the 99 in their grazing lands and go out searching for the lost sheep until you find it? ⁵ When you find the lost sheep, wouldn’t you hoist it up on your shoulders, feeling wonderful? ⁶ And when you go home, wouldn’t you call together your friends and neighbors? Wouldn’t you say, “Come over and celebrate with me, because I’ve found my lost sheep”? ⁷ This is how it is in heaven. They’re happier over one sinner who changes his way of life than they are over 99 good and just people who don’t need to change their ways of life.

⁸ Or imagine a woman who has 10 silver coins. She loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the whole house, and search diligently until that coin is found? ⁹ And when she finds it, doesn’t she invite her friends and neighbors and say, “Celebrate with me! I’ve found that silver coin that I lost”? ¹⁰ Can’t you understand? There is joy in the presence of all God’s messengers over even one sinner who changes his way of life.

¹¹ Once there was this man who had two sons. ¹² One day the younger son came to his father and said, “Father, eventually I’m going to inherit my share of your estate. Rather than waiting until you die, I want you to give me my share now.” And so the father liquidated assets and divided them. ¹³ A few days passed and this younger son gathered all his wealth and set off on a journey to a distant land. Once there he wasted everything he owned on wild living. ¹⁴ He was broke, a terrible famine struck that land, and he felt desperately hungry and in need. ¹⁵ He got a job with one of the locals, who sent him into the fields to feed the pigs. ¹⁶ The young man felt so miserably hungry that he wished he could eat the slop the pigs were eating. Nobody gave him anything.

¹⁷ So he had this moment of self-reflection: “What am I doing here? Back home, my father’s hired servants have plenty of food. Why am I here starving to death? ¹⁸ I’ll get up and return to my father, and I’ll say, ‘Father, I have done wrong—wrong against God and against you. ¹⁹ I have forfeited any right to be treated like your son, but I’m wondering if you’d treat me as one of your hired servants?’” ²⁰ So he got up and returned to his father. The father looked off in the distance and saw the young man returning. He felt compassion for his son and ran out to him, enfolded him in an embrace, and kissed him.

²¹ The son said, “Father, I have done a terrible wrong in God’s sight and in your sight too. I have forfeited any right to be treated as your son.”

²² But the father turned to his servants and said, “Quick! Bring the best robe we have and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet. ²³ Go get the fattest calf and butcher it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate ²⁴ because my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and has been found.” So they had this huge party.

²⁵ Now the man’s older son was still out in the fields working. He came home at the end of the day and heard music and dancing. ²⁶ He called one of the servants and asked what was going on. ²⁷ The servant said, “Your brother has returned, and your father has butchered the fattest calf to celebrate his safe return.”

²⁸ The older brother got really angry and refused to come inside, so his father came out and pleaded with him to join the celebration. ²⁹ But he argued back, “Listen, all these years I’ve worked hard for you. I’ve never disobeyed one of your orders. But how many times have you even given me a little goat to roast for a party with my friends? Not once! This is not fair! ³⁰ So this son of yours comes, this wasteful delinquent who has spent your hard-earned wealth on loose women, and what do you do? You butcher the fattest calf from our herd!”

³¹ The father replied, “My son, you are always with me, and all I have is yours. ³² Isn’t it right to join in the celebration and be happy? This is your brother we’re talking about. He was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found again!”

Jesus: Once there was a rich and powerful man who had an asset manager. One day, the man received word that his asset manager was squandering his assets.

² The rich man brought in the asset manager and said, “You’ve been accused of wrongdoing. I want a full and accurate accounting of all your financial transactions because you are really close to being fired.”

³ The manager said to himself, “Oh, no! Now what am I going to do? I’m going to lose my job here, and I’m too weak to dig ditches and too proud to beg. ⁴ I have an idea. This plan will mean that I have a lot of hospitable friends when I get fired.”

⁵ So the asset manager set up appointments with each person who owed his master money. He said to the first debtor, “How much do you owe my boss?” ⁶ The debtor replied, “A hundred barrels^[b] of oil.” The manager said, “I’m discounting your bill by half. Just write 50 on this contract.” ⁷ Then he said to the second debtor, “How much do you owe?” This fellow said, “A hundred bales^[c] of wheat.” The manager said, “I’m discounting your debt by 20 percent. Just write down 80 bales on this contract.”

⁸ When the manager’s boss realized what he had done, he congratulated him for at least being clever. That’s how it is: those attuned to this evil age are more clever in dealing with their affairs than the enlightened are in dealing with their affairs!

⁹ Learn some lessons from this crooked but clever asset manager. Realize that the purpose of money is to strengthen friendships, to provide opportunities for being generous and kind. Eventually money will be useless to you—but if you use it generously to serve others, you will be welcomed joyfully into your eternal destination.

¹⁰ If you’re faithful in small-scale matters, you’ll be faithful with far bigger responsibilities. If you’re crooked in small responsibilities, you’ll be no different in bigger things. ¹¹ If you can’t even handle a small thing like money, who’s going to entrust you with spiritual riches that really matter? ¹² If you don’t manage well someone else’s assets that are entrusted to you, who’s going to give over to you important spiritual and personal relationships to manage?

¹³ Imagine you’re a servant and you have two masters giving you orders. What are you going to do when they have conflicting demands? You can’t serve both, so you’ll either hate the first and love the second, or you’ll faithfully serve the first and despise the second. One master is God and the other is money. You can’t serve them both.

Jesus (to the Pharisees): ¹⁵ You’ve made your choice. Your ambition is to look good in front of other people, not God. But God sees through to your hearts. He values things differently from you. The goals you and your peers are reaching for God detests.

¹⁶ The law and the prophets had their role until the coming of John the Baptist. Since John’s arrival, the good news of the kingdom of God has been taught while people are clamoring to enter it. ¹⁷ That’s not to say that God’s rules for living are useless. The stars in the sky and the earth beneath your feet will pass away before one letter of God’s rules for living become worthless.

¹⁸ Take God’s rules regarding marriage for example. If a man divorces his wife and marries somebody else, then it’s still adultery because that man has broken his vow to God. And if a man marries a woman divorced from her husband, he’s committing adultery for the same reason.

¹⁹ There was this rich man who had everything—purple clothing of fine quality and high fashion, gourmet meals every day, and a large house. ²⁰ Just outside his front gate lay this poor homeless fellow named Lazarus. Lazarus was covered in ugly skin lesions. ²¹ He was so hungry he wished he could scavenge scraps from the rich man’s trash. Dogs would come and lick the sores on his skin. ²² The poor fellow died and was carried on the arms of the heavenly messengers to the embrace of Abraham. Then the rich fellow died and was buried ²³ and found himself in the place of the dead. In his torment, he looked up, and off in the distance he saw Abraham, with Lazarus in his embrace.

²⁴ He shouted out, “Father Abraham! Please show me mercy! Would you send that beggar Lazarus to dip his fingertip in water and cool my tongue? These flames are hot, and I’m in agony!”

²⁵ But Abraham said, “Son, you seem to be forgetting something: your life was full to overflowing with comforts and pleasures, and the life of Lazarus was just as full with suffering and pain. So now is his time of comfort, and now is your time of agony. ²⁶ Besides, a great canyon separates you and us. Nobody can cross over from our side to yours, or from your side to ours.”

²⁷ “Please, Father Abraham, I beg you,” the formerly rich man continued, “send Lazarus to my father’s house. ²⁸ I have five brothers there, and they’re on the same path I was on. If Lazarus warns them, they’ll choose another path and won’t end up here in torment.”

²⁹ But Abraham said, “Why send Lazarus? They already have the law of Moses and the writings of the prophets to instruct them. Let your brothers hear them.”

³⁰ “No, Father Abraham,” he said, “they’re already ignoring the law and the prophets. But if someone came back from the dead, then they’d listen for sure; then they’d change their way of life.”

³¹ Abraham answered, “If they’re not listening to Moses and the prophets, they won’t be convinced even if someone comes back from the dead.”