Thursday, March 24, 2022https://kuc.org/wp-content/uploads/parable-20.jpg

Going before a Judge, by Christine Hides

Thus, when you go with your accuser before a magistrate, on the way make an effort to settle the case, or you may be dragged before the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you in prison. I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny.” Luke 12:58–59

Reflection: Lent is a kind of New Year’s Eve for spiritual resolutions. On Ash Wednesday, there is an invitation to a Lenten discipline…. Fasting, prayer, giving, Bible study, and refraining from luxurious foods are some of the means we might use to get our spiritual lives back in shape.

In this parable we are warned to tend to our lives before the eschaton, the end time when God’s ultimate plan comes to fruition. Often this is imagined as a divine banquet where we are gathered with God and the community of the faithful through the ages. The lesson of this parable could be “don’t miss the party because you are at court!”

But a life with God isn’t just about some far off future, it is also here, now, in this moment. Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki calls this the “double destiny” of the faithful. “To live deeply and richly in this life through personal and societal structures of love, and to participate everlastingly in the life of God.” May our Lenten disciplines and journeys lead us toward the destiny of divine love.

Prayer: 
Christ of the Lenten journey,
Lead us toward everlasting love.
Amen.