At the heart of the way Jesus' parables do this is the insight that sometimes we are so enmeshed in a situation that we can't even see ourselves as oppressed. When that is the case we need someone to hold a mirror up which reveals our own situation to us, which allows us to begin to think of ourselves in different terms, and which, when all goes well, can challenge and empower us to change our society and our own lives to those of greater dignity and freedom. In the parable of the unmerciful servant the key question we must ask ourselves is, "Does the king in this parable represent God?" If the answer is yes, we will be led to say many things about divine justice, divine mercy, the actions taken by the servants, and the nature of the Kingdom of God which we would never say if we answered "No, the king in this parable does not represent God." Beyond this, the next questions we must ask ourselves are, "If the king represents (or does not represent) God, then for whom is this parable good news and why? For whom is it not and why not?"

Sin is still at work in our world; it is present in everything we build or create and we are enmeshed in it in ways which make it almost impossible to see ourselves clearly or envision things differently. Jesus' parables -- and this is certainly true of the parable of the unmerciful servant -- give us a unique place to stand from which we can question everything we take for granted otherwise: our notions of justice and mercy, our sense that these complete one another, a sense that God's justice is the same as our own --- only writ very large, the sense that mercy is the weaker and exceptional element in the equation justice and mercy, the notion that if there is a heaven there must also be a hell where we are turned over to torturers as in the parable, and so forth. If sin is at work, the parables are a place where grace reigns and can be encountered and allowed to embrace and change us. When we step into these unique stories, these sacred spaces where we meet the God Jesus knows intimately, we can begin to allow God to free us of the enmeshment that makes us so blind to the systemic evil that touches and tragically distorts everything we know. This is part of the power of Jesus' parables part of the way these often not-so-simple stories reveal a divine power which is made perfect in weakness.

Jesus' parables can easily be domesticated; it takes little effort to turn them into quaint religious stories with some kind of comforting moral. When we do this they are neither truly good news for us or for anyone else except those who are comfortable in their current positions of power and privilege. But Jesus' stories are meant to turn things on their heads, they are meant to subvert the oppressive structures of this world and replace them with the Word of a God who frees and proclaims the dignity of the degraded, the anawim ("little ones") and marginalized of our world. Ash Wednesday found us marked with the cross and commissioned to "Repent and believe in the Gospel." As we move through our Lenten journey to the culmination of Jesus' life in death and resurrection we are asked to examine where we have placed our trust or found our true worth and dignity. If Jesus' parables, including his "antithetical parables" are genuinely Good News to us then perhaps they can empower us to make Jesus' prayer our own in ways that allow God's "will (to) be done and (his) kingdom (to) come on earth as it is in heaven." I sincerely hope so!