There are passages of the New Testament that I’ve always found puzzling and have left it at that – not digging in deep in order to try to understand them.  That may be kinda weird for a NT scholar, but it is just as common as it is weird.  Some of these puzzlers involve the parables of Jesus.  Recently I’ve decided to put in the brain work to figure them out, and I have – to my own satisfaction, at least.  And hey, who else do I need to satisfy?

Here are two examples.  I have long thought neither of these parables made sense, and I’ve thought that whatever sense they made, they sure seemed to stand at odds with one another.

Both are found only in the Gospel of the Luke, the Gospel most concerned to portray Jesus’ views on wealth and money, and both are in fact about money:

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