When students in my Old Testament courses contrast the allegedly messy world of the first testament with the allegedly simple, straightforward teachings of Jesus, I know for sure they haven’t read the New Testament lately. When we read the Gospels, not least Jesus’ parables, we discover him saying all sorts of bizarre, borderline offensive things.
Keith Bodner is here to help relieve our confusion. His new book, Exploring the Financial Parables of Jesus: The Economy of Grace and the Generosity of God, gives a tour of God’s “economy of grace” by focusing on “parables with a financial edge.” Indeed, Bodner suggests these parables provide “an excellent point of entry into the larger biblical story.”
Along the way, as Bodner invites us to learn from the parables, he also offers guidance on immersing ourselves in them as readers. The book thus inspires readers to engage a genre of biblical literature Bodner playfully dubs the “TikTok of the New Testament,” while equipping them with tools to engage it well.
Exploring the Financial Parables of Jesus is both extremely accessible and delightful to read. Bodner, a religious studies professor at Crandall University in New Brunswick, Canada, displays a winning passion for good illustrations.
At various points, he likens the plot twists in parables to the endings of M. Night Shyamalan films, reframes the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1–13) as the story of “an Oil Baron and an Embezzler,” and describes the Pharisee’s proud prayer—“God, I thank you that I am not like other people” (18:11)—as an instance of “virtue signaling.” Employing both wit and remarkable clarity, Bodner achieves his goal of writing a book that will captivate readers interested in the Bible but unfamiliar with the prevailing jargon in academic biblical studies.
At the same time, his simple presentations offer a sophisticated literary approach to the parables. Bodner slows us down, allowing us to feel the power of a story as it unfolds and consider the questions it raises along the way. For instance, Bodner’s interpretation of the parable of the vineyard workers (Matt. 20:1–16) pauses to ask why the owner keeps coming to the market where the unhired workers are throughout the day. Surely he doesn’t really need more workers once the evening rolls around. As the end of the parable confirms, the owner’s actions flow from his lavish generosity rather than any economic calculus.
Bodner’s story-sensitive approach also involves reading these parables alongside one another and with close attention to their immediate context. Doing so reveals hidden depths. Consider, for instance, the way Bodner reads the praying tax collector (Luke 18:9–14) alongside the story of the Prodigal Son. His reflections on the prodigal’s painful journey back to the father become a window for imagining what it costs a despised tax collector to take his own journey to the temple. Perhaps that journey to the temple, too, is a journey of repentance.
In addition, Bodner points out that the picture of a tax collector pleading for mercy in the temple raises questions about what happens next. “Should such a figure decide to start following Jesus,” he writes, “an immediate shift in priorities would need to take place. … At the end of the parable, the unlikely figure goes home justified but nonetheless has more work to do” on the road to “becoming a shareholder in the kingdom of God (or using the imagery in Luke 9:23, a “cross carrier).”
Such attention to the story allows the parables to become genuinely subversive. “Perhaps,” Bodner notes, “we’re all spiritually bankrupt, and, like the tax collector, we’ve sold out to the empire in various ways.” That means there’s more work for us to do as well.
The most surprising—and, for someone in my line of work, delightful—aspect of the book was how often Bodner pointed out rich allusions to the Old Testament in the parables. Reading the parable of the unjust steward alongside the story of the wicked King Ahab’s (faithful) steward Obadiah helps us see how both stories nudge us to costly acts of creative discipleship in response to God’s reign. And we learn something about the Bible’s expansive conception of neighbor relations, says Bodner, when we read the Good Samaritan parable as a “deliberate echo” of 2 Chronicles 28, another story about unexpected kindness extended across unlikely boundaries.
In line with his book’s subtitle, Bodner regularly reminds us that all these parables invite us to enter God’s “economy of grace.” His study attends to patterns of these parables “immersing” us in the “experience of forgiveness.” That is one of the primary gifts of the book; Bodner demonstrates that parables drawn from economic life invite us to reflect more deeply on God’s economy of salvation.
But I confess that, at times, I thought the economic and material aspects of that economy of grace deserved more emphasis.
For instance, when Bodner analyzes the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13–21), he suggests that Jesus’ words about being “rich toward God” refer to building up “relational capital.” That’s not all wrong, but I worry that readers prone to overspiritualizing Jesus’ teachings may miss his relentless emphasis on economic practices within the life of discipleship. When Jesus presents the kind of wealth many modern readers take for granted as a danger to genuine faithfulness, we shouldn’t downplay the plain meaning of his warnings.
To take another example: While Bodner’s treatment of the parable of the unjust steward is outstanding, I wish he had given more attention to Jesus’ admonition to “use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (16:9) That line seems to suggest something beyond an invitation, in Bodner’s words, to “live with wisdom and operate according to the economy of grace.” Perhaps Jesus is calling us, more specifically, to invest money in building a new kind of community.
This is not to say that Bodner ignores the financial implications of parable-shaped discipleship. Far from it! He acknowledges, for instance, that the Samaritan’s costly care for the injured man is a “tangible sign of the economy of grace,” because he undertakes it “with no chance of any return.” But again, I thought such themes merited more attention, given the emphasis on economic ethics in the Gospels.
In a similar vein, I suspect Bodner could have strengthened the book with more sustained reflection on the economic world of Jesus and his audience. In my experience, many Americans read the Gospels from a largely middle-class perspective. A great many people in Jesus’ day were barely scraping by, if not already slowly dying due to desperate poverty. By reminding readers of that background fact, Bodner might add more depth to his discussion of economic themes.
Consider, for instance, the way predatory debt wreaked havoc in the lives of Jesus’ listeners. Highlighting this dynamic would only enhance Bodner’s treatment of the parables about debt forgiveness. It might also underscore the connection between forgiveness of sins and the countercultural call upon disciples to give freely, without expectation of return.
At the same time, that background might also require further discussion of how Jesus’ audience would hear stories about, for instance, the “master” in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14–30). Bodner’s depiction of that master is fairly rosy; others have suggested that, to Jesus’ average listener, he would have sounded like the consummate exploiter. Even if Bodner disagrees with that line of thought, acknowledging the underlying complexity would strengthen his argument.
Nevertheless, part of the power of the book lies in the simple way it welcomes readers into the strange, subversive world of Jesus’ parables, and Bodner makes no claim to offer a comprehensive treatment of the parables he tackles. Exploring the Financial Parables of Jesus offers preachers, teachers, small-group leaders, and everyday Bible readers an outstanding window into this world, and the hope of being transformed by their journeys there. May the Lord use Bodner’s book to welcome all who read it into the everlasting riches of God’s glorious “economy of grace.”
Michael J. Rhodes is a lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College in New Zealand. He is the author of Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World.
