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SUMMARY:Morning worship and Junior Church
DTSTART:20250921T090000Z
DTEND:20250921T101500Z
DTSTAMP:20260418T201625Z
UID:12219832025-09-21 09:00:00+00:00achurchnearyou
CATEGORIES:
DESCRIPTION:A Service of the Word for the fourteenth Sunday after Trinity\
 ; leader and preacher Stephen Greenall. Junior Church takes place at the s
 ame time in the hall.\n\nFirst reading: 1 Timothy 2. 1–9 \nGospel: Luke 
 16. 1–13\n\nToday's Gospel has been described as Jesus's most difficult 
 parable - the story of an estate manager who\, upon being given notice to 
 quit\, fiddles the accounts in favour of his employer's debtors in order t
 o win their goodwill. Surprisingly\, this trick earns him a commendation f
 rom his master instead of the court case such actions would normally deser
 ve\; they are certainly not a literal model for us to follow in everyday l
 ife.\n\nA parable is a kind of extended metaphor\, and a possible way of u
 nderstanding the passage is to see it in a symbolic light. Although the pa
 rable is often called the 'Dishonest Steward'\, Luke does not actually say
  he was sacked for dishonesty: he might previously have been incompetent\,
  lazy\, or perhaps just too easygoing with people who owed money to the es
 tate. The master\, for his part\, seems to have known exactly what went on
  next\, perhaps rather like the Duke in Shakespeare's 'Measure for Measure
 '\, and he doesn't pursue his debtors for the discount his former steward 
 had given them.  In terms of moral indebtedness\, we all owe God far more 
 than anyone owes us\, and that might be one message to be taken from the p
 arable\, along with the more transparent message that while honesty is ess
 ential\, material wealth should never be our priority.     \n\nThe image a
 bove\, from a painting of c.1540 by Marinus van Reymerswaele\, puts the st
 ory in a contemporary and quite amusing setting (the whole painting is att
 ached below). The obviously wealthy businessman on the left is pointing me
 aningfully with his right hand at an account book while he hold up his lef
 t as if to stem a flow of excuses and unconvincing explanations. The stewa
 rd is avoiding his master's eye\, but his upward-pointing gesture perhaps 
 suggests that he has been sent a way out\, which he can be seen enacting i
 n the background.
GEO:0.037423;51.469833
LOCATION:Kidbrooke\, St Nicholas
URL:https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/671/service-and-events/events/12
 21983/
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