The basic assumption of Jesus’s parable is not that one must act a certain way for the giver, but rather that it is good and right and beneficial for all to have a daily living wage, with no strings attached.
Luke’s account thus presses towards a re-imagining of community. Belonging is not guaranteed by purity or boundary maintenance but by practices of compassionate recognition.
Sometimes the most I can be grateful for is that it is still possible to imagine an alternative.
By Welling Hall