Christianity retold
The Persistent Widow is based on Luke 18:2-8.
A small town had an MP, an MP who couldn’t care less about God and didn’t respect his constituents. Also living there was a widowed mother, with two small children. She kept coming to the MP’s surgery, saying: ‘Look, I’m being victimised by the council. Help me get justice!’
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The Flower Seeds and the Pots is based on Luke 8:5-8.
This was the first parable I retold, rather than just updated. I was writing a book which had a modern Jesus preaching in a modern London. It became very obvious, very quickly, that Jesus wouldn’t tell a parable based on First Century Middle Eastern farming practices to a bunch of modern East Enders – not if they had no previous experience of hearing it. The meaning of the parable would stay the same; the props and setting would be reset.
[Read more…] about Commentary: The Flower Seeds and the Pots (Luke 8:5-8)The Flower Seeds and the Pots is based on Luke 8:5-8.
Once, a woman wanted a flower garden in her flat. So she bought some flower seeds, and planted them in pots the landlord had left. Some of the seeds fell out of her window onto the pavement below; of course, people walked all over them. Then pigeons came and scoffed the lot. Some of the pots she’d found were too shallow – the flower seedlings came up, but the thin soil, it didn’t hold enough water. When the sun shone, the plants dried up.
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Outside the Gate is based on Luke 16: 19-31
There was a man from a wealthy family who had everything – good clothes, fine foods, his children at the best schools. They lived in a gated community and just outside that gate was a refugee, named Lazarus.
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The Three Employees is based on Matthew 25:14-30
There is a variation on this parable in Luke 19: 11-27; the parable in Matthew seems to be a more basic version, missing out Luke’s explanation of the journey and omitting several characters. Matthew places this parable between Jesus’ visit to the Temple and the Last Supper, and states that Jesus told it privately to his disciples rather than to the crowd.
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The Ten Budgets is based on Luke 19: 11-27
The basic form of this parable – servants entrusted with money by someone going on a journey – appears in the Gospels in two versions. The version in Luke is told just before Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and is a parable for the crowd. They thought the Kingdom of God was going to appear immediately; this parable (according to Luke) is partly a warning that it won’t.
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