In a few weeks’ time, on the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, one of the lectionary readings that I plan to preach from is Luke 16.19–31. It’s not an easy text to understand or to preach, but I’m thinking that Duncan Forrester might be able to help me out:

‘It is impossible to keep company with Christ if we refuse to accept the company he has chosen to keep. Following the patristic principle ubi Christus ibi ecclesia (where Christ is, there is the Church), it is necessary to go to find Christ and therefore the Church among the poor he loves, to listen to them, and to learn afresh from them how to worship God in Spirit and in truth … Worship separated from the great issues of liberty and justice has become idolatry, an instrument of ideological manipulation, a way of hiding from God rather than encountering Him’. – Duncan B. Forrester, Theological Fragments: Explorations in Unsystematic Theology (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 109, 110.

[Image: Heinrich Aldegrever, ‘Lazarus Begging for Crumbs from Dives’s Table’, 1552]