Sunday, February 28, 2010

Blogging through the Orthodox Heretic, day 10

This parable is the companion to day 9. In it we saw a prophet so beautiful that the message was rendered invisible. In today's parable, the role of the prophet is played by an old priest, deeply loved and respected by all for working tirelessly on behalf of the poor. The rich ruler's son, who hated the Church, decided to discredit the old man by offering him a huge amount of money to publicly confess his hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of his church. The confession would be printed and distributed to all across the land.

After thinking about it, the old an agreed on 3 conditions - the rich prince would leave the priest and his church alone, any who had been imprisoned but were innocent of any crimes would be released, and that the prince would give the old man enough time to raise the 10,000 rupees.

Obviously the old priest had misunderstood the prince and thought he was to pay the huge sum of money to the prince because he saw the public confession as an opportunity to become transparent to the good news of the gospel.

How often do we/I do the good things we/I do, expecting to be recognized for them? And are we really willing to become invisible so the good news of the kindom can spread?

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