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Shake the dust off your feet

Reference: Matthew 10:5-14
An edited version was published in Parousia Newsletter, The Weekly Wrap, 20 Feb 2026

I have always been intrigued by the cultural and religious significance of ‘Shake the dust off your feet’. For context, this was part of the instructions given when Jesus ‘sent out’ his apostles to proclaim that ‘the kingdom of heaven has come near.’

Jesus gave them ‘authority to drive out impure spirits and heal every disease.’

But Jesus narrowed the geographic scope of their mission: ‘do not go among the Gentiles … go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.’ Paul would later be led to the Gentiles.

So he dispatches twelve missionaries to the twelve tribes on their first mission without him, ‘two by two’ (Luke 10:1).

He commissions them to travel light and stay at the house of a ‘worthy person’. But if ‘anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home and shake the dust off your feet.’

This final gesture is an affront on many levels.

The dust-shaking tradition was practised by Jews returning from Gentile lands as a sign of renunciation and separation from pagan defilement.

In the Oral Torah (Mishnah), Rabbi Batenura’s commentary sheds light on these historic roots: ‘all dust which comes from the land of the Gentiles is reckoned by us as the rottenness of dead carcass’ as it ‘pollutes the purity of the land of Israel.’

Jesus repurposes this familiar emblematic ritual and turns it against fellow Jews who reject the proclamation.

Why did Jesus have such high expectations of the lost sheep of Israel? Perhaps because they failed to recognise their shepherd. Hence his warning: ‘it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town’ (Matthew 10:15). The inhabitants of those two ‘sin cities’ were Canaanites (Genesis 10:19), not followers of Yahweh.

In the Jewish tradition, hospitality and humility were demonstrated by washing the feet of the guests, especially after traversing dusty terrain. Jesus does this at the Last Supper (John 13:5), and reprimands Pharisee Simon for not doing this: ‘I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet’ (Luke 7:44).

When the apostles were ‘not welcome’ during their mission, perhaps the dust shaking in the streets (Luke 10:10) was their public retort to the inhospitable rejection.

My upbringing in a Levant (Lebanese) culture reinforces the derogatory significance of feet. Sitting cross-legged and pointing the sole of my shoe at another person is a sign of extreme disrespect, as the foot is the lowest part of the body that touches filth on the ground. Hence, shoes are thrown at a person as the ultimate insult: ‘you are lower than the sole of my shoe.’

A more familiar Western idiom may be ‘wash my hands of it’, which is absolving ourselves from any responsibility or association with a situation after doing our duty. This gesture was immortalised in the Levante when Roman Governor Pontius Pilate washed his hands in front of the crowd and declared: ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood … It is your responsibility!’ (Matthew 27:24).

The dust-shaking ritual was flaunted by Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey in Pisidian Antioch. When jealous Jewish leaders ‘stirred up persecution … and expelled them’, these two missionaries ‘shook the dust off their feet as a warning to them’ (Acts 13:50-51).

In our Christian walk today, how do we apply this lesson of shaking dust from our feet? How do we reconcile it with ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’? (Matthew 5:44).

In our modern mission to be Christ-like, we are less likely to experience dusty feet, but more likely to experience ‘hot under the collar’ when mocked, rejected and persecuted for following Jesus. What others think about us and our faith is none of our business. It is God’s business to play God.

Perhaps the liberating takeaway lesson from Jesus is: ‘You are free to walk away with a clear conscience and your head held high. Leave the rest to me. Stop knocking on the doors of the hard-hearted. When they resort to name-calling and trying to shame you, this says more about those throwing stones. It’s already in the past, so stop wasting time, let go and move on to more hospitable people. Don’t let the dust (mud) stick. You need to travel lightly and cannot carry these burdens. Leave them at my feet. I will dust them off in my way in my time.’

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The sign of Jonah – who defines wrong?

First published: Sight Magazine, 9 Jan 2026

Read Jonah 4: 1-11

On the surface, the four chapters of Jonah read like a children’s comic book about a disobedient prophet swallowed by an obedient fish. It inspired the 1881 iconic tale of Pinocchio and Geppetto – trapped inside Monstro the whale for three nights.

But beneath the surface, the Jonah story raises a modern mirror that reflects a moral question. Not the question provoked by the 1981 classic book ‘When bad things happen to good people’. But the opposite: why does God allow good things to happen to ‘bad people’?

Jonah knew all about “bad people”. The Ninevites of the Assyrian Empire worshipped pagan gods, including Dagon, who was depicted as half-fish. Jonah knew that the Assyrians were cruel conquerors who were notorious for their terror tactics.

About 20 years after Jonah’s death, the Assyrians captured the Northern Kingdom of Israel (circa 722 BC) and exiled the ‘ten lost tribes’.

Jesus knew that the Pharisees, like Jonah, despised Ninevites as “bad people”. The Pharisees asked Jesus for “a sign”, checking if he was exorcising demons as the “Son of David” or the “prince of demons” (Matthew 12:23-24).

But Jesus “knew their thoughts” (Matthew 12:25) and rebuked them with a bitter pill to swallow: “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign!”. He evokes the wicked Ninevites who “repented at the preaching of Jonah” and will “condemn…this generation…at the judgement…” because “now something greater than Jonah is here”. (Matthew 12:41). Even Jonah, who was far from great, opened the eyes of the Ninevites, while the Pharisees remained blind to the signs that Messiah was standing before them.

Like the Pharisees, Jonah found his mission was too bitter to swallow, until God “provided” a big fish to swallow him and gave him another chance to obey God’s instructions: “Go to…Ninevah and proclaim….Forty more days and Ninevah will be overthrown” (Jonah 3:4).

Ironically, Mosul (Iraq) now stands on the ruins of Nineveh. Imagine being a ‘missionary’ sent to preach in ISIS-occupied Mosul a decade ago with this dangerous proclamation. Would we flee in the opposite direction, like Jonah? Would we be angry if God saw their change of heart and spared them, despite all their ‘terror tactics’?

Perhaps Jonah hoped that Nineveh “overthrown” would parallel “the Lord rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah” (Genesis 19:24). Perhaps this is why his proclamation was a condemnation, not an ultimatum with an “unless” clause.

Then comes the twist: the “proclamation” from Ninevah’s king for all people and animals to fast, wear sackcloth, give up ‘their evil ways’ and “call urgently on God [to]…turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish” (Jonah 3:7-9).

When God relented, the “fierce anger” welled up in Jonah who saw this as “very wrong”: good things should not happen to bad people – this not what they deserve. This mission was supposed to end with God’s punishment, not God’s mercy: “That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God…who relents from sending calamity” (Jonah 4:2).

To Jonah, this mission was a waste because Ninevah was not reduced to waste.

So why did the Ninevites relent so quickly to warnings from a strange prophet of a foreign god who was “vomited” from a huge fish (Jonah 2:10)? How “fishy” would he have appeared after three days and nights ‘in the belly of the fish’? (Jonah 1:17)?

Is it a coincidence that the superstitious Ninevites worshipped and feared a half-fish deity? Perhaps this is a poignant reminder that ‘my ways are higher than your ways’ (Isaiah 55:9).

Is it a coincidence that the fish theme characterises many of Jesus’ miracles among His “fishers of men”?

Is it a coincidence that the Greek acronym for ‘Jesus Christ, son of God, Saviour’ spells Ichthys and means fish?

Is it a coincidence that the fish became the secret symbol among persecuted Christians in the first three centuries?

So how does God enlighten Jonah, who was so distraught that he “wanted to die” (Jonah 4:8)? God “provided a leafy plant” that shaded Jonah’s weary head “to ease his discomfort”. Overnight, “God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered.”

While Jonah did not give life to that tree, he was “so angry” that the hundreds of shady leaves were stolen from him. Yet God gave life to the 120,000 Ninevites, and rejoiced that they had “turned from their evil ways”.

Jonah sought justice, but God provided mercy.

For God, perhaps there are no bad and undeserving people. He is patient and keeps “providing” second chances.

For us, perhaps Jonah’s sign reminds us not to play God with our definitions of justice, wrong, good and bad.

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Wrestling at the intersection of science and creation

First published in Sight Magazine, 17 December 2025

You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know. – Job 42:3 (NIV)

I am vicariously travelling with my sister on a historic scientific expedition to Antarctica. Her videos of waddling penguins and colossal icebergs juxtaposed against a dramatic blue-white wonderland fill me with thrills and chills.

She is part of the ‘Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future’ expedition. These scientists will map changes to this undisturbed ecosystem since the last scan over 20 years ago.

The treacherous 4000 kilometre voyage on the Southern Ocean from Tasmania to Heard Island (land of fire and ice) is often described as an encounter with ‘Mother Nature’. The personified and popular concept of Mother Nature stems from the Greek primordial goddess Gaia, around 1200 BC.

So why does it remain so unpopular to personify Father God (Yahweh) the Creator? Moreover, if science can decipher how the Laws of Nature operate, who wrote them and why?

These burning questions have recently re-ignited my curiosity about that intersection between science and creation.

Who stands at that vexed crossroads between these two ‘altars’, like a majestic Emperor penguin proudly perched on an Antarctic ice shelf? The soon-to-be centenarian – Sir David Attenborough, of course!

My respect for this living legend grew when he declared “I don’t think an understanding and an acceptance of the four billion-year-long history of life is in any way inconsistent with a belief in a supreme being.”

I love his honesty about what science cannot explain: “There are still things we don’t know about and don’t understand.” In his litany of documentaries, he often concedes “for reasons unknown”, such as why beluga whales congregate annually in the Canadian Arctic. Scientists know how a whale can launch itself out of the water with a spectacular splashdown, but “don’t really know” why whales breach.

On the opposite end of the planet, my sister’s Antarctic videos evoke paradoxical questions underlying the science – about the ‘unseen’ underwater realm of each iceberg: why is there so much heart-melting beauty in this ice-melting wilderness? Why is it teaming with marine life yet so life-threatening? Why would God create this alien land that is not human-friendly?

As I re-watched some Attenborough documentaries on Antarctica and the laws of Mother Nature, one childlike question remained unrelenting and unanswered: “But why?”

Why do animal skins and tree barks appear to be painted by the same brush, using the same colour palette and texture? The beech tree is nicknamed ‘elephant tree’ because their wrinkled trunks resemble elephants’ trunks and their stumps resemble elephants’ feet. Similarly, the sycamore tree is nicknamed ‘alligator wood’ because its furrowed bark resembles the scaly texture of alligator skin.

If flora and fauna merely mimic each other’s appearance through natural selection and convergent evolution, who designed these enduring patterns, and why are they so enduring?

Ironically, I missed another ‘resemblance’: my tirade of why questions evoked Job 38 when God unleashed a whirlwind of rhetorical questions about His creation. Many are so apt for Antarctica.

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow … From whose womb comes the ice? … Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens, when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen? Do you know the laws of the heavens?”

Perhaps only the ‘laws of the heavens’ can explain why, but the laws of Mother Nature can only explain how.

If I were physically on the science expedition to Antarctica, I would be armed with the Book of Life to ignite my icy bones. I would read God’s whirlwind questions as a reminder that answers to my why questions are “things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42:3).

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Are we leaving voicemails to God?

First published in Sight Magazine under ‘This Life’ column, 3 December 2025

This Life: Are we leaving voicemails to God?

ARE WE LEAVING VOICEMAILS TO GOD?

“Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord. – Jeremiah 29:12-14

I recently contacted a relative to pay condolences. We had not spoken for a while, so it felt awkward to phone out of the blue.

In my Lebanese culture, I was haunted by the Arabic adage Ain al mahzoun dai’a. It literally translates as “the eye of the bereaved is narrow”. In practice, this means that the mourner’s eyes are sharp and harsh. They notice everything, including who was absent.

Sending a ‘message’ could be (perceived as) disrespectful, so I hit the ‘call’ button. When it rang out and reached voicemail, I must confess my relief.

Then my conscience was pricked by pangs of guilt: do I sometimes treat my daily prayers like ritual voicemails?

Before I sleep, I kneel by my bedside and face the Divine Mercy image of Jesus. I follow a threefold prayer routine that I taught my children: thanks…sorry… please…

But at the end of the prayer, there is no pause or listening. With the sign of the cross, I virtually hang up…on God!

This does not feel like a two-way conversation with “Our Father who art in Heaven”. It feels more like a routine payment of a regular contribution to my spiritual superannuation, hoping for a return on that investment when darkness envelopes me or at the hour of our death.

If my prayer transaction can be reduced to a voicemail machine, how would it feel if God treated me with automated busy-ness?

“Hey Siri/Alexa/Google, call God.” After the ringtone, it offers all languages.

“Thank you for calling heaven’s hotline. Please select one of the following four options: Press 1 for a miracle. Press 2 for appointments. Press 3 for forgiveness. Press 4 for gratitude. Press 5 to leave a voicemail. To hear these options again…We are busy taking other calls…Your call is important to us…Your expected wait time is…To use our virtual assistant…”

Some angelic choir fills the void while I am on hold, fuming.

“I don’t want to leave a voice message! I need to talk to a real person! Not to some artificial…”

Sounds familiar?

But it is the antithesis of our faith and Scriptures that our loving Father could ever treat us with such disdain.

In my advocacy work, I have sought private audiences with CEOs, politicians, celebrities and bishops. I wait in queue, “put it in writing”, endure screening, then am allocated a time-limited appointment at a predestined location, which could be cancelled at short notice.

But God has no appointment secretary. His door and heart are always open as He will “neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:4). He even “knows what you need before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:8).

He imposes no time limit on my appointment, has reception from any location, does not charge for global roaming, and keeps our conversations private.

He never narrows His eyes when I call him out of the blue.

Perhaps this is a wake-up call worth sharing. Perhaps we all reduce prayer to a routine or ritual rather than the more important r-word: Relationship.

I have learnt to pause, be still, and know that God answers my prayers in his own way, in his own time. But as the Prophet Elijah found, God’s voice may not be dramatic and instant: “After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper…Then a voice said to him…” (I Kings 19:11-13).

That’s the best bit: pausing to listen to that whispering voice.

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The Prodigal Son – how grace trumped mercy

The Prodigal Son – how grace trumped mercy
First published in Open Bok, The Sight Magazine, 28 Nov 2025

The familiar Parable of the Prodigal Son is riddled with cultural questions about what did not happen. It epitomises the difference between earthly retribution and “as it is in heaven”.

Luke Chapter 15 starts by setting the scene with the cultural context: The Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them”.

The law of Moses stipulates that the firstborn inherits a “double share” (Deuteronomy 21:17).

The father could have declined the disgraceful request and observed the Jewish wisdom to “wait until the last moment of your life, when you are breathing your last, and then divide your property among your heirs” as contained in the Jewish Book of Sirach (33:23). But he “waived” what was culturally right and “divided his property between them”, granting a third to his younger son.

Because the son had effectively treated his father as dead, the brother wrote off “this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes”.

If the brother knew about the son’s exploits, he probably heard murmurs that the son had fallen into desperate times, resorted to feeding “unclean” pigs (Leviticus 11:7) for a Gentile, and worked on the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-11). Others may have arranged to eliminate this sin-soaked son before he further disgraced the family’s reputation.

When the son “came to his senses”, he rehearsed a three-part speech: “I have sinned against Heaven and against you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.”

When the father saw him “still a long way off”, he was “filled with compassion” rather than wrath.

King David offers a lofty explanation for the father’s heart: “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me…you perceive my thoughts from afar…Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely…and you lay your hand upon me.” (Psalm 139:1-6).

Instead of shunning the son, waiting for the grovel or expecting the reverent hand-kissing, the opposite happens. It is the father who publicly disgraced himself by running out to the sinner – to give grace! It is the father who hastened to embrace and kiss his son. It is the father who gestured forgiveness before a word was spoken.

When the son delivers his three-part speech, the father refuses to hear part three about treatment as a servant. Again, the father waived that third of what was culturally right.

Again, the opposite happens. The father asks the servants not only to “bring the best robe” but to “put it on him”, as if to cover the scars of his sins. For the murmuring Pharisees and Scribes, this imagery would have evoked the angel replacing Joshua’s filthy clothes with fine garments (Zechariah 3:4), especially as royal robes were traditionally preserved for a noble prince (Esther 6:8-9).

By putting a ring on his son’s finger, the father is immediately and publicly restoring the son’s status in the family. The signet ring was traditionally engraved with a family crest for a wax seal, akin to a credit card! For the murmurers, this would have evoked the ceremony when Pharaoh promoted Joseph with a signet ring (Genesis 41:42).

As servants traditionally walked barefoot, the sandals reinforced the father’s rejection of part three.

At best, the son was hoping for mercy after sequential stages to redeem himself. Instead, he was greeted with immediate grace.

Instead of the father becoming angry and turning his back, it is the brother who “refused to go in”.

The brother cannot understand the hasty celebration, after all the shame and disgrace that the son has caused. Surely, the father has skipped a few stages – a process akin to our Western justice system.

Our justice system may entail a protracted process of charges (breaches of Mosaic law), prosecution, trial, plea bargaining, evidence, witnesses, cross-examination, victim impact statements, sentencing, proportional retribution, compensation of victims, public shaming and mandatory rehabilitation.

Similarly, Baptist minister Dr Gary Chapman co-authored The 5 Apology Languages which maps out the popular and progressive stages of regret, responsibility, restitution, repentance then forgiveness.

Perhaps the brother expected more grovelling and healing before he was ready for clemency.

But the father sprinted straight to forgiveness.

Given that the brother had already received his ‘double share’ of inheritance prematurely, perhaps he was ‘eyeing off’ the full share of his father’s remaining property. The regrafting of the son may jeopardise this.

Perhaps this is why the father explicitly placates him: “everything I have is yours.”

Is it a coincidence that the parable ends by circling back to the opening murmurs?

Indeed, the father embraced his son to erase the shame and so he “receives sinners”.

The father hosts a celebratory homecoming dinner for this ‘sinner’ and so he “eats with them” too.

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What birth teaches us about death

First published as This Life column in Sight Magazine, 12 November 2025

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be. – Psalm 139:13-16 (NIV)

I watched in awe at the acrobatic ripples of my grandchild ‘reaching out’ within my pregnant daughter. We were physically separated only by the womb wall, but we were dwelling in different worlds. I was profoundly curious about what this foetus could sense about life outside the womb.

Foetuses cannot ‘know’ that their vital placenta will expire and they will eventually exit their familiar ocean within the amniotic sac. Their life of warm water, muffled sounds and faint lights will end when they suddenly come face to face with the real human causes: loud and clear.

In the ‘new life’, limbs will stretch out into thin air, not into some cosy cocoon, and that may be scary! But newborn babies are hard-wired to ‘sniff’ out the new comforter – mother’s vital breast milk.

After all, God has “created my inmost being and knit me together in my mother’s womb” and His eyes “saw my unformed body” (Psalm 139:13, 16). No matter how many scientific explanations I read, this ‘knit’ is too perfect to be anything but miraculous.

Scientific research verifies that foetuses respond to external lights and voices. In utero, the foetus learns, identifies and remembers the sound of the mother’s voice, evidenced by an increased heart rate. During the third trimester, sonograms show that foetuses will turn their heads when responding to sounds they hear outside the womb.

Do they intrinsically sense that there may be life outside the womb walls?

Similarly, do we intrinsically sense that there may be life outside of this mortal sphere? When we encounter so many ‘God moments’, do we keep writing them off as mere coincidences?

While we are blessed if we have believed without seeing (John 20:29), sometimes the divine signs may turn our heads and increase our heart rates: a vivid dream, a sudden appearance, a street sign, a message ‘out of the blue’. Perhaps these are the faint lights and muffled voices that remind us that something ‘out there’ awaits us.

Like a newborn baby, we will come face-to-face with the loving light of ‘Our Father who art in Heaven’.

As her mortal candle was flickering, my late wife had a sudden surge of lucidity and asked her grandmother to sit down. Her grandmother had passed away long ago, but my wife could see her standing at the foot of the hospital bed. During that burst of energy, my ailing wife sat up smiling and reached forward to…something or someone.

In the lead-up to our final ‘delivery’, we ponder and perceive loving arms waiting to embrace us.

In a beautiful parallel, the ‘hour of our death’ may be ushered in by a welcoming party of angels and midwives, just like the hour of our birth.

Having held hands in birthing units and palliative care units – the similarities are chilling: the waiting room, feelings of helplessness, monitoring the breaths, the wrinkled skin, the tears.

Dr Wayne Dyer articulated this comparison between birth and death in a parable titled Your Sacred Self where a foetus questions life after delivery: “no-one has ever come back from there, it’s just the end of everything”.

Perhaps we are already hearing echoes, seeing glimmers and feeling ripples of the next life – the heavenly kingdom that is the eternal home of those who have gone before us.

Perhaps fear of death may be placated by the reminder that our souls have all been through something similar – at birth.

Perhaps these similarities are a reminder that death is not a full stop, but a comma.

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Jesus executed the law, not the adulterous woman

Published as Open Book Column in Sight Magazine, 7 November 2025

Read John 8:1-11 (NIV)

Why would teachers of the law dare to test the writer of the law?

The spectacular story of Jesus sparing the adulterous woman reveals what happens when cold stones meet a sacred heart.

We don’t need to be lawyers to grasp the genius of the ultimate judge. We need to apply ‘spot the difference’ to see what the trappers maliciously omitted when applying the ‘letter of the law’.

As a comparison with our court trials, let’s use ‘prosecutors’ when referring to the “teachers of the law and the Pharisees”.

They framed a lose-lose situation: if Jesus sanctions the execution, they incriminate him for violating Roman law and report Him to the authorities, as Jews “have no right to execute anyone” (John 18:31). If Jesus forbids the stoning, He is a heretic for violating Mosaic Law.

The temple courts were an apt public setting for this exhibition.

Exhibit A: the woman who was “caught in the act of adultery”. But “caught” means there were witnesses.

The prosecutors would be acutely aware of the letter of the law.

Exhibit B: “One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime…A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses” (Deuteronomy 19:15). Yet Jesus does not demand that the witnesses step forward.

Next, the prosectors cite the Law of Moses that “commanded us to stone such women”. But this omits the other half of the command…

Exhibit C: ‘Both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death’ (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22). Yet Jesus does not demand that the conspicuously missing man steps forward.

Mosaic law is very prescriptive about who must cast the first stone…

Exhibit D: “The hands of the witnesses must be the first in putting that person to death” (Deuteronomy 17:6-7). The trap is now disintegrating – how will the execution ‘legally’ commence without witnesses?

But the law is a double-edged sword, which is a problem for pedantic prosecutors.

Exhibit E: “If the witness proves to be a liar…then do to the false witness as that witness intended to do to the other party” (Deuteronomy 19:18-19). So the witnesses should step forward and cast the first stone. Unless there were ‘false witnesses’ who risked exposure and stoning.

Despite all these opportunities for Jesus to highlight the prosecution’s omissions and anomalies in their malicious manipulation of Mosaic law, he remained silent. Instead, He “bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger”.

Perhaps the spectacle of Jesus writing with His finger would have evoked the origin of Mosaic Law…

Exhibit F: “When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God” (Exodus 31:18).

Perhaps this is why Jesus wrote in silence: the same finger that inscribed the Ten Commandments may have now inscribed all the laws (exhibits) that the prosecutors were violating.
Against this rich tapestry of Biblical text and ‘exhibits’, Jesus utters His only ‘defence’ to the prosecutors: “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her”.

Without sin? Without witnesses? Without the adulterer?

Surely, the older Pharisees knew their Hebrew Bible: “There is no-one on Earth who…never sins” (Ecclesiastes 7:20).

Jesus did not wait for the first stone, but “again He stooped down and wrote on the ground”.

St Jerome suggested that Jesus wrote the names and sins of the accusers, to fulfil a prophecy…

Exhibit G: “All who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust” (Jeremiah 17:13). Surely, the learned prosecutors would be familiar with this Biblical imagery.

Whether Jesus inscribed Mosaic Law of their sins, the finger-pointing was now backfiring and shaming them.

Those who “kept on questioning him” suddenly fell silent, their stones fell to the ground, and their trap fell to pieces.

When “only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there”, He alone qualified as “without sin”, but He refused to condemn her.

Perhaps all our sins are temporarily inscribed in dust but can be blown away by the breath of God when He sees our repentant heart.

The mother of Jesus is also believed to be “without sin” and born through Immaculate Conception. When Mary was betrothed to Joseph, she became pregnant “before they came together” (Matthew 1:18). This could have been perceived as adultery with fatal consequences. Like Jesus, Joseph was “faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace” (Matthew 1:19).

Like his foster father, Jesus spared the woman from death.

Instead of executing the woman, Jesus executed the letter of the law.

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Learning to listen like Luke

First published in Sight Magazine, 22 October 2025

“Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us,just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus,so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” – Luke 1:1-4 (NIV)

During a recent trip to my birthplace in north Lebanon, I distributed copies of my 144-page book on our family genealogy to 40 cousins.

The book was not a family tree of who ‘begot’ who as in Matthew 1:1-17. It was a narrative on the legacies of our ancestors, spanning three centuries.

My great-grandfather Sassine was repeatedly imprisoned for his armed resistance in the dying days of the Ottoman occupation. His fearless wife Sa’eeda once threw a rope to hoist him over the 12-metre prison wall. During other jailbreaks, Sassine survived with bullet holes in his ’aabayya (robe). In Arabic, both Sassine and Sa’eeda mean joyful or blessed

My great-grandmother Sa’eeda did it again during World War II when the pro-Nazi Vichy French Forces invaded Lebanon. When these troops approached our snow-capped village to pillage ‘free food’, Sa’eeda rode out on horseback, wielding a helmet, sword and shield: “Not one grain of wheat shall leave this village!” Behind her was an army of women ready to ‘break some bones’ with their canes. My father recalls the collaboration between the villagers and the ‘friendly’ Australian army, which expelled the Vichy Forces in 1941.

As Sa’eeda was about 50-years-old when she married Sassine, she was praying for a child. She made the 12-hour pilgrimage from Bekaakafra to the monk (Saint) Charbel at his hermitage in Annaya. She begged him for a sign, and he made the sign of the cross: she gave birth to her only child a year later.

Sa’eeda was aged 94 years and I was aged two when my family migrated to Australia.

Throughout my childhood, I kept hearing variations of these incredible stories from disparate sources in Australia and Lebanon. For decades, I recorded ‘interviews’ with illiterate elders who may have been eyewitnesses to these stories. I was struck by their acute memories and verbatim accounts. Their eyes lit up, they waved their fingers, re-enacted what Saeeda said, and ‘swore’ that their version was the truth. This enabled me to record this oral history for posterity (Luke 1:4).

The journey has been both emotional and spiritual.

Emotional because genealogy can be abruptly amputated or gradually dissolved with the passage of migration. As much as I was blessed with a safe and prosperous new homeland, I felt robbed of ancestral roots and identity; robbed of experiencing the warmth, wisdom and love of grandparents and great-grandparents.

When I handed them the book, my Lebanese cousins kept asking: Where did you dig this up from? They knew that written records were scarce and that ancestry websites were fruitless for people of the Levant.

Which leads me to the spiritual journey. The answer to my cousins’ question evoked a newfound awe of Luke 1:1-4. This Gospel writer was not an eyewitness, but he “carefully investigated” the accounts that were “handed down to us”, so he could “write an orderly account”.

Just when I thought that this journey was over, my family rediscovered a dusty box of reel-to-reel tapes from 60 years ago. We hit play: the four-track analogue tapes contained clear voices of yearning, poetry, songs and stories. The impossible happened: I finally heard the voice of my great-grandmother Sa’eeda! We wept as the ‘reel resurrection’ filled the room. There she was, telling her own story in her own accent.

This was a privilege not afforded to Luke when he documented the ‘certainty of things’, about 60 years after the ‘real Resurrection’.

We don’t choose our genes, but we may lose sight of our genes when we migrate. Sometimes, we need to dig deep, listen like Luke, and bottle them.

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Do we need sarcasm emojis to grasp the parable of the shrewd manager?

Do we need sarcasm emojis to grasp the parable of the shrewd manager?

First published in Sught Magazine, 10 October 2025
https://sightmagazine.com.au/open-book/open-book-do-we-need-sarcasm-emojis-to-grasp-the-parable-of-the-shrewd-manager/

Read Luke 16:1-15 (NIV)

The ‘paradoxical’ Parable of the Shrewd Manager has always confounded and divided Christians. Why would the master “commend the dishonest manager”? How are “people of this world” shrewder than “people of the light”? Why would Jesus encourage us to “use worldly wealth to gain friends” so we are “welcomed into eternal dwellings”?

A cultural torch may help crack open this nut: the Levant languages are renowned for their colourful lexicon and hyperbole. I know that from my Lebanese upbringing, when my relatives sought to sharpen their point. If I visited my aunt after a long absence, she responded sarcastically: “So you remembered where we live!”

When our angry Lord spoke “out of a storm” to Job and his friends, He sarcastically quizzed them about his mysterious creation: “Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!” (Job 38:21).

Jesus was a master of rich language: “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away” (Matthew 5:29).

When His opponents plotted to stone him for blasphemy, He deployed sarcasm: “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” (John 10:32).

But there were no sarcasm emojis and exclamation marks 2000 years ago when Luke recorded this parable!

Within this cultural context, a re-reading of the shrewd manager parable does not contradict the surrounding parables about the prodigal son and Lazarus in the “bosom of Abraham“. Both of these parables juxtapose the ‘way of the world’ (rich man; selfish son) with the way of the ‘light’ (Lazarus; repentant son).

Surely, Jesus was sarcastic when He suggested that using worldly wealth to gain friends would lead to eternal dwellings. There is only one eternal dwelling: “in my Father’s house” (John 14:2). Moreover, Jesus tells us “do not store up for yourselves treasures on Earth” (Matthew 5:19).

At the end of His parable, Jesus pivots His focus to the sneering Pharisees: “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts”. He knew that they “loved money” and became “people of this world” when they should have been “people of the light”.

Jesus concludes: “no-one can serve two masters”. The shrewd manager knew exactly how to navigate the way of the world so that “people would welcome me in their houses”. Like the shrewd manager, the Pharisees knew the rule book when “dealing with their own kind”.

After the sarcasm has landed on the sneering Pharisees, Jesus leaves us with a serious challenge: do we who ostensibly serve the true master know the rule book of ‘our own kind’ to shrewdly navigate our way to eternal life?

The shrewd manager knew the way to the heart of the master he serves. He hastily concocted a win-win-win situation for “people of this world”. The debtors received an instant discount and closure. The master would be hailed a hero for his unwitting charity. The manager set up a contingency plan to be welcomed among these debtors “when I lose my job here”.

In the honour-shame culture of this world, the manager spared himself from the public shame of begging, and bestowed public honour on his master.

As ‘people of the light’, how well do we know the way to the heart of the master we serve?

What is unspoken by Jesus in this short parable may have been culturally odd to his Levant audience.

The master declares, “you cannot be manager any longer”, but does not ask the manager to balance the books first.

The master does not reveal who informed him of the mismanagement.

The master does not send the manager to prison or slavery for “wasting his possessions”.

The manager, meanwhile, does not defend himself, demand witnesses or plead by hand-kissing.

Unlike the prodigal son, he does not offer himself as a “hired servant” (Luke 15:19).

The wasteful manager does not know what each debtor owes, so he asks them.

He does not call for an urgent group meeting with debtors, perhaps because ‘people of this world’ (unlike people of the light) protect themselves by scheming privately, behind closed doors.

He does not evoke a long (family) history and loyalty of working for the master.

The debtors do not know that the manager has already been fired.

The manager’s eye was set on his earthly prize: retaining ‘my job.’

As people of the light, we have a different set of rules to reach the eternal dwelling place in the heavenly kingdom.

When we understand the sarcastic speech and the cultural context, this parable is not paradoxical. It is consistent with all that Jesus teaches: we are people in this world, but not of this world (John 17:16-18).

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How the dandelion inspired an epiphany

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.” – Matthew 13:24-29 (NIV)

I used to banter with my neighbours when I caught them “wasting time” on weekends: head down on bended knees, weeding their garden. “What a sight! Get a life!”

I recently heard those words boomerang back to me when I was caught red-handed uprooting dandelions from my garden after a downpour.

For those obsessed with a lush green lawn, dandelions are an invasive and uninvited weed. During winter, their rosette bases camouflage as grass, anchored by a deep taproot. In spring, their yellow daisy-like flowers morph into a white ‘puffball’ of wind-blown seeds to expand their invasion of my hallowed lawn.

The uprooting of weeds from moist soil may have looked like laborious repetition, but it felt like spring cleaning. There was something simple yet miraculous about working hand-in-hand with the seasonal rhythms and cycles of Creation.

The dandelion’s jagged leaves ostensibly resemble a lion’s teeth, hence its name stems from the French dent-de-lion. Their ‘teeth’ looked more like defence battlements of a fortress. Indeed, extracting these foot-long tap roots from my ‘fortress’ was like extracting a lion’s tooth – a very exacting art!

One passing neighbour tried to correct my (mis)classification: “At least I was weeding! Dandelions aren’t weeds! They’re good for the lawn!” He proceeded to enlighten me on their pollen that feeds bees, their leaves that boil into herbal medicine, and their tap roots that brew into ‘coffee.’ I did some fact-checking and he was right! These weeds contain antioxidants and are highly nutritious.

Children love to blow the seed heads to make wishes: another insidious ploy that these self-germinating opportunists deploy to tempt my grandchildren in my ‘Eden’!

As I toiled in the soil, it evoked the etymological ‘roots’ of humility, from the Latin word humus meaning (down to) earth. Digging even deeper, a Rabbi recently told me that the name Adam derives from the Hebrew word Adamah, which also means earth. This makes perfect sense as the “Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground’” (Genesis 2:7).

As I uprooted the ubiquitous invaders from deep in the dirt, I bundled them for removal. If ‘they’re good for the lawn’, perhaps they’re even better for my compost heap. In time, these rejects would decompose into the rich dark organic matter (humus) that improves soil fertility and plant fruitfulness.

Right under our noses, the garden is rich with echoes of Eden and Gospel parables. For example, my compost heap consists of rejects and broken parts: peels, leaves, clippings, eggshells, packaging and scraps. Yet the Creator miraculously enables this dead debris to breathe new life into old soil. Perhaps in God’s time, and in subsequent chapters of our lives, none of our brokenness goes to waste either.

When I returned to the lawn wearing my ‘Gospel’ lens, I had a dandelion-inspired epiphany about the parable of the weeds. When the weeds sprouted with the wheat, the servants asked the owner “Do you want us to go and pull them up?” In his wisdom, the owner declined because “you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.”

Indeed, my weeds disguised themselves as green grass until their yellow flowers shot up. Only then could I distinguish them from the good seed that I had sown. Only after the rain could I uproot them from softer soil. Only in that ripe moment could I avoid damaging the lawn.

Next time my neighbours catch me ‘wasting time’ and tell me to “get a life!”, I will respond with: “This keeps me grounded and reminds me to stay humble.”