The Immoral of the Story

by Mary Luti | published on Oct 5, 2026

Discussion Questions 

  1. Read the series of parables in Matthew 13; you can find the chapter here. Then read the devotional below, “The Immoral of the Story.”  
  1. Have you been taught, or perhaps assumed, that Jesus’s parables have morals to them?  
  1. What changes when you read the parables without looking for a clear virtuous lesson? 
  1. Consider what Jesus says about his use of parables: “I speak to them in parables … because this people’s heart has become calloused” (Matthew 13:13 & 15a, adapted). In your experience, what is needed to soften a calloused heart or to interrupt a set-in-its-ways mindset?  

Devotional 

[Jesus said,] “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy sold all he had and bought that field.” – Matthew 13:44 (NIV) 

I once heard a sermon about this short parable during which, inexplicably, the preacher got hung up on its “questionable ethics.”  

You don’t spot a Rembrandt at a yard sale, he said, buy it for five dollars, resell it for a zillion, and keep the profit for yourself. Finders aren’t always keepers. The man who discovered that treasure should’ve given it back to its original owner.  

He stopped just short of telling us how disappointed he was in Jesus for condoning theft. He also stopped short of the point. And the good news. 

Parables don’t have morals. They aren’t clear lessons about right and wrong. They are, as someone once described them, hand grenades Jesus tosses into your imagination to blow up your exhaustion and electrify your heart with the sudden stupendous prospect of a world turned upside down.  

A commentary on this passage notes that, lacking banks, people in Jesus’s day sometimes buried their valuables. And sometimes someone else found them. The poor had no chance of amassing wealth, but they had a slim chance of stumbling upon it. Jesus’s listeners could feel in their flesh just how radically their lives would change if they did.  

And that? Jesus says, that exhilaration, that explosion of possibility, that joy? That’s what God’s realm is like.  

Iffy morals didn’t bother Jesus’s audience. They were too electrified to worry about property rights. If you are, too, you get the point. And the good news.

Prayer
Holy Spirit, detonate life-altering possibility in our imaginations. Light us up with the transforming joy of something new. We can be moral later.

Mary Luti About the Author
Mary Luti is a long time seminary educator and pastor, author of Teresa of Avila’s Way and numerous articles, and founding member of The Daughters of Abraham, a national network of interfaith women’s book groups.