our times. We work with selected passages of Scripture, reading and interpreting them as parables as we attempt to understand and discern the signs of our times that we may now, perhaps too benignly, describe as times of great upheaval and confusion.

The challenge this book attempts to confront is how Christians, standing in the tradition of the biblical prophets and of Jesus of Nazareth, and the prophets of today read and discern the signs of our own times. How do we interpret the situations contemporary politics is creating for especially the poor and oppressed, the vulnerable and excluded children of God? How do we reclaim not only our prophetic imagination but also the boldness and courage to enact it in the dismantling of what is wrong, unjust, and inhuman.

We talk of parables not as stories about tragedies or chaos in the observations of politicians whose politics is so flawed that their perceived wisdom drowns in the tragedies their own politics created and keeps creating. We speak of parables as Jesus told them, as subversive of the politics of these men and women of power and subversive of their ultimate intentions that in both cases, then and now, were and are so contrary to the politics of Jesus.