The Tilted Halo
The Tilted Halo podcast has a refreshing and honest perspective on the challenges pastors face in their ministry and those involved in ministry as a whole. Hosted by Pastor Kathleen Panning, who has seen it all, this edgy show explores the idea that we all have a "tilted halo" - a recognition that we are not perfect and all make mistakes.
Through personal experiences, interviews with fellow pastors, leaders, and insights from scripture, this show offers advice and encouragement for those struggling with the weight of their imperfections. From burnout and rude awakenings to personal failures and shortcomings, The Tilted Halo provides a safe space for pastors to share their struggles and find support from a community of like-minded souls around the globe.
With a focus on authenticity, vulnerability, and humanity at large, this podcast challenges the notion that pastors must have it all together and invites listeners to embrace their humanity and lean into the grace of God. Whether you are a pastor or someone looking for a fresh perspective on life's challenges, The Tilted Halo is a must-listen in the search for hope, healing, and a renewed sense of purpose.
The Tilted Halo
EP 61: Love grows where gratitude is planted
Gratitude transforms everything—yet in our demanding, rights-focused world, it's becoming increasingly rare. In this thought-provoking episode, we explore Jesus' Parable of the Money Lenders from Luke 7, discovering a profound link between gratitude and our capacity for love.
The parable seems deceptively simple: two debtors, one owing 500 denarii (nearly two years' wages) and another owing 50, have their debts completely forgiven. Jesus asks which debtor will love their creditor more. But the context reveals much more—Jesus tells this story while a "sinful woman" weeps at his feet, washing them with her tears and expensive perfume, while his Pharisee host silently judges both the woman and Jesus for allowing her touch.
Through this powerful narrative, we uncover life-changing truths: those who recognize how much they've been forgiven naturally express more gratitude and love. The woman demonstrated extravagant love precisely because she understood her great need, while the "respectable" Pharisee couldn't even offer basic hospitality.
This episode will challenge you to examine yourself honestly: Are we creditors demanding repayment or debtors grateful for forgiveness? Do we recognize our own need for grace? I share a personal story of being unexpectedly forced out of a ministry position and how choosing gratitude—initially finding just one thing to be thankful for—gradually transformed my perspective and freed me to forgive.
The implications reach far beyond religious settings. In a culture where gratitude seems scarce, practicing thankfulness becomes revolutionary. It opens our eyes to see blessings we'd otherwise miss and expands our capacity to love those different from ourselves. Even simple expressions of thanks create ripple effects that can transform relationships and communities.
Join me in exploring how gratitude might be the key missing element in your ministry, relationships, and personal growth. How grateful are you—and how might cultivating thankfulness change everything?
Welcome to the Tilted Halo. This is a new podcast and it's for anybody who's a woman in ministry. You might be a pastor like myself, a bishop, a priest, a rabbi, music minister, elder children's minister whatever your title is, you're absolutely in the right place, especially if you're someone who loves your ministry and you're doing it well and you're feeling pressure to sometimes be perfect and deep down inside, you know you're not, and how in the world to deal with that? And, men, you're absolutely welcome here too, because this is about ministry and the same thing can happen to you. So you're all in the right place. Let's get started with the show. Welcome to another edition of the Tilted Halo. I am your host, pastor Kathleen Panning, and I'm starting today kind of a series that is focusing on a lot of a number of the parables of Jesus, and what do those mean for us today?
Speaker 1:Parables are often things that people remember from the Gospels, even if you're not particularly religious in these days and age. Some of them are very well known and others not as well known. Very well known and others not as well known. But what is a parable? Now, some people see parable as kind of a story that Jesus tells that has one particular meaning and we have to dig out that one meaning and there's only one right answer to that and there are different ways of interpreting the parables with that. But my experience with the parables is that the longer I live with them the more I see there. It become kind of sometimes a prism that we can look through life with, sometimes often look at ourselves with in these wonderful, wonderful stories that Jesus told. But you know, many people have nice, warm fuzzies about the parables of Jesus. But the more I learn about them, the more I realize that for many people who actually heard them when Jesus spoke them, it was not always such a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling. They are very challenging in many respects and so that's one of the things to look for in these parables what's the challenge to us today in these stories and one person has described a parable as a very human story and Jesus took the normal activities of life as he knew it in first century Palestine and use them to tell a heavenly story. So a human story telling us something about God, god's love, a heavenly story in some way manner, shape or form.
Speaker 1:And most of these parables, at least initially here will be coming from the Gospel of Luke. Now there's parables in Matthew, mark and Luke and some of the parables are in all three of those Gospels, some in just Matthew and Luke and some only in Matthew and some only in Luke. So that gives us some interesting things to look at with that. But right now I'm looking just at the gospel of Luke and one of the ones early in the gospel is in the seventh chapter of the gospel of Luke and it's sometimes called the parable of the money lenders. But that parable is set in a context All of them are and sometimes we think about the parable of the money lenders, but that parable is set in a context All of them are and sometimes we think about the parable and forget about the question or the situation in which Jesus told those parables. And those are critical to understanding some of the meaning and some of the implications and sometimes some of the almost a little bit of a punch that's in the parable and the seventh chapter of Luke's gospel.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of stuff going on. Jesus has healed a centurion slave. He has raised from the dead the son of a widow in the city of Nain. He has. Now the followers of John the Baptist have come, at John's request, to ask Jesus who he is, if he's really the Messiah. And it's in response to that part that we begin then to hear this next section. And Jesus tells those disciples go back and tell John what you see and hear about his healings, about his freedom of people, all of those different kinds of things to tell John about that, of those different kinds of things to tell John about that.
Speaker 1:And then Jesus accepts the invitation to have dinner, to dine with a prominent person in somewhere around Capernaum. At that time, one of the Pharisees actually a Pharise asked Jesus to come and have dinner with him. And it's an indication to us that Jesus, you know, welcomed all kinds of people and he did not play favorites to the rich or to the poor, and so he accepted this invitation very graciously. The name of the Pharisee we learn later is Simon, and Simon was a very common name at the time of Jesus. So this was not the disciples, it was nobody else, it was a Pharisee named Simon, you know.
Speaker 1:And so Jesus goes and has dinner, eats with, and to eat in those days people reclined on couches or benches. If you were in somebody's house, you didn't sit on a chair like we do today. But you ate kind of laying or half laying down and so your head and hands would be at the table end and feet behind you. And there were customs about how you greeted visitors, how you greeted guests, what kinds of things were often supplied to a guest who came to your home, and those things weren't afforded by Simon the Pharisee. When Jesus came, the Pharisee did not supply water to wash Jesus' feet because feet got very dusty, wore sandals, the road was dusty, the area was dusty, so it was customary to wash your feet before going into somebody's house and especially to offer that to guests to have some oil to anoint their head. To greet somebody, sometimes with a customary kiss, like a kiss on the cheek, was a very customary greeting and these things didn't necessarily happen. This was not. These customary things were not afforded to Jesus for whatever reason, we don't know. But there is a woman. The way the dinners were arranged. Let me back up here the way these dinners were arranged. Let me back up here the way these dinners were arranged.
Speaker 1:It was not at all unusual for people from the community to come into this room where they were eating. I don't know all of what they did in that room but to be there to hear the conversation. Be there to hear the conversation perhaps. Maybe to get a little bit of's made out of alabaster, which is a very delicate material. It was something that in which only precious perfumes were kept because it was an expensive glass. You had to very carefully take something to bore out the inside of a piece of alabaster for it to hold something. And she had some very expensive perfume in there and she used it to anoint Jesus' feet.
Speaker 1:She was moved and very overwhelmed by being there in the presence with Jesus and was crying and because of her embarrassment for that, she let down her hair which was never done except in the privacy of your own home and she dried Jesus' feet because her tears fell on his feet, and dried his feet with her hair as a way of kind of compensating for her crying and tears getting on her feet, and then anointed his feet with this expensive perfume and and there the implication is that she was not the typical kind of person who would been in this kind of a space in the home of a Pharisee. Not exactly welcome there. Probably or possibly a prostitute, probably or possibly a prostitute, and so anybody who looked at her and kind of knew who she was, would have been looking with a great deal of judgment about her. And so Jesus senses the mood in the room and what's going on, that he is allowing this woman to touch him, to anoint him, these kinds of things, and that he is being seen as a prophet. And so the question is, how could a prophet, somebody who's supposed to know what's going on and who these people are, how could a prophet possibly let a woman like that touch him and, you know, pull down her hair, let her hair down, literally let her hair down in such a gathering? And so it's in response to that whole situation that Jesus tells a very simple parable, and I'm going to read the text to you from the New International Version of the Bible, and it's in chapter 7, verses 41, through part of 42, 43, actually.
Speaker 1:And it reads like this Two men owed money to a certain money lender. One owed him 500 denarii, another 50. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both of them. Now which of them will love him more? That's the basic parable, that's it. And then Simon replies I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled. Jesus' response you have judged correctly. Jesus said that's the whole parable and the context in which it's said. So what's going on with this parable? A couple of things, and yes, I have some papers here, so you're hearing them being rustled around a little bit. I have some papers here, so you're hearing them being rustled around a little bit.
Speaker 1:The parable talks about a creditor or a money lender, kind of like a banker today, a cash advance store in our day and age. That's the kind of person situation we need to think about, situation we need to think about. A denarius is a Roman coin that was equal roughly to the purchasing power of an agricultural laborer's daily wage, so a whole day's wage. And it's a day's wage before any taxes or health insurance in our day and age, before any taxes or health insurance or anything else is taken out of it. So it's your gross income for a day. 50 denarii would have been equal to about two months salary because people worked six days out of the week. So 50, instead of 48 days, about 50 days salary. 500 denarius is equal to about 21 months of salary. A lot of dough, you know that's a pretty big amount of money.
Speaker 1:Neither creditor, unusual act of forgiving even one of them but here both of them is not even mentioned by Jesus, and many would have thought that that would be the focus of what Jesus was saying. It's on, however, on the debtors, that Jesus asks the question of Simon. There's the verb which of these will love him? Meaning the creditor, the creditor after the debt is forgiven, and so it includes the idea of gratitude in this verb. It's a love being a way of expressing gratitude. The verb here is a form of the very precious word in Greek, a form of agape. The Greeks have three words to describe love. There's the one from which we get brotherly love, like Philadelphia phylos. There's one for eros, erotic love, and then there is agape, which is the unconditional love, like God's love for us, and so the word for love that's used in this parable is a form of the word agape. Very important to note the difference. Simon's response, I suppose, or I assume it could be stated. Well, I assume maybe this was the person who got forgiven more, kind of a sense of indifference. Yeah, maybe that was the one who was loved more, was more grateful. But Simon could also. He's a Pharisee, so he was very acquainted with rabbinic law and rabbinic ideas of debate, and one of the ideas of debate would be well, it could have been the one who was forgiven more, but there could be reasons or conditions for the one who only owed 50 denarii to be the one who loved more, and so it could have been. He was kind of hedging his bets onto which of these two might really have loved more, and so the answer could also be that Simon is aware that he's kind of caught. Simon is aware that he's kind of caught, that he's been caught as not showing even basic courtesies and love towards Jesus as his guest when he showed up for dinner and answering reluctantly, expecting criticism for his lack of gratitude that Jesus was there or lack of recognition of how much he has been forgiven.
Speaker 1:In Jesus' day, a creditor could be somebody's boss. It could be a leading person in town. There were no organized banks or lending institutions, and the rules for what to do if someone couldn't pay a creditor back were really pretty much non-existent. There are references in scripture to creditors who threw debtors into jail until they could pay back, which means they're not going to be the ones paying back. It means that their family is going to have to find a way to come up with the money, or work until they can pay back what was owed. There are also references to debtors being sold into slavery or indentured servitude for nonpayment of debts. So a creditor would not just forgive these debts, would not just forgive these deaths.
Speaker 1:So the possibility that this even happens for somebody who owes 50 denarii would be a total surprise to the people who were hearing Jesus tell this parable, and the focus would be on the character of the creditor. That's what everybody would assume. The focus would be on the character of the creditor for forgiving that kind of a debt, rather than on the response of the debtors whose debt is erased. And so the question that Jesus asks Simon also comes as a surprise. It would seem obvious to us that the one forgiven the most would be the correct answer, if you will. But again, as I mentioned in rabbinic thought excuse me dealing with cases of conscience or right versus wrong, it might have been argued that both should have loved the creditor equally. Or the one forgiven less could have been the one who was most grateful for some reason or other. That would have been a theoretical argument that could have been given by Simon. He could have answered that way. So Jesus' question seems to call for the answer that Simon gave, even though a theoretical argument could be made for a different answer.
Speaker 1:So what about us today? What does this say to you or to me? One of the ways that people often deal with parables is to say okay, who are you, who am I in this parable, and are you the creditor to whom other people owe things? Maybe not dollars, but you feel the people owe you an apology. Other people owe you some better living conditions. You know, whatever you think, somebody else owes you. That would make you the creditor. Or are you the debtor of somebody who is in debt, maybe dollar-wise? It's not at all unusual these days for us for people to carry a debt for a mortgage, car loans or leases, credit card debt and not paying all of the income taxes. It can be all kinds of different things to be in debt too. So are you the creditor? Are you the debtor? Those are the two main characters, one of the debtors, two main characters in this story of the debtors, two main characters in this story. If you're the one to whom people owe money, what would you be inclined to do when somebody tells you they can't pay? You just say oh okay, you know you're forgiven. Not usually that's not the typical response that I hear from people, that how they want to have things done.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of talk these days in our country, in our culture, about reciprocal agreements you treat me one way, I'll treat you the same. You know, if you have policies and procedures that disrupt my business, I will do the same to you. Or if you treat me nice and scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, that kind of thing. But is that? That's not exactly what Jesus is talking about here? So you know, what would you do if you were the creditor? What have you done with people who owe you something, and at what level? You know, if you were to forgive somebody a debt, how much of a debt would you be willing to forgive before you would want to find some way to get that person to pay up? You know, would you extend terms of a loan longer so that they could pay? Would you reduce a payment? You know what lengths would you go to to be able to get your money back, but also maybe to help somebody else out? Those are all good questions for us to wrestle with. So those are all good questions for us to wrestle with.
Speaker 1:What do you see as the normal response today for people who cannot pay their debts, whether it be a financial debt or some other sort? What is the response? In the business world, there are certainly a lot of debt collection agencies out there. So businesses don't like to write off debts, they like to collect them. And you know, if you don't pay your debts, that has an impact on the credit score, has impact on future employment. Sometimes it can have all kinds of impacts going on. What's the response of most individuals who, you know, can't pay their debt? A lot of worry, usually A lot of anxiety about mounting debt, a lot of stress. I even had the experience a number of years ago, in serving a congregation, of working with a woman who I have no idea how significant her debt was, but the debt caused such huge depression for her that she became suicidal. She really became suicidal at the thought of having all this debt. And there are people for whom debt is such a big no-no that they cannot fathom living and being allowed to live with that kind of debt, living and being allowed to live with that kind of debt.
Speaker 1:If you heard about a business or an individual forgiving debts of the magnitude mentioned in this parable. What would you think about that creditor? Would you think, oh, I'm going to go borrow from that person, they'll forgive me. Or would you think that person's really pretty stupid? You know they don't have much of a good business sense on their head to do something like that. You know, what would you be thinking about that creditor? Certainly you might think, well, they're not going to stay in business very long if they keep doing that kind of thing. You know, or he or she must have money to burn. You know, to forgive debts like that. Maybe we think that they're ultra-rich, multiple billion billionaires, but you know, we wouldn't know necessarily. What would you think about a person like that?
Speaker 1:Have you ever felt that there's a debt that you can't pay and have been forgiven for it? That's a pretty tough question, you know. Is there something that you have done or said to someone that has been a debt of hurt, hurt feelings, hurt relationship, financially, perhaps a debt of behavior? Been involved in an accident that was your fault and created injury, physical injury, to someone? You know how? Have you? Have you ever felt that there is a debt, something that you owe to someone that you will never be able to repay and then have been forgiven for it. How did that feel? What happens inside? If that is true for you? What would you imagine happening If that hasn't happened but you would love for it to happen? Would it be like, oh, now I can go out and live life and do more of the same? I don't know. Or would it be such a big relief that it would change your outlook on life? What's the connection here? It's kind of the heart of this question, the heart of this story. What's the connection between love and gratitude? And that gets at a lot of things in our world today, lot of things in our world today.
Speaker 1:I have a book coming out soon, at the beginning of June of 2025. And in there I tell my story, and part of my story is about the power of gratitude. I was serving a congregation and one of four associate pastors so there were five full-time pastors and two part-time retired pastors on staff and the new senior pastor came on the staff and after a number of months, he came to me one day and said I could choose. I could choose to either resign or be fired. In other words, he didn't want me there and he didn't think I fit with whatever he wanted for a staff and no matter what I wanted, I was leaving. That was the gist of what he was saying. That was not my plan, you know, long-range plan. I had thought I'd be at that congregation for many, many more years but I was leaving and I was devastated.
Speaker 1:But it was learning about the power of gratitude and looking at that situation. And it took me time. Believe me, this was not something that was quick or easy, but it took looking at that situation and saying, is there anything here I can be grateful for? At that situation and saying, is there anything here I can be grateful for? And it took me. When I first started asking that question, it took me several days before I found one thing, just one, that I could be grateful for. And then I found a second thing and a third. And the more I looked, the more I found to be grateful for. There was nobody outside of me to forgive me for something, at least not in my thinking of things. But it was a matter of me forgiving this senior pastor for the way he was looking at who I was and what he was doing. But it was still my feeling of gratitude that allowed me and freed me to love and to forgive. So that's kind of another side to this thing that gratitude frees us to love, love.
Speaker 1:And if there's something that we really feel indebted, for that we have owed somebody an apology and they have forgiven us for something in the past, or if there is a financial debt, is a financial debt. You know, whatever kind of debt you might call it. If somebody forgives us for that, there's a whole lot of reasons to be grateful, a whole lot of them. But if we think, you know well, you know that's nothing, you know, why should I worry about that? That's no big deal. But the more we think that, the less grateful we are. And when we're not grateful, we actually don't see what we have been forgiven. We don't see the love and the grace of God for us, or from other people for that matter.
Speaker 1:Gratitude opens our eyes to see so much more. It opens our hearts to so much more. So what's the level of gratitude you see in yourself? Are you? Would you describe yourself as a grateful person? I don't know what would a grateful person be like, and is that you? What is the gratitude level of the average person you see in our culture today, in your family, in your faith community? If you're a member of a faith community, if you're a faith leader, what's the average level of gratitude you see in the members in your congregation or your community?
Speaker 1:What's happening to gratitude in our culture? There's so much pressure of people thinking you've got to see it my way or you're wrong, whatever that way is, and that's on all sides of the issue, and that doesn't leave much room for gratitude. It doesn't leave much room for caring about other people who are different from us, or seeing even how we impact others, perhaps in negative ways. Love and gratitude go together. I learned that years ago. It's a lesson I have to keep learning over and over and over, in many ways, in many different circumstances, but it's a powerful lesson and gratitude so opens our eyes and our hearts and our minds to see ourselves, other people, the whole world differently ourselves, other people, the whole world differently. And it opens ourselves more to be able to receive God's love. And that's what Jesus was saying to Simon, you know, asking him how much he loved, how grateful he is or was, and what did that mean for the love he showed for others.
Speaker 1:We have many questions in our culture in our world today about do we show and how do we show our love for other people? Are there people who are not worthy of our love, who we say no, no, no, no, no, no to you, for whatever reason, and what does that do? When we do not show our love to them, what does that say about our gratitude for the love that has been shown to us, maybe not by those folks, but by other people and by God Gratitude. The question in this parable of the money lender is how grateful are you and what's the power of gratitude to give us life and to create more positive relationships in our own life, in our community, in the whole world? So that's what I'd like you to think about today how grateful are you? Because that's the only person you can have any control over, for gratitude is me, myself and I, and once we change ourselves, that has a ripple effect.
Speaker 1:Saying thank you to someone, just a simple thank you to a clerk in a store, to someone we talk to on the phone yeah, a simple thank you. It's an expression of gratitude, not just perfunctory like yeah, that's what I'm supposed to do. Mom and dad told me to be to say thank you, please, and thank you. Yes, we were taught that, but it has so much more power than that. So the question for this parable for us, for you, for me, for all of us, is how grateful are you and what's the relationship between gratitude and love? Are you forgiven much enough to be grateful? I know I am. So. God's peace and God's blessings. Blessings, and come back again for another show. So until then, take care.
Speaker 1:You have been listening to Tilted Halo with me, kathleen Panning. What did you think about this episode? I'd really like to hear from you. Leave me some comments. Be sure to like, subscribe and share this episode and catch another upcoming episode. For more conversation on ministry life, mindset and a whole lot more. Go to wwwtiltedhalohelpcom, where I've got a resource guide and other resources waiting for you, and be sure to say hi to me, kathleen Panning, on LinkedIn. See you on the next episode.