Famous parables re-considered: Sex workers and the Kingdom of God

Symon Hill, author of The Upside-down Bible, is encouraged by first-time readers to re-evaluate a series of widely cited Bible stories …

Jesus seems to have spent a lot of time hanging around with sex workers. They crop up at various points in the gospels and scholars write of their presence in the early Christian community. It's generally assumed by Christians that these were former sex workers who have repented.

I encountered a different interpretation when I showed one of the key texts to current sex workers.

This is the Parable of the Two Sons. You can find the passage at Matthew 21, 22-32. Jesus speaks of a son who told his father he would obey him but failed to do so. The other son refused his father's instruction but then carried it out anyway.

After the parable, Jesus says to the Pharisees, 'In truth I tell you, tax-collectors and sex workers are making their way into the kingdom of God before you'. He says they believed John the Baptist whereas the Pharisees did not.

There was an instantly positive response when I showed this passage to Pandora Blake, a sex worker known for writing about ethical and political issues around sex. What did she think Jesus was saying?

‘A sex worker who has faith is more godly than a priest who doesn't,’ she said. She thought that Jesus was encouraging people not to reject the works of God when they don't fit their preconceptions. She added, 'Sex workers are a good metaphor for this because we are a marginalised class of people in most societies.’

Sarah, who has been a sex worker in the past, was not quite as enthusiastic. She asked, 'Do the sex workers still get to be sex workers and followers of that God? I would like to think so’.

The same hope was shared by a Christian sex worker I spoke with who wishes to remain anonymous. She insisted that Jesus condemned sexual exploitation but not sex workers.

Others disagreed. Some suggested that Jesus had used the phrase 'tax-collectors and sex workers' as examples to emphasise that even the most stigmatised people could enter the kingdom.

Tax-collectors (as opposed to people who ran the businesses they worked for) were not wealthy. They had a reputation for being bullies. They were doing ‘unclean’ work, handling Roman coins (considered idolatrous by many Jews). They had taken employment with the occupying power. Like sex workers, they may have been driven to dangerous and stigmatised work out of poverty and desperation.

Jesus was criticised for eating with 'tax-collectors' - not with 'former tax-collectors'. We tend to assume that most of them remained in their jobs while following Jesus. Could the same be true of sex workers?

If either tax-collectors or sex workers gave up their jobs, how would they survive? Neither area of work was known for the career prospects open to those who left it.

A possible answer lies in the nature of Jesus' community. At least some of his followers shared their possessions in common. If sex workers did give up their work, they may have survived by living from the common purse.

However, Jesus praised the sex workers for believing John the Baptist. Jesus' own movement began after the time of John. In John's time, sex workers were unlikely to have been able to support themselves if they did not continue selling sex.

Thus Jesus praised people whose lifestyles would be regarded by most Christians today as utterly immoral.

It's a shocking parable. But then if we don't find Jesus' teachings shocking, we're probably not paying attention.

Symon Hill is the author of The Upside-down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence, which was published on November 26 in paperback and eBook, priced £9.99.