There is a thought-provoking quote in The Other Journal's 2005 interview with John Milbank:

"I think that the body of Christ is St. Paul's image and I do think in St. Paul the economy of grace and the real economy are really linked with each other and the church essentially is a community of gifts---it's a community rooted in the Eucharist and in the reception of the life of God; and I think that when Paul characterizes the life of the church as a constant exchange of material gifts but also gifts in the sense of talents he insists these are for the up-building of the body. It seems to me that somehow what we fail often to think through is that grace is also material practice---or the meditation of grace is also a material practice---so that we're constantly supposed to be bestowing grace on each other and our social relations are supposed to go beyond simply duty or what is demanded towards always doing something extra." -John Milbank

What I find to be crucial in this is the return to an equality between material and spiritual health. N.T. Wright makes a similar point in his book The Lord and His Prayer when he comments that "forgive us our debts" means both spiritual debts and actual financial debts---that the material and immaterial are connected together. In short, the material and immaterial both form our existence, and we cannot separate them from one another without detriment to our theological lives.

When we live life as if we are in the parable of the wicked servant, forgiving economic debts and spiritual debts as the "good king" does, is when we walk the narrow road between gnosticism and materialism. ... more