Living and Giving: Sermon for Proper 21C, September 28, 2025

    
When I was in Santiago, Cuba, a few years back, I noticed little statues of poor Lazarus in the doorways of churches, with coins scattered around the statues, left by people who were themselves praying over an illness of someone they loved. There's a photo of one I saw on the cover of today's bulletin. It was one way of these churches NOT ignoring those in need lying at their gates. The money was then collected and used for those who had need. It's a quaint little superstition, and it leads to money being collected to help the poor. But it IS a superstition.

The problem with this, if you really take this kind of thing seriously-- and some people do-- is that it is engaging in what is called “magical thinking.” One type of magical thinking is called superstition—where you see a baseball player always eating chicken before a game, or avoiding stepping on the baseline, or not shaving during the play-offs, because he believes it will bring him luck. Sometimes this kind of thing is light-hearted.

I once knew a strict Baptist woman whose house had been on the market for so long that she went and bought one of the specially made St. Joseph figurines and buried it head down next to her “For Sale” sign—and boom- the house sold. She was aghast—and her world was rocked. It’s a real thing, too, here in St. Louis. Don’t believe me? Just google “St. Joseph sell your house.” The thing is, when your house does sell, you are expected to bring St. Joseph into your house and give him a place of honor at your new home. She worried that when her Baptist friends would come over, they would be shocked to see a Catholic saint sitting on her mantle, so she made a little chef's hat for him as camouflage, since he was wearing an apron and holding what looked like a lump of dough in his hands. Voila! Now he was Imo, of Imo's Pizza!

But the prosperity gospel is bad enough in terms of its thinking that we human beings can manipulate God to do what we want by way of any magic formula. Even worse is the idea that if wealth and health and good fortune is a sign of blessing, then the obverse must also be true. The poor, the ill, the dying must be being cursed by God. They must have brought their misfortune on themselves through sin. This second belief also then removes the expectation that those who do have wealth should do anything to help the poor, since to do so would be violating God's will. I know it sounds crazy--but I have heard this come out of the mouths of a lot of people in my life when questioned about their beliefs.

Our circumstances in life are not the result of God's blessing or cursing us. Bad things happen to kind people. Good things happen to hateful people. And none of this is the result of actions by God. And the worst thing about the prosperity gospel is that it leaks out into our secular life-- just replace the word God for "my own hard work." Even when it is obvious that no matter what, community goods helped them get there.

Amos is addressing a society that is at peace and experiencing great prosperity-- for a few. The words Amos speaks are pointed in addressing a kingdom that is enjoying newfound wealth and peace-- and yet also experiencing a huge chasm in their common life due to that wealth. Where once all lived basically equal lives, now the rich have summer homes and winter homes, and devote themselves to feasting on fine foods, while the poor labor day by day, and are not themselves receiving their fair share of the prosperity. Interestingly, it is also a time when religiosity among the wealthy also flourished-- even while they violated the very heart of the Torah by believing themselves to be a separate class, especially favored by God. Amos, speaking for God, derides and condemns the way the rich exploit the poor in the harshest of terms.

In our gospel fable of the rich man and the beggar at his gate, Jesus chips away at the edges of this kind of thinking, just nibbling around its corners, as it were.

Let's be clear: Jesus is telling a fable here. He is using tropes and characters that are familiar to everyone at his time. We are tipped off by the use of the term "Hades," a Greek concept which good Jews did not believe in. They did believe in Torah and the Prophets, however. Prophets like Amos, who also is being used by God in our first reading to criticize a society that has strayed from a community model of caring for each other to an individualist model of a tiny wealthy upper class hoarding most of the wealth while the great mass of workers barely scrapes by. Somehow that seems like a scenario that we might recognize.

Jesus symbolically condemns the prosperity gospel by using his fable to condemn those who do not use their means to care for those less fortunate. The difference between the two symbolic characters Jesus creates in Luke 16 could not be more stark-- nor could we miss the signs of whose side Jesus is on. Each day the rich man averts his eyes from the beggar, beset by open sores, at his very own gates, as he goes about preparing his daily feasts. The rich man is nameless, but the poor man is named "Lazarus," meaning "God Is My Helper." Yet, from our perspective, we hear the name "Lazarus" and think of Jesus's friend whom Jesus raised from the dead.

Speaking of death, the one thing both men share is that they are mortal. When both die, there is a stark reversal of circumstance. Suddenly, and for eternity, the beggar is in the bosom of Abraham in ease and honor (recalling Jesus's observation from August 31 about humility in choosing places of honor), while the rich man is in torment. The rich man reinforces why he is in torment with his continued attitudes that Lazarus should serve him, as the rich man tries to convince Abraham-- from Hades-- to make Lazarus tend to soothe his suffering or become an errand boy to warn the rich man's brothers of what fate awaits them if they ignore the divinely sanctioned claims of those in need all around them. That rich man stepped over the poor beggar every day. And ignored the need staring him in the face. The need that Torah commanded him to alleviate. The same teaching that Jesus lays upon all who follow him. It's not enough to pray that God helps those beset by poverty or illness. God has made us God's agents in the world to do that ourselves, as we claim to be the Body of Christ in the world.

Yet is this a story about death-- or about life? I think we DO miss the point if we think following Jesus is about taking care of ourselves and "going to heaven" after we die matters more than how we try to live like Jesus. Whether we believe in heaven or hell-- or Hades-- or not, the fact is that what we do with our lives matters, and how we respond to the human needs and suffering we know exist all around us-- is what matters.

How we recognize the divine image in everyone-- rich or poor, saint or sinner, citizen or migrant, even friend or foe-- matters. It matters because the most important part of the life of faith is not in what we believe, but in what we do when that belief takes root within us, in all its implications. At the heart of the life of following Jesus, not just "believing" in him, is the concrete and mindful ways we truly seek to live in unity with each other, regardless of race, class, origin, or wealth-- and especially, for the way we care for the "invisible" ones lying at our very gates.

Jesus asks us that question every day. Every day is a day to work toward recognizing the mercy and grace God offers us, and let that mercy and grace come to full flower in the way we use what is most precious in this world for the benefit of those most ignored and forgotten.

As Creation itself reminds us, the way of life is the way of giving. Nature is in balance when each creature in the web of existence gives as much as it takes. This is the path of life, abundant for all, which God first gives each of us. In order to live a life abundant, we are called to give abundantly. Not so we will win a prize. So that we live a life of meaning and purpose-- and follow in the way of Jesus.

Amen.

Readings:

Amos 6:1a,4-7
Psalm 146
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31

Preached at the 505 on September 27, and at the 10:30 Eucharist on September 28, 2025 at St. Marton's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Imagining the Kingdom: Sermon for Proper 12A

Today, I thought it might be fun to start with a little bit of show and tell. In your pews, you will find copies of an illustration on a single sheet of paper. Take a few moments and look at it.

What did you see when you FIRST looked at it? What did you immediately recognize it as?

How many people here saw a duck? How many saw a rabbit?

Who here saw something completely else, like a rock formation or alien spaceship?

Now that I have tipped you off, can you SEE a duck in the picture? Can you SEE a rabbit if you change the focus of your line of sight within the image?

So here’s a mind-blowing question: which is it? Is it a duck, or a rabbit? Or is it both at the same time?

This illustration was used by the early 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who himself borrowed it from the field of psychology. He was trying to demonstrate a fundamental issue about the mind and observation—how two people can objectively view the same thing, but come to wildly different conclusions about what that thing is. It has to do with the way we look at things—that we actually first jump to a recognition of the whole of something before we can see its constitutive parts.

Because here’s another fact: we often only see what we are looking for—we have talked about that previously in sermons this year. Jesus knows this. The world wants us to only see scarcity, and division, and soul-crushing competition to the death. It seeks to keep us anxious, empty, feeling unfulfilled and separated from those around us. If that’s all we look for—and we are programmed to see that way—that is all we will see. Unless--- unless we look for the signs that there is something else out there. Unless we use our imaginations, unless we “open the eyes of our hearts” to see the imprint of God all around us, in each other, in images, in nature, in stories or art or poetry. Or through parables.

That’s an important insight to bring to our life of faith. Unless we know what the point of a Christian life is, and can explain that purpose to others, people will have no idea what we are talking about—they won’t recognize the parts of the Christian life unless they can see the whole.

I walk you through this little experiment today because I want you to understand WHY Jesus is telling us all these parables. He is telling us what the kingdom of heaven is LIKE so that we can learn to look for the parts so that we can see the whole revealed right in front of us. He is telling us what the kingdom of heaven is LIKE because it is too big to just recognize all at once, and it is also too small to recognize all at once.

Our gospel reading hits us with six quick parables in rapid succession, all beginning with the words, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” And all of them are meant to explain what the kingdom of heaven, or life under God’s values, would be like.

To be clear, the kingdom of heaven is NOT about what happens when we die. The kingdom of heaven is about what God’s hopes are for how we live our lives. The kingdom of heaven is made up of faithful people who live by-- and love others and all creation by—God’s values. God’s values, as we are reminded by our reading from 1 Kings and our section of Psalm 119, are guided by the wisdom embedded in God’s commandments to us. And in Christianity, we have a model for how to live out those commandments in Jesus. We are called not just to believe in him, but to follow him and act like him—caring for others, seeking to heal and reconcile wherever we go, being lights of love and hope against the darkness of despair. That’s the kingdom of heaven, right here, right now.

Jesus explains to us what the kingdom of heaven is LIKE—back in your days of studying English, you might remember that such comparisons are known as similes. We use this kind of figurative, imaginative language because God is more than whatever our words can say. God is mystery—but mystery that is all around us; mystery that constantly reached out to us in love, seeking our flourishing by living lives of abundance—especially abundant grace, abundant mercy, abundant hope, abundant love.

And here’s the special feature holding all of today’s parables together: Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven starts with small things. Tiny things. Mustard seeds, yeast, and pearls. And those three things, in particular, start with something that is not valued at all. Mustard was a weed. Yeast is considered necessary, but unclean, which is why Jewish households got rid of the leavened bread during Passover. 

And pearls? You may think of them as luminescent and expensive. But do you know how pearls actually start out? They start by being a grain of sand that gets into an oyster and irritates it. The oyster can’t expel the sand, so it begins to coat it with its saliva, which eventually hardens, layer after layer, day after day, until suddenly it’s a pearl. Yep. A pearl is basically an irritating piece of dirt covered by fossilized oyster spit. Seems like an odd thing to value and wear as jewelry—but then again, some of us also like silk, and that starts out coming from a worm’s butt.

You might be laughing, because my illustrations are outrageous—but memorable. I mean, you may never look at a pearl or a duck, or a rabbit, the same way again. Jesus was doing exactly the same thing. His listeners laughed at the idea of a mustard plant turning into a tree, or a woman knead what is the equivalent of 60 pounds of flour and turning it into bread, or a person selling everything he owned for a single pearl.

Jesus’s hearers would probably wonder why any sane person would deliberately sow a weed in his field—it will take the place of valuable crops. Yet here this weed is commended for providing a home to all kinds of birds. In the Bible, trees are often the symbol of how God provides shelter, protection, and nourishment to us. But it goes deeper in our stories today-- what one person considers useless, God considers valuable. Thus, the kingdom of heaven turns earthly calculations of value and worth on their heads. Just as in the Parable of the Sower, something small (it took over 700 seeds to weigh a gram) produces something substantial.

And here’s something we may not know: mustard was considered to be a curative in the ancient world. It was thought to aid digestion and fight the common cold. In our brief parable, mustard growing into such a large bush means that there was far more of it than one person could use, because just like every good thing, too much of a good thing is toxic. Instead, this medicine is meant to be shared.

Take a step back from all these scattered parables to see the whole. Jesus was illustrating this truth: from the smallest things, once we recognize them, we can see hints and flashes of something valuable beyond price: the kingdom of heaven. The Way of Love for us to live and truly flourish and have full and abundant life, right now, even among the weeds.

Listen to that foundational principle again: God seeks our flourishing by calling us to live lives of abundance—especially abundant grace, abundant mercy, abundant hope, abundant love. Is that the message of how the world tells us to live? NO. The world always tells us there is never enough and that the only way to win is by attempting to crush each other and only think of ourselves. That’s why, even though the kingdom of heaven is right now, it is also incumbent upon us to work toward it, to contribute to sharing this good news of God’s love for us.

To have faith, friends, is to imagine what can be. To be faithful people calls us to open our imaginations—our hearts and our minds—to the presence of God in a world that denies God. It’s a world after all, that tells you that a duck is a rabbit—and a Japanese horror-movie rabbit, at that.

Our parables today remind us that even a little is enough. In the Kingdom of Heaven a tiny bit of faith is enough. A tiny bit of understanding is enough. As we look at church attendance decreasing in the West, we are also assured that the Church started small, like a mustard seed, and yet eventually became big enough to even grant non-Jews a place to live, which is one interpretation for the “birds of the air.”

The birds find their refuge in the branches of this new tree, sprung up through God’s goodness, just as we find our refuge within the kingdom of heaven ourselves (Levine, 166). We do nothing to earn this—God’s love and care is there for us through no merit of our own, but simply as a result of God’s abundant grace and mercy. From an ecological standpoint, we could also say that we find our home in this beautiful world that, of all the planets and stars in the universe, is uniquely suited to support our life.

Close your eyes for a moment: what does the kingdom of heaven look like for you? Is there an image, or a sense, or a feeling that hints at God’s loving presence in your life? Now open your eyes. How can you share that image in the world? Because that’s how the kingdom of heaven grows.

One thing is sure. The kingdom of heaven doesn’t just fit one description, simile, or definition.

Poet Denise Levertov, who converted to Roman Catholicism late in life, wrote this poem that is called to mind with our gospel. You can find it in the back of your bulletins. It’s called “On the Parables of the Mustard Seed:”

Who ever saw the mustard-plant,
wayside weed or tended crop,
grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree, a treeful
of shade and nests and songs?
Acres of yellow,
not a bird of the air in sight.

No. He who knew
the west wind brings
the rain, the south wind
thunder, who walked the field-paths
running His hand along wheatstems to glean
those intimate milky kernels, good
to break on the tongue,

was talking of miracle, the seed
within us, so small
we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust,
nothing.
               Glib generations mistake
the metaphor, not looking at fields and trees,
not noticing paradox. Mountains
remain unmoved.

Faith is rare, He must have been saying,
prodigious, unique –
one infinitesimal grain divided
like loaves and fishes,

as if from a mustard-seed
a great shade-tree grew. That rare,
that strange: the kingdom

                                            a tree. The soul
a bird. A great concourse of birds
at home there, wings among yellow flowers.

The waiting
kingdom of faith, the seed
waiting to be sown.

The kingdom of heaven is found in the simplest, most commonplace of things: seeds and trees and homebaked bread, in the joy of discovering something you’ve never expected to find. In looking for the good, and the beauty, and the meaning rather than trying to beat down everyone around us.

So what is the kingdom heaven like to you?

Imagine it. Love it. And then tend to that vision to bring it into being, to provide a home for all.

Amen.

--Preached at the 505 on July 29 and at the 10:30 Eucharist on July 30, 2023 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church.

Readings:

1 Kings 3:5-12
Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33,44-52

Worthy Weeds: Speaking to the Soul, July 20, 2023

Sometimes, the worthiness of a weed is in the eye of the beholder. In the lat few years, some farmers, alive to the extreme stress that many pollinating creatures are under, have begun planting the margins of their fields with clover, ox-eye daisies, sorrel—even vetch on the verge! Queen Anne’s lace, which sounds fancy but is actually wild carrot. Taking up valuable farmland! Sixty years ago, this would have been akin to heresy of the hippy-dippiest sort.

But these “weeds” attract pollinators—which in turn, helps the crop to grow, not just in one particular field, but all around. Maybe this is a modern admonition to do as Jesus advises us, to let the weeds grow up among the wheat in Matthew 13:24-30,36-43.

As conditions in our environment get more and more extreme climatologically, weeds are experiencing a rehabilitation of sorts, which makes the parable of the wheat and the weeds in Matthew’s gospel shine with new possibility. What if this isn’t a story about judgment and flames, but a story of redemption, of allowing time and grace to sort things out where we rush in to condemn?

I remember I was sitting in my car one morning, about ten years ago, reading. In between pages I would watch my daughter's field hockey practice. They played in a desiccated brown field full of crispy grass and weeds—even though every boys’ team was gallivanting on crisply tended fields, the girls were shunted a half mile away, not even on school property, and yet the school claimed equivalency under Title IX. Every time I sat near this field watching these girls practice, I felt a sprout of annoyance break through the drought-fired clay of my heart.

The day before, a man half-heartedly, like a somnambulist, mowed this alleged field, even though the grass had remained in a state of stasis due to the extremely dry conditions of that summer. This field seemed to be in suspended animation, but instead of Sleeping Beauty, it was Sleeping Ugly.

There were tiny oases of green visible here and there across the burnt-ochre and sienna expanse, but those were weeds. It's always that way. When the *stuff* goes down, it's the weeds that thrive. It often seems like that with people, too. I don't know about you, but sometimes that just drives me crazy, especially if I have forgotten the weediness of my own natur, and put on airs that I might be more of a hothouse flower.

As I mused, desultorily, my eyes scanned the thatch patches that prickled, sea-urchin-like, over the ground-- and saw one small, shocking flash of color jump out from the landscape. There was a tiny yelp of purple hanging low among the clumps of fescue and thatch. A fluted flower-- belonging, yes, to some weed.

What could be more unlikely than beauty in such sere surroundings? What could be more stubborn than this small flower determined to bloom just here regardless of its improbability? What else could remind me that even in the most drab and dingy places there is grace and beauty if only we open our eyes?

And suddenly the weed was transformed into a bit of grace, a call for second chances.

In other words, a miracle.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul for July 20, 2023.

Soil, Seeds, and Stories: Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11A)

Words are powerful things. They get inside us and change us. They combine together and create ideas, and those ideas can inspire us to great things, or to terrible things. Words sprout in our hearts and minds like seeds.

Words can also be used to tell stories, and who doesn’t love a good story? BUT—and there is always a but—sometimes people use words in strange and mysterious ways.

So I’m thinking about starting a new self-help group, and I was wondering if any of you all would like to join. Hello, my name is Leslie, and I live with a Dad-jokester. I live with a punning, groan-inducing person whose gift for banter and word-play when we were dating took a dark turn once we had little children, and who has no shame about using his dark gift. And it’s contagious—you live around a Dad Joker long enough, you start collecting Dad Jokes simply as a matter of self-defense, a kind of humor-based version of building up a nuclear arsenal: you never want to use it, but if you don’t have some on hand as a deterrent, you could be attacked at any time.

Anyone else had this experience? Is there anyone out there who can commiserate, and wants to join me in my new club?

The thing I have learned from living with this kind of a jokester is that there is NO topic about which a Dad Joke cannot be told. For instance:

A dad and his kids were walking through the woods, and the littlest kid picked up an acorn.
“Dad! What’s this?” the kid asked.
“A tree.” The Dad answered.
“Really?” the kid asked. And the Dad answered,
“In a nutshell, yes.”

A friend of mine has chickens, and suddenly they weren’t eating the fancy Purina Chicken Chow they had bought. It’s really weird, because I looked at the seed, and it looked flawless. It was, in fact, impeccable.

Last week, I had to drive to Nashville and back in one day because my car had trouble and had to be repaired over several days, and it was finished. On my way back, I was stuck in construction traffic in the middle of a bunch of newly plowed fields, and a plane came in flying low over a field and turned around and flew back overhead. At first I assumed it was dusting crops, but then it looked like the fields were barren, as the plane dropped the stuff it was carrying onto the field next to me, some of it blew back—and it was seed. Aha! I realized I was looking at a reseeding airline.

As we begin chapter 13 of Matthew’s gospel, let us all be grateful that Jesus’s stories were parables instead of puns. No. really. Let us bow our heads. (Mutters) Amen.

Now then let us think about how important stories are. Matthew’s gospel has five main blocks, called discourses. And all these discourses are meant to help Jesus’s listeners understand the point of Jesus’s life on Earth, which is nothing less than helping us find and grow a new community here on earth that lives according to the values of what Matthew calls “the Kingdom of Heaven.” So what is the kingdom of heaven, a phrase used particularly by the author of Matthew? The kingdom of heaven has to do with the reign of God, and in particular, with the transformation that we set out to work toward when we declare ourselves as members of what Presiding Bishop Michael Curry calls “the Jesus Movement.”

The kingdom of heaven grows when the Word of God is welcomed, received, nurtured in the hearts of people just like you and me who do the incredible thing of committing to make way for God to rule our lives. Talk about counter-cultural, especially in this day and age of self-help, even sometimes self-worship. At Chapter 13 of Matthew’s gospel, we are entering a new discourse, known as the Parabolic Discourse. In this third of five teaching blocks in the gospel, this chapter stands at the heart of Matthew’s message—and the chapter is filled with 7 parables of the kingdom.

It's funny—there’s one feature parables and puns share. Parables arrest the attention of their hearers due to their twists, their strangeness, their often-enigmatic quality, and sometimes their humor. Parables are stories that use symbols and images to make a point. So the character and the setting are often symbols. 

The first parable in this discourse is this one- the Parable of the Sower. There’s even a pun embedded in the title. The definition of a parable is a comparison or extended metaphor, of course. BUT the etymology of the word “parable” comes from the Greek prefix “para”, which means alongside, and the Greek word root “bole” which means to throw or cast. So the first of the stories in the Parabolic Discourse is a “throwing alongside” of a story of someone throwing seed on all sides. I think that’s awesome, even as it might tread dangerously close to an especially nerdy form of Dad Joke-ism.

So let’s look at this parable: Who is the person sowing or scattering the seeds?
What does the seed stand for?
And there’s different kinds of soil, right?

Specifically, Jesus is talking about the response of the world to his teachings in these parables. Jesus is the original Sower in our first pass through this parable. The different soil stands for the different ways people respond to the teachings of Jesus, especially in Jesus’s lifetime, and in the time just after, in which Matthew’s community is living. And from this parable, we learn that being able to see the truth of a story depends on your setting, but it also depends upon your point-of-view.

Some people have hard hearts, like the dirt on a path packed down by trampling feet—maybe they’re angry or afraid of being disappointed. Maybe they’ve been hurt. They can’t hear the story until they let go of their fear or anger.

Some people get really enthusiastic for a new way of life at first, but when they realize how much work it is, or that some people will dislike them for their new beliefs, they give up and go back to their old story.

Some people like what they hear about what God can do for THEM, but they don’t want to change. They may not like Jesus’s call to love your neighbor as much as you love yourself when that neighbor ends up being someone completely different from them. So eventually they, too, dismiss the story of God.

But in some people, those who have the ability to have an open heart and open mind, those who are willing to believe that love can bring us through anything, even troubles or sadness, and is the greatest treasure of all—they’re willing to write a different kind of story with their lives.

It is only those who open their ears, and their hearts, to be receptive to the story revealed by Jesus who will bear good fruit, but they will bear it abundantly. Those of us who hear the story of God and see our own story within it now have the name for that love that maybe before we didn’t have a name for.

But here are some other implications from this parable. We are not only called to be the good soil, and receive the gospel, and let it drop right there. We are called to be disciples. That means that Jesus calls us to share in the sowing right alongside him. That’s what being members of the Body of Christ really means—not just being good soil for ourselves, but spreaders of the good news of God’s redemption in Jesus for others.

And that means not worrying too much about the way the ground looks in our sharing of the Good News. The Sower sows with abandon—he doesn’t check to see if the conditions are perfect, he just starts scattering seed hither and yon with the confidence that some of it will sprout and eventually bear good fruit. This situation alone is a welcome reminder to all of us to never allow “the perfect” to get in the way of the “good” when it comes to sharing the good news. As a billboard at St. Martin’s used to say about kindness, we should be throwing the good news around “like confetti.” Everywhere we go. Everything we do. We ARE Jesus’s face, heart, and seed-scattering hands in the world.

So yes, one lesson from this parable is to work on the soil in our own hearts, and to work on ourselves so that we are as receptive and fertile as we can possibly be. But the other lesson from this parable is that we ourselves are called to help spread the seed of Jesus’s message of God’s love, redemption and care for us as wide and as far as possible, with abandon. And we can do that as simply and as intentionally as the way we live our lives. As self-professed Christians or not, people know us by our words, by our attitude, by our actions. How we walk through the world is the greatest testament to who Jesus is in this time and in this place. God has given us the very best seed—the seed that promises to sprout and grow and nourish and sustain a billion hearts—if only the seed is scattered broadly enough.

This sharing of the good news is part of what we talked about last week—about “pulling for each other” as one of the most important witnesses we can make as Christians.

So as you go into this week, work the soil of your heart, so that you can fully receive the gospel and bear good fruit—absolutely, and especially before you we worry about the soil quality of others. But then go out into the world, flinging the good news around like confetti—embodying the good news, sharing the good news, so that it may produce abundantly, no matter what soil it first lands on.

Preached at the 505 on July 15, and at the 8 and 10:30 Holy Eucharists at St. Martin's Church in Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

Isaiah 55:10-13
Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

Sowing Hope: Speaking to the Soul, July 13, 2023

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-25

In the woods a woodpecker has discovered a pine
filled with insects like a pinata,
and has already worked a pattern of holes
like the brogues on a pair of wingtip shoes, hammering
a spiraling, pointillist tale of his search for sustenance,
his drumroll also warning me
that this tree may not be long for this world.
But still, this is the way of things,
and this is where I go to feel
the peace
and the industry
of wild things.

This is where things grow
mostly despite me
rather than because of me.

To be a gardener or a farmer
is to trade in hope,
to refuse to give up
even when the odds for abundant growth seem long.

Nonetheless here’s growth,
and anticipation,
and hope
in each new sprout from the ground.

Sow in hope; reap in care:
the instruction manual
for farming and ministry.

There is more than simply science
or even art
in how hearts, sometimes scarred from abuse or neglect,
can nonetheless be transformed
into the soil for new growth in love.

Sure, some seed may feed the birds--
but doesn’t God provide there as well?
Plant anyway, yes—
open to receive the gospel in faithfulness,
in response to the promise
that the gospel will bear fruit
even in the clayest soil of the healing human heart.

God famously works in clay, too.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on July 13, 2023.

The Parable of the Blade of Grass

                  Where the fire enters
a city of small doors, a city
of one blade of grass, a city
where the fire enters, where
the children on their hands
and knees lick the stones
of the street and the mice gather
in the square with the others
to watch the one blade of grass,
where old men whisper
in their hands, a city where the old
women move their skirts against
their thighs to remind themselves
of their own flesh, and what flesh
can do for a city, for a fire,
where a couple not from the city,
not blue-veined, but full of flesh,
watch the town gather around the blade
of grass, watch them offer their eyes,
watch them heap stones around their fire,
this couple not from this city,
not flattened by the heat
or the dust watch the children
crawl to the edge of the blade
of grass and offer their young tongues,
in this city where the fire enters,
the two not of the city walk
to the children, step over their hunched
backs and dirt-stained lips, past the edge
and pluck the flower from the fire,
from this city, in this city where
fire enters through a hush of flesh,
the couple not of the city snap
the blade of grass in two
and place it in each other’s mouth     watch
them eat a fire watch the children grow
legs below the knees     watch the old men
kiss the old women behind the house walls.
Love is when you hear the flood coming.


-- Roger Reeves (1980- ), African American poet and professor of poetry at the University of Illinois, Chicago

Two Before the Altar: Speaking to the Soul, October 20, 2022

“There is a crack in everything;
That’s how the light gets in.”—Leonard Cohen

The upright Pharisee, each hair in place, not a
Fringe on his tasseled loafers askew, stood
Before God’s altar and prayed to himself
Congratulations for his impeccable soul.
He knew what others thought of him.
His righteousness shone from his shoulders
Like epaulets- so certain was he of his goodness.
He checked the lock on the vault of his heart,
And nodded, satisfied. Nothing
In, nothing out, undisturbed. Shrugging deeper
Into the mantle of his own esteem,
Duty satisfied, he knew he was blessed.
Nothing had changed.

On trembling legs the tax-collector climbed the steps, aware
Of the eyes that turned his way, the stink of collusion
That clung to his fine clothes. He could still turn away,
But his heart urged him forward. No one
Expected to see him here in God’s courts,
And some sneered as he passed.
He knew what others thought of him.
Eyes downcast, he made himself small,
And beat his breast,
Pouring out his sins until his soul
Was an empty bowl, so thirsty was he for God’s mercy.
A spark of forgiveness lit the tinder
Of his heart. Cheeks wet, he resolved to turn.
In the new fire of grace and gratitude he was reclaimed.
Everything had changed.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on October 20, 2022.

The God Who Pursues Us: Sermon for Proper 24C

Let me just cut right to the chase: God is not the unjust judge.

Also: You don’t get what you pray for by badgering God until God gives in. See also: You don’t don’t get what you pray for if you rub a lucky rabbit’s foot, or if you cross your fingers, if you find a four leaf clover, or if you say the same prayer for a week or even a month.

Yet I have known people who believed all these things. I imagine many of you have too. I mean, that would be a sweet system if it worked, right? Just act like a spoiled toddler and God, the weary parent, will eventually give in.

Except that’s not how prayer works. That’s also not how God works.

So then, how can we understand this parable?

Let’s start with prayer. Jesus tells this parable, he says, to encourage us. That is literally what the phrase “not lose heart” means. To stay steadfast and faithful.

We also know that prayer is a two-way street. We forget that sometimes. I think the movie Bruce Almighty didn’t help that very much when it portrayed prayers as emails to God that were all requests for God to magically solve problems or allow the petitioners to win the lottery. Bruce, sitting in God’s chair because he has said he could do God’s job better, gets exasperated by the unmanageable number of requests and does what you should NEVER do when at work: he hit “reply all.” His “yes” to every request spawned literal chaos and rioting.

The communication link that is prayer goes two ways: from God to us and from us to God. As much as we may think that prayer originates with us, that is not so. The times in our lives when we have fallen away from the habit of regular prayer is not filled with nothingness or a vacuum. There is God, still in our lives, knocking at the doors of our hearts, placing obstacles in our path to inspire us to take up the conversation again. 

To be clear, the entire span of scripture is the story, again and again, of God pursuing these reckless humans God has made, seeking us out of love when we have gone astray, from calling to us when we are hiding in the bushes in the Garden of Eden to the extreme step of sending angels and prophets and talking donkeys and even God’s own Son to try to encourage us to walk in the ways of love, hope, justice, and reconciliation—God’s dream for our flourishing.

In giving human beings both the privilege of being made in God’s image and also bearing the responsibility of free will, God necessarily cedes God’s total claim to power. Just as even when sitting in God’s chair, Bruce Almighty can’t make his girlfriend love him again by sheer will, God allows us the freedom to respond to God’s abundant love and grace—or not. We know this to be true.

With these basic assumptions laid down, we can now take up first who the judge represents. This judge is guided by self-interest and self-preservation. His actions do not reveal a concern for anything but his own status. His focus is on the short-term, on taking advantage of his position for self-benefit and profit. He considers those who get hurt by his actions to be mere collateral damage, and acts out of pure profit motive to himself.

What if the unjust judge is the world’s systems of greed, casual cruelty, contempt, and inhumanity? The systems all over the world that excuse injustices and unethical practices with the claims that “the law” that they themselves have written do not forbid actions which expand inequality, poverty, and defenselessness before the gears of power? What if the unjust judge is the tendency we have to claim “that’s just the way it is” with a shrug when we encounter tragedy or injustice? Our tendency to claim helplessness in correcting human systems that we tend to treat as sacrosanct? Our tendency to claim there is no money to improve our commitment to the general welfare of our most vulnerable citizens while expanding corporate welfare and the ability to manipulate scarcity of resources so that they end up in the hands of the few?

God sent God’s son into the world not as a prince or a potentate but as a humble little baby born to an unwed, teenaged, peasant mother and her bewildered carpenter of a fiancé. Jesus grew up in a duty backwater of empire in a no-account town in a no-account region on the very margins of influence from any sort of human calculation. So how hard is it, really, to imagine God as the widow, relentlessly knocking on the doors of our hearts and consciences?

Trappist priest and theologian Thomas Keating makes this observation about this parable:

God approaches us all day long, coming to meet us morning, noon, and night through people, events and our own thoughts, feeling, memories, and reactions. We accept the kingdom finally, not because we are just or deserve it, but because at some point like the unjust judge, we cannot stand the importunities of grace anymore and are forced to give in, saying, ‘Okay, take my life. I am in your hands.’”

That kind of surrender is the bravest and therefore scariest thing we can do. It means living life with wide-open eyes and a wide-open heart. It mean not just worshiping Jesus as a distant figure sitting up on a heavenly throne, but actually following him in his humble carpenter’s attire our into the world, in attending to the aches and pains and needs we see all around us, even if we have to do it one person or situation at a time. It means our obligation lies not in just performing human rituals every week for the benefit of our own souls, but instead our obligation is to those we encounter in the world. To BE the loving, healing hands and heart of Christ not just within these walls but out beyond these doors in our secular lives. By doing so, our lives become less secular, yes, but more holy.

By doing so, persevering in prayer means raising our voices and our political will in advocating for justice for the oppressed. Prayer can be prayed with our feet, walking alongside those in need. Prayer can be prayed as we provide the hungry with food and the unhoused with shelter. It means sitting in love and faithfulness with the sick and the grieving. I give thanks that this is where I see you all being most faithfully engaged in prayer—not just sitting here on Sundays, although that is important because it gives us fellowship and strength for our true prayer lives, out in the world, sustained by each other, by your commitment to this place, and always, always, by God, who honors us by calling us into partnership in bringing about God’s kingdom.

As Rabbi Rami Shapiro reminds us:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.
Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now.
You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

We walk alongside God, and we walk alongside each other. Let us bravely persist in prayer—and sometimes even use words. And the most important word of all is yes. Yes to God. Yes to community. Yes to following Jesus.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on October 15 and the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist on October 16, 2022 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

Jeremiah 31:27-34
Psalm 119:97-104
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Luke 18:1-8

Bridging the Chasm: Sermon for Proper 21C

My dad was a very superstitious person. Growing up, there were rules that were followed. Everywhere we lived Dad hung a horseshoe above the door, and while carrying it to its place of installation it was very important not to turn the horseshoe sideways or worse, upside down. That would, and I quote, “make all the luck run out.” Dad would put a nail through each of the seven nail holes (yep—seven!), and voila—good luck in the house. Apparently, this superstition was rooted in a story about St. Dunstan, who was trained as a blacksmith. One day, the Devil rode in and wanted his horse shoed. Dunstan apparently recognized the Prince of Darkness, but played it cool and agreed. But he took the first horseshoe and nailed it to the Devil’s foot. Howling in pain, the Devil agreed to never enter a house with a horseshoe nailed over the door if Dunstan removed the shoe.

There you have it. If my dad had known this was related to a Catholic saint, he might have thought twice. Nah, probably not.

Similarly, he collected knives, and his favorites were Case knives. We were raised to see pocket knives as indispensable tools, and he made sure all his kids had at least one. To this day I feel like a pretender if I have any pocket knife that is not a Case knife that is razor sharp, and yes, I do carry one still, including some I inherited from him. 

But there were also superstitions about knives. You could never ever ever give anyone a knife. Knives had to be purchased. So when my dad would give one of us a knife, he would require us to give him a nickel, to make sure that this was a transaction. He would often attach the nickel TO the knife, given that we kids often didn’t have any money. We would just have to immediately give the nickel back. Apparently he believed that a knife that was a gift that would sever the relationship between the giver and the receiver. 

You also could never hand someone an open pocket knife. We also knocked on wood, threw spilled salt over our shoulders, NEVER walked under a ladder. Lucky pennies were absolutely a thing in our house.

The fact is, there are misfortunes that could happen lying all around, and often we have no ability to figure out why bad things happen to us. Superstitions like these pretend to give us the illusion of control in the face of uncertainty. For a country that likes to extol the self-made person all the time, we sure do also talk a lot about good luck—and bad luck, about blessings and curses. We hate uncertainty. It’s human nature.

Our readings today all deal with uncertainties. Judah is under siege—yet the prophet is encouraged to buy a piece of land, as a visible reassurance to the people around him that they will eventually make it through the time of war to the time of peace. Likewise Psalm 91 is thought by some scholars to be a so-called “amulet psalm,” one that would be repeated to ward off evil or bad luck. The last two readings scheduled for this weekend deal with rich people and poor people. That means the actual topic is luck, since the folks of Jesus’s time believed that being rich was a sign of God’s love you, and vice versa s regards being poor.

The verses we hear from Psalm 91 radiate hope and trust. They comfort us in times of grief, when we are anxious or afraid. The fill us with the warmth of the love of a God who is gracious, whose loving-kindness never fades. They invite us to trust in God with our whole being.

Some days it feels like we have the world on a string. Other days are filled with struggle and loss. Psalm 91 resonates on both kinds of days. Its promises of God’s love and protection ring true, and hold up to us our reliance on God and God’s companionship with us in all seasons. There are some beautiful images used for God in this psalm. God is described as our shelter, our habitation—our safe home, a place of rest. Four times we are reminded that God is our refuge—and even more than a refuge, a stronghold. God is a mighty mother bird, with strong pinions and sheltering wings to draw her children close to Her and envelop us in safety.

The first verse we will read reminds us of the encompassing love of God:

Those who dwell in the shelter of the Most High

abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

This psalm calls us to draw in a breath, and let it out. Feel that? The more mindful we are of our breathing, the more we are aware of the blessings God has given us, starting with our very breaths, given to us in creation, give to us from our births. As we breathe, we feel the sheltering wings of the Almighty, which provide us refuge and respite as we catch those breaths, as we gather strength and are clasped within the embrace of the One who is beside us always, who never sleeps. Our lungs as they inflate even more our ribcages out and back like wings on a bird being flexed.

That shadow we rest under is the cool shade of the garden, the underside of every green leaf warmed by the sun. It is the promise of being bound to God in love-- Love which is also the Name of God that echoes in our hearts. We then are led to remember why we need God’s protection and shelter—war and plague are circling overhead. Do not trouble yourself in thinking about that, the psalm reassured us. Dangers like serpents and lions lie in wait—figuratively for us, nowadays, than fully. Translator Robert Alter cites a scholar who believe that this psalm is an “amulet psalm.” An amulet is a lucky token, often worn around the neck. The idea is that anyone who would recite this psalm would be gathered in God’s protection.

Similarly in our gospel, we see a reversal of fortune between one who was considered lucky, or blessed, and one who would seem unlucky, even cursed, in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. For once, it is the person most likely to be among the invisible of the world who gets a name, while the “rich man” just gets a description. However, the name Lazarus means, “the one God helps.”

This Lazarus is NOT the same person who is Jesus’s friend and Martha and Mary’s brother. But he is, to the rich man, an invisible man. That’s why the irony is so delicious that unlike many Bible stories, the poor man actually gets a name while the rich man in the telling is made anonymous.

When I went to Cuba in 2017, one of my dearest hopes was to visit an Episcopal Church there—yes, Cuba is a diocese in the Episcopal Church, in our actual province, and obviously, it has been hard for them to maintain contact with us due to the political situation there. When I finally snuck away from my tour group to visit one, the first thing I saw on the doorstep was a tiny figurine that looked like this with coins all around it.

This is San Lazaro—St. Lazarus. Figurines of him are actually very common all over Cuba. Now the actually St. Lazarus is the one who is Jesus’s friend who was resurrected—but for some reason the figurine is based on our gospel character today. See the wounds? See the dogs?

It is a custom in Cuba to place coins around statues of San Lazaro to ask for healing. Both Christians and practitioners of Santeria, which is a mix of Catholicism and African folk beliefs, do this. And indeed, the shrine of the Virgen of Cuba has an entire wall covered with walkers and canes and braces left by people who believe they have been cured by her intercession.

If you remember, last week's gospel ended with the warning that no one can serve both God and money. But there's a missing verse in between the end of that gospel and beginning of this one. Jesus as opponents hearing him say these harsh things about wealthy people grew angry and mocked him. Jesus responds by saying that people may justify themselves in the sight of others, but God knows everyone's heart. “What is prized by human beings is and abomination in the sight of God,” Jesus concludes, and then he tell our story.

The characters in the story of course are exaggerated. Lazarus is not just a beggar, he's covered with sores. The rich man is not only dressed in fine purple robes the finest that money could buy, but his neglect of the poor is so entrenched that it is made clear that Lazarus lies right at the open gates into the man's house. The rich man literally has to step over this poor sick beggar in order to go into his feasts. so there's no way that he can claim he doesn't know that he has closed his eyes to the need that is around him in favor of his own comfort and pleasure.

Eventually, both men die. Jesus uses a Greek term for the underworld, hades, and says that that is where the rich man is, being tormented. Meanwhile Lazarus is actually lying in the embrace of Abraham himself the great patriarch. While the rich man had his feasts while he was alive, Lazarus now receives his feast throughout eternity.

Apparently part of the rich man's torture is his ability to see that the nobody that he probably found disgusting lying at his gates is now receiving all the good things that he was denied in life, including honor as well as comfort. And he still doesn’t get it!

It's one thing to ask for help. But notice in our story, even as he is supposedly being tormented the rich man still treats Lazarus like an object, rather than a person. He doesn’t speak to him at all. Instead he asks Abraham to order Lazarus to serve the rich man—to leave his place of comfort, the only comfort he has probably ever known, as the story insists, and run around doing errands for the rich men. Notice how much the rich man talks and thinks about himself: my agony, my suffering, my brothers. Never a thought about who Lazarus is as a person, even now.

Even at this point the rich man still perceives of Lazarus not as a person but as a thing-- as a tool so that the rich man can help his own family avoid his suffering in the afterlife. He still expects Lazarus to serve him. Abraham rebuffs this attempt and tells the rich man that his brothers have the same opportunity to listen to the prophets and sages in Israel scriptures, to the commandments to take care of the poor, the sick, and the needy. such commandments alone should be good enough, rather than relying upon celestial visitors like some form of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

It's often that way. We all recognize the tendency to see those who are on the margins of society by their misfortunes, not as complete persons. Yet every person you see who is struggling with something—which means everybody, but especially those who are visibly dealing with misfortune, was once someone’s precious child, or sibling, or spouse, or friend. They have names, and we have obligations to really see them and honor their dignity.

The chasm that is stretched between Lazarus and Abraham on the one part and the rich man in Hades on the other part is not just part of the landscape. It is created by those who preference their own comfort and and status over their obligation to others that is fundamental to all great faiths, but especially Judaism and Christianity.

The point, once again, is not that wealth is necessarily evil. The evil lies in where one puts their concern. The rich man only served his own pleasure and his own belly. Lazarus was less than nothing to him during life even though it would not have taken much to feed him and to comfort him. Because the rich man never served the poor, he never served God in life. So once again we are reminded that the point of the Torah as well as the point of the gospel is to learn how to live a fully human, fully compassionate and engaged life. Our resources are meant to be tools we can use to bridge the chasms between us.

Devoting ourselves to being compassionate, empathetic, mindful persons is actually God's greatest blessing to us. It cultivates within us the blessing of love, compassion, peace, and well-being-- what is known as shalom in Hebrew.

Believing that we only depend upon ourselves is denying our need to trust in and depend upon God. It's a denial of the idea that everything that we have comes from God at its beginning. And worse by cutting ourselves off from dependence on God we actually make ourselves more prone to fear and insensitivity as well as isolation.

God is our help--through each other. God cares for us and protects us most immediately through calling us to see each other as one body, one community. That's the blessing of living acknowledging our dependence upon God, end up on each other.

Preached at the 505 on September 24 and at the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31

Faithful in Little Things: Sermon for Proper 20C

First of all, Rev, Shug likes to claim that she always gets the short end of the stick when it comes to difficult readings in the lectionary. This is proof that she is absolutely wrong.

Right off the bat, I would like to say a few things about this perplexing gospel. We have fallen into the habit of thinking that all of Jesus’s parables are stories about God. Not this one, baby. Every single person in this parable is engaging in cut-throat competition. In fact everyone in this parable is looking out for number one. To be specific:

The dishonest steward is, first of all, engaging in corrupt, criminal behavior. He is basically bribing the debtors to owe HIM rather than his master. He may be helping the debtors, but he is doing so with money that is not his. He is planning that they will HAVE to offer him hospitality when he is fired for his original malfeasance. The debtors get part of their debt forgiven, but they know they now owe an unscrupulous person. The master apparently has to admire the utter chutzpah of the steward—and perhaps considers that where before he had debts hanging on the books, at least he has gotten something in repayment.

No one in this parable is either Jesus nor God. Let us be clear.

BUT they certainly are characters that Jesus’s audience, then and now, can recognize. We see people and corporations acting like this all the time. Pay day loan firms, pawn shops, collection agencies and even some municipalities here in our own back yards can and do operate out of this same corner of the economy. 

We see the same thing in corporations who have been ordered by courts to pay large fines and damages for hurting people, or who have squandered the pensions of their employees, simply evading their obligations by declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying the penalty. We see this kind of behavior in impoverished communities, where authorities constantly write tickets for violations of codes to make up for the lack of a tax base. We see people who don’t have enough money to open a banking account being forced to pay part of their money just to cash a check, paying fees much higher than they would pay if they could afford to have a checking account.

Some people have taken this parable to mean that Jesus condemns all wealth as hopelessly corrupt. And, thinking about it, I can think of only one time in scripture where Jesus is depicted as touching money, and he’s not too complementary about it then. Furthermore, the common purse for the disciples was held by Judas. On the surface, the stance Jesus appears to take here is this: Money is corrupt—how can we be surprised when people use it dishonestly?

This is also an opportunity to tell you a bold-faced truth. Sometimes, the gospel will make us uncomfortable. Sometimes preachers are standing before you sweating and wishing to be anywhere else at that moment because we are compelled to acknowledge that Jesus offers forgiveness and grace, yes, but he requires self-examination and repentance as well. Jesus taught about how to live with each other in love and respect. That sometimes means acknowledging where there is injustice in the world, and where we may even profit from it, and then determining to do better. That can be scary. It can make us temporarily feel guilty—or make us lie to ourselves in order NOT to feel guilty. The gospel is NOT always what we want to hear. It IS always what we need to hear. Just don’t shoot the messenger!

The 16th chapter of Luke is all about money, and money can be an overwhelming subject. A hugely powerful subject. Let us remember that for Jesus and his audience, the coins in circulation were themselves reminders that they lived as oppressed people under a foreign empire. This is not the case with us. But growing up working class, I can tell you about knowing the power money has when you DON’T have it, and I can also tell you what it’s like to be able to walk around with $20 in my pocket without having to search the couch cushions. And I do NOT kid myself that I got here on my own.

My parents paid my car insurance until I got married because I worked at a parochial school and rent cost half my paycheck. I couldn’t afford health insurance, because that cost 25% of my pay, and when I got injured, my principal sent me to her doctor and loaned me the money for the visit. The early married years were a blur of how many different ways I could turn 20% fat content hamburger into a meal and not give my spouse and I clogged arteries. And along the way, there were people who tried to take advantage of us. At one point, my brother, sister, and I kept lending each other the same $100 round and round while we were in school. Yet also, all along the way, there were people supporting us, encouraging us, and sharing with us what they had.

But here is where we CAN nod our heads in recognition right along with Jesus’s audience: when we hear about dishonest people manipulating a system that admires dishonesty, we can all nod our heads in recognition.

So what can we take from this gospel reading today?

This is Jesus’s word that provides me with new insight into our relationship with each other, and with money: faithfulness.

In verse 10 Jesus says, "Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.”

Faithfulness here is used as a synonym for honesty. Someone who will be honest even in small things will be honest in big things.

Here at St. Martin’s there are many ways little things add up. One of those is our wonderful Laundry Love ministry, which is celebrating its one-year anniversary this month after being delayed for two years by COVID. This ministry is based on a very real, often overlooked need: for clean clothing. There are lots of people in our area that, after paying for the rent, food, and utilities, just don't have any cash left over for laundry. So we encourage you to gather up your spare change, like these quarters here, and put them in this white box. Each month, your contributions are gathered together and they provide clean laundry and dignity to numerous families. Also once each month, on the second Tuesday, volunteers from this parish donate three hours of their time to meet with people and help them get their laundry done at a local laundromat, getting to know our clients in the process.

These are all little things. Little things where we can grow deeper in faithfulness.

And here’s the amazing thing: the last several months your faithfulness in turning in your change has fully funded that month’s Laundry Love—we haven’t had to touch our reserves a bit. What a blessing! And all generated from small things so that we can work, faithfully, for the good of people in our community whose needs are often overlooked.

Jesus reminds us that being faithful, with money or anything, means being honorable. In terms of money, it also means using it humbly, not to self-aggrandize or to separate us from others, but to build relationship. Listen, that’s even what the dishonest steward was doing. 

Jesus’s observation is about humility. First of all, there’s the humility of the little things themselves. Often, the true change in the world comes from the humble power of little things, and faithfulness is a tremendous example of that. I thought about that in the poem I wrote while thinking about this gospel, called “Little But Fierce.”

Whoever is faithful in a very little
is faithful also in much…- Luke 16:10


Some pray for faith to move mountains;
but overlook the gnarled and knotty pine
that grasps the cliff face
with roots as strong as talons
that persistently turn that mountain into soil,
daredevil defying gravity and wind
its needles whistling a laughing alleluia.

Some pray for the faith of a mustard seed,
forgetting, in the parable
it was an ugly, humble weed
better located outside the garden wall.

Lord, let me pray for the faithfulness
proclaimed by the honest little flower
that’s blooming in the pavement crack
or garbage dump; the dandelion,
maned all in white ruff, who
though spurned, has nourished the bees all season.

This is my prayer:
to be brave enough to offer my heart
like a flare of blue in an autumn sky
without calculus of renown or esteem.

O Lord, make me faithful
like little, overlooked things.

Being faithful in little things actually reminds us of the humble power of little things to do great good. If we become mindful about the dozens of ways each day we can do small things for others, our own happiness increases. If we examine the dozens of ways we have money pass through our hands each week, and make a conscious decision to redirect those small amounts toward something that benefits not just ourselves but others, we start developing a habit of being faithful in little things. And since little things make up a majority of our experiences, suddenly the little things add up to big things.

Thus, being faithful in little things builds us up in the habits of holiness and discipleship. It turns each day into a collection of opportunities to make a difference and to live a life of joy and generosity. Developing that habit then outfits us to be bold when great challenges and opportunities present themselves to us.

Being faithful with money means never letting it take over the place in your attention and values that should belong to God: “You cannot serve God and wealth,” Jesus insists. Being faithful in small things restores money to its proper place as a tool for good rather than as something that we serve. So the humility works both ways.

Being faithful in little things is God’s gift to us to enable us to develop our spiritual strength. It offers us the perspective to see opportunity for worship even in simple things throughout the day. Thus even by these small things do we become more openhearted in our dealing with our neighbors. This leads to us being more grateful in our purpose in life and in our testimony to the world of the generous, abundant love of God, reflected in a thousand different ways through our own humble, yet never insignificant actions.

As I pointed out in my rector’s reflection in the Beacon, the little things are our greatest teachers as we grow into adulthood. When we were infants, even little things were big things, because we depended on others to meet our most basic needs. As we became young adults, we learned independence, and insisted on doing things for ourselves—and as long as we stayed humble, those little things gave us confidence. But independence is not where our journey to full personhood ends, especially for those of us who claim to follow Christ. You can’t do whatever you want and follow Jesus. The little things, when considered maturely lead us to the greatest wisdom of all: the wisdom of interdependence, of recognizing the imprint of God in each other and our obligations to each other and our mutual flourishing. That kind of faithfulness leads to true wealth: wealth in spirit, secure in our knowledge that we are living lives of meaning and generosity.

Preached at the 505 on Saturday, September 17, and at the 10:30 am Eucharist on Sunday September 18 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
Psalm 79:1-9
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13