Wealthy in Soul: Sermon for Proper 20C, September 21, 2025

The Unjust Steward, by Nelly Bube, Kazakhstan

Once there was a man who had two sons, and his younger son came to him and asked for his inheritance to be settled upon him now. So his father gave him his share, and the younger sone went off to a foreign country, where he promptly spent all he had on wild living, food drink, parties, and a questionable entourage of hangers-on. And just then a great famine came over the land, and soon he was forced to caring for swine, being paid so little that he fed himself with the starchy pods used as pig food.

Finally, he thought that he was going to die so he decided to return home and ask to be taken on as a servant in his father's house. He carefully rehearsed his crafty speech, testing how he could weasel his way at least into steady employment.

But as the young man approached his father's estate, and while he was still a great way off, his father saw the dust of his travel, and ran to him, with his servants. Before his son had gotten six words out the father embraced him, and cut off his son's carefully planned speech, weeping for joy and relief. Through his tears, the father ordered the servants to dress him in finery, and ordered a great feast to be prepared, because his son who had been lost was now found.....

Oh wait. That's the wrong story for this weekend, isn't it? Let me start over....

Once there was a man who had a manager he suspected of being dishonest. So he called the manager before him, and tells him he will lose his job, and demands from him an accounting of all his dealings in his employer's name. The dishonest manager panics once he was out of his employers presence, and realized he had nothing to show his employer-- except for his dishonesty.

So the cheat called in his boss's biggest debtors. He cuts deals with his master’s debtors, accepting 50-80% of what they owe in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the debtors. He does this so that he will be welcome in their homes since they are now in his debt for doing them this favor and could perhaps be convinced to take him in. He rehearses his speech carefully to the debtors, and and the debtors, being no fools, take that deal. By the next morning, the payments are in hand. The manager goes in front of his boss expecting to be fired. But instead his boss interrupts him, and congratulates him on his shrewdness and on clearing those old debts off the books-- kind of like when a company sells its unpaid bills to a collection agency.

Two stories about debts and money both touching on the ways of this world in which we live-- at least outside these doors. Two stories with absolute parallels in their structure. Both of the wasters of money never seem to show any real remorse-- they're so used to manipulating to get what they want. Both remorselessly pursue their own gain-- until it catches up with them. But the funny thing is, one of these stories is far more likely to be the subject of a stained glass window than the other. It's hard to imagine having a church window with the motto saying something like "Buy yourself false friends to help cover up your theft," or "Do unto others BEFORE they get a chance to do unto you." Not exactly the golden rule in action.

Only one of these stories reflects grace, and love, and forgiveness. Only one of these stories reflects the kingdom of God we call for every time we pray the Lord's Prayer.

We already spend too much time living in a dog-eat-dog world like this every day of our lives. Why in the world would we want to import that into our lives as followers of Jesus?

At first glance, Jesus seems to praise the actions of the dishonest manager. "The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light..." Jesus says. Can Jesus be praising the philosophy of "if you can't beat them join them" that unfortunately governs all too much of our relationships with each other? Or is Jesus actually condemning this kind of double-dealing?

Perhaps what Jesus is saying is that wealth is so corrupting that we just need to examine its crippling power in our lives: after all, we hear, “No slave can serve two masters…. You cannot serve God and wealth.” The thing is, it seems that great wealth NEVER satisfies. No matter how many zeroes are used to describe a person, which shouldn't be a way to describe a person at all, really. In the last 200 years, we have had our first multi-millionaire in 1812, our first billionaire a century after that, and last week it was announced that perhaps in two years the world will soon have its first trillionaire.

And yet, it seems like very few of these people know true peace. Despite all they have, they consume away. Enough is never enough. Imagine being able to spend a million dollars a day for the rest of your life. What would you do with such great wealth? Here's a sobering fact: if the world's richest man right now spent one million dollars a day of his fortune, without making any more money, it would still take him 1300 years to spend it all-- one THOUSAND, three HUNDRED years. Make it ten million dollars a day, and it would still take 130 years. And yet we are socialized to chase after them, despite the fact that the goalposts keep being moved in that rarified air, leaving more and more behind in anxiety, if not abject destitution.

Is that what Jesus advises us to try to do too? Or maybe we are missing a key point. Jesus doesn't call us to be children or students of this world. Jesus calls us to be children of the light. We, as followers of Jesus, are called to be prodigal, or extravagant, in love, in faith, in trust, and in compassion in all aspects of our lives. Not in the art of the deal.

What does being a child of the light mean? Is manipulation, double-dealing, selfishness, and greed at the heart of the kingdom of God? Or is it about being wealthy in soul, generous in spirit, and grateful for knowing the love of God and each other in our lives?

Isn't living our lives rooted in faith, and its mirror image, trust, the basis of the kingdom of God? Aren't we called to live by a covenant with God, a sacred pact, that places love of God and love of each other, at the center of our lives?

As we look at our candidate for baptism, we see someone whose life centers on trust. On security. On knowing that she is loved and cared for and treasured, exactly as she is. Even when squirmy. Even when grumpy. Even when hangry. At her stage in life, she lives by faith-- faith in those around her to love and care for her, faith in yummy snacks, and a desire for a good long nap. The dream of us all, am I right?

The covenant we make with God in baptism, and that we will all re-affirm in just a few moments, calls us to act in opposition to the calculus of this world, that creates winners only by creating hundreds of times more losers. It moves from general renunciations of the corrupting influences of this world, to promises about what we believe, through faith, and how specifically we live out that faith as children of the light. Not by trying to maximize our profits, as Amos condemned, but by living as prophets of Jesus, as witnesses and emulators of his example.

It means taking seriously the collect we prayed just a few minutes ago, in this Season of Creation: Grant us, Creator God, to put wealth to use in relieving the suffering of others; so that we might hold fast to the love that endures; through Jesus Christ the Wisdom of Creation, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings:

Amos 8:4-7
Psalm 113
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13

Preached at the 505 on September 20, and the 10:30 Eucharist on September 21, 2025, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville.

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

Rich in Soul: Sermon for Proper 21 C, Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Periodically in American Christianity, a theory known as the “prosperity gospel” or “the gospel of wealth” is preached by some religious leaders, often quite popularly. The basic idea is that, if you pray this prayer or give money to that preacher, you will receive wealth and blessings from God. 

 The problem with this 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 have a friend who, when she loses something, puts a dollar under a St. Anthony figurine on her mantle, since he is the patron saint of lost things—and frankly, I will admit to calling on St. Anthony to help me find things too—can’t hurt, right? 

 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.” 

Sometimes it gets a little more desperate—when I was a kid, a famous televangelist in Tulsa famously told his followers that if they didn’t send him $8 million by March, 1987, God was going to “call him home.” Spoiler alert: he supposedly got the $8 million in 10 days’ time, and he lived for another 22 years. 

Magical thinking, though, can lead to the arrogant belief that if you do X, then God will have to do Y. That kind of magical thinking assumes that humans can control God and figure God out so that God follows our sense of justice and our sense of fairness. 

 Even worse, this kind of magical thinking about money and blessing also implies the inverse: it leads to the belief that anyone who experiences hard times or difficulties is being cursed by God. This kind of thinking is one of the ideas that Jesus constantly challenged. Further it flies in the face of our experience: think of all the times we see bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people! Believing in a simplistic system like this will only lead to doubt, despair, and denial of the love of God by those who, through no fault of their own, suffer. 

And a word about the use of the term “Pharisees.” It is at this point that I realize how much I owe Amy-Jill Levine, whose work I have been reading in the 3 years since I last revisited these notes. She points out that many of the criticisms of “the Pharisees” were inserted into the documents of the early church after 70 AD, with the fall of the Temple. The problem that she points out is that the Pharisees ended up founding the post-Temple Judaism we now see, and they became many of its first rabbis. Thus, blanket criticism of the Pharisees feeds into the dangerous anti-Semitism that was spawned in the first century CE, and is always lurking in the Church. The idea of Jews as greedy and obsessed with wealth is a slander as old as time—and Hitler used that resentment to great effect. (1) 

If we look at this parable as the third in a series from Jesus (beginning with the Prodigal Son, to the Dishonest Steward, and now to this story) as pointing out the problems that worship of wealth can create for any person from any background. Thus, I propose that we understand that there are certainly many people for whom love of wealth is a not just a stumbling block to their spiritual development, but an idol they worship in place of God. It is wrong and historically inaccurate to claim that all members of a certain religious group behave badly, especially when the failing being talked about is a universal within MANY groups. 

Instead of using the word “Pharisee,” I will be using the term "opponent." I am convinced that that is what we should call those who worship money to the exclusion of all else what they are—opponents of the values God commands us to embrace, and opponents of the way of life Jesus calls us to embody. 

That’s why it is important to take a look at the verses that bridge between last week’s perplexing gospel and this week’s reading. Starting at the last verse of last week’s gospel, here are the intervening verses: 
No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.’
The opponents, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him. So he said to them, ‘You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God. 

Jesus then continues with this parable to illustrate his point. The rich man, who is a symbol for those who love money more than God, has squandered his life in focusing on his own comfort and honor (being dressed in purple and fine linen signified one’s status more loudly than shouting from the rooftops). The poor man is allowed to languish at the rich man’s very gate, with no mention of any care being given to him—he is there, but “invisible” and unacknowledged—just as many of us respond when we see the poor on the street. 

The poor man is indeed pitiful, not only due to his poverty, but because he is also covered in sores which make him unclean and further accentuated that he is cut off from all decent society. The licking of the sores by dogs is a fine touch within the Mediterranean culture, since dogs were also often seen as unclean—just goes to show how cultures are different, since many of us see this behavior by our pets as signs of love and attempts to comfort us, and we know dogs’ mouths are cleaner than ours, on average. 

Notice the use of names here. The rich man gets no name—he could be anyone. But Jesus tips his hand early in this story when he not only gives the poor man a name, but a name that has special meaning. Lazarus means “God has helped” in Hebrew. Further, when we hear the name “Lazarus,” we think of Jesus’s friend whom he raised from the dead—and this is a story about death. How can Jesus’s opponents be right about money being a sign of blessing and its lack a sign of curse, if the poor man is the one literally “helped by God?” Even more important in helping us judge the rich man is this: he KNOWS the name of the poor man he ignored as he strutted about in fine clothes with a full belly. He knew Lazarus’s name—and yet ignored his need for food, shelter, and medical care. 

This is an important realization to sit with. In an ironic reversal, the rich man “name drops” Lazarus to Abraham—possibly out of a delusion that he NOW recognizes the humanity that had sat, sick, suffering, shivering, at the rich man’s very gates. Or more likely, NOT.

In our parable, he STILL ignores Lazarus as a person, but demands that Father Abraham send Lazarus to wait first on him and then on his brothers, without ever deigning to talk to Lazarus directly. That alone makes it easier for us to understand that he STILL, even in the alleged torment of Hades, doesn’t get it—at all. 

In the best translation of this story, the image of Lazarus's comfort is even sharper: it states that Lazarus was in Abraham’s bosom, or embrace. This, interestingly, is an image from feasting as well. People reclined at table on couches, their head propped on the left hand, eating with their right. One gets an image of Lazarus lying up against Abraham at the great heavenly banquet. If Lazarus is next to Abraham, he is in the place of honor (remember a few weeks ago, when Jesus advised people to sit at the low place at the table so that they could be honored by being asked to move up? Where you sat at the table had deep significance. 

 The image of TWO feasts in this reading, then, re-enacts Luke’s combination of “blessings” and “woes” in Luke 6:21 and 6:25:
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now, 
   for you will be filled. 
‘Blessed are you who weep now, 
   for you will laugh. 

These are then turned on their heads as a caution: 
‘Woe to you who are full now, 
    for you will be hungry. 
‘Woe to you who are laughing now, 
    for you will mourn and weep.'

This is not to say that those who have money are evil—many people make great use of their personal savings to help others. For those for whom wealth is simply a tool to help others, money CAN be a blessing. However, there certainly is the tendency in our society today to believe that the poor are undeserving of help, and that they are not only to blame for their condition, but to RESENT them and to claim that their condition is something that they have chosen. It's a crazy claim. Yet, those doing the criticizing of the poor also have no desire to actually BE poor. If the poor are cleverly manipulating a system, why doesn’t everyone emulate them? 

The rich man, ultimately, in his life served himself, served his belly, served his status. He never served the poor, and so he never served God. This parable again reminds us that dehumanizing the poor is one of the most un-Godly acts we can take. When it comes down to basics, the point of the Torah and the point of the Gospel is to describe how to live a fully human life, and to understand what that means. It is always good, when considering that goal, to remember the concept of shalom, a word that includes the meaning of health, wholeness, well-being, peace, and contentment. Shalom is both a blessing, a prayer, and a hope for the future. 

What if, instead of engaging in magical thinking, we engaged in the magic of hope in action, especially when it comes to how we live and work with others? Many of us have had too much of hopelessness. Many of us have probably heard the excuse that alleviating poverty is impossible, a self-serving argument that actually makes poverty more widespread and more desperate, more hopeless. Pope Paul VI made this point in 1967 in his encyclical “On the progress of peoples:” 

It is not simply a question of eliminating hunger and reducing poverty. It is not enough to combat destitution, urgent and necessary as this is. The point at issue is the establishment of a human society in which everyone, regardless of race, religion, or nationality, can live a truly human life free from bondage imposed by men and the forces of nature not sufficiently mastered, a society in which freedom is not an empty word, and where Lazarus the poor man can sit at the same table as the rich man.(2) 

 That beloved old hymn, God of Grace and God of Glory that we sang as the processional at the 10:30 service, reminds us of a better way. Hear again what verse 3 has to say: 

Cure your children's warring madness; 
bend our pride to your control; 
shame our wanton, selfish gladness, 
rich in things and poor in soul. 
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, 
lest we miss your kingdom's goal, 
lest we miss your kingdom's goal. 

God IS our help, as Lazarus’s name implies, and God’s love offers us life, grace, and forgiveness— not just through some hope in the distant future, but RIGHT NOW. God is our help—through each other, right now. This parable reminds us that we are bound up together and called to care for each other as God cares for us and protects us. It is when we seize hold of our common humanity and celebrate it rather than resent each other and fail to really see each other that we become rich in heart, rich in soul. 



Amen.

Preached at the 505 on September 28 and at 8:00 and 10:30 on September 29 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

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


Citations:
1) Amy Jill Levine and Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Luke: New Cambridge Bible Commentary.
2) Pope Paul VI, On the Development of the Peoples .