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Be Patient? Third Sunday of Advent, 12/14/2025

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Readings

A child of my age, I resonate with Ambrose Bierce’s definition of patience, “A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.” So, James’ “Be patient” is not what I want to hear.

Actually, James’ “Be patient” and Jesus’ “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” are acknowledgements of problems, and set the agenda for the sermon.

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” It’s not an unreasonable question, and not simply because John’s been in prison for some time. Recall what we heard last Sunday from John’s description of the coming one: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Jesus doesn’t seem to be doing that.

Jesus responds by describing what he has been doing, the description drawing heavily from multiple texts from Isaiah, including our first reading: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” The citations from Isaiah aren’t a rhetorical flourish; they’re the argument: Jesus is doing what God promised. Implicit in the response: there is a difference between gathering the wheat and burning the chaff on the one hand and what Jesus has been doing on the other.

Notice that Jesus in his response is doing what he did in the synagogue in Nazareth as recorded by Luke. Reading from Isaiah, he reads up to “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” but omits the following “and the day of vengeance of our God” (Isa 61:1-2; Lk 4:18-19).

Jesus knows that this is both what John does and doesn’t want to hear. Hence “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Of course, it’s not a problem only with John. Luke recalls James and John’s response when a Samaritan village refuses to receive them: “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luk 9:54). And it’s been a problem ever since: Jesus and his followers: enacting  God’s vengeance or God’s compassion and mercy (recalling the ending of James’ argument, cut short by the lectionary)?

So that’s one problem, what “the one who is to come” is doing, is commissioning us to do. It affects even our reading of the Magnificat. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, / and has lifted up the lowly./ He has filled the hungry with good things, / and the rich he has sent away empty.” That should give the mighty and rich pause.[1] But following Jesus’ lead we focus our efforts on the lowly and the hungry, a focus that often demands not a little patience.

“Be patient—James writes—until the coming of the Lord.” James is also dealing with a second problem, the delay in that coming. His contribution to our reflection lies in his choice of wording. As Luke Timothy Johnson observes of the verb makrothymein, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament that verb and its corresponding noun are mostly “used of the attitudes of a superiority to an inferior.” “[B]efore the time of judgment, God shows makrothymia; so should the community also share that outlook” (The Letter of James, 313). Contra Ambrose Bierce, we exercise patience from a position of strength, not weakness.

Now, if the delay in Jesus’ coming was a problem for James in the first century, it’s a problem for us in the twenty-first! In the Great Thanksgiving: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” How do I make sense of that delay? Well, in three different ways.

First, were I to push the question, I’d open myself to the same divine response Job got (Job 38-41):

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements– surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? (Job 38:4-7)

And those would be legitimate questions.

The second way is a spin-off from God’s response to Job. We tend to assume that we’re God’s only concern. God spends the last two chapters of the reply to Job celebrating Behemoth (“which I made just as I made you”) and Leviathan (“When it raises itself up the gods are afraid; / at the crashing they are beside themselves.”). We humans are often making a mess of it; the rest of creation, from the hummingbirds to the great whales, are giving exquisite full-throated glory to God.

The third way is more tentative, and takes off from James’ example of the farmer. Some things take time. Crops take months; some things take much longer stretches. Take Yosemite Valley: the time to form those massive blocks of granite, the time for the glaciers to do their thing. So we get the majesty of Half Dome. Or take the Grand Canyon: God introduces what will become the Colorado River: let’s see what that looks like in five or six million years. God is happy to work with long stretches of time.

What if the Creator wishes to explore the potential of this creature made “a little lower than God” (Ps 8:5)? David and his harp: it took time for that technology to develop, and it will take centuries more before a Mozart, a Beethoven, or a Copeland can appear. Or to take a different sort of technology, the centuries to develop the scientific traditions that make possible the achievements displayed in the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Literally breath-taking what we can do together in our best moments.

There is, as Scripture and the daily headlines remind us, more than enough cruelty and suffering to have us crying “Come, Lord Jesus.” Job and these other reflections don’t lessen that impulse, but do make me grateful that I’m not the one making the decision on timing.

To sum up this perhaps strange reflection on our readings, Scripture is clear that the mind is important. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mat 22:37). And sometimes its importance lies in its capacity to recognize its limits. So I am profoundly grateful that Jesus’ blessing in today’s Gospel is not “Blessed is anyone who understands what I’m doing” but “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

[1] Recall the British ban during their rule in India as well as the more recent bans by dictatorships in Argentina and Guatemala. (Source)

“The wolf shall live with the lamb”–and Paul’s readers in Rome struggle to make that work! Second Sunday of Advent, 12/7/2025

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Readings

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” So Paul to the Romans in our second reading. Hope: today’s readings flesh that out in some encouraging ways. Let’s dive in.

Whatever else it is, our reading from Isaiah, an exercise in hope.” A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse…” “Stump of Jesse:” that assumes that things have not gone well. Just a few chapters back we heard Isaiah warning Ahaz “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all” (7:9), but Ahaz is showing no sign of that faith; he’s putting his faith in the king of Assyria! Nevertheless, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse…” The faithlessness of Ahaz—of most of the kings of Judah—will not get the last word. And what a shoot! “With righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.”“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together…” And what is happening in Jerusalem will get international attention: “On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him…” It sounds like what we heard last week from Isaiah (“Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths’” [Isa 2:3]). Hope.

This hope for what God will do through the shoot drives today’s psalm in more general terms: what God will do through any king. Prosperity, international security: yes. The surprise is that what the king is doing focuses almost entirely on defending the needy, rescuing the poor. From the part the lectionary omitted:

For he shall deliver the poor who cries out in distress, *
and the oppressed who has no helper.
He shall have pity on the lowly and poor; *
he shall preserve the lives of the needy.
He shall redeem their lives from oppression and violence, *
and dear shall their blood be in his sight.

God to the king: you worry about the poor; I’ll worry about prosperity and the other nations. The tragedy of Israel’s history: like Ahaz, most of the kings worried about prosperity and the other nations, with the poor toward the bottom of the to-do list. Gentile rulers—to whom the offer is implicitly extended—have tended to do no better. So the hand-copying of Psalm 72 in the centuries before Gutenberg, also an exercise in hope that someone will take it seriously.

So when John the Baptist proclaims “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” that does encourage the hope that God is doing something about those words from Isaiah and the psalm. He’s baptizing at the Jordan, that river that Joshua and Israel crossed to enter the land. It’s a powerful promise: we can begin again. At the same time, there’s that word “repent.” The problem isn’t “those people.” John’s right there with Pogo: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” That image of wheat and chaff with which our reading ends? The wheat: not those who don’t need to repent, but those who are doing so. So the first of our brother Martin Luther’s 95 theses: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

Which brings us to our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans. “Abound in hope:” particularly a challenge in the capital of the Roman Empire, whose legions, architecture, and stories had no intention of going anywhere! Virgil, the Empire’s poet, has Jupiter, king of the gods, saying this of the Romans:

“On them I set no limits, space or time:
I have granted them power, empire without end.” (Aeneid i.333-334)

Living among competing narratives is nothing new! So Paul “May the God of hope–not to be confused with Jupiter–fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” How does Paul think this works, particularly “believing”? Our reading is at the end of a section in which he’s dealing with the challenge of Jewish and Gentile believers living together. Some, in faith, keep kosher and observe particular days; some, also in faith, eat whatever they want and treat all days equally. All are tempted to judge, to enlighten the others. While Paul talks about the groups as the strong and the weak, each group would have seen itself as strong and faithful in contrast to the other groups.

Paul: “Welcome one another…just as Christ has welcomed you.” It’s not a call to toleration (too often simply a temporary ceasefire until one of the groups feels strong enough to resume hostiliities), but to actively supporting each other’s different understandings of faithfulness.

Isaiah: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid.” Lovely words, but Isaiah didn’t have to figure out how that actually works. Paul—and the Romans—do. Wolves, lambs, leopards, kids: in God’s faithfulness all thrown together in Rome’s various house churches. Potlucks are going to stay complicated. (With increased awareness of food intolerances in our congregations, we should be able to sympathize!)

And this welcoming one another, encouraging one another, wolves as wolves and lambs as lambs, is a powerful sign that Isaiah’s words aren’t just words, but a world that God is birthing in their midst. So there’s reason for hope. But it’s a hope that doesn’t come cheap. It means the repenting, the turning, that John the Baptist proclaimed, repenting of the natural assumption that our group’s right, that they’re the ones who need to change, that they’re not sufficiently grateful for our tolerance.

Let’s step back for a minute. To the first century Romans Paul writes “For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (14:17). But despite the presence of this section in his letter (14:1-15:13) we Christians have been really proficient at finding equivalents to food and drink over which to divide. Within the Anglican tradition, even over the presence or absence of candles on the altar! The problem is that if we’ve got “Welcome one another,” we also have (from Paul’s letter to the Galatians) “if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!” (1:9). Discerning which is applicable in any given situation has never been easy. Nevertheless, this section from Romans is a standing challenge to our tendency to build walls when we should be building bridges.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Not because hope in itself is a good thing; it depends on what we’re hoping for. Our hope centers in prayers like “Your kingdom come” or “Come, Lord Jesus.” How do we “abound in hope”? As our believing shapes our behavior so that our common life offers glimpses of what we’re hoping for, of Jesus’ presence, of Isaiah’s vision: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.”

The Day is Near (!) (?) First Sunday of Advent, 11/30/2025

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Readings

Somewhat earlier in Matthew we hear Jesus saying this:

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (13:44-46).

The vision of God’s kingdom in our first reading is like that treasure, that pearl. The nations beating swords into plowshares, devoting all that expertise, all those resources, into human flourishing. That, says Isaiah, is God’s future for the nations. The last verse describes it as Israel’s charge in the present: “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!” And perhaps Israel walking in that light will make it easier to get the nations walking in that light.

This theme of the nations doing that, you need to do this organizes Paul’s exhortations in our second reading. He is writing, recall, to the Christians living in the capital of the empire. The reveling and debauchery he alludes to may be issues among the Christians; they’re standard for Rome’s elites. That, says Paul, is the night; the day’s “near,” so “let us live honorably as in the day.” It’s still night; we live as in the day.

What’s at stake in these two readings? Well, catch Isaiah’s vision or Paul’s vision of God’s coming kingdom and the political differences that can be so important to us pale in comparison. Some of you may have seen Ken Burns’ 12-hour documentary The American Revolution that aired a couple weeks ago. One of its striking themes was the degree to which the revolution was a civil war, with rampant inhumanity on both sides. That represented a massive failure in Christian formation. Disagreements are inevitable; violence may be inevitable. Keeping God’s coming kingdom in mind should mean not keeping a supply of tar and feathers readily available.

When is God’s kingdom coming? Our texts offer two answers. Jesus in our Gospel reading gives one: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Only the Father knows. (Parenthetically, that “nor the Son” was disconcerting enough that while Matthew took this verse over from Mark, Luke simply omits it!) So judging simply from the titles, there are a good number of books not worth opening, web links not worth the click.

But twenty-one centuries after these words do we simply say “Amen!”? Paul’s “the night is far gone, the day is near:” “Amen?” Well, yes. Peter, already addressing the issue, writes “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2Pe 3:8). Whether that resolves the issue is a judgment call. I think not, so my wondering goes in a variety of directions. Clearly God has hit the pause button. There’s God’s answer to Job (chapters 38-41): not simply that God’s ways are several orders of magnitude above our understanding, but that we’re not God’s only concern. God spends the last two chapters celebrating Behemoth (“which I made just as I made you”) and Leviathan (“When it raises itself up the gods are afraid; / at the crashing they are beside themselves.”). We humans are often making a mess of it; the rest of creation, from the hummingbirds to the great whales, are giving exquisite full-throated glory to God.

Then there’s the time involved in creating the splendor and beauty preserved in our national parks. Yosemite Valley: the time to form those massive blocks of granite, the time for the glaciers to do their thing. So we get the majesty of Half Dome. The Grand Canyon: God introduces what will become the Colorado River: let’s see what that looks like in five or six million years. God is happy to work with long stretches of time.

Then there’s the time involved in exploring the potential of this creature made “a little lower than God” (Ps 8:5). It takes centuries to develop the musical tradition in which a Mozart, a Beethoven, a Copeland can appear. It takes centuries to develop the scientific traditions that make possible the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Literally breath-taking what we can do together in our best moments.

There is, as Scripture and the daily headlines remind us, more than enough cruelty and suffering to have us crying “Come, Lord Jesus.” Job and these other reflections don’t lessen that impulse, but do make me grateful that I’m not the one making the decision on timing.

So, “But about that day and hour no one knows” is one answer to the question of timing. But then there’s Jesus’ promise at the end of the Gospel according to Matthew “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (28:20), which somewhat relativizes the question of when Jesus returns. That, coupled with the exhortations in Isaiah and Paul to live God’s future now, raises the question of how much of that future might contaminate the present.

So, for example, Isaiah’s vision: only for the future? Second and third century Christians argue that it’s being realized now, evidence that Jesus is the promised Messiah. Here’s Justin, writing around 160:

“For, we Christians, who have gained a knowledge of the true worship of God from the Law and from the word which went forth from Jerusalem by way of the Apostles of Jesus, have run for protection to the God of Jacob and the God of Israel. And we who delighted in war, in the slaughter of one another, and in every other kind of iniquity have in every part of the world converted our weapons of war into implements of peace—our swords into ploughshares, our spears into farmers’ tools—and we cultivate piety, justice, brotherly charity, faith, and hope, which we derive from the Father through the Crucified Savior” (Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 110.2-3).

How much of God’s future might contaminate our present? We don’t know. The invitation of Advent—of the entire Church Year, for that matter—let’s find out.

How God likes to use power (Christ the King, 11/23/2025)

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Readings (Track 1)

“May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power” Paul writes. On this Feast of Christ the King that “glorious power” is worth wondering about.

How does God use this “glorious power”? In our first reading from Jeremiah, “I will attend to you [the shepherds] for your evil doings,” which, as Jeremiah had been warning, meant bringing in the Babylonian army to destroy Jerusalem. “Then I myself will gather the remnant”—through the various leaders who brought waves of exiles back to Jerusalem. And through “a righteous Branch” for David—which turns out to point forward to our other readings.

In Zechariah’s song “He has raised up for us a mighty savior, / born of the house of his servant David. / … save us from our enemies, / from the hands of all who hate us.” That sounds like military power.

In the Gospel the “righteous Branch” of whom Jeremiah spoke, the “mighty savior” Zechariah celebrated, is on stage for… the crucifixion? At first glance, profoundly disturbing, and we’re there with the two disciples leaving (fleeing?) Jerusalem on the road to Emmaus: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luk 24:21). It took Jesus’ resurrection and post-resurrection teaching to enable us to see that Friday as “Good.” There, as Paul puts it, God “was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” Or, as Paul puts it to the Corinthians “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2Co 5:19). So Jesus’ words (“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”), expressions of weakness, or power? Recall Jesus’ words from John’s Gospel: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (12:32).

What does God use power for? Clearly, when necessary, to attend violently to the shepherds destroying and scattering the sheep. But our readings—as well as the rest of Scripture—suggest that God would greatly prefer to use that power, as Paul puts it, “to reconcile to himself all things.” Will God succeed, succeed in turning all enemies into friends? Scripture leaves that question open, much to the dismay of the commentators who’ve tried to find a clear answer in the Book of Revelation. Why does Scripture leave the question open? Perhaps because our desires and decisions also matter. The story is still being written.

What Scripture does not leave open is how God wants us to use that power. Back to Paul: “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father…” This may be why Paul calls love the greatest of God’s gifts, for it is love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1Co 13:7).

We have, obviously, enemies, and we want God to do something about them. “Love your enemies” is no easier now than when Moses (Exodus 23:4-5) and Jesus (Matt 5:44) first said it. It may help to recall another of Paul’s observations in that “Love Chapter”: “now we see in a mirror, dimly” (1Co 13:12). That applies both to us and our enemies, so sometimes they’re seeing things that we don’t, that we need to see. In any case, as today’s Collect celebrates, “the King of kings and Lord of lords” is about freeing and bringing together all those divided and enslaved by sin, and calls us to be part of that. (And the weekly General Confession reminds us that “those divided and enslaved by sin” is not entirely in our rearview mirror!)

God’s glorious power. The Holy Eucharist is many-faceted. Today’s Feast and readings might remind us that it, and, precisely, the words of institution, is also a celebration of that glorious power. “This is my Body.… This is my Blood.” Royal words, royal gifts, to empower us to share in our King’s work.

Much of what I’ve been exploring in these texts is captured in one of the prayers buried toward the back of the Book of Common Prayer on p.816. So I invite you to turn to it, stand as you are able, so that in celebration of this Feast of Christ the King we can pray “6. For our enemies” together:

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Praying “Your kingdom come” (23rd Sunday after Pentecost, 11/16/2025)

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Readings (Track 2)

This morning’s Collect focused on Holy Scripture: “Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life…” How might that work with today’s readings?

More precisely, the themes in some of the readings recall that petition in the Lord’s Prayer: “your kingdom come.” How might the readings help us better pray “your kingdom come”?

Our first reading from the prophet Malachi: “See, the day is coming.” The day, the day of the Lord, the Lord’s decisive action. Like many other descriptions of the day of the Lord, the text focuses the Lord sorting things out: the arrogant, the evildoers, “you who revere my name,” each will get their due. (We’re still a couple weeks out from Advent, but this wouldn’t make a bad Advent reading!)

That sounds pretty good: the arrogant and evildoers, “you who revere my name” neatly separated. But our tradition, informed by Holy Scripture, has us confessing at each Eucharist “we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed…” That separation isn’t as stable as we’d like.

When we pray “your kingdom come” it’s pretty much inevitable that we focus on where we perceive God’s agenda and our agenda aligning. And that easily becomes a focus on only where those agendas align, so that “your kingdom come” and “my kingdom come” become indistinguishable. In our polarized national context, it’s easy to see this happening among those with whom we disagree. So the challenge is to stay alert to the possibility that God might have some questions about our agenda. Easier said than done. In the midst of the English civil war, Oliver Cromwell to the Scottish clergy: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” Among the many spiritual disciplines on offer today, that may be one of the more relevant.

What do our enemies want us to hear as we read Holy Scripture? They won’t always be wrong.

What of today’s Gospel reading? The temple in Jerusalem was one of the axes of Jesus’ ministry. Even after his resurrection his followers were worshipping in the temple, like Peter and John that day that they encountered the man lame from birth (Acts 3:1ff). It would have been natural for the disciples to assume that “your kingdom come” could only mean increased glory for the temple. And already it was glorious, “adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God.” So Luke is probably underplaying the shock of Jesus’ words (“As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”). It’s a warning to us: to pray “your kingdom come” is to write our merciful God a blank check. Our merciful God, so there’s no reason to fear, but also no reason to assume that we know what God will do with it.

Our reading from 2nd Thessalonians is the odd man out, included not because it relates to the other readings, but because the lectionary—justifiably—wants to include some of the letter somewhere, so here we are. No direct connection to “your kingdom come,” but not entirely disconnected. Like the other petitions in the first half of the Lord’s Prayer, it’s self-involving. In Thessalonica, praying “your kingdom come” means I make my decisions about time, talent, and treasure as a member of the community of believers. Following Paul’s example, idleness is not an appropriate response. Where idleness is not an issue, the broader principle holds: to pray “your kingdom come” is to commit to live together in a way that witnesses to the hope of that kingdom.

“Your kingdom come.” Our texts have encouraged us to understand this as playing out in our future. True enough, but not the whole truth. We started with Malachi’s announcement of “the day,” shorthand for “the day of the Lord.” But recall that we refer to Sunday as “the Lord’s day.” We’re already encountering that use in the New Testament. From the first chapter of the Revelation: “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day” (1:10). The core of “the day of the Lord” is in our past, whether we think of it as Easter Sunday, Holy Week, or that whole stretch from the Incarnation to the Ascension. Every Sunday, a celebration of the Resurrection, a celebration of the Lord’s victory as anticipated in Psalm 98.

2 With his right hand and his holy arm
has he won for himself the victory.

3 The Lord has made known his victory;
his righteousness has he openly shown in the sight of the nations.

The tomb is empty. Jesus 1, Death 0. Or, more accurately, Death 0, Jesus 1, since this world is God’s home turf.

And so, while the Church is not the Kingdom, it’s the context in which we get a foretaste of the Kingdom. Paul again: “For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17). The Risen Christ has showered on us the Holy Spirit, and with “your kingdom come,” we pray that these gifts spread out to the ends of the earth. Amen.

“Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength” (22nd Sunday after Pentecost, 11/9/2025)

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Readings (Track 1)

Today’s readings are, as it were, the soundtracks from three points in our history as the people of God. What is their good news (their Gospel) for us today? Each in their own way are echoing the Gospel as proclaimed in Isaiah 40. That chapter’s first verse: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” Its last verse: “but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (v.31).

In our first reading the prophet Haggai speaks in a profoundly discouraging situation. Some of the Judean exiles are back from Babylon, but the rebuilt temple is a constant reminder of the splendor of the temple the Babylonians destroyed, and Zerubbabel, a Davidic heir, is “governor,” not king. We can sympathize: some of us can remember when the pews were packed and affiliation with a congregation was simply part of being a good community member. So Haggai: take courage, work, do not fear! Why? “I am with you… my spirit abides among you.”

The prophet continues: “Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the LORD of hosts” (Hag 2:6-7). With all due respect to George Frederick Handel’s brilliant rendering of these verses, they’re a problem, because nothing recognizably like this happens in Haggai’s lifetime. Centuries later Herod the Great fills the temple with splendor, just in time for Jesus to pronounce it a “den of thieves” and for the Romans to destroy it! It’s an example of something common even to true prophets: the short- and long-term are conflated. God, as we often observe, does time differently than we do.

Nevertheless, “I am with you… my spirit abides among you.” That’s the comfort Isaiah talked about. Not consolation (as in “consolation prize”), but an assurance that God’s still active that strengthens the hearers. “Those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” So Haggai: “work.”

Notice that that line from Isaiah doesn’t read “Those who see the LORD acting” but “Those who wait for the LORD.” So waiting for the LORD is not like waiting for the mail: it expresses itself in the strength Isaiah describes, in celebrating before the final battle. (That is, by the way, one of the fundamental dimensions of the Eucharist. Isaiah (elsewhere) had prophesied: “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever” (25:6-8a). Every Eucharist foreshadows that feast, that new world in which everyone is welcome, there’s room for everyone, there’s enough for everyone. We celebrate particularly on Sunday, when our Lord took that decisive chomp out of Death.

If that waiting for the Lord is sustained by remembering God’s mighty acts—preeminently the resurrection—it’s equally sustained by the “God moments” in our past or present, often in the form of particular people. It’s what Paul was talking about in last Sunday’s reading:
“We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing” (2Th 1:3). Yes, Cain, we are each other’s keeper, and the choices we make in our dealings with each other nurture or sap our capacity to faithfully wait.

The ending of our reading from Paul’s letter was the inspiration for associating our readings with Isaiah 40: “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.”

That reading started with Paul trying to quash the rumor that the “day of the Lord” had already arrived. He works the problem from two angles. First, he recalls an expected sequence of events, perhaps drawing from Jesus’ teaching as recorded in Matthew (24:1ff), Mark (13:1ff), and Luke (25:5ff). Attempts to make sense of this sequence in the subsequent centuries of the Church’s life have not been encouraging. Second, he paints the larger picture: “God chose you as the first fruits for salvation.” There is a rich harvest coming; you’re the beginning of it. That’s a designation every generation can own: for every generation is in a unique situation, and, in God’s generosity, the first fruits in anticipation of a rich harvest. It’s why Jesus told parables like the sower and the mustard seed. “Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the LORD; take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the LORD; work, for I am with you, says the LORD of hosts.”

“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.… but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” OK, preacher, how does Jesus’ argument with the Sadducees regarding the resurrection relate to that?

In this way, I think: what makes it hard to believe Isaiah’s words then and now is the same thing tripping up the Sadducees, the assumption that we know how the world works. The Sadducees: if there’s a resurrection it’s a continuation of life as we know it, which leads to absurdities like one woman simultaneously married to seven brothers.

As you may recall, Matthew and Mark also tell this story, and in their accounts Jesus begins his response with “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God” (Mat 22:29; cf. Mk 12:24). Centuries later Hamlet makes a similar point to Horatio in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I find Hamlet’s words a useful benchmark: is that therealization that our encounters with Scripture and God’s power are generating? Sadly, there are too many ways of reading Scripture that narrow our focus, confirm our prejudices. Oh, that our readings more often generated the awe and wonder reflected in Hamlet’s words!

God’s future: not the continuation of life as we know it. As we celebrate in the Eucharist, in God’s future, everyone is welcome, there’s room for everyone, there’s enough for everyone. Let us hear again Isaiah’s words: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.… but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

What is God up to today? (18th Sunday after Pentecost, 10/12/2025)

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Readings (Track 1)

What is God up to today? My friend Qoheleth (the book of Ecclesiastes) repeatedly argues that we can’t know. At the same time, Qoheleth does a lot of wondering. So, coming off today’s texts, we might wonder: today is God up to something like that?

Our Gospel provides a useful anchor. Ten lepers ask Jesus for mercy; Jesus heals them. One of many healings in the Gospels, one of many acts of power and mercy in the Bible. God desires our health, our shalom. So today’s psalm recalls that archetypical act: the Exodus (“He turned the sea into dry land, / so that they went through the water on foot, / and there we rejoiced in him.”). Where things get puzzling is the human response (“Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”). So the question here isn’t what God’s up to, but what we humans are up to.

What God’s up to in the situation assumed by our first reading is far from clear. The triumphant Babylonian army has taken some of the Jews into exile in Babylon. What’s God doing? Is God capable of doing anything? Some prophets are announcing that God’s about to bring the exiles back home. So Jeremiah writes a letter, part of which we just heard. Perhaps the main point: “Thus says the LORD of hosts…to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon…” The exiles are there by the Lord’s decision; the Lord’s still in control. The prophets announcing an immediate return have it wrong; you’ll be there for a while. So “multiply there, and do not decrease.” And then, another surprise: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Seek the welfare (the shalom) of Babylon, pray for Babylon. If the exiles thought Jeremiah was going to encourage their faith, this is probably not the faith they were thinking about. By faith Abraham left, now by faith they’re supposed to settle in, where it’s hard to walk a few blocks without encountering a temple to another Babylonian god or goddess? This is a faith Qoheleth would have recognized: keeping the faith, remaining faithful despite not having a clue what the Lord is up to.

Then there’s today’s psalm. I noticed the allusion to the Exodus. But then there are these lines:
For you, O God, have proved us;
you have tried us just as silver is tried.
You brought us into the snare;
you laid heavy burdens upon our backs.
You let enemies ride over our heads;
we went through fire and water;
but you brought us out into a place of refreshment.

As the last line shows, these troubles are now in the rearview mirror. But prior to that last line, these troubles would have generated multiple psalms of complaint. “Lord, are you paying attention to what’s happening to us?” So, retrospectively, these lines: “For you, O God, have proved us; / you have tried us [or refined us] just as silver is tried.” Testing, refining, formation: it’s part of the package. From the letter to the Hebrews: “Although he [Jesus] was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him…” (Heb. 5:8-9).

Recall this morning’s collect. That “we may continually be given to good works” isn’t a given—that’s why we have the Confession and Absolution. So we ask that God’s grace “may always precede and follow us.” We probably don’t want to pray that God’s grace “whip us into shape,” but there may not be much of a difference. (Having Vince Lombardi as one of our state’s patron saints may help us with this!)

So God is always testing, refining? That, Qoheleth would argue, claims too much knowledge. Is God going to pass on a good opportunity to test, to refine? Probably not.

Paul’s letter adds another dimension. He writes “even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained.” God’s passion for human freedom (recall the Exodus) generates opposition. Our options may be limited; God’s are not. Paul doesn’t understand why in God’s providence he’s chained like a criminal, but he does understand that God’s options are not thereby limited. And Paul’s decisions even within his limited options matter: “Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.” In passing, most of us probably underestimate the effect our decisions have on those around us. In the midst of all that he doesn’t know, Paul knows that his decisions—and Timothy’s—matter.

I opened this sermon with “What is God up to today?” The story that we tell at every Eucharist, whether in the Creed or the Eucharistic Prayer, gives us the broad outline, placing us somewhere between “Christ is risen” and “Christ will come again.” We met that broad outline in today’s readings, whether in the joyful memory of the Exodus, Jesus’ “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” or Paul’s forward look to “the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.” But within that broad outline, today? Qoheleth: “All this I have tested by wisdom; I said, ‘I will be wise,’ but it was far from me. That which is, is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out?” (Eccl. 7:23-24). Perhaps we’re with the exiles, in Babylon by the Lord’s decision. Perhaps we’re in the middle of that proving and refining described by the psalm, wondering about the wisdom of having prayed “that your grace may always precede and follow us.” Perhaps we’re with Paul, in a situation where it’s good news that while our options are painfully limited, God’s are not.

The point, of course, is not to celebrate our ignorance, but to recognize that it’s not unfamiliar territory for God’s people. And in the midst of this ignorance our decisions still matter. So we might start with this: when grace does meet us, whether in small ways or great, are we there with the Samaritan at Jesus’ feet, giving thanks, or with the other nine, leaving Jesus scratching his head?

But rather than invite an “Amen,” perhaps a postscript is necessary. To confess ignorance is not to underwrite passivity, as two of my favorite Old Testament protagonists show us.

Nehemiah is a layperson in the Persian civil service. He makes no claim that God has asked him to do anything. But he sees an opportunity, wrangles a royal charter, and rebuilds Jerusalem’s walls.

Esther and her cousin Mordecai are Jews living in the Persian capital. Through a strange series of events she becomes queen, and then learns of a planned genocidal attack on her people. The Lord’s name does not even appear in the book, but rather than go to ground she uses her position to thwart the attack, as celebrated even today in the annual feast of Purim.

Qoheleth got it right: we often haven’t a clue what God’s currently up to. But Qoheleth also gets this right: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might” (Eccl. 9:10a).

How do we do community? (17th Sunday after Pentecost, 10/5/2025)

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Readings (Track 1)

This Sunday our readings go in quite different directions, so we’ll look first at Lamentations and then at our Gospel.

Lamentations. Since Pentecost our Old Testament readings have had us listening to the prophets’ warnings: if you continue to turn away from the true God and continue to oppress the vulnerable (who, like you, bear the image of that true God), things will turn out badly. In last week’s reading the Babylonian army had Jerusalem surrounded, and soon after that were inside. But rather than a triumphant “I told you so,” what Scripture gives us are five powerful laments.

If you look at them in the pew Bibles, you’ll notice that chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 all have 22 verses, and chapter 3, 66 verses. Why? The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, so we’ve got five acrostic laments, each verse beginning with the next letter in the alphabet, giving voice to grief from A to Z, and then back again. Chapter 3, the centerpiece, devotes three verses to each letter, so 66 verses total.

Grief over the loss of the beloved city, or—poetry is open-ended—a loved one, or a cherished dream: Lamentations knows that that’s hard work, but necessary work, and work in which there are no short-cuts. It’s part of being human. So, grief from A to Z, and then again, as often as needed.

Mercifully, the Bible doesn’t end with this book. There is an “after,” and the Bible explores what this “after” can look like. I could sketch out this exploration, but that might give the impression that grief is something to be moved past to get to the important part. No: grief is just as important as any other part, and we’ll know when we’re ready to wonder about that “after.”

We never want to be in a situation in which we need that book, but it’s there when and as often as we need it.

Deep breath. Our Gospel reading. Today’s reading comes directly after the rich man and Lazarus story we heard last week. That story was part of Jesus response to the Pharisees. Verse 14 in that chapter: “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money heard all this, and they ridiculed him.”

How do we speak truthfully about the Pharisees? It’s clear from the Gospels that Jesus had much more in common with the Pharisees than he had with the Sadducees, the Herodians, the Zealots, etc. When God looked for someone to spearhead the mission to the Gentiles, God drafted Paul the Pharisee. And, pulling back the camera, we acknowledge with gratitude the beauty and holiness that rabbinic Judaism, child of the Pharisees, has continued to produce over the centuries. What drove Jesus’ opposition to the Pharisees was the twofold recognition that (1) too many of their leaders were not successfully resisting the temptations of power, and simply stuck, and that (2) his own disciples were too often not even recognizing that these were temptations to be resisted! The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ opposition—written decades later—have more to do with the conduct the church leaders should avoid than with what the Pharisees were doing.

So how is Jesus instructing the disciples?

Don’t be the cause of someone else stumbling. You’re responsible for each other.

If another disciple sins, rebuke. If that disciple repents, forgive—as often as necessary.

Following these instructions isn’t a matter of having more faith/trust. As Yoda put it “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”

If you’ve followed these instructions, don’t give yourself airs. You’ve just done what needed to be done. (By the way, we don’t want to misuse that “worthless slaves” as a starting point for our self-definition. Jesus is happy to use hyperbole to help us avoid fatal mistakes, as in the prayer that starts “God, I thank you that I am not like other people…” [Lk. 18:11])

OK. Jesus probably doesn’t get the warm-and-fuzzy award for these words. And as we look at these instructions, I think we see that Jesus is envisioning a more cohesive—and, frankly, riskier—community than we often settle for. The “safe” way of doing community is through a general hands-off pact: I’m OK, you’re OK, and we’ll leave it at that. “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender.” But rebuke only works if through experience I know that the person rebuking me is doing so out of concern for me, not as an exercise in one-upmanship. That is, Jesus’ vision of community is of one that’s nurtured over time, not one that comes into being overnight.

A community that’s nurtured over time: that’s also behind “And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.” We’re slow learners. Sometimes my first “I’m sorry” is “I’m sorry I got caught out,” then, later, “I’m sorry that my action didn’t produce the result I intended.” Hopefully I eventually get to “I’m sorry that I even thought that was a good idea.” So seven times a day may be at the low end of the possible scenarios.

Pulling back the camera, how well have we attended to Jesus’ instructions? Too often, not very well, with results that periodically go sideways very publicly, the abuse scandals being simply the latest example. “She weeps bitterly in the night, / with tears on her cheeks…” We have Lamentations also to grieve over these failures.

So why does Jesus even bother? There’s a new world to be created. And God/Jesus, ever hopeful, who prefers to redeem rather than replace, doesn’t choose folk well-suited for the task, but folk like the disciples, folk like you and me, folk like Paul.

Speaking of Paul, what does our second reading contribute to all this? Perhaps this, that Paul really cares that Timothy get it right. It matters to Paul. And so, in a bit, when we pray “joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven,” we’re not talking about a crowd that doesn’t care how the game goes, constantly at the concession stands or doing the wave. They care and intercede, and, supported also by their care and intercession, we’ll again go forth to “love and serve the Lord.”

Live like this God: generously (16th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/28/2025)

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Readings (Track 1)

One of my favorite sayings about optimists and pessimists runs like this: the optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist agrees. In that context, we might hear Paul’s words as hopeful: there are alternatives.

On the one hand, Paul tracks with the cynic and stoic philosophers: choosing contentment is key to happiness. Then and now that means swimming upstream in a culture that constantly and stridently proclaims that happiness depends on always having more. (It takes effort to swim upstream, hence our collect’s “running to obtain your promises.”)

Notice that the problem is not wealth, but the desire for wealth. Good work can produce wealth, but when the desire for wealth replaces a commitment to good work, it’s never pretty, as in the typical grocery store: too many products that are simply bad for our health, produce like tomatoes that retain the name, but not the taste.

But Paul sets his invitation to contentment in the context of our confession of God as generous Creator (“God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment”). Luke Johnson puts this provocatively: “human existence is in itself a gift from God that cannot in any significant fashion be improved by material possessions.”

But preacher, doesn’t “contentment” mean “boring”? Well, notice how Jesus does contentment, spending so much time at the table that his enemies: “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Matt. 11:19). OK, preacher, but doesn’t “contentment” mean stagnation? Here the historian Lynn White Jr is helpful: technological progress—harnessing water and wind power—is driven by the monastic commitments to find an alternative to slavery (the source of this power in the classical world) and to live out Paul’s injunction “to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.” Contentment—Paul thinks—frees us to mirror God’s creative generosity.

“God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” That’s deeply rooted in the opening chapters of Genesis, and it’s easy to forget how counter-cultural it was/is. Israel, remember, lived between the two cultural powerhouses of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and Egypt, with Mesopotamia being more relevant in this context.

The creation stories in Mesopotamia ran something like this: sowing, harvesting, keeping the canals dredged: that’s backbreaking work, and finally the minor gods had enough and revolted. The major gods solved the problem by creating humankind—to do the work no one else wanted to do. So if you’re wondering why life is the way it is…

In that context—and that’s the context in which these chapters of Genesis took their present shape—one of the big surprises is that we humans aren’t created to solve a divine problem. So if we weren’t created for that, what were we created for? Genesis—and the rest of Scripture—wonders about that question.

But back to our reading. Living like the gods is a common human dream. And Scripture happily encourages it—as long as we remember how the Living God lives. “God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” So go and do likewise: “do good…be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.”

Jesus’ story in our Gospel reading covers much the same ground as our second reading. No surprise: Jesus and Paul are drinking from the same wells. We might notice the last bit: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” As Christians our faith is properly centered on this someone. But if “they” aren’t listening to Moses and the prophets, that “someone” isn’t going to be convincing. Moses and the prophets: to hazard a summary: the generous Creator expects us to live generously. If “they” find that unbelievable Jesus isn’t going to register. This is why the quality of our parish life is so important: the world badly needs to be able to see what living generously looks like. Our common life is an intrinsic part of our message.

We can imagine responding to Jesus and Paul in good weather; what about in nasty weather? I’m thankful for Jeremiah. In the middle of the Babylonian siege Jeremiah’s cousin comes to him asking him to buy up some family property—a field. The timing could not be worse, for that field is almost certainly currently occupied by some unit in the Babylonian army. Responding to the request and to the divine word, Jeremiah buys the property and dots all the legal i’s and crosses all the legal t’s so that the family’s ownership will remain undisputed. Even in nasty weather by God’s grace Jeremiah is able to act generously, in imitation of this generous God.

Now, a sidebar. While today’s texts have a lot to say about what we do, our images of God are equally important. Jesus is not the Son of just any god, but of the God revealed in Moses and the prophets, the generous God who digs very deep for our healing. Do I believe in that God? Most days that’s a work-in-progress. And what image of God reigns in my gut profoundly shapes what I feel, think, and do.

We might wrap all this up by noticing that the story Jesus tells is open-ended. On the personal level it challenges us: how are things around my gate? On the local, state, and national levels, who are getting our votes? Those concerned that the rich man continue to feast undisturbed, or those concerned that Lazarus not lay at the gate indefinitely. We pray “God bless America;” what are we doing to encourage God to think that’s a good idea?

It turns out that imitating God and encountering God dovetail in surprising ways. “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?… And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’” (Matt. 25:37-40).

“You got to know when to hold ’em…” (15th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/21/2025)

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Readings (Track 1)

“You cannot serve God and wealth.” That’s a statement that seems perfectly obvious when applied to other people, whether to the Spanish conquistadores who brought the cross and the sword —not necessarily in that order— to the Americas or to the occasional well-heeled tele-evangelist who practices creative bookkeeping. But the same statement seems unnecessarily limiting when applied to us. There really ought to be a way to do it!

Where did Jesus get “You cannot serve God and wealth”? He could have gotten it from the Decalogue: when wealth is the bottom line it’s a god and “no other gods before me” kicks in. This is another form of the duck test: if it walks like a duck & quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. If it drives my decision-making, it’s my god. He could have gotten it from reading prophets like Jeremiah. But I don’t think he came to it without carefully examining the alternatives. His career would have been a lot less frustrating and a lot less painful if he’d found a way! That may be what the 40 days in the wilderness were about. Recall the temptations. The devil invites him to turn stones into bread, to cast himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, to worship the devil in exchange for “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” These are also ways of trying to serve God and wealth.

Now, sermons are supposed to contain good news, and “You cannot serve God and wealth” doesn’t sound very good newsy. It can, however, be useful information. It’s like the first rule of the hole: if you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the first thing to do is…stop digging. To the degree that we take “You cannot serve God and wealth” seriously, we save ourselves all the futile work involved in trying to serve both.

But “You cannot serve God and wealth” does more than this. Once accepted, it opens up some new possibilities, possibilities that Jesus explores through his story. But before diving into that story, a few words on our first two lessons.

Jeremiah is directed, broadly, to the leaders of the Kingdom of Judah at the end of the 7th Century bc. God had brought Israel into being about 600 years earlier —about the time of the fall of Troy— as a place where God would be loved and the neighbor loved —the two halves of the Ten Commandments or Decalogue. Measured against the Decalogue the leaders’ conduct was suicidal, particularly with respect to the love-your-neighbor half. And so God sends Jeremiah to announce the end of the Kingdom —exile. And from that time Jeremiah’s words are passed down from generation to generation so that Israel will remember that God really is serious about both halves of the Ten Commandments, that one cannot serve God and wealth.

Now one way of responding to Jeremiah would be to retreat into a strict legalism that wrote off everyone on the outside. Something like this was what Paul was responding to in the letter to Timothy. Rather than writing off everyone on the outside, pray for everyone —supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings— including the kings and folk in high positions who are as corrupt as Israel’s leaders were. Why? God desires that all be saved. God, desiring the salvation of all, has supplied a mediator between God and humankind —Jesus Christ— and appointed Paul —and many others down to ourselves— as witnesses of this. So —Paul to his audience— if God desires everyone to be saved, the least you can do is pray for everyone. In other words, don’t use “you cannot serve God and wealth” as a reason for writing off your neighbor—God hasn’t.

Another way of responding to Jeremiah would be to retreat into a sort of quietism, maybe to retreat into the desert and wait for the Messiah. Here’s where Jesus’ story comes in. It’s a strange story. To get into the spirit of it a soundtrack might help. As a sound track we might use the country-western song Kenny Rogers made famous back in 1979 called The Gambler. You may recall some of the lines… “Ev’ry gambler knows that the / secret to survivin’, / Is knowin’ what to throw away / and knowin’ what to keep. / ‘Cos ev’ry hand’s a winner, / and ev’ry hand’s a loser.” And the chorus: “You got to know when to hold ’em, / know when to fold ’em, / know when to walk away, / know when to run.”

So, keeping that song going in the background, recall the story Jesus tells: out of the blue a rich man gives his business manager notice. It’s a crisis: business as usual just isn’t an option. The business manager faces the crisis, and responds by calling in all the rich man’s debtors and reducing their debt, thereby making them indebted to him. (It’s not clear if he’s cheating his boss, or simply forgoing his cut.) His boss commends the manager for acting shrewdly. And Jesus glosses the story: make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. Parenthetically, the phrase “dishonest wealth” or “unfaithful mammon” is probably a shameless pun, since “mammon,” the word for wealth, is probably derived from the Hebrew root for “faithfulness.” As Luke tells the story, Jesus is returning to a theme we’ve met before: “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.” This doesn’t mean that every Christian is called to sell all their possessions —not even Luke believed that. But every Christian and every Christian community is called to recognize that God’s coming Kingdom means the economic arrangements of this world’s kingdoms will become obsolete and to use their resources —shrewdly. We can’t serve God and wealth, but, serving God, we can use what wealth we have to serve others, and—Jesus’ words, not mine—make purses for [our] selves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, (Luk 12:33). If the financial planners only knew…

This homily, you see, ends up being about stewardship —not simply what we give to the church, but how we steward (manage) all our resources.

The standard is God, who, in Jesus’ brother James’ words “gives to all generously and ungrudgingly” (1:5).

The surprise is that Jesus is quite happy to urge generosity for selfish motives—“an unfailing treasure in heaven.” Generosity for selfish motives—better than no generosity for selfish motives. And what can happen, of course, is that the generosity transforms—slowly—the motives.

The obvious question: just how generous do I have to be? I think Jesus would say that’s the wrong question. What might be the right question? Do I think that this generous God is worth imitating? If my answer is yes, then I sort, or continue to sort—that out within the web of relationships in which this God has placed me.

Ev’ry hand’s a winner, and ev’ry hand’s a loser. The secret to survivin’, is knowin’ what to throw away and knowin’ what to keep. Kenny Rogers’ gambler and Jesus’ business manager have something to say to us. Every hand’s a winner, and every hand’s a loser, so with every hand it’s possible to act shrewdly with what we have for the glory of the Lord. May God give us the grace to continue to see and act shrewdly.