St George's Sermon Blog

Matt 22:1-14 We are marching on into October and thus continues my quest to avoid the dealing with the readings from the Gospel of Matthew for this season.   But alas, there is no major saint’s day this week so I got stuck reading from Matthew.   And the reading for today could be good, in fact in Luke, it is good.   Because both Matthew and Luke remember this story.   And Luke’s version is this perfectly normal little parable about a man who invites his friends to a banquet and his friends are too busy to come so he invites all these other people and they come and they all have a good old time.   I like Luke’s story, in fact it would have fit perfectly with our stewardship themes about how generosity can create places of welcome.   I like it so much that I really, really thought about swapping Luke’s story in for Matthew’s today and hoping that no one noticed.   It was very tempting.   But alas, I couldn’t do it.   Because Matthew’s albeit...

  Acts: 4: 32-35, 5:1-11; Luke 12: 13-21 Today is the Feast of St Francis, and it is particularly great that October 4 falls on a Sunday this year because this is also a jubilee year for St Francis marking 800 years since his death and inviting us to remember his enduring legacy and impact on the church.   The Feast of St Francis traditionally is a day across the church and especially in the Episcopal church where we often celebrate St Francis’ deep love of animals and nature with Pet Blessings and outdoor worship and all manner of animal and creation themed activities.   Which is good.   But we did all that last month when the bishop was here.   And now at least for me, I am just really thankful after this crazy month that we are back inside our clean, warm and newly unsmelly sanctuary.   And so instead, I think that this year we have a really wonderful opportunity to think more deeply about St Francis and the wider legacy of his life and what it can t...

Matt 21:23:32; Philippians 2:1-13 It’s fighting season in the lectionary.   Today in the Gospel of Matthew we see the religious authorities go and pick a fight with Jesus.   And this fight that they start with Jesus today goes on in our readings for the next 7 weeks.   These people, they just keep arguing, they keep attacking Jesus, one group after another, for like the next month and a half. And I just can’t.   I can’t do it.   Not this year.   I have preached through this series of readings before, and it does have a lot to teach us.   It’s good, see me in 3 years, we’ll talk about it, we’ll do it all.   But not this year.   Not when every time I turn on the TV, I see some of the most ridiculous political ads I have ever seen in my life (are we really fighting over which candidate likes football more?).   Not when we seem to have forgotten even the most basic rules of civil discourse.   Not when our church recently literally c...

Jonah 3:11-4:10; Matt 20:1-16 So today we have a set of stories from the bible that really get us thinking about the principle of scarcity and how it affects us.   Our Gospel lesson for today tells one of the more infuriating stories in the whole bible about a landowner who goes out and hires people to work for the harvest in his vineyard.   And he goes out time and time again to hire more and more workers throughout the day.   Some end up working a full 12-hour day and others for only a hour.   And then at the end of the day, when it’s time to get paid, the owner very publicly, very intentionally pays all the workers the same standard daily wage no matter how long or hard they have worked. And I am betting this story probably annoys you a little bit.   It’s okay, it does me too.   It violates our basic common sense of fairness.   What the owner does just doesn’t seem right.   Some people worked so hard and the others that came late barely wor...

  The Old Testament Scholar…, Proper 19 (A) – 2008 The Old Testament scholar Gerhard von Rad wrote: “Real forgiveness is not a purely interpersonal matter, but it reaches deeply into the relationship of men before God.” The three lectionary passages today, taken from the end of the book of Genesis, from St. Paul’s Letter to the Roman Christians, and from Matthew’s retelling of Jesus’ parable to his disciples, present us with profound lessons on tolerance and forgiveness. In the very last chapter of Genesis we read the finale of the Joseph story. There is nothing easy or light or sentimental in the ending of this story, one that reads like an exciting short novel. Out of jealousy and spite, the sons of Jacob had committed a grave crime against their brother Joseph. Years later they discover that their victim has survived and has become a great man in another land: Egypt. They, too, eventually go to this land to escape starvation, and their wronged brother is the only one who can sav...

  Matt 14:22-33 So last week while I was away you all got to hear the story about Jesus feeding the 5000 with only 5 loaves and 2 fish.   And you learned that God is Good, all the time and will always provide what we need.   And then today we pick the thread back up and hear this story about Jesus and the storms on the sea.   And it provides with yet another great opportunity to think about how God is present with us in good times and bad. At the beginning of our story, after accomplishing this great feeding miracle Jesus is very worn out, so he makes the disciples go on ahead of him to the other side of the sea.   And this is a bit of an interesting choice, because in the Gospels crossing to the “other side” of the sea is almost always a metaphor for going out to do ministry in the midst of new people in the world.   Often among gentiles or less receptive crowds.   And so in this way, it is not so different than other stories we have heard in our ...