St George's Sermon Blog

Luke 20:27-38 We are almost done with the Gospel of Luke, just a couple more weeks until the end of the liturgical year, but Luke, he is not yet done with us. Luke is still trying to get us to think in new ways and reorient our worldview in order to focus on what God thinks is truly important. And our gospel reading for today skips a little ways ahead from where we have been.   It comes from right near the end of Jesus’s ministry after he has entered Jerusalem for the final time.   All of Jesus’s counter cultural teaching, all of Jesus’s revolutionary ideas, all of Jesus’s pushing against the world order is finally beginning to come to a head.   Those with the most to lose are really starting to push back.   And so today’s lesson comes right in the middle of a string of encounters with people and groups questioning Jesus in the temple.   Now lets be clear, these are not his friends or disciples, but rather people who are trying to either discredit him or get...

Luke 18:9-14 Man, Jesus, why are you so mean to us right now? Luke has had some hard things to say to us all fall, and this one today is no exception, in fact this one may be the hardest yet for many of us.   But the Holy Spirit is funny y’all.   Because we planned this day, we picked today as the day to invite our special guests here to talk to us after church long before I did any lectionary planning.   But Holy Spirit, she knew what she was up to.   And honestly, I couldn’t have picked a better text in order to talk about power and privilege and discovering our role in unjust systems than if I had set out to do so.   I mean it’s almost too on the nose. Our Gospel lesson starts out, “Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt”.   And in it two guys walk into the temple, and the Pharisee looks over and sees the tax collector and says, doesn’t even just think it, he literally says...

Luke 18:1-8 Today we got to hear a trio of wonderful biblical stories about the power of persistence.   Now I tend to think that persistence is a highly underrated trait in the church and in the world.   The ability to stick to a task even if it is repetitive, hard or shows little or no sign of success.   The commitment to continue with something for extra ordinary periods of time or the decision to stay faithful to a something even when new and different choices arise is something we often fail to value in our fast-paced world. Instead we tend to be attracted to charismatic people and big splashy events.   These sorts of things tend to be the ones that get noticed and talked about, promoted and lifted up.   This is definitely true in the media, but also often at our jobs and in our communities and even in our church families.   We tend to notice and remember the person who gets up front and speaks, the large-scale fancy events, the CEO, the priest, the l...

The Unchained Word, Pentecost 18 (C) – October 12, 2025  by  The Rev. Charles Wynder [RCL] Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Psalm 66:1-11; 2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19 “But the word of God is not chained.” We can find strength, peace, and courage from these words in the Second Letter of Paul to Timothy. We are living in rapidly changing times. Uncertainty can be sensed in the minds, bodies, hearts, and concrete realities of many of us, regardless of our social location and context. Circumstances and situations are unpredictable. For too many, the world itself seems unmoored. Whether it’s the cost of living, finding shelter and housing, a world increasingly driven by Artificial Intelligence, or more significantly, whether one can feel secure about remaining in their community, many in our congregations and the surrounding neighborhoods are seeking a sense of grounding. Perhaps our siblings are looking for inspiration, comfort, and compassion that is life-giving and liberating. Our neighb...

  The Test of all Happiness Is Gratitude, Proper 23 (C) – 2016 October 09, 2016 Joseph S. Pagano Gratitude has become something of a hot topic among psychologists recently. And what is really interesting is that the research is showing is that gratitude is good for you. It seems as though gratitude has a number of positive benefits and it correlates with higher levels of well-being and health. Grateful people report higher levels of positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, optimism and lower levels of depression and stress. Gratitude often nurtures generalized compassion and altruistic behavior in people. And there is even some evidence based on studies using state of the art monitoring techniques that gratitude is good for your heart. Pretty interesting stuff! We have some scientific evidence which shows that gratitude and the practice of gratitude has positive benefits. But as Dr. Robert Emmons notes in “Why Gratitude is Good” grateful people do not take a Pollyannaish vie...

  Luke 17:5-10 I mean Luke, why are you doing this to us?   The last couple weeks were hard and this text certainly isn’t getting any better.   I am going to have grey hair by the end of this if he keeps it up.   So, our gospel lesson for the day comes in 2 parts, and nice normal little parable about faith and then this super dicey one about working slaves.   And the first little bit is great.   Jesus tells us that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed we would be able to say to the mulberry tree be uprooted and planted in the sea and it would obey.    I like this parable, it is what I like to call children’s sermon material.   It simple and straightforward and easy enough that even a child can understand it.   It even lends itself to handy visual aids and I indeed have whole grain mustard seeds in my spice cabinet for this exact reason.   They are at least 10 years old and I have no earthly idea what one would actually ...

  Luke 16:19-31 So here we are again stuck in the Gospel of Luke talking about money.   It’s not a great day for rich people in our lessons today huh?   In fact in all three of our texts today, scripture has some very pointed things to say about the accumulation of wealth and all the dangers that go along with it.   And this makes our job difficult today because talking openly about money and power and privilege is hard in our culture and especially talking about anything that doesn’t put making money, creating a more comfortable life and increasing our prosperity on the top of our list of life goals.   And so, we in the church often shy away from these difficult texts.   We often try to dance around Jesus’s point or soften or spiritualize them.   But I don’t really think that any of that does any of us any good because there is a lot we can learn from these texts.   Even if learning it may put some of our comfort at risk. Our Gospel lesson ...

  [RCL] Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Psalm 79:1-9; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13 by  The Rt. Rev. Frank Logue   Jesus offers money management advice in our Gospel reading, saying, “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” This does not sound like solid investment advice, does it? Follow that counsel and you’ll be buying fair-weather friends through less than honorable means. Why did Luke value sharing this in the Gospel? What are we missing? One problem with hearing this story rightly is that Bibles and Sunday School lessons give parables a name that shapes how we hear them. This story is called “The Parable of the Unjust Steward” or even “The Parable of the Shrewd Manager.” Jesus did not name his parables. He simply told them. Jesus begins by saying, “There was a rich man who had a manager.” The one to watch in this story is the rich man. This is exactly what happens with the parable Jesus told i...

  God Is Good All the Time,  by  Deon Johnson There is a wonderful scene in C.S. Lewis’s famous novel  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe  where Lucy, the youngest the children to cross into the magical world of Narnia, converses with Mr. Beaver. In this magical land of talking animals and evil queens, Lucy feels both wonder and fear after hearing about Aslan, the original Lion King, who rules over the lands of Narnia. Lucy inquires of Mr. Beaver, “Is he quite safe?” to which the industrious rodent replies with an air of indignation “Safe? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe! But he’s good.” Much like Lucy wants to know that the ruler of her mystical realm of Narnia is safe, we want our God and our faith to be safe and comforting, making no great demands of our time or treasure. But if we pay close attention to our Gospel for today, we quickly realize that Jesus is far from safe, but is always good and full of surprises. Jesus had been travelin...

  Luke 15:1-10 Woohoo.   I am very happy about our texts today.   Because we have had some real downers lately.   Because the Gospel of Luke can be a hard one.   Luke says a lot of hard things.   He remembers Jesus challenging people and systems that used to keep him and people like him out.   He remembers feeling welcomed and seeing others welcomed in ways others don’t.   But those same memories, that same Good News for Luke can be really hard for those of us who are more accustomed to comfortable seats.   So I am glad for today.   And I know at first glance today’s texts don’t seem much better.   I mean they are all about sinners and what a mess we as humans can make of our lives and quite frankly the world.   But I love them.   Because we have made it to Luke chapter 15 and it is one of my favorites.   Because today God rejoices.   Today in Luke and elsewhere, we get to see God at his most merciful.  ...