St George's Sermon Blog

  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.  ...

Deut 30:15-20; Luke 14:25-33 How is it September already?   I can’t believe the summer is ending.   The weather has certainly turned quickly on us and it is definitely starting to feel like fall. And man, I was really hoping to start the season off with something way more upbeat than the lessons we heard today.   Because these lessons today especially the Gospel are pretty tough.   But maybe they are also perfect.   Because we open the scriptures today to another time of great transition.   First, we turn to the book of Deuteronomy to see the Israelites perched on the banks of the Jordan gazing at the promised land.   After 40 years in the dessert, their lives are about to change.   Their life is the wilderness is ending and they are about to start a new life in the Promised Land.   They have been freed from slavery and are about to start living on their own for the first time.   And so God sits them down and lays before them a choic...

Luke 14:1, 7-14 Here we go again, we heard more from the Gospel of Luke today and guess what he is taking about, power, privilege, class and hospitality.   Why are we not surprised.   This time also unsurprisingly it is in the context of food.   Which is one of the things I like most about the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is always eating.   He spends far more time eating, feeding others and talking about food in the Gospel of Luke than in the other gospels.   Thus, Luke captures a special place in my heart as I absolutely love food, cooking and anything to do with feeding people.   But here is the thing, in the ancient world, much more than today, talk about food was in fact still always talk about money, class and power. Because food was and in certain ways still is the very center of our social world.   Perhaps today in the world of drive-thrus, and tv diners and where most of us gathered here have never had to think very hard about where our next meal...

Of All the Issues…, Proper 16 (C) 2007 August 26, 2007 Amy Richter   Of all the issues facing the church 120 years ago, one that was considered so pressing that it was addressed by bishops throughout the Anglican Communion at the Lambeth Conference of 1888 was this: the observance of the Sabbath. The bishops at that conference issued a report including these statements: The principle of the religious observation of one day in seven is of Divine and primeval obligation, and was afterwards embodied in the Fourth Commandment. The observance of the Lord's Day as a day of rest, of worship, and of religious teaching has been a priceless blessing in all Christian lands in which it has been maintained. The growing license in its observance threatens a grave change in its sacred and beneficent character. … The increasing practice on the part of some of the wealthy and leisurely classes of making the day a day of secular amusement is most strongly to be deprecated. The most careful regard sh...

  Luke 12:32-40 At least we are back inside this week, but I am sure it is any better in here and we are hot and we are tired, and then we get to hear yet another text from Luke about money.   Which actually should be pretty unsurprising because Luke loves to talk about money almost more than anything else, except perhaps maybe hospitality and food.   In fact, half of all the parables in Luke are about money, wealth and our resources.   Half.   Let that sink in for a moment.   Jesus talks about money 10 times as often as he talks about sex.   And much more often even than he talks about worship or the bible or even prayer.   Now the fact that Jesus actually talks about money this much may really surprise you.   It certainly surprised me the first time I heard it.   Maybe it’s because the church it seems very often likes to take exactly the opposite approach.   We talk a whole lot about how to worship and pray, we deliberate deep...

Luke 12:13-21 I really am trying to make this summer hard on myself apparently.   This again is not the lectionary trio I would have picked for today if given the choice.   We’re outside, we’re welcoming our pet friends, we have a band, it’s a joyful day.   And to make it harder, we only hear half of the Gospel story and so you have to come back next week to hear the rest.   Yet here we are with a trio of texts that are less than joyful and quite frankly a bit depressing because they are unmistakably about facing our own mortality and the legacy we leave behind, voluntarily or not. For all three texts in series make a point of reminding us that one day, we are all going to die, and well as the old adage says, “You can’t take it with you.”   So the question becomes, What do you want your legacy to be?   First, out of the great wisdom tradition in Ecclesiastes we have the lament from a great king who at the end of a long and successful reign looks around ...

  Luke 11:1-13 Lord, Teach Us How to Pray, Proper 12 (C)  by  Katerina Katsarka Whitley Lord, teach us how to pray. “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily  bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive  everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time  of trial.” This is the Lord’s Prayer as found in the gospel of Luke. Prayer. What can one find to say about prayer in an environment where it can be used as a cover for hypocrisy, an easy mantra to fool the vulnerable?  “Our thoughts and prayers are with you,” politicians say to bereaved parents whose children were gunned down because these same politicians failed to do what is just and good. Even the ancients understood that empty prayers meant nothing. There was a saying in ancient Greece: “Together with Athena, move your own hands also.” Do something, don’t just pray! The disciples had witnessed that whenever their teacher, the one they called ...