17 Pentecost

 

October 5, 2025

 

Luke 17.5-10

+ I always joke that in my time as your priest here at St. Stephen’s , I have felt  like I have been pastor of three different parishes.

 

By that, I mean, I mean St. Stephen’s has transformed into something very different than it was let’s say 20 years ago.

 

As I thought about that, I found myself pondering what St. Stephen’s means to me.

 

I was thinking about the fact that one thing I am very proud of here is that when we say we are truly welcoming and inclusive.

 

We welcome everyone and we include everyone, even people who might not believe the same things about certain issues.

 

There truly is a wide spectrum of belief here at St. Stephen’s.

 

We encompass many people and beliefs here.

 

And I love that!

 

And, even people who don’t believe, or don’t know what they believe, are always welcome here.

 

And included.

 

That includes even atheists.

 

I love atheists, as many of you know.

 

And I don’t mean, by saying that, that I love them because of some intent to convert them.

 

No.

 

My love for atheists has simply to do with the fact that I “get” them.

 

I understand them.

 

I appreciate them.

 

And I have lots of atheists in my life!

 

Agnostics and atheists have always intrigued me.

 

In fact, as many of you know, I was an agnostic, verging on atheism, once a long time ago in my life.

 

As you have heard me say many times, I still consider myself an agnostic to a large extent.

 

Now to be clear, agnosticism and atheism are two similar though different aspects of belief or disbelief.

 

An agnostic—gnostic meaning knowledge, an “a” in front of it negates that word, so no knowledge of God—is simply someone who doesn’t know if God exists or not.

 

An atheist—a theist is a person who believes in a god, an “a” in front of it negates it, so a person who does not believe a god—in someone who simply does not or cannot believe.

 

You have heard me say often that we are all agnostics, to some extent.

 

There are things about our faith we simply—and honestly—don’t know.

 

That’s not a bad thing.

 

It’s actually a very good thing.

 

Our agnosticism keeps us on our toes.  

 

I think agnosticism is an honest response.

 

But atheism is interesting and certainly honest too, in this sense.

 

Whenever I ask an atheist what kind of God they don’t believe in, and they tell me, I, quite honestly, have to agree.

 

When atheists tell me they don’t believe in some white-bearded man seated on a throne in some far-off, cloud filled kingdom like some cut-out, some magic man living in the sky from Monte Python’s Search for the Holy Grail, then, I have to say, “I don’t believe in that God either.”

 

I am an atheist in regard to that God—that idolatrous god made in our own image.

 

If that’s what an atheist is, then count me in.

 

Dorothee Soelle, one of my all-time favorite theologians, one described herself as “atheist who believes.”

 

And I think many of “get” that statement.

 

But the God I do believe in—the God of mystery, the God of wonder and faith and love—now, that God is a God I can serve and worship.

 

And this God of mystery and love that I serve has, I believe, reached out to us, here in the muck of our lives.

 

And has done so in the person of Jesus.

 

Certainly that is not some distant, strange, human-made God.

 

Rather it is a close, loving, God, a God who knows us and is with us.

 

But there are issues with such a belief.

 

Believing in a God of mystery means we now have work cut out for us in cultivating our faith in that God of mystery.

 

“Increase our faith!” the apostles petition Jesus in today’s Gospel.

 

And two thousand years later, we—Jesus’ disciples now—are still asking him to essentially do that for us as well.  

 

It’s an honest prayer.  

 

We want our faith increased.

 

We want to believe more fully than we do.

 

We want to believe in a way that will eliminate doubt, because doubt is so…uncertain.

 

Doubt is a sometimes frightening place to explore.

 

And we are afraid that with little faith and a lot of doubt, doubt will win out.

 

We are crying out—like those first apostles—for more than we have.

 

But Jesus—in that way that Jesus does—turns it all back on us.  

 

He tells us that we shouldn’t be worrying about increasing our faith.  

 

We should rather be concerned about the mustard seed of faith that we have right now.

 

Think of that for a moment.  

 

Think of what a mustard seed really is.  

 

It’s one of the smallest things we can see.

 

It’s a minuscule thing.

 

It’s the size of a period at the end of a sentence or a dot on a lower-case I (12 point font).  

 

It’s just that small.

 

Jesus tells us that with that little bit of faith—that small amount of real faith—we can tell a mulberry tree, “be uprooted and planted in the sea.”  

 

In other words, those of us who are afraid that a whole lot of doubt can overwhelm that little bit of faith have nothing to worry about.  

 

Because even a little bit of faith—even a mustard seed of faith—is more powerful than an ocean of doubt.  

 

A little seed of faith is the most powerful thing in the world, because that tiny amount of faith will drive us and push us and motivate us to do incredible things.  

 

And doing those things, spurred on and nourished by that little bit of faith, does make a difference in the world.

 

Even if we have 99% doubt and 1% faith, that 1% wins out over the rest, again and again.

We are going to doubt.

 

We are going to sometimes gaze into that void and have a hard time seeing, for certain—without any doubt—that God truly is there.  

 

We all doubt.

 

And that’s all right to do.

 

But if we still go on loving, if we still go on serving, if we still go on trying to bring the sacred and holy into our midst and into this world even in the face of that 99% of doubt, that is our mustard seed of faith at work.

 

That is what it means to be a Christian.  

 

That is what loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves does.

 

It furthers the Kingdom of God in our midst, even when we might be doubting that there is even a Kingdom of God.

Now, yes, I understand that it’s weird to hear a priest get up here and say that atheists and agnostics and other doubters can teach us lessons about faith.

 

But they can.

 

I think God does work in that way sometimes.

 

I have no doubt that God can increase our faith by any means necessary, even despite our doubts.

 

I have no doubt that God can work even in the mustard-sized faith found deep within someone who is an atheist or agnostic.

 

And if God can do that in the life and example of an atheist, imagine what God can do in our lives—in us, who are committed Christians who stand up every Sunday in church and profess our faith in the Creed we are about to recite together.

So, let us cultivate that mustard-sized faith inside us.

 

Let’s not fret over how small it is.  

 

Let’s not worry about weighing it on the scale against the doubt in our lives.  

 

Let’s not despair over how miniscule it is.  

 

Let’s not fear doubt.

 

I think a lot of Christians do, in fact, fear doubt.

 

Let us not be scared of our natural agnosticism.

 

Rather, let us realize that even that mustard seed of faith within us can do incredible things in our lives and in the lives of those around us.  

 

And in doing those small things, we all are bringing the Kingdom of God into our midst.

 

Amen.

 

 

 

16 Pentecost

 

September 28, 2025

 Luke 16.19-31

 + Well, I just gotta say:

 It’s good to see all of you made it.

 All of you survived yet another Rapture this past week.

 So, either it didn’t happen, or we’ve all been left behind.

 Shucks!

 But, just in case you haven’t had enough of all that talk about the end times and heaven and hell and who gets in and who doesn’t, we get this parable this morning.

 Ok.. . .I  weirdly love the parable we heard today.

 I think I might be one of the very few people who do actually love it.

 For some, it’s just so weird and…well, bizarre.

 It’s such an interesting story.

 There’s just so much good stuff, right under the surface of it.

 So, let’s take a look at it.

 In it, we find Lazarus.  

 Now, if you notice,  it’s the only time in Jesus’ parables that we find someone given a name—and the name, nonetheless, of one of Jesus’ dearest friends.  In most of Jesus’ parables, the main character is simply referred to as the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son.  

 But here we have Lazarus.  

 And the name actually carries some meaning.  

 It means “God has helped me.”

 Now the “rich man” in this story is not given a name by Jesus, but tradition has given him the name Dives, or “Rich Man”

 Between these two characters we see such a juxtaposition.  

 We have the worldly man who loves his possessions and is defined by what he owns.  

 And we have Lazarus who is poor, who seems to get sicker and hungrier all the time.

 In fact, his name almost seems like a cruel joke.  

 It doesn’t seem like God has helped Lazarus at all.

 The Rich Man sees Lazarus, is aware of Lazarus, but despite his wealth, despite all he has, despite, even his apparent happiness in his life, he can not even deign to give to poor Lazarus a scrap of food from all that he has.

 Traditionally of course, we have seen them as a very fat Rich Man, in fine clothing and a haughty look and a skinny, wasted Lazarus, covered in sores, which I think must be fairly accurate to what Jesus hoped to convey.  

 They are opposite, mirror images of each other.  

 But there are some subtle undercurrents to this story.  

 Lazarus is not without friends or mercy in his life. In fact, it seems that maybe God really IS helping him. 

 He is not quite the destitute person we think he is.

 First of all, we find him laid out by the Rich Man’s gate.  

 Someone must’ve put him there, in hopes that Rich Man would help him. Someone cared for Lazarus, and that’s important to remember.

 Second of all, we find these dogs who came to lick his sores.  

 The presence of dogs is an interesting one.

 Are they just wild dogs that roam the streets, or are they the Rich Man’s watch dogs?

 New Testament theologian Kenneth Bailey has mentioned that dog saliva was believed by people at this time to have curative powers. (We now know that is definitely NOT the case)   

 So, even the dogs are not necessarily a curse upon Lazarus but a possible blessing in disguise.

 Finally, when Lazarus dies, God receives him into paradise.

 In fact, as we hear, “angels carried him to be with Abraham.”

 The Rich Man dies and goes to Hades—or the underworld.  

 Lazarus goes up.

 Dives goes down.

 He literally dives.

 The Rich Man, in the throes of his torment, cries out to Lazarus.

 And Lazarus, if you notice, doesn’t ignore him or turn his back on him, despite the fact that the Rich Man did just that to Lazarus.

 Lazarus does not even scold him.  

 It almost seems that Lazarus might almost be willing to go back and tell the Rich Man’s friends if only the gulf between them was not so wide.

 There really is a beauty to this story and a lesson for us that is more than just the bad man gets punished while the good man gets rewarded.

 And it is also not really about heaven and hell either.

 I get a lot of people who, when they hear that I do not believe in an eternal hell, remind me of this parable.

 I, in turn, remind them that it is a parable.

 It is a story that Jesus is telling.

 He is not talking about literal people here.

 And he is not talking about literal places.

 Like it the Rapture, It is poetry and poetic imagery.

 And that is vital to remember.

 What we find is that, by the world’s standards, by the standards of those who are defined by the material aspects of this life, Lazarus was the loser before he died and the Rich Man was the winner, even despite his callousness.

 And the same could be said of us as well.  It might seem, at moments, as though we are being punished by the things that happen to us.  

 It is too easy to pound our chests and throw dirt and ashes in the air and to cry out in despair and curse God when bad things happen.  

 It is much harder to recognize that while we are there, at the gate outside the Rich Man’s house, lying in the dirt, covered in sores, that there are people who care, that there are gentle, soothing signs of affection, even from dogs.  

 Actually, there have been times when I have been soothed more by dogs than humans.

 And it is hard sometimes in those moments to see that God too cares.

 I have done that.

 But the fact remains, Paradise awaits us.

 That place to which Lazarus was taken by angels awaits us and, for those of us striving and struggling through this life, we can truly cling to that hope.

 For those of us still struggling, we can set our eyes on the prize, so to speak and move forward.  

 We can work toward that place, rather than “diving” like Dives himself, into the pit of destruction he essentially created for himself.

 In a real sense, the Rich Man was weighed down by his wealth, especially when he refused to share it, and he ended up wallowing in the mire of his own close-mindedness and self-centeredness.

 What happens to this Rich Man?

 Well, the chickens came home to roost.

 The rich man, the narcissist, full of hubris and pride, full of arrogance and selfishness and self-centeredness.

 The rich man, who did not care for the poor, who ignored the needy, who cared only for himself,

 The rich man who boasted and blew smoke and walked around with his puffed-out chest,

 The rich man fell, as all such people we find will fall.

 Scripture again and again tells us such people will fall.

 History again and again tells us such people will fall.

 The chickens ALWAYS come home to roost.

 Though sometimes they so agonizingly slow.

 The moral of this parable is this: let us not be like the rich man.  

 Let us not follow that slippery, dangerous slope to destruction.

 But for those of us who, in the midst of our struggles, can still find those glimmers of light in the midst of the gloom, we are not weighed down.  

 We are freed in ways we never knew we could be.  

 We are lifted up and given true freedom.

 We are Lazarus.

 God has truly helped us.

 And God continuous to help us again and again.

 And when God does help us, it is then that we see most clearly God’s amazing love, grace and mercy.

 Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

15 Pentecost

September 20, 2025

 

Amos 8.4-7;1 Timothy 2.1-7; Luke 16.1-13

 

+ This past Wednesday at our Wednesday night Eucharist, we celebrated one of our very favorite saints on her feast day.

 

St. Hildegard of Bingen.

 

Sandy brought her beautiful icon of St Hildegard.

 

We joyously rang our bell named after her.

 

And we celebrated Hildegard in all her defiant, independent brilliance!

 

Oh, how we love St. Hildegard!

 

We love her because she was something else!

 

She was a defiant force. 

 

And she was one of the first feminists.

 

In fact, we love St. Hildegard so much that we even named our bell after her.

 

St. Hildegard was a German Benedictine nun, a mystic.

 

She was also a great musician, which is also another reason why she is the namesake for our bell.

 

But the real reasons she was chosen as the patron saint of our bell is because she was quite the force to be reckoned with.

 

And let me tell you, St. Hildegard would’ve loved St. Stephen’s and all it stands for.

 

She would fit in very well here.

 

At a time when women were not expected to speak out, to challenge, to stand up—well, Hildegard most definitely did that.

 

She was an Abbess, she was in charge of a large monastery of women, and as such she held a lot of authority.

 

An abbess essentially had as much authority in her monastery as a Bishop had in their diocese.

 

She even was able to have a crosier—the curved shepherd’s crook—that is normally reserved for a bishop.

 

And she definitely put Bishops and kings in their place.

 

There is a very famous story that when the emperor, Fredrick Barbarossa supported three of the anti-popes who were ruling in Avignon at that time, she wrote him a letter.

 

My dear Emperor,

 

You must take care of how you act.

I see you are acting like a child!!

You live an insane, absurd life before God.

There is still time, before your judgment comes.

 

Yours truly,

Hildegard.

 

(That could be written to certain leaders—I won’t mention any names—right now!)

 

 

That is quite the amazing thing for a woman to have done in her day.

 

Even more amazing is that the emperor heeded her letter.

 

And as a result of that letter, she was invited by the Emperor to hold court in his palace.

 

By “judgement” here, Hildegard is making one thing clear in her letter.

 

There are consequences to our actions.

 

And God is paying attention.

 

For us, we could say it in a different way.

 

If you know me for any period of time, you will hear me say one phrase over and over again, at least regarding our actions.

 

And let me tell you, this phrase has often felt like ashes in my mouth!

 

That phrase is  “The chickens always come home to roost.”

 

And it’s true.

 

That phrase was made famous in the last 60 years or so by Malcom X, who said, following the assassination of JFK in 1963, (this quote is actually from the film, Malcom X)

 

 

“I don't think anybody here would deny that when you send chickens out in the morning from your barnyard, those chickens will return that evening to your barnyard, not your neighbor's barnyard. I think this is a prime example of the devil's chickens coming back home to roost. That the chickens that he sent out, the violence that he's perpetrated …. I think this same violence has come back to claim one of their own. Now, being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never made me sad. ln fact, it's only made me glad.”

 

One of the things so many of us have had to deal with in our lives are people who have not treated us well, who have been horrible to us, who have betrayed us and turned against us.

 

It’s happened to me, and I know it’s happened to many of you.

 

It is one of the hardest things to have to deal with, especially when it is someone we cared for or loved or respected.

 

In those instances, let’s face it, sometimes it’s very true.

 

“The chickens do come home to roost.” 

 

Or at least, we hope they do.

 

Essentially what this means is that what goes around, comes around.

 

We reap what we sow.

 

There are consequences to our actions.

 

And I believe that to be very true.

 

And not just for others, who do those things to us.

 

But for us, as well.

 

When we do something bad, when we treat others badly, when gossip about people, or trash people behind their backs, who disrespect people in any way, we think those things don’t hurt anything.

 

And maybe that’s true.

 

Maybe it will never hurt them.

 

Maybe it will never get back to them.

 

But, we realize, it always, always hurts us.

 

And when we throw negative things out there, we often have to deal with the unpleasant consequences of those actions.

 

I know because I’ve been there.

 

I’ve done it.

 

And I’ve paid the price for it.

 

But there is also a flip side to that.

 

And there is a kind of weird, cosmic justice at work.

 

Now, for us followers of Jesus, such concepts of “karma” might not make as much sense.

 

But today, we get a sense, in our scriptures readings, of a kind of, dare I say, Christian karma.

 

Jesus’ comments in today’s Gospel are very difficult for us to wrap our minds around.

 

But probably the words that speak most clearly to us are those words, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful in much.”

 

Essentially, Jesus is telling us this simple fact: what you do matters.

 

There are consequences to our actions.

 

There are consequences in this world.

 

And there are consequences in our relation to God.

 

How we treat each other as followers of Jesus and how we treat others who might not be followers of Jesus.

 

How we treat people who might not have the same color skin as we do, or who are a different gender than us, or how we treat someone who are a different sexual orientation or sexual identity from our own.

 

What we do to those people who are different than us matters.

 

It matters to them.

 

And, let me tell you, it definitely matters to God.

 

We have few options, as followers of Jesus, when it comes to being faithful.

 

We must be faithful.

 

Faithful yes in a little way that brings about great faithfulness.

 

So, logic would tell us, any increase of faithfulness will bring about even greater faithfulness.

 

Faithfulness in this sense means being righteous.

 

And righteousness means being right before God.

 

Jesus is saying to us that the consequences are the same if we choose the right path or the wrong path.

 

A little bit of right will reap much right.

 

But  a little bit of wrong, reaps much wrong.

 

Jesus is not walking that wrong path, and if we are his followers, then we are not following him when we step onto that wrong path.  

 

Wrongfulness is not our purpose as followers of Jesus.  

 

We cannot follow Jesus and willfully—mindfully—practice wrongfulness.

 

If we do, let me tell you, the chickens come home to roost.

 

We must strive—again and again—in being faithful.

 

Faithful to God.

 

Faithful to one another.

 

Faithful to those who need us.

 

Faithful to those who need someone.

 

Being faithful takes work.

 

When we see wrong—and we’re seeing a whole lot wrong right now in our world!—our job in cultivating faithfulness means counteracting wrongfulness.

 

If there are actions and reactions to things, our reaction to wrongfulness should be faithfulness and righteousness.

 

Now that seems hard.

 

And, you know what, it is.

 

But it is NOT impossible.  

 

What we do, does matter.

 

It matters to us.

 

It matters to others.

 

And it matters to God.

 

We must strive to be good.

 

Hildegard would say the same thing to us.

 

She would wave her finger at us and say, “Do good! God—who loves you!— is watching!”

 

Those good actions are actions each of us as followers of Jesus are also called to cultivate and live into.

 

As Christians, we are called to not only to ignore or avoid wrongfulness.

 

We are called to confront it and to counter it.

 

Hildegard did it when she wrote to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.

 

And we too should do it.

 

We are called to offer faithfulness in the face of wrongfulness.

 

So, let us do just that in all aspects of our lives.  

 

Let us offer kindness and generosity and hope and truth and forgiveness and  joy and love and goodness, again and again and again whenever we are confronted with all those forces of wrongfulness.

 

Let us offer light in the face of darkness.  

 

Let us strive, again and again, to do good, even in small ways.

 

For in doing so, we will be faithful in much.

 

“For surely I will not forget any of their deeds,” God says in our reading from Amos today.

 

What we do matters.

 

God does not forget the good we do in this world.

 

We should rejoice in that fact.

 

God does not forget the good we do. 

 

What we do makes a difference in our lives and in the lives of those around us.

 

So let us, as faithful followers of Jesus, strive, always to truly “lead a…peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”

 

Amen.