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.

 

Holy Cross

 

September 14, 2025

 

John 10: 11-16

 

+ I always say this:

 

If you come into church and see red paraments—the red altar frontal, the red hangings, the red chasuble—be prepared.

 

We are commemorating something not so pleasant.

 

Well, except for Pentecost.

 

Then, we celebrate the Holy Spirit.

 

But usually when we have the red up, it means we’re dealing with martyrs.

 

This morning, we have the red on.

 

But, no, we’re not commemorating a martyr.

 

But, still, sadly, we are commemorating something not that pleasant either.

 

This morning we are commemorating probably the one most important symbols of who we are as Christians.

 

We are commemorating the Holy Cross.

 

The late, great Father John-Julian of the Episcopal religious order, the Order of Julian or Norwich, writes about this very important feast in his wonderful book, Stars in a Dark World, which we use regularly at our Wednesday evening Eucharist. 

 

He writes:

 

“It is noteworthy, I think, to see that the Church celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross not with the penitential purple of Lent or the mortal black of Good Friday, but with the brilliant passion red of celebration and honor! And the propers of this feast do not dwell on the bloody death of Christ but rather upon the wonder of the utterly holy [instrument], because the executioner’s instrument has been exalted as the means of the salvation of the world. The salvic resurrection of Christ transformed the gross and ugly Cross of death into the most enduring symbol of life and hope.”

 

Now, we probably don’t really think about the Cross as an object too often.

 

We find of take it for granted.

 

We see it every Sunday.

 

We see them on the churches we pass every day.

 

We probably wear the around our necks or hang them on the walls of our homes.

 

For us, of course, the Cross is more than just two pieces of wood bound together.

 

For us the Cross is our symbol.

And more than that.

 

We have essentially been branded with the cross.

 

Each of us were marked by the Cross in our baptism.

 

And as a result, it is ingrained into our very souls.

 

We make the cross very nice and pretty.

 

But we sometimes forget that it was, in its day, a symbol of execution and death.

 

You will notice today that we have this black, hand-made cross in front of the altar.

 

This cross was made by my father fifteen years ago last April.

 

He made it for me to use at our Good Friday liturgy.

 

Well, if you follow me on social media, you will have seen my post about the fact that fifteen years ago today—on the feast of the Holy Cross—my father died very suddenly.

 

Some of you remember that time in the life of your priest.

 

And you’ll also remember how it came in the middle of a string of deaths in our parish—I think we had seven that month alone.

 

I always thought it was apt that my father made the cross we use for Good Friday during his last Holy Week and that same year he would die on the feast of Holy Cross.

 

It’s especially apt, since my father knew a few thing about bearing crosses in his own life.

 

He knew how to endure hardships and difficulties.

 

And I am grateful he taught me that lesson in my own life.

 

For me this feast day takes on so much meaning, but so too does the cross itself.

 

This symbol of death and degradation has been given to us and we are told to bear it with all the strength and dignity we can muster, just as Jesus did.

 

I’ve shared this quote with you before, but I love this saying by Blessed Charles Grafton, the Bishop of Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin.

 

He said that our job as Christians is to “preach the Cross from the Cross.”

 

By that, I think, he meant that we should preach the cross from our own imperfection, our own limitation, our own brokenness.

 

And doing so is not easy.

 

It is not easy to preach about this symbol of death when we are surrounded by such death and violence.

 

 

In our Gospel reading for today, we hear Jesus say to us,

 

“Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.”  

 

Those words resonate for us.

 

We have often felt as though we have been overtaken by darkness.

 

Certainly recently.

 

I know most of us here this morning followed the events that happened this week in Utah.

 

It was ugly.

 

And that event just proved to all of us how divided we are, how broken we are.

 

In the day or so that followed, I like many of us had to endure some brutal reality about our country, and some terrible ugliness.

 

And it would be easy to counter such hatred with hatred.

 

But the fact is: countering hate with hate isn’t the answer.

 

It never is.

 

Countering hate with hate only leads to even more hate—more negative energy, more conflict—in our world.

 

Besides, we as Christians, are never once called to hate.

 

What are we called to do?

 

We are called again and again to. . . love.

 

Even to love those we find despicable.

 

Even those who are hatemongers.

 

And racists.

 

Even those who want to blame others for their pain, for the consequences of their own actions.

 

Even those who want to wage war against others.

 

Loving them, I want to be clear, is not the same as accepting their hatred.

 

Loving them simply means counteracting their hatred.

 

Our empathy is a defiant act again the lack of empathy from others.

 

And it is vitally important as well to recognize that most of the hatred and fear and paranoia going on right now stems from the fact that we are all suffering.

 

We are all enduring our own pains, our own struggles.

 

And when we are suffering, we often time act out in anger and fear and hatred.

 

But to take up the cross is to not let hatred and fear win out.

 

Taking up the cross means we take up our love—we carry our love—even despite our own pain and suffering.

 

We must be children of light in this oftentimes dark place.

 

And in doing so, in the end, we know, love will transform hatred and fear and suffering.

 

Father John-Julian wrote,

 “In a sense, the Cross underwent the first transformation of the Resurrection; and that same transformation has been part of the salvation offered by the Crucified and Resurrected One. Pain and death became resurrection and exaltation—and that has never changed. The sign of the Christian’s salvation is not some giddy, mindless, low-cost bliss, but rather an entry into the deeper parts of the reality of pain and death [and I would add, fear], soaked, as was the Holy Cross, with the blood of sacrifice and finally emerged, brought by God on the other side, resurrected, exalted whole, and in heaven.”

 Just as the cross was transformed from an instrument of pain and suffering and death into a symbol of love and eternal life and resurrection, taking up our cross and carrying it transforms our own pains, our own sufferings, our own fears into life and love and strength.

 If we take the crosses we’ve been given to bear and embrace them, rather than running away from them, we find that fear has no control over us.

 If we become children of light, the darkness will not overtake us.

 Hatred has no control over us.

 Death has no control over us.

 The Cross destroys fear and pain and hatred and death.

 The Cross shatters hatred and pain and death into a million pieces.

 And when we do fear, we know we have a place to go to for shelter.

 When fear encroaches into our lives—when fear comes riding roughshod through our lives—all we have to do is go to the Cross and embrace it.

 And there, we will find our fears destroyed.

 Because of the Cross, we are taken care of by our God, who truly does love us.  

 Because of the Cross, we know, all will, somehow, in some way, be well.

 Through the Cross, we must pass to find ourselves, once and for all time, face-to-face with God and with each other.

 Face to face even with those others who are so caught up in their ideologies of hate and fear.

 Face to face even with those others who are trapped in their suffering.   

 So, let us do as Jesus tells us to.

 Let us be children of light.

 Let us take up our cross and follow him.

 He knows the way forward through these dark and frightening times.

 He is the light that shines in the dark, leading us forward.

 He knows that the only way to maneuver through these times is with love and empathy and understanding.

 It is with non-violence and peace and a clear vision of the way forward.

 This is our only option, after all.

 Because just look at the alternative.

 Hatred?

 Fear?

 Division?

 Anger?

 Those simply isn’t an option for us who follow Jesus.

 Let us bear our crosses patiently and without fear.

 Let us continue to preach the cross from the cross.

 If we do, we too will be following the way of Jesus.

 After all, the Way of Jesus doesn’t end at the Cross.

 Rather the Way of Jesus ends on the other side of the cross.

 And that is our truly destination.

 Amen.