8 Pentecost

August 3, 2025

 

Luke 12:13-21

 

+ A few weeks ago in my sermon, I mentioned that I revised my will about a month ago.

 

It was a good thing to do.

 

It has been almost 13 years since I revised it.

 

And a lot has happened in 13 years in my life!

 

But doing so, reminded me of one of my duties as your priest.

 

I’d like you to take a look at a section of the Prayer Book that I’ve showed you before, but I’d like to draw your attention to once again.

 

On page 445, you will find something very interesting.

 

It says this,

 

The Minister of the Congregation [that’s me] is directed to instruct the people [that’s you], from time to time, about the duty of Christian parents to make prudent provision for the well-being of their families, and of all persons to make wills, while they are in health, arranging for the disposal of their temporal goods, not neglecting, if they are able, to leave bequests for religious and charitable uses.

 

I always encourage people—no matter where they are financially in their lives—to make out a Will.

 

And now that we have an endowment here at St. Stephen’s, I also encourage people to remember St. Stephen’s in their wills.

 

Wills are more than just a means of giving away our earthly possessions when we die.

 

They truly can be a practical expression of one’s faith and a positive acknowledgement of our own mortality and dependence upon God.

 

 

For me in having a will, there was a sense of accomplishment in knowing that what I have will be distributed to those people and those organizations that I know would appreciate them and benefit from them.

 

And it was also a relief to be able to put in that Will such practical instructions as my funeral arrangements (which, as you me say time and again, I highly encourage everyone to consider and write down in some way or form).

 

But the real reason we make out a will is because of this one simple fact: we cannot, whether we like it or not, take what have with us when we shed this mortal coil.

 

I hate to break that news to you.

 

None of the money we have made and saved and invested will go with us when we pass from this life.

 

Our cars, our houses, our books, our art, our stocks and bonds, our fabulous 1950s furniture will not go with us as we pass through the veil.

 

OK, maybe that part about the fabulous 1950s furniture only applies to me and Steve Bolduc.

 

But you see where I am going with this.

 

Which the whole reason we make Wills. 

 

We make Wills to give us a sense of security about what we have and where it will go when it is no longer ours.

 

We like to know where these things we worked so hard to get will go.

 

Still, having said all that, I have never been comfortable talking about Wills and money.

 

It’s such a personal thing.

 

 

Which, I know, is completely pointless.

 

In this morning’s Gospel we find this “someone” in the crowd who is fretting over his possessions, it seems. 

 

And this “someone” just hasn’t quite understood what Jesus is saying when he says “do not be afraid,” which is what he was telling them right before this particular incident.

 

But as easy as it is to judge this poor person quarreling with his brother—as much as we want to say—“look at that fool, bringing his financial concerns before Jesus,” the fact is, more often than we probably care to admit, this is the person we no doubt find ourselves relating to.

 

In this society that we live in, in this country in which we live in, we naturally think a lot about money and finances.

 

We spend a lot of time storing our money, investing our money, making more money and depending on money.

 

 None of which, in and of its self, is bad.

 

People often think the old saying says, “money is the root of evil.

 

But what the aphorism really says is, “LOVE of money is the root of all evil.”

 

And that is bad.

 

For those who don’t have much, they worry about how to survive, how to live, how to make more.

 

For those with money, they worry about keeping the money they have, making sure their money isn’t stolen or misused.

 

And we don’t just worry about the money in our lives.

 

We worry about all our material “treasures.”

 

We worry about protecting our possessions from robbers, or fire or natural disaster.

 

We insure them and store them and we spend time planning how to pass our treasures on after we die.

 

We are concerned about what we have and we might even find ourselves looking for and seeking those things we don’t have.

 

And there is nothing inherently wrong with any of this either.

 

It’s good stewardship to take care of that with which God has blessed us and take care of those things.

 

What Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel is not so much these issues—it’s not money per se, or the “things” in our lives.

 

What Jesus is talking is something worse.

He is talking about greed, or as older translations used, covetousness.

 

Greed and covetousness are not the same thing.

 

They are actually two different things.

 

Greed involves us—it involves us wanting more than we need.

 

Covetousness is wanting what others have.

 

Covetousness involves envy and jealousy. (And envy and jealousy are two different things as well, but we won’t get into that today)

 

Covetousness involves looking at others and wanting what they have desperately.

 

And at times, we’ve all been guilty of both of these things.

I’m certainly guilty of covetousness.

 

I want to covet Steve Bolduc’s very cool 1950s aqua blue clouch that he found in his basement.

 

In our society, we are primed to be a bit greedy and we are primed to covet.

 

Look at some of the ads we see on TV.

 

We are shown products in such a way that we actually come to desire them.

 

And they are shown in the context of some other person enjoying them so much that we should want them too.

 

And, in this society, we are primed to want more than we need.

 

We’re all guilty of it.

 

And we should be aware of this fact in our lives.

 

And in being aware of this, we need to keep Jesus’ words close to heart.

 

Because Jesus is clear here.

 

There are two kinds of treasures.

 

There are those treasures we have here on earth—the ones we actually own, the ones we might need and the ones others have that we want (like 1950s aqua blue couches)— and the ones we store up for ourselves in heaven.

 

And, let’s be honest, those treasures we are expected to store up for ourselves in heaven are not the easiest ones to gain for ourselves.

 

They are not the ones we probably think about too often in our lives.

 

Jesus isn’t too clear in today’s Gospel exactly what those treasures are, but it won’t take much guessing on our part to figure them out.

 

The treasures we store up for ourselves in the next world are those that come out of loving God and loving each other.

 

But we have to be careful when considering what it is we are storing up for ourselves.

 

It is not the idea that good deeds will get us into heaven.

 

We need to be very clear here.

 

Jesus is not at any point saying to us that what we do here on earth is going to guarantee us a place in heaven.

 

But what he is saying is that we don’t get to take any of our possessions with us when we leave this world.

 

All of it will be left behind.

 

Every last thing we have right now in our lives—every previous thing—will be left behind when we die.

 

However, Jesus says, if you do these good things in your life, you will be closer to heaven.

 

You will not “win” heaven by doing them.

 

But…by doing good things for one another, you will be bringing heaven closer into our lives.

 

I can’t stress enough how important it is to take care of the treasures we have on earth.

 

We should always be thankful for them.

 

And we should be willing to share them as are needed.

 

And to take care of these those things that are meaningful to us—like St. Stephen’s.

 

Our job as Christians is to take care of our possessions here on earth—with whatever God granted to us in our lives.

 

Considering what we heard from our Book of Common Prayer earlier we know that we are encouraged to look after our earthly treasures and to share them in a spirit of goodness and forbearance.

 

By arranging for our Wills to be made, by being generous with our gifts and with the instructions we give our loved ones who survive us, we are truly responding to today’s Gospel.

 

By being generous with our gifts , and by being generous to those who share this earth with us, we are building up treasures in heaven.

 

We are not “buying” our way into heaven.

 

We are just striving to do good on this earth, as faithful followers of Jesus and as beloved children of a loving God.

 

And striving to do good does build up those treasures in heaven.

 

In all of this, let us listen in a way the anonymous person in today’s Gospel did not.

Let us listen to Jesus’ words of “do not be afraid.”

 

Do not be afraid.

 

Do not be afraid of what will happen to the possessions you have on earth.

 

Do not let fear reign in your life by letting greed and covetousness rule your lives.

 

Do not get all caught up in the things you have, or the things your neighbors have.

 

Or those things you don’t have but really want.

 

Instead, let us love our neighbor as we would love ourselves.

 

And let us love our God who provides for us everything we can possibly need.

 

And let us know that that same God whom we love and who loves us in return has a special place prepared for us which is full of riches beyond our comprehension.

 

For, as Jesus makes clear in pointing out, our lives do “not consist in the abundance of our possessions.”

 

We are more than our possessions.

 

We are more than what we have.

 

In that place to which are going, we will go naked and empty-handed.

 

We will go shed of all attachments and possessions.

 

We will go there shed even of our very bodies.

 

But we will go there, unafraid.

 

And we will go there gloriously and radiantly clothed with hope and joy and love.

 

 

 

7 Pentecost

July 27, 2025

 

Luke 11.1-13

 

+ So, let’s start with a hard question.

 

Are you ready?

 

OK.

 

How many times, through the entire course of your life, have you prayed the Lord’s Prayer?

 

Just think about it for one moment.

 

Do you have an answer?

 

Can you answer it?

 

Or. . . is the answer something like, “as many stars as in the sky.”

 

If that’s your answer, that’s a good answer.

 

Because, let’s face it, we pray the Lord’s Prayer a lot.

 

We will do it today in a few moments.

 

We pray it almost every time we gather in church.

 

We pray it at every wedding we do.

 

We pray it at every funeral.

 

We pray it at the graveside when we bury our loved ones.

 

Many of us pray it on our own every day.

 

For those of us who pray the Daily Office, we pray it at least twice a day.

 

But, as much as we pray—maybe because we pray it so much—we sort of take it for granted.

 

We pray it without thinking about it. 

 

It is an important prayer for us, so important in fact that it is the actual answer thot her question Jesus receives from those disciples asking him how to pray.

 

Now, I love the Lord’s Prayer.

 

I hope we all do.

 

But let’s face it, so many of us take for granted.

 

But if you ever really study it, you will see it really is the very perfect prayer.

 

And it definitely has its roots in classic Judaism.

 

Last week I talked about the Shema—the summary of the Law, which is basically, Love God, Love others as yourself.

 

Every Jewish male prays that prayer twice a day, once upon awakening, once upon going to bed.

 

But there is another prayer that is  required to prayed three times a day in Judaism.

 

It is called the Amidah.

 

The Amidah is the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy.

 

And it was so important that is was prayed three times a day every day since the First Century.

 

Jesus’ prayer—the Lord’s Prayer—is essentially a summary of the Amidah.

 

And early Christians, who were closer to their Jewish roots than we are, actually prayed the Lord’s prayer three times a day every day, like the Amidah was prayed three times a day in Judaism.

But, let’s take a moment to actually look at this pray we pray all the time.

 

It begins, as we all know, with

Our Father.

 

Jesus sets a tone here.

 

God is not being referred to as Lord, or Yahweh or Holy One.

 

Jesus refers to God on intimate terms.

 

God is our Father, our Abba, our Parent.

 

He then references that fact that God is in heaven.

 

Pretty straightforward.

 

Hallowed be your Name.

 

That’s a very Jewish way of praying.

 

Blessed is your Name, O God.

 

Your Name is holy and blessed.

 

Your name, O God, is sacred.

 

Then we come to your Kingdom come.

 

In this we know that God’s Kingdom is what w are striving for, and that it is our goal as followers of Jesus to bring that Kingdom into our midst, now—not just later.

 

God’s Kingdom comes into our midst when we love God and love others as we love ourselves.

 

Your will be done.

 

This is our completely surrender to God.

 

It’s not our will that we are trying to accomplish in prayer.

 

It is God’s will.

 

And one of the hardest things we can do as followers of Jesus is to accept God’s will.

 

We know that all prayers are answered, as you’ve heard me say many times.

 

The answer however is just not always what we might want to hear.

 

Our God is not Santa Claus in heaven, granting gifts to good children, nor is God a projection of our own parental expectations (to which many of us act like spoiled children).

 

God always answers our prayers, but sometimes the answer is “Yes,” sometimes is “not yet,” and, sadly—and we have to face this fact as mature people in our lives—sometimes the answer is “No.”

 

And I can tell you from my own experience, the greatest moment of spiritual maturity is accepting that “no” from God.

 

But, that is, of course, the petitionary aspect of prayer, and very rarely do most of us move beyond asking God for “things,” as though God is some giant gift-dispenser in the sky. 

 

(I am telling you this morning, in no uncertain terms, that God is not a giant gift-dispenser in the sky. Sorry!)

 

That’s what it means to be pray for God’s will to be done, not only here on earth, but also in heaven.  

 

Then we get to the part about bread.

 

Give us today out daily bread.

 

In Jewish culture, bread is the essence of our wellbeing.

 

It is what sustains us and feeds.

 

And it is so vital, so holy, that bread should never be discarded, it’s believes, because it shows ingratitude to God.

 

Bread here means more than just a loaf of bread.

 

It means all the blessings and sustenance we receive from God.

 

Give us, we pray, what we need to sustain us, to keep us vital and doing what we must do to love and serve God.

 

Forgive us our trespasses.

 

We of course need repentance.

 

We know we fail sometimes.

 

We know we fall short.

 

Those are our trespasses.

 

And when those things happen, we need to ask forgiveness for them from our God (and from those we “trespass” against).

 

And it’s not just enough to ask forgiveness for ourselves.

 

We also must forgive those who trespass against us—who fail us, who hurt us, who wrong us.

 

This is important.

 

It’s hard to forgive.

 

I sometimes don’t want to forgive those who have wronged me.

 

But it’s not healthy to carry around those grudges.

 

It’s not healthy to be angry and bitter about past hurts.

 

Because pain like that festers.

 

We must forgive others as well.

 

Then we get to this kind of elusive petition.

 

Save is from the time of trial.

 

Trial?

 

What does that mean?

 

Well, trial is a tome of resting, or temptation.

It is the moment when we find ourselves on the “left hand of God,” as you’ve heard me talk about regularly through the years.

 

In this petition we acknowledge that we are often weak and vulnerable.

 

It is God who is the one who can save us from the dark moments of this life.

 

Finally, we get to evil.

 

Deliver us from evil.

 

This one you might think is an easy one to figure out.

 

And it kind of is.

 

But it’s also hard.

 

The Hebrew word for evil is ra.

 

Ra means danger or misfortune as well as evil.

 

When we ask God to deliver us from evil, we are not just thinking here of the so-called “Devil” or sin.

 

We are also asking God to deliver us from misfortune, from a bad person, or a bad injury, or illness or doubt.

 

Deliver us from all the bad things that happen in this life.

 

As we can see, the Lord’s Prayer is really kind of the perfect prayer.

 

It encompasses every thing we need to pray about.

 

The point of all of this, of course, is that Jesus is making clear to us how important it is to reach out to God regularly in prayer.

 

In prayer we come to a meeting place with God.

 

And in that place of meeting, we come to “know” God.

Jesus is clear that prayer needs to be regular and consistent and heart-felt.

 

Certainly, prayer is essential for all of us as Christians.

 

If we do not have prayer to sustain us and hold us up and carry us forward, then it is so easy to become aimless and lost.

Prayer essentially is simply about us opening ourselves to God, responding to God, seeking God and trying to know God.

 

Prayer doesn’t need to be hard.

 

We do not do it only when we are pure and holy and in that right spiritual state of mind.

 

We pray honestly and openly when it is the last thing in the world we feel like doing.

 

We pray when life is falling apart and it seems like God is not listening.

 

And we pray when we are angry at God or bitter at life and all the unfair things that have come upon us.

 

So, let us go hear what Jesus says to us our Gospel reading for today.

 

Let us be mindful of this incredible prayer he taught us.

 

Let us actually pay attention to those words and petitions we find in the Lord’s Prayer.

 

And let the prayer become the prayer always being prayed withing our hearts.

 

Through prayer, let us go to meet God.

 

Through prayer, let us seek God.

 

And definitely, through prayer, let us strive to know God.

 

God is breaking through to us, wherever we might be in our lives.

 

Let us go out to meet the God who is our father, our Abba, our Parent, who feeds us, who sustains us, whose Kingdom we long for and who delivers us again and again from the evils that sometimes assail us.

 

When we do, it is then that we truly come to know our God.

 

Amen.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6 Pentecost

July 20, 2025

Colossian 1.15-28, Luke 10.38-42

 

+ If you’re anything like me, you are sometimes not all that proud to call yourself a Christian.

In this day and age, the very term “Christian” sometimes means something diametrically opposite of what we actually believe and practice.

The term has been highjacked and made into an ugly word, associated with such things as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

There’s a lot of talk recently about “Christless Christianity.”

And boy! Do I see that on a regular basis!

Many of us find ourselves trying to skirt the identification as “Christian.”

We say, instead, “I’m Episcopalian.” Or “I’m Anglican.” Or “I’m a progressive Christian.”

We add often, “we’re not like those Christians.”

I often say I’m a liturgical Christian, hoping that helps (it often doesn’t).

But, one of the things I love about being a liturgical Christian, especially in the Episcopal Church, and here at St. Stephen’s is  that we worship with all our senses here.

We worship with our ears—with music and bells.

We worship with smell, with the incense we use at our Wednesday evening Eucharist.

We worship with taste, with the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

We worship with sight, with the beauty of the art on our walls and in our altar and in the hangings here.

Even in baptism we use our senses—with those basic elements of water and fire (in the candles) and oil. 

And in our icons and religious art.

And in this way, we are paying special homage to the Eastern Orthodox roots within our church.

In Eastern Orthodoxy, icons take special place in the worship service.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, ikons are pictures which are sacred because they portray something sacred.

They are a “window,” in a sense, to the sacred, to the otherwise “unseen.”

They often depict Jesus or Mary or the saints.

But they are seen as something much more than art.

They are seen as something much more than pictures on the wall.

They are also “mirrors.”

And that is important to remember

That term Ikon is important to us this morning because we encounter it in our reading from Pauls’ Letter to the Colossians.

In that letter, in the original Greek,  Paul uses the word “eikon” to describe the “image” of Christ Jesus.

Our reading this morning opens with those wonderful words,

“Jesus is the image of the invisible God…”

Image in Greek, as I said, is eikon.

But eikon is more than just an “image”.

Ikons also capture the substance of its subject.

It captures the very essence of what it represents.

For Paul, to say that Jesus is the ikon of God, for him, he is saying that Jesus is the window into the unseen God.

In fact, the way ikons are “written” (which is the word used to described how they’re made), God is very clearly represented.

But not in the most obvious way.

God is represented in the gold background of the ikon, which is the one thing you might not notice when you look at an ikon.

That gold background represents the Light of God.

And that light, if you notice permeates through the faces of the subjects in the ikon.

So, when we look at any ikon, it our job to see God in that ikon.

God shining through the subject whose face we gaze upon.

God, who dwells always around us and in us.

For me personally, I do need things like icons in my own spiritual life.

I need help more often than not in my prayer life.

I need images.

I need to use the senses God gave me to worship God.

All of my senses. 

I need them just the way I need liturgy and scripture and incense and vestments and bells and good music and the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

These things feed me spiritually.

In them, I am actually sustained.

My vision is sustained.

My sense of smell is sustained.

My sense of touch is sustained.

My sense of taste is sustained.

My sense of hearing is sustained.

And when it all comes together, I truly feel the holy Presence of God, here in our midst.

I have shared with you many times in the past how I have truly felt the living presence of God while I have stood at this altar, celebrating Holy Communion.

I have been made aware in that holy moment that God is truly present and dwelling with us.  

The Sacred and Holy Presence of God is sometimes so very present here in our midst.

I can’t tell you how many times I have gazed deeply into an icon and truly felt God’s Presence there with me, present with a familiarity that simply blows me away.

And for those of us who are followers of Jesus, who are called to love others as we love our God, when we gaze deeply into the eyes of those we serve, there too we see this incredible Presence of God in our midst.

In other words, sometimes the ikons of God in our lives are those who live with us, those we serve, those we are called to love.  

This, I think, is what Paul is getting at in his letter.

We truly do meet the invisible God in this physical, visual, sensory world—whether we experience that presence in the Eucharist, in the hearing of God’s Word, in ikons or the art of the church or in incense or in bells or in those we are called to serve.

For years, I used to complain—and it really was a complaint—about the fact that I was “searching for God.”

I used to love to quote the writer Carson McCullers, who once said, “writing, for me, is a search for God.”

But I have now come to the realization—and it was quite a huge realization—that I have actually found God.

I am not searching and questing after God, aimlessly or blindly searching for God in the darkness anymore.

I am not searching for God because I have truly found God.

I found God in very tangible and real ways right here.

I found God in these sensory things around me.

Certainly in our Gospel reading for today, Mary  also sees Jesus as the eikon of God.

Martha is the busybody—the lone wolf.

And Mary is the ikon-gazer.

And I think many of us have been there as well.

It’s seems most of us are sometimes either Marthas and Marys,

But, the reality is simply that most of us are a little bit of both at times.

Yes, we are busybodies.

We are lone wolves.

But we are also contemplatives, like Mary.

There is a balance between the two.

I understand that there are times we need to be a busybodies and there are times in which we simply must slow down and quietly contemplate God.

When we recognize that Jesus is truly the image of God, we find ourselves at times longingly gazing at Jesus or quietly sitting in his Presence.

But sometimes that recognition of who Jesus is stirs us.

It lights a fire within us and compels us to go out and do the work that needs to be done.

But unlike Martha, we need to do that work without worry or distraction.

When we are in God’ presence—when we recognize that in God we have truly found what we are questing for, what we are searching for, what we are longing for—we find that worry and distraction have fallen away from us.

We don’t want anything to come between us and this marvelous revelation of God we find before us.

In that way, Mary truly has chosen the better part.

But, this all doesn’t end there.

The really important aspect of all of this is that we, too, in turn must become, like Christ, ikons of God to this world.

In that way, the ikons truly become our mirrors.

When we gaze at an ikon we should see ourselves there, reflected there.

We should see ourselves surrounded by the Light of God.

We should see the light of God permeating us and shining through us.

We should become living, breathing ikons in this world.

Because if we don’t, we are not living into our full potential as followers of Jesus—as unapologetic Christians.

So, let us also, like Mary,  choose the better part.

Let us be Marys in this way.

Let us balance our lives in such a way that, yes, we work, but we do so without distraction, without worry, without being the lone wolf, without letting work be our god, getting in the way of that time to serve Christ and be with Christ and those Christ sends our way.

Let us also take time to sit quietly in that Presence of God.

Let us sit quietly in the presence of God, surrounded by the beauty of our senses.

Let us be embodied ikons in our lives.

Let us open ourselves to the Light of God in our lives so that that Light will surrounded us and live within us and shine through us.

And, in that holy moment, we will know: we have chosen the better part, which will never be taken away from us.