Sorry for the repost – my inclusion of the sermon text this week seems to have seriously borked my RSS feed for the site. In trying to edit the feed, I finally just gave up, nuked the post and started over again. Hopefully this will fix the problem a number of you wrote me about. I’ve removed the sermon text for the time being…
Jesus' parable in today's Gospel lesson features the story of the dishonest manager. Like previous parables in our Sunday lectionary, this story operates on many different levels. On one hand, Luke is warning us that we may be squandering what we've been given in ways we are not even aware of. But one should also take away from this story a message about forgiveness and compassion towards others. In Luke's Gospel it is the poor and marginalized that already have a place set aside in God's Kingdom. Luke surprisingly shows how it may be the task of those of us who have been given much to determine how we can curry favor with those holy ones who have almost nothing.
(I've started using a new tool in preparing my sermons, and as a result I'm actually writing out a manuscript. I don't preach directly from it, but in case you're interested, I'll start adding the text of the sermon after jump.)
