Entangled States

Jesus’ parable is not just about prayer as personal comfort. It’s about the kind of prayer that sustains action. We’re told to keep working even when we don’t see the fruits of our labor. Many of the great movements toward justice in our time have been long, slow, often discouraging struggles: gender equality, civil rights for all citizens, the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people, immigration reform, the defense of creation itself. None of these have […]

Philip Jenkins has written about why the Bible speaks so naturally to many Africans today. The world of Scripture—its agricultural life, its social relations—is much closer to their own experience than to ours. He points to verses like these found in Psalm 126: Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves. To us this sounds poetic and distant. To a subsistence farmer who has […]

Having Faith as St. Paul or as Our Lord seems to use it here doesn’t mean that we have to believe a certain set of logical propositions to be saved. It’s also not about believing in one key idea that serves as a magic talisman to open the gate of heaven to our command. (For some reason, perhaps because of our educations, this seems to be a commonly held mistaken belief today.) Faith is much […]

One of the most striking features of St. Luke’s gospel is the constantly repeated theme of reversal. People who were on the outside of the community are now inside. People who were powerful in their life are now powerless. People who were discounted by society or treated as being disposable, are to be seen, once the Kingdom dawns, as the apple of God’s eye. Today’s parable is yet another example of this fundamental Lukan theme. […]

What the steward in this week’s parable actually does is to forgive people. He cancels debts. He uses forgiveness as the coin of the realm. Jesus himself seems to reinforce this point. In the Lord’s Prayer, the only conditional is this: Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Our standing with God depends on our willingness to forgive. Imagine what the world would look like if we were extravagant with […]

This week we begin a series of readings in St. Luke’s Gospe that sometimes described as the Gospel of the Outcasts. It’s about finding those who are pushed to the edges, those who are living on the margins, those who are lost? What do we have to offer the lost? If we are to search alongside the Shepherd, if we are to sweep the house with the diligence of the woman, what exactly do we […]

So maybe this Gospel doesn’t fit in the cheerful context of “Welcome Back Sunday”. But it speaks with urgency to our lives right now. We live in a world where trust is hard. Economies fluctuate. Nations arm themselves. Communities fracture. Families strain. And into that world Jesus says: “Trust me more than all of this. Give up your reliance on what will not last. Build your life on me.” This is not a call to […]

Socrates once pointed out that even those who claimed to reject honor— like the Cynics, who would walk through the marketplace without shame— were really just chasing honor of a different kind. They wanted people to admire their shamelessness. They were still playing the same game as the people they were criticizing. And we can fall into the same trap. If we treat Jesus’ words simply as clever advice, we may just find ourselves maneuvering […]

Luke tells us of a woman who had been bent over for eighteen long years. She couldn’t stand up straight. She couldn’t lift her eyes to meet another’s face. She couldn’t walk into a room with dignity, or even look up at the heavens. She was quite literally bowed down. And when Jesus notices her, something striking happens. He stoops down to meet her where she is. The text is careful—she doesn’t approach him. She […]

I’m on vacation through the end of August. I’ve reworked the sermon I preached three years ago and will be preaching it at the Chapel of St. John in Saunderstown where I’m the supply clergy this weekend while one of our clergy is on vacation herself.  (Yeah.. I know… but we all do vacation differently.) So rather than recording a sermon this week, I hope you’ll understand when I give you a pointer to the […]