“Jesus, King of Glory, remember me in your kingdom!”

I don’t know about you (and perhaps I am being a bit oversensitive) but it does strike me as just a little odd that this last Sunday of the Church’s year has come to be called the Feast of Christ the King... I mean, we Americans fought a revolution so that we would have a government without kings. And after the Revolution, it took a while for we Episcopalians to convince our fellow citizens that we weren’t singing “You’ll Be Back” to ourselves, secretly yearning to run back to King George to run things for us (“Da-da-da, dat-da, dat, da-da-da, da-ya-da….”)

But all the other churches who share the Revised Common Lectionary with us—which is, like, nearly everybody! — call today “Christ the King Sunday”, so let’s think about what kingship means for Jesus and for us.

Here in America we tend to think of royalty in much the same way we think of celebrities. So when we say “The King” we might think of a British monarch…or we must just as easily think of Elvis, the King of Rock ’n’ Roll. Or maybe Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. Before he was President, Donald Trump was called the King of Wall Street. There are the Los Angeles Kings, the Sacramento Kings, king snakes, kingfishers, king crab, chicken a la king, king of the mountain, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, The Kings of Leon, B.B. King, Stephen King, and Burger King. There’s King Arthur flour, Carole King, king salmon, the Lion King, the King James Bible, and Steve Martin sang “King Tut.”

Being a “king” may be “king-sized” which might seem like a bargain but does not necessarily demand our obedience. And while may not have a king, we certainly live in a culture that demands our allegiance.

You may not know this, but as church feasts go, this one is a mere pup because Pope Pius XI first established the feast of Christ the King only a hundred years ago. 1925 was a time of gathering darkness throughout Europe and Asia, still recovering from the horror of the First World War, the world was beginning to be gripped by nationalist, secularist, anti-Semitic movements led by authoritarian fascist and communist dictators or wanna-be dictators that may look vaguely familiar to us today. Pope Pius’ goals were to refocus the Church, the Body of Christ on Earth, to remember that as disciples of Jesus before these ideas took hold. He taught that we are to serve the world as Christ did: loving God and all people as neighbors – even to the point of praying for and loving our enemies. Jesus’ reign is a reign of service, and our power comes from the Holy Spirit, and our task is to love others as our Risen Lord and King loves us.

Today we live in a world, with two competing yet parallel idols: Christian Nationalism, a profound heresy that defines Christian faith in nationalist and racial terms, as well as a culture that defines our values by the things we buy and have. The theologian Harvey Cox once said that our culture’s true civil religion is called “The Market,” which has evidently decreed that we will dispense with Thanksgiving and start that most holy of days “Black Friday” a day early!

Nathan Duggan who teaches Christian stewardship through a program called Share, Save, Spend reminds us that the National Retail Federation expects "About 33 million people will shop on the (thanksgiving) holiday itself, and a slew of retailers including Macy's, Wal-Mart, Target... and Kohl's will accommodate them."

We shouldn’t be surprised. Not really. Every week, the busiest retail day of the week is…right now. Sunday morning. And, as things are going, the busiest retail day of the year could become Thanksgiving Day itself instead of the day after.

Needless to say, this is a challenge for people of faith. Something that we must deal with every day—and (before we fall into pearl clutching…) we’ve had to deal with this for as long as there have been people of faith.

Which brings us to the feast today. If Christ is our King, if we are living in God’s reign, how can we, in the midst this planned frenzy, take the time to give thanks, to be with family, to come together as a community and remember who and whose we are?

It is hard in our world to make space for Sabbath, for thanksgiving. The world’s idea of a “holiday” is to take an extra day to do more with more intensity the same activities we do every day. 

This is one of many reasons that we end the Church’s year remembering Christ’s reign and Jesus’ Lordship. Every day we have to choose who we will we follow. And the fact that the world’s values clash with what God wants for us is not only not new—it is the very heart of the matter! It why Jesus came among us in the first place. \

We hear in today’s Gospel how Jesus was called a king. It was not the first time that holy week. Remember how Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed young colt trailed by a donkey, in the middle of do-it-yourself parade of cloaks and palms? Instead of a parade surrounded by soldiers and carried in by conquered slave, he was showing from the get-go that God’s reign, God’s kingdom was different. This did not make the powers that be happy. So at his crucifixion, when they hung the sign “This is the King of the Jews” on the cross to identify both Jesus and his crime it was an act of derision, an insult both to Jesus and to the Jewish people whom the Roman’s occupied. 

So the people witnessing Jesus’ crucifixion joined in the mockery, laughing at his failed and pathetic kingship. “He saved others,” they said. “Let him save himself if he is king of the Jews!” Even one of the criminals crucified with Jesus joined in. “Save yourself and us!” he says from his own cross.

Oddly enough, this mocking thief will get what he asks for…just not in the way he expects! Because while Jesus’ persecutors and prosecutors saw Jesus’ kingship as a political, an economic, or even a military kingship whose only measure was (and is) “how can you use your power to make more power?” Jesus instead saves the thieves—and us! By entering into the darkest places of our lives, where our deepest fears reside, and into death itself, and He reunites us with God, heals our broken souls, and makes us one with each other and creation. The very source of his humiliation and defeat becomes the means of Jesus’ glorification and of our salvation.

The other thief being crucified with Jesus saw this and said so. Tradition calls this so-called “good” or “repentant” thief Dismas. As these men meet each other on their points of their own death, Dismas says to his companion on the cross “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” Suzanne Guthries observed that a cynic might say that Dismas has nothing to lose by such a request besides some precious air in his lungs. But this is no hedging of bets. Dismas sees through the horror of the cross and sees the kingdom's throne. And Jesus manages to gasp out these words: “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

We baptized Christians are citizens of that very kingdom that Jesus welcomed Dismas into. We have through our faith and baptisms given ourselves to the One who created all things, rules all things, and animates all things. We believe that Jesus is God’s word who spoke all things into being and who will also speak all things into completion.

We are ambassadors of Jesus’ reign to this world and in our daily living we represent God’s reign, God’s time, to a world that is stuck in that weird collision of the humdrum and the crazy-busy. As we wrap up one Church year and move into a new one, we are confronted with the collision of the everyday world and God’s eternal reign.

So how we order our lives is very important. Will we choose to live in solitary reactivity or in Christian community? Will we pray only when things are tough and then only by ourselves or will we gradually and intentionally turn our prayer into a habit where even our private prayer is in concert with God’s people.

Do we choose to see the world as God’s and as our arena for mercy, compassion and service? Do we allow the rhythm of the sacraments to become our heartbeat and our breathing?

This is our challenge everyday as Christians, to remember that we live in God’s time, God’s reign, with Jesus as our Sovereign, our Lord, our Master. We are Jesus' friends and apprentices.

At this moment, we end one year and start a new one at the cross where God’s reign collides with and overcomes the reign of sin and death. And at this moment, our prayer is the same as that repentant, dying thief… in the midst of all the chaos of living, in the midst of all our choices past and yet to be made and even at the end, our prayer is the same. “Jesus, King of Glory, remember me in your kingdom!”

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Scripture for the Last Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 29, Year C, November 23, 2025

Website for Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Here is the bulletin for the Last Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, November 23, 2025, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida.

Jumping into the Bible with both feet

A friend of mine told me this would happen that when I became a grandparent, it would be life-changing, life-challenging and an awful lot of fun. And one of the things I love to do the most with my grands is to read out loud to them. My wife and I like to take the kiddos to the library or the bookstore, and along the way we’ve built a pretty good little children’s library of our own. We keep the books at kid level, so they can freely pick out a book and either look at it themselves or ask one of us to read to them.

Now we come by this naturally. My wife’s parents were both teachers, and my mom was a librarian, and I still remember my father reading aloud to me and my brother when I was small.

And you know what? Children’s literature is amazing! Stories written for kids contain a lot of truth about life, the world, and what it means to be human. Adults would do well to read more children’s literature, because you never know what a rabbit, a stuffed bear, a dragon, a magical school bus, or a kid on a cosmic adventure might teach us!

Do you have a favorite children’s book? While we all have our favorites, there are two, that are favorites of mine and I think speak to our life as Christians hinted at in the collect and readings assigned for today.

The first is an oldie. The Monster at the End of This Book stars Grover of Sesame Street fame. Grover has read the title of the book and tries very hard to convince the reader to stop reading. Grover does not want us to get to the end of the book. From the very beginning, Grover “breaks the fourth wall” and talks to the reader directly. [And, for some reason, when I read this aloud to the Grands, my voice changes to become very Grover-like!] 

Of course, the book can’t go on without the reader reading, which makes Grover try even harder to stop us; and, I don’t want to give anything away, but the monster at the end of the book turns out to be Grover himself! 

Another wonderful children’s book is one you might never have heard of. It was written by Nancy Patz and is called Pumpernickel Tickle and Mean Green Cheese. In that story, Mom asks her son to go to the corner store and buy one loaf of pumpernickel bread, one pound of cheese, and one very fresh, very green, very big dill pickle. As the boy and his friend (a very silly stuffed elephant) walk through their Baltimore neighborhood, trying to remember the list and of course mixing it up into something very silly – of course, they forget what they were going to the store for! Still in the end, they finish their journey, get what they are after, and bring it home, where they have a nice lunch with Mom.

This is wonderful, I hear you say, but what’s this got to do with today’s readings? Well... Everything!  A few minutes ago we prayed, to God “who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning” that we’d have the grace “to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ....”

This is the only collect in the whole Book of Common Prayer that explicitly refers to the Scriptures themselves. It claims that God is the one who is the source and cause of the writing of Scripture. It does not get into the mechanics of how that happened; it simply says that God is the cause of Scripture. 

Episcopal priest Fr. Joshua Bowron suggests that we are encouraged to engage in Scripture in four ways:

First, we are invited to simply hear the Scriptures. Hearing is a funny thing because we can’t hear more with effort, it is just something we have to allow. We also cannot unhear things, can we? A lot of these stories are familiar, so put aside what you think you know and just listen! If we can hear with new ears, then we’ll be awakened to the newness and wonder of what God is doing. 

Next, the collect encourages us to read the Scriptures. How often do you read Scripture? Sunday mornings we get a great deal of Scripture, both from the lessons and in the liturgy, but how about Monday through Saturday? The Church has long given testimony to the transformative power of daily Bible reading. Forward Day-by-Day and The Daily Office are good places to start!

The collect now gives us a very funny word. What does it mean to “mark” the Scriptures? This prayer was written way before highlighters or even pens were invented, so it doesn’t mean that we mark up our Bibles literally, though doing that might be useful. (There is no prohibition against underlining or making notes in your Bible… I have an old Bible that is like an old friend to me because it has over fifty years of highlights, underlines, and notes in it!) But what “marking” means is that we stop from to time to time and see the gravity of a particular passage and then take the time to reflect and ponder it. We are invited to ask what it is saying to us. What was going on when it was first written? How have faithful people interpreted this passage over time? And in interrogating the passage in that way, we mark its power; mark how it makes us wonder; so we can ponder what God is saying to the people of God and then act on it.

We are encouraged to learn the Scriptures. For too long, Episcopalians have ceded knowledge of the Bible to other groups. I don’t know about you, but for a long time, I always felt kind of beat up by people who could quote chapter and verse at me, usually to tell me that I, or my tradition, was wrong about something—especially something I was passionate about! We should not be ashamed of what the Scriptures say and instead should know them well enough to live by them. This leads us to the last way of engagement described in today’s collect.

How do we inwardly digest the Scriptures? Now, isn’t that a strange image? Or maybe not! There is a rabbinic tradition that a small dab of honey is placed on a scroll of the Torah for children to lick to understand the sweetness of the word of God. St. Benedict urged his monks to ruminate upon Scripture throughout the day. Do you know what a ruminant animal is? It’s an animal that digests food in stages— you know, like a cow, chewing the cud. And maybe like one of those animals, we need to come back to Scripture time and time again in order to digest it properly. 

In other words, instead of keeping the Bible at a respectful distance, we are encouraged to jump into Scripture with both feet!

Very often, we simply accept what a particular passage says without much thought. That’s like stopping one’s ears and singing “la la la.” Instead, allow a passage to settle into your very being. Let it reside there. And while it’s there, allow it to inform your experience. Ask where you agree or disagree, where it causes a pinch, and where it challenges you to grow.  Go ahead and turn it over in your mind. See what happens. This kind of reading and rumination will keep the Scripture with you like a pebble in your pocket.

However you do it, jumping into the Bible with both feet will change you! This kind of conversation with Scripture, and Tradition and Reason is the launchpad for a new, dynamic relationship with God. Without this give and take, then the Bible simply becomes an idol ... or, worse, a dust-magnet. 

Remember, the Bible just didn’t pop out of the air fully formed and edited, but it was gathered over a long period of time… first in the Hebrew Scriptures and then in the early Church. In fact, it was the same Church council that gave us the Nicene Creed that finalized what would be in the Christian Bible…and that was 400 years after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension!

So how did the Church get along for four centuries without a finalized Bible in their homes and churches? Well, in much the same way we get along with the Scriptures that we have today… by simply being the Church! Like those early Christians, we are followers of Jesus Christ. We are his friends and apprentices who are learning and doing the work of Jesus every single day!

Today’s collect invites us to jump into the Bible with both feet because we are kind of like the “monster at the end of the book!” We are part of the community that wrote that book we call the Bible, the Church. It is fairly mind-bending to consider that the New Testament was written by people who gathered in their congregations just as we do every Sunday. And just like us, they told the story of Jesus and his followers. And just like us, they asked questions and worked out what it means to follow Jesus and how to faithfully live in community serving the people around us. They (and we!) imagined what God is up to in the world and where God is taking us! We are not only people of the book; we are experiencing what that book talks about every day!

Reading the Bible can be a solemn thing. Our lectors work hard to read it well (and they do!). But sometimes I like to imagine myself reading the Bible the way I read a story to my Grandkids, with voices, whimsey, and weight. And that’s how the Bible was remembered long before they wrote in scrolls or printed it in books… by telling the story together! So I invite you to imagine yourself, when you are reading the Bible, to go ahead and “be the monster at the end of the book” and find all the ways to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the text so that we will engage Scripture, and be transformed by it, and more and more live it. Because, as we do that, we become more and more the Gospel Story for a world that’s so desperate for hope, love, and Good News.

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Scripture for the Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 28, Year C, November 16, 2025

Website for St. Chad's Episcopal Church, Tampa, Florida

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Here is the bulletin for the Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, November 16, 2025, St Chad's Episcopal Church, Tampa, Florida.

So... Who's next?

The Big Story of the Past Week is how two of the main television networks just shut down two late-night comedians for doing their craft... Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel. There is a video going around of a speech by John Stewart at the Kennedy Center reminding us that comedians are the "banana peel in the coal mine" (a wonderful image!), and that those in power are particularly sensitive to being made fun of. More precisely, tyrants hate being laughed at.

So, in addition, to suggesting that now might be a very good time to revisit and watch closely the film (and play) "Cabaret," and doing all we can to support and hold up not just free expression in the arts, but also holding up it's sibling, a free and unfettered press. 

We in the work of ministry, both lay and ordained, ought to be particularly watchful. Because, make no mistake, we're next. If not next, then we're at least on the list.

It's strangely odd and ironic (not to mention moronic), that the folks cheering on the powers that shut down both Kimmel and Colbert, are often in their way super-duper religious, and not so long ago they were cheering on a movie about a pastor and theologian, Dieterich Bonhoeffer, who was not only jailed, but later executed, for talking back to (and organizing against) the German fascist regime under Adolf Hitler. But their take on Bonhoeffer is deeply flawed and distorted, because for Matraxias (and his gang of a-historical preachers) to make this work outside the cinema, they have to make the actual tyrant into the good-guy, and  make the culture into the tyrant. Sure, mentioning this might strain Godwin's Law to the breaking point, but it is nonetheless true.

So, if it's comedians today will it be clerics tomorrow?

I'm not trying to be dramatic here. I mean, I am sure that last January 20th, the President would have happily taken over and shut down the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Washington, DC (aka the "National Cathedral") because the Episcopal Bishop of Washington spoke of the need for mercy and her prayer that the newly inaugurated president would exercise that cardinal virtue in his administration. 

His reaction? He said, "It was boring." Yeah, right. Sure. He always says that when the critique has hit home, except that instead of yawning theatrically during the sermon, he gets mad and stewed about it. Just replay the video and look at the people sitting around the president, who were watching him carefully, weighing his reactions as frightened children do around an abusive parent. Because the problem is that when El Jeffe gets mad, he gets even, and he will not be happy until his opponents are both humiliated and annihilated.

Just look at the recent cabinet meeting when (and not for the first time) each member of the cabinet took turns praising the president for his wit, wisdom, intelligence, and vision. No honest assessments here, and the only bad news for this crew will be whatever the boss wants to hear.

Which brings me back to my question... who's next?

Pastor Martin Niemöller's poem, "First They Came," comes to mind, and if you haven't already thought of it or don't know it, take a moment and read it here. 

The bottom line is that when the networks have been cowed, the comics silenced, the press shackled, and those in power even down to the most local level have all lined up in obedience, who will speak about ethics, morals, justice, and who will speak for the powerless, the imprisoned, and the silenced? 

Sure, there are plenty of clerics who are thrilled that voices that offend them (or make fun of them) are knocked off the air. But that's only biblical, just look at the all the court prophets who sidled up to the kings of Israel and Judah, while the biblical prophets were put to death or chased into the deserts. As someone once said, "they have their reward." 

We know when it will happen: when denominations are held hostage, threatened, and taken to to court for doing what faithful people do, then we'll know.

It's already been tried here and there on the micro level. Like the recent wrangle between a Christ Episcopal parish in Tom's River, New Jersey, when the local mayor tried to use eminent domain to take over the church's property because he did not want the feeding and sheltering of the homeless which would mess up his plans for an expanded park in his beach front town. He apparently wanted the church property used for pickleball. His plan didn't work, but it's a hint at things to come.

It looks like it's only a matter of time before the current administration tries to use to the power of government to regulate, reign in, and control religious expression. It probably won't happen quickly, but there will be indicators along the way. 

We'll know by the clerics who are invited into the White House and those who are not. That's already happened.

But soon it will spread in other more subtle ways. When the government starts handing money to religious service groups that they agree with, instead of ones that are simply neutral-- or who speak out against things the government might do or say. 

Or when denominations are black-balled or punished because their preachers or conventions say things they don't like or go places they don't want them to go. 

Or when the government picks and chooses for churches what ethical and moral issues they may (or may not speak to), and pressures them into how they may act on it (as when, in some states, clerics could go to jail for officiating at inter-racial marriages). 

There are plenty of examples all through history, including our own, of faith communities and their leaders jailed, run out of down, and executed for going against the prevailing faith of the moment. It's not out of the question. 

And to tell you the truth, my own denomination and it's English forebears have been down that path. My own denomination does, after all, come from a state church tradition. And our forbears have both been jailed by their religious enemies, working in cahoots-- heck! who were the government! (Remember Oliver Cromwell, as well as the New England Puritans?) My tradition also participated with the government in religious coercion (think the so-called Indian Schools in both the US and Canada run by Episcopalians and Anglicans). So we don't come to this debate either cleanly or naively.

Which bring us back to the question: if it's comics today, who's next? Artists? Musicians? Writers? Scientists? Journalists? If that's the case, then theologians, clerics, and the everyday faithful will not far behind.

Many folks say that religion enjoys a special, even a favored, space in the public square. And some don't like that. Every now and then, we'll go through a cycle where someone grouses about the tax-exemption for houses of worship and their ministries. Churches, synagogues, mosques, of all stripes and varieties can be (if they do the paperwork... it's not automatic... and mileage varies by state and municipality) tax-exempt along with charities, private schools and universities, not-for-profit hospitals, and so on. 

Despite the claim that this is an unconstitutional favoring of government towards religion, if you look closely, it's not really. The people who don't like this set up forget that the point of the charitable tax-exemption is that these institutions--both religious and secular-- do a civic good that government cannot or should not do. 

At the same time, the critics have a point, but only if the exemption went only to particular traditions or denominations leaving the rest out. But every religious group can benefit from this if they choose... which is why some unscrupulous folks sell mail order ordinations and set up religious-looking groups as they try to rake in the dough without either oversight or taxation in their desire to cash in.  

[Hey, look, I live in Clearwater, Florida, where L. Ron Hubbard set up shop, so I know how this can play out in the extreme! Keep in mind that one of the first signs of a religious charlatan is that they deliberately avoid interacting with other faith groups except when they want to cherry-pick members. They want all the perks and none of the accountability. Our local group ain't the first to play this game, but they do it on a grand scale! But I digress.]

Anyway, that's the risk you take when you treat everyone the same. Most of the folks claiming the various religious exemptions are sincere and ethical. Some are not, which gives the rest of us a bad name. But as, Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility. Religious groups who claim the exemption have the responsibility to use that privilege to do social and civic good. 

One of those responsibilities means promoting civil conversations about public ethics. The government doesn't tell us what to believe, how to worship, how we organize ourselves, and whom we select as our ministers, precisely so that we can be free to talk about morals, ethics, justice, and meaning freely and without coercion.

The rub comes when people in power do things that are immoral, unethical, unjust, and coerce others into either cooperation or silence. If the government starts doing that, who will speak up? If not the faith community, then who? Naturally, there are journalists, activists, scholars, citizens, and even (occasionally) politicians. But the faith community, no matter their tradition or beliefs (even non-theistic faiths) have a particular skill set  in ethics (or they ought to!) so they have an important role in freely and firmly speaking on these issues in the public square. 

Yeah, but, I hear you say, religious groups don't not always agree... to which I say, that's kinda the point!

So when certain things happen, especially when the pace picks up, we need to pay attention.

It was not an accident the day that President Trump decided to use the power of the military and police to clear a crowd and march across the street to St. John's Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square. [Also see here.] 

Nor is it an accident that he sells Bibles interwoven with civic documents and embossed with his signature. 

And it is not happenstance when he gathers ministers and evangelists (most of whom have a television, broadcast, and internet presence) to gather around him in a show of prayer. 

Or when he goes to the Museum of the Bible and declares that the government ought to "encourage" an hour of prayer per week. Which begs the question, would that 'encouragement' look like and who would design, promulgate, and enforce it?

Then, to top it all off,  there is his strange image of Trump dressed as a Bishop on an official White House web site. He said he was only joking. As Pope Leo pointed out, he is sending a message.

The message is as clear as the recent cancelling of Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, and the taking over of the Kennedy Center. He was crystal clear during the cabinet meeting where the time was spent lavishing praise on the President. He showed his hand in his reaction to Bishop Marianne Budde's sermon at the National Cathedral on Inauguration Day. It's very clear that as far as the White House is concerned, the only messages that should come from stages, screens, and pulpits are ones approved by the Administration... and these must always compliment the president.

Imagine! Imagine when the power of government is used to regulate what is preached, taught, and worshipped in your local congregation. Sooner or later, someone will decide that the price for the privilege of being a charity, a school, a university, or a faith community will be constant and consistent fealty to The Leader. 

In this kind of world, the cost of disobedience won't just be taxation... it will be regulation. And regulation requires monitoring. And monitoring means the end of the trust that is the heart of a healthy civic life. 

The question is: who's next?

Grace over bondage

It’s probably safe to say that the typical Christian in today's world doesn't read an entire book of the Bible in a day. And even safer to say this usually doesn't happen before lunch.

Well, I want to congratulate our lectors this morning, because that’s exactly what they did! Yes, you, too, can go home astound your friends and family by telling them “I read a whole book of the Bible today!”  Or, you can flop down in the living room chair and exclaim “Whew! Today I sat in church long enough for them to have read a whole book of the Bible today!” That’s got to be worth something! Yessiree! Our lector read a whole of Paul's Letter to Philemon, (well, except for four verses that the lectionary people cut out for some strange reason, but that’s close enough.)

Okay, okay, Philemon isn't a long theological treatise like Romans or Galatians. It’s not a double-barreled letter like 1^st and 2^nd Corinthians. By comparison, it’s kind of a bookmark. Or more precisely a bookplate. But it gives Paul and a few other early Christians a very human face because it sheds light on a culture that is so very different from ours and a glimpse of how real, live early Christians actually lived their lives.

Here's the story: Onesimus was a slave, and he was a Christian. Philemon was a Christian, too. But Philemon owned Onesimus. Apparently, Onesimus ran away or else did something against Philemon's wishes. And after Onesimus ran away he somehow ended up working with the apostle Paul.

Paul is schmoozing Philemon, laying it on thick, because he wants Philemon to let Onesimus go so that he would have the freedom to travel with Paul. Was sending Onesimus home to be freed and reconciled or would he face the music instead?

Notice that Paul is not above a little Christian arm-twisting, because even though the letter is written to one man, you know that the entire congregation or cluster of congregations around Ephesus, where Philemon lived, was watching to see what he would do. Would he welcome Onesimus home as a brother in Christ or take him back as a runaway slave and punish him? Of course, Philemon could have split the difference: welcome Onesimus home as a Christian slave with little or no punishment. But that’s not what Paul was asking…he wanted Onesimus to come back to Paul a free man.

Okay. That’s nice. So what? This letter is so short that it’s practically a bookmark in the New Testament. The average Christian doesn’t even know it’s there. And, besides, the letter’s context is so totally and completely different than ours that it might seem totally irrelevant to us. (By the way, in the ante-bellum South, slave owners hated this letter and either twisted it justify themselves or wished it was cut out of the Bible entirely!)

But look again. Here are three people (Paul, Onesimus and Philemon) struggling to live out their faith while being challenged by it over and over again. There’s an awful lot packed into a couple dozen Bible verses!

I don’t know about you, but what Jesus says in today’s Gospel makes me pretty uncomfortable, too. He says that when we follow him, we are to hate—hate! —family, kinship, possessions, and everything we hold dear. What Jesus means is that it will take work, discipline—and practice! — to put Christ at the forefront of our living and following Jesus will challenge our priorities and change our decision-making. If you don’t believe me, ask Philemon.

Paul is asking Philemon to put aside his pride and treat Onesimus as a brother in Christ. It doesn’t matter if Philemon is right and has custom (and the law!) on his side. Paul in fact sets that all aside when he to writes Philemon these words, “I am sending him back to you, no longer as a slave, but as a beloved brother.” Look at what Paul is doing. He does not appeal to Philemon on the basis of law, but on the basis of love, in verse eight, he says: “Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.”

Paul is asking Philemon as a true Christian to accept Onesimus back as a brother in Christ, and not as a slave under the law! Paul is asking Philemon the slave-owner to receive Onesimus, as a Christian brother. Paul is asking Philemon to choose grace.

The brilliance of this move is that Paul neither breaks the law of the land nor the law of the gospel. He says, “Yes, go back to your former home, but as new people in Christ.”

I love this little letter because it shows us what faith looks when the rubber meets the road. And it also shines a harsh light on the goings on in today’s world. I mean, what issues and relationships try our faith today? If someone were to appeal to us on the basis of faith to change something in our lives, what would it be? And what would be the effect of that change? In a world where people get wound up over everything from migration to wealth and poverty, to how we might deal with school shootings and who go mildly berserk over how we memorialize the victims of night-club massacres-- I mean, painting over cross walks at 3 a.m. Really?-- what Paul is asking of Philemon cuts to the quick. 

And just in case you think that I or someone in the Episcopal Church chose this passage just to needle us, remember that this letter was written two millennia ago and was added to the lectionary fifty years ago. After all that time, the promise of this little letter shows us that the deeper we go in our Christian living, and the more we conform our lives to Christ, the bigger the change we will see, the greater the challenges we’ll feel, the more lives we will touch with grace and hope.

So, how did it turn out? What did Philemon do? What happened to Onesimus? We don’t precisely know but we have some clues. 

There's some evidence in the early Christian church that there was a "Bishop Onesimus" in the city of Ephesus in Greece, a church founded by Paul. The story goes that this Bishop was so grateful for the witness and Christian love of St. Paul that he preserved many of his epistles. And to prove his bona fides to collect Paul's epistles, he included this little letter showing how he was freed from one life and set on course for something new.

Today we’ve had a taste of what first century Christianity was like in the first decades after Jesus’ resurrection.  And guess what? It doesn’t look all that different from what people like you and me must deal with every day!

Imagine what would happen if Christians today approached each other and our tough choices with the same sense of prayer, compassion, risk, and hope that Paul, Onesimus and Philemon exercised together! What would life be like if following Christ was more important in our everyday living than kinship, politics, country and custom? Would it be easy? Probably not! Ask Philemon! Would it be life-changing? You bet! Ask Onesimus! Would it make a difference? Look around! Because right here, right now, is what faith looks like where the rubber meets the road.

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Scripture for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18, Year C, September 7, 2025

Website for St. Chad's Episcopal Church, Tampa, Florida

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Here is the bulletin for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, September 7, 2025, St Chad's Episcopal Church, Tampa, Florida.

Friend, Come Higher

There is this old routine done by the late puppeteer and ventriloquist Shari Lewis where she is talking with her hand-puppet friend, Lamb Chop, about her (Lamb Chop’s) table manners.

Lewis says to Lamb Chop: I was very disappointed in how you acted when we had dinner guests last night.

Lamb Chop: Why? 

Shari: Because when the food was set at the table, you just grabbed all the food off the plates and ate it up before anyone else had a chance!

LC: Oh. (pause) Well, what would you have done?

Shari: I would have waited to go last.

LC: Well, you were last, so what’s the problem?

And it goes on like that, back and forth with Shari trying to teach little Lamb Chop in vain about how to be a good guest and how to be a good host.

In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus at the home of a Pharisee trying to teach him about how to be a good guest and how to be a good host.

All through his Gospel, Luke shows us Jesus eating and drinking and with all kinds of people, from Matthew, the hated tax collector, right through to his Last Supper at Passover with his disciples.  Luke’s Gospel tells us how Jesus fed the multitudes...twice! In Luke’s Jesus is at table with everyone, rich and poor, men and women, you name it!

But why all this eating and drinking? For Jesus, the meal, the table and the banquet, is an image of what God’s reign in like. He says that being in relationship to God is like being at a feast…where only strangers and the poor are invited!

Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like coming in to the party and not only being greeted but being escorted to the best seat in the house.  We don’t need to bluster, bully or pretend. And we certainly don’t have to reach across the table and grab what we want and stuff our faces. We don’t need to charm the bouncer at God’s banquet, either.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that at God’s banquet, we are seen for exactly who we are and—surprise! —we are invited to the head table!

But wait! There’s more! Look at Jesus’ invitation list. His banquet is open to everyone! Typically, we invite only people we like, or people we want to impress, or people who are like us, people we don’t want to offend. That’s natural. But God want us to live beyond the natural, to go the extra step into the supernatural: invite the stranger, the poor, the hungry, the outcast. Now maybe we don’t do that in our homes, but we can certainly do that here.

Jesus teaches us to welcome—and, more than that, to invite and usher in—to the table everyone who hungers, especially those whose hunger is beyond our ability to feed. Look at what Jesus teaches in the Gospels: the banquet, the feeding of the four- and five thousand, the communion table, the cross, all show us that God’s love is for everyone! And God’s grace is better than any heavenly Uber-eats because we don’t so much go to the banquet, but God brings it to us, where we live, as we are.

Are you a fan of old movies? I am! One of my favorite films is called "Places in the Heart." It pops up from time to time on one of the cable networks or you can find on Tubi or Amazon Prime or one of those. Set in Texas during the 1930s, “Places of the Heart” is a film about survival in the face of very difficult circumstances.  It talks about overcoming hatred with love, and how grace happens even among broken, imperfect people. Sally Field plays a poor widow with small children, and she won an Oscar for her role in this film.  Her character takes boarders into her home to help make ends meet on her dirt-poor farm. In the film, the two borders are a blind man, played by John Malkovich, and an African-American man, played by Danny Glover.  Glover is also her farm hand and farm manager and faces overt –sometimes violent – racism from Field's white racist neighbors. Malkovich is blind but he sees the world for what it is. Every meal that is set for the family and the guests becomes a kind of ritual, a meeting place, and a touchstone for whatever else is going on.

What I remember most is the final scene, set in a small country church during Holy Communion.  As Communion is being distributed, the camera shows us the congregation.  There, all around Sally Field's character, are not just the congregants, but also all the people who are and have been important in her life, both the living and the dead.  Despite all the conflict and difficulties of life and all the imperfections of that community, there they are. It’s not just a church service; it’s a heavenly banquet attended by the communion of saints.

Jesuit priest Fr. James Martin, reminds us of how Jesus’ teaching and ministry was all about embracing the outsider, the outcast, the stranger, and the migrant. He says:

‘How often have you been at a social gathering and gravitated towards the most popular, powerful or supposedly “important” person in the room? It’s natural; maybe this person has become popular because of some talent or notable accomplishment. So perhaps the “popular” person seems more interesting. But often we gravitate towards that person because of our own desire to be seen as popular, powerful or important as well. That is, we hope for a kind of “rubbing off” of the person’s importance.

“It’s natural, but it’s not what Jesus asks of us. When I [Martin] was in high school, one of my friends regularly spent time with fellow students who were seen as “uncool.” This impressed me deeply. It was like he had some sort of superpower: He didn’t care if others saw him as uncool. It was more important for him to treat others with dignity and kindness.

“Who are seen as “outcasts” today? That depends on what social milieu you are in, but you might say transgender people, migrants and refugees, the poor, homeless men and women, sometimes the elderly. Most of us aren’t so callous as to shut them out (though some people do this publicly, and even gleefully), but are there times when we could be more welcoming? It’s important to say without irony what we all want to hear ourselves: “Friend, come up higher.”

Jesus takes it a step further. Instead of taking the place of honor, take the place of humility… join with the outcast, the left behind, and the stranger and the host of the banquet, God our Creator, will say, “Friends, come up higher.”

A long time ago, when I was a student at Drew University, a Methodist-related college in New Jersey, I went to chapel every Tuesday night for Holy Communion. And every week, the celebrant (a religion professor and Methodist minister) would recite these words from a hymn written by Charles Wesley, Anglican priest and, with his brother John, founder of the Methodist movement, that went like this:

Come, sinners, to the gospel feast;
let ev'ry soul be Jesus’ guest.
Ye need not one be left behind,
for God hath bid all human-kind.

The Prayer Book has the rubric that when the consecrated bread and wine is presented to the assembly, the words “The Gifts of God, for the People of God” are said by the Celebrant. And over the course of my ministry it has become my custom to say something like to everyone at the offertory, “…this is Christ’s table, and you are all welcome to it.”

And you know what? Whenever I say that invitation, something like that movie image comes to my mind. Here we gather, in Christ’s presence with all the people who have ever touched our lives, some living and present, some moved away and moved on, some who have died, and yet… we are all here, at home, at table, sharing a great and wonderful feast together.

Whenever we come to this table, we come face to face to two truths: we are, all of us, the humble guest invited to “come higher” and we are the hosts, the maitre de, as it were, of Christ’s banquet who invite all comers, even the lowliest, the most unlikely people to sit and feast at God’s head table.

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Scripture for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 17, Year C, August 31, 2025

Website for St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Dade City, Florida

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Here is the bulletin for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, August 31, 2025, St Mary's Episcopal Church, Dade City, Florida.