Learning to Live Lent Everyday

Sometime ago, on the day after Ash Wednesday, a dear friend from high school posted on Facebook the following announcement: “I am giving up caviar for Lent.”

After appropriately droll congratulations, several other friends jumped in with their own pronouncements:

“I am not going to smoke cigars,” said one woman.

“I will not eat liver and onions,” said someone else.

“I will refrain from driving a Ferrari,” I offered.

“My husband will not dust this Lent,” said another woman.

Of course, all this electronic silliness had a point. My friend was underscoring how we can use Lent to avoid something that we’d never do anyway while sounding all righteous at the same time. Or how we can trivialize spiritual discipline into a kind of reverse-new years resolutions (with equally deep and last results).

I was thinking about that as I re-read Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. I mean I can honestly say that I can safely resist the temptation to turn a rock into raisin bread, I wouldn’t even dream of troubling an angel to act as a parachute, and I certainly know that I can easily turn aside the temptation to run the universe my way.

Well… mostly!

Both the silliness on Facebook and the Gospel lesson tells us two things about the Christian life that become very clear if you make even a partial stab at a Lenten discipline.

First, it is tempting to turn Lenten disciplines into a show of piety designed to impress our friends and, maybe lull ourselves into thinking that we really don’t need to change anything substantial about ourselves.

Second, we forget that the real spiritual damage comes not from doing something radically out of character but from when we do the things that come very easy to us—only at a time and a place and in way that distorts us.

Look at the temptations that Jesus faced:

He is tempted to turn stone into bread. Well, Jesus fed a crowd of 5000 and another of 4000… couldn’t he do this in a heartbeat? And certainly Jesus ate all the time… in fact, some of the super-religious in his day chided him for eating too much and with the “wrong” people (in their estimation), to boot! The temptation was not that he was being asked to do something Jesus couldn’t do, but rather to do it at the wrong time and for the wrong reason.

The devil tempts Jesus to throw himself off the temple roof so that angels could rescue him and then bear him up for all to see. But instead, he waits to slowly walk among everyday people in his ministry, healing and teaching, to walk the road to Calvary and die on the cross—where he would finally defeat death. The temptation was to cut that short and avoid the cross altogether.

Jesus is also tempted to take on earthly power, again avoiding the cross, when instead, in God’s time, he will assume his place as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Notice that all of these temptations have the effect of eliminating the cross and resurrection. Not taking away the need but bypassing it altogether. So while these temptations might have served Jesus in the short-term, but it also would have stopped God’s redeeming work dead in its tracks.

Something else stands out in the temptations: they are not merely personal. Jesus engages the powers of this world--the underbelly of human existence, that in the Gospel is the devil. Bishop Neil Alexander, former Bishop of Atlanta and Dean Emeritus of the School of Theology of the University of the South, once said that “the powers of this world are the great resistant forces, largely uncontrollable, that hold people hostage, captive to the institutions and systems that carry us along, the forces that drive the spirit of the age promising life but leading to death. The powers of this world seek to render us powerless, before the immensity of the world's problems.”

These are the powers that say, "No one really wants war, but the bodies keep piling up” and "No one really wants homelessness, but we can't seem to do anything about it” and "No child needs to die of hunger anywhere, but especially in the wealthiest nation on earth, and yet they do." In short, these are the powers of fatalism and cynicism that say, "What can you do, you can’t fight city hall!"

At the same time, the powers of this world love domination and violence. The principalities and powers of this world see cruelty as the tool and power as the point and relentlessly seek to have their own way regardless of the costs, even to the point of death. It is these powers that Jesus confronts and resists in the wilderness. The evil one and his servants do everything they can to distract Jesus—and us! —from his, and our, mission and purpose. And the struggle won’t end there! These are the powers that will eventually hunt him down, arrest him, flog him, publicly humiliate and then crucify him.

But before all that, let’s look more closely at the temptations that Jesus faced.

It’s true. These divine-sized temptations may never come our way, but what does come our way are the same temptations that on a smaller scale. Every time we are tempted to use our gifts, our abilities, and our opportunities frivolously, impulsively, and selfishly to instead fritter them away in the service of self rather than for God’s glory, is to distract ourselves from learning and doing the work of Jesus.

The temptation to cut short what God cultivates in us will always come at a time and in a form that appears to be most convenient, and most attractive to us. It might even appear to be the shrewd, powerful thing to do. How many people aspire to power and wealth and fame, even if that circle ends up being rather small, at the cost of true friendship, healthy relationships, and collaborative service?

I wish that holiness of life was something we could just do. You know, I wish we could just snap our fingers, buy a packaged system, or just re-boot ourselves. It would be great if we all came with a big red reset button. But reorienting ourselves takes a lifetime and that’s okay because God wastes nothing. There are tried and true processes and tools, but none of it is magic. The amazing thing is God uses all the temptations we’ve turned aside and the ones we’ve given into, all the prayers we’ve said and the prayers we’ve neglected, all the opportunities to serve we’ve taken and the times we’ve run away, as the raw material to shape us into the people God made us to be.

On another Facebook discussion about Lent, a more serious question came up: “what are you giving up and what are you taking on this Lent?”

I remember hearing a Benedictine monk from the Episcopal Holy Cross Monastery talk about this. He said that he neither gave up nor took on anything during Lent. He used Lent to try to do what he was supposed to be doing all along. He said that he had come to see that Lent is about spiritual self-correction and challenged us to do one exceptional deed each day during the season and tell no one about it.

Now there’s a radical idea: Using Lent as the time to do what we are supposed to be doing all the time! Instead of taking away something we might not miss all that much anyway, how about using the time we’ve set aside in Lent—this 40-day tithe of our year—to do a just little more of what we are supposed to be doing anyway!

So you see, this season is so much more than giving up candy bars or making resolutions. Lent is a time to discover that all of life is a process of re-orienting ourselves towards faithfulness. The season reminds us that the baptismal living that we are renewing come Easter, is an everyday process of honest self-appraisal, of turning around, and living new life in Christ grounded in sacramental community. So taking a month or so to focus on better health, or being a bit more intentional in our prayer, or to decide to do something useful for the community, or to attend worship a little more often are human-sized, everyday ways to cooperate with Jesus in making us into the people God made us to be.

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Here are the Scripture readings for 1 Lent A, February 22, 2026

Here is the website for St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida 

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Twenty-One Religious Resolutions for a New (Liturgical) Year

Tomorrow is the First Sunday in Advent, and while we don't generally make resolutions at the start of a new liturgical year, given all the turmoil in our culture and all the ways that people's use of religion both adds to and, at least occasionally, mitigates the anxiety of our age, I think some Advent Resolutions might be of use. Maybe they will help us refocus our life of faith so that our life of faith might become more healing, more centered, and more spiritually grounded. 

I've been pondering this question for a long time. Fifteen years ago, when I was on the news team for the old Episcopal Cafe, I wrote a column that I published when that daily news blog was alive and well. It was based on earlier version also appeared in a Saturday religion column that I contributed to every month in the Parkersburg (WV) News and Sentinel (in the 1990's), and again in the Allentown (PA) Morning Call (in the late 2000's). The latest (and only) version I could find on line came from the the blog of Bishop Nick Knisely of Rhode Island, posted several years ago.  As I said, I've been pondering this a long time.

Since that last version, I have updated it once again... mainly by adding a new resolve. These are written so that they can be read in both an interfaith and ecumenical context, and also with the assumption that those whose faith is not in my denomination--or religion, for that matter!-- or who are not traditionally religious, or who are non-theistic in their spiritual practice, might share in these resolutions and find value in them. 

So, without further adieu, are my Twenty-One Religious Resolutions for a New Year:

1. I will allow my religion to change me
2. I will resist telling other people how to change.
3. I will let go of my need to use my religion to control other's behavior.
4. I will seek to make my religion a channel for gratitude and appreciation.
5. I will avoid using my religion as a channel for my anger.
6. I will expect my faith to challenge me to live ethically.
7. I will give up needing to be certain about everything.
8. I will allow my religion to both care for and challenge my insecurities.
9. I will pay attention when my culture and my faith are in conflict.
10. I will be wary of leaders who use religion to sow hatred, fear, or division
11. I will allow my religion to temper my passion with humility.
12. I will work to be for something good even when it easier to be against something bad.
13. I will not allow my religion to become a fad or a trend.
14. I will allow my religion to keep pace with my maturity.
15. I will remember that my religion is for the benefit of the people and world around me.
16. I will avoid holding on too tightly to my religion as a personal possession.
17. I will give up punishment and shame as tool for religious persuasion.
18. When I fail, I will expect my religion to challenge me to be responsible.
19. I will not let the fact that I am an imperfect practitioner of my religion deter me from living my faith.
20. I will not let the imperfection of other people’s faith deter me from having faith.
21. I will accept beauty, fun, spontaneity, and companionship as signs of God at work.

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.

When is the right time to show mercy?

How do you like your church? Do you like it all bubbly and spontaneous? Or do you like it orderly and predictable? Throughout its long history, the church has been a little bit of both.

The famous mid-20^th century theologian Paul Tillich said that church history can be understood as a movement between charisma and order. He said whenever charisma—the need to stir things up—and order—the need for stability and predictability— meet up, that’s when the Holy Spirit shows up!

And that is what we see in today’s Gospel. The tension— the conflict! —between order and charisma.

To tell you the truth, my heart kind of goes out to the leader of the congregation, who was just trying to maintain order when Jesus healed the woman on the Sabbath in the middle of a worship service.

More than once in my ministry, I have found myself in the position of that local synagogue leader.

Two of my former parishes hosted soup kitchens in small industrial cities, and every now and then one of our soup kitchen guests would show up at Sunday worship, all scruffy and rough from living on the street. It was… well, let’s just say it was challenging. And uncomfortable.

So I kind of get where the leader of the synagogue in today’s Gospel was coming from. I mean, here was this itinerant rabbi from God-knows-where walking in and offering to heal someone without so much as a by-your-leave. The leader hadn’t read ahead to the ends of the Gospel of Luke yet, so what did he know?

But even if he was trying to do the right thing, he was going about it in the wrong way.

Instead of going to Jesus and asking him directly what he was up to, he goes to everyone…well, more accurately every man… in the congregation and complains “Couldn’t she have waited until after the sabbath to be healed?” he asks.  “Couldn’t she have gone someplace else besides the synagogue?”

I mean, the whole thing wasn’t even her idea! The man is mad at Jesus, but he blames the woman! Never mind that she didn’t even ask to be healed in the first place! After 18 years, she was probably pretty used to being stooped over like a bent matchstick. Jesus invited her to come over to him. It was all his idea!

So, the Leader of the Synagogue has committed a trifecta of wrongs: first, he triangulates—instead of talking to the person he’s mad at, he brings in a third party, the congregation; second, he focuses on the wrong person—the woman and not Jesus; and third, he stirs everyone up in the process.  All in all, he brings out the worst in everyone except maybe Jesus and the woman who was healed…and she was apparently too busy praising God to notice all the hoo-rah going on around her!

So let’s cut through the triangulation, the grumbling and the blame-game, and go right to the Leader of the Synagogue and ask him some questions. We can’t do it face-to-face, but let’s pretend. Besides, given what’s going on in the world right now, they are questions worth pondering anyway.

When would be a good time to show mercy? Tomorrow, maybe? After all, today is a day of rest. We don’t want to do work on a day of rest. After all, even God rested on the seventh day, right? But as Jesus said, even the most observant of Jews will lead their animals to the feeding trough, milk their cows, and gather up the hen’s eggs on the Sabbath. Why? Because animals don’t know about the Sabbath and they don’t care. If you don’t believe me, ask any hungry cat or dog at about 5:30 or 6 am. All they know is that it’s time to be fed or walked and they don’t know or care about your customs, calendars or your need to sleep in. And, you know what? feeding, watering and milking your animals on the Sabbath was all allowable in Jewish law. It was the right and sensible thing to do. 

Jesus asks: if it is okay to show mercy to your livestock on the Sabbath, then why can’t we show mercy to a daughter of Abraham on the Sabbath?

Put another way, when is it a good time to show mercy? Now is a good time to show mercy. Right now. That’s when.

And where is the right place to show mercy? Underneath his complaint about the Sabbath, the unhappy man who stirred up the congregation with his grumbling about the place of the healing is saying something like “This is a house of worship, not a clinic, take it outside.” But Jesus’ invitation to the woman and healing her brokenness tells us that if our worship doesn’t drive us to mercy, then we are not really worshipping God at all! If our worship doesn’t call out compassion, then we are not listening. If our rituals only reinforce our fears then we are only huddling against the cold instead of turning ourselves to God.

So… Where is the place to show mercy? Here is the place to show mercy. Right where we are, right now.

Over four hundred years ago, the first slave ship arrived in an English colony, landing in Virginia with a cargo of about twenty slaves purchased either in Africa or in Brazil, after having been brought over from East Africa by Portuguese merchants. This began a trade in human beings that fed not only the plantations of the Southern states, but eventually the mills and cloth factories in the North. The slave trade not only staffed the plantations across the South but made bankers, investors, inventors, ship-builders, and ship owners in the North quite wealthy. Of course, no one can speak for the spiritual lives of anyone other than ourselves, but I suspect that many a devout Christian took part in the buying, selling of these persons, and benefited from their labor.

A few years back, the Bishop of the Diocese of Rhode Island, Bishop Nick Knisely, led his diocese in study, prayer, confession, and repentance for their part in the slave trade and the way the Church in Rhode Island benefitted from the mills, shipping, and banking that depended on the slave trade and made some wealthy and employed many others. (Read more here.)

It took over three hundred years for this country to abolish slavery, and it took a war to do it. And in the century and a half since then, we are still sorting out its meaning and repenting from the consequences.

When Bishop Knisely did this, for the most part, he got a lot back-patting atta boys. But there were some—not a few—people whose families got wealthy from that industry, and Universities, hospitals and private schools who all had wings or halls or scholarships named after people who owned those ships and those trading houses and held shares in stocks that once speculated in human flesh. And they weren’t too happy. It was a long time ago, they said. That was then. Why bring it up now? 

Like the leader in the story today, too often we hear people say that now was not time, and church was not the place, to talk about such things. But Jesus’ response now is the same as it was back then: the time for mercy is now. And the place for mercy is here.

Luke’s Gospel tells us that Jesus’ words were so effective that no one dared challenge him again. Sure. If only. That’s only true if you ignore big chunks of the Passion.

People still challenge Jesus right down to today. They still get annoyed and grumble. They still blame the victim and look for scapegoats. Jesus was condemned to death and went to the cross because human beings will look anywhere, anyplace in order to keep what scares them at arm’s length.  And it still happens today.

We hear the same complaints: why here? Why now?

You know why we have these responses, right? Fear! Fear is the opposite of faith. But there are always people who use our fears to build up their power. There are people who only feel big and strong when everyone around them is terrified, or angry, or shouting. Like the Leader in today’s Gospel who stirred up the crowd with his grumbling—and he didn’t even have the internet and Twitter and the media—who build themselves up by bringing out the worst in everyone else.

It’s true. We do live in an uncertain and often dangerous world, and we do everything we can to maintain some order and create some safety, but here we are living smack dab in the place where charisma and order meet! And that is the place where the Holy Spirit is found! And, as Jesus demonstrates over and over again in the Gospel of Luke, we can show mercy where we can. We might not be able to save every victim of disaster, or stop the suffering of this world, but we can reach out with healing to the person right in front of us, the stranger God gives us, or the sick, injured, or lonely person in our midst.

So…. When is the time to show mercy? Now is the time to show mercy!

Where is the place to show mercy? Here is the place to show mercy!

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Scripture for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 16, Year C, August 24, 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 Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, August 24, 2025, St Mary's Episcopal Church, Dade City, Florida.