Everything for God's Purpose

Revised and updated.

Today’s Gospel lesson reminds me of an old story about the richest man in town.

Once upon a time, there a was a small town, and the richest man in town lived in a big house on a big hill overlooking the town, he was driven around in a big car, and he wore the best clothes, and ate the best food. If you were new to town or passing through and knew nothing else about this man, you knew he was the richest man in town. Well, one day the church in town got a new pastor and the church needed a new roof. The young pastor said to his vestry, “why don’t we ask the guy in the big house on the hill to contribute to our building fund? I’ll bet he could pay for the roof and maybe more!” The board members looked at each other knowingly, but shrugged and said, “sure pastor, give it a try.”

So, he goes up to the big house on the big hill and rings the doorbell, introduces himself to the butler and, after leaving him on the front porch for a while, he lets him in and brings him to the study of the wealthy man, who demands to know what the young pastor wants.

After explaining the church’s need for a roof and their list of deferred maintenance items, he asks the man to donate to the church. The rich man thinks for a moment, and says, “Well, I’d like to help, but I don’t think God wants my money.”

Puzzled, the pastor asks him how he knows that.

“Every week,” the rich man says, “I take a pile of cash, and I throw some it up in the air, and I tell God you can keep whatever you want, but it always falls back on the floor. So clearly God doesn’t want it.”

Sometimes, we have a hard time reconciling our money and our faith. Today’s Gospel is another example of that.

At this point in the Gospel of Matthew and in Jesus’ ministry, people are approaching Jesus with all kinds of questions. Some came to learn and some were there to challenge. And some folks posed questions meant to trip Jesus up with the hope that he would seem silly. Matthew’s Gospel tells us that the Pharisees got together with the Herodians because as much as they disagreed with each other, they both were suspicious of Jesus.

The people who approached Jesus represented two very different groups. The Pharisees did not want to give any money to their pagan oppressors and so were opposed to paying taxes to Rome. On the other hand, King Herod’s position of power, as king of Israel, came courtesy of the Romans, so even though the taxes were widely considered to be oppressive, the Herodians had a vested interest in keeping the Roman’s happy and that meant ‘pay the taxes.’ In their way, the Pharisees and the Herodians each reflected the horns of the dilemma.

These two groups wanted to know where Jesus landed… whose side he was on. The question they pose, “according to the Law of Moses, is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?” was meant to tease that out.

Would Jesus side with the Herodians (pay the taxes!) or with the Pharisees (keep the money…or at least put it one of the temple charities instead of shipping it off to Rome).

What was Jesus to do? Speak against the tax which would anger the Herodians and lead to a charge of treason against Rome? Talk up the tax which would anger and alienate most of the crowds that followed him, because they hated the Roman occupiers of their nation?

Well Jesus went another way. Think ahead to when Jesus would chase the money changers out of the outer courts of the Temple. They were in business because anyone making an offering at the Temple was required to exchange Roman currency for Temple coins, but for a price, kind of like those currency exchange booths at airports. You see, carrying the image of Caesar, who claimed divinity for himself, into the Temple was considered sinful idolatry. And there was money to be made at the table where Roman money was exchanged for temple money and back again. 

Which is why, when Jesus asks for a Denarius, at least one of his questioners reaches into his pocket or purse and hands it to Jesus. He shows how bound up they all were -- especially his challengers--  in a system that kept them down when he proves that at least one of the questioners was a hypocrite. 

Actually, I kind of envision a bunch of people in the crowd all producing a Denarius all at the same time! The coin Jesus asked to see was a silver Denarius with the image of Caesar on one side, and on the reverse, the image of a woman named Pax or personified peace. The coins were little portable graven images.

Jesus then asks the question that everyone in Israel could have answered without a coin in hand, “Whose head is this and whose title?” We don’t hear it in English, but word for “head” in the Gospel is “icon,” a Greek word better translated as “image.” The word “title” is better translated as “likeness.” When they answer Jesus’ question, saying that the image and likeness are “Caesar’s,” Jesus replies that they are to give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. After all, it’s his coin anyway, who cares?

Then Jesus gives the punch line: “give back to God the things that are God’s.”

I’ll bet when Jesus said this, immediately, everyone starts calculating in their head exactly how much we are supposed to give back to God.

Now before you pull out your phone’s calculator app, think about the word “icon” or “image” and the word “likeness.” Whose likeness is on the coin? For us, it’s Washington or another dead president. But whose likeness is on… us?

Jesus’ answer pointed his challengers to their Sabbath-school lessons: In Genesis 1:26-27, it says, “And God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness,’” and goes on to state, “God created humankind in his Image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

The principle is this: Just as the coin has Caesar’s icon on it and so belongs to him, so we are made in the image and likeness of God, so we are God’s.  Jesus says “tax schmax! What we owe to God is far greater and far more important!”

This text is often used to talk about stewardship in terms of what you give to the church. But this is not a passage on the tithe. Tithing is good, and it is basic standard of giving for the Episcopal church, and I agree that we should all strive to meet that. But if giving 10 percent of our income is the only thing we do, then we would fall well more than 90 percent shy of the mark.

Jesus says that everything we have and everything we are belongs to God because we bear the image and likeness of God. In our faith and in our baptisms, we’ve been grafted into God’s vineyard, made part of God’s household, and are adopted into Christ’s family.

Jesus is teaching us that everything, 100% of what we have… and who we are… is to be used for God’s purposes.

Your house, use it for God’s purpose. Your car, use it for God’s purpose. Your credit, your stuff, and your savings are to be used for God’s purposes. Yes, clothe yourselves, have safe shelter, go from place to place safely and comfortably, save and spend wisely, enjoy and maintain what you have… and share it, knowing that it all belongs to God and God wants you and all you have to be used for God’s purposes! I am not saying to sign everything over to the church… that’s what cults and religious con-artists say. I mean that are to use we have for God’s purposes. 

So, what does that mean? Well, for starters: love God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself. 

It also means caring for the world that we are placed in, taking care of the only planet we have and listening to the scientists who study and teach us about the place we call home, and which we charged by God from the very beginning to nurture and care for.

And, I must add, giving Caesar his due means also to hold Caesar accountable. In our country, that means vote, show up, tell your elected representatives at every level, local, county, state, and federal, what's going on and put the pressure on so that they act-- not for the sake of the wealthy donors, but for the people they represent.  Giving Caesar what is due Caesar and God what is God's comes together when we advocate for the powerless, the poor, the forgotten, and for the everyday ordinary citizen. That's why the Church can seem like such a gadfly sometimes, because if we don't speak up and work for the weakest and the poorest amongst us, who will? 

Jesus was not preaching benign disengagement, and we know that because he spoke to the wealthy and powerful, he rode into Jerusalem as a different kind of king, and on the cross he experienced the full wrath of the state, only to defeat both in resurrection and ascension, capped off with Pentecost. Reminding those in power that God is in charge and cares for all people and the whole creation, ain't easy, but it sure is biblical. 

You have been made in the image and likeness of God. In baptism, you have been marked as Christ’s own forever. What God wants is nothing less than to come and abide in your heart. God loves you. God keeps your picture in the divine wallet and on the heavenly refrigerator. Jesus did not care about the tax, because his real concern was that we live into being the image and likeness of the God who lovingly created each and every one of us.

We begin to live into the image and likeness of God by conforming our living to be more like Jesus’ life. Giving back to God through the church does matter—and so does paying our bills and our taxes—but it’s only the beginning.

To live more fully into that image and likeness of God that is in you, give your heart back to God – for it is God’s anyway. Our money is our power for good. Our voice is our power for good. We are called to use them for good. Our money allows us to care for ourselves, for our family, friends, neighbors, and even the stranger or the person across town or the globe who we’ve never even met. Our voice, our time, our creativity, our smarts and our skills are just as much our power for doing good. We choose to live and do business ethically. We don’t hoard out of fear, but we trust that God is at work even in the hidden places of our lives and is making us whole. Our time, talent, and treasure are the tools the people God use to do the work of God for the people gives to us.

The answer to the question “What are the things that are God’s which we are to give back to God?” is both simple and awesome all at once. The answer is, “You.”

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost: October 18, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 21 Pentecost (Proper 24A) Sunday, October 18, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Dressing for the party

Ever give a party and worry that no one will show up? Ever go to a party and wonder what you should wear? We’ve been hearing a lot about banquet halls lately, and on the tv you’ll see celebrities walking from the limos on red carpets waving to adoring fans.

Imagine getting an invitation from someone famous, let’s say King Charles III inviting us to a royal party. A smartly dressed person would show up at your door bearing a card that would read “the Lord Chamberlain has been commanded by the King to invite the holder to a celebration at Westminster Abbey, or perhaps the British Embassy, at 11 a.m. on such and such a day.”

Would you clear your calendar, find your best dress or tux (or morning coat, actually), hop on a plane and go? Or would you say “nah! Skip it!” lie on the couch and turn on ESPN or HSN instead?

Well, according to Jesus’ story in Matthew’s Gospel today, that’s exactly what happens! The king really wanted these people to come to his son’s wedding banquet, but they couldn’t be bothered, they had other work to do! Not only that, but some of the invited ones were also so annoyed by the invitation that they berate the messengers, beat them up, and even killed some of them!

But this really isn’t a story about a party. This is an interpretation of religious history and a discipleship story rolled into one. Matthew and his church took a parable of Jesus and made it into an allegory describing the history of God’s salvation, all to make a point about our place in the Commonwealth of God. And, just like last week’s Gospel lesson, it re-frames the story of God-at-work both in history and in their community in the present.

Today’s story goes like this, God has invited humanity to something great; first, God made a covenant with particular group of people to be God’s people and a light to the world. And now God is inviting everyone into the reign of God to live a new transformed life. 

But, if you ask me, the story takes a violent and gruesome turn (which is why, to be honest, this passage is one of my least favorite of all the Gospel stories). The harshness of this story contrasts sharply with the wedding banquet in the Gospel of John, which, in that Gospel, kicks off Jesus' public ministry. There Jesus turns water into wine. The contrast is striking!

Keep in mind, this really isn't Jesus talking, but the Gospel writer, whom we call Matthew, remembering a story Jesus told when he was talking to his congregation. So what probably started out as a Jesus story, like the one in John's gospel, or a Jesus parable, becomes something a bit different.

So when Matthew talks about the king killing the people who refused the invitation and destroying their city—my hunch is that this is Matthew’s church remembering something terrible and earth-shattering that happened which was still fresh in their memory, namely the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire in 70 CE. This ended Temple-based worship in Judaism for good and shifted the focus of both Judaism and Christianity to the local communities of the diaspora. I'm spitballing here, but I also wonder if they might also have been thinking about the destruction of Pompeii, a center of Roman arts and culture, when Mount Vesuvius blew its top just two years later. I wonder if they thought that maybe God was cleaning house? Personally, I don’t think God works that way, but maybe they were trying to make sense of those events?

In the story, the King here is God. The first messengers in the story who were sent out were the prophets, followed by Jesus, the King's son. The sending of servants out to bring in everyone both good and bad would remind that Early Christian Community and their mission to go out into the world. End of story, right? “They” are out! “We” are in! Hooray for us! Let the party begin!

Not so fast! You may have been invited off the street, but where’s your wedding garment? Why aren’t you dressed for the party? The sour note (for us anyway) is when the guest who is hauled in from the street is suddenly thrown out—not onto the street, but someplace far hotter—for not wearing the right party clothes to a party he never expected to attend! 

What’s up with that? We love the ‘welcome’ part of the story, but this other part, not so much! And, happy as I am, I am glad that this passage only shows up once every three years. 

But something occurred to me as I studied again the passage this week. I wonder if this story didn’t remind Matthew’s church of baptism?

Follow me here: in my last full time parish, the folks there did a few things at every baptism, some of which were new to me. In addition to making the promises that we all make—both as a candidate and as a community; in addition to baptizing the person with water in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and in addition to anointing the candidate with oil blessed by the bishop that tells us that we are “sealed by the Holy Spirit… and marked as Christ’s own forever,” we did three other things that were more or less unique to that congregation (at least to me!). First, everyone in that congregation signed a great BIG baptismal certificate, about 18” x 24” with beautifully calligraphy and suitable for framing. Everyone in the assembly promised to uphold the person in their baptism, and we put our promise in writing! We’d also give the candidate a little Easter candle that was lit from the Paschal candle, and was meant to be lit on every baptismal anniversary in their home. But after the baptism and anointing but before we presented the candle, we’d dress the newly baptized in a new white outfit.

All of this was done to echo what many Christian traditions have done since the very earliest days of the church, where the candidates took off their street clothes, got baptized from head to toe in their birthday suit (or close to it!) and then put on new white clothes. The new outfit symbolized the fact that as a baptized follower of Jesus they were a new person. They had, as the apostle Paul put it, ‘put on Christ.’

I wonder. Did Matthew’s community practice something similar during those very early days of the Christian Church? We know that baptism was a big deal in the early church. Archeologists have found ancient house churches that have a walk-in baptismal pool at the entrance. If that’s so, then I imagine that the wedding garment in Matthew’s story would remind everyone in his congregation of that new clean white baptismal garment and of their own baptisms. Whatever the case, the Gospel is telling us that none of us are party crashers. We are all invited and through our baptisms, we are dressed for the party!

Now I have a bone to pick with Matthew on the "thrown into outer darkness" bit. Some preachers say that perhaps the host had a closet full of white garments for under-dressed guests, the way some fancy restaurants or clubs have blazers on hand for guests in shirt-sleeves. I'm not sure I buy that. eIt sounds like the preacher trying to let Matthew (or Jesus) off the hook. And, if Matthew is talking about baptismal garments and somebody walks into the assembly improperly dressed, I don't think the ushers became bouncers, dropping their bulletins and throwing the guy out on the curb. To the extent that baptism is initiation into the church, fine; but at the end of the day, I think the people God welcomes will surprise and astound us.

The important part is that, we are also dressed for the street—for everyday life and the distractions that come with it. We wear grubby old jeans for doing chores. Or put on a business suit as if it is armor. We wear clothes that are dusty and stained with old habits and the ketchup that dripped from the burger we were eating while driving. We wear clothes stamped with a designer’s name that shouts “look at me!” Sometimes we wear clothes designed to dazzle, and sometimes we put things on meant to keep people away. But remember, even as we wear clothes for the street, as baptized people, we are also dressed for heaven and clothed for holy service!

In today’s epistle, the Apostle Paul writes from a jail cell urging his companions in Christ to rejoice and to stop worrying. He says, “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” This is much more than mere positive thinking! Paul is encouraging the Christians in Philippi to “put on Christ!” “Wear Jesus like your best outfit!”

Which brings us back to the question: Now that we’ve accepted the invitation, how do we dress for the party? Like a teenager trying to find just the right outfit for the big night out, we might find ourselves trying on several new outfits over the course of our lifetime and our life in Christ. We might try a pious look, or one of knowing irony. We might put on a happy face, an angry face or wear the blanc tableau.  

The party is not simply a soirée. It is our service to God and to all the people God’s made living in the world, the creation, that God has made. Our worship, our work, our stewardship is how we show off Christ in the world, and our study—as well as the celebrations and sacramental moments—are the party we invited to. The party is our life in Christ, and the banquet hall is the world.

Which makes putting on the “wedding garment” a lifelong process that includes intentional prayer, intentional stewardship, intentional service and worship. As Christians grow and mature, as faith becomes more and more woven into our being, we develop new holy habits of sacramental living, reading and learning scripture, discovering the skills of prayer, and the joy of generosity. In doing this, we are all the time putting on and wearing the wedding garment. We have accepted the invitation. We have been brought in off the street and stand in Christ’s festive banquet hall. And every day we are more and more being dressed for the party!

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost: October 11, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 20 Pentecost (Proper 23A) Sunday, October 11, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Reconciliation is the Main Thing (Part Two)

I know what Jesus says, but the truth is this: there are times when I don’t want to forgive! I want to get even. I want my day in court. My pound of flesh. I want everyone to know I’ve been wronged, and I want the one who hurt me to get what’s coming.

That’s the truth. And I know I am not alone. The problem of course, is what happens when we organize our lives around our injuries— when I start to build my living around all the ways that I have been denied my due, and all the ways I have been injured—then it becomes quickly apparent that my life will bear the fruit of anger, of fear, of resentment. And that’s why Jesus says what he says about forgiveness.

Forgiveness happens when we choose to no longer organize our lives around the things and the people who have hurt us.

What the late Presbyterian pastor and religious writer, Frederick Buechner said of the deadly sin of anger applies to forgiveness as well:

“Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

But it is not magic. Forgiveness doesn’t come with the snap of a finger. Forgiveness is a journey and a discipline.

I remember an example of this from two decades ago, when five Amish schoolgirls were killed and 11 others were wounded by a gunman in Pennsylvania in 2006. What made this stand out from the rash of school shootings that have infected our country (and our unresolved trauma from 9/11/2001!), was that the Amish community not only comforted the shooter’s wife and children, but they also forgave the perpetrator. But what was even more astounding was the anger, the revulsion, and the vitriol that the Amish received from their “gentile” neighbors, the media, and even from preachers, because they forgave even as they mourned the deaths of their own innocent children.

A more startling example happened in 1948. Pastor Yang-Won Sohn’s two teenage boys were shot for being Christians by a rioter in Korea. Yang-Won not only forgave the shooter but arranged his release from prison and adopted him as his own son.

Were these people crazy? How can people forgive such heinous crimes against innocents? It messes with our minds. Yes, Jesus said forgive, but there must be an upper limit and these crazy people must have crossed it.

But Jesus said, forgive not seven times, but 70 times seven. OK, let’s count it up; we must be way beyond that limit now. But put away your calculators and be honest. We know that when Jesus said “Seventy times seven” he meant “always.” You must always forgive.

And then Jesus told a parable about the wicked slave who is forgiven a huge sum by his master but then shakes down a fellow slave and throws him in prison for being owed just a fraction. We hear in the story that the wicked slave gets his just punishment. “Good,” we may say. “He surely deserved that!” But notice that the wicked slave was not punished for back debt, but because he did not forgive. Jesus is very serious about this forgiveness thing.

The Apostle Paul reminds the Romans about another side of forgiveness. He reminds that how we treat each other because of our differences defines the quality and nature of our life together. So, some eat anything they want, others are vegetarians; they must not despise each other. Well, that’s easy enough. We can do that.

Some may worship God on one day, some on another; do not despise one or the other. Another easy one – we can do that! To each his own, we say!

But then Paul asks, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?” meaning, why do we pass judgment on everybody else? Perhaps because we so often see immense hurt and evil in our world and we want to see justice done. We cannot imagine why people maim and kill innocent people. We cannot understand the sickness of domestic abuse, trafficking of young men and women and children, the horror of genocide. These evils need to be dealt with. They need to be eradicated from the earth, and humanity deserves to live in peace and safety. Forgiveness? Was Jesus being naïve when he said, “Seventy times seven?” Actually, no. Remember that even as Jesus was being executed, he prayed that God would forgive his tormentors and executioners “for they don’t know what they are doing.”

So, how do we start? We might look once again at the Amish. Their ability to forgive came from the center of their theology, which is the Lord’s Prayer. They believe it when they say, “…As we forgive those who trespass against us….” Over and over, Amish leaders tried to explain that to journalists and others who could not believe the parents of the dead little girls could forgive. The Amish in that community made quite clear that forgiveness did not take away the pain of the death of their children. It also did not take away the requirement that the perpetrator be held accountable. They were choosing not to build their lives around hatred for the person who caused that pain.

Forgiveness doesn't say, "It’s like it never happened”—that’s amnesia.

And forgiveness doesn't say, "well, nobody could have expected you to do any better"—that’s condescension.

And forgiveness doesn’t mean that one who injured us is freed from accountability—that’s cowardice.

Forgiveness puts demonizing the other person out of bounds. When we demonize another person, we deny their moral agency, as well as their fitness for being loved. In suggesting that the others are incapable of moral action—by turning them into monster-- we lets them off the hook. In so doing, we give away our power for good.

The truth is that when we are hurt and we want to hit back and we want to make the other person suffer but to choose not to, we have taken control of the situation but not in arrogance but in mercy and love. When we make the hard choice to stop organizing our lives around the injury, we are freed from the shackles of living in the past, feed from the fetters of living the injury over and over again, freed from the prison of rehearsing the hate.

You see, forgiveness doesn’t let the other person off the hook. Forgiveness frees us to continue to live faithfully and ethically.

Now I must underscore something that is very important and central to a full understanding of Christian forgiveness. Safety is a crucial component. Safety is all important. The fact is that abusive people often manipulate their victims into continuing their reign of emotional or physical terrorism but sneering things like “but what about forgiveness? I thought you were a Christian!” Please do not fall into that trap! Remember my definition of forgiveness: no longer organizing our lives around the injury? That means that sometimes we need to create a safe space, get away from (maybe far away from!) the perpetrator.

And when we are around people who, for whatever reason, bring out the worst in us, the forgiving thing to do is create the safe space that will not draw us into that destructive spiral.

In a few minutes, just after we recall Jesus’ gift of himself on the cross and just before we break the bread, which is also his body that feeds us, his body, we will pray the Lord’s Prayer. And we will all say, “as we forgive those who trespass (sin) against us.” As you let that prayer marinate in your heart, think about what the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said about forgiveness:

“The simple truth is, we all make mistakes, and we all need forgiveness. There is no magic wand we can wave to go back in time and change what has happened or undo the harm that has been done, but we can do everything in our power to set right what has been made wrong. We can endeavor to make sure the harm never happens again.”

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Here are the Scripture Lessons for 16 Pentecost (Proper 19A) Sunday, September 13, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Reconciliation is the Main Thing (Part One)

Today’s Gospel is different. There’s more—and less—than meets the eye. Let’s dive in. 

The Gospel passage I just read only shows up in Matthew—and we hear Jesus say a word that won’t show up in the Bible until Acts or the epistles. Jesus says “church.” I see you shrug… so? Isn’t church all about Jesus, and shouldn’t Jesus be all about “church?” Well, yeah, except why would Jesus be talking about church discipline when the church hasn’t been invented yet? 

I mean, the gathering of believers won’t become “the church” until after Pentecost, and by then Jesus has already been resurrected and ascended. So why is he talking about a person in “the church who might sin against us,” when there isn’t yet a church?

The Gospels that we have in the Bible were gathered up by at least four different gatherings of Christians way after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. It did not take long for those first Christians to start gathering their memories and re-telling what Jesus taught and did, and then some folks wrote it down. The Gospels record Jesus’s actions, values and teachings, and they guided early Christian communities in how to live and minister together, in this case the community that brought us Matthew’s Gospel.

So, knowing that, let’s listen again.

Jesus said: If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matt. 18.15-17)

Some people and churches use this passage as a procedure guide for how to throw someone out of their congregation. I don't think that's what's going on here. It's about keeping people in community, not exiling folks from it.

What we have here is guidance for when folks in one of these new Christian communities get mad at each other. It’s what to do when members have a beef. And, trust me, whenever two or three are gathered together, someone is going to have a beef, or get their nose bent out of joint, or get offended or offend someone. As long as the church is filled with humans, it’s going to happen. So here is some guidance as to what to do when that comes up.

But though this passage is speaking to a post-resurrection community, I’m pretty certain its roots go back to the fact that in his earthly ministry, Jesus had to deal with followers who didn’t agree or didn’t get along or who did dumb things or who were just plain wrong. So, I am thinking that when they were organizing Matthew’s church and this stuff came up, they asked themselves, “what would Jesus do?” Or, at least, “what would Jesus say?”

It may come as a shock to you, but these problems haven’t gone away. You may not know it but there is fine print in the Book of Common Prayer, where the Episcopal Church lays out a procedure for excommunication. It’s on page 409. And since the BCP is a constitutional document, that’s a pretty big deal.  But there is also rites for reconciliation, commonly called confession, that are equally good places to start.

Now in my 44 years of ministry, I’ve never ever used the “disciplinary rubric.” But I have dealt with a pinch or two in community. I have found that it’s pretty common for people to get into conflict over little stuff. It might be over something operational, like service times, or the style of the service, how we spend our money, or over who does what in the parish, or who gets to decide this or that. Maybe it’s about who wants to get married, or if we should host a 12-step group…I could go on. I don’t know, but I’ll bet you know what I mean.

But before we get caught up in the weeds the procedure, notice what Jesus doesn’t say. First, he doesn’t say, “If someone sins against you, you should sulk, pout, moan, make everyone else miserable, cut your pledge, call your lawyer and swear before God and anybody else around that you’ll have nothing to do with that no-good so-and-so until he or she crawls up to you begging your totally undeserved forgiveness.” It doesn’t grant us permission to abuse the other person, call them names, or turn them into a punching bag. It doesn’t say you should flood social media with accusations, light up the phone lines, send out a flock of e-mails, tweets, and Facebook posts, use AI to create cruel memes, whisper vile things about the offender, move to another church, or write a nastygram to the bishop. Neither Jesus nor Matthew say to do any of that.

Instead, we are taught that if you are wronged, if you are the one hurt, then you are the one who needs to take the initiative for forgiveness and reconciliation. Even if, maybe especially if, it isn’t even your fault. That’s what the Gospel says. The first step in your search for forgiveness and reconciliation comes from you—even if that doesn’t seem fair.

And it isn’t just the offended party who has to make the first move. Remember the Prodigal Son over in Luke (15:11-32)? The dad didn’t send out a search party, but when the son came to his senses and decided to come home and ask forgiveness, before the repentant son even gets to blurt out his prepared speech, the father meets him. And the father also meets the faithful son as he sulks in his room. Reconciliation is found in the act of meeting.

Reconciliation may not happen when the two parties totally agree. It may start when both sides simply decide to stop fighting about it. Not sweep it under the rug, just not allow it to define our relationship.

Sometimes we need help. Maybe the first step is to talk to a priest, maybe for counsel, maybe for confession, as a first step towards healing the breach. The twelve steps of AA talk about this: Steps 5 through 10 are all about reconciliation in dealing with our recovery and taking responsibility for the harm our addictive behavior may have caused.

Jesus’s teachings on forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoring relationships never seem fair. At least not at first. He always asks us to do more than we know we should. In fact, it is in the very next verse after today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells Peter to forgive, not 7 times but 7 times 70 times, which is Bible-speak for “always.” (Matthew 18:22).

I wish today’s passage was a magic bullet. I wish I could tell you following it will mean everything will end with a sentimental moment like at the end of a Lifetime movie. Doing this, or something like it, won’t necessarily make the other person either act better or repent. They might not even like us and they might even choose to hang on to their hurt or never change their hurtful behavior. And while we might choose to steer clear of each other for a while for our own sense of safety, none of this is why Jesus teaches us these lessons. Jesus tells us to act this way because this is how God acts toward us, and he is teaching us to imitate God every day.

When things get rough, we are invited—urged, commanded, even!—to make the first move toward reconciliation, no matter whose fault it is, no matter what we think is the fair thing to do. As with some other things Jesus says, we don’t have to like it, but we do have to do it. Or, at the very least, we need to take what Jesus says very, very seriously.

Notice that in this passage is that accountability is not a one-way road. In taking it to the church, or I must add, maybe to a therapist or a mediator instead, we might discover that the one who needs to get off his high horse… is me! Or maybe we both need to settle down. Or maybe to relax and not try to make other people behave the way we want. The community, in whatever form, may have wisdom that hasn’t occurred to the injured parties. However it happens, it requires an open heart, trust in the process, patience, and a sense of safety for everyone involved. Whatever the process, reconciliation is the goal.

In these days of “my way or the highway,” the Gospel insists that the common good—the overall health and quality of the community, the family, the group—has a strong positive claim on us. Seeking such common good takes priority over our own satisfaction, our anger, or our sense of what we deserve.

[I will never forget once watching a mother deal with two squabbling siblings. Both of them brought their case to their parent, with all the drama that kids can bring. The mother listened to both and realized that both kids were right, and that they were both wrong. So, she sat them down and said, “Listen: you have only one brother and you have only one sister. I love you both. Please work it out. Then tell me what you decide.” I was impressed. Because I might have blown the whistle and sent both kiddos to the penalty box or arbitrarily taken a side just to make the problem go away. But the family, the relationships, were more important, and putting the problem where it belonged was a good first step.]

A few weeks ago, I got called into jury duty over a civil dispute rooted in an event that took place more than seven years ago. I was the alternate juror, so I got sent home before deliberations began, but while I was listening to the evidence presented by both sides, this passage was rattling around my head.

When somebody sins against us—when there is trouble and conflict—it’s not just the two (or more) people most directly involved whose welfare is at stake. The whole community’s welfare is at stake in how things are handled.

We tend not to think this way these days. But this passage, along with the other ways Jesus dealt with his followers, suggests otherwise. He suggests that “we” comes before “me.” What an odd thought. It’s worth pondering a bit.

The passage talks about church discipline, but it is really about living in relationship and in community, whatever community that may be. And the good of the whole community is at the center of our interactions, even when—especially when—we’re in a pinch.

So, what do we do about that last part of the passage? The part about when someone refuses to listen? It says, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” It does not mean that the other person is a pariah, or that we must be estranged. No, it is a reminder that the Church’s ministry of love, reconciliation, and hope is for everyone. Even for—especially for—the people who drive us the most crazy, or the ones we have a beef with. Remember how Jesus ate and hung out with Gentiles and tax collectors? He didn’t say, “but only if you straighten up and fly right, first!” He sat down and ate. Some people didn’t get that, but the ones who up until then were on the outside looking in sure got it.

Which may be why Matthew included this bit of teaching. Tradition says Matthew was himself a tax collector. Maybe that’s why he stuck this passage in, and not the other three gospel writers? Whatever the case, reconciliation is for everyone. Especially for the people who drive us the most bonkers.

How we work out our pinches is important because they can point us toward the way of Jesus, reminds us of how we have been reconciled to God, and teaches us to become bit by bit, by the grace of God, reconcilers in a divided world.

(Stay tuned for Part Two next week! - atg+)

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost: September 6, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 15 Pentecost (Proper 18A) Sunday, September 6, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Challenging Jesus

There is something strange going on in today’s Gospel. Did you notice? Maybe it struck you as odd but shrugged it off because it doesn’t fit with how we typically picture Jesus… but there it is as plain as day. 

Did you notice it? In today’s Gospel, Jesus the Rabbi is taken to school. 

When we read the Gospels, we see Jesus teach, yes; and he certainly heals and shows power; but there is something else, Jesus learns and he changes. What was said about Jesus as a child—that he grew in wisdom and knowledge (Luke 2:52) — still happens for the adult Jesus. Jesus not only teaches, but he also learns. He grows in wisdom. 

Wisdom is a constant theme of many movies, TV shows, literature, and even graphic novels, although it rarely described as such. 

Remember The Matrix? Neo undertakes a journey to discover his role in overthrowing the Matrix starting with his first meeting with the Oracle, a grandmotherly figure peering into an oven baking cookies, in an apartment where the students hang out as if they are doing their homework after school.

In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker learns the ways of the Force under the tutelage of the ancient Jedi master Yoda, who seems at first to be an eccentric, slightly annoying little creature but turns out to be steeped in ancient wisdom.

The film The Way, director Emilio Estevez cast his father, Martin Sheen, as a man named Tom who walks away the Camino de Santiago, “The Way of St. James.” through northern Spain. Along the way he encounters all kinds of people and discovers the difference between the “life we live and the life we choose.”

And we mustn’t forget Spider-Man, who is always learning that with “great power comes great responsibility.”

In the Hebrew Scriptures, Wisdom is the personification of God’s knowledge, creativity and transforming love. Rather than focusing on the power of God that sent plagues to Pharaoh, parted the Red Sea and those other miraculous special effects, Wisdom is how we meet God through other ways of knowing. It is more intuitive, depends on our senses, and comes out of reflection, artistic and musical expression. 

Wisdom is where heart, emotion, and thinking meet. 

That’s why, when the earliest Christians looked for ways to describe their encounter with Jesus, it was the Wisdom literature that spoke to them the most. Their experience of Jesus was not just of a person who did powerful things, but their encounter was one that opened their eyes, their hearts, and their minds to the very presence and person of God. In Jesus, they experienced both the knowledge of God and the welcome of God. 

Wisdom is at the heart of Jesus’ encounter with the foreign woman in today’s Gospel. 

Jesus and his disciples travelled through a Gentile region near Galilee when a woman from those parts approaches Jesus and asks him to heal her daughter. At first, he flat-out ignored her. He wouldn’t even acknowledge the request.

She pleads and shouts after Jesus and his disciples. 

Finally, when he turns to her and speaks the conventional wisdom concerning the Messiah, he says that the Messiah is only for the Jews, not for Gentiles like her. He brushes her off saying that “it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Did you hear that? He called her a dog!

Nevertheless, with courage and desperation, she persisted. “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Finally, the picture begins to make sense. Jesus commends her faith and affirms her as a beloved child of God. “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And, the Gospel tells us, her daughter was healed instantly. 

I don’t know about you, but this story startles me because it does not fit with my soft, cuddly picture of Jesus, who here acts in an arbitrary, harsh, and unloving manner—until she changes his mind!

For centuries, preachers have struggled to make sense of it—and to explain away Jesus’ rudeness. We can’t imagine that the guy who would flip over tables in the Temples or go toe to toe with the religious leaders of his day could be… sarcastic! And the lengths they’ll go to smooth it over is incredible. Some say that the Greek word Jesus used for “dog” really means “puppy.” (Uhm, no. It doesn’t.) Some say that he was critiquing the cultural norms of the day… really? By being callous and unkind? Maybe Jesus was using this encounter to test and stretch his disciples’ understanding of God? Hmm… we’ll see.

Here’s an idea. Maybe the Gentile woman taught Jesus… that in saying that God’s covenant extended to everyone regardless of their status was bigger than they imagined. And maybe the early Church remembered their encounter because they were learning that lesson for themselves! The lesson? That God’s reign is bigger than tradition or culture or “the way we’ve always done things.” 

Remember, Jesus grew up in the first century and that he lived his early life only among Palestinian Jews. He spent almost all of his ministry among the Jews – the children of Israel. His training was Jewish. 

His bible was the Hebrew Scriptures. He lived in a social and religious culture that saw Gentiles as “other,” often as unclean, or taboo.

Was Jesus was stuck in such a mindset or was he deliberately pushing the envelope? I think he was pushing the edges of faith outward, taking it to new territory literally and figuratively. I think he chose to bring Good News to everyone. After all, he did deliberately go to a place where Gentiles lived when he encountered this persistent woman. What did he expect? Either this encounter caused him to re-think commonly accepted views about Gentiles… or it was his chance to prove a point!

Whatever happened between Jesus and the woman, he clearly went from saying “no!” to complimenting the woman for her faith and answering her prayer. I think Matthew’s Church remembered this encounter precisely because those early Jewish Christians were starting to see their Gentile Christian companions in a new light! In short, in this story, Jesus is showing an early Church the importance of learning something new.

Maybe Jesus’ mind changed or he was breaking new ground, but the real news is that the early Church—the Church of Matthew’s Gospel—was changing! They went out from Palestine into the wider world of the Roman Empire; and they were leaving the Synagogues of the Diaspora and going into new communities, and discovering over and over again that Jesus’ teaching, the Holy Spirit, and the grace of God was changing people in unexpected places and in unexpected ways. Over and over again, they were encountering people about whom they would say “…Great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And in that they found healing!

In this transformation we see the challenges and inner struggles faced by every succeeding generation of Christians. Their transforming, God-provoked re-imagining of a long-held, commonly known practices mirror and inform the struggles we experience ourselves in a troubled culture during this excruciatingly troublesome year.

Amid our struggles for inclusion, our long history of racial inequality, the ways we understand Jesus, the Gospel, we will meet and encounter people who challenge our long-held, often cherished notions of faith.

Last Friday, August 14, two different branches of the Church recognized in their calendars the sacrificial witness of two very different saints on the very same day. The Roman Catholic Church remembered the witness Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Episcopal Church remembered Jonathan Myrick Daniels. 

Maximilian Kolbe was a Franciscan priest in Poland who overcame his early, learned anti-Semitism and after the Nazis invaded his country sheltered Jews fleeting the Holocaust. For this he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1941, when a prisoner escaped, ten other prisoners were rounded up to be executed. Kolbe stepped in and volunteered to die instead of one of the others, and so the Nazis executed him on August 14, 1941. He was canonized in 1982.

Jonathan Daniels was a seminarian who grew up in Keene, New Hampshire and attended the Virginia Military Institute and eventually the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Mass. In 1965, he answered the call to go to the South and help register disenfranchised black citizens to vote. And on 

August 14th, he was jailed in Haynesville, AL, along with six other Freedom Riders including a Catholic priest. After six days, on August 20th, they were released but while waiting for a ride, they were confronted by a deputy sheriff who aimed his shotgun at a young girl named Ruby Sales. Daniels pushed her aside and was killed in the blast. The priest was wounded trying to protect the others. Ruby Sales continues to be an activist for civil rights and justice to this day.

Sales was so traumatized by Daniels' murder that she nearly lost the ability to speak for the next seven months. Despite death threats made to her and her family, Sales testified at Tom Coleman's trial, where he was acquitted by a jury of 12 white men and said in a CBS television interview a year after the killings that he had no regrets, declaring, "I would shoot them both tomorrow."

Sales herself would later attend the same seminary as Daniels and works today as an advocate for civil rights and social justice.

I don’t know if I would ever have the courage of any of these saints, but their example inspires us to seek faith where it will be found, to speak out against racism, tyranny, and bigotry in all its forms. The story of the Gentile woman challenging Jesus is the story of the Church—of us—being challenged every day to see the image of God in the faces of all the people God gives us every day and reminds us of our baptismal promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons and to love our neighbor as ourselves, whoever and wherever they may be.

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The 12th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15A

This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost: August 16, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 11 Pentecost (Proper 15A) Sunday, August 16, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Meeting Jesus in the Storm

Here’s a riddle for you: Why did the disciples cross the lake? To get to the other side!

In Jesus’ day, the Sea of Galilee was a stormy place to sail anyway. It is actually a lot like sailing across the Great Lakes of North America. Water behaves differently on big inland fresh water lakes than they do on open oceans. The least bit of wind can create quite a tempest.  So, when the disciples were going across the water it was very rough going very quickly and they were stuck in the middle all night long, trying to make headway against a storm with an itty-bitty sail and oars.

The early church remembered Jesus’ miracle because they could identify with it immediately. Not because they were sailors or fishermen, but because the new, young church was like, to quote the prayer of St. Brendanthe Navigator, being in a very small boat on a big sea in the middle of a storm.  So, in the Gospel of Matthew (as in Mark, whose outline Matthew follows) going across the water means “going to the other side” from a safe familiar place to a new, foreign or unknown place of mission—by definition a risky and stormy trip.

Matthew is telling the story of what Jesus because the young church knew that they were sailing through a storm.

Around here, we know about storms. Not far from my house, there’s a sign on the road to the airport that is on a pole 15 feet high. It says that the storm surge from the bay will reach or cover that sign.

Many of us in these parts listen closely to the weather in hurricane season, put together a storm box in case the power goes out, know our flood zone by heart, and keep “go bags” at the ready in case we are told to bug out.  Mostly, we deal with them as best we can. We try to keep the water out and, if necessary, try to stay afloat, even if we don’t always make headway.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus walks across the water and through a storm to meet the disciples. Some paintings I have seen of this shows a serene Jesus walking across the water as peacefully as a stroll down a lane on a summer day. But I think that when Jesus walked across the water, he got very wet, and he probably looked like three miles of bad road when he finally did climb into the boat. The storm was all around him and the wind was still wailing. The powers of the storm and the wind and sea tried to overwhelm him but could not. He walked through the storm, not immune from its effects and fully immersed in its reality. The miracle is that he was not overpowered by it.

He would do that again on the cross. He would face everything evil and sin has to offer, including death. He would die a true and real death on the cross, just as he faced a true and real storm on the sea that day, and he would rise from the dead. In walking across the lake in the storm, he demonstrates not only his power but he also that the storm is real. The storm does not deter or stop him.

As he comes to the boat, the disciples see him and are afraid because they don’t know what to make of what they are seeing. But Jesus says to them the same thing he said on that third day in the upper room on that very first Easter: “Do not be afraid!”

Jesus comes and he brings peace, but the storm doesn’t stop. Not right away.  Which leads us to the rest of the story:

Oh, Peter. Poor old Peter!

We tend to give Peter short shrift because Jesus’ words to him after he is rescued sound to our ears like a rebuke: “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” We hear the words “little faith” and think “no faith.” We humans are very binary, very “1” or “0” about almost everything. We expect ourselves to either have the kind of faith to move mountains and accomplish the impossible, or to have no faith at all. The truth is that we are all somewhere in between. We are all people of “little faith.”  Martin Luther said that we are simultaneously saints and sinners.  Which is why we identify so much with Peter, because he is a lot like us: a lion of the faith with a heart of gold who is at the very same dense, afraid, and reactive.

The disciples are not spiritual klutzes who can’t shoot straight. They are faithful people on a difficult journey, and Jesus meets them in the midst of storms.

We forget that Peter did in fact do what Jesus did. He walked on the water! Until, well, he didn't. Still, I'll bet he walked farther than I would have, that's for sure!

St. Brendan the Navigator

Being a Christian is all about imitating Christ, and Peter wants to be like Jesus and do what Jesus does. He asks Jesus to call him and he answers the call. Only the storm is real, and as Peter moves into the storm, he says “uh-oh!” But even as he is sinking, even as he feels overwhelmed, Peter still calls out to Jesus. And Jesus helps Peter and brings him back to the boat. Safely aboard the boat, still beset by the storm, Jesus stills the storm. 

How many of us have done exactly the same thing? Who among us has never bitten off more than that we can chew spiritually?

Every summer for about thirty years, I go to Icon Camp, where I gather with other artists, most of us amateurs to paint an icon—an ancient Eastern Christian form of religious art found in Russian and Greek churches. We take a week to gather at a monastery where we paint, pray, eat, kibbitz, and then paint some more. 

One year, we worked on an icon based on today’s Gospel. Part of the work that week was to do a study of Jesus’ hand grasping Peter’s wrist in the midst of a maelstrom. That study is the heart and focus of the larger icon. That study was not just a lesson on artistic technique but also a reminder of the three miracles described in today’s Gospel: Jesus walks on the water. Peter walks on the water. Jesus stills the storm.  But first, before all that everyone (Peter and Jesus included) gets wet.

And no matter what, Jesus calls us, watches us, and rescues us.

Every Christian will experience storms. Baptism does not make us waterproof! We will all get wet! In fact, to do the ministries we are called to do, we will be sent into some pretty thick weather! But Jesus comes to us and is with us in the storm. We cannot still the storm or walk on water alone. But Jesus has power over the storm. The storm will not defeat Jesus. And we people of little faith, we are at once saints and sinners, need only reach out to Jesus and say “Lord, save me!” and he is there in the midst of the storm to rescue us. 

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost: August 9, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 10 Pentecost (Proper 14A) Sunday, August 9, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Jesus' manna moment

So, I have a question: was Jesus a foodie? Or did he just like dinner parties and big bashes?

I ask this because so much of Jesus’ teaching and even some of his miracles happen while there’s food around. Think about it: after the opening poem in John’s Gospel, the first thing we see is Jesus at a party turning water into wine. During another dinner with a bunch of religious leaders and lay people, a women crashed the party and washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair? Remember how, during his sojourn in the desert, Jesus is tempted by Satan to turn stones into bread—but, as hungry as he was, he doesn’t do it? On the other hand, when Jesus had dinner with Matthew and his tax collector friends, some of the local clerics and lay leaders grumbled about his gluttony? And, of course, there’s the last supper in the upper room where he washed his disciples’ feet and then celebrated a Passover meal with them! Remember how the risen Jesus appeared after the resurrection to the disciples as a group, around that very same dinner table, and how another time, the Risen Jesus cooks his fisherman-followers breakfast over a campfire?  After walking along the Emmaus road with a pair of sad, grief-stricken followers of Jesus, they didn’t recognize his risen self until he breaks bread with them in their own upper room.

So many encounters over so many meals! I guess we shouldn’t be all that surprised that Jesus would choose to feed a big crowd of people who came to hear him with baskets and baskets of food that he blessed and multiplied out of a kid’s bag lunch.

The miraculous feeding with the loaves and fishes must have on made an impression on Jesus’ followers, because it shows up six times in all four Gospels. Six! All the Gospels have at least one account of this, but Matthew and Mark have two… when Jesus fed 5000 of mainly Jewish listeners, and 4000 mostly Gentile folks in a place called the Decapolis. 

This repetition is a very big deal!

The people in the four early church communities that gave us the Gospels remembered these miracles not just because they were spectacular, but precisely because they were repeated. My hunch is that miraculously feeding lots of people from a small grocery bag was a regular, or at least not infrequent, part of Jesus’ preaching and proclamation. It sits right up there with the various healings and his way of teaching.  Jesus demonstrates the abundance of God’s love, grace, and care for all of us in that is once practical and spectacular: by feeding hungry people.

There feedings were Jesus’ manna moments. Not just once, as with the miracle of the manna in the wilderness in Exodus, but time and time again. And just like Moses’ miracle in the desert, Jesus feeds the people both freely and abundantly every single time.

Today, we associate the Eucharist with the very stylized but spare meal that we do in church every week. But in the early church, the line between a festive dinner, often called an Agape meal, and the Eucharist was almost indistinguishable. Sometimes early Christians got so carried away with the festivity, that the parties could get out of hand. At one point, the Apostle Paul had to remind the Christians in Corinth not only to settle down, but also that the folks who could afford catered meals had to look out for (and share with) people who could only bring a small casserole or loaf of bread.

Eventually, the Eucharist got separated from the banquets, so that today we celebrate, in a very ritualized way, the infinite grace imparted using only a tiny piece of blessed wafer and a sip of sacramental wine. After that, we proceed to the parish hall for coffee, iced tea, and yummy treats, or sometimes to a wonderful meal.

I will never forget how my first parish had a community meal (aka, a soup kitchen) six days a week, and that every week a Eucharist preceded it every Wednesdays at noon. That simple celebration was often attended by the same people who both served the food and those who shared the meal. For a lot of these folks, that meal was their only meal of the day, and that service was their only church. And for them, the two meals, both the one in church and the one in the dining room, were deeply linked. They couldn’t have one without the other.

Today’s Gospel reminds us that the grace imparted in the Eucharistic meal and the grace seen in the feeding of the five thousand are both practical expressions of God's never-ending, generous love.

But more than that, Matthew’s church remembered how Jesus fed the 5000 and put in their Gospel story an act of practical reminiscence. Because when Jesus took this small offering of food, blessed and broke the bread, and gave it to his disciples to hand out, he demonstrated what all of Jesus’ images of small seeds growing into big shrubs, yeast rising into loaves, someone finding treasure hidden in a field and buying it, a woman turning her house upside down to find a lost coin was really all about. The feeding of the five thousand was for them, and us, a living demonstration of those little kingdom parables.  Jesus showed us that the kingdom of God is all around us all the time, and that God's grace abounds not only in sanctuaries but in fields, on hill tops, and in the homes, farms, and shops of ordinary people. The reign of God is found in lunch boxes as well as in temples. Jesus shows us we are all called to love, care for, and feed one another, and that in God’s economy the smallest acts of kindness and compassion makes all the difference in the world.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost: August 2, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 10 Pentecost (Proper 13A) Sunday, August 2 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.