Sept. 25, 2016, 19th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 16:19-31  (The Message)

19-21 “There once was a rich man, expensively dressed in the latest fashions, wasting his days in conspicuous consumption. A poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, had been dumped on his doorstep. All he lived for was to get a meal from scraps off the rich man’s table. His best friends were the dogs who came and licked his sores.
22-24 “Then he died, this poor man, and was taken up by the angels to the lap of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell and in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham in the distance and Lazarus in his lap. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, mercy! Have mercy! Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water to cool my tongue. I’m in agony in this fire.’
25-26 “But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that in your lifetime you got the good things and Lazarus the bad things. It’s not like that here. Here he’s consoled and you’re tormented. Besides, in all these matters there is a huge chasm set between us so that no one can go from us to you even if he wanted to, nor can anyone cross over from you to us.’
27-28 “The rich man said, ‘Then let me ask you, Father: Send him to the house of my father where I have five brothers, so he can tell them the score and warn them so they won’t end up here in this place of torment.’
29 “Abraham answered, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets to tell them the score. Let them listen to them.’
30 “‘I know, Father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but they’re not listening. If someone came back to them from the dead, they would change their ways.’
31 “Abraham replied, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the Prophets, they’re not going to be convinced by someone who rises from the dead.’”


The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus does not tell us it is a crime to be rich.
Or that those who have a good time of it here will get their suffering in eternity.

It sounds like it does, but it doesn’t!
Nor does it give us a clear picture of the way it is in heaven.
Anymore than our jokes about heaven do.

“To use this story as warrant for a doctrine of a brimstone hell, or to deduce from it the dogma of the absolute and irrevocable separation of the good and the bad hereafter, is to transplant it violently from its native soil of parable to a barren literalism where it cannot live.”   Parables of Jesus, Geo. Buttrick, p. 140

The point of the parable is that life is to be lived, not evaded.  The rich man was guilty of evasion; running away from real life into his pretend world where he didn’t have to see Lazarus - really see him.  He was afraid of the smell of poverty and used his riches to evade facing the poverty all around him.

Like it or not, we are the rich man.  We too run away from life, evading those places and people where our God has chosen to meet us, even as God meets us in Jesus who said, “What so ever you do for the least of these, you do it unto me.”

Living in the Kingdom of God is not a matter of having heaven all figured out; or the mysteries of death and eternity solved.  It is a matter of loosing oneself in life, giving oneself away, hurting with those who hurt, weeping with those who weep, laughing with those who laugh, and discovering that life comes not by evading but by jumping in.

This takes faith; faith which comes by hearing the Word of God, and doing it.
Faith for living, not just for dying.





The parable of The Rich man and Lazarus
is about indifference and idolatry;
about how easily we ‘miss the mark’
for which life and possessions are intended.






Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me figure out how to lose myself in living, so life becomes more than just consuming.  And what I have,  who I am , (my riches) becomes a gift to someone somewhere, close or far away.”

Sept. 18, 2016, 18th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 16:19  (The Message)

16 1-2 Jesus said to his disciples, “There was once a rich man who had a manager. He got reports that the manager had been taking advantage of his position by running up huge personal expenses. So he called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? You’re fired. And I want a complete audit of your books.’
3-4 “The manager said to himself, ‘What am I going to do? I’ve lost my job as manager. I’m not strong enough for a laboring job, and I’m too proud to beg. . . . Ah, I’ve got a plan. Here’s what I’ll do . . . then when I’m turned out into the street, people will take me into their houses.’
5 “Then he went at it. One after another, he called in the people who were in debt to his master. He said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’
6 “He replied, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’
“The manager said, ‘Here, take your bill, sit down here—quick now—write fifty.’
7 “To the next he said, ‘And you, what do you owe?’
“He answered, ‘A hundred sacks of wheat.’
“He said, ‘Take your bill, write in eighty.’
8-9 “Now here’s a surprise: The master praised the crooked manager! And why? Because he knew how to look after himself. Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”


The master praised the dishonest servant  “because he acted shrewdly” (other translations of why the servant was praised) that is he was…“sharp-witted, perceptive, smart, wise, savvy, clever, canny”.

“This is the most difficult of all parables and no interpretation is wholly satisfactory.”
And if we get stuck in trying to figure out what is happening and how Jesus could
use such a scoundrel to make his point we will miss the point of it all.

What Jesus is dramatically laying before us is that we are to be as shrewd and cunning as those who don’t care - and we are to do it as those who do care, because we have a God who cares.  As those who live by grace and know it is the only way we can make it - in this life or the life to come.

As children of the grace we are to work hard at being  shrewdly graceful in how we live with the priorities of God’s Kingdom deeply imbedded in our heart, soul, mind and being.  How we live with faith as “a power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of life.”  A power and passion born of grace which means we live not to get even but to forgive;  not to judge and condemn but to be compassionate as our God is compassionate!

“The point of the parable is not to approve what the steward did wrong, but to applaud how rightly he did it.  We are to do rightly what is right, even as he did rightly what was wrong.









"If he doesn't disturb us,
then he's not Jesus."
Andrew Greeley










Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me to be shrewdly graceful in all I do, letting compassion rule my heart and my actions.”

Sept. 11, 2016, 17th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 15:1-10  (The Message )

The Story of the Lost Sheep
15 1-3 By this time a lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus, listening intently. The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased. They growled, “He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends.” Their grumbling triggered this story.
4-7 “Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in your friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Celebrate with me! I’ve found my lost sheep!’ Count on it—there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than over ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue.

The Story of the Lost Coin
8-10 “Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it? And when she finds it you can be sure she’ll call her friends and neighbors: ‘Celebrate with me! I found my lost coin!’ Count on it—that’s the kind of party God’s angels throw every time one lost soul turns to God.”

We who are religious like to see repentance first, then God will forgive.

Is it not the other way around?
God forgives - that is God offers love and forgiveness to the lost - to help them repent.

God is open to the lost and rejoices on their being found.  It is in the process of the celebration that repentance really takes place.  Because I have been found, when I didn’t think anyone, certainly not God, would want me, or bother looking for me.

What a joy to be found and loved before I deserve  it.  To have a party thrown for me before I could even mumble my repentance.

To be saved is to trust that God loves me enough that I dare risk getting lost again, not because I am indifferent to God’s love, but because I am trying to let  love be at the center of my life, and sometimes that gets dangerous and means I have to do what I don’t want to do.  And I get lost trying to find my way through life’s dilemma’s.
Yet God will find me again, and again, and again, until I get it right.

The parables of Jesus are about
"a passionately, desperately,
insanely forgiving God."
Andrew Greeley









Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, don’t give up on me.  I will get it right eventually,
and love as you love me.”

Sept. 4, 2016, 16th Sunday After Pentecost

Luke 14:25-33 (The Message)

25-27 One day when large groups of people were walking along with him, Jesus turned and told them, “Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters—yes, even one’s own self!—can’t be my disciple. Anyone who won’t shoulder his own cross and follow behind me can’t be my disciple.
28-30 “Is there anyone here who, planning to build a new house, doesn’t first sit down and figure the cost so you’ll know if you can complete it? If you only get the foundation laid and then run out of money, you’re going to look pretty foolish. Everyone passing by will poke fun at you: ‘He started something he couldn’t finish.’
31-32 “Or can you imagine a king going into battle against another king without first deciding whether it is possible with his ten thousand troops to face the twenty thousand troops of the other? And if he decides he can’t, won’t he send an emissary and work out a truce?33 “Simply put, if you’re not willing to take what is dearest to you, whether plans or people, and kiss it good-bye, you can’t be my disciple.

These are radical words designed to set us free from that which really destroys the joy of living - luke warm religion.  To play with religion is worse than no religion at all.  To want a little bit of God, but not enough to make us have to change our ways, is worse then having no God at all.  At least then we are honest!

Jesus is not advocating that we ‘hate’ in his name.  He is advocating that we place first things first - and that means discipleship!  Loving God with all our being.

These words were spoken at a time when Jesus was popular.  As such, they were designed to shatter the illusion that discipleship is a mass movement.  Jesus would have us go where we don’t want to go and do what we don’t want to do.  Many drop out. There are times when to be near Jesus is the most dangerous place to be.

Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, give me the courage to go where I don’t want to go, and the strength to do what I don’t want to do, as your Disciple.”