Like a Thief in the Night

November 30, 2025

Matthew 24:36-44

            It’s been a really long time now, but I still have some pretty vivid memories of the events that preceded the birth of my son, Joe.  I would imagine that all of us who are parents have the same kinds of memories.  Jackie and I did the Lamaze class thing.  One of the members of our class actually delivered before the classes were over, bringing her newborn into one of the classes, reminding all of us of what waited ahead.  We went through the usual flurry of purchasing baby clothes and supplies, putting a crib together, having a baby shower, and getting the baby’s room ready.  Of course, in those days, knowing whether the baby would be a boy or a girl was a mystery until the child was born and so not knowing whether we would have a boy or a girl we decorated the nursery in a gender-neutral style.  But Jackie, never one to do anything half-way, decided on a Muppet theme for the room and she, her brother John, and I painted Sesame Street murals on the walls, a few of which I was able to find pictures of.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find a picture of the one painting that I did by myself.  It was a painting of Oscar the Grouch in his trash can, but I can assure you that it was a respectable representation of Oscar. 

            We didn’t know the day or time of Joe’s arrival, but we had a general idea and so, preparation for the event was a high priority right up until the day that Jackie went into labor.  And on that day, just as Jackie’s contractions were beginning, I found myself accompanying her to the grocery store to make sure that our refrigerator and cupboards were sufficiently full.  It boggles my mind to this day that that was Jackie’s first thought as she went into labor.

            Today is the first Sunday in Advent, the beginning of the church year.  And while some may find it curious that our New Testament lesson today has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas or journeys to Bethlehem or babies in a manger, today we are reminded that God’s plan includes not one, but two comings of Jesus.  And today the first lesson for Advent focuses not on His first coming but on His second.

            There are a couple of different ways of looking at today’s scripture.  I suppose the fun way to look at it is to speculate on what is to come.  Theories about the timing of the second coming are ubiquitous and more than one prominent preacher’s career has been compromised by guessing incorrectly about when Jesus will return.  Just this past year a South African pastor predicted that the world would end on September 23^rd.  Oops, wrong again!  And theories also abound about HOW Christ’s return will work.  Rapture theology developed in the early 1800’s… and was popularized by none other than the prominent preacher and theologian, D. L. Moody. 

There are a few verses in the New Testament that may possibly support the idea of Rapture theology, but I really don’t want to talk about that today, other than to say that I believe that this entire exercise of trying to interpret the timing or the methodology of Christ’s second coming, or, as theologians refer to it, the Parousia, really misses the point of today’s text.   Because I believe that what Jesus is actually teaching here is not so much a lesson about what is to come; but is much more likely to be a lesson about the narrow road.  You know, that passage from Matthew 7:13 that says, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Jesus begins His teaching today by talking about Noah.  In Genesis 5:32 the Bible tells us that, “After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.”  Noah was 600 years old when the floodwaters came and he entered the ark with his sons and their wives.  Assuming that his sons married in the typical time frame in their twenties or thirties, theologians presume that it took Noah between 50 and 75 years to build the ark.  Let’s think about that for just a moment.  50 to 75 years!  50 to 75 years of ridicule from your neighbors.  50 to 75 years of chopping down trees and constructing a boat the size of an aircraft carrier in the middle of your back yard.  50 to 75 years of waiting for a flood that, as time passed, may very well have seemed less and less likely to actually happen. 

Noah’s neighbors continued to live their lives without the slightest concern for the impending disaster, but Noah kept building, kept preparing, and most important, kept believing. 

When we ask ourselves “What does Jesus mean when He says that we need to be prepared”.  Part of the answer to that question is apparent in Noah’s story.  It is to continue to function, to continue to live our lives in a way that reflects our belief that God is going to do what He says that He is going to do.  For Noah, that meant to spend 50 to 75 years of his life taking a giant step in faith and building that ark.  But we aren’t being called to build an ark, so what does being prepared mean for us? 

Well, how do we define what it is that Noah did?  Through what was certainly decades building the ark, Noah remained true to the task; and not just the task of building.  Noah convinced his family to stick with him, and I would imagine that that might have been a challenge.  And yet, thanks to Noah’s efforts, his entire family followed him onto the ark and was saved.  Noah followed God’s instructions to the letter, both in the building of the ark and in the gathering of the animals.  In short… Noah was faithful.  He did exactly what he was called to do.

Ronald J. Allen tells us that, “Matthew 24:37-44 reinforces the idea that the community must “be ready.” In this context, to “be ready” is to continue to do what Jesus taught in the Gospel of Matthew. The community is to prepare for the final advent less by doing special things and more by living and witnessing as Jesus instructed. The liturgical season of Advent is an annual reminder of the importance of faithfully doing what Jesus said.” [1] 

And so, when Jesus is telling His followers to be prepared, what He is asking us to do IS to be faithful; to live in the way that we are called to live, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to welcome the foreigner, and to stand for justice for all of God’s beloved children.  To live, as close as we are able, to the way that Jesus has called us to live… to BE the people that He has called us to be.

Next, Jesus talks about the two men working in the field and the two women grinding at a hand mill and saying about each that one will be taken and the other left.  Jesus is trying to impart a sense of urgency.  The fact that it has taken 2,000 years and still counting for Jesus to return may lead people into a false sense of security; may lead people to think that it’s not going to happen at all.  And I suspect that some folks in Noah’s day may have felt the same way about that flood that took 75 years to happen.  But when Jesus does return it will be like a thief in the night, sudden and irrevocable.  Jo Ann Taylor says, “Whatever you are doing when the time comes, you won’t have a chance to change your mind about Jesus then. It will be sudden, and it will be final. Since we have no idea when it will occur, we need to start living our lives right now for the possibility of that moment. We need to make sure that the daily tasks we are performing when Christ comes again are the sort of tasks that will prepare us for that time. As we work our fields and grind our grain, we need to be doing it as faithful followers of Jesus who are eager for him to come again. As we go about our daily routines, those routines should reflect our hunger for God, and our desire for his Kingdom to come in its fullness.” [2]

But there’s more.  As believers we are called to have a heart for the lost.  If we are working in the fields or we are grinding grain (Metaphorically speaking), we don’t want our work partners to be the ones who are going to be excluded from the kingdom, do we?  No!  We want them to find what we have found.  We want them to become children of the kingdom also.  And when we live our lives in the way that Jesus has called us to live them, when we live lives of grace and compassion and empathy and when we love others as Jesus has called us to love them, we may just find ourselves becoming the bearers of the Good News; the ones whose witness will save them.  By loving others in unexpected ways, we become a living, breathing, version of the Gospel; teaching others about the love of Jesus through our lives and through our example.  So, living in a state of constant readiness for the inauguration of the kingdom isn’t just something that we do for ourselves.  It is something that we do to show God’s love to the world in the hope that showing that love will lead others to a saving faith in Jesus.

Before my son Joe was born Jackie and I were caught up in this whirlwind of preparation where practically everything that we did was done in anticipation of the impending birth.  We were anxious and we were apprehensive but we were overjoyed at the prospect of becoming parents.  No, we didn’t know the day or the time, but we knew for sure that that day was coming.

This Advent we face a lot of the same kinds of emotions.  We can be apprehensive, we can be anxious, but we should be filled with wonder and awe and joy at the promise that awaits us.  And so, let us live our lives fully in anticipation of the coming of God’s kingdom.  And let us live our lives as witnesses to the love of God in Christ, in order that others may join with us in our joyful anticipation of Jesus’ return.

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[1] Ronald J. Allen, WorkingPreacher.com, Commentary on Matthew 24:36-44

[2] Jo Ann Taylor, A Pastor Sings, Keep Awake!

Stand Firm, and You Will Win Life

November 16, 2025

Luke 21:5-19

            It would be tempting to interpret today’s reading as prophecy, where Jesus is giving us all a hint about the future and what’s going to be happening.  And, while Jesus was indeed prophesying, the intent of His message was not about helping us to predict the future.  The intent of His message is to help His followers (and that would include us!) to keep the faith.  To stand strong in the face of adversity or difficulties or even persecution.  Over the last several weeks as we’ve talked about Luke’s narrative of Jesus setting His face toward Jerusalem, we’ve seen all kinds of opposition.  We’ve seen Pharisees and Sadducees and teachers of the law and even the Roman authorities opposing Jesus, trying to entrap Him with contrived questions, and trying to inhibit His work of spreading the Gospel.  If Jesus Himself couldn’t avoid the confrontations and the roadblocks that tried to impede His work, why in the world would we think that things would be any easier for us?

            The world, and when I speak of “the world” I speak of that portion of humanity that rejects Jesus and His teachings; and that prioritizes money and power ahead of the needs of God’s beloved children, this world about which I speak despises Jesus and everything that He stands for.  The world rejects the idea of helping others because helping others costs money and inhibits the world’s ability to amass even greater wealth.  The world rejects the idea of loving others because loving others requires one to direct one’s attention outward and so to be less selfish and therefore less capable of gathering more for oneself.  The world cares not for justice because justice interferes with one’s ability to amass money or power or self-gratification.  The world bids us not only to ignore the needs of others, but actually encourages the exploitation of others for personal gain. 

“Get while the getting is good”, “Look out for number one”, “They who die with the most toys win”, these are the mantras of this world; a world that finds ultimate convenience in taking from others whatever one can so that one can have even more.  It is a really ugly thought, isn’t it?  None of us would prefer to look at the world that way.  It would be so much more comfortable to focus on the good moments, the moments of people helping people, the moments of people making sacrifices to make sure that other people are OK, those feel-good moments that buttress our faith in humanity.  But deep down, we all know that those are the exceptions rather than the rule.

  It isn’t easy to look at our world with the kind of cold detachment that allows us to recognize the evil that is so prevalent; evil that we, sadly, have just grown to expect.  We look away from the person asking for spare change and create a narrative in our head that they will just use the money for drugs.  We shield ourselves from the fact that 11.1% of Americans live in poverty, ten million of them being children.  Almost 18 million households in the United States are food insecure, three quarters of a million are homeless, and 8.2% of the population… more than 27 million Americans are living without health insurance.  And none of that is due to a lack of resources, it’s all due to a lack of distribution.  It’s due to a world that refuses to recognize the fact that when one hoards resources, those resources are being denied to others who may very well be in desperate need.  The world calls this the cost of doing business.  God calls it sin.

There is a reason that we tend to hold the thought all of these things at a distance.  It’s self-preservation.  The problem of evil is so overwhelming… and when we contemplate all of the evil that exists in this world, the problem just seems so hopeless that we really can’t cope with it.  It’s just too much.

Today, this is what Jesus has chosen to talk about. 

Herod’s Temple almost defies description. It was built of gleaming white stones with accents of real gold and it was built on a large hill.  The temple could be seen from miles away and the sun would reflect off of the white stones and the gold creating a striking picture of beauty and grandeur.  The temple itself was the size of a modern football field, and the temple complex including the enclosed courts was the size of 28 football fields, over a million square feet and had enough room to accommodate about 400,000 people.

And there is one other thing that we need to know about the temple.  The temple was built by King Herod and King Herod had no Jewish blood.  He was born into an Edomite family who had been forcibly converted to Judaism and he was raised as a Jew, but the Jewish people did not accept him as a Jew.  Herod was known to have a massive ego, and he built the temple more as a monument to himself than as a place to honor God.  He wanted to outdo the rulers of the surrounding lands by building a temple that would far surpass the massive pagan temples built by the other rulers. And so, among the Jews, there were mixed feelings about the temple.  Yes, it was the center of Jewish worship and a place of Jewish pride.  But the knowledge of Herod’s egotistical involvement with the building of the temple, the fact that a man who claimed to be a Jew but whose actions belied his faith at every turn was something that tainted the temple for the people, even though they revered it.

In today’s story, the disciples look at the temple and comment on its beauty.  Jesus responds to their comment, saying, “The time will come when all that you see here will be destroyed. Every stone of these buildings will be thrown down to the ground. Not one stone will be left on another.”  I don’t know if we can understand how shocking this must have been to those who heard it.  For the Jewish people, the loss of not just the center of their worship, but the center of Jewish community would be catastrophic.

            And indeed, it was.  In 68 CE a group of Jewish Zealots rebelled against Rome.  The Romans besieged Jerusalem for two years.  The Jewish historian Josephus estimated that as many as a million Jews may have perished in that siege.  Even the Roman historian Tacitus set that number at around 600,000 but regardless of how many were lost, it was a terrible, horrifying event.  The Romans finally breached the wall in 70 CE and, true to Jesus’ prophecy, the Roman soldiers were commanded not to leave one stone standing on top of another.  The destruction of Jerusalem was complete.

            But Jesus didn’t stop with just this prophecy.  False prophets, nations and kingdoms set against each other in wars, poverty, famine, earthquakes, sickness, persecutions and rejection by family and friends, all of these things will happen, Jesus said.  But like I said earlier, His focus was not on predicting the future.  His focus was on that sense of hopelessness that we feel when we encounter the evils of this world… that paralyzing feeling that we are helpless to do anything significant to help.

            And so, what IS Jesus’ message today?  The message is to stand firm!  To continue to live our faith as we are called to live it and to do so regardless of our circumstances.

            I’ve mentioned before that Luke likes to arrange the stories in his Gospel in such a way that the stories are explained or enhanced by the surrounding stories.  Just prior to today’s lesson we read about the widow in the temple donating the single, small, coin that was all that she had.  As the disciples were contemplating the grandeur of the temple building, Jesus had just finished commending the sacrificial gift given by a woman who was living in the depths of poverty. 

Perhaps Jesus is commenting here on the nature of what it means to “stand firm”.  Maybe standing firm means not allowing ourselves to become overwhelmed.  Maybe standing firm means recognizing the needs of a single person in our own community and being the one who alleviates suffering for just that one person.  Maybe standing firm means to be a strident voice speaking out for justice, calling out the injustices of this world and advocating for something better.  Maybe standing firm means to be praying fervently for God’s will to be accomplished in this world, for hearts to turn to Jesus, for lives to be changed and for righteousness and justice to flow like a never-ending stream.  And certainly, standing firm means to trust God; to know without reservation that He is our strength and our shield, an ever-present help in times of trouble. 

            Those who stand firm, those who have empathy for others and who are willing to help as their circumstances permit, those who stand for justice and speak out against the injustices of this world, those who pray for the well-being of others both physically and spiritually, those who listen to and obey the call of the Holy Spirit, and those who share the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with others, these are the people who will win life.  And not just life, but eternal life in abundance.

            Last week I quoted a part of 1 Corinthians 2:9. I’d like to repeat it today.  “No one has ever seen, no one has ever heard, no one has ever imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.”  Stand firm!  And we will win life.  A life that is more wonderful than anything that we could possibly imagine.

A Shaggy Dog Story

November 9, 2025

Luke 20:27-38

            The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a “Shaggy Dog Story” as, “Of, relating to, or being a long-drawn-out circumstantial story concerning an inconsequential happening that impresses the teller as humorous or interesting but the hearer as boring and pointless”.  Today’s lesson is a shaggy dog story in the form of a question asked of Jesus by the Sadducees. 

Jesus had just had His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey with crowds shouting “Hosanna” and “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord”.  We can well imagine how alarming this event would have been to the temple authorities and leaders, not to mention the Roman authorities.  And so, today’s question from the Sadducees is the third in a series of questions posed to Jesus in the temple courts.  But all three of these questions that were asked were totally disingenuous; asked not out of an attitude of curiosity or a desire to learn, but simply to try to entrap Jesus into saying something… anything that would get Him into trouble. 

            The first question saw the chief priests and the teachers of the law asking by what authority Jesus was teaching.  They were hoping that His answer could be construed to be blasphemous.  Instead, Jesus thwarted their plan by telling them that He would answer their question only if they would answer His question.  He asked them if John the Baptist’s baptism was of heavenly origin or of human origin.  This was a loaded question because either answer would create huge problems for the Jewish authorities, and so they refused to answer.   And so did Jesus.

            The second question was asked in the presence of Roman sympathizers and the authorities were trying to trap Jesus with a question about whether or not it was appropriate for Jews to pay taxes to Caesar.  Jesus again thwarted their plan by showing them a coin with Caesar’s image and telling them to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and render to God what belongs to God.

            And in today’s lesson the Sadducees ask their shaggy dog story question.  You see, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection.  They were literalists who put primary emphasis on the 5 books of the Torah and, unlike the Pharisees, did not accept the oral traditions.  Since the Torah does not speak specifically about the resurrection, the Sadducees rejected any teaching that was related to it.  Now, there was a part of Mosaic Law that is referred to as “Levirite Law” in which, if a man marries a woman and he dies childless, the law requires his brother to marry his widow and produce a child in his name.  The purpose of this is, of course, the carrying on of the dead man’s family name, his legacy as it were, and the continuation of property rights, which would protect the widow.  And so, the Sadducees pose a ridiculous question where a man marries a woman and dies childless.  The man’s brother marries her and also dies childless and subsequently, all seven brothers in the family marry this woman and die childless.  The question the Sadducees ask is, in the resurrection, to whom is this woman married?  Since in this life she was married to all seven brothers.  Does this qualify as a shaggy dog story?  It sounds like some of the jokes I tell.

            Since the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, this question was clearly an attempt to ridicule belief in the resurrection but was also an attempt to entice Jesus into saying something that would make Him look bad or get Him into trouble.  I am not really sure why Luke chose not to report the same beginning to Jesus’ answer that Mark did, but Mark reports Jesus as having said, “How could you be so wrong? It’s because you don’t know what the Scriptures say. And you don’t know anything about God’s power.” 

Instead, Luke tells us that Jesus gave them an answer in two parts.  The first part was for Jesus to explain to the Sadducees that the life to come will be, in many ways, very different from the way things are now.  Erdman tells us that, “Those who share the glory of that age, and who will experience the blessedness of ‘the resurrection from the dead’ will be immortal in soul and body.  Marriage, which is now necessary for the continuation of the race, will no longer exist.  The relationships in that life will be higher than even the most sacred relationship of the present life.”  [1]  And so, to begin with, the Sadducees are applying worldly thinking to something that is quite beyond our imagination.  Paul gives us a pretty good insight into this idea in 1 Corinthians when he said, “No one has ever seen, no one has ever heard, no one has ever imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him”.

Then, Jesus’ answer had a second part.  The Sadducees were thoroughly convinced that the Torah did not teach about the resurrection, but Jesus used the Torah itself to address their argument.  Jesus told them that, in the story of the burning bush where God first revealed His name to Moses, God identified Himself as “‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  These men were all long dead by Moses’ time, and those who are dead cannot have a God, because when you are dead you don’t have anything.  And so, if God is calling Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then they must still be alive, at least to God.  Because, as Jesus said, God is God of the living, not the dead.  Caird says, “Death may put an end to physical existence, but not a relationship that is by nature eternal”.  [2]  The Sadducees were so wrapped up in this life and how things work according to their own experience, that they failed to consider the wonder, the miracle, of the resurrection, and the riches that God has prepared for His beloved children. 

But there is something deeper in today’s lesson.  The Sadducees tended to be the wealthy elite of first century Judaism. They collaborated with the Romans, not because they agreed with Roman rule or methods, but because the Sadducees were a very pragmatic people and collaborating with the Romans allowed them to keep their positions of authority and their status as the wealthy elite.  But we all know that Roman rule in first century Palestine was profoundly unjust.  And when we think of the attributes of God, Justice is very high on that list.  We know, of course, that love is first and foremost on that list, but it has been said that justice is just love in action. 

It is impossible for Christians to look at the world in its fallen state and to find any semblance of consistent justice.  The sad fact is that our fallen world is persistently unjust.  And so, if we, as Christians, believe in justice… if we believe that God will, at some point make everything right, then we must believe in the resurrection because ultimate justice cannot happen without it.  God’s entire story as it relates to humanity is the story of the fall, the calling, the redemption, and the renewing, first the renewing of the heart, then the renewing of the resurrection including the introduction of the new heaven and the new earth.  “Behold, I make everything new!”

Let me ask a question… If we should happen to be driving on the Parkway, do we always carefully follow the speed limit, or might we occasionally drive just a little bit faster?  Answer carefully, because I’ve seen some of you drive.  Now… if we are driving and we see a state trooper up ahead, how much more likely are we to carefully follow the speed limit?  The fact is… the presence of authority will almost always alter our behavior.  Whatever it is that we are doing, no matter what that may be, if there is authority present, the chances of us meticulously following the rules greatly increases.  And so, what would happen if God was personally and noticeably watching every single thing that we did?  Do you think it’s possible that we might be inclined to live differently?  Probably so, right?  It would be just like us slowing down for that state trooper. 

But here is the thing: In the presence of authority, what changes within us is our behavior, not our inclinations.  And God has no interest in having His children pretending to be good.  God wants the goodness of His children to flow from hearts that are loving and Christ-like.  God is perfectly willing to forgive the lapses of those who love Him; the slips and falls of those who have committed themselves to that pursuit of Christ-likeness; of those who AGREE with God that His ways are right and just.  But the only possible way for anyone to come to the conclusion that they DO agree with God is for them to have complete freedom to choose for themselves whether they wish to follow God and embark upon that quest for Christ-likeness, or to reject God and seek only their own satisfaction.  Every individual MUST be given that choice.  This is why free will is such an integral part of God’s plan for humanity.  God, with all of His infinite power, is not able to create love.  Love can only be real when it is given of one’s free will.

It is the human seeking of our own satisfaction BOTH by unbelievers and by believers, that create all of the injustice that exists in this fallen world.  And those injustices will never be remedied until the day that God separates those who have chosen to follow Him, from those who have chosen to reject Him and to seek only their own satisfaction.  And that will not happen until after the resurrection.  So, if we do believe that God will ultimately make all things right, then it turns out that by default, we have to believe in the resurrection.  Yes, we may still have questions in our minds.  The idea of resurrection life is a pretty hard thing for us to wrap our heads around, but if we truly believe that God will bring justice to His creation then we are already placing our trust in the fact that God will indeed make everything new.

Pablo Kim Sun tells us that, “God raised Jesus from the dead and highly exalted him and gave the name that is above every name. Jesus’ bodily resurrection and his exaltation also means the restoration of God’s justice. As Jesus’ resurrection is a sign of assurance that all believers will be resurrected, it is even a sign of promise that God will bring all injustices to justice. Therefore, as I believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, I trust that God’s justice will triumph over all injustices as well.”  [3]

            So, what do we have to learn from today’s shaggy dog story?  The Sadducees were so convinced of the rightness of their theology that they left no room for the miraculous.  Their over-emphasis on the Torah, basically ignoring the wisdom and the prophets whose words interpreted and illuminated the Torah left them with an incomplete understanding of God’s world and indeed of God’s call to them.  And their theologies were so entrenched and their approach to their faith so inflexible that they failed to recognize the Son of God when He was standing right in front of them.  Let us always be open to the possibility of the miraculous and let us never become so inflexible that we fail to see the work of an infinite God who loves us beyond measure.

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[1] Charles R. Erdman, The Gospel of Luke, Pg. 209

[2] Caird, cited by Leon Morris, Tyndale NT Commentaries: Luke, Pg. 319

[3] Pable Kim Sun, crcna.org,, Do Justice

Salvation Has Come to This House

November 2, 2025

Luke 19:1-10

            Over the last few months, we’ve talked about quite a few people whose stories from the Bible have made them famous.  Just last week we talked about the Pharisee and the tax collector, characters in a very well-known story.  We’ve talked about the persistent widow and the unjust judge and we’ve talked about the rich man and Lazarus, also all characters from well-known stories.  We’ve talked about Nicodemus, the other Lazarus, and Jairus.  All of these folks are people for whom their stories being in the Bible have made them famous over the millennia.  But you know what?  These people may be famous, but they aren’t “somebody wrote a song about me famous”!  But today we have the real deal.  This guy today is so famous that somebody actually DID write a song about him. 

Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he,

he climbed up in a sycamore tree, the Savior for to see. 

And as the Savior passed that way he looked up in the tree, and he said,

“Zacchaeus, you come down, for I’m going to your house today.” 

And not only is Zacchaeus “somebody wrote a song about me” famous, but when they sing his song, his song has hand motions.  There’s this whole actual pantomime thing that goes along with his song.  Now that, THAT is famous!

            I would imagine that at least a few of us have heard the story of Zacchaeus somewhere along the line. (Other than the song, I mean).  Jesus is traveling through Jericho and Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, wants to see him, actually the text tells us that Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was.  But apparently, Zacchaeus was, umm, vertically challenged, and so, he climbed a Sycamore Tree to get a better view.  And just incidentally, in modern day Jericho, on the main road that goes past Jericho, there is a 2,000-year-old sycamore tree right by the side of the road that tradition tells us is Zacchaeus’ actual tree.  I guess it goes without saying that it is a big tourist attraction.  Anyway, Jesus sees Zacchaeus in the tree and tells him; commands him actually, to come down from the tree because Jesus MUST have dinner at his house tonight.  Zacchaeus, delighted at Jesus’ call, excitedly comes to Jesus and proclaims that he is giving half of his possessions to the poor and that, if he has defrauded anyone, he is repaying them fourfold.  Jesus proclaims that “Salvation has come to Zacchaeus’ household today”. 

            As we dig into this story, we need to remember that Zacchaeus wasn’t JUST a tax collector, he was the CHIEF tax collector.  He was the guy who the Romans had put in charge of all of the tax collecting for the district in which he lived.  Now, there is something that we need to understand about the Roman tax collector system.  The Romans actually didn’t pay tax collectors particularly well.  An honest tax collector would not be significantly better off financially than any of the other average inhabitants of Palestine.  But you see, tax collectors had the weight of a ruthless and brutal Roman army behind them.  And as a result of this very intimidating support, an opportunistic tax collector could inflate the amount of the taxes due and pocket the difference.  And the taxpayers had little if any recourse to combat this, let’s call it what it is: theft.  The bottom line is, if a tax collector was wealthy, he had to have been cheating people in order to acquire that wealth.  And ALL of the tax collectors were wealthy.  So, it wasn’t bad enough that the tax collectors were collaborating with the enemy, they were defrauding their own people as well.  Is it any wonder that they were despised?  And so, it’s not hard to imagine why our story today tells us that when Jesus invited Himself to Zacchaeus’ house the people were grumbling about Jesus keeping company with such a man as Zacchaeus.

            When one studies Luke’s Gospel, one finds it to be quite well organized.  Luke has chosen to situate his stories in such a way that a preceding story will often set the foundation for the following story, or a following story will help to interpret or illuminate the previous story, and that is the case today.  Today’s story about Zacchaeus follows the parable of the rich young ruler.  In that parable a young, devout, and wealthy ruler of the Jewish people came to Jesus and said to Him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus responds by telling the man to follow the Law and the man replies that he always has.  “One thing you lack” Jesus tells him, “Sell all you have and give to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven, then come and follow me”.  The man walked away sad because he was unwilling to part with his wealth.

            And so, today, Luke tells us another story about another wealthy official.  One who very badly wanted to see who Jesus was.  So much so that he ran forward of the crowd and climbed a tree to get a better view.  In the culture of the ancient East, it was considered undignified for an adult to run, and we can imagine how even MORE undignified it would have been for an adult to climb a tree, especially when that adult is wealthy and is a high ranking official.  What a picture that must have been, a short man, almost certainly wearing fine, expensive clothes, scrambling up a tree.  But Zacchaeus wasn’t concerned with appearances.  He wanted to see who Jesus was.

            We don’t really know why he wanted so badly to see who Jesus was, but we can probably speculate.  Tax collectors were despised, and Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector and so his life was almost certainly filled with endless episodes of abuse and malicious treatment from the Jewish community.  And maybe he was tired of that.  Maybe he was tired of being branded a “sinner”, which was the common epithet directed at tax collectors.  Or maybe he wanted to see Jesus because he had heard some of Jesus’ teachings and Jesus’ words had moved him to decide that he no longer wanted to be participating in something that he knew was so hurtful to so many people.  The truth is, we really don’t know.

            But regardless of why Zacchaeus wanted so badly to see Jesus, this we do know… Without boring everyone with a long Greek lesson.  In English we modify words to indicate tense and voice by changing the words themselves (I’m going, I go, I went) but in the Greek, these things are indicated by using a system of different endings attached to the root words.  And in our story today, according to this Greek system of identifying tenses and voices, this passage was written in the present tense and uses an active voice.  Please allow me to re-read Luke 19 verse 8 from the English Standard Version: “And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.”  Did you happen to hear the subtle difference?  The NIV says, “I WILL give”.  The EST says, “I AM giving”.

            This parable today is a wonderful picture of how Jesus changes lives when those lives are open to being changed.  How much money do we think Zacchaeus would have had left over after he gave half of everything to the poor, and then gave fourfold restitution to those who he had defrauded?  Probably not much, right?  In fact, he may very well have given away everything.  But you see, Zacchaeus had just found the pearl of great price.  In Matthew 13 Jesus tells this parable, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.  When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”  Everything he had!  For Zacchaeus, to give away all in exchange for being made right with God wasn’t a sacrifice to him at all.  And the text tells us that Zacchaeus was joyful.

            And here is where Luke contrasts Zacchaeus’ joyful response to Jesus’ call, with the rich, young ruler’s sad rejection of Jesus.  In these two stories we can see clearly how the way that we handle earthly things reveals the condition of our hearts.  When we cling to earthly things then those things become our master.  Our earthly possessions will dictate to us what we do and how we live.  And ultimately, our earthly possessions will define who we are.  Coble gave us a great explanation of this when he said, “In the New Testament, ‘the world’ represents that order of human life which consistently rejects or defies God and His claims upon [humans].  It is essentially a self-centered life.  Its primary traits are the giving of great effort to gratify appetites physical, mental, and emotional, and intense hatred of any who may resist or fail to cooperate in efforts to attain that satisfaction”.

            Those who are wrapped up in that pursuit of worldly satisfaction will neither have the ability nor the inclination to love others.  Our rich, young ruler friend walked away from Jesus, he walked away because he was unwilling to give up that pursuit of worldly satisfaction.  But when Zacchaeus climbed down from that tree, the only satisfaction that mattered to him was the satisfaction of a renewed and right relationship with God.  And this is the lesson that Luke gives us as he contrasts these two stories.

            N. T. Wright comments that, “The hardened old tax collector fits in to three of Luke’s regular themes:  the problem of riches and what to do about it, the identification of Jesus with ‘sinners’ and the faith which recognizes Jesus as Lord and discovers new life as a result”.  [1]  Indeed, Luke here gives us three quarters of a summary of the Gospel itself:  Jesus calls, we answer, and our lives are changed as a result.

            But there is more to this lesson than just that summery.  Zacchaeus wanted to know WHO Jesus was.  This was a curiosity that was born of the work of the Holy Spirit.  Before Zacchaeus ever climbed that tree, the Sprit was already calling him and preparing him for his encounter with Jesus.  Zacchaeus pursued his call with a sense of urgency, not walking but running so that he wouldn’t miss his chance to see Jesus.  Zacchaeus abandoned all concern about how his actions would be viewed by others, climbing that tree in full view of the community.  Undignified or not, Zacchaeus was not going to miss out on this opportunity.  And when Jesus called Zacchaeus by name, Zacchaeus responded with JOY at Jesus’ call and already had begun to exhibit the fruits of a transformed heart.  Jesus welcomed Zacchaeus without regard for the fact that the crowds seriously and loudly disapproved, a wonderful illustration of how Jesus accepts us exactly as we are, even though He never LEAVES us the way we are.  And where that crowd had excluded Zacchaeus from the fellowship of the temple and the community, Jesus embraced him and declared him to be a true son of Abraham, restoring him to his rightful place among God’s beloved people.

            Our story closes with the fourth and final quarter of that Gospel summary when Jesus said that “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”  Our social status doesn’t matter to Jesus. Whether we are wealthy or poor, popular or outcast, white collar or blue collar, none of this matters to Jesus.  The only thing that matters is… when Jesus calls, how do we respond?  Do we jealously guard our worldly lives like the rich, young, ruler?  Or do we recognize the fact that we have finally found that pearl of great price?  That we have found the one thing that is worth more to us than everything else?  And if we have made that discovery, are we allowing God to touch us with the power of His love and allowing Him to change our lives?  In a world that is full of rich young rulers, let us be Zacchaeus.

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[1] N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone, Pg. 165

Me? Of Course I’m Righteous!

October 26, 2025

Luke 18:9-14

            In today’s story we are given yet another golden opportunity to bash a Pharisee.  Jesus tells a parable about prayer and… surprise!  The bad example in the parable is another Pharisee.  But I think that we should be careful about making generalizations.  Acts 15:5 tells us that, at the First Council of Jerusalem, there were “believers who were of the party of the Pharisees”, and so clearly there were Pharisees who became devout followers of Jesus, and in fact, leaders of the early Christian community.  The Gospels also tell us about a few Pharisees who were secretly followers of Jesus during His ministry.  Those of us who are watching The Chosen have seen this in the characters of Nicodemus, Jairus, and Yuseff.  (And by the way, for my fellow The Chosen fans, the name Yuseff in English is Joseph and there is speculation among the on-line The Chosen community that Yuseff is actually Joseph of Arimathea.)

            One of the commentaries that I read this week stated that, in the Gospels, the Pharisees often come across as the “moustache twirling bad guys”.  And since our understanding of the Pharisees is mostly limited to what we read in the Gospels, it’s not surprising that we WOULD view them as the bad guys, but I think that it is important for us to have a somewhat more charitable view towards the Pharisees, and the reason that I believe that is because, if we dismiss the Pharisees as the unrepentantly self-important, inflexible, and arrogant people that the gospels appear to make them, we lose the ability to see ourselves in them  And we need that ability in order to be able to learn the lessons that Jesus seeks to teach in these parables.

            So, let’s talk about the upside of the Pharisees for just a moment.  The Pharisees were extremely faithful, they were deeply concerned about the purity of their faith, they were committed to teaching the Law and to guarding against false teaching, and they zealously advocated for righteous living.  And these are all good things.  And so, if we look at them in this light, it’s a lot harder to think of them as being the bad guys.  In fact, understanding that they aren’t the bad guys can go a long way towards having us not view them as caricatures, as the perennial poor example in everything, but rather see them as the real people that they were… trying, and sometimes failing, to live their faith.  And that is something that should sound familiar to us all.

            In today’s parable, a Pharisee positions himself prominently and conspicuously in the middle of the temple.  In the traditional Jewish posture for prayer he would have raised his arms and looked to heaven to pray.  And though his prayer began by addressing God, the rest of his prayer was fixed entirely upon himself.  He thanked God that he was not like the robbers or the evildoers, or the adulterers… and then he singled out the tax collector who was also there to pray.  Thank God I’m not like HIM, the Pharisee said.  Then he told God about all of the good things that he does, fasting and tithing more than is required, you know, because he was so holy. 

            Meanwhile, our tax collector friend hides in a corner of the synagogue, beats his chest, a traditional Hebrew sign of sorrow, and begs God for mercy.  And to give us an idea of the depth of the tax collector’s understanding of his sin, he didn’t say he was “a” sinner, he said that he was “the” sinner; a confession of the fact that he identified his sin as the worst of everyone’s.

            There are a couple of things to unpack here, but I think that the first and most important thing that we need to identify is where is the Pharisee’s heart in all of this.  All three synoptic gospels tell us the story about a Pharisee asking Jesus what is the greatest commandment? With Jesus answering that the commandment to love God and love others is the most important commandment, and indeed is the summation of all of the law and the prophets.  And so, our first question this morning is, is there any hint of love at all in the Pharisee’s condemnation of the tax collector?  In fact, the Pharisee’s prayer shows contempt for more than just this poor tax collector.  Chelsey Harmon tells us that, “Even as [the Pharisee] comes to pray to his loving God, he has compared himself to all of the people he’s walked by and rather than finding himself wanting, it’s everyone else who fails to measure up”.  [1]

            The simple truth is, it is not possible for people to compare themselves with others and love them at the same time.  Barclay says that “No [person] who despises [other people] can pray.  In prayer we do not lift ourselves above [others].  We remember that we are one of a great army of sinning, suffering, sorrowing, humanity, all kneeling before the throne of God’s mercy”.  [2]  At its very core, love demands grace.  It demands making allowances for other people’s weaknesses and failures… just as we desperately need for others to make those same allowances for us.  And so, one of the mistakes that our Pharisee friend made this morning is a failure to love others.

            A second problem is the Pharisee’s understanding of how grace works.  Our Pharisee friend is of the opinion that his goodness is the key to God’s acceptance, and he evaluates his goodness relative to those around him.  But the question that this Pharisee, and indeed ALL of us need to be asking is not “are we as good as the best of all the others” but “are we as good as God”, and the answer to that question for the Pharisee; and for all of us is a resounding “NO”.   

By now you all are probably tired of hearing me explain that the Greek word in the Bible that is the word most commonly translated into the English word “sin” is ἁμαρτία (ha-mar-teea) which is a word that could appropriately be translated as “imperfection”.  Sin is, in fact, anything and everything in our lives that fails to be completely Christ-like.  It is the prevailing experience of my Christian walk that, the closer I get to God, the farther away from Him I realize I am.  Erdman says, “The nearer one is to God, the more conscious are [they] of [their] own sinfulness.  And the less likely to boast of [their] own moral attainments.”  [3]  Christ-likeness is an impossible standard for humans to achieve, and so, God’s grace is the one and only way to the Father.  We absolutely cannot do it on our own.  It is only by God’s grace, secured in the blood of Jesus, that we are able to enjoy a restored relationship with God and look forward to an eternity in heaven.

Our parable today ends with Jesus telling us that it was the tax collector who went home justified, not the Pharisee.  Justification in the Bible means to be in right standing with God.  This doesn’t mean that any of the tax collector’s actions were justified, it simply means that, in throwing himself on God’s mercy, his sins are no longer counted against him, and he has been restored to a right relationship with God.  The Pharisee, finding no reason within himself to ask for God’s mercy, remains in his sin and is still outside of fellowship with God.

And so, with us intentionally viewing this Pharisee not as the bumbling bad guy who never gets it right.  And instead thinking of him as someone who may be somewhat like us, a faithful person trying, and in this particular instance, failing to understand God’s call for him.  Our Pharisee friend has decided that he is to be a defender of the faith, one who calls others to faithfulness and admonishes those who fall short.  He is zealous in these tasks and thoroughly convinced of the propriety of his actions.  And one would think that all of these things are laudable goals.  But when it comes to the truth of God’s grace he has missed the boat entirely.  Garland tells us that, “[The Pharisee’s] prayer functions to reveal what he assumes it means to honor God and to be ‘upright’.  He has developed a righteousness scale by which he can gauge his and other’s rectitude and reports to God what he has done and what others have not done”.  [4]  His zeal for the purity of the faith fails to take into account the fact that, no matter how “good” he is, no matter how hard he tries, he can never EARN his way into heaven,  because he, just like us, will never, in this lifetime, be fully Christ-like

In the beginning of our reading today, Jesus stated to whom this parable is addressed.  It is addressed “To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else.”  The NRSV translates verse 1 in this way: “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.”  Have you ever noticed how self-righteousness always seems to go hand in hand with the condemnation of others?  This is what happens when we begin to compare ourselves to others, instituting our own personal standard of what constitutes “good” and “bad”.  Those who don’t measure up to our standards will then be viewed as “bad” or less worthy of our consideration and subsequently, less worthy of our love.  And in the process of doing that we fail to follow the first and most important commandment: To love God and to love others as we love ourselves. 

And so, our Pharisee friend, standing prominently in the center of the temple, hands outstretched to heaven and informing all who will listen about how good he is, in the process publicly violates a central commandment of his faith.  He looks with disdain upon the tax collector, failing to love him. 

If love is to be the standard of our lives… if we are to be faithful to live in ways that exhibit Christ-likeness… then our faith cannot; MUST not be a faith that compares ourselves to others.  Yes, there are times when it is appropriate to admonish a brother or sister in the faith when they have strayed from faithful living, but it is of the utmost importance that this is done in love, without the slightest hint of superiority or self-righteousness on our parts.  If we can’t admonish in love then we have no business admonishing at all.  Garland says, “No one can expect justification before God without also accepting God’s justification of others and showing love, not contempt for neighbors.”  [5] 

My dear brothers and sisters, the song says that they will know that we are Christians by our love, and that is the way things should be in the church of Jesus Christ. But that is not always the way that things are today.  Today’s church has, in some circles, become known more for what we are against than for what we are for.  And if we dismiss the Pharisee in our story today… if we fail to identify with him; to see ourselves in him, then we run the risk of repeating his mistakes.  And if we fail to learn from his mistakes in this lesson that Jesus has put before us today, then we run the risk of failing to be the loving, inclusive, accepting, and affirming believers that we are called to be.

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[1] Chelsey Harmon, CEPreaching.org, Commentary on Luke 18:9-14

[2] William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke, Pg. 224

[3] Charles R. Erdman, The Gospel of Luke, Pg. 182

[4] David E. Garland, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke, Pg. 718

[5] David E. Garland, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke, Pg.722

When Prayer Seems Not to Work

October 19, 2025

Luke 18:1-8

            The ancient Israelites used the priesthood to resolve disputes.  When there was a disagreement or issue between two people or two parties the matter would be brought before the priests and the priests would mediate a solution.  But in Roman occupied Palestine there were certain types of disputes, most notably, those involving property, which were required to be resolved by the Roman court system and not by the priesthood.  The judges in the Roman court system were Roman employees, and the corruption of these judges was legendary.  William Barclay tells us that, “Unless a plaintiff had influence and money to bribe his way to a verdict, he had no hope of ever getting his case settled.  These [judges] were said to pervert justice for a dish of meat.”  [1] The official Roman title for these judges translates into English as “Prohibitions Judge” but by changing just one letter in that original Greek word for prohibitions, you changed “prohibitions” to “robber” and “Robber Judge” is what the Israelites called them.

            The widow in our story today had no power.  She had no money to bribe the judge and as a woman, she wasn’t permitted to even stand before the court, and so, with no one to advocate for her, she had absolutely no hope of obtaining justice from her adversary, who was, more than most likely, trying to steal her land.   But our widow friend had one thing going for her… persistence.  These judges were itenerant, and so they would conduct their trials from within a tent that was moved from place to place.  Our widow friend apparently stood outside of the tent and shouted at the judge, she very possibly accosted him on his way to and from work, in the marketplace, and anywhere else where she could create a disruption.  Finally, the judge gives in, not because he cares about her, or about her issue, or even because he cares about justice, but just because she was making his life miserable and he just wanted to be rid of her.

            Now, we might look at this parable and think that the message is that persistence in prayer is necessary to wear God down until He gives in and grants our request, but that is not at all what Jesus is teaching here.  What Jesus is really doing is that he is making a contrast.  Anyabwile tells us that, “If an unrighteous judge who fears no one is eventually moved by persistent pleading, how much more does a righteous God, moved by compassion, goodness, mercy, and faith, hear the prayers of His people who pray night and day?” [2]

            No, in this parable Jesus is not asking us to try to influence God with incessant prayers.  So, the question becomes, what IS He asking?  Well, how often do we pray prayers that appear not to be answered?  How often are we discouraged when we ask, and ask, and ask, and no answer appears to be forthcoming?  What persistence in prayer DOES is, that through all of this, it keeps us connected to God.  At the times that we feel that our prayers are hopeless, continuing to pray is an important part of reminding us that we do serve a loving and caring God who does answer prayer.  It’s just that sometimes the answer to those prayers comes in most unexpected ways.

            Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”  While we like to think that WE know what is good for us… God actually DOES know what is good for us, and His answers to our prayers are the answers of a deeply loving God, intimately involved in the details of our lives, and truly seeking our happiness.  But it is a kingdom happiness that our God seeks for us.  It’s not that God does not want our lives on earth to be happy, He does, but God looks at us with a view towards eternity and answers our prayers in light of THAT perspective.  And so, we are called to pray persistently, unceasingly, that our relationship with the Father may be strengthened through our prayers.

            Warren Wiersbe tells us that, “Prayer is much more than the words of our lips; it is the desires of our hearts, and our hearts are constantly ‘desiring’ before Him, even if we never speak a word.  So, to ‘pray without ceasing’ means to have such holy desires in our hearts, IN the will of God, that we are constantly in loving communion with the Father, petitioning Him for His blessing.” [3]  In a nutshell, we are called to pray persistently not for God’s benefit but for ours.  We are called to pray persistently so that our faith is not hampered when prayers appear to go unanswered.  We pray persistently so that we may learn to share the mind of God, and in so doing, trust that He loves us and cares for us; that He protects us and that the first thing in His mind always is our eternal well-being.

            In the end of today’s reading, Jesus asks the question, “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”  It’s an interesting question that, while it at first glance, doesn’t exactly seem to fit the rest of the narrative, it actually does tie directly in to what Jesus is talking about.  Jesus spent the first part of this parable telling us why persistence in prayer is so important, not because we need to remind God of our needs or to persuade Him to act in our behalf, He already does all of these things… and delights in doing them.  Persistence in prayer actually reflects a rock-solid belief on our part that God ALWAYS acts in our behalf, even when every shred of current evidence seems to belie that truth.  When one is not persistent in prayer, then God’s seeming silence, or God’s failure to answer those prayers in the way that one wishes, can create distrust and can cause some to doubt God’s goodness.  This is why Jesus is asking if He will find faith.  Are His followers persistent enough in their prayers and in their faith to believe even when belief becomes difficult?

            When I first moved to New Jersey from Boston in the late 70’s I lived in Eatontown but worked in Cherry Hill.  At this point in time they had not yet built Interstate 195 so a good bit of any route that I took to Cherry Hill was two lanes, and I needed an hour and forty-five minutes to get there and an hour and forty-five minutes to get home.  And I was driving a ten-year-old Volvo station wagon that basically worked when it felt like it.

            One morning my old Volvo decided that it didn’t feel like working that day and my prayers that it would start so that I could get to work were not answered, at least not in the affirmative.  And with the anger born of a frustration with a car that was unreliable and a bank account that was unlikely to be able to remedy that situation anytime soon, I directed my anger squarely to where I thought it belonged… at God.  It was His fault that He didn’t choose to keep my car running when I really needed it, and it was His fault that my finances were not sufficient to cover my needs.  I had grown up in the church, and as many of you well know, starting in 7^th grade, I wanted to be a pastor.  But in that moment, and in my deep frustration, I came to the conclusion that there probably wasn’t a God, and that if there was, He didn’t care about me or about my needs.

            And this was the attitude in which I remained stuck for just about two years.  How I eventually was able to escape this place of anger at God is too long of a story for this sermon, but I did end up finding my faith again.  And in the process, I learned one of the most valuable lessons that I have ever learned.  And if we read between the lines, today’s lesson teaches US exactly what my little spat with God taught me… And that is the fact that prayer isn’t all about me.  My dear friend, Army Chaplain Major Greg Monroe once said to me that “Prayer is not us bidding God to do our will, prayer is us asking God to incorporate us into His will”. 

            In Mark Twain’s book, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, Miss Watson tells Huck that whatever he prays for he will get.  Well, Huck had gotten ahold of some fishing line, but he had no hooks, so he prayed that he would get some hooks, but he didn’t.  Huck ends up wondering why God doesn’t supply a whole bunch of things that he knew folks were praying for, and so he decided that, when it came to prayer, “there ain’t nothing in it”.  Now the thing is, whether it’s a need for fish hooks or a need for a recalcitrant car to start, or the need to address any of the myriad of things, little or big, that draw us to God in prayer, it’s not hard to see that sometimes, some of these prayers might be a little self-serving. 

            And, as I said, prayer is NOT about us bidding God to do our will.  It’s not that God isn’t concerned about our day to day lives; He is… profoundly.  And it’s perfectly OK for us to ask God to please let my car start.  But the persistent prayer about which Jesus is teaching today is prayer that brings us closer to God, prayer that helps us to grow in our faith, prayer that helps us to trust in God’s goodness, prayer that is geared towards growing our hearts to become more like God’s heart.

            It was my little spat with God that led me to ask questions that I had never asked before.  It was those questions that I had never asked before that led me to open my Bible and actually begin to read it and to study it.  And it was the reading and studying of my Bible that led me to make the choice to become a follower of Jesus; something that, in spite of my years of church attendance and even my desire to become a pastor, I had never done.

            And so, the question that I would like to ask you all today is, do you think that God answered my prayer?  Well, my car didn’t start, I missed work that day, and I spent the day finding a junk yard part, putting it in, and getting my car running again.  But in the process of praying for my car to start, God gave me something infinitely more valuable, something of eternal significance.  God forgave my misplaced anger at Him and restored my relationship with Him to the place where He had always intended for it to be.  He called me to His side, He led me into discipleship, and He saved me.  So, you be the judge.  Do you think that God answered my prayer?

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[1] William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke, Pg. 222

[2] Thabiti Anyabwile, Exalting Jesus in Luke, Pg. 265

[3] Warren Wiersbe, Be Courageous, Pg. 63

Why Did You Heal HIM?

October 12, 2025

Luke 17:11-19

            Five different times in the New Testament Jesus said to someone, “Your faith has made you well”.  He said it to the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years after she had touched the fringe of His garment and was instantly healed.  He said it to Bartimaeus, the blind beggar whose sight He restored.  He said it to the woman who anointed His feet with perfume and wiped it with her hair.  He said it to a blind man who he healed on the road to Jericho, you know, the guy who refused to be quiet when they told him to shut up.  And then He said it in today’s lesson to the one leper out of the ten who was cured and returned to give Jesus thanks.

            The medical name for leprosy is “Hansen’s Disease” and it is a condition characterized by a loss of sensation in body parts, especially the extremities.  The inability to feel pain can lead to injuries caused by not responding to things that can hurt you.  If you can’t feel a pin prick you won’t pull away from the pin.  Hansen’s Disease is contagious and is transmitted through water droplets in the air spread by an infected person sneezing or coughing.

            Now, when the Bible speaks of leprosy it is not necessarily speaking of Hansen’s Disease, Biblical leprosy can be any rash or discoloration of the skin that doesn’t go away in the prescribed 14 days.  Two entire chapters of Leviticus, the 13^th and 14^th, are devoted to describing the various skin conditions that qualify as Biblical “leprosy”.  The Hebrew word that is used is צָרַ֖עַת (tsahl-ah) and in Leviticus the NIV does of good job of translating this word, not as “leprosy” but as a “defiling skin disease”. 

            Due to the extremely contagious nature of Hansen’s Disease, isolation of people with the disease was essential.  However, non-contagious diseases such as psoriasis or even a simple, persistent rash could still have rendered a person unclean, and banished them from the Jewish community. 

            I think it’s important for us to understand just how horrific the isolation was for those who had been declared “unclean” due to צָרַ֖עַת.  Probably the first thing to know is the fact that these skin diseases were believed to be a direct result of personal sin, so there was a stigma attached to the disease that not only were you sick and probably contagious, but that you were an evil person as well. 

So stringent was this isolation that if an unaffected person came within 50 paces, or about 125 feet, of a person with צָרַ֖עַת, the unaffected person would be rendered unclean themselves.  And so, the first thing that one would lose if they were declared unclean would be personal contact; personal contact with friends, with families, with spouses, and even with your children.  And of course, you would be excluded from worship and barred from the temple, which was the center of Jewish community.  Lepers were not permitted to bathe, probably because of fears of contaminating the water supply.  Lepers were required to wear clothing that had been torn, a sign of grief.  Lepers always had to have their nose and mouth covered, they were not permitted to cover their hair, which would have been shameful for women.  They were required to wear or carry noise makers; bells, shakers, or things that they could clang together and whenever other people approached at a distance, they were required to make noise with these noise makers and shout continually, “unclean, unclean, unclean”.  And you thought that “social distancing” was a Covid invention!

            The isolation must have led these poor people to despair, and so, it is no wonder that lepers tended to live in community with other lepers.  That community would have provided them with the only social interactions and support that they could possibly have.

            In today’s story Jesus is approached by a group of ten lepers.  We are not told how the lepers knew that Jesus was able to heal them, but we do know that word of His healing powers was widespread and given the fact that one of His earlier miracles was the healing of a leper, one would expect that that news would spread quickly through the leper community.  And so, this group of lepers stood at a distance and shouted “Jesus, master, have pity on us”.  When Jesus saw them, He instructed them to go and show themselves to the priest to be declared clean, as required by Jewish law.  But when Jesus commanded this, they had not yet been healed, and so, it required some faith on the part of each of the ten lepers to turn and begin the journey to the nearest synagogue.  Our text tells us that they were healed “along the way”. 

            One of the ten lepers, realizing that he had been healed, returned to Jesus to thank Him.  And not only just to thank Him.  Our text tells us that the man “Threw himself at Jesus’ feet”.   My interlinear Greek Bible translates this passage as “He fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving thanks”.  This one leper, overwhelmed with gratitude at his healing was the only one who returned to thank Jesus for healing him.  And then… our text tells us that he was a Samaritan.

            And before I go on, I would like to make a little observation.  We have often discussed the Samaritans and the animosity that existed between Samaritans and Jews.  We’ve learned a little about the origins of that animosity, how the Jews viewed the Samaritans as half-breeds and blasphemers and how the Samaritans viewed the Jews as hostile, inflexible, and arrogant when it came to their faith.  Since the other nine lepers  are all quickly making their way to the closest synagogue to have themselves declared clean, it is probably a safe assumption that they are all Jews.  And yet this Samaritan was living among these Jews as a part of their community.  The difficulties that these lepers faced, the fact that they were ostracized and excluded from the life and worship of the general community resulted in their being banded together for their mutual support and acceptance, and the racial aspect of their relationship, this hatred of the Jews and the Samaritans towards each other had been set aside in the interest of that support and acceptance that they all so desperately needed.  Isn’t it a shame that sometimes it takes personal adversity to lead people to become more human.

            And so, our nine Jewish lepers hurry to the synagogue, undoubtedly grateful… undoubtedly.  But their eagerness to be declared clean, to be restored to all of that which they had lost when they became sick, friends, family, spouses, and children.  To be able to worship again, to work again, to live normal lives without the stigma of being both contagious and sinful, all of this compelled them to haste.  The sooner they were declared clean, the sooner they could return to normalcy.  And so, it’s not at all hard to understand their enthusiasm.  And even though, thankfully, WE don’t have to deal with the difficulties that they faced.  Even though we are not isolated from community or worship, even though we are not looked down upon as sinners bearing the punishment for our sin, there is still a lot for us to learn here.

            Because this human tendency to rush into our responsibilities and into our favorite distractions and into our dreams, can occupy us to the point that we can also forget to show OUR gratitude for what God has so graciously done for us.

            Only the Samaritan, the foreigner, that despised “other” returned to give thanks.  And what happened next to our Samaritan friend was life changing for him.  Our text tells us that Jesus said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”  But the NIV translation doesn’t quite give this statement the impact that it deserves.  I started my remarks today with a list of the five people in the New Testament to whom Jesus said, “Your faith has made you well”.  And in each of those five instances, Jesus used the Greek word, “σέσωκέν” (say-so-kyen) and σέσωκέν actually means to save.  According to Helps Word Studies it means, “to deliver out of danger and into safety, used principally of God rescuing believers from the penalty and power of sin”.  There is actually one other use of σέσωκέν in the New Testament that will help us to understand its impact.  When the angel spoke to Joseph, telling him that Mary was pregnant, he told Joseph that this baby that would be born “will save his people from their sins” and the word that we translate here as “save” is σέσωκέν.

The Samaritan leper was not just healed of his infirmity, his gratitude to God for what God had done for Him in Jesus, allowed God to SAVE him.  Our Samaritan friend, in God’s act of grace and in his corresponding act of gratitude was restored to right relationship with God and was made whole not only in body but in Spirit as well.

            The Presbyterian pastor and theologian R. C. Sproul says,” Beloved, it is one thing to be grateful; it is something else altogether to show it, to manifest it, to DO gratitude. Feeling and doing are not the same thing.  If a person is truly grateful, [they] show it, and [they] show it in worship and service to God. That is the part of this passage that is so precious—the response of the man who was healed: “With a loud voice he glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks.”

            This morning, as we look at all five of the people in the New Testament to whom Jesus had said “Your faith has made you well”, we find in each instance that same gratitude; that same burning desire to thank and to glorify God for what He has done.  This was not a gratitude that was felt while hurrying along to continue living one’s life.  This was a gratitude that was life changing.  This was a gratitude that caused each of these recipients of God’s extravagant grace to stop in their tracks and to recognize the magnitude of what God had just done for them.  And in that moment of gratitude something happened in each of their lives where their relationship with God moved from the theoretical to the personal.  It was a point at which God suddenly and emphatically touched their lives in such a way that they would never again be the same, because now they KNOW that God is real, they know that God is personally and intimately involved in their lives, and they know, without question, that God loves them!

            My dear friends, have we felt this gratitude?  Has God touched us with the power of His Spirit helping us to understand that He cares about us and is deeply and personally invested in our lives?  Have we experienced His life changing love?  If we have, let us not fail to bring Him our thanks and our praise and our worship.  And let us live our lives in ways that are worthy of the grace and love that He has showered upon us.

An Unworthy Servant?

October 5, 2025

Luke 17:5-10

            There’s a story that I heard once.  It was about a guy who lived on a river in Wisconsin.  It was winter, and he wanted to go ice skating, but he wasn’t entirely sure if the river was sufficiently frozen to hold his weight.  So, very carefully, and right near the edge of the river, he stepped lightly onto the ice and began skating, always staying right near the edge, you know, just in case.  He soon came upon a bend in the river and as he skated around that bend, he saw a man sitting on the ice, ice fishing… with his truck parked next to him… on the ice.

            In our story today, the disciples respond to a comment that Jesus had made just before the beginning of our reading, that the disciples must be prepared to forgive someone over and over and over again.  Recognizing the difficulty of this command, the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith, so that they may be better able to do this.  Seems like a reasonable request, doesn’t it?  In light of the fact that I personally have often felt the desire to have my faith increased, I can really identify with the disciples here.  But I think it’s fair to say that Jesus’ answer is a little unexpected.  “If you had faith as big as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Pull yourself up by the roots and plant yourself in the sea!’ and it would obey you.” 

            Now, a couple of things about this.  The mustard seed mentioned here would have been the smallest seed with which the disciples were familiar, and so Jesus appears not to be talking about a whole lot of faith to begin with, just a tiny mustard seed worth.  Further, the tree to which Jesus refers is a black mulberry tree.  And Garland tells us that this particular tree had “a proverbially extensive and deep root system.  Uprooting it completely was deemed to be a hopeless task”.  [1]  So, what Jesus appears to be telling us is that a miniscule amount of faith can basically achieve the impossible.  But I don’t think that that is exactly what Jesus had in mind.  Jesus regularly used hyperbole to make a point, and that is exactly what I think He is doing here.  It’s not so much that we have the power to move trees, it’s that what faith we have is sufficient for the tasks to which God will call us.  I don’t believe that the question here is a question about the quantity of faith, I think it’s a question about the quantity of our faithfulness.  Laurence says, “The apostles ask for more faith. That means they have some faith, right? If they have some faith – if we have some faith – then we have enough faith. Faith the size of a mustard seed is plenty, Jesus says. Why? Because it’s not a question of how much faith we have – it’s a question of who we put our faith in.”  [2]  Our ice skating friend did not have a whole lot of faith in the ice on which he was skating, did he?  But what kept him from falling through the ice wasn’t his faith in the thickness of the ice, it was the fact that the ice was far stronger than he believed it to be.  And as Christians, our faith is in someone who is far stronger than we could ever imagine.

            The desire to have our faith increased seems to us to be a pretty faithful request.  After all, we are, as our Presbyterian denomination is so fond of telling us, reformed and always reforming.  The entire Christian experience is about growing; growing in faith, growing in love, growing in service, growing in faithfulness, and yet, Jesus’ response here almost comes across as a mild rebuke.  And here is why I think that is:  I think that in asking for more faith to help us to accomplish the task of being loving enough to forgive again and again and again, we are asking God to do FOR us, a job which is ours to do… to learn to be more loving by BEING more loving. 

            There’s a movie called “Evan Almighty”.  In the movie Morgan Freeman plays God and Steve Carell is Evan, a modern day Noah, building an arc in New York City.  There’s a great scene in the movie where Morgan Freeman, as God disguised as a server in a diner, is talking to Joan Baxter, who plays Lauren, Carell’s wife.  Lauren is troubled by the fact that her husband is saying that God told him to build the arc and asks how she is supposed to handle that.  Morgan’s God character tells her it sounds like an opportunity.  As she looks at him quizzically, Freeman says, “If someone prays for patience, do you think that God gives them patience?  Or does He give them the opportunity to be patient?  If they prayed for courage does God give them courage or does He give them opportunities to be courageous?  If someone prayed for their family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does He give them opportunities to love each other.  [3]

            When God calls us to be forgiving, the opportunities that we HAVE to forgive become the lessons that teach us to BE forgiving.  If we bypass the lesson, how are we supposed to learn?  What we really need isn’t more faith; what we need is more faithfulness.  What we need is to do that hard, hard work that God gives us to do, that is designed to shape our hearts into hearts that look like His heart. 

            These difficulties that we sometimes face, these obnoxious people that are sometimes put in our path, these challenges and detours and roadblocks that sometimes stand in the way of what we THINK is the task at hand are designed to teach us, to make us more mature, to make us more patient, to make us more loving.  We sometimes forget that we are not here for ourselves, but that we are here for a higher purpose.  Those challenges and roadblocks may very well be detouring us into a task to which we actually ARE called, a task with kingdom implications and kingdom significance.  Matthew Root tells us that, “Expecting God to do our faithfulness for us is like a slave expecting to be waited on by his master.”  [4]

            And this idea ties directly into the next part of our reading, but the next part of our reading can be a little difficult for us to hear.  Difficult, for the simple reason that we find slavery to be abhorrent.  But stick with me just for a minute here, because there are a few things that we need to know.  The first thing that we need to understand is that slavery in ancient times, particularly among the Jews, was very different from the chattel slavery that plagued the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Our experience with that tells us that slavery was a thing where slaves were not considered to be human, where abuse and violence were commonplace, and where slavery was a lifetime sentence not only for you, but for your children and for their children.  In ancient times though slavery, while sometimes the result of your country losing a war, was more often just a way to get out of debt.  A person in debt could sell themself into slavery for a certain period of time, discharge their debt and then be free.  And even those who were conquered people would often have the option of purchasing their freedom.  While it would be naive for us to think that violence and abuse of slaves didn’t exist in ancient times, and that was certainly an issue in the Roman world, but for the most part the Jews had laws that protected slaves from mistreatment. 

            And so, as we look at this next section, what we are seeing is a parable where Jesus used an example that was contemporary to His time.  He wasn’t endorsing or approving of slavery, He was simply addressing a situation that would have been easily understandable to His listeners.  And what He said was this: When your slave finishes his work in the field, would you invite him to sit down, relax, and have his dinner?  Or would you have him continue to do his job, making and serving YOUR dinner, and then he could have his dinner when all of his other work was done?  These slaves all had their obligations and they weren’t entitled to any special treatment, simply because they did their job. 

            And so it is with us.  We are called to serve, to become a part of God’s kingdom and to live in ways that advance that kingdom.  This is our calling; this is our task.  We serve because we are called to serve.  Manson tells us that, “If a mere man is entitled to make such far reaching demands on the service of his servant, and that merely for his own profit and comfort, how much more is God entitled to require the utmost from His servants in the manifestation and extension of His kingdom among humans?  [5] 

            In our passage today, the NIV uses the phrase “Unworthy servants”.  This may leave the impression that we are considered worthless, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I actually like the way Google AI parses this verse, “After performing one’s duty, a servant should say they have only done what was expected of them, not that they are inherently worthless but that they have no claim to special praise or a reward.”  [6] 

            Now, the fact that we have no CLAIM to special praise or reward doesn’t mean that there won’t BE special praise or reward.  That is because we serve a loving and gracious God who delights in our faithfulness.  Maybe we can remember what we read a few weeks ago when the bridegroom returned to find his servants alert and attentive with all of their work done, and the bridegroom changed into a servant’s clothes and served the servants instead of having them serve him.  I made the comment at the time that, “The implications of this are almost beyond belief.  We, the humble servants, the imperfect sinners, not only will be welcomed at Jesus’ table, but will be honored guests, with Jesus Himself serving.”  So, a reward really is waiting, it’s promised, but we are not serving in order to gain that reward, we are serving because we have been called to serve.  And when the love of God is in our hearts, serving Him is our delight.

            So, do we think that our ice skating friend maybe had a little more confidence in the ice after he saw that truck parked on it?   I think that would do it for me.  When we know what it is that we have put our faith in, when we understand the solid ground on which we stand, realizing what God, in Jesus, has done for us, when we understand that we have been called to the task of being ambassadors of God’s kingdom, then service becomes the natural response to the love that God has shown to us, as He has restored us to the right relationship with Him that He has always intended for us to have. 

And so, we serve with joy and with delight.  We gladly pour ourselves into the task of advancing the kingdom of God and of sharing the Gospel.  In His Name we have the capacity to accomplish amazing things for the kingdom.  And all it takes is a lot of faithfulness, and a little faith.  About the size of a mustard seed.

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[1] David E. Garland, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke, Pg. 681

[2] James Laurence, MyPastoralPonderings.com, How Much Faith is Enough?

[3] Evan Almighty, © 2007 Universal Pictures, Spyglass Entertainment, Relativity Media. 

[4] Matthew Root, MatthewRoot.ca, Increase Our Faith

[5] Manson, The Sayings of Jesus, Pg. 302

[6] Google AI Search Result

Who Is My Master?

September 21, 2025

Luke 16:1-13

            As a pastor, you know that you are in trouble when none of your commentaries agree on the meaning of a passage.  You know that you are in trouble when your commentaries are offering several different possible conflicting interpretations of the reading.  And you know that you are in trouble when your most expensive and comprehensive commentary tells you that theologians have been scratching their heads over the meaning of this week’s lesson for the last 2,000 years.

            And so, what I would like to do today is to try to explain this parable in a way that seems to be the most commonly accepted among the 8 different Luke commentaries that I am using,  and in the way that seems to make the most sense to me, with thanks to Leon Morris, a commentator that I was already a big fan of, but who really dug into this week’s reading in a way that seems to best fit both the text, and the cultural circumstances surrounding it. 

            But before we talk about the parable itself, there are a few things that we need to know.  When the manager in our parable today said that he would call “each one” of his master’s debtors, the word that we translate “each” is ἕκαστος (heck-as-toss) and in the Greek, this word is a superlative, indicating the fact that the two debtors who are the examples in this parable, are two of many, many more unmentioned debtors that this manager supervised.  This is a very large estate that we are talking about here.  Now, what the manager was managing was almost certainly rental property.  These many renters were farming land that was owned by the manager’s boss and their contracts stipulated the amount that would be paid in rent and interest as a portion of their harvest. 

            From the two examples that we are given, we find an indication of the extent of this owner’s properties.  900 gallons of olive oil represents the output of about 900 olive trees, probably occupying around 15 acres of land.  1,000 bushels of wheat is about 30 tons of wheat and represents the output of about 100 acres of farmland.  In both of these instances the manager forgives about 500 denarii of debt which in 2025 dollars is approximately $130,000.00 each.  Bearing in mind the fact that we have already established that there were significantly more than just these two debtors, the loss to this owner would have run well into the millions in today’s dollars.

            Now, this manager was said to have been wasting his master’s possessions.  And the word that we translate as “wasting” here is διασκορπίζω (dia-score-pee-zo) which is exactly the same word that was used to describe the prodigal son’s squandering of his inheritance.  This manager was NOT incompetent, he was a scoundrel who was taking advantage of his position to enrich himself.  And because his boss had discovered his malfeasance, the manager was told to bring in his books for an audit.  And the story tells us that he was going to lose his job. 

            So, given his circumstances, and the loss of his boss’s confidence in him, how could he possibly get away with altering the contracts in the way he just did, hugely reducing the debts of the renters?  Well, the manager had certain protections under Jewish law.  A manager had full authority to act on his boss’s behalf, and his boss was legally obligated to honor any contract or any agreement that the manager should happen to make.  A manager was also not permitted to be held personally responsible for any losses incurred by his actions.  And so, for better or for worse, Jewish law expressly permitted the actions that this manager took.

            We also need to know that Jewish law prohibited Jews from charging other Jews interest.  And so, for this land owner to be charging the interest that he was charging was a violation of Jewish law.  But, there’s always a loophole, right?  Morris tells us that, “Those who wished to make money from loans evaded this [law] by reasoning that the law was concerned to prohibit the exploitation of the poor.  It was not meant to forbid innocent transactions that were mutually beneficial and where the payment of interest amounted to a sharing of the profits.”  [1]  Since the renters in this case were not destitute, the land owner could tap dance his way around the law using this reasoning.  Further, the owner was protected by the fact that the manager DID have autonomy, and so if the owner was accused of charging usurious interest, he could claim ignorance of the dealings of his manager.  Given the fact that in today’s parable the interest originally charged in these contracts was somewhere on the order of 50%, I think it’s fair to say that the interest rates were indeed usurious.

            So now, facing unemployment, the manager altered the contracts to the point where it appears that he eliminated the interest entirely.  And the truly devious part of the manager’s actions is the fact that the owner couldn’t publicly complain about not being paid interest that he shouldn’t have been charging in the first place.  So are we starting to understand just how shrewd this manager really was?  I really wasn’t kidding when I said that this guy was a scoundrel.  The owner, almost certainly a savvy businessman himself, saw how his manager had painted him into a corner, and so it’s not at all hard to imagine how the owner may have shown his grudging appreciation of his manager for his actions.  But the owner also probably realized that, since he could claim that he knew nothing of the original contracts, a public commendation of his manager for changing the terms of the contracts to eliminate interest and comply with Jewish law would reflect well on his own reputation, appearing to make him a pious businessman who was obeying the law.  I guess we in the 21^st century would refer to this as writing off a public relations expense.

            Next, let’s think for a minute about those to whom Jesus told this parable.  In modern times people, not always, but often, identify with the wealthy.  We tend to view their financial success as being the result of exceptional business acumen, hard work, and persistence of effort.  And frankly, I think a lot of 21^st century people hold the idea that someday they too may be wealthy, and so they defend the wealthy, claiming them to be possessors of superior talent.  Not so Luke; his Gospel is filled with references to the evils of extreme wealth.  Luke appears to have a much better grasp of the idea that the earth holds limited resources and that the wealthy gain their wealth by taking that which does not rightly belong to them.  He understands well the fact that poverty was not a result of a lack of resources but a result of a lack of distribution.  And so, Luke would not have thought highly of the land owner in this story, and while we call the manager a scoundrel or a thief, I would imagine that Luke and many of the readers who were his contemporaries would have quietly applauded the manager for the way he flimflammed his wealthy boss.

            As for the manager, having two people in his debt for a few hundred denarii would not be anywhere near sufficient to sustain him for the rest of his life.  But we know that there were far more than two people whose contracts were reduced, and with a good number of people indebted to him he would have the option of bouncing around and sponging off of people in small amounts here and there; not enough to become a burden on anyone, but enough to get by.  And this is the point of the parable.  The manager was resourceful and he was intelligent and he didn’t let obstacles get in the way of his accomplishing his purpose of insuring the security of his own future.

            After we finish our story of the manager, Jesus begins a discussion of what the NIV calls “worldly wealth”.  But the phrase “worldly wealth” doesn’t even begin to capture the meaning of this passage.  The King James version renders this phrase as the “mammon of unrighteousness”.  And “mammon” is an English transliteration of a Greek transliteration of a Hebrew word that describes ill gotten wealth.  My interlinear Greek Bible translates this phrase as the “wealth of unrighteousness”

            So… now that we understand that “worldly wealth” means wealth that is immorally obtained, what exactly is it that Jesus is saying here?  Well, let’s contrast, as Jesus did, unrighteous mammon with righteous mammon.  Unrighteous mammon is the worldly wealth that worldly people pursue.  It is wealth that is obtained by any means necessary. And the means by which people pursue that wealth are illustrated in the devious and illicit actions of our manager today.  Unrighteous mammon is money that is used to satisfy worldly desires.  Righteous mammon, on the other hand, is the treasure that we store up in heaven.  Righteous mammon is the care that we show to those who are in need, utilizing our resources to feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the naked, and house the homeless.  It’s the extravagant grace that gives freely without expecting anything in return.  It’s loving God and loving neighbor and it’s living justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.

            And if we, as Christians were to pursue the mammon of righteousness with the same zeal and the same single-mindedness of purpose with which the world pursues the mammon of unrighteousness… well, just imagine what we may be able to accomplish for the kingdom.

            Strong’s tells us that every time mammon is translated as “money” or “worldly wealth” Jesus frames it as a rival master.  Mammon is a competitor for the love and devotion that we rightly owe to God.  And so, Jesus tells us that, ““No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”  Morris tells us that, “Anyone who uses money in the wrong way shows [themselves] [unfit] to handle more important things.  [So], they must not be surprised if God keeps [these things] from  them.  The same truth is put in a highly paradoxical way.  We would say that, if we are not faithful in our own things, we are not fit to handle those of others, but Jesus reverses this.  The money we think we own is not really ours.  It is always what we have from God and we are no more than stewards of it.  We cannot take it with us when we die.  If we handle it badly, we show that we are [unfit] to use the true heavenly riches which will otherwise be given us as our permanent possession.” [2]

            Our manager friend knew his way around his businesses; he had what we call street smarts.  He knew how to take every advantage of every Jewish law to insure a comfortable future for himself, and maybe even to take a little revenge on his boss who was about to fire him.  In the heat of a dire situation, he came up with a plan, and executed it flawlessly.   And the question that Jesus is asking us today is, when faced with a world that is in desperate need of hearing the Word of God, will we be able to formulate a plan on how to live up to our responsibilities to be bearers of that Word and to execute that plan flawlessly?  Are we knowledgeable enough and committed enough to take advantage of every opportunity to fill those responsibilities?  Are we willing to turn aside from the wealth of unrighteousness in order to give our entire being to the pursuit of kingdom living and the accomplishing of the goals that God sets before us?

            My dear friends, this is the path that we have chosen.  Let us use all of our available resources to touch the world with the truth of God’s love.

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[1] Leon Morris, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: Luke, Pg.269

[2] Leon Morris, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: Luke, Pg.273

The 99 and the 1

September 14, 2025

Luke 15:1-10

The Reverend Hugh Reed once told a story about a member of his congregation who he gave the fictitious name “Allen Roberts”.  Allen was going through a difficult time in his life.  He had left home as a young man and had become ensnared in a life of drugs and homelessness.  For several years he had roamed the streets, working as a day laborer for the money he needed for drugs and a bare sustenance lifestyle.

One day, Allen was spending the night at a homeless shelter.  He was just settling into his bed, in a deep depression, and contemplating suicide when he heard someone calling “Is there an Allen Roberts here?”  Thinking at first that they must be referring to some other Allen Roberts, he ignored them, but the call came again and so, he said “I’m Allen Roberts”.  The voice told him that his mother was on the phone.  Allen replied that they must be mistaken, that HE didn’t even know where he was, how could his mother possibly know where he was.

But he answered the phone, and it was indeed his mother.  And she said to him “Allen, it’s time to come home”.  Allen told her that he didn’t even know where he was, he had no money, and besides that, she didn’t know who he was anymore and surely would not recognize him.  His mother simply replied “It’s time for you to come home.  There’s a Salvation Army officer who’s coming to you with a plane ticket.  He’s going to take you to the airport, and get you home.”

You see, every single night, for the last three years, Allen’s mother had been randomly calling hostels and homeless shelters just asking if Allen was there in the hope of maybe finding him.  She had no idea where he was, but she never gave up trying to find him until that day that she did find him.

Allen came home and with his mother’s love and support recovered from his drug addiction, was able to find meaningful work, and was baptized by the pastor that told this story.  This pastor said that, [Allen] did not find his own way to my office… A path, not of his own making, [was] made by the love that found him, that knew him better than he knew himself and that invited him to “follow me.”

Today’s lesson might just embody the Gospel as well as any lesson that Jesus ever taught.  But before we can come to understand the depth of these two parables, we need to come to an understanding about a misunderstanding.  Jo Anne Taylor tells us that, “We have it in our heads that repentance means admitting our sin and turning away from it, in order to receive God’s forgiveness. It’s a transaction. We confess and repent, and in return God forgives.  But what if we consider that God has already forgiven us. Christ has already made everything right between God and us. God is just looking for us to come home.” [1]

We live in a transactional world.  We are accustomed to everything in our lives being transactional.  In fact, the transactional nature of our existence is such that, on those rare occasions when something truly isn’t transactional, our reaction is usually “What’s the catch?”  Can you imagine that?  Living in a world that is so cynical that when something is just given to us our first thought is to try to figure out what is the hidden cost.  And so it’s understandable that we may find God’s offer of total forgiveness to be something that has a hidden cost also; something that somehow requires some sort of recompense on our part.  But here is the simple, Gospel, truth:  Repentance is not a prerequisite for receiving God’s love and forgiveness.  God’s love and forgiveness is a given.  The Greek word that we translate as “repentance” is μετανοέω (met-uh-noy-uh).  And μετανοέω actually means to think differently.

When we discover the fact that God, in His great mercy and love, has already forgiven the unforgivable in us; all of it, when we learn the truth that God has pursued us relentlessly, never giving up the hope that we will turn to Him and follow Him, when we realize that God’s love for us is unconditional, and that there really is no catch, no quid pro quo, and no possible way of repaying, then, and only then, do we find that capacity to think differently.  Then, and only then, can we stop being people for whom all of life is transactional and for whom something is always expected in return when we do something for someone else.  Then, and only then do we develop the capacity to emulate the love of God and do things for others that require no recompense.  Then, and only then, can we begin to love the world as God loves us.

So, let’s take a little journey today and explore these two parables.  And let’s start with the Pharisees because that is where today’s story starts.  Our text tells us that the Pharisees were watching Jesus closely, and that they were angry; yes, actually angry.  They were angry because Jesus was associating with “sinners”.  Garland helps us to understand who these “sinners” are when he explains to us that the “Tax collectors were outside the law, and the scribes and Pharisees object that Jesus appears to do nothing to bring them under the law.  The sinners could be apostate Jews who were not simply the wrong sort of people but notorious and persistent lawbreakers who brought dishonor to their fellow Jews.  They could comprise the godless who are presumed to be without hope.  More likely, the Pharisees labeled them sinners because they were not meticulous or did not care to obey their rulings on purity standards of the Mosaic law.  “Sinners,” then, can simply be those who do not practice religion the way others think they should.” [2]  It’s not very hard to look at the church today and see this same attitude where acceptance into the community of believers requires prescribed behaviors and lifestyles.  But this is emphatically not how Jesus viewed repentance.  Garland continues. “From Jesus’ perspective, the sinners are those who, like the prodigal son, are lost and alienated from the Father and need to be restored.” [3]

And so, the Pharisees who are watching Jesus ARE angry; angry because these “sinners” are not living up to the Pharisee’s expectations.  But it gets worse.  The Jewish historian Alfred Edersheim tells us that there is an ancient Jewish saying that, “There is joy before God when those who provoke him perish from the world.”  These Pharisees actually believed that God rejoices when a sinner dies and goes to hell.  Is it any wonder that the Pharisees were outraged when Jesus, not only associated with these “sinners” but actually ate with them.  Because you see, in ancient times, to eat with someone was to accept them as part of your family.  And so, in eating with these sinners, Jesus was identifying Himself with them.  And here… here is the great irony of the Pharisee’s theology:  What they viewed as unacceptable behavior; Jesus’ identifying with and communing with sinners, is actually the Gospel.  Yes!  Jesus identifies with and communes with sinners.  What began with the Pharisees as accusation and judgment, becomes the very thing that saves us!  Jesus identifies with and communes with US.  And that communion, that identification is the very source of our forgiveness and the very sign of our acceptance into God’s family.  And the greatest tragedy of today’s story is the inability of the Pharisees to see that they too were in need of forgiveness, and that Jesus longed to identify and commune with them also.

Our journey now moves to the tax collectors and sinners.  Where the Pharisees were appalled by Jesus’ identification with sinners, the sinners embraced Jesus.  The sinners, finding forgiveness and acceptance that they had never experienced anywhere else, turned to Jesus.  And in turning to Jesus they found within themselves the ability to think differently.  Within their acceptance of the forgiveness and love that Jesus offered them, and the thinking differently that is an inescapable part of who they became when they chose to follow God, they too were restored to their beloved status as members of God’s family.  And again we need to consider today’s church and how it was the love and acceptance of Jesus, and not the Pharisee’s demands for moral living, that caused these “sinners” to “think differently” and to return to God.

And lastly, let’s look at God Himself.  Like Allen Robert’s mom, there is no end to God’s searching for the lost sinner, no question that God will leave the 99 to find the one who is lost but earnestly searching, no doubt that God will turn His house upside down and inside out to find that one lost sinner.  His love for His children is such that He will never stop searching, never stop calling, and never give up hope that His children will return to Him.  And when they do, God, and all of heaven celebrate.  

When a Jewish woman was married, she was given a headdress that had 10 silver coins on it.  So immutably hers were these coins that they were not even permitted to be taken as payment for a debt.  It is widely assumed that the coin that the woman lost in today’s parable was from this headdress.  And if that is the case, then her losing that coin would be just like a woman today losing her engagement ring.  In today’s second parable when the woman finally found her coin, she threw a party.  Now, am I the only person who thinks that it may have cost more for her to throw that party than what the coin that was found was worth?  It’s possible, right?  But the value of what was found was more than just the value of the coin itself.  And so great was the joy over finding that coin, that the cost of the party was rendered insignificant.  And so it is when even one sinner turns to God.  Because our value to God is more than we can possibly imagine.  And the party that He throws in joyful celebration of the return of just that one sinner, well, I’m kind of looking forward to going to one of those parties, aren’t you?

Our two parables today teach us something about the nature of God and the nature of His grace.  They also teach us something about ourselves…  About God, we are given a glimpse into the depth of the love that He has for His children.  We see a love that is graciously forgiving, radically inclusive, and a love that relentlessly pursues reconciliation between God and each and every one of His beloved children.  About us, as hard as it is to admit, we see ourselves in the actions of the Pharisees.  How often do we expect others to conform?  How often do we demand that others worship like us, or look like us, or love like us?  But my dear friends, what we are really called to do is to love without exception, without borders, without demands, without expectations.

The faith of the Christian is not about what we do.  It is about who we are.  It is about allowing God to restore that relationship with Him that we were intended to have from the very foundation of the universe.  It is about responding when He calls us to His side by thinking differently, by looking at the world not through eyes of judgment and disapproval, but through eyes of love.  And once we understand this; once we understand what it means to love AS JESUS LOVED, inclusively, extravagantly, and graciously, then we will find it impossible NOT to be relentless ourselves in sharing His love with the world. 

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[1] Jo Anne Taylor, PastorSings.com, Jesus Eats with Sinners

[2] David E. Garland, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Luke, Pg. 611

[3] Ibid