When I was a child, back in the late 1970s and early 1980s,  growing up on a council estate in Rotherham in South Yorkshire, I remember that my friends and I used to play all sorts of games in some rather dangerous places.

One of my particular memories is of us running wild on a building site when the estate was being expanded – no security fences in those days of course – those golden days of yesteryear when we didn’t  feel it was necessary to keep the estate kids safely away from the piles of bricks, rickety scaffolding, rusting machinery and half completed buildings.

One of the games we loved playing involved finding a huge  heap of sand or half completed wall – anything we could climb up on. The first one to the top of the heap or wall would claim the kingdom and shout, “I’m king of the castle and you’re the dirty rascal.” The rest of us would charge the kingdom. Some tried pulling the king down. Others tried pushing the king off the castle. We all wanted to take over the kingdom.

Each attack on the king was in some way an unspoken demand for proof. “If you’re really the king, prove it. Defend yourself. Show us your power and strength. Save yourself and your kingdom. Because if you don’t I’ll take it for myself.” Each one of us wanted to climb the heap of sand and proclaim that we were king (or queen of course) of all that we surveyed!

It was a great game. We had a lot of fun and I’m sure many of you played very similar games, if not the same!

But when we look back and reflect on how we played, I wonder if it did begin to nurture in us an outlook that has become a bit of a problem.

You see from being children we have grown up – but many of us have never stopped playing the game. We have become adults and ‘King of the Castle’ has become a way of life.

Our heaps of sand or half built walls, our high places are now made up of our personal success and money, power and control or reputation and popularity.

For some of us, the heaps of sand have become our families, our children, or the fairy tale of living happily ever after. Others have climbed the walls of being right, holy, or respectable.

Often our kingdoms have become ways of thinking, political parties, or social groups. Our nation and even our church have become king of the castle playgrounds.

There are all sorts of kingdoms. Each one of us can probably name the sand heaps of our lives, the sand heaps on which we have played king or queen of the castle.

The adult version of king of the castle has become about filling our emptiness, fighting our fear, and ultimately establishing some type of order and control.

What began as a child’s game has become the reality of our adult lives.

For many of us life is a constant scrambling to establish and maintain our little kingdoms, to convince ourselves as much as anyone else that we are okay, we are enough, we are the king or queen. And isn’t that a hard way to live?

Today, the Feast of Christ the King, celebrates and reminds us that playing king of the castle does not have to be the final reality of our lives.

Life can be different. We do not have to spend our lives trying to get to the top of a three-foot heap of sand. We do not have to spend our lives trying to keep our balance on top of a half-built wall as others try to push us off.

Christ the King invites us to stop playing the game. Life does not have to be, was never intended to be, an ongoing game of king of the castle.

If we choose to stop playing the game, it means we must give up our little kingdoms. We cannot celebrate Christ the King if we continue fighting our way up the sand heap.

We can have one or the other but not both.

Today in our service we will again pray, “your kingdom come.” It rolls off our tongues with ease and familiarity.  But I wonder if we really know what we’re asking for and do we really mean it? Implicit in that prayer is the request, “my kingdom go.” “Your kingdom come, my kingdom go.”

It’s one thing to pray for God’s kingdom to come. It’s another to let our kingdom go. After all we’ve been kings and queens of our own castles for a long time. Or at least we’ve convinced ourselves that we have.

It’s not easy to let go of our kingdoms and more often than not I think we try to negotiate a deal with God. “Ok God. Prove you are the king and then I’ll step down. Show me evidence of your kingdom and then I’ll let go of mine.”

The leaders, the soldiers, one of the criminals – they all want the same thing. They want to see proof that Christ is the king. They want to see evidence of his kingdom. We all do. After all, if Jesus is really the king, the one to rule our lives, and we are supposed to believe that – then let him prove it. “Save yourself if you are the Messiah of God. Save yourself if you are the King of the Jews. Aren’t you the Messiah? Then prove it. Save yourself and me.”

At one level I think we want to see Jesus come down from the cross. We want to see his wounds disappear. We want to see a well-dressed king – one with physical strength, military might, and political power. We want to see something spectacular, something beyond the realities of our ordinary lives.

At a much deeper level, however, these demands are about more than just Jesus saving himself from death, from physical pain, from political defeat.  At this deeper level we are crying out: “Save yourself and us from our own unbelief. Save yourself and us from our need to control. Save yourself and us from the fear that this little heap of sand I call my kingdom is all that there is to my life. Show me. Right now. Prove who you are.”

But you know what – he won’t do it – at least not in the way we usually want. Jesus will not offer us proof of his kingship. Instead he offers us the kingdom. He invites us to share in his kingship.

That happens in the silence of the deepest love.

The leaders are scoffing at Jesus. He responds with silence. The soldiers are mocking him. He responds with silence. One of the criminals derides him. He responds with silence. All are demanding proof. None are getting what they ask for. Jesus does not take himself or the criminals off the cross. He doesn’t answer the leaders. He refuses to respond to the soldiers. He is silent.

In that silence the other criminal begins to understand. It’s not about getting proof of Christ’s kingship – it’s about letting go of our own kingship. It’s about coming down from our little heaps of sand and realising that we already are, and always have been, royal members of God’s holy kingdom.

This realisation underlies the criminal’s cry, “Jesus remember me. Remember me not because of what I have done or left undone. Remember me in spite of those things. Remember me not because of who I am, but because of who you are.” His cry to be remembered is the cry of one who has emptied himself of everything, has let go of every last kingdom, and whose very life and existence are entrusted to the God who remembers. That is the reign of Christ.

The reign of Christ does not mean we now have all the answers, that everything is fixed, that there is no more pain, or that every problem has been eliminated. Jesus will not take us off our crosses. Instead, he gets up there with us. He does not fix our lives. Instead, he enters into the reality of our ordinary existence. We are remembered – and right here today, in the reality of our everyday lives, in the midst of our pain, in the midst of our dying, in the midst of our brokenness, in the midst of our guilt – Christ the King says to us, “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Who was Margaret of Scotland? I wonder what you already know about her – or what you think you know about her?

It’s strange to start at the end, but Margaret died on 16^th November in the year 1093 and that’s the reason that her feast day is on this day.

She’s not one of particularly well-known saints, especially outside of Scotland and many people don’t have any idea about who she was or what she did, but as we learn about her today and we get to know her story better, I’m sure most of us will come to admire her, and maybe even see her as a role model for ourselves and for our lives as followers of Jesus.

So let’s take a brief look at her life. Margaret was the granddaughter of the English king Edmund Ironside, but because of dynastic disputes she was born in Hungary, in the year 1047. She had one brother, Edgar, and a sister, Christian, and many people in England saw her father Edward Ætheling as the rightful heir to the throne of England. Those of you who know your history  will confirm that Edward the Confessor became King of England in 1042, but that he never had children, and in 1054 the parliament of Anglo-Saxon England decided to bring Margaret’s family back from Hungary so that her father could inherit the throne when King Edward died. So, the three siblings were brought up at the Anglo-Saxon court under the supervision of Benedictine monks and nuns, who trained them according to the Benedictine ideal of a life of work and prayer.

It’s hard to overstate the influence of those Benedictines in Margaret’s life. From them she learned the importance of balancing times of prayer and times of working for the good of others.

Margaret’s father died in 1057, and her brother Edgar became heir to the throne. But his succession was not to be – King Edward the Confessor died in 1066, and we all know what happened in that year? Of course, William the Conqueror invaded England and claimed the throne for himself. Edgar and his sisters were advised to go back to Hungary for their own safety, but on the way their ship was blown far off course by a fierce gale. They spent some time in northern England and then sailed up the coast to the Firth of Forth in Scotland, where King Malcolm gave them a warm welcome to his kingdom.

Margaret was now about twenty years old; Malcolm was forty, and unmarried, and he soon became attracted to her. But she took a lot of persuading because she herself wanted to become a Benedictine nun, and besides which Malcolm had a very stormy temperament! It was only after a very long time of reflection that she finally agreed to marry him, and their wedding took place in the year 1070, when she was twenty-three. In the end, although she was much younger than him, she was the one who changed him; under her influence, he became a much wiser and godlier king.

Of course, Margaret was now in a high position in Scottish society, and was very wealthy according to the standard of the day. But she continued to live in the spirit of inward poverty. She saw nothing she possessed as belonging to her; everything was to be used for the purposes of God. As Queen, she continued to live the ordered life of prayer and work that she had learned from the Benedictines. In a very male-dominated society she was only the wife of the king, but nevertheless, mainly because of her husband’s deep devotion and respect for her, and because of her own personal integrity, she came to have the leading voice in making changes that affected the social and spiritual life of Scotland.

Margaret would begin each day with a prolonged time of prayer, especially singing the psalms. In this she was following the example of the Benedictine nuns; the Rule of St. Benedict prescribes seven prayer services a day, and in this way the whole book of one hundred and fifty psalms would be prayed through once a week!

After her prayer time, we’re told that orphaned children would be brought to her, and she would prepare their food herself and serve it to them. It also became the custom that any destitute, poor people would come every morning to the royal hall; when they were seated around it, the King and Queen would enter and ‘serve Christ in the person of his poor’. Before they did this, it was their custom to send out of the room all other spectators except for the chaplains and a few attendants because it was important to Margaret that what they did was done for the love of God and the poor, not to win spiritual brownie points from admiring onlookers.

The church in Scotland had been formed in the Celtic way of Christianity. But Margaret had been raised in the way of Rome, and she was keen to bring Scotland into unity with the rest of the world. However, she didn’t do it in a domineering or authoritarian way. She often visited the Celtic hermits in their lonely cells, offering them gifts and caring for their churches. But she also held many conferences with the leaders of the Church, putting forward the Roman point of view about things like the date of Lent and the proper customs for celebrating the liturgy and so on. In the end she convinced them—not so much because of the strength of her arguments, but by the power of her holy life.

In those days many people in Scotland used to go on pilgrimages to see the relics of St. Andrew at the place now called ‘St. Andrew’s’. Margaret wanted to help the pilgrims, so she had little houses built on either shore of the sea that divided Lothian from Scotland, so that poor people and pilgrims could shelter there and rest after their journeys. She also provided ships to transport them across the water. And interestingly enough, that place in eastern Scotland is still called ‘Queensferry’!

I think it’s fair to say that most people from the past who are recognised as saints were monks and nuns who lived lives of celibacy, far removed from the demands of the world and the pressures of family life. But Margaret is remembered as having a happy family life. She had eight children—six sons and two daughters and her three youngest, Edgar, Alexander, and David, are remembered as among the best kings Scotland has ever had.

I love hearing about the lives of the saints, not just because of their intrinsic value as stories about people who have gone before us in our lives of faith, but because there is always something we can take, reflect on and use to shape our own lives as followers of Jesus.

Like Margaret, we’re all busy people. Many of us work long hours at demanding jobs. Some of us are retired of course, but so many times I hear retirees claiming they’ve never been so busy and wondering how they had time to work!

So, how are we to avoid becoming burnt out? Where can we find strength from God to deal with the everyday challenges that life sends our way?

Surely our answer as Christians is that we need to stay in touch with God so that we come to know his presence in our daily lives – God loves us and wants each of us to experience his love. One of the best ways of staying in touch with him is prayer. In prayer, we can lay down our burdens in God’s presence. We can bring our requests—for others and ourselves—to the one who’s best able to deal with them. We can thank God for the blessings we receive and ask God’s forgiveness for our wrongdoings and shortcomings. We can listen to the voice of God in Scripture and in silence and seek a word from God to guide us through our day.

Now praying seven times a day, as Margaret did, might be a bit much for some of us! But maybe we could manage once or twice? Perhaps at the beginning and end of the day, we can turn to God for strength and peace.

‘Love God with all your heart and love your neighbour as yourself’.

Jesus’ vision is a life of loving relationship with God and our neighbour. Many of us are getting better at doing a lot to help our neighbour, but my friends,  let’s not forget about our relationship with God. Margaret of Scotland was a very busy person, but she never forgot her daily time with God in prayer. Let’s follow her example, and be people of prayer as well as people of good deeds. The two belong together, and when we combine them, like St Margaret, we’ll find richness in the life for which we were made.

I wonder if you have ever played that game where you try to remember objects on a tray? A feat of memory! Memory yes, but not really remembering. If you have ever played this game, I bet you are now remembering it. The fun, the laughter, the people you played it with. This is Remembering. Mentally and emotionally placing yourself back into a moment.

Remembering thoughts, feelings, smells, relationships. The difference between memory and remembering. One is simple factual recall, the other forms us as human beings.

Remembering connects us individually and collectively: telling us who we are, where we come from, and linking us to our community, our friends, and our families.  

The loss of life in the Great War was dramatic, traumatic, and affected every community across our country and beyond. After the Armistice in 1918, many didn’t talk about it for years, but collectively the nation needed to remember.

The trauma and loss of life were so significant that remembering became vital. Not simply recalling a list of battles fought and campaigns won or lost, but a re-membering, of people, of lives, of relationships. The importance of lost individuals as members of the community.

Remembering each individual within a collective remembering of millions. Because those who died had value, they had innate worth. For all it is the overwhelming numbers we recall in history books, grief was for the individual.

So why do we still fall silent? In 2014 I went to see the Sea of Poppies Installation at the Tower of London. I eavesdropped on the crowds’ conversations and many of them were remembering a specific family member. A family member of whom they have no ‘memory’ and yet, re-membering was still important. 100 years later a Great Niece or a Great Grandson was there, moved to tears. A treasured moment, not because of memory, but because that individual mattered within their family story. It is through remembering that generations and their stories interweave and matter. Sadly, this ‘war to end all wars’ did not end conflicts, so we also remember many who have died in conflicts since. Generations past, and indeed present, whose stories of war and its impact are remembered.

When we are in despair, we can feel that God has forgotten us. That we have been abandoned. Even Jesus on the Cross shouted out ‘My God, my God, why have you Forsaken me?’ (Mark 15.34b).

This heartfelt cry of the deep human fear of being forgotten certainly found an echo in the trenches of the First World War, and for many who have known armed conflict. The Old testament prophet, Isaiah speaks into this space. ‘Can a mother forget the babe at her breast, and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you. See I have engraved you on the palms of my hands’ (Isaiah 49: 15-16).

In the middle of desolation, forsakenness, the isolation of being forgotten, it is being remembered which gives us back our humanity, evidenced on the engraved palms of God. Remembering is a human action that helps us to feel valued. God tells us that remembering is even more a divine action that gives value to humanity.

Today is our opportunity to remember and grieve personally and collectively for the individuals from our community. Giving back our humanity in the worst of circumstances. God tells us that we matter more to him than a baby does to its mother, that remembering us is a divine action that gives value to humanity, that he is prepared to sacrifice himself for us.

Today we remember those who have also followed that command; that greater love hath no one than this, that they lay down their life for their friends. We, their friends, will remember them, and their innate worth as human beings, both to us and to God.

Is it easy to be a Saint? I wonder if any of us could do it?

Take St Notburga – could you do what she did? She was a cook in the household of Henry and Ottilia of Rattenberg, living in the Tyrol around the turn of the fourteenth century. She was so devout that she would give the leftovers to the poor rather than to pigs as Ottilia had commanded her to do. One day Henry became suspicious of her and ordered that a bag she was carrying when she was leaving the cast should be searched. Miraculously the leftover food in the bag had turned into sawdust, but nevertheless she was sacked by Ottilia anyway. Would you risk losing your job to do the right thing?

Or could you be like St Marcella. She was a high born roman noble woman who converted Christianity at the end of the fourth century. Following the death of her husband, she was pursued by a number of wealthy influential suitors, but turned them all down and gave away her entire fortune to the poor before committing herself to an austere life in the service of Christ. Could you give away everything you have and forsake your closest relationships for your faith?

Or how about St Richard Gwyn of Wrexham. He was a catholic at the time of the reformation and was threatened with ghastliness if he did not conform to the Church of England. He took to making up rude, comic songs about the vicar for which he was clapped in irons. He then rattled his chains during sermons which so annoyed everyone that he was convicted of high treason and was hung, drawn and quartered in Wrexham’s beast market. Whether you agreed with St Richard or not, could you stand up so strongly for what you thought was right?

Most Episcopalians are familiar with the church year: that great cycle of prayer and liturgy that takes us from Advent, through Christmas and Epiphany, on to Lent and Easter, and into the long stretch of Sundays after Pentecost. Fewer among us might be familiar with the cycle of the saints’ calendar. While most of the saints and great lights of the Church have a special feast day or celebration assigned to them, it is rare that they get a mention in church on Sundays for the simple reason that the assigned Sunday liturgy nearly always takes precedence, though here in East Sutherland we have had a few saints days kept on a Sunday when permissible – some of you might recall that we remembered St Bartholomew back in August, and later this month we’ll learn more about St Margaret of Scotland. But as I said, there aren’t many Sundays where we are able to ‘keep’ the particular saint’s day.

It is, in some ways, a pity, because there is always much we can learn from the lives of the saints. Some were great scholars; others were illiterate. Some were ancient; others modern. But what is particularly striking about the calendar of the saints is that it is a bit of hodge-podge – messy and unpredictable. In the calendar of the blessed, saints come and go in no particular order. Ninth-century saint follows twentieth; European, Far East; young, old; and so on.

Just this month, for instance, ancient Willibrord, whose feast is kept on the seventh of November, hobnobs with Reformation-era, Richard Hooker, of November third, and medieval Hugh of Lincoln, of November seventeenth. It must make for some very interesting conversations in high places.

The calendar of the saints mirrors our own lives in many ways. People come to us in no particular order. We probably did not choose the particular members of our church community, for example. Friends and future spouses appear seemingly out of nowhere, and we do not get to choose the people without whom we would not be here: our own parents.

Those described as blessed, or saints, in our gospel text today are also a pretty diverse range of characters,  perhaps an unfortunate and desperate one. They are not particularly popular, or well-off, or prosperous. They are the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the despised. If they have anything in common, it is perhaps that they are those people who are not in control of things. They are those who are often described as ‘victims’ or ‘vulnerable’.

I’m not sure that there are many of us, including martyrs and saints, who actively want to be victimised, used, manipulated, cheated, or made to look a fool. And certainly, our scriptures do not require that of us. We read the daily papers and we shake our heads as we learn about all the evil things our fellow human beings are capable of, including the shedding of innocent blood. I imagine that we certainly do not want such things to happen to us – no matter how committed we are to the Gospel.

But somewhere in our fear of being hurt or made a victim we may, if we are not careful, also lose our ability to be vulnerable; to take a chance on another human being, on life, on God. Because if we dare to open ourselves to others it is quite possible, some might say likely, that we will get hurt. But, you know, unless we are willing to take that risk, we may find ourselves living lives of fear and loneliness -in other words, lives that can be devoid of human warmth and caring and love.

So, the saints do have something in common, in spite of their variety and age and culture. They have learned to become vulnerable, to be fully human, and to take chances on others, even when it may seem to go against common sense or their own self-interest. And like it or not, each of us will also be given plenty of opportunity to experience this vulnerability in our own lives – at work, at home, among friends, and sometimes at church as well.

So what about being blessed? What about being a saint? We can determine our state of saintliness and blessing by our willingness to be open to the needs of others. Sainthood becomes not so much some unattainable goal of moral excellence as it does a way of life marked by commitment to others and their needs.

We will not always be good. We will not always get it right first time. We will fail. We will have plenty of reasons to witness and to accept our own vulnerability. But then we are in good company. After all, what words other than ‘vulnerable’ and ‘committed’ should we use to describe a God willing to become one of us with all the messiness of our self-doubts, and strings of failures, and hurts, and even death?

It probably does not take much effort to be poor, grief-stricken, or hungry. But being blessed – well that is something else. That involves a radically different way of seeing the world. It requires a worldview that embraces the poor, and the exiled, and the remnant, and the refugee. Not just because our Lord asks us to do this in the gospel, but because we should recognise ourselves in the very least of those we know. We should recognise that our saintliness and blessing comes only in embracing wholeheartedly and without reservation all those others in need of God’s blessing.

Is it easy being a saint? I am afraid it is more difficult than we ever thought. Difficult, that is, if we try to do it through our own power and with our own wisdom and cleverness and effort. But it is paradoxically easy when we hold on to the blessed cross of Christ that forever committed God to the world; the cross that consecrates us in the blood of the Lamb, who gave himself that we might live. Blessed be God in all His saints, both living and departed!

Luke 18.9-14

“The Pharisee and the Tax collector” — that’s the traditional name of the parable we read today.

We’re in Luke 18 — If you’ve noticed, we’re on a long trip through Luke’s gospel, a trip we always take in Year C in the season after Pentecost

And over these these past few Sundays in Luke — well, it’s like being at an Elton John concert. Peter and I went to see Elton John a few years ago, and it was two solid hours of well-known hits. No warm up acts, no obscure songs – All killer, no filler, if you know what I mean? Hit after hit after hit!

Well, Jesus rattles off hit after hit in Luke — the Good Samaritan (Luke 10); the Wedding Feast (Luke 12); the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son (Luke 15); last week, the Persistent Widow, and now today — hit, hit, hit, hit; no warm ups, no covers, no B sides.

I want to look at this latest of Jesus’ greatest hits, the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, under three headings — players, point, and power:

• The players in the parable (who are they? why does it matter?); (2) the point of the parable (what it teaches us); and (3) the power of the parable (how can it change our lives?).

First then, the Players:

Two men went into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. Two men; two very different identities. Identity is at the heart of this parable, as it is very much at the heart of Twenty first century life. It sometimes feels that we are in the middle of a great cultural identity migration. Gender roles are merging. Racial identities are being shed. In the last few years we’ve been made to see how trans and bi and poly-ambi-omni we are.

Everything touches on identity, even our very own selves  that some of us mediate through online social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, images of how we want the world to identify us.

If you asked the players in the parable “Who are you? What defines you?” you’d get two very different answers.

Who was the Pharisee? Even the name of this group is about identity — the Hebrew word it comes from, perushin, literally means “separated ones.”

Pharisees claimed their identity by being separate, set apart, holier than everybody else. So, this Pharisee prays: “God, I thank you that I’m not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, not even like this tax collector.”

Now put the question of identity to the tax collector.

Remember Rome was a long way from Palestine. It would take a

huge bureaucracy to collect taxes there, so Rome sub-contracted the job.

Some Jews became “tax farmers,” private citizens who collected taxes for Rome, and the system was set up so they had to collect more than Rome demanded to make their own profit. Nobody in Jewish society was more despised than tax collectors.

The identities of these two men couldn’t have been more different. Just think about how they prayed.

The Pharisee stands confidently before God, but away from the others in the temple.

He knew he was righteous, and his prayer was completely self-directed:“I thank God that I . . . I don’t steal or commit adultery; the law says fast once a week, I fast two; it says give ten percent of what you earn, I tithe even on what I buy.”

The tax collector prayed differently — He beat his breast, which some of us do at mass sometimes — it’s a sign of penitence. He looked down, a sign of humility. Rather than “God, look how righteous I am,” he said “God, have mercy on me because of how righteous I’m not.”

Two men; two prayers; two different identities. Those are the players.

So what about The Purpose of the Parable: Jesus says “I tell you, this man (the tax collector) went home justified rather than the other (the Pharisee) . . . .” This parable is answering a particular question. That’s its purpose. “Who is qualified to enter God’s kingdom?” And the answer was shocking — because It’s not the religious chap, the one who tithes and fasts.

May I just say something that probably should be clear but maybe isn’t? Fasting — is good. Jesus assumed his followers would fast. Tithing, sharing our blessings with the poor, serving others with our wealth — is good. Giving’s hard — but it’s good.

It’s not the Pharisee’s practice of tithing he has to change; it’s not his commitment to the religious practice of fasting he has to lay aside; it’s thinking that those things make him righteous. They don’t!

The one person who gets into heaven is the one who knows he doesn’t have to pay a price of admission. The purpose of the parable is to drive home one truth: Good works won’t buy a place in Gods Kingdom; His merciful Grace is the only game in town.

So, what about The Power of the Parable:

Almost every biblical commentator will tell you to watch out for a trap.

The story is dangerous because we could just adopt different criteria for righteousness before God.

“Ok, maybe I can’t keep all the commandments like the Pharisee, but . . . what if I look down my nose at all the religious types and flip the situation?” Still trying to justify ourselves, this time by our great humility, we find our mouths praying the words: “God, I thank thee that I am not like the Pharisee!” And that’s a sure sign that actually our hearts haven’t changed at all.

Who is the hero of the story? It’s not the Pharisee, and it’s not even the Tax Collector with the heart of gold — it’s God.

God saves not because we keep the law or even because know we can’t. Our God saves for one reason: He loves us.

And that, my friends, is the power of this parable. Power to change.

Understand that God knows you completely, but he loves you completely. God knows us — he knows how much we want to buy him off, how lots of times pride lies underneath our religion — he knows us to our depths, but he loves us to the skies. And that changes hearts.

As I end my sermon this morning, please just take a moment to close your eyes and listen.

Who are you? What is your identity?

You are not your CV and the jobs and roles you have held in the past.

You are not your online social media account.

You are not the rules you keep or what other people think of you.

You are not your sexuality or the relationships you have.

You are not your brokenness.

You are, quite simply, God’s beloved child.

God already knows all about us — our failures, how sometimes we’re unhappy, how we can feel awkward or out of place or alone. And he loves us. Love like that changes us — in fact, it’s the only thing that ever does. That’s the gospel — a God who won’t be distant. Who knows us to our very depths, but loves us to the skies — and he’ll call us home fully justified, if we will just let him.

2 Kg 5.1-3, 7-15             Psalm 111                        2 T 2.8-15                         Luke 17.11-19

Throughout the chapters of the Gospel of Luke previous to today’s reading, the Evangelist again and again and again presents the Good News through telling stories. He illustrates a series of personal encounters between Jesus and others – sometimes with his followers, sometimes his opponents, sometimes strangers. There were crowds of the curious and hopeful and various individuals – a tax collector, a centurion, a grieving mother, a sinful woman, a man inflicted with demons. As Luke relates these stories, he shows Jesus responding with love and grace and using the occasions to teach the values of God, while challenging the contrasting and distorted ways of the world.

Now, having reached Chapter 17 in the liturgical calendar, we find Luke recalling an episode in which Jesus was engaged by 10 lepers begging for mercy. These unfortunates suffered from what we now call Hanson’s disease. This malady, known among humans for thousands of years, went untreated in biblical times and caused permanent damage to skin, nerves, limbs and eyes, compromised the immune system, and hastened death. Though it is now known to be only mildly infectious, the ancients considered it highly contagious and forced lepers to stay away from others, identifying their condition by announcing, “Unclean. Unclean,” when approached.

As a result, they were excluded from the general society and forced to make their own communities, not unlike leper colonies that still exist in some parts of the world. They became dead men walking – at the mercy of others, ostracised, alienated from the richness of family life and the comfort of communal religious practices.

Like others, the lepers in today’s gospel were outcasts who bound themselves to one another out of necessity and because no one else would touch them. All that mattered was their disease, as evidenced by the inclusion among them of a Samaritan who would have been a hated and shunned foreigner in mainline Jewish society.

This band of 10 had nothing to offer others; nothing to offer Jesus when they saw him coming. But they recognized him, perhaps by his reputation as a holy man, and approached within shouting distance the one they knew by name. They cried out: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Possessing enough inspiration, or maybe just a sense of desperation, they reached out to Jesus with an appeal for healing that went beyond all conventional expectations.

Jesus did not hesitate in his response. He did not back off or require the lepers to confess faith in God. He did not inquire about whether they were worthy. He did not ask anything of them. Jesus saw them and said simply, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”

According to Jewish law, a cured leper had to appear before the priests, who would conduct a series of elaborate ritual actions in order to declare them cleansed. The lepers, who had hoped in Jesus, now displayed enough faith to obey him. They immediately left his presence to go to the priests as required and to begin the new lives Jesus made possible.

What Jesus did for them, of course, bore remarkable significance. Not only were they cured of a horrendous, disabling disease, but the cleansing also enabled them to overcome what was perhaps the greater affliction. Now they could return to the community, to become a part of the body that had cast them out. Now they could participate in life fully, restored physically and socially, and surely, experiencing the beginnings of emotional healing.

Yet, we might ask, did they gain everything Jesus hoped for? Did they achieve spiritual healing, as well? We will never know about all of them, but we have assurance that one did – the Samaritan who returned to give thanks. If we wonder what led to his distinguishing himself by praising God and falling at Jesus’ feet in gratitude, we might speculate that it was easier for him – as a double outcast – to see clearly the remarkable nature of what had happened. More likely, however, it was due to his greater maturity and deeper strength of character.

Whatever the reason, Jesus was saddened that he was the only one who turned back, and he used the one and the nine to teach his disciples another lesson about the values of God. He was clearly disappointed by the behavior of the nine, and in earshot of his followers, he said to the now-cleansed Samaritan leper, “Your faith has made you well.”

In place of the word “well,” some translations use “made whole” or “saved.” There is ambiguity about the Greek meaning, but its use by Jesus surely implies more than simply being cured from a disease. “Your faith has made you whole,” seems closer to the way Jesus used this episode to provide a new teaching. The Samaritan was not simply cured like the others, but experienced something more important.

His response to being cleansed demonstrated that his view of God was closer to what Jesus came to reveal. He acted not out of selfishness to gain certification of his cure, not rushing to the priests without reflection, but paused to put his cleansing in a wider perspective, seeing God as the centre of the personal miracle he was experiencing. Before anything else, the Samaritan gave thanks for the chance to renew his life. This was the beginning of his transformation, and it provided a fitting model for Jesus to honour. He was not only cured physically, but he also gained spiritual wholeness.

There are a number of “take aways” from today’s gospel – community, inclusivity and wholeness in the life of the world and in Christianity. Think about the Eucharist. The moment we experience among our fellow Christians, in prayer and at the altar rail, is unity in its purest form. Receiving the sacrament of bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ, all else is shut out but the holy context. We are at one with God and one another, in a sublime moment of grace.

In this moment we are made whole. Even if we lose this reality as we go back to our seats, we know it as a deep truth on which to draw on our journeys of faith. In that moment, we know that everyone is like the Samaritan, freed from alienation and separation from others in a realm of God that includes a circle of universal inclusion.

Luke’s story of this encounter between Jesus and the lepers allows him to teach us about the disappointment Jesus felt because the nine failed to give thanks and the joy he experienced in discovering that the Samaritan recognised the deeper truths of God. When Jesus reflects on the difference, he speaks no less to us than the disciples of old. Today we are reminded of the sadness of our Lord when we, like the nine, fail to follow him, but we also are led to emulate the Samaritan. We can take joy in committing ourselves anew to respond in love and gratitude to the grace, forgiveness and wholeness of God that we all can have simply by accepting this freely offered gift.

It was Harvest time at a small village church in rural Scotland and the priest was organising the annual harvest service where people would bring their home-grown plants and vegetables to the service.

But this year was a little bit different. The local village cricket team has just won their league and the village was in a celebratory mood so the priest decided to do something special – they would combine the normal harvest service with a cricket theme.

Now, the day of the service arrived and the church was filled with flowers. People were bringing in their offerings of vegetables, and in the middle of the display was a cricket wicket, a strip of turf with a set of wooden stumps at each end, and people were laying their offerings on the wicket. Everything was going fine until one lady went up to the front of the church and placed a bag of frozen peas among the other vegetables. She was stopped by the priest who quietly asked her to return to her seat still clutching her peas.

“What happened?” asked the lady she was sitting next to.

She shrugged her shoulders and said wearily, “There’s just no peas for the wicket.”

(No peace for the wicked – get it? – I can hear you groan from here)!

Celebrating harvest goes very deep in us – it seems to stir in us a sense of our country roots, memories of a land that lived by agriculture before the Industrial revolution turned most of us into townies. Some of us don’t have to go very far back to find our farming connections. Although very few of us have probably actually done it, we sing “We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land”, and it doesn’t seem in the least odd, even though farmers are much more efficient in their methods now. Harvest marks the end of a sequence in the church and country calendar. Plough Sunday in January, when the farm implements were blessed; Rogation days, just before Ascension Day in May, when prayers were made for favourable weather for the growing crops; Lammas Day at the beginning of August, when the first loaf made with flour from the new crop was offered in token thanks, and coming full circle (though it was introduced much later on the liturgical scene, in the nineteenth century) Harvest. Time for a pause before it all starts again. Time to be thankful, to remember God’s mercy and goodness, enjoying the sight of full storehouses and barns, pantry shelves and freezers. Time to feel secure against the coming winter. It is good to be thankful and we come gladly, enjoying the colour and smells, the readings and hymns that we have so long associated with this time of year.

But there’s something uncomfortable about Harvest too, especially now that we can see on our television screens that there are people who haven’t got a harvest to celebrate – in fact some who haven’t had a harvest for years, perhaps because the rains have failed, perhaps because war and conflict have made it impossible to cultivate the land.

Way back in time, God’s people faced the same situation on a smaller scale. Reading the instructions in Deuteronomy we are reminded that God’s people have always been told to be generous and help the poor to share our fortune. Deuteronomy speaks of very different farming methods than we use nowadays, but the message is clear: don’t keep it all to yourself.

And the New Testament warns us against taking things for granted, being pleased with out achievement. Remember that man who pulled down his barn and built a bigger one, who stuffed it full and sat back feeling pleased with himself – Remember that he got a sharp reminder – “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” That ‘s the question that Harvest asks us too.

In the Bible, harvest and judgement often go together – the parable of the wheat and the tares puts the point very starkly (Matthew 13.24-30). So, it’s right and good to be thankful, but we have to ask ourselves how our thankfulness can find expression in making it possible for all humankind to be thankful. We can’t ever sit back and say we’ve done enough – not while there are still all those children stick thin limbs and swollen tummies looking at us hopelessly from our screens.

It we are going to be on the side of the angels, we have to work for the elimination of hunger, and the inhumanity which locks most of the world’s food away from those who need it most. We have to support the agencies who work to improve farming methods, but we also need to put our political will behind the removal of world debt, an issue which keeps on being pushed  down the agenda by scandals and atrocities across the world. We must keep asking the questions and seeking action. Harvest is the point where, far from sitting back and thinking how fortunate we are, we have to prepare to sow the seeds and encourage the growth for the harvest to come, when the will of God will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Amos 6.1, 4-7 Psalm 146 1 Timothy 6.6-19 Luke 16.19-31

In our readings today, we heard one of Jesus’ famous parables, about a beggar named Lazarus and a rich man without a name.

Before we consider this parable, I want to set the stage for us. Too often, we read Jesus’ parables in isolation from their contexts. If we’re not careful, we might start imagining that Jesus was in the habit of rushing into places, telling some parables, and taking off again – leaving everyone either delighted, because it was such a nice story he told, or angry, because the story insulted them, or scratching their heads, because they had no idea what he was talking about.

That’s not how Jesus operated. His parables were always part of a larger discussion or controversy. And he usually told these stories to challenge people’s thinking. To try and broaden their horizons, to see things from a different angle, or maybe notice something they hadn’t before.

That’s what we saw a couple of weeks ago. Remember? The scribes and Pharisees complained—for the second time in Luke’s Gospel—that Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners. So Jesus told the Pharisees and scribes a few parables to justify his table ministry. The stories were about something that was lost being found.

A shepherd loses a sheep, and searches until he finds it.

A poor woman loses a coin, and frantically sweeps every nook and cranny of the house until she finds it.

In these stories, those who find what had been lost invite their friends and neighbours to celebrate with them.

Jesus wants the Pharisees and scribes to see him and his disciples eating with tax collectors and sinners differently. Jesus has been out seeking the lost sheep of Israel. The tax collectors and sinners are lost sons and daughters who have come back home. When he opens his fellowship to them, he’s celebrating their return—just as the shepherd and the poor woman celebrated when they found what had been lost.

Like any other story, parables do their best work when we find ourselves in them. When something in them resonates with our experience. Whenever, for good or bad, we see something about our own lives reflected in them. But the parables can only do this profound and powerful work in us when we understand who Jesus told them to, and why he told them.

So let’s talk about the context of this week’s reading. Who was Jesus telling this story to, and why was he telling it?

The parable about the rich man and Lazarus we heard today is part of the same conversation we heard last week. Jesus and the Pharisees have been going ‘round and ‘round for a few chapters now. There’s a three-way conversation that’s going on between Jesus, the Pharisees, and his disciples. Jesus is saying things to the Pharisees that he also wants his disciples to hear. And he’s saying things to his disciples that he wants the Pharisees to hear.

Jesus begins his story this morning: There was a certain rich man. This rich man is anonymous. Like the rich man in the parable in Luke 12, who had a bumper crop and wanted to build bigger barns. Jesus said this rich man clothed himself in purple and fine linen. These were very expensive clothes—the kind royalty might wear.

Not only did the rich man dress like a king, he lived like one, too. Jesus said he feasted luxuriously every day.

By contrast, Jesus tells us, at the rich man’s gate lay a certain poor man named Lazarus. A few details here. First, it’s not enough to say poor Lazarus laid at the gate. The verb suggests he was tossed there by someone – like rubbish.

Second, while Jesus refuses to name the rich man—indeed, he never names anyone in his other parables—he tells us the poor man’s name: Lazarus. The name Lazarus means: God is my helper.

It might not look right now like God is on this poor man’s side. But we must stay and listen for the rest of the story.

Third, the rich man’s home has a gate. So he doesn’t just have a house; he owns a gated compound. Keep that detail pinned to your mind. It will come up again.

While the rich man covered himself with the finest, whitest linen and a purple robe, Lazarus was covered with sores. Someone covered with open sores would have been considered ritually unclean by other Jews. Those who saw him may have believed he was being punished by God.

After all, Deut. 28.35 threatens the wicked with this judgment: The Lord will strike you … with grievous boils of which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head. So people who passed by this poor, suffering man probably thought he deserved his suffering. Maybe the rich man even thought so. And we wouldn’t want to interfere with God’s justice, would we?

But then Jesus piles on even more pathetic details. While the rich man feasted every day; just outside his gate, Lazarus longed to eat the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table.

Instead, Jesus says, dogs would come and lick his sores. This is not a sentimental scene of dogs trying to comfort this sick and suffering man. Dogs were not pets in those days. They were wild scavengers, like a jackal or hyena. And they were ritually unclean.

You’re supposed to imagine poor Lazarus trying to fight with dogs over table scraps. Meanwhile, they’re scavenging off his flesh.

Lazarus means, God is my helper. God better help him, because no one else is. Jesus dignified him with a name, because he represents all the poor outcasts—the homeless, the chronically ill, the refugees; and, in the eyes of the Pharisees, the tax collectors and sinners—tossed like rubbish outside the gate of polite society. All the wretched people we’d rather pretend don’t exist.

Maybe the rich man thought to himself sometimes: I’m so glad I’ve got this big wall to keep that Lazarus out! Perhaps even when he prayed, he thanked God for all the blessings God had given him, so he didn’t have to wallow with the dogs like poor Lazarus.

If he did, maybe God answered, You just wait! But the rich man was so deaf to anything outside his own thoughts, he never heard it.

Jesus continues his story: The poor man died and was carried by angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. The rich man got a proper burial. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say the same for Lazarus. Even in death, that basic dignity was denied him. Just as someone had dumped him like rubbish in front of the rich man’s gate; his body was probably also tossed without ceremony in a hole somewhere.

But that’s where the story begins to turn. The rich man was buried, I’m sure with honours and mourning.

But Lazarus was carried by angels to Abraham’s side. Not only that, the rich man awakens to find himself tormented in Hades; meanwhile, in the distance, he can see Lazarus, being welcomed and comforted by father Abraham himself.

In life, the rich man had feasted in luxury every day, while Lazarus’ hungry belly was never filled. Now the rich man suffers awful thirst, and there’s not a drop of water to quench it. In life, the dogs had licked the sores on Lazarus’ body. Now, scorching tongues of flame lick at the rich man in the land of the dead.

He begs: Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I’m suffering in this flame.

Obviously, he was used to being served during life; and still expects this in death.

But Abraham speaks up, telling the rich man: Child, remember that during your lifetime you received good things, whereas Lazarus received terrible things. Now Lazarus is being comforted and you are in great pain. Back in Luke 6.2, Jesus had warned:

Happy are you who are poor,

    because God’s kingdom is yours.

But how terrible for you who are rich,

    because you have already received your comfort.

And near the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ mother Mary sang that God:

He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones

        and lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things

    and sent the rich away empty-handed. (Luke 1.52-53)

That’s just what’s happened: the great reversal. Notice that Abraham doesn’t say: Lazarus was good and pious in life, so he’s in heaven; but you were wicked, so you’re in hell.

No—it’s that Lazarus never got justice in life, and so he gets justice, finally, in death. God helped him. Meanwhile, we aren’t told the rich man was particularly wicked. He was just so self-absorbed that he let Lazarus suffer and starve to death just outside his walls.

And he’s still self-absorbed. He doesn’t confess how blind his privilege made him to Lazarus’ suffering. He doesn’t ask Lazarus to forgive him. He’s consumed by his own discomfort, and trying to boss Lazarus around.

C. S. Lewis liked to say, “the doors of hell are locked on the inside.” And the rich man in Jesus’ parable shows that to be a fact.

As if to remind the rich man what led him to be tormented and thirsty in the flames of Hades, Abraham says: Moreover, a great chasm has been fixed between us and you. Those who wish to cross over from here to you cannot. Neither can anyone cross from there to us.

Remember, the rich man had lived in a gated compound. And Lazarus suffered just outside his gate. The rich man could see him, and he could see the rich man. But the rich man never crossed through that gate to comfort poor Lazarus. In death, they can still see each other, the rich man and Lazarus. It’s like Father Abraham is telling the rich man: Sorry, but Lazarus lives in a gated compound, now. You never invited him into your home before. And he certainly isn’t coming to your home now.

Only in the end does the rich man begin to think about anyone beside himself. He begs Father Abraham to send Lazarus to his five living brothers: He needs to warn them so that they don’t come to this place of agony. Even in the land of the dead, the rich man thinks he’s in a position to call the shots. He wants to order Lazarus away from the joy of Abraham’s side, to serve his five living brothers.

He’s still not moved by what Lazarus, and those like him, have suffered in life. The rich man is only concerned that his family, his friends, the people in his little circle, should not suffer.

Father Abraham puts him in his place. He will not send Lazarus to the rich man’s brothers: They have Moses and the Prophets, Abraham reminds him. They must listen to them.

Just before Jesus told this parable, he’d told the Pharisees: What is highly valued by people—wealth, status, influence—is deeply offensive to God. And then he reminded them: It’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for the smallest stroke of a pen in the Law to drop out (Luke 16.15, 17). Nearly every page of the Torah and Prophets commanded them to care for people like Lazarus—the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the widows, orphans, and immigrants. If they listened to Moses and the Prophets, they would surely not let the Lazaruses of the world starve to death in front of their gate.

But the rich man—who I’m sure was used to getting his way—wouldn’t give up. No, Father Abraham!, he argued. But if someone from the dead goes to them, they will change their hearts and lives. Abraham said, “If they don’t listen to Moses and the Prophets, then neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.”

And that gives the story a new twist. Because we know Jesus, the one telling the story, would himself rise from the dead later. But even that wouldn’t convince a lot of people. When you invest yourself in getting more stuff, gaining more status, and winning at any cost—like the Pharisees—you become blind to many things.

Like actual human suffering just outside your gate.

And even a miracle may not change that.

Robert Frost’s famous poem, “Mending Wall,” challenges the popular proverb, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

Instead, Frost asks:

“Why do they make good neighbours? …

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.”

Jesus wanted the Pharisees to see that their focus on being right, being pure, being safe, combined with their love of money, popularity, and comfort, had built a great wall around them. Just like the rich man’s gated compound in the parable. And the Lazaruses suffering and dying outside that wall weren’t just the poor and the sick and the widow and orphan and immigrant. But the social and religious outcasts like the tax collectors and sinners Jesus ministered to. They were sick and dying emotionally and spiritually. Lonely. Needy. Neglected. Hungry and thirsty for connection. Eaten up with toxic shame. Vulnerable to attacks from predators and scavengers.

And they hadn’t just walled out the undesirables—the tax collectors and sinners. They’d also walled themselves in. They had put up thick barriers to love, grace, and mercy. Their wall also kept God out, making them blind and deaf to the Good News of God’s salvation.

Like C. S. Lewis said: “the doors of hell are locked on the inside.”

Those who would follow Jesus don’t build bigger, thicker walls to keep others out. They build bigger, longer tables, to bring more people in.

Amos 8.4-7 Psalm 113 1 Timothy 2.1-7 Luke 16.1-13

This morning’s gospel reading is sometimes called the Parable of the Dishonest Manager, and its about a manager of his master’s business who learned he was going to lose his job. So the manager decided to cook the books with some of those who owed his master debts, and give them discounts so they might return the favour and take care of him later when he had no income.

In one case the manager found someone who owed his master one hundred jugs of olive oil, and he said, “Make it fifty.” He found another who owed a hundred containers of wheat, and he said, “Make it eighty.” And according to the way Jesus told the story, the manager did this so that those people later would welcome him into their homes.

But the master in today’s lesson learned what his manager had done. However, the fate of the manager was not what we might have expected. Listen again to how Jesus told what happened next.

Jesus said, “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” Jesus continued, “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into their eternal homes.”

Few, if any, parts of Luke’s Gospel have bewildered readers more than this part of the Parable of the Dishonest Manager. And you probably would not be surprised to hear that few, if any, parts of Luke’s Gospel have generated more different interpretations of its meaning.

So how should we understand it? Does this story mean that we should praise shady dealings, or that we can buy our way into heaven? Of course not. That would be entirely inconsistent with everything else in the Bible.

We start by remembering that this story is a parable. That means Jesus was speaking in a symbolic way in order to make a point.

This was not a narrative about something that actually happened in Jesus’ experience, but rather a common teaching device that assumed certain facts for purposes of discussing causes and consequences – what we might call a Case study today.

And we also should understand the parable in the context of how Jewish law affected the way people did business at the time.

It was unlawful to charge any interest or finance charges on loans or purchases. This was known as usury. Don’t a lot of people today wish that Jewish law applied to their credit card statements?

But people easily avoided these prohibitions. They simply increased the amounts of notes or the prices of goods to include hidden charges. Or, as we saw today, they might have taken payment in commodities such as olive oil or wheat to possibly disguise the true cost.

In addition, managers of property frequently were not paid salaries, but rather made their living by putting their own commission on top of the amounts of their masters’ money they were able to lend, or the prices of their masters’ goods they were able to sell.

Some analysts and scholars have used these ancient business practices to explain why the master commended his steward for what he did. They say that the steward might only have deducted his own commissions that would have been added on later, and thus the master was not deprived of anything to which he was legally entitled anyway.

Or they say that the reductions that the steward gave the debtors were for interest charges that were not lawful at the time, and the master had no choice but to grudgingly commend the steward for his shrewdness, at least publicly.

My belief, however, is that Jesus told the story this way in order to lead into the basic point he wanted to make. And here I think Jesus used some irony or cynicism. How many times have you heard someone say, “Yeah, right” when they actually meant the exact opposite.

That is a good explanation of what happened here. Let’s go back again to Jesus’ statement that “the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” Then, and here is the irony, he told his disciples to make friends from dishonest wealth so that those friends would welcome them into their eternal homes.

Jesus probably was making a point by saying something in such an obviously ridiculous way that the opposite meaning, the meaning he intended, would be clear. Suppose I said, “I just love to drive in rush hour traffic.” You could tell from the tone of my voice and the literal incongruity of what I said that I did not mean it, and in fact was indicating my dislike of driving during rush hour.

In the same way Jesus made the point that worldly goods contain inherent dangers, but can be wisely used. And to the extent Jesus even used the manager as an example, it only was because he was resourceful in dealing with his problem, and Jesus wanted the disciples to be equally resourceful in doing their work as they cared for the poor and spread the Gospel.

Thus, the manager was not an example to be imitated, but only an example of someone who showed initiative in worldly affairs. By extension and analogy Jesus urged the disciples to take the initiative in spiritual and godly affairs.

This idea also is expressed in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus told his disciples that “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (10:16).

And so we today can take two messages from the parable of the Dishonest Manager. One relates to spiritual understanding and the other to practical action.

The spiritual message is that we all will be called by God to account for the content of our lives; that preparation for that time should include the prudent use now of our resources and finances, including helping the poor and needy; and that when we do so we will be living into the Christian promise of eternal life and joy.

The practical message is that we really do need to be as shrewd as serpents as we serve the church in contemporary society. Surveys show that people are more receptive to spirituality than at any time in recent history. But yet religion is being driven from schools, excluded from the public forum, and diminished by secular activists who see faith as a threat to their agendas.

Opportunities abound for churches to wisely use their resources in new ways to make the voice of God heard. To use the terms of the reading, the children of light should be prepared to engage the children of this age on their own terms, and with a shrewd and wise use of resources the light can drive out the darkness.

Many churches effectively proclaim the Word through modern public relations strategies, cutting edge technologies, and innovative communication techniques. And even when limited financial resources do not permit full use of these possibilities, we still are called to search for creative ways to reach out to those we can bring to Christ.

So for us, today’s Gospel means that we are to engage the world as we find it, not as we might prefer it to be. Jesus knew that his disciples would encounter snares and pitfalls as they continued his ministry, and he wanted them to know that through both shrewdness and faith they could deal with the world and still be true to their beliefs.

That also is a message for the church today. We are the children of light in today’s Gospel. And with a shrewd and faithful use of resources the light of Christ will show the way, and we can discover anew how the Spirit can lead us.

Amen.