September 21, 2025

Sometimes the most difficult part of preparing a homily is figuring out what the opening anecdote is going to be—the way that I'm going to frame the outset of the homily to make it feel somewhat relevant and connected to our current circumstance. There were two things that struck me about the reading today as I was reflecting on it earlier this week. The first is, I thought about my experience of learning foreign languages. I've dabbled over the course of my life with a variety of different languages. In undergraduate, I studied Greek and then later on Mandarin Chinese. At one point after graduating and when I was in seminary, I returned to biblical languages, studying Hebrew. I've tried my hand at Arabic and Irish at one point, and since very early on in my life, I've at least had a peripheral knowledge of Spanish.

But in a lot of circumstances, I'm not that great at language acquisition. The best I've ever been able to do is to listen very attentively and carefully to what's being said and to get to the end of the statement and say, "Oh, I kind of have an idea of what you were saying. I understand the last thing you said. It kind of framed everything else." I think, in truth, our gospel passage today can be somewhat like that. It's a very confusing, nuanced, ambiguous passage. But there's very little ambiguity in hearing, "No slave can serve two masters. You cannot serve God and wealth." That seems pretty straightforward, no?

The other thing that this passage makes me think of, every year when it comes up—or every three years, actually, because this is a unique Lukan passage—is satire. Satire is kind of in the news today, being very politicized and discussed as to its appropriateness. But one of the greatest satirists in the entirety of the English language was a fellow Anglican, the late 18th and early 19th-century priest and writer Jonathan Swift. And in the midst of being a clergy person, actually a quite successful clergy person, he ended up being the dean of a cathedral. He devoted himself to tearing apart, tearing down, and critiquing all of the misanthropic and misplaced priorities of the society around him. One of his most popular and famous works is the novel Gulliver's Travels.

I suspect many of you have encountered it at some point in your life. Towards the very end of Gulliver's Travels, this narrative of a sea captain who repeatedly gets stranded in these exotic and foreign lands, he ends up in one desolate location where life is inverted from the way we experience it. There are these kind of primal humanoid creatures who are essentially the animal servants to a very intelligent and wise equine society, a society of horses who control these humanoid creatures. At one point in this particular journey, Gulliver discovers that these humanoid creatures, even as their base needs are being cared for by the horses, still obsess over these shiny stones that have no discernible value. They hoard them. They lament and become depressed when they lose them. They fight wars and battles over them. It's very clearly a critique of our own monetary system, and I think it's actually quite a close parallel to what Jesus is talking about today.

I can't help but think that Jonathan Swift, in his framing of that particular part of the story, was reflecting on this specific parable. But there is a lot of ambiguity here, even as we hear this very clear statement at the end of our lesson today. There's a lot to think about, unpack, and try to understand. For one thing, I think the King James actually does a better job when it says, "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Because "mammon" is closer to the original Greek here, "mamanos," and "mamanos," while a Greek word, actually has an older Semitic origin. It meant not just money, which we so often think about it as, but any treasure a person trusts in. And I think one of the things that Jonathan Swift so brilliantly points out—a habit we still fall into today—is that we often get obsessed about things that are of no value in and of themselves.

I fall into this trap all the time, spending hours thinking about 401Ks, pension plans, and concerning myself over how much money we have stored away. In times of great anxiety and uncertainty, that seems very reasonable. But that storing up of earthly treasure for nothing of significant account is serving a master that is not our God. Money, at the end of the day, is of nothing if it's not translated into the material goods that we use it to mark or to symbolize. Jesus is, I think, really pointing our attentiveness to that reality today.

One of the things that's interesting about this passage, when you really begin to kind of dig into it more thoroughly, is that it's not as strange as we might initially think. As scholars have pointed out, one thing we miss as 21st-century hearers of this parable is that it is very likely when this manager, realizing that the game is up and that he's being called to account, goes to settle these accounts, what he is doing is he is eliminating his commission. That is what these reductions in payment are. It's not that he's shorting his master. He's saying, "I did not do what I was supposed to, so I'm going to take my cut out of the equation so that my master's affairs are settled. And when I am out of a job in just a few weeks, these folks will remember the good turn I did them, that I didn't take my portion of what was due. And maybe by not taking my portion of what is due, they will be sensitive and sympathetic to me and invite me in in their own hospitality."

Sometimes, when we are called to account—when we slip up, screw up, and make mistakes—the place of return is to make that place of sacrifice, to apologize, to find a place of restitution and renewal of relationship. If we take all of our readings together, that is fundamentally what we're hearing explicated throughout all of Scripture. In our passage all the way back from Amos, that section of verse 5 where the people are obsessed over the new moon or the ending of the Sabbath, they're getting themselves tied up over material concerns of this world. They are not focusing on the things of true and lasting importance and substance, the things of the kingdom. And they are being called to account for it, being judged by God for their inhospitality, their uncaring, their cynical material obsession with the things of this world.

But then also, in our epistle from 1 Timothy, St. Paul is not just calling us to be, in a sense, subservient, removed, disengaged followers, letting the world be what it is, even though he says, "Lead quiet and peaceable lives." Pay close attention to what he says in verse 3 and 4. It is in living those quiet and peaceful lives that we find right and acceptable position in the sight of God who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. It's not that we just simply give up, that we take our lot as it is, and not try and strive for a better future, a more fulsome and honest reflection of the kingdom. It is in being humble, it is in leading lives of quiet humility, of dignity, of compassion, of charity that we don't just get taken advantage of, but that we offer the world an alternative that is transforming and renewing.

Over and over and over again, we have examples throughout history where that sense of quiet confidence does break down the barriers of hatred, of discord, of distrust. I saw an article just this past week that suggested in times of great kind of authoritarian upheaval, where the powers of this world are ascendant, that often, and especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, that period of upheaval actually turns back to a period of greater stability, a period of greater freedom, a period of greater democracy. And that's hard to see, that's hard to see in the midst of times of darkness and struggle. But it's in remaining faithful to the call that we have, to the call to serve God, to remain singularly focused on the things of the kingdom that allow us and empower us to show forth that alternative—to give life back into a world that is in the midst of death, to be the children of light in a great and overwhelming time of darkness.

So today as we hear a parable, as we encounter a teaching of Jesus that seems quite foreign, quite difficult, quite challenging, may we not be caught up in the confoundingness of the teaching, but instead reawakened to that simple and clear truth: that we are to serve God, that we are to be children of light, that we are not to be consumed, obsessed, or distracted by the shiny little stones of this material world, but instead always and forever focused on the things of the kingdom, the things of love, the things of ultimate life and transformation. As Robert R. Brown, the great 20th-century theologian, observed about this passage in Luke, "Its overall service in Luke's theological view is to make the point that abundant wealth, abundant treasure of any of these different ways we frame treasure, power, influence, worldly material possession, that those things corrupt. And the right way to use them is to give them away to the poor and to make friends who, when they go to heaven, can help us." Our invitation today is to upend our priorities, to be not a slave to the material things of this world, but to again center ourselves anew on the things of the kingdom and of ultimate value. That we in our quiet confidence may be communicators and proclaimers of that gospel good news, even to a world that struggles to hear it. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

August 31, 2025

Sometimes sermon inspiration comes from the most random of places. And this week, I want to talk to you about chairs. Chairs, you say? Yes. And frankly, they're far more fascinating than you can even imagine. Just a few hundred miles north of us, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, resides the oldest chair in existence. It is the chair of Reneseneb, who was a scribe in ancient Egypt. The chair dates to the 15th century B.C., 1,400 B.C. It is in pristine condition because it was entombed with Reneseb when he died. The only thing that's been changed over the years is the wicker seat faded away, deteriorated, and they had to re-bind it.

But that's not the only ancient chair around. In the Christian tradition, we have the cathedral, which is a fancy term for the chair that the bishop sits in. It's actually the term by which cathedrals have come into usage. Cathedrals are the place of the cathedral. The term the chair of St. Peter is a descriptor for the bishop of Rome, for the pope. But in Rome, in St. Peter's Basilica, there is an actual chair of St. Peter. It is today encased in a golden reliquary, but it's a literal wooden chair that at least dates to the 9th century and has pieces embedded within it that appear to be far older. By tradition, received tradition, it is understood that the chair or significant pieces of the chair are part of a chair that Peter, the first bishop of Rome, sat in himself.

And then in our tradition, in the Anglican Communion, we have the chair of St. Augustine of Canterbury. It is a beautiful Sussex marble chair that dates to the 13th century and is still to this day used in England for the inauguration and enthronement of the Archbishop of Canterbury each time we have a new Archbishop. But one of the chairs that captures me almost more than any other is the coronation chair used in England. It's known as St. Edward's Chair or King Edward's Chair. And it's an ancient wooden chair used by British monarchs since at least the 14th century. We know that it was used in 1308 at a coronation and has been used in recent memory as far back as we can go.

But the thing that fascinates me about it is that it's a rather plain chair with a rather plain origin. It wasn't anything fancy or made specifically for the purpose of being a throne. And today, it is quite decrepit. In the 18th century, in the 1700s, when Westminster Abbey was kind of hard up for cash, they would let people pay a few pence and sit in the chair itself. And people, tourists, in the 18th century, would carve their initials into the coronation chair. So if you see a picture of it today, it looks like a wooden bench in a park where people have come through and carved their names over time. It really is not very attractive.

And then on top of that, the seat of the chair is an ancient stone from Scotland used to enthrone the kings of Scotland. It's called the Stone of Scone, and it itself is very rough-hewn and not very attractive. So the whole design of this chair is rather plain and ordinary. But there's something really profound about that too, isn't there? Of something so plain, so ordinary, so run-of-the-mill, being the chair that is used to enthrone, arguably, the most prominent and powerful monarch in the world today.

And that brings us to the gospel passage. And this sense of what it means to be humble and how we are to live with humility in the world around us. Now there are kind of two distinct elements of this gospel passage that we hear today. Because the first is this parable that Jesus is offering about not positioning yourself at the head of the table. Not preemptively or presumptuously thinking that you will be the person of prominence. But taking that opportunity. Taking that opportunity to be reserved. To be humble. To step back. And wait until you are invited. Wait until you are acknowledged for that position of preeminence.

But in that parable, there's a little bit of a presumption there, or could be a presumption, of self-servingness. That we will have this facade of humility so that when we are recognized for the important people that we are, that we will be put in that place of honor. That we do it not out of true humility, but out of an effort not to be scandalized or not to be embarrassed. But Jesus doesn't stop with just the parable. He adds the second element that really does kind of upend our human inclinations. He says, when you throw a banquet, don't do it for those self-serving reasons. Don't be humble for self-serving purposes. But instead, go out and invite the people on the margins. Go out and invite the people that cannot repay you, that cannot do anything of their own volition, that are incapable of reciprocating this false sense of humility with some kind of recognition of your status. But do it out of a true... of connection and service to those who are in need, those who are desperate for support, compassion, and love.

And so if we take both of those admonitions today, we are presented with this call not just to deep humility, but the experience of humility as an act of service. Humility as a call in our lives to be of loving servitude to each other. As we hear in this great reading from Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, the book has both names, the beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord. So often, so often in our lives, we get tied up in knots with our own presumptions about who we are, what is right, how we should be, how the world should be. And the moment we get ourselves down those tracks, we have forsaken the Lord. That the Lord's of orientation for us. The place in which he shows up and most fully works through us is when we are the people of humility and openness prepared to hear and receive the truths of the world around us. Hear and receive the needs of the world around us. and to be that transforming change agent in the world around us.

It can be so very easy to come in on our high horse, as it were, and to dictate to the world what needs to happen, what changes must be made, how the world could be a better place if just X, Y, or Z thing were different. Different in the ways that we think they need to be different. But I invite us to consider today that even when we are those empowered change agents in the world, when we are the voice and the presence of transformation in the world around us, we are that most fully when we have an openness and generosity of spirit, when we have a humility to be the people of faith who we are and to stand firm in that faith, but to do it with love and compassion, with a deep ear to listen to what the world is begging us for, what the needs are before us. How we might be a better service to each other.

There have been numerous thought pieces over the last 30 years that have talked ad nauseum about the decay of our social bonds and ties that bring us together. The ways in which we have been able to cross bounds and boundaries and barriers. To be in relationship even in the midst of great diversities that we have in this country. We see this politically in the dissolution of bipartisanship. If we look at the ways in which subsequent congresses have conducted their affairs in the last 50 years, we've grown further and further apart, more and more polarized, more and more centered in our own echo chambers, unwilling, unable to hear the voice of the other, to be invited into a space of deep relational connectivity, even when we are encountering an experience or a person or a community that isn't quite what we think it should be or quite how we think the world should be. But yet in that humility, in that deep place of humility, we find our ability to be the transforming change agents of compassion and love, to be the people of deep care and service that God calls us to over and over again throughout all of Holy Scripture.

Years ago when I was still in Arkansas I worked as a coordinator for disaster relief services with the Red Cross. And I had the responsibility for three separate counties, but I had an older retired gentleman who was kind of my right-hand man and helped guide me as I was taking on this kind of first opportunity of leadership as a young 20-something. And he was this kind of gruff, old Marine veteran who had been a gunnery sergeant in Vietnam. And one of the great lessons I learned from him on several occasions when we were responding to disasters was that whatever needed to be done, whatever activities were before us, if I as a leader was unwilling to do even the most basic and most menial of those tasks, then I wouldn't be respected in my leadership by the rest of the team. So not only was I the one directing stuff at kind of a top-level layer, organizing response calls, but more often than not, I was with Richard down in the muck, doing the dirtiest of jobs, responding to the most difficult of calls. Because doing that helped me understand what everyone else was doing, gave me the humility and openness to see how best to lead those who are doing the same things that I was doing.

When we're called into this place of humility, when we're called into this place of service, it's going to be disorienting. Sometimes it's going to be uncomfortable. But it's life-giving. It's transformative. And it helps us to be the most robust, and the fullest proclaimers of this gospel good news that we have to offer to the world around us. When we don't sit on our laurels proclaiming what should be done from on high, but instead get down into the thick, nitty-gritty needs, the difficult, dirty, dark spaces of the world around us, that's where we are most impactful. That is where Christ shines through us most fully.

But I want to bring us back to chairs for just a moment. Because I said that Edward's chair, King Edward's chair in England is one of my most favorite chairs. My absolute most favorite chair anywhere in the entire world is just down the road in Washington, D.C. At the Smithsonian American Art Museum, just around the corner from Chinatown, there is a space in the American folk art wing. It's an entire room. Called the throne of the third heaven of the nation's millennium general assembly. It's a mouthful. But it's an entire throne room. Lavishly decorated in this stunning metallic beauty. It was designed by James Hampton in a carriage house in Georgetown.

He spent 14 years in the early part of the 20th century. And James Hampton became convinced in his life that he was to make the throne room for the return of Jesus when he arrives again. But I say this throne room is gilded in this metallic sheen. The entire throne room, this ornate, beautiful array. Of the throne and all of its accoutrements. Is cardboard and tinfoil. How profound it would be for Christ to come arrayed in all the splendor of glory. And for his throne to be cardboard and tinfoil. I faithfully believe that that may well be Christ's throne when he returns. That is what servant leadership looks like. That is what the humility and beauty of humility looks like. For us to be present to those lowest and most left out. To be the presence of God to those most in need. To find our place in that deep humility.

Because ultimately, as St. Paul talks about in our reading from Hebrews today, that is where the depth of our love comes from. It's in that place of hospitality. That place of caring for the stranger. That place of being Christ to those most in need. So as we come this day, as we come in this weekend where we celebrate all the laborers in the society and world around us, may we see more clearly the labor we are called into, the labor of being humble and open proclaimers of a gospel that is centered on love, compassion, and care. And may we find in our humility our place of honor in God's kingdom.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.