October 12, 2025

Growing up in the St. Louis area, history was always a bit of a strange subject. And I say that because it imbued almost every aspect of our communal identity. So many elements of how we talked about ourselves, how we identified ourselves, what it meant to be a part of that larger identity and community was rooted in the past. We were the gateway to the west, the Arch being chief among those kinds of memorials. We were the place from which Lewis and Clark embarked on their great journey to the interior of the country and continent. Even further back, we were the location on the Illinois side of the river where I grew up, the place of a great Mississippian culture headquartered or located at Cahokia Mounds in the pre-European experience of the indigenous people in North America.

But very little of that ever felt present. It was relegated, quite literally, to history. It was preserved in dioramas and historical markers. So much of what we talked about or we memorialized had to be conceived of in the imagination because it hadn't been stewarded into the present age. It hadn't been preserved in a way that we could encounter it as a living experience. It was simply a part of what once was and is no longer.

Philip Deloria, who is part of a storied Lakota Episcopal family, is a professor of American history. And in the late 90s, he wrote a book called Playing Indian. I've referenced it a couple of times before. And I come back to it this year as well because I think that point is one for us to remember, too, when we reflect on history, when we reflect on stewardship, which I'm going to talk more about in just a minute. But Philip's point is that in the larger U.S. consciousness, the concept of the Native American, of the indigenous experience, by the middle of the 20th century, had been, quote-unquote, relegated to history. It was something of the past. It was the thing that you see in the Bonanza episodes on TV. It was not an ongoing, present, lived experience. And yet, as we all know, there are millions of Native Americans in the United States today who have a continuity with that past history. They have, in their own ways, often outside of the larger narrative of who we are as America, have continued to steward and bring forth the realities of who they have been, who they are in the present moment, and who they will be in a future time.

You may be wondering where all of this connects with our readings today. And I'll connect that in a moment. But I'm bringing all of this up, and I'm framing our conversation and our discernment today of these scripture readings, in the context of us launching our stewardship season this year. Our theme for stewardship is Stewardship Is... It's an invitation into considering what stewardship means for each of you, how you might answer that question of what stewardship means to you.

In our present use of the English language, stewardship essentially has two meanings. One, for folks that are part of religious communities like we are, it often has this point in time invitation or appeal for financial support. Stewardship is what you give of your financial resources to help your existing faith communities continue to exist in the future—keeping the lights on, paying the bills, etc. But stewardship, in another way, but not unrelated, is used in terms of land stewardship, conservation, organizations that try to keep the beauty and the wildness of our landscapes. And both of those have a historical connection to the English concept of stewardship. Going back into the late medieval period, stewardship related to the work of a steward, one who was in charge of the material assets of a household. So you can think about the financial element there, but also often the land on which an estate existed. They were in charge of both. And so these concepts kind of come forward into the present moment in both senses of that historical term.

But what does stewardship mean for us? Well, for me specifically, I think about this question of history. Because so often, when we consider what it is that we are stewarding, we can get trapped in these bifurcations of thinking the past is a discrete reality, the present is a discrete reality, and the future is a discrete reality.

I have been incredibly blessed in the last decade of my life to have very intimate and close friendships and relationships with a number of my Native American colleagues. Interestingly, some of you may or may not know this: In the middle of the 19th century, the Episcopal Church evangelized a number of Native American tribes on their reservation lands such that today the highest concentration percentage-wise of Episcopalians by zip code, if you were to go and look this up, are on Native American reservations—the Oneida, the Navajo, the Lakota. In some places, upwards of 95% of people on some of those reservation zip codes identify as being Episcopalian. And so as I have grown and deepened my relationship within the Episcopal Church, I have been gifted the great witness of that experience. And it's a way of stewarding our tradition that brings the past, present, and future into a cohesive whole in the present reality of who we are and how we experience the world. And it's shaped and changed me in some very important ways.

This is a connection point to especially what we hear in our gospel lesson today. Over and over again throughout the gospel passages, Jesus has this very positive regard for the Samaritans. Which, in a kind of similar dynamic, though not entirely parallel, the Samaritans were a marginalized, minority community within the larger ethos of first-century Israel Palestine. They were seen as a corrupted part of the Jewish tradition, so much corrupted by their intermarriage with the Assyrians that they were even considered at times, like Jesus talks about today, as foreigners. They were no longer legitimate, authentic people of the book.

We've similarly at many points in our history as the United States, alienated and marginalized our indigenous brothers and sisters, seeing them as foreigners in a land that is theirs first. But Jesus, again and again, both in his teaching and in his ministry, shows the authenticity of that faith. He actually has many times at which the Samaritans are the ones expressing the genuine response that Jesus is looking for. And that's the example we have today. That this one Samaritan, out of the group of those suffering from leprosy, is the one to return, to praise God for his healing, to thank Jesus for what he has done. He is the one showing authentic faith in this moment of transformation and healing.

There's a sense, a sense in which Samaritans, and not just this man but the variety of Samaritans who Jesus interacts with throughout the gospels, are the stewards of an authentic faith practice. When Jesus so often and so frequently criticizes the power structure, the faith experience of the Pharisees, of the Sadducees, of those at the very top of Jewish society, he simultaneously finds, over and over again, that the authentic faith that he preaches is being expressed by these on the very edge, these who have been rejected, these who aren't considered legitimate.

And when we come to our own discernments of stewardship, I think there are several elements of this experience that are instructive for us. In one sense, is this important connection to continuity and to a holistic experience of who we are. Again, as I mentioned, we so often want to put into discrete units the history of who we've been, the present reality of who we are, and our kind of optimal view of what the horizon holds and where we may go in the future. But those things aren't discrete realities. They all function together as one present experience in the present moment.

When we think about stewardship, beyond just the financial commitment, we so often can get ourselves in that place of discrete compartmentalization. We want to steward the best of who we've been and look always to the past and to the goodness of the past. We want to steward the present moment, constantly focused on the ever-increasing needs of the society and community around us. Or we want to steward forward a future reality that we are striving for. We want to just take all of our resources and put them into something beyond the horizon. And all three of those are insufficient or incomplete. Because in truth, to steward the whole of who we are is to do all three of those things simultaneously: to bring the best of our past into this present moment, to address and care for the needs of the present moment, but then to look forward to the future too, and to see the places of impact that we can have in a future time.

And very often, when we do that holistically, when we bring all three of those orientations into conversation together, we find the places and people and experiences on the margins to sometimes be the most instructive or elucidating of experiences for us to understand most fully who we are. We can get so focused and captured on the grand narratives, the important waypoints and key marks of who we've been, but miss the more significant, the more frequent experience of the day to day. Of who we are as a people, who we have been in the past, who we continue to be now, who we might become in the future. And by listening to all voices, by bringing into conversation all who have been transformed and experienced new life in this place, we can begin to sense a fullness of who we are and what it is that we are being called to steward.

So this year in particular, as we enter into this season of stewardship, as we hear this great story of healing and transformation, I invite us not just to focus on the money, which, I'm not going to lie, is a critically important part of our stewardship season. It is, quite frankly, what keeps the doors and the lights on. But in that discernment, to also think about what it is that we are keeping the doors open for and why it is that we are keeping the lights on.

Who are we as a community? What is the work that we are on about? Who have we been in the past? Who are we in this present moment? And who are we becoming as we follow ever more significantly the things that God is calling us to do? Because ultimately, beyond just the money and the financials, our discernment of stewardship is who we are as a community and what we are being called to do and be as that community. And that goes well beyond all of the other elements.

And so as we launch this stewardship season today, I invite us to be ever more mindful of the fullness of that stewardship. Of what it means for us to be in conversation with the whole of who we have been historically, to recognize that our history is a lived experience, even in this moment. But it is a lived experience in the context of also looking towards the future. There is all of that brought together in a seamless whole.

And as we hear this story of healing and transformation in the gospel, to recognize that in our own ability to seek that wholeness of perspective, we too will find our own places of transformation and new life. And my prayer for us is in this season of discernment, as we seek that sense of transformation and new life, that we may like this Samaritan, find at the end that what we fundamentally do, what we end up coming back to, is this return for praise and thanksgiving for what has been gifted us and how we might carry that forward into the new world and new reality that Christ is setting us up for.

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

September 28, 2025 Dcn Janice Hicks

Well, I've accomplished one St. Anne's tradition already this morning before I go, and that is I got locked in the columbarium. So thank you, John, for getting us out. It seems that in this late season of Pentecost, the lectionary keeps giving us passages about riches, not just about money, about what life itself is for. And if we're honest, if you were thinking that you identified more with Lazarus, most of us here are considered rich in the eyes of the world. But these texts are not meant to scold us. They are invitations. Invitations to think about how we relate to the material world and how we relate to each other.

And today we heard it in two different kinds of voices. In the pastoral letter to Timothy, it came as a direct invitation, plain language. And in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus gives it to us in the form of a parable. Now the pastoral writer tells Timothy to seize the life that really is life. And that's a phrase worth lingering over. The writer is drawing a contrast between two ways of living, destructive life and true life. Destructive life is marked by the pursuit of riches as an end in itself. The writer warns those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by the many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. And notice the word he uses for people is tus anthropos, in the Greek, all people. And by that he means not just the people who are chasing wealth, but the people who are damaged in the process.

I was reminded of this when I recently visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture. If any story exemplifies lives destroyed by the relentless pursuit of wealth, it is the American story of chattel slavery. Millions of lives diminished so that others might prosper, and the slave owners were diminished even more. That is destructive life. But our epistle offers an alternative: the true life, a life marked not by accumulation but by generosity. And we see glimpses of this today. Did you hear that Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, donated $70 million to the United Negro College Fund? Acts like this remind us that wealth can serve life when it is reoriented towards generosity.

But why does the epistle writer consider generosity and good works to be the more true life? In our capitalist culture, doesn't giving money away make you less powerful? The theologian Paul Tillich gives us insight. He said, wealth and power are unreliable objects of faith. They are fleeting. They cannot offer hope in the face of death. That's his litmus test. What is good in the face of death? As we are reminded in the letter to Timothy, echoing the Jewish wisdom tradition, we brought nothing into the world so that we can take nothing out of it. And that should be obvious and plain, but it has to really sink in deeply. The danger isn't money itself, but the letter calls it the love of money. The danger is distraction, letting possessions consume our imagination, leaving little room for God. And in contrast, generosity and good works affirm real life. They flow from trust in God's eternal life, a life given, being given, and always given. To be generous is not a loss, but an affirmation that life itself is abundant, that what we release will be made whole again.

When I was first coming back to church, and I didn't get the whole part about giving money to church, so I was learning that. And in a good sermon, one of our preachers at St. Margaret's convinced me, so I upped my donation by several thousand dollars. I was so inspired. And then the next week, I got a check in the mail from Honda, who said, we overcharged you for this service, and it was like around $2,000. I was like, when is the last time you got a check from your car dealership giving you money back? I was like, okay, God, you got me on that one. That was a good story. God has a sense of humor. The pastoral writer urges Timothy, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. These can offer hope in the face of death. This is the life that really is life.

And the gospel gives us the same lesson, this time in story form. Jesus tells of a rich man who lives inside the gates of abundance and of Lazarus who lives outside the gate in misery. There's a wall between them, a clear boundary. Lazarus longs only for crumbs but receives nothing. When both die, the situation reverses. Lazarus rests in Abraham's arms. The rich man suffers torment and still tries ordering people around, but it doesn't work. And once again, there's a boundary, a chasm that cannot be crossed. On the surface, this sounds like a simple reversal. The poor rewarded, the rich punished. But notice something. Jesus does not give the rich man a name. But he does give a name to Lazarus, to the poor man, Lazarus. Not to be confused with his best friend, Lazarus, but this is another Lazarus. It is Lazarus who is known, Lazarus who is remembered, Lazarus who has dignity. The real issue isn't money, but relationship. The rich man never saw Lazarus as a fellow human being, even though he was right there at his gate. And so once again, the readings remind us this is about how we relate to others and how we relate to our material goods.

So this brings me to a story about story. Writer Donald Miller wrote a book called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, subtitled What I Learned While Editing My Life. He writes, if you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn't cry at the end when he drove off the lot. Nobody remembers that story. Yet we spend years living lives of those kinds of stories and expect them to be meaningful. What makes a story meaningful are things like rejection, forgiveness, sacrifice, love, and redemption. That's also what makes a life meaningful. Miller discovered this when two filmmakers came up to him and said, we'd like to make a movie out of your book. And they started with the screenwriting, you know, from his book, started writing the movie script, and they started altering the details of it. And Miller was like, you can't change that, that's my life. And then they said, well, we're just trying to make a good story. And that has struck him. If you can edit a story to make it better, you can edit your life to make it better. He was in his 40s, no partner, out of shape, drinking too much. Miller began taking risks. He hiked Machu Picchu. He biked across the country. He faced challenges that pushed him out of his comfort zone. And these adventures gave him courage and opened friendships. These activities may seem self-focused still. But actually they were giving him courage and self-confidence to do other things.

And Miller notes, you become like the people you interact with. Eventually he confronted the deeper wound of his life. He had grown up fatherless. And out of that pain and with new courage, he sought reconciliation with his father. And out of that, he founded a non-profit to help other fatherless children. He learned that we can participate in shaping our own lives into better stories. And as Christians, there's more. We believe something even more profound. We believe there's a writer, capital W, outside ourselves, whispering a better story into our lives. And Miller put it this way, evil wants us to create meaningless stories, teaching people that life is only about who has the most power and money and toys. But God wants us to create beautiful, meaningful stories, teaching that life is always worth living. And doesn't that sound like the epistle's call to seize life that is really life? And it sounds like Jesus' words. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. Every great story, every epic, shows us that even conflicts and suffering can be woven into redemption if we face them with courage. Think about your favorite story, Narnia or Star Wars. Viktor Frankl, writing as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp, said, The plot is heading towards redemption, and we are all participants. That's the story the Bible tells from Genesis to Revelation, from creation to recreation, from life to life abundant.

Now, not all of us will start non-profits. Not all of us will give away millions. Not all of us will write books. But the invitation is the same: to live lives that bear fruit. And fruit shows up in small choices, in generosity, in listening, in seeing the person at our gate, right? Christian love is not simply a feeling. It is a disciplined habit of care and concern for self and for others. Jesus said, as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love. To abide in love is to let our lives be stories of redemption. And this is why we gather at church, and we know church is not the building, it's the congregation of the seeking. I like to think of church as a laboratory, a place where we can experiment with what God calls us to do and to be. And sometimes we fail, sometimes we succeed. But all of it is part of a larger story.

So John and I had a professor in seminary who noted that in baseball, a batting average of 333 is considered excellent, an elite hitter. So you can fail two out of three times and still be a great player. Failure is part of the game, and discipleship is no different. The point is to step up to the plate. And Jesus said, you did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. And that is our calling, to live meaningful lives, to weave stories that reflect God's redemption, to let generosity and love become the fruit of our faith. Richard Rohr puts it this way. The Christian enjoys union on all levels. We begin with small connections to people and to nature, and we grow into deeper connectedness until finally we experience full union with God. How you do anything is how you do everything. Without connectedness, we don't fully exist as our truest selves, and no one goes to heaven alone or it would not be heaven. Each of our lives and the life of this community together mirrors the great story of redemption. It is indeed, as Donald Miller titled his book, a million miles in a thousand years and more.

I want to say, as this is my last sermon with you as your deacon, thank you. Thank you for letting me walk some of those miles with you. Thank you for trusting me with your stories. Thank you for experimenting with me in this laboratory of church. And thanks to John for allowing me to serve and share the pulpit. I've seen generosity here. I've seen faith here. I have seen you pursue the life that really is life. So I leave you with this encouragement. Keep writing your story with God. Keep looking for Lazarus at the gate. Keep seizing the life that really is life. And keep abiding in Christ's love, which is always, always enough. Blessings to you all. Amen.