"Three Short Sermons About Zacchaeus"

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday November 2, 2025
Scripture:  Luke 19:1-10


Has anyone here ever heard the term “rage-baiting”?  This is a concept in social media, a place where the number of views that a post gets, the number of comments, the number of reactions, is directly related to success.  The more views, the more reactions, the more comments, positive or negative, that a post gets, the more likely the Instagram or Facebook or YouTube or TikTok algorithm is to show it to other people.

And as a result, some people will post a rage-bait video or picture, whose sole purpose it to get people upset and clicking the thumbs-down reaction, or posting a comment to point out what is wrong.  An example of this might be a map with an obvious error that might be a typo but is more likely there to get people to correct it in the comments.  It might be as innocuous as watching a short cooking video and the chef says to add a teaspoon of baking powder but you can clearly see them holding a box of baking soda.  Or it might be as dangerous as posting a controversial conspiracy theory about vaccines that is guaranteed to get people on both sides riled up and arguing in the comments.

So why do creators do this?  Views. Engagement = promotion by the social media algorithm = more views on the post with spillover to more views on their other posts. And for someone trying to make a living out of social media, views and followers = money.

And why do social media companies promote posts and videos with ragebait content?  For the same reason – money.  It doesn’t matter if the reactions and comments are positive or negative to the companies – the more you engage in the content, the more minutes (or hours) you are going to spend on the platform, and the more advertising revenue Facebook or TikTok makes.

So I’ll get you to tuck this ragebait definition in your back pocket – we’re going to come back to it later, I promise!

Let’s turn from social media to the bible, and the story of Zacchaeus that we heard this morning.  Zacchaeus was a tax collector in the city of Jericho, and Jesus was passing through town, along with his disciples, on his way towards Jerusalem.  He wanted to see Jesus, and because he was short, he climbs a tree so that he can get a better look.  Jesus sees him up there, calls out to him by name, and invites himself to Zacchaeus’s house for dinner. And after the meal ends, Zacchaeus promises to give half of his possessions to the poor, and promises that if he cheats anyone out of money, he will repay four times as much as he stole.

At some point in your life, there is a very good chance that at least some of you have heard a preacher stand here and talk to you about tax collectors in Jesus’s world.  Heck, there’s a good chance that I’m the preacher who has stood here and talked to you about tax collectors in Jesus’s world.  The tax collectors tended to be the most despised people of that time and place.  They weren’t Roman; they were local people who were colluding with the Roman empire.  They were given the task of extracting tax money from the local people on behalf of the Roman Empire, and they were especially despised because they weren’t paid very well, and so they had a nasty habit of extracting more money than was owed to Rome and pocketing the difference.

And here we have Zacchaeus, the tax collector.  Not only is he a tax collector but he is the chief tax collector, the ruler of the tax collectors, a prince among tax collectors.  And not just that, but he is rich in a world where most of the population is barely able to keep a roof overhead and food on their plate.  He was someone that would be very easy to despise; and he likely faced a lot of cruelty on top of it all for his physical deformity – he was so short that he had to climb a tree in order to see over the heads of the crowd.

It would be a very easy sermon to preach to say that Zacchaeus had a literal come-to-Jesus moment in this story.  It would be a very easy sermon to preach to say that this grasping, conniving man met Jesus, and just like the Grinch, his shrunken heart grew three sizes that day, and he became a person who was all about generosity, giving away half of his possessions, and repaying four-fold all of the money he had stolen from his neighbours.  Go, and be like Zacchaeus!  End of sermon.

That would be an easy sermon to preach, and whether or not you have heard that sermon before, I know that I have preached that sermon before!

But what if I were to suggest that this sermon might be doing a disservice to Zacchaeus?  What if I were to tell you that if you were to turn back to the original Greek, you would discover that many translations make a mistake?  That the verb tenses aren’t quite what most translations say?  That Zacchaeus didn’t say, “I will give half of my possessions to the poor, and I will pay back four times as much”; but instead he said “I give half of my possessions to the poor, and I repay them four times as much.”  The original Greek isn’t in the future tense, but it is in the present continual tense.

What if Zacchaeus has been doing these things all along?  This isn’t a Come-to-Jesus moment after all, a dramatic conversion on the Road to Jericho.  What, then, is Jesus trying to teach with this encounter?

Which brings me back to my definition of ragebait.  What if Jesus is ragebaiting the crowd?  Nothing will grab the attention of the crowd, get them riled up more than seeing Jesus hanging out with the person that they feel is least deserving of his attention.  A rich man.  The leader of the despised tax collectors.  A short man who is easy to mock.

Luke puts it quite mildly when he says that the crowd began to grumble when they saw Jesus hanging out with the one they hated.  I rather suspect that the grumbling was more than just a low rumble.  I can imagine the odd shout coming from the crowd – “Hey Jesus, you don’t want to have anything to do with that short little Tax Collector!” or “Of course Zacchaeus who gets everything he wants gets time with Jesus too.”  Maybe someone had an especially ripe tomato on hand that gets tossed in their direction, hitting Zacchaeus squarely in the back and splattering some juice on Jesus’s robe.

Jesus has caught their attention for sure, but why?  Unlike 21^st Century ragebaiters, there isn’t any financial gain for Jesus to do so, but like on Social Media, he now has the crowd’s attention.  And his decision to dine with Zacchaeus is very much in keeping with his overall message – that God has special concern and special love for anyone who is marginalized.  It doesn’t matter if you are marginalized because you have leprosy or because you are possessed by demons or because you are a tax collector – God loves you.

So this might be a sermon, not on conversion and Come-to-Jesus moments, but rather on God’s radical inclusivity of the very people that society casts out.  Love your neighbour, especially your marginalized neighbour. Be like Jesus.  End of sermon.

But I want to pivot one more time, and suggest that there might still be a sermon in here with that original message, Go, be like Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus was trapped in a broken and corrupt system – a system of Empire, where the land he was born into was the property of Rome, and where a foreign emperor controlled every aspect of life.  He was born into a family that had profited from historical inequality and they had wealth, likely acquired on the backs of other people.  He was employed by a system where corruption was the norm – we aren’t told how he ended up in this job, but possibly his family made their wealth because his father and grandfather were tax collectors before him.

And yet despite all of this, as he was trying to live and exist in a world full of unjust and broken systems, Zacchaeus does his best to live his life in a way that honours God and loves his neighbours.  The law said that he was to tithe 1/10 of what he had, and Zacchaeus gives 5 times as much, giving away half of his possessions to the poor.  The law said that if one person cheated another person out of money or property, they were to give back twice as much as they stole, and Zacchaeus doubles the requirement, repaying 4 times as much.

Could it be that Zacchaeus is actually an honourable man, doing his best to do good while living in a corrupt world; and Jesus is challenging us to see past our prejudices in order to see him in this light?

If the message is to “Go and be like Zacchaeus,” it is very easy to name the unfair and broken systems that we are trapped by.  We are trapped living in an economic system that allows a small number of people to get obscenely rich while the gap between the rich and the poor is always growing.  We are trapped living in a system that is dependent on fossil fuels, as our planet is literally on fire as a result.  We are trapped living in a world where historical injustices mean that those of us with white skin receive benefits we didn’t earn while our black and Indigenous neighbours live with disadvantages that they don’t deserve.

We are living, like Zacchaeus, trapped in systems that we, individually, don’t have the power to change.  So the question is, how can we, like Zacchaeus, live our lives in this broken world in a way that honours God and loves our neighbours?

Go and be like Zacchaeus.  End of sermon.  (For real, this time!)

 

 

“Zacchaeus” by Cara B. Hochhalter

Image Used with Permission

"I Didn't Believe in Ghosts Until"

I didn’t believe in ghosts until

            my cat sat on the arm of the sofa,

            gaze fixed on empty space,

            ears pointed forward like satellite dishes,

            whiskers twitching,

            but nothing to see

                        at least not to my eyes;

            but nothing to hear

                        at least not to my ears.

 

I didn’t believe in ghosts until

            I was alone in the office

            and a sound reached my ears

            like voices in the distance

            laughing and talking.

I went down to the basement,

            calling out to see who was there,

            but there was no one to be found,

                        at least not to my eyes

 

I didn’t believe in ghosts until

            I was walking home in the dark

            and heard footsteps crunching

                        in the dry leaves beside me.

            I stopped,

                        and the footsteps stopped,

            and the scent of a familiar perfume

                        from decades ago

                                    reached my nose,

            and waves of love radiated out

                        from the empty air.

 

I didn’t believe in ghosts until

            I met the memory of my past self

                        in a box of keepsakes long unopened.

            I met myself who was

                        in forgotten journals

                        in forgotten photos

                        in a forgotten mix tape.

            I reached out to myself

                        and gave myself a hug,

                        and promised myself:

                        It Gets Better.

 

"How Do You Receive a Blessing?" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday October 19, 2025
Scripture:  Genesis 32:22-31


To me, this story about Jacob that we read this morning has almost a cinematic feel to it.  There probably isn’t enough story there to turn it into a feature length movie… unless you are Peter Jackson who managed to turn a single novel, The Hobbit, into three movies.  But I can see this story about Jacob working well as a short film.

So let’s start with our casting.  Our main character here is Jacob, son of Isaac and Rebekah, grandson of Sarah and Abraham.  Jacob, who was the husband of the sisters Leah and Rachel (yes, both at the same time), and consort of his wife’s slaves Bilhah and Zilpah.  Jacob who was the father of twelve sons and one daughter.

I think that we would probably have to cast a conventionally handsome actor in the role of Jacob, but we wouldn’t want a muscley action hero type actor.  Jacob tended to get by on his wits rather than on his physical strength.

Jacob was more than just a bit of a trickster.  You might remember that when he was younger and his father was dying, he tricked his older brother Esau out of their father’s blessing.  In fact, this complicated relationship between the brothers goes right back to their birth – they were twins, and when they were born, Jacob, the second-born, came out of the womb holding on to Esau’s heel, almost like he was trying to pull his elder brother back, and pulling himself into the first-born position.

So Jacob is a trickster, but when you carry on with his story, the trickster gets tricked by his father-in-law.  When Jacob fell in love with Rachel and asked to marry her, the condition was that he would give seven years’ labour to her father in exchange for his bride. But then seven years later, at the wedding, her father tricked the groom by covering Rachel’s elder sister Leah’s head with the veil and presenting her as Rachel. And so Jacob was tricked into giving his father-in-law seven more years of labour in order to be allowed to marry Rachel.

But don’t worry too much about him – you can’t keep a trickster down for long, and shortly before today’s story, Jacob turned the tables on his father-in-law.  He was in charge of his father-in-law’s livestock, and used his trickery to make sure that his flock ended up with the largest and strongest sheep, while his father-in-law ended up with the weak and sickly lambs.  And then when his wives’ brothers clued in that their father was being tricked, Jacob made plans to move his whole family, all of those wives and children, back to his homeland.  But Jacob didn’t wait for his father-in-law to catch him, but snuck them all away without saying goodbye.

And now Jacob, our hero – or maybe anti-hero – is on his way back to his homeland, back to encounter his brother Esau, with whom he didn’t part on the friendliest of terms, after he had robbed Esau of his birthright.

So back to casting.  For Jacob, like I said, we probably want someone who is conventionally handsome, but not a big buff action-hero type.  I’m thinking someone like Benedict Cumberbatch or Ryan Reynolds.

His family – his wives and children – they all have minor roles in our film. At the beginning of the story, Jacob helps them all across the river to go on ahead of him, but he remains behind for the night.  So I don’t think that we need to spend a lot of time casting them.

But our other main character in our story is this shadowy figure that Jacob meets that night on the shores of the River Jabbok.  Did you notice that we are given very few clues as to the identity of this figure?  Jacob had been praying to God in the scene just before our story, praying to be saved from his brother’s justifiable anger; and at the end of our story, he names this place by the river Peniel, meaning “face of God.”  So we might assume that the figure that Jacob encounters by the river is God.  But in the flow of the story itself, this figure is only named as a man.  Not God, not an angel, but a man.  No name, no description, other than the fact that this being is strong enough to dislocate Jacob’s hip, something that usually takes the force of a car accident to achieve.

In making our film, I think that I would want to keep this figure shrouded in as much mystery as possible.  I would want to keep their face in the shadows so that we can never see their face clearly.  And maybe dress them in a long dark robe so that their precise movements are hard to make out.  It would have to be a tall actor with a commanding physical presence, or maybe we could use camera trickery to make the actor look significantly taller than our actor playing Jacob.  Interestingly, Tilda Swinton was the first actor who popped into my brain as I was mentally casting my film, but if she isn’t available, maybe we could ask Johnny Depp or Denzel Washington.

The main action sequence in our film is a wrestling match between the two characters – Jacob and our mysterious being. We aren’t told why they began to wrestle, but they wrestle through the night, and then, just as the dawn is beginning to break on the horizon, with the two of them locked in each other’s arms, we have our main dialogue.

The mysterious stranger demands, “Let me go!” but Jacob replies, “I won’t let you go until you bless me.”  Our stranger asks, “What is your name?” and Jacob replies, “Jacob.”  Our stranger, in that moment, re-names Jacob Israel, which means “One Who Struggles With God,” but when Jacob-Israel demands to know the stranger’s name, our stranger refuses to answer, asking why Jacob wants to know.  Finally, our stranger blesses Jacob, and then… disappears?  The stranger is there in the story, and then they aren’t. We can probably have some fun with the visual effects at this point in our movie.

And then our big cinematic moment comes at the end of the film, with the sun rising in the background, and Jacob limping towards the river to go and rejoin his family, limping not only because of his hip injury, but limping as an outward, visible signal of his inner change – changed by the blessing that he received, changed by his wrestling with God, changed by the new name he has received.  Roll the credits.

To me, the most interesting question to ask of this story is the one that I hinted at a while ago.  Why did Jacob wrestle this stranger, there on the riverbank?  Why did Jacob think that he needed to wrestle a blessing out of God?  When I think of God, I think of love radiating out in abundance, for God is love – the very substance of God is love.  And yet Jacob feels the need to wrestle a blessing out of God.  Jacob, who has spent his life tricking others and being tricked by others, thinks that he needs to trick a blessing out of God, rather than realizing that God’s blessing is there for the taking.

To me, a blessing isn’t about material good fortune – it isn’t about fancy vacations or a fat bank account or even about good health.  To me, when something is blessed, it is set apart to be the thing that God made it for. A blessing dedicates a person or a thing to God.  I suspect that when this building was first built, it was blessed, set apart to be a place of worship and service.  We end each worship with a blessing, setting us on a path to be God’s people in the world in the days ahead.  Jacob is blessed to be Israel, the father of many nations of people who will love and serve God.

I wonder if one of Jacob’s character flaws might have been that he wasn’t able to see God any differently than he saw other people.  He went through his life thinking that he needed to fight others for what he wanted; and then when he met God, he could only see God in the same light.

I’m thinking of our movie that we are making, and how we might portray that moment when Jacob first encountered God, I mean, a “shadowy stranger,” on the banks of the river as the sun was setting.  I imagine Jacob looking at the stranger with longing in his eyes, knowing that this stranger had something that he wanted, but unsure of how to ask for it.  I imagine Jacob yearning to know God better, just as his parents and grandparents had, but unsure of how to approach God, and then falling back on his usual patterns of how to handle life’s challenges with violence and trickery.  But all the while, God’s love and God’s blessing were there for the taking – no trickery required; no violence required.

Now what about you?  How do you approach God for your blessing?  Do you relate to Jacob, scrambling for everything in life, and wrestling this blessing from a seemingly-reluctant God?  Or do you feel like you want to turn around and run the other direction, fleeing from the path that this blessing might put you on?  Or do you shrink back, not certain whether you deserve this blessing that God is about to give you?  Or do you stride forward confidently, knowing that this blessing is there waiting for you?

But no matter your approach, you, my friend, you are blessed.  You are blessed by a loving God, blessed to be the person God created you to be, beautiful and beloved.  You are blessed for a journey that may not always be easy, but it will be a journey with God always at your side.  You are blessed, so that your life might be a blessing to the world.  Amen.

 

 

Now picture Jacob-Israel, silhouetted by the rising sun,

limping,

preparing to cross the river to re-join his family

Image Credit:  “Grand River Sunrise” by Rachel Cramer on flickr

Used with permission.

A Thanksgiving Prayer

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday October 12 - Thanksgiving Weekend

God of overwhelming grace,

         this Thanksgiving, we pause,

                  and we choose gratitude.

With each breath we take, we thank you for the air we breathe.

With each meal, we thank you for making the plants grow.

With each hug, each smile, each handshake,

         we thank you for the people that you put into our lives.

With each morning that we wake up,

         we thank you for giving us the breath of life,

                  for filling us with your Holy Spirit.

 

As we gather around Thanksgiving tables,

         celebrating the abundance of the fall harvest,

we thank you and pray for all of the people who make it possible.

We pray for the farmers and for the farm workers.

We pray for the drivers who transport the food.

We pray for the manufacturers and processors.

We pray for the people who work in grocery stores

         and farmer’s markets

         and gas stations

         and farm stands.

We pray for the people who prepare the food,

         who set the table,

         who issue invitations,

         who serve the food,

         who wash dishes.

Thank you, God, for the gifts of all of these people,

         and we ask you to bless them and bless their labour.

 

And yet even on this Thanksgiving weekend,

         Loving God,

                  we know that all is not perfect in the world.

And so we pray for everyone who is sick or injured,

we pray for everyone who is lonely,

we pray for everyone who is mourning,

we pray for all caregivers,

we pray for everyone who lives in fear,

we pray for everyone living in war zones and places of violence.

We pray that your love might reach to every corner of the world,

and we ask that you transform us, by your Holy Spirit,

         into people who reflect your love into places in the world

                  that still rest in the shadows.

 

God of all people and all places,

         our prayers today stretch around the world.

In the WCC Ecumenical Prayer Cycle,

         this week we especially pray for the people and churches

                  of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Panama.

We pray for the people of Gaza,

and we pray that the tentative ceasefire

         might grow into a just and lasting peace.

We pray for peace in Ukraine,

         and also for peace in places that don’t reach the news cycle.

We pray for an end to this drought –

         for rains to fall that will fill wells and fill rivers

                  and quench the thirst of the dry land.

As the world feels ever more divided into isolated silos,

         we pray for your Holy Spirit to break down walls that divide

                  so that we might truly hear one another.

We pray for safety for all who are marginalized –

         for immigrants and refugees,

         for all members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ Community,

         for racialized people;

and we pray for your kingdom to unfold soon

         as a place where all people are equally valued.

 

And we pray too, for the people and situations

that are closest to our hearts,

as we name them now, aloud or in the silence of our hearts.

(pause)

 

Merciful God,

         finally we pray for ourselves.

You see us as we truly are.

You know the needs and desires of our hearts.

You know our secret joys and our secret sorrows.

Embrace all of us in your warm, enveloping love.

Fill our hearts with the peace of Christ.

Nudge us forwards, by your Holy Spirit, when we feel stuck,

         comfort us when we need comforting,

and most of all, draw us into your eternal dance of love.

 

All of our prayers, spoken and unspoken,

         we gather together and hold up to the light of Christ,

                  entrusting them to your care.

 

We pray all of this in and through Jesus Christ,

         in whose name we are called.

Amen.

 

 

"A Mustard Seed of Faith" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday October 5, 2025
Scripture:  Luke 17:5-10


In school, they give out prizes for all sorts of things.  Last spring, my nephew Charlie got the prize at his Grade 8 graduation for the top student in Geography.  Another nephew, Eddie, was on the Dean’s List at the end of his first year of university.  And another nephew, Jonathan, was given the Sandrine Craig Award by his school, awarded to a student who chooses kindness, cooperation, commitment, and respect, and acts as a moral compass in their classroom, speaking up for those who need help.  (And yes, that wording is straight from his certificate.)

So here’s a question – if Jesus were standing in front of us, what sorts of awards might he choose to give out?  He probably wouldn’t be giving out awards like Best Mark in Geography, or Best Goalie in the league.  So what sorts of awards might he give out?  (Invite suggestions – e.g. the kindest person award; most generous person award; choir practice attendance award; most sandwiches made for Romero House prize)

But if you think about it, this is a pretty silly thought experiment.  Because if we are giving out an award for the kindest person, that would imply that everyone else wasn’t kind.  Or, maybe, that only one person could win at kindness, so if you weren’t in the running for the award, you might as well not try.

In reality, Jesus wants all of us to win the kindness prize, or the most generous person prize, or the most compassionate person prize.  These are things that are expected of all of us – it isn’t a competition.  It would be pretty silly for Jesus to stand here and say, “I give the runner-up prize in generosity to (name)”; or “The third-place winner in the compassion category is (name).”

It's not a competition – instead these are things that are expected from all of us – the bare minimum, you might say!  But even if they are the bare minimum, all of our gifts and all of our contributions are celebrated.  God’s grace means that there is enough celebration for everyone.  Rather than celebrating the winner in the kindness category, everyone’s contribution of kindness is celebrated in the world.  Even my nephew’s award for kindness and cooperation and respect isn’t quite in keeping with God’s dream for the world – in God’s dream for the world, everyone will be celebrated for kindness and cooperation and respect, and not just one person.

So where does that leave us?

In the reading from Luke that we heard this morning, Jesus is using the example of slavery – an analogy that would have made sense to his original listeners, even though it isn’t part of our lived experience in our time and place.

Jesus says that a slave is expected to do their work, and doesn’t expect special commendation for doing their job.

Our job, as followers of the Way of Jesus is to follow the teachings of Jesus, and like the slave in Jesus’s analogy, we shouldn’t expect special commendation for doing what is right.

We are to love God with our whole being.  We are to love our neighbours – all of our neighbours – and love here should be an active verb, not a passive feeling.  We are to live with respect in Creation, as part of God’s community of creation.  We are to seek justice and resist evil.  We are to proclaim God’s hope, peace, joy, and love with our words and with our actions.

And even though we aren’t to seek special commendation for doing these things, I don’t think that it is wrong to celebrate these things in all people.  After all, Jesus said that you only needed to have faith the size of a tiny mustard seed in order to make a difference in the world!

And so even if we, by our own efforts, aren’t able to solve climate change in the world, we are called to do what we are able to do to live with respect in creation so that all of creation can flourish.

And so even if we, by our own efforts, aren’t able to bring about world peace, we are called to do what we are able to do to bring about peace in the spheres in which we move.

And so even if we, by our own efforts, aren’t able to create a world where nobody is hungry, we are called to do what we are able to do to feed hungry people in our neighbourhood around us.

There is no prize for these things – as Jesus says in the teaching, “we have only done what we ought to have done.”  And yet we can celebrate these things when we see them happening, because we are witnessing the kingdom of God in action!

And so as we journey the Way of Jesus together, how are you going to share your gifts with the world?  How are you going to plant and nurture your mustard seed of faith?  And how are you going to encourage your fellow travellers to do the same?

And may the Holy Spirit inspire us and guide us so to do!  Amen.

 

 

 

A Mustard Seed of Faith
Image Credit:  JaBB on flickr
Used with Permission

"Irrational Hope" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday September 28, 2025
Scripture:  Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15


I’m probably going to break some preaching rule somewhere, but this week I want to give you a peek into how sermons are written – a bit like getting a glimpse behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.  Though, I guess, there are many different ways to write a sermon, but I want to tell you about one method.

The Four Pages of the Sermon technique was developed by Paul Scott Wilson, a United Church preaching professor in Toronto, and this technique has been adopted across denominations and around the world.  He has the preacher start with four pieces of paper – four literal pieces of paper – on the desk in front of you.  At the top of page 1 you write “The Trouble in the Text.” At the top of page 2 you write “The Trouble in the World.” At the top of page 3 you write “The Good News in the Text.”  And then you can probably guess what you write at the top of page 4 – “The Good News in the World.”  The preacher then starts brainstorming different ideas under each of these four headings, and once the four pages are filled, you can shuffle them around to figure out what order of pages makes sense for this sermon – some weeks, it makes sense to start with page 2, then page 4, then page 3, then page 1.  Another week you might want to go page 1, page 3, page 2, page 4.  And then once you have your pages in order, the sermon has essentially written itself!

I say all this, because I think that this week’s story from Jeremiah fits really nicely into the Four Pages of the Sermon technique.

Let’s start with page 1 – the Trouble in the Text.  On the surface, this story might look like a complicated real estate transaction.  Jeremiah’s relative has a field for sale.  God tells Jeremiah to buy the field.  Jeremiah pays 17 shekels of silver for the field.  One copy of the deed is sealed up for posterity, and the other copy of the deed is left accessible for public scrutiny.  Where is the trouble in this story, other than the risk of getting bored to death by the details of property law in ancient Judah?

The trouble in the text is actually hinted at in the beginning of the story.  Verse 2 reads:  “At that time, the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was confined in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah.”  So we have a double-whammy of trouble here.  Jeremiah has been imprisoned by the king, likely for speaking truth to power, for pointing out to the king all of the ways that the king has led the people away from God’s way.  But even more than that, the city is under siege.

At this point in the history of the people of ancient Israel and Judah, they had entered the Promised Land – the land promised to their ancestors – under the leadership of Moses, after spending 40 years in the wilderness, after leaving slavery in Egypt.  But as our regular bible study people will attest, things didn’t stay good for long once they were in the Promised Land.  Gradually, under poor leadership, they turned away from God, and then things really fell apart for them.  The northern kingdom of Israel had fallen to the Assyrian Empire’s army, and the people had been deported, or had fled for refuge to Jerusalem in the southern kingdom of Judah.  And now that southern kingdom of Judah was under attack by the army of the Babylonian Empire.  The city of Jerusalem was under siege with no one able to enter or leave, with the hopes of starving the people of Jerusalem into surrender.

And from our perspective almost 3000 years later, we know that the strategy succeeded.  Jerusalem did fall to the Babylonian army.  The temple, the literal home of God is going to be destroyed. The people are going to be carried off into exile.  The world as they know it is about to crumble to pieces around them.

And so I would name the trouble in the text as the existential threat to the people that the Babylonian army is posing to them. Their very existence is being threatened.

So that is page 1 of our sermon – the trouble in the text.  Moving on to page 2, titled The Trouble in the World, is there any threat in our world today that might hold some parallels to the existential threat in the story?

I don’t know about you, but for me, when I think of the things in the world that cause me to feel existential dread, the threat of climate change is pretty near the top of my list.  To me, that is the thing in the world today that has the most potential to demolish our very existence on this planet.  Rising sea levels used to be viewed as the most dangerous part of climate change, and it still is to people who live close to sea level around the world, but I see the most pressing threat these days being the shifting weather patterns.  Floods where there were never floods before.  Droughts and wildfires in places that were never threatened before.  Farmers struggling to grow food under these changed weather patterns, with the associated threat of hunger and starvation around the world.

When I think about the future of the world – the world that my niece and nephews and their children are going to inherit – these are the sorts of things that fill the pit of my stomach with dread. Our existence, just like the existence of the people of ancient Jerusalem, is being threatened by something that we don’t have control over.

So that is page 2 of our sermon.  We’ve covered the problem in the text and the problem in the world.  Let’s move on to the good news half of our sermon!

Page 3 of our sermon is titled The Good News in the Text.  In our story from Jeremiah, where is the good news?  To me, the whole story about Jeremiah buying the field, that tedious real estate transaction, is the good news.  On the surface, it makes no sense at all – after all, who in their right mind would buy a piece of land when the city is about to fall to a foreign army?  In a very short time, that land is likely going to be worthless, as the invading army is about to take over and confiscate all of the land in the region.  So why does Jeremiah buy this field?

He buys the field because God told him to do so.  Jeremiah, as a prophet, was a mouthpiece for God.  He pointed people back to God and towards God’s way of doing things.  But Jeremiah was a prophet in more than his words – when you read his story, he was a prophet in his actions too, and did a lot of crazy things to get people’s attention, and then re-direct their attention towards God.  And buying this field was a prophetic act.

Because right at the end of our story, God says, through Jeremiah, “For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:  Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”

Jeremiah is buying this field as a sign of hope.  Yes, the disaster is going to come, but that isn’t the end of the story because God is still in charge.  Even though the field is going to fall into the hands of the invaders, a time will come when it will be valuable again, and ordinary real estate transactions will be able to happen.

And from our perspective, a couple of millennia in the future, we know that this was true.  The siege is going to end when Jerusalem falls to the Babylonian army, the temple is going to be destroyed, the people are going to be carried away into exile, but that isn’t the end of the story.  70 years are going to have to pass in exile, two full generations, but eventually the people will be allowed to return to Jerusalem, they will be able to rebuild the temple, and houses, fields, and vineyards will once again be bought and sold in the land.

Hope is a funny thing, because it makes no sense in the present moment.  Hope is the thing that kicks in when the world is falling to pieces around us, and reminds us that this isn’t the end of the story.  Hope is irrational, but hope is a tangible thing, because it lets us continue on, it frees us from the existential dread so that we can continue to be God’s agents in the world.

And hope is the pattern through the whole biblical story.  The story doesn’t end with slavery in Egypt – the story continues until the people reach freedom in the promised land.  Exile in Babylon is followed by restoration to the land.  The story doesn’t end on Good Friday with the crucifixion, but continues on to Easter and resurrection.

So what about page 4 of our sermon?  We’ve seen the problem in the text, the problem in the world, and the good news in the text.  What about the good news in the world?  Where can we find parallel good news in a world bogged down by existential dread over climate change?

I think that it is maybe up to all of us to write that page 4 in our own lives.  Jeremiah bought a field as an act of trust, as an act of hope.  Even though he wouldn’t live to see the time 70 years later when the land would be worth something again, he trusted in God when God said that this time would come. What action can we do to put our trust in God’s future?

In a moment, we’re going to be singing the hymn “This is God’s Wondrous World,” and in verse 3, we’ll be singing the very powerful line, “O let me ne’er forget, that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.”

I’m reminded of the quote attributed to Martin Luther, the 16^th Century theologian who was one of the driving forces behind the Protestant Reformation.  When he was asked what he would do if he knew that the world was ending tomorrow, his answer was, “I would plant an apple tree today.”

When we trust that God has the whole world, our past, our present, and our future, in their hands, we can be freed from fear and freed to act as if that future was already here.  We can buy a field.  We can plant an apple tree.  We can drop a donation off at the food bank.  We can make tomato sauce from the tomatoes we grew in our garden this summer.  We can volunteer at the local school, knowing that these children will grow up in a world we are helping to create.

If we let ourselves fall into despair, or be trapped by the dread, we become paralyzed, unable to act because anything we do doesn’t matter anyways.  But when we have hope – remembering that hope doesn’t make any sense in the present moment – then we are freed for action.

So I’m going to leave you to ponder that question – how are you going to write page 4 of our sermon this week?  What are you going to do in the world today that signals the hope that God has given to you to carry?

And may God strengthen the hope within each one of us, and empower us to act on that hope.  Amen.

 

Image:  “Regrowth” by Q Family on flickr

Used with Permission

 

"Dishonest Manager, or Abundant Generosity?" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday September 21, 2025
Scripture Readings:  Amos 8:4-7 and Luke 16:1-13


There are some funny quirks about bibles, and one of them is the chapter titles that bible publishers put in there.  These chapter titles or story titles, or headings – they aren’t part of the original manuscripts.  They’re not a translation of something that the original authors put in there.  Jesus didn’t begin his teachings by saying, “Now I’m going to tell you the story of the Prodigal Son.”

Instead, it is up to the editor or the publisher to decide 1) if they want to include titles or headings to the different sections, and 2) what title or heading they are going to use.  And so these titles can give us a hint or a clue about what the editor thinks that the story is about; but we have to be careful with them, because they might not always match what Jesus intended by the story.

With the parable from Luke’s gospel that we heard today, if you were to open up a bible – either one of the pew bibles or your bible at home, you would probably see a title given to it along the lines of, “The Parable of the Dishonest Manager,” or “The Story of the Crooked Manager,” or “The Shrewd Manager,” or “The Parable of the Dishonest Steward.”

And if you were to read the parable with one of these titles in the back of your head, it becomes a very confusing parable indeed.  Because why, at the end of the parable, is the landowner praising the dishonest or crooked dealings of his employee?  What are we supposed to take away from this parable?

It is a very confusing story that Jesus tells.  Are we supposed to cheat the people we are supposed to be accountable to?  Are we supposed to “make friends using stolen money” as either the master in the story or Jesus himself seems to be praising the manager for doing?  Like I said, it is a very confusing story that Jesus tells.

But what if we were to take the title out of the picture.  What if we begin with the assumption that the manager isn’t dishonest or crooked, and is the hero of our story.  He has been put on notice for his employment, his days at this job are numbered, and he chooses to use his remaining time there spreading wealth and abundance to people with less financial clout than he has.  He could have doubled down, tightened the screws and tried to extort as many debts as possible, trying to curry favour with his master. But instead he turned around and did good to the people without wealth.  He becomes almost a Robin Hood type figure – steal from the rich to give to the poor.

With this interpretation of the story, the most surprising moment is when the master, the owner of the money that the manager is giving away, laughs and praises the manager for what he is doing.  Maybe the owner of the money is also a Robin Hood type figure, giving away their wealth to anyone who needs it.

My turning point this week, in figuring out this reading of the parable, was the poem that I asked Elaine to put on the back of the bulletin.  It was written by Steve Garnaas-Holmes and it reads:

And Jesus went around
to everyone who thought they owed God something,
and asked, “What do you think you owe?”
And they would count it up.
And he would say, “Erase it.”
And God said, “That’s my boy.”

What if we can see this parable as a parable of God’s abundance, a story of a world where everyone who has more than enough shares with everyone who doesn’t have enough, a story of the kingdom of God where there is more than enough for everybody.  What if we were to title this story, The Parable of the Extravagantly Generous Master?

With this reading of the parable, it makes sense for both the owner of the resources and the person responsible for managing them to seek out generosity, and for the parable to teach us to do likewise.  Be generous with what God has entrusted to us – we don’t own these things, but God wants us to share and be generous with abundance, just as God is generous.

The parable ends with, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

We can’t be enslaved to God and enslaved to wealth at the same time, but the good news is that we can choose which master we want to serve.  We can choose to focus all of our attention and energy to wealth-creation, tracking the stock market hour by hour, making every decision in our lives based on what will allow us to accumulate more wealth.

The easy example to pick here would be the ultra-wealthy in the world, but I think that money-worship or money-enslavement is much more extensive than that.

There are some people on YouTube who take frugality to the extreme – even though they make a good salary, they sleep on an air mattress because they don’t want to have to spend money to buy a bed, they only buy food that is “reduced for quick sale,” they walk or bicycle not for the exercise but because they don’t want to spend money on the bus fare, they wear clothes that are torn and dirty, to avoid spending money on either new clothes or doing laundry.  I believe that there was also a TV show a decade or so ago called Extreme Cheapskates along the same principles. I think that they are as enslaved to money as the ultra-wealthy of this world are.  Money shapes every decision they make.

But when we are enslaved to God, we are able to adopt a lifestyle of generosity and abundance.  We don’t need to hoard wealth because we know that with God there is more than enough to go around.  We can become concerned with what God is concerned about, which usually has to do with caring for the poor and needy of this world.

The prophet Amos, in the other reading that we heard today, is pretty explicit about this.  God condemns anyone who tramples the poor of this land, God condemns anyone who tries to cheat in their business practices in order to make more money.  (Side note – I love the ancient description of the modern problem of shrinkflation.  God condemns anyone who makes the ephah, or container size, smaller, along with anyone who rigs the scales that measure it out.). God condemns anyone who devalues human life.

God is always, always, on the side of people who are poor, people who are oppressed, people who have less in this world.  In this season of creation, I would also name the non-human parts of creation that are voiceless and silenced in this world as belonging to God’s special care.

And when we stand on the side of the manager in the parable, who is on the same side as the master, then that is where our concern should be too.  We are called to abundant generosity – the sort of generosity that doesn’t make any sense to someone watching from the outside.  We are called to this abundance, extending our care to every corner of the world that is under God’s special care.  When we serve God rather than wealth, we are freed to live in this abundance.

And what steps to we want to take in that direction today?

And may God grant us the courage so to do.  Amen.

 

 

“Rich and Poor, or, War and Peace”

How can we correct this picture?

Image used with permission.