"Two Examples"

 

Luke 18:9-14

October 26, 2025

 

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’  But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’  I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

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During the Middle Ages, preachers sometimes told stories about sinners turning their lives around that sound a little bit contrived when you hear them.  I came across one such story recently, though, that caught my attention because it sounds amazingly similar to the plot of Sister Act in reverse, and without the music.  It has to do with a woman now known as St. Afra who lived in the late third century, the time when the Emperor Diocletian was conducting the Roman Empire’s last wide-scale persecution of Christians.[1]

In case you don’t know Sister Act (and you should), Whoopie Goldberg plays a Vegas lounge singer who has witnessed a mob crime and has to go into hiding, so she enters a convent in Los Angeles.  She ends up finding her true calling there as a music teacher, sparks a revival in the neighborhood, and the pope stops by while he’s in town to see what’s going on.

Afra’s story starts out with a bishop in Spain who has to get out of town to avoid the persecutions.  He flees to the town that will eventually become Augsburg, all the way up in Bavaria.  The only place he finds to stay is in a brothel run by a woman named Afra, who may or may not have been a priestess of the goddess Venus (although that sounds to me like a euphemism for her profession).  She and her employees took an immediate liking to their secret guest and came to respect him, to the point where they hid him under a pile of flax when Roman soldiers arrived to search the building, and eventually came to understand God’s care for them.  It was a care that led them to respect themselves in ways no one else had ever done and changed their lives profoundly.  They had been lumped in with “thieves, rogues, adulterers,” [Luke 18:11]  but now they were set free from their past, beloved daughters of God through Christ.

Afra was willing to stick up for that truth when she was eventually called on by the authorities either to affirm or deny her new faith.  She died for it, and her witness was remembered, at least in Augsburg, where her tomb is visible to this day.

            Next Sunday we will be observing All Saints’ and remembering people who have gone before us whose lives have shown us God’s grace.  We focus on people whom we have loved and whom we sometimes miss and sometimes still feel close to.  But in doing that, though, we don’t want to lose track of the people like Afra who make up what the letter to the Hebrews calls “so great a cloud of witnesses” [Hebrews 12:1], people we have not known directly but whose lives showed the grace of God at work in them and, through them, at work in the world at large.

            Like Afra’s, many of their lives directly illustrate the parable from Luke’s gospel, where

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’  But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” [Luke 18:10-13]

There, referring to the tax collector, Jesus says,

“I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” [Luke 18:14]

It’s kind of instinctive, isn’t it, to be put off by the first man’s view not only of himself as the best and most wonderful person but also of his offhand contempt for the other man? Jesus doesn’t say that either man left the Temple feeling in any way differently about himself, only that God in his insight into the human heart, holds the same attitude toward both Pharisee and the tax collector that we are moved to have, and presumably that we would all be more merciful when we consider where we ourselves would belong in that story.

            That brings me to another example.[2]  This man was a powerhouse preacher in London around the time of the American Revolution, just a little younger than John and Charles Wesley.  One of the things he said could have come straight out of this parable:

“When people are right with God, they are apt to be hard on themselves and easy on other people. But when they are not right with God, they are easy on themselves and hard on others.”[3]

That observation came straight out of his own life.

            At 17 he was forced into serving in the British Royal Navy by what they called a “press gang”.  Press gangs would find vulnerable teenagers and either outright kidnap them or get them drunk and entice them to enlist when they didn’t know what they were doing.  They would look for runaways or street kids who saw no future for themselves and offer a life that would likely be short but at least include regular meals.  With this boy, though, they took in someone more troubled than they knew.  Once in the navy, he began to go wild, even more than was usual for a British sailor at the time (and that is saying a lot).  His behavior could have gotten him hanged but he had a somewhat lenient commander who just dropped him off at the nearest inhabited island in the middle of the Atlantic and left him there. 

He was lucky that a few months later a British ship passed by and needed another crewman as badly as he needed a way off the island, and he soon found himself in West Africa.  There he was kidnapped again, this time sold as a slave in Sierra Leone.  He escaped, made it to the coast, became involved in the slave trade, but this time as a seller instead of as the merchandise.  He worked his way up until he was captain of a slave ship of his own, stuffing people into the hold as cargo to be sold off in the Caribbean, dumping the dead overboard as they went.

            There’s a lot more to the story about how he came to his senses and about his horror when he realized what he was doing.  The point is that his conscience caught up to him, and when it did, he knew he had a lot to answer for, “beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” [Luke 18:13]  Eventually he dedicated his life both to preaching the gospel and to working for the eradication of slavery.  As by-then the Reverend John Newton put it for the people who came to hear him:

“I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”

He expressed his gratitude for God’s mercy toward sinners, particularly to himself, in a poem you may have heard:

“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.”

 

            Few people’s lives go to these extremes.  In fact, that’s something to be thankful for in itself.  What would the world be like if everybody was going off the rails all the time, turning to the Lord for help only at the last moment?  But isn’t it good to know, even if it never comes to that, how great and wide God’s love and mercy is, and that he doesn’t give up even on somebody ready to give up on himself or herself, someone unable to “even lift up his eyes to heaven”?  I honestly don’t think he’d even give up on the Pharisee, although he might take a little more time to come around.

 

 

 

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[1] The retelling of her story here is drawn from a variety of websites, including Saint Afra - Wikipedia and Portal:Catholic Church/Patron Archive/August 5 - Wikipedia

[2] As with St. Afra, the story here is pieced together from a variety of retellings available on the internet.

[3] Quotations from John Newton are found (unsourced) at John Newton Quotes (Author of Out of the Depths)

"A Note to God's People in Exile"

 

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

October 12, 2025

 

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

 

*******************************************

 

So, picture this.  All of this happens over the space of two to three generations.

Things get even weirder than they are now, and Brazil starts to expand north.  They take over the countries along the Caribbean coast of South America, then Panama announces that they won’t fight them.  They settle into an uneasy peace with Central America and the people there decide it would be a good idea to start learning Portuguese.  About a decade later, the U.S. government opens quiet talks with Buenos Aires and when the Brazilians move on the smaller Central American countries, they give them permission to move straight on through into southern Mexico while the U.S. attacks through Texas and Arizona.  The Mexicans hold onto the north, while losing the south. 

Ten years later, it looks like war again and about half of the political and cultural leaders throughout the states, but especially from the northeast, pack up and move to Canada.  Without many experienced hands left, the Brazilian coalition has no problem spreading across the Midwest, then turning east all the way to the Atlantic as far north as New York.  In D.C., they take as many congresspeople as they can find and ship them and their families back to Buenos Aires.  They do the same with stockbrokers in New York.  In Philadelphia and Baltimore, they aren’t sure who the influencers are, so they just kill random people and burn the cities.

            The Brazilians miss at least one important person, though.  He’s someone who’s been around a long time, who has advised U.S. governments for decades, with almost everything he’s ever said being ignored.  Nevertheless, he has always refused to be quiet or to give up hope.  He’s they type who buys up land in occupied territory, saying that the occupation will be over someday and that he wants to establish clear ownership to it now, when he can buy it cheap.

            The Yankees down in Buenos Aires write to him and ask what to do.  He writes back and says, “Settle in.  Your grandchildren may return but you yourselves aren’t coming back.”

“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” [Jeremiah 29:5-7]

            That’s basically what happened when the Babylonian Empire overran the whole Middle East for decades and under Nebuchadnezzar II in 587 B.C. captured Jerusalem and took the leaders of Judah as prisoners to Babylon, hostages for the “good behavior” of those left behind.  The exiles were bitter.

By the rivers of Babylon—
    there we sat down, and there we wept
    when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
    we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
    asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
    “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How could we sing the Lord’s song
    in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
    let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
    above my highest joy.

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
    the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down!
    Down to its foundations!”
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
    Happy shall they be who pay you back
    what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
    and dash them against the rock!  [Psalm 137]

And Jeremiah the prophet of God was telling them to learn to live among these people?  He wanted them to pray for its welfare?  Really?

            Yes.

            In the midst of catastrophic events a lot of things happen.  One is that people’s faith in God is severed from the culture in which they learned that faith.  Times of massive change force us to make distinctions that might not have been needed in other times.  We discover that Christmas is about Jesus, not Rudolph and Frosty.  That is a good thing.  In the long run it is also a good thing for us to realize that we cannot rely on the culture to do our work for us.  We have to realize that if we don’t teach the children to pray, they aren’t going to pick it up anywhere else.  We discover that if the Ten Commandments aren’t written on their hearts (and on our own), putting them on a poster at the back of a classroom isn’t going to make a bit of difference. 

            I admit I have jumped from Jeremiah’s time to ours pretty quickly, but it’s hard not to do that.  The circumstances differ, but not his witness to God’s will for his people.

            What absolutely must happen in such times is that the mindset of individuals and even of institutions that have undergone deep loss absolutely has to turn to the future. Admittedly, grief is real and doesn’t simply go away with time.  It needs to be expressed and owned, even honored.  Yet dwelling solely on the past is the way to lose sight of the future, and of missing out on what must be done in the present to secure the spiritual life of those who never knew the former reality.  That’s why Jeremiah told

“the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon” [Jeremiah 29:1]

to pick up and move on within the new situation.  Even the name “Jeremiah” means “God raises up”.  God does raise up. 

The life of God’s people has never been about going back to an ideal time or place.  It has always been about hearing God’s call to faithfulness and mercy here and now.  It has always been about how God led the Israelites through the desert when they wanted to turn back to Egypt.  It has been about remaining faithful witnesses to the one, almighty God in a land whose inhabitants invited God’s people to join in the worship of idols.  It has been about trusting God while in exile, finding ways to sing his song in a strange land, even if some days you just want to hang your harp on a tree and forget it. 

Those days do come.  Part of what’s going through my mind in this sermon has to do with an interchange with one of my friends, a colleague and a brother in faith who lives in Appalachia in an area that has been struggling in many ways for a long, long time but is just feeling the first brunt of the kind of secularism that we’ve been dealing with for a generation.  He wrote,

“It’s almost Brunswick Stew making time, man.  You know this is important to our mission.  Without it we’d have to eat that store-bought stuff.  Hey, I’ve given up on confirmation class.  [I had mentioned confirmation earlier in the discussion.]  I don’t think there’ll be another generation of Christians.  We’re a dead sect.” 

That hit like a lightning bolt.  If he had stopped there, I would have jumped into the car and driven two days into the mountains to find him, but he went on,

“But things are ok.  We’re expecting a fourth grandchild in January.” 

That’s how I know he’ll come through.  He’s looking ahead, the way that Jeremiah said to do.  What’s more, I also know one of this guy’s favorite hymns says,

“How sweet to hold a newborn baby

and feel the pride and joy he gives,

but better still the calm assurance ,

this child can face uncertain times because he lives. 

Because he lives, I can face tomorrow. 

Because he lives, all fear is gone. 

Because I know he holds the future

and life is worth the living just because he lives.”

 

Faith grows with challenge. Faith hears the voice of Jesus, risen from the dead, telling his disciples to leave Jerusalem and Judea, to see the journey not as exile but as seeking new horizons, telling them to take good news to the whole world, loving that world as they go, seeking the good of everyone in it, friend or foe or stranger.

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” [Matthew 28:18-20]

 

"Setting the Children's Teeth on Edge"

 

Jeremiah 31:27-34

October 19, 2025

 

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. In those days they shall no longer say:

“The parents have eaten sour grapes,
    and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of the one who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.

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            Let me be very clear.  Not only does this passage from Jeremiah say this, but Jesus himself addresses the same issue: God does not impose punishment or guilt on someone for their parents’ or grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ sins; nor does God punish somebody by taking it out on their children.

            Yes, there are places in the Bible where that belief is indeed expressed.  Right there in Exodus, in the second of the Ten Commandments, it says,

“I the Lord am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.” [Exodus 20:5b-6]

But what I hear there is that the Lord is 250 times more ready to love than to condemn. 

            If you want to push it even further, it isn’t even safe to say that when someone is struck by tragedy that they have somehow brought it on themselves – unless, of course, you are ready to say that somebody born with a disability or suffers an injury in the cradle somehow deserves it.  Jesus certainly did not go along with that.  John’s gospel tells us how

“As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’” [John 9:1-2]

The want to assign blame or at the very least identify some cause for his suffering and his parents are obvious suspects.

“The parents have eaten sour grapes,
    and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” [Jeremiah 31:29]

Jesus wouldn’t go for that, either.

Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.”  [John 9:3-7]

Jesus is more interested in relieving the man’s suffering than explaining it.  He’s more determined to heal and to help than to make sense of it.  Even if it takes stuff as grimy as spit and mud, he will get his own hands dirty to do it.

            Okay, now let’s confuse matters again.  Jeremiah does speak in future tense.

“In those days they shall no longer say:

‘The parents have eaten sour grapes,
    and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’

But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of the one who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.” [Jeremiah 31:29-30]

There are ways that the evils of the past reach out and poison the present.  I don’t even have to take that as a metaphor.  Toxic waste dumps tend to encourage cancer in people living near them, even when they were officially closed long ago.  The pollution we ourselves pour into the atmosphere will still be causing destruction centuries from now.  Broadening the meaning, though, one sin or one injustice can open the door to cycles of hurt and anger that turn into cycles of revenge that infect the lives of generations.  Just ask the Indians and the Pakistanis.  The day that Jeremiah foresaw, where (and he announces it as good news)

“all shall die for their own sins” [Jeremiah 31:30a]

still lies far off.  We bear responsibility for ourselves along, yes.  But we endure the consequences of the past.

            So how are we to sort out where the line is where our responsibility begins or ends?  I’m not sure we ever could figure that one out.  A few years ago it became at least an occasional practice to open public events with a “land acknowledgement”.  For instance, where we now sit is on the land of the Lenni-Lenape, and that means (for some of us) recognizing that our own direct ancestors pushed them out.  Yet other ancestors arrived here afterward, many forced out of their own native land, with no awareness of the people here for 12,000 years previous to their arrival.  With no intention to commit harm, they benefited from harm done by someone else.  Stephanie Perdew, who is on the faculty of Garrett-Evangelical Seminary (one of our United Methodist schools) out in Illinois, looks at the situation and how at a community Thanksgiving service “…often a Native American from the community is asked to give a land acknowledgement or read a poem.”  She says, 

“I’ve been asked to be that person more than once, because I’m a tribal citizen who is also a Christian minister.  And more than once, I’ve declined.  Inviting a Native person helps perpetuate the myth of the first Thanksgiving, of a happy harvest meal shared between the tribal people of the Eastern Seaboard and the settlers of the Plymouth Colony.  The Native person is invited to participate in a performance of shared gratitude, glossing over the question of whether the arrival of the Pilgrims was entirely innocent.”[1]

Ouch.  I just want to eat my turkey in peace and enjoy my cranberry sauce without it setting my teeth on edge.  Can’t we just talk about reparations for slavery instead?

            More and more I can hear the wisdom in the words, “I don’t know.”  Yet more and more I find myself relying on the way that having the answers to everything is not what we are here for anyway.  What sets us right with God, with the world, and with ourselves is never going to be anything we do or some kind of magic formula we say.  It hasn’t got anything to do with understanding or making sense of things.  What sets us right is letting God love us, as he has done in his Son, who took on our limitations himself, and as he does when the Holy Spirit that they share reaches out to stir us up to seek righteousness but also to know God as merciful and kind.  He is a God who says,

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.” [Jeremiah 31:33b-34]

 

 

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[1] Stephanie Perdew, “A Day of Mourning Each November” (The Christian Century, vol. 142:11, November 2025), 32.

"Don't Be That Guy"

 

Luke 16:19-31

September 28, 2025

 

"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.

And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,

who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores.

The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried.

In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.

He called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.'

But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.

Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.'

He said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house--

for I have five brothers--that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.'

Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.'

He said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'

He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

*********************

 

            Some passages from the Bible are hard to preach on because they are complicated.  This one is hard to preach on because it’s straightforward and – to add to that – Jesus says at the end of the parable that a lot of people aren’t going to take it to heart anyway.

            In the parable, the rich man says to Abraham,

“'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house--

for I have five brothers--that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.'

Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.'

He said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'

He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

By the way, there are two Lazaruses (Lazari?) in the New Testament.  One of them was Jesus’ friend, whom he raises from the dead.  The other is the man in this parable, the only parable where anyone is given a name.  (I once heard a sermon where the preacher observed that “Lazarus” is the Greek version of the Hebrew “Eleazar”, which means “God is my help”.) 

And, of course, there is one other person in all of this who was telling the story and who himself would rise from the dead, and he is the one who is telling us, his sisters and brothers, “Don’t be like the rich man!”  Anything anyone else adds to that is just commentary.  The message itself is not to ignore the person in need who is lying right there on your doorstep.

Of course, we’ve already heard it from the Old Testament – the Law and the Prophets.  Deuteronomy 24:17-21 says,

“You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this.

 When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings.  When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.

When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.  Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this.”

When people failed to do things like this, the prophets had a few things to say.  Amos, for instance, was especially upset about people who could sit back (like the rich man and his brothers in the parable) and forget or ignore the fact that their own people had been carried off into slavery.

“Woe to those who are at ease in Zion and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria.

Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and lounge on their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the stall,

who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David improvise on instruments of music,

who drink wine from bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile, and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.” [Amos 6:1a, 4-7]

How much clearer can that be?

            No, it is not possible to do something about every single injustice or every single need in the world.  It is not possible even within our own families or the circle of our closest friends to hold every hardship, illness, or heartache at bay.  That can hurt.  That should hurt, which is part of what Jesus is getting at in this story.  He layers on the details so that we see things from the perspective of the person whose experience we want to hold at arm’s length, in this case

“a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores.”  [Luke 16:20]

I had a beagle named Rosie.  One time I had a really bad cold that had taken everything out of me, and I laid down on the floor to watch TV.  She came over and laid down beside me.  I fell asleep there on the floor and only woke up hours and hours later, and there she was, wide awake and facing the door to make sure no predator or danger would sneak up on me while I slept.  Lazarus was being cared for not even by a pet but by sympathetic animals who saw him and offered him comfort even when they didn’t understand the whole situation.  Meanwhile the party went on on the other side of the gate.

            Don’t be that guy inside, Jesus teaches.  It’s better to be a dog on the street who has a heart than a human being who has closed their heart to the people they see every day and even (as the rich man did) know them by name.

            And, to complicate the story in a way, maybe someone like that has closed themself off for reasons that no one ever knows.  Maybe they need some sort of compassion, too.  It’s not the Bible, but it’s a good story – remember in A Christmas Carol, that starts with Marley rising from the grave to warn Scrooge not to be such a Scrooge, how everyone is ready to write the old grouch off except for two people?  One is Bob Cratchit and the other is Scrooge’s nephew Fred, who insists on inviting his uncle to Christmas dinner every year even though he knows he’s going to say, “No.”  He couldn’t force help on him, especially when life had led him to insist he didn’t need it.  But he could and did let him know the door was open when he was ready. It’s to those two men’s households that Scrooge goes when he sees the light, and there is nobody happier to see him.  Who is the rich man and who is the poor man?  We don’t always know.  We’re probably all a little bit of each.

            What we do know, however, is another incident in Jesus’ ministry that Luke tells us about:

“An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’  He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.’  And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’” [Luke 10:25-28]

 

"One Tune, Two Songs"

 

I Timothy 1:12-17

September 14, 2025

 

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he considered me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost.  But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience as an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.  To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.  Amen.

********************************

            A lot of people use their own lives to tell other people what not to do.  For example, even though we have no idea who wrote this song, a lot of singers have recorded it and we’ve all heard it:

“There is a house in New Orleans

they call the Rising Sun;

It’s been the ruin of many poor boys,

and, God, I know I’m one.

 

My mother was a tailor;

she sewed my new blue jeans.

My father was a gambling man

down in New Orleans.

 

Now the only thing a gambler needs

is a suitcase and a trunk.

And the only time he’s satisfied

is when he’s on a drunk.

 

Mothers, tell your children

not to do what I have done,

Spend your lives in sin and misery

in the House of the Rising Sun.

 

Well, I’ve got one foot on the platform,

the other foot on the train,

And I’m going back to New Orleans

to wear that ball and chain.

 

There is a house in New Orleans

they call the Rising Sun;

It’s been the ruin of many poor boys,

and, God, I know I’m one.”

 

The first Letter to Timothy, whether written by Paul himself or by someone close to him, took for granted that people had heard him tell of the way that he persecuted the believers before he became one of them:

“though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” [I Timothy 1:13-14]

Paul was not the first to do that, nor the last.  There is nothing more compelling than the telling and the hearing of personal experience to convey what is most important and to invite others to the rich feast that is life in the kingdom of God.

            In the books of the prophets, you have someone like Isaiah recalling his shock and confusion when God revealed himself as a mighty ruler and named Isaiah to act as his ambassador:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.  The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”  Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!” [Isaiah 6:1-8]

There’s that same awareness of God’s holiness, human sin and weakness, God’s forgiveness, and the commission to go and share the message.  All of those appear, in different combinations and degrees, in any faithful witness.

            It doesn’t mean we all have to dwell on whatever skeletons we may have in our closets.  Sometimes, in fact, there are people who, as they tell their own stories, recall them in such detail that you begin to wonder whether they are missing the things they have turned away from.  There can be a kind of pride that attaches to how bad they once were.  It’s the shadow side of “Look how good I am now!”  Or it can become that.

            On the other hand, it’s possible to be honest about the difference that Jesus makes in our lives and about how the Holy Spirit works on us every day to bring us into better alignment with God’s will.  The English novelist Evelyn Waugh was well known for being kind of a crank and for having a sharp tongue.  Nevertheless, after he had a conversion experience he became an unofficial advocate for his faith, and especially for the Roman Catholic version.  That set up a situation where an interviewer once asked him about how he could put those two sides of himself together.  The best defense against charges of hypocrisy is honesty.  Waugh’s response has to be one of the most honest that anybody has ever given.  He said, “You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic.  Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.”[1] 

            Very few people I know fit the profile of having formerly been (or being currently)

“a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence.”

Plenty of people I know, and one I see in the mirror on a regular basis, can say they’ve done and said plenty of things they regret, and have thought of a lot more that they would have regretted if God had not stepped in and said, “Don’t be stupid.”  That, too, can be an honest witness even if it is not as spectacular or newsworthy.

            In small ways as well as large ways, we need and we know God’s mercy.  In all our ways, God is there for us.  Even before we are aware of what lies ahead, God prepares the way, so the apostle could look back and say of his darkest time,

“I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” [I Timothy 1:13-14]

The key word there is “grace”.

            There are some alternative words to “The House of the Rising Sun”, by the way, just as there’s an alternative story to the one it tells:

“Amazing grace!  How sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me. 

I once was lost, but now am found;

was blind but now I see.

 

 

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

and grace my fears relieved. 

How precious did that grace appear

the hour I first believed!

 

Through many dangers, toils, and snares

I have already come. 

’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,

and grace will lead me home.

 

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

 bright shining as the sun,

we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

than when we’d first begun.

 

Amazing grace!  How sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me. 

I once was lost, but now am found;

was blind but now I see.”

 

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[1] TOP 25 QUOTES BY EVELYN WAUGH (of 198) | A-Z Quotes