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Showing posts with the label St. Stephen

Sermon - Trinity IX, 2026 - Luke 16:1-13

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The Parable of the Unjust Steward , Marinus van Reymerswaele, 1540 Christian Wisdom Seeks Eternal Dwellings Wisdom is forward thinking and focused on the goal Christian wisdom employs every treasure, heavenly and worldly, for the sake of reaching the goal If there is a hardest parable, it might be this one; throws people off every time. The parable presents a rich man with a steward who was found wasting the rich man’s possessions. The job of a steward is to be faithful with someone else’s possessions, and this guy wasn’t cutting it. So obviously, he got fired. What’s crazy is the rich man lets the steward hand in the books, and he doesn’t hunt them down and take them from him immediately. The steward does exactly what you don’t want the steward to do, which is why normally the books get taken from the steward: the steward cooks the books. He meets some of the rich man’s debtors, probably tenant farmers, and in order to ingratiate himself with the debtors he adjusts how much they owe, ...

Sermon - Feast of St. Stephen 2021 - Acts 6:8-7:2a, 51-60

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The Martyrdom of St. Stephen , Annibale Carracci, 1604 Merry Christmas!  Our readings for this second day of Christmas seem out of place at first glance. Reading about the stoning of Zecheriah, the stoning of Stephen, and Jesus prophesying about others being martyred as well doesn’t seem to fit in with little baby Jesus lying in a manger. But wiser Christians than myself long ago saw fit to read about the first Christian martyr on December 26th. In fact, it fits quite well, since the martyrdom of St. Stephen corrects our romanticized and commercialized view of Christmas. Christmas today has been, like Charlie Brown says, commercialized; even the dog has gone commercial. It’s about family gatherings, presents, concerts, and food. It’s about warm fuzzy feelings in your belly. We also tend to romanticize the first Christmas with pristine nativities and pretty Christmas carols about a baby Jesus who doesn’t cry. We tend to forget that Mary gave birth with the animals not because the ho...