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Showing posts with the label Year C Epiphany 6

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 - Epiphany 6, Year C, 2025 - Luke 6:17-26

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The Sermon on the Mount , Cosimo Rosselli, 1481 Blessed are you who trust in the Lord Abundance in this life often leads us to love this life and ignore greater comforts Sorrow in this life directs us towards greater comforts We are not blessed because of our sorrows, but because of our faith in Christ “ Woe to you who are rich. Woe to you who are full now. Woe to you who laugh. Woe to you when all people speak well of you. ” Those are difficult words to hear! We like to hear the beatitudes and that God is blessing us, but the woes are challenging, especially these, because we identify with them so concretely. We live in a land and an age of abundance. Some of you probably consider yourselves rich, others of you probably wouldn’t, but even if you’re not rich your level of poverty is pretty manageable, since none of us are starving to death or naked.  But does this mean that rich, full, laughing people can’t go to heaven? No it doesn’t! The Bible is full of rich Christians. The Old ...