August 3, 2025
7th Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 13C – Mark Winword
Then Jesus told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, `What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, `I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, `Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, `You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” – Luke 12:13-21
KC, Christian, Matthew, and I are so glad to be finally joining you in ministry here at Holy Family! We moved into our new home in Talking Rock on July 15th, and thanks to the Holy Family Grounds Crew, we made short work of as much as I could shoehorn into a 10×20 U-Haul van. KC returned to Florida a couple of days later to prepare our home for sale while I stayed behind to unpack. KC, Christian, and Matthew are here for the weekend and will join me permanently around the middle of August.
As a Navy family, we’re old hands at these kinds of transitions – this is our 24th move! That said, moving is still a huge job and never something we look forward to. Part of the problem is that KC and I have been married for almost 38 years, and we’ve accumulated an amazing amount of stuff over that time. Some of it is family treasure, but there’s a lot of junk mixed in. Quite frankly, it’s become more of a burden than a blessing, and we hope to continue divesting ourselves of what we don’t need in the months ahead.
Really, our story isn’t all that unique in America. The way we approach our “stuff” says a lot about us. It’s fair to say that Americans are not only wealthy by global standards, but also historically. And not only are we wealthy – we’ve made wealth building a core American value. If you go by the infomercials, the American Dream isn’t just to “make it,” but to make it big. That’s because wealth gives us the freedom to pursue our interests in the way of our choosing.
Now, freedom is a wonderful gift. But when the focus of “my choosing” becomes less about the choosing and more about the me, it can obscure what’s truly important in life.
That’s the point of today’s parable in Luke. The issue isn’t wealth itself but our attitude toward attaining and using it. Jesus weaves a story of a wealthy landowner blessed with a bumper crop. There’s no evidence that he did anything dishonest to earn it – he’s simply a businessman who had a good year. As a good businessman, he reinvests in expansion, building bigger barns to store his surplus and protect his investment.
So far, so good. But then, surveying his achievements, he kicks back, toasts himself – “Self, you’ve done good!” – and concludes that he can now “eat, drink, and be merry.”
And I think most Americans would say, “So what?” He worked hard, had some good luck, and now deserves to enjoy it. But Jesus points out that when our life’s focus is on self instead of on the blessings God has given, we’re living into the essence of materialism.
See, materialism lacks concern or responsibility for others – it’s about my achievements, my happiness, my way. But while this man is at the pinnacle of success and satisfaction – with his future leisure all planned out – Jesus tells us that God requires his life that very night. And for what? After all his effort to build wealth for himself, what difference does it make to him now?
I was blessed with a great gift that made this very real to me two summers ago. I was hit by a car while riding my bicycle. Yes, getting hit by a car was a blessing – and I ask you to bear with me for a moment.
I’ve been cycling most of my life, regularly riding as much as weather permits, and going on countless long-distance tours. The accident happened one Sunday afternoon near our then-home in Maryland, between Baltimore and Washington. I was making a left-hand turn, signaled, and crossed what appeared to be a road clear of traffic. Apparently, a motorist at the stoplight accelerated quickly, wasn’t paying attention, failed to slow down, and clipped my back wheel. (By the way, please share the road with cyclists – we’re not surrounded by a ton or two of steel like you are!)
I bounced off the hood, went flying, and landed hard in the road. Thankfully, I was wearing a helmet, which hit the pavement just after my hip. I dragged myself out of the road and sat on the curb to catch my breath – seemingly unharmed. The driver, frantic, asked if she should call an ambulance. Drawing on my chaplain experience in emergency rooms, I told her that was probably a good idea – people are often injured worse than they realize.
The ambulance arrived, loaded me onto a stretcher, and rushed me to the nearest ER – where a triage nurse told me to get up and wait in the lobby. We waited for over an hour before I was brought into an exam room for a TBI study they were conducting. Up until that point, I was feeling fine – until I suddenly experienced excruciating pain, and my hip began to swell rapidly. The ER staff now took me very seriously – and I knew why: my mother had died a few years earlier from internal bleeding after fracturing her hip.
As I began to feel faint, I found myself struggling to stay conscious. As I began to fade out, my vision narrowed to blackness, and I saw shooting stars down a dark tunnel with a light at the end. Remembering my mother, for the first time in my life the thought passed my mind, “I wonder if this is what it’s like to die?” And here’s the gift I will remember the rest of my life: In that moment, there was no fear – only three things mattered: my faith, my family, and the lives I had touched.
As it turned out I had massive bleeding in my thigh but – miraculously, at my age – no fracture. But I believe I was blessed with insight into what people may feel in their final moments. Because when it all came down to it – my stuff, my education, my achievements – none of it mattered. What mattered were the intangibles: faith, family, and the lives we touch.
The man in Jesus’ parable wasted his life focusing on achievement, wealth, and influence – rather than on what truly matters. Jesus calls him a fool. In the Old Testament tradition, the “fool” is the opposite of the wise. Proverbs tells us, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” – in other words, wisdom begins with knowing our place relative to God: that God is God, and we are not. The “fool,” on the other hand, ignores or denies God altogether.
The rich man’s pitfall wasn’t his wealth – it was being so self-absorbed that he felt neither gratitude nor responsibility toward others. His self-centeredness became self-destructive.
In the long run, our lives don’t amount to a hill of beans unless they make a difference for others. Still, we hoard our stuff because we’ve bought into the idea that what we accumulate in this life is all that counts – or at least, that’s what our culture tells us. The old biblical aphorism, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” has become a cultural cliché. I’m old enough to remember the Schlitz Beer slogan: “You only go around once in life, so grab all the gusto you can.” The implication is we have no accountability, no eternal values – just live for yourself!
But other than someone saying something trite at your funeral about how you lived life with gusto – when your prized possessions are someone else’s junk – the value of your life won’t be judged by how much stuff you had, but by how much of a difference you made in the lives of others, for good or ill.
And perhaps that’s why I felt called to return to parish ministry, rather than enjoying a quiet military retirement after nearly 40 years of service. So I’m left asking myself: How am I using the blessings I’ve received for God and those around me? One of my favorite patriot songs that reflects this sentiment of service is American Anthem by Norah Jones. Taking a bit of license, the final verse goes like this:
Let them say of me,
I was one who believed‚
In sharing the blessings I’ve received.
Let me know in my heart‚
When my days are through‚I gave my best to you.
July 27, 2025
7th Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 12, Year C – Bill Harkins
The Collect of the Day
O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Lesson: Hosea 1:2-10
When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” So he went and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son…
In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all…Amen. Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this seventh Sunday after Pentecost, and a day on which we have a challenging text from Hosea. I confess that I am often drawn to texts that are simultaneously disturbing and intriguing, and this is certainly among them. Indeed, a quick survey of a few clergy colleagues revealed that not one of them planned to talk about Hosea this morning. One, whose comments I will edit for both brevity and contextual appropriateness said,
July 20, 2025
6th Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 11, Year C – Katharine Armentrout
KEEPING THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING
First: Let me say that when I hear this story I get really irritated – This story has become almost a cliché – You can hear people thinking: “Oh that’s just Martha, fussing away in the kitchen again… and whining to Jesus.”
It has made it easy to hear this story only as a story of a frustrated woman in the kitchen
and to ignore the important teaching of Jesus.
I think Luke could just as easily have made the story about the brothers, James and John – It would go like this:
James welcomes Jesus to his home but stays outside to finish work on a boat that Jesus will need in the morning. But his brother, John, goes inside, sits at the feet of Jesus as disciples did, and did not help James caulk the keel.
James gets frustrated and irritated that John isn’t helping with this important task for Jesus. He fusses at Jesus: “Make that lazy John help me.”
And Jesus replies:
“John has chosen the better part.”
I think when we put James and John in the story it makes it easier to hear the point Jesus is making – that we need to listen to His Word, put it in us, then do our work.
And by the way,
July 13, 2025
5th Sunday after Pentecost – Byron Tindall
I wanted to make absolutely certain I knew the definition of the word parable, so I went to the Merriam-Webster Website, and here’s what I found. “Parable – noun – a usually short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle – the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan” Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines the word exactly the same.
This parable is probably one of the better-known utterances Jesus made when he was wandering around Palestine while preaching the good news about the Kingdom of God. It has been the source for countless sermons throughout the centuries.
This morning, I’m going to try something a little different. I’m going to rewrite the parable into the 21st Century. I’m not going to touch the early part of St. Luke’s lesson, just the story itself. So here goes.
In the early evening, after normal business hours, a young white, Anglo-Saxon protestant professional man was getting his exercise on the Beltline Trail in downtown Atlanta, Ga. Suddenly, he was attacked by a gang of 4 Hispanic teens. They proceeded to beat him up pretty badly and relieved him of his watch, cell phone, wallet, and the running shoes he was wearing. They left him beside the trail and ran off to examine what they had taken from the man.
An Episcopal priest was also walking on the trail and saw the injured man sitting on the bank trying to get himself back together.