September 28, 2025
16th Sunday after Pentecost – Katharine Armentrout
In the last two Sundays we have listened to two of the toughest parables Jesus told – both of them on the subject of wealth and how to be faithful.
Jesus was talking to the Pharisees who, as the scripture tells us, loved money.
Basically what Jesus is trying to help us understand is that there can be a real tension between accumulating wealth and living a life of faith.
And he was challenging the Pharisees, and us, to open our eyes and our hearts to the teaching of both the Old and New Testament
– the teaching that the accumulation of wealth while neglecting the needs of others can wall us off from God and God’s loving, wonderful world.
And speaking of opening our eyes, have you ever heard of the crime of willful blindness? It is a crime that is sometimes charged when the law holds accountable someone who deliberately avoids learning of, or acting on, facts that make up a crime…You see, it is a crime to hide from facts that constitute a crime and not take any action.
For instance a person who has reason to know that a package he is to deliver contains illegal drugs but chooses to go ahead and deliver the package can be found willfully blind and convicted of a drug crime.
Or a business executive who ignores his own employee’s fraud on a customer, can be held liable under willful blindness for the fraud of that employee, just like the executives at the Enron Corporation were.
In effect the law can hold someone accountable for the effort to hide from uncomfortable facts – and that is exactly what the Rich Man did in this painful parable. The parable is really a play in three acts about willful blindness.
Act One – We see that day after day Lazarus was at the Rich Man’s doorstep, in ragged clothes, with oozing sores. The Rich Man’s dogs knew he was there, even licking the sores of Lazarus. But the Rich Man hides himself behind the locked gates of his home, behind the elegant curtains that blocked out the sights on his front porch;
And, if he goes out the front gate, the Rich Man probably just steps over Lazarus as he leaves.
Thus he can avoid seeing or greeting or helping the pitiful man lying on his doorstep. All the while he eats sumptuously, dresses in fine purple clothes and hides himself from any sight that might be distressing.
He walls himself off.
He is willfully blind to the man who is slowly dying in front of him and blind to his needs.
What are the consequences of his deliberate avoidance? We learn that in Act Two of this parable.
We learn that both Lazarus and the Rich Man die. But, for those listening to Jesus, there was an unexpected turn of fortune –
The Angels carry off Lazarus off to be in the bosom of Abraham – which the faithful would understand as heaven.
But the Rich Man is summarily buried and he descends to Hades where he is being tormented.
The Rich Man then looks up and sees Abraham far away and with Lazarus at his side. The Rich Man seems puzzled by this chasm between them but he calls out to Abraham.
He calls out to “Father Abraham”, as if he had been a faithful Jew who knew the Torah. He pleads for mercy..
Now let’s remember that Jesus had been telling this parable to the Pharisees and they would have been deeply shocked at this turn of events. Why?
In the Jewish world of this time wealth was seen as a sign of God’s favor. At the same time, illness, poverty and hardship were seen as a sign of the man’s own sin or the sin of his parents.
“How could a beggar go to heaven” would have been the question on their minds, “while a Rich Man suffers in Hades?” It would have been a complete, disturbing paradox.
And, as we see, the Rich Man still did not fully understand his true state, his utter abandonment to Hades.
So…hopeful, but still in his arrogant and self-blinded way, the Rich Man asks Abraham to send down Lazarus to bring him some water.
Well… did you notice he at least has learned the poor man’s name but still, in his arrogance, the Rich Man thinks of Lazarus as a servant who can be directed to bring him relief.
But Abraham is having none of it. He reminds the Rich Man that in his life time he was showered with rich things while Lazarus had only bad things.
It is almost as if Abraham is saying “it was your willful blindness to God’s commandments that has led you here. Your willful blindness to the Great Commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. ”
So, in what we can call Act 3, it appears that the Rich Man finally understands that his life of riches and leisure, without attention to God’s commandment, has relegated him to Hades permanently.
And, perhaps with a pang of conscience, he begs Abraham to at least send Lazarus to warn his five brothers about what has happened to him. He wants to warn them so that they won’t end up as he did.
But Abraham did not relent. Instead he reminds him that those brothers have everything they need to keep them from Hades
if they will just listen to Moses and the prophets, clearly something the Rich Man did not do.
Abraham is clearly saying that there will be no special help for those who refuse the needs of the wretched at their gate.
Saying that if the Willfully Blind will not hear the Scriptures and be merciful, then they have placed themselves beyond the reach of God’s mercy.
Tough words but I don’t believe that the Lord is without mercy or that this would be His last word on mercy, even for the willfully blind.
I think we know from the parable of Prodigal Son that those who truly want to come home to God, to Jesus, then they are welcomed with open arms.
Instead this parable seems aimed at the stiff-necked and willfully blind, the self-indulgent who care nothing for God’s children or creation
Who care only for their own seeming progress in the world of wealth and power.
And I also know, and you know, that those of us who are here this morning are not deliberately “walled off” and oblivious to the needs of others like the Rich Man,
You would not be here in church, or volunteering at CARES or Angels on Horseback or Habitat if you did not care about the world and the people our Lord has created.
But…and there is always a but…
It is easy to get caught up in our own world of family, some volunteering, Football Saturdays, and myriad other things that distract us from the world right outside the doors of this church or our homes.
In other words walling ourselves off from confronting the world as it is…
Perhaps looking at the world through the fingers of our hands, like a little child does, so she won’t see something painful.
This parable is Jesus’ call to take our hands from our eyes and to continue to look for the Lazaruses who are in our community. No willful blindness here.
So you might ask: “Do we really have such folks in Jasper?” “Is there a Lazarus here?”.
And the answer is “Yes”.
Just about two weeks ago a homeless young man died here. He had a name – Dakota James Massey. He was only age 27. He and his father were living in their car parked at our Walmart. He died from seizures early one morning in the car.(I wonder if he could not afford his anti-seizure medication) My prayer is that the angels carried him off to heaven just as they did Lazarus.
And almost every time we have Financial Assistance at CAREs we see someone who is homeless and is living in their car or on the streets or is about to get evicted.
And we know that our local government erects very restrictive regulations so that people spurred by the Gospel are unable to get permits for a homeless shelter.
Additionally we know that homelessness is being made worse by lack of affordable housing in Pickens County. We have long, long waiting lists for the very few subsidized Section 8 houses here. And we have not had any new low-income housing built in Jasper since the late 1980s. And if regular apartments are available the rents are sky-high.
So I can hear you thinking: “Ok Katharine, so what do you think we can do about this?”.
I think the first step may be to refresh our eyes. To really see what is in our community. No willful blindness here!
One easy, but eye-opening thing you can do, is sign-up to help with Serve Pickens on Saturday, October 18. It is an opportunity to see our non-profits at work, to understand God’s needs in Jasper, to learn where the Lazarus’ of our community are and how we might be able to offer more help.
Our God is faithful and just, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love…
So instead of seeing this parable as a big warning to those of us who are considered rich by the world’s standards,
I think the Holy Spirit is inviting us to receive the “fullness of [God’s] grace,” as our collect says, and to have our eyes and hearts open to God’s needs.
As one writer put it: “Friends, Jesus invites us through this teaching to let our guards down, keep our gates unlocked, our ears unplugged, our eyes wide open, so that our souls may become less guarded and more and open to the flow of Holy Spirit’s generosity. Amen.”
September 21, 2025
15th Sunday after Pentecost – Byron Tindall
I usually like at least 2 weeks to prepare a sermon. Unfortunately, Father Mark’s untimely accident didn’t give me the time I like to spend on preparation. I’m grateful to the email “Sermons that Work” from The Episcopal Church for assistance this week.
Remember, Jesus used parables, or stories he made up, to make a point he wanted his listeners to understand. On occasion, a parable could have several meanings on different levels. I’m going to look at this example and first take it at its face value.
The Merriam-Webster website defines squandering as, “to spend extravagantly or foolishly: dissipate, waste.”
How was the manager squandering his master’s property? Rioterous living? Under the table payments to his cronies? Bad investments? We don’t have the slightest idea of how the steward was misusing and wasting his master’s property. It’s really not that important.
One of the things we have to keep in mind that in this parable, Jesus or God is not portrayed as the master.
I’m pretty sure that the manager would not have been looking forward to the meeting with his master.
Even after the confrontation, the dishonest manager continued to “cook the books” as the expression goes in order to gain acceptance with those with whom he dealt in the past. The manager was still looking out for number one.
The dishonest steward realized that he was only qualified to be a steward.
September 14, 2025
14th Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 19C – Mark Winward
“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.” – 1 Timothy 1:15
Where were you 24 years ago this last Thursday morning? I remember exactly where I was. I was flying a small, rented plane on a perfect, sky-blue morning, heading to a diocesan clergy conference near Bar Harbor, Maine. Little did I know, as I was pre-flighting the aircraft at Portland International Jetport, that two radicalized Islamic extremists were departing from that same airport on a connector flight bound for Boston.
At that time, I was the Rector of Trinity, Saco—a small parish just south of Portland, Maine—and also a Naval Reserve Chaplain. Flying VFR under Boston Air Traffic Control, I was in touch with ATC when the announcements began. First, they reported a suspected hijacking somewhere in New England. Then came word of a ground stop on all aircraft in the region. For me, flying a rented Cessna in Maine, it seemed a minor inconvenience—until my passenger’s cell phone, ringing constantly, was answered. His wife told him an airliner had crashed into one of the World Trade towers. We could not imagine that there was a connection.
Then came the order: all aircraft, wherever they were, were to land at the nearest airport and stay there. Thankfully, the nearest field was the little grass strip where I had already planned to land near our clergy conference.
September 7, 2025
13th Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 18C – Mark Winward
“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” – Luke 14:25
Jesus’ words here aren’t exactly what we might call consoling. At first hearing, they sound harsh. He demands total allegiance, even above family, possessions, and life itself. And He drives the point home with vivid images—like the builder who first counts the cost of completing a tower, and the king who weighs his chances before going to war. But his message couldn’t be more clear: discipleship isn’t an add-on to life. It’s not a hobby. It’s not a spiritual side project. It is a whole-life calling. No wonder the crowds who followed Him would have been rattled—and that was exactly His intent.
Large crowds always come with mixed motives. Some may have gathered because they had seen Jesus feed thousands and were waiting to be fed. Others probably came because they had heard of His power to heal and hoped for their own miracle. Still others undoubtedly followed out of curiosity or excitement. But only a few were truly committed to this unconventional but inspiring wandering preacher.
If we think about it, we see that Jesus no more taught hating our families than He taught us to hate anyone. Just four chapters earlier in Luke, Jesus gives us the greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,