When I was a curate at St. James Cathedral, I was given an assignment: to recruit more volunteers for refreshed service at 9am.
It was very slow going at the beginning, and just as I was getting started, many of the existing volunteers at that early service suddenly went into retirement.
While I was puzzling over what to do about the situation, I was reading a book by Peter Drucker about managing non-profit organizations. He was writing about a church that grew by 100 volunteers every year, and even had a waiting list above that of people who wanted to join.
I began to wonder how such a result was possible…but then I read a bit closer and got an idea. The church, I discovered, already had 12,000 members, and I calculated that their volunteer numbers only grew by 0.0083% every year.
This seemed like a much more manageable goal for me and I went with it, though I did keep it more or less to myself that that was my target.]
Today we are beginning a stewardship campaign in preparation for 2027, and our focus will be on how contributions in a few vital areas, which may seem small in themselves, have the potential to make a huge difference for our worship and our life as a community.
We return in our Gospel reading to the last week of Jesus’ earthly life. As we observed two weeks ago, he has turned his attention away from the Scribes and Pharisees, and is now preparing his true followers for what will come next.
His main teaching in chapters 24 and 25 is that the next major event we should look for is his Second Coming – the time he will return again to earth. At that time, his mission will not the same as in his first appearing as a Baby-Saviour in Bethlehem. His next appearance will be to judge the world in righteousness.
He describes the difficult times that will happen before he returns.
There will be false teachers attempting to lead the disciples astray – claiming to be Christ when they are not.
There will be relational difficulties and violence, and as lawlessness increases the hearts of many will grow cold.
There will be a great tribulation or period of great suffering, during which his disciples will need to flee from major cities.
But immediately after all these signs have taken place, then a final sign will occur: the Son of Man appears in the sky with power and great might, to gather his disciples from the four winds.
What Jesus has to say about this is that we must remain ready and awake at all times for his return. There will be some signs that it is approaching, but no one can truly predict when that moment will be. It will not do to try and time it; it will definitely come when no one is looking for it. The time to get ready and to live in a way that pleases the Lord is now, Jesus says.
To illustrate this further, Jesus tells a parable about 10 Bridesmaids waiting for a Bridegroom to appear for his wedding. This parable begins as many of the others do: “the kingdom of heaven is like… or it can be compared to this…” But something has changed now. Up to this point, most of his parables (some of which we have looked at since September) have been about the gracious character of the kingdom of heaven. They have taught about how gracious God is and why people should accept his grace.
Now that he has turned the focus of his ministry away from the crowds and his opponents (the Scribes and Pharisees) and is speaking privately to his disciples he begins to speak about judgement.
This is worth noting as it is something Christians often get the other way around.
When Jesus spoke to people who were not following him or who were against him, he used grace to bring them closer.
And When he was speaking to his close disciples and followers, he used the teaching of judgement to bring them closer.
This approach is meant for us too. When we are calling people in from out there, we are to use the message of God’s grace. As we emphasized on our prayer walk yesterday, it is the kindness of God shining through us that calls people to repentance.
And when we are in the church, speaking among those who already believe, we use the message of God’s judgement as a reminder to ourselves not to become too comfortable or too careless in our relationship with God just because we are saved.
Preaching a message of costly judgement to those who are outside and cheap grace to those who are inside, pushes everyone further away from Jesus, and that is not what we want to do here at St. Stephen’s.
In this parable about Judgement, 10 bridesmaids are waiting for a wedding to begin. This story is a bit different because we may be more used to waiting on the bride to start the wedding, but in this case it is the groom. Let’s just stick with it for now.
They were waiting in the evening, and as we have seen this past week, it can get dark very quickly and very early. But it’s more than that. We are surrounded by lights and electricity, so it is difficult in this city to get an idea of the kind of darkness Jesus is talking about. He is talking about the kind of darkness where you can see all the stars in the sky; or where at times you can’t see your hands in front of your face.
In these kinds of conditions, if you do not have a reliable light source, then you are completely stuck until the sun comes up again.
The 10 women in the parable know they are living in that kind of world, and yet 5 of them who are described as foolish do not bring extra oil in case they need to wait a while for the wedding banquet to start. Jesus calls them foolish, but I am sure they knew in their minds that they were so smart to bring just the right amount of oil. The wise bridesmaids knew that they weren’t so smart to predict the future, and so they brought extra oil in case their first guess was wrong.
They may have looked foolish to be lugging around a big tin of oil, but because they knew what they did not know, they are called wise by Jesus. But those who were so confident that they DID NOT know what they DID NOT know, were called foolish by Jesus.
This parable and those that follow are told by Jesus so that we know what we need to know about his return, and what we most need to know is to be ready at all times. I don’t know if anyone needs to hear this but: Don’t wait until the time you are supposed to leave the house to start getting ready. And don’t leave home exactly based on the time google maps says you will arrive, or you may be looking for parking and miss Jesus when he comes.
This Sunday we are focusing on Stewardship and making pledges about what we will contribute to ministry at St. Stephen’s in 2027. I believe this parable of Jesus is very appropriate for what we are thinking and praying about today.
Stewardship is the moment where we take a look at our lives through spiritual eyes, and recognize all that God has given us for our own needs and for the needs of his kingdom in this world. Once we take stock to understand and appreciate what we already have, we can begin to think about where God wants us to direct or steward the things he has given us.
At the same time, Stewardship is an opportunity to recognize what we do not have, and how we respond to that is also a form of stewardship: this can look like asking God in prayer for more or asking him for the courage to be content for now.
In every case, stewardship is about being a disciple. We are taking time to recognize what God has given us and what God has not yet given us, and seeking him about how to respond. Stewardship is all about God and drawing closer to him. And this time of year is a good time for that, as we look ahead to a new year calendar year: how is God preparing us for life, work, rest, ministry, blessings, and trials in the year ahead? And a deeper question: how am I meant to discover him to be enough for me and rest in him in the year ahead, no matter what happens?
What this parable has to say to us in this process, I believe, is that the foolish bridesmaids were called foolish primarily because they were not good stewards of what they had – not because of what they did not have. All 10 of the women had lamps; but only five of them knew how to be good stewards of what they had.
I believe for us at St. Stephen’s stewardship means being really, stubbornly focused on what we do have already, to treasure it and care for it, rather than walking the path of discouragement focused on what we do not have or on what we used to have.
I am new here so I can say this: St. Stephen’s is one of the richest churches I have ever been too: and I’ve been to some rich churches in the past.
I have witnessed the richness of your faith as I have gotten to know many of you more closely and heard your stories; and I have seen the way you continue to show up – to church, to Morning Prayer, to Bible studies, to prayer walks – because your love for God and desire for him is so strong.
I have witnessed your richness in generosity, contributing financially over the years to the stewardship of this building, towards outreach ministries like the Saints’ Cafe and Angel Tree, and toward special celebration such as the luncheon for Daisy last week.
And I have witnessed your generosity in service, people contributing their time and their abilities to the ministry of this church, and not with a sense of entitlement or a longing for recognition, but out of love and faith in Jesus.
The purpose of thinking about stewardship in the coming few weeks, is to give thanks for the riches we have, and to put them into God’s hands to do with them what he will in 2027. This is a time to pray as we have never prayed before and to discern what God wants to do with us and with the gifts he has given us in the year ahead.
What I have discerned, through prayer and reflection on this parable, is that God wants us to think small in the year head. [yes you heard me right]. I believe God wants us to think small in the year head. This is what I mean.
In the parable, the bridesmaids Jesus called wise were those who had enough. And for us, wisdom may be recognizing what enough means for us our ministry, and what it means to bring enough of ourselves to the tasks before us in the coming year.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus was always talking about small amounts yielding much more than expected.
he talked about faith the size of a mustard seed.
a little yeast mixed into a batch of dough
two or three gathered in Christ’s name
5 loaves and 2 fish.
A wedding where they didn’t have wine, but he said just give me the water you do have.
These are not just realistic images about a ministry trying to get off the ground, so that later on we can get to larger and more spectacular imagery. I believe that Jesus used these images in his teaching and ministry because this is how it is always supposed to be. This is how his kingdom grows and advances.
A little bit of faith as it begins; a little money given cheerfully, a little service done as unto the LORD, placed in the hands of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ will do amazing things.
But this can be hard. I am learning about long distance running these days, and what everyone says is that keeping within a zone 2 heart rate (runnning or walking so slowly that you can keep a conversation going with someone) that is where the heart really gets strong. And you know, I don’t like running in zone two. I like running fast, and running slowly can be really hard; but that is the way to build the heart and the mind of a runner.
The Israelites had to learn this in the wilderness, as we saw in Exodus this week. They wanted to sprint out of slavery and into the promised land, but God told them they would need to stay in zone two, because their hearts were not yet strong enough to get all the way to the promised land. If they ran too fast and were too eager to get to the destination, they would miss the provision and the goodness of God along the way that would really strengthen their faith for the long run.
And I believe that if we want to be ready for the blessings we are longing to receive from God in this place – for these pews to be full, for their to be lots of children in Sunday School, for the ability to renovate this building and property – we will need to learn to think small and add a bit more oil while God builds us up in faith, in finances, and in fellowship for many years of good things into the future.
As you leave this morning, I encourage everyone to take one of the envelopes prepared at the back. Inside is a letter from me explaining in practical terms what we are inviting you to pray about over the coming weeks. Along with the letter there is a pledge form you can fill out – there are suggested amounts and suggested areas to contribute, but please contribute what you can and what feels right (fill in what you need to, leave blank what you need to). If you have any questions about this, please feel free to speak to me or to one of the Wardens (Orphtee, Tellece, and Peace) and we will be happy to help
My wife and I have already submitted our pledge form toward the ongoing ministry of St. Stephen’s and toward the special ask to give a bit more above that for paying off the rectory loan and building up a fund to take care of property needs as they arise. We hope that you will all join us according to what God has given you.
Once we are prepared, and have enough oil for ourselves, then we will find that God can give us more than enough to share for others as we wait together for him.
Having enough faith will give us something we are eager to share with others.
Having enough money will give us something to share with those who need it more than us.
Having enough service will create opportunities for others to help out as well.
And as the Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 9, “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having ENOUGH of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.” To him be the glory now and forever. Amen.
A few weeks ago, as I was out in the community running a few errands, I got into a conversation with a staff member at a store near Jane and Sheppard about the Christian faith. She wanted to get an idea of what I preach about at St. Stephen’s, and she asked me this: “Do you preach the gospel of Jesus Christ or do you preach more about all the different saints?” I reassured her at the time that I do preach the good news of salvation through Jesus and the need to repent and be born again.
What I might have added, though, is that when we do talk about the Saints – as we are doing this All Saints’ Sunday – we do so in order to draw our attention to the good news of Jesus Christ expressed in their lives.
Our first reading from Revelation chapter 7 gives us a picture of who the saints are and what they do. And what I intend to show this morning is how we who put our faith in Christ form a part of this picture as well.
This passage occurs during a series of visions revealed to John the Apostle (hence the title Revelation) about God’s plans for the world. Beginning in chapter 5, we learn that these plans are written double-sided on a scroll with 7 seals. A mighty angel calls out to see if anyone is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals. At first, no one is found, and John begins to weep. But then one of the 24 elders, who are always worshipping before God’s throne, tells him not to worry, because Jesus is worthy to open the scroll. John sees a vision of Jesus, but not the one we may be used to. Jesus is described as a lamb who had been slaughtered but was still standing, and this lamb had 7 horns and 7 eyes which represent the Spirit of God sent out into all the world.
The 24 elders fall down before the lamb, each with a bowl of incense (representing our prayers) and a harp in their hands, and they begin to sing: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom of priests serving our God, and they will reign on the earth.”
They continue to worship for some time, along with something like 100 million angels, and then the Lamb, Jesus, begins opening the 7 seals on the scroll.
The first seal releases a white horse going out to conquer;
the second seal releases a bright red horse whose rider removes peace from the earth;
the third seal releases a black horse, whose rider carries a weighing scale and brings about massive price inflation;
the fourth seal releases a pale green horse which kills a fourth of the world’s population by sword, famine, pestilence, and wild animals;
the fifth seal reveals the souls of people who have been killed for their testimony about God’s word – they were given white robes and told to keep resting while more of their brothers and sisters would continue to be killed;
and then Jesus opens a sixth seal which causes terrifying signs to appear in the sky and makes all the powerful people on the earth go into hiding to avoid God’s judgement.
Which brings us to chapter 7. Here there is a pause in the action. We are made to picture four angels at the four corners of the earth, holding back the next terrifying vision – the winds being unleashed to damage the earth, the sea, and all the trees. They are told to wait, so that the servants of God can be identified and sealed with a sign on their foreheads.
Those who are sealed belong to two groups. The first group contains 144,000 from the tribes of Israel, equalling 12,000 from each of the tribes: Judah, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin.
The second group contains a great crowd, which no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people group, and language, standing before the throne with palm branches in their hands.
Both of these groups, along with the 24 elders, four living creatures, and 100 million + angels, bow down around the throne, and worship God with a loud voice saying: “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb! Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen!”
As this vision of heavenly worship continues, one of the elders turns to John and asks him if he knows what is going on: “Who are these robed in white and from where have they come?”
When John says he doesn’t know, the elder says, these are they that have come out of the great ordeal (often referred to in English as the Great Tribulation); they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
They remain close to the throne to worship day and night in the temple; and because they remain so close, they fall under the shelter of the one seated on the throne. From now on they will lack nothing, and an allusion is made here to Psalm 23. They will not hunger and thirst again; they will be protected from danger; the Lamb will be their shepherd and will lead them beside the waters of life; and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
I will spend the remainder of this time speaking about what these visions mean for us in our walk as saints, and in particular what all of this has to do with baptism, which we will be celebrating in this church on December 6th, God willing.
First, the visions which the seals describe seem very relatable to life in this world – and it is in the midst of a world such as this that we are called to be saints.
It is a world in which peace has been taken away – both peace between nations and peace between individuals.
It is a world in which people cannot afford food and the other necessities of life;
It is a world in which people die from violence and natural disasters of every kind – and sometimes the two are connected.
It is a world in which some who speak the world of God are persecuted and even killed.
And it is a world in which the powerful and the rich do what they can to escape the consequences of their actions while others are left to suffer.
It is in the midst of a world just like this that saints are called and marked as Christ own forever.
This is what we say when we baptize both adults and infants in this church: “I sign you with the cross, and mark you as Christ’s own forever.”
When we baptize adults and mark them as Christ’s own forever, we are saying that their life does not need to be defined by the past, by what people have said to them or about them, or by their past sins and mistakes. Forever is longer than the past, and so being marked as Christ’s own forever means at some point who Christ says we are and what Christ has done will be what shapes us and defines us more than anything else we have experienced.
And when we baptize children, we are speaking a blessing over their lives at the very beginning which we pray will not be overshadowed by all the curses the world, the flesh, and the devil will speak over them in times to come. Forever is also longer than their future in this world, and so there is nothing that can happen in this life that can bring that blessing to an end.
In both cases we are saying, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what you are!”
Now this is not to say that when we baptize children they are all set for a great Christian life and will be automatically protected from all evil.
Baptizing an infant is not a shortcut to get in one day what most people strive for their entire lives
Baptism is not magic; it is a moment for us to declare where we stand and whose side we are on, and its is a moment to invite the Holy Spirit into our lives to be present and to guide us in all we experience.
The ones in this scripture who experience God’s protection are those who worship him day and night and remain in his temple. They are close enough to him to be under his shelter at all times. For baptism to have its full effect, we must never wander too far away from the fountain or pool where it all began.
As I have mentioned in the past, I was baptized by a former incumbent of this parish, and my prayer is that those I am given the privilege of baptizing in this font will also grow up to lead this parish – not just as priests but as saints in every sphere of life, who never get too far from the place where it all began. Please join me in asking the Lord to do this.
Secondly, these visions of John teach us that being a saint does not come naturally to us but requires transformation.
In the vision we see people from every tribe and tongue and nation. Even though we as humans like to think so, there is no nation or tribe or tongue that is naturally closer to God than any other. Amid all of our God-given diversity we find so many diverse ways of walking away from the God and Father of us all.
The reason the Lord gave us baptism and taught us about our need to be born again is because there are some things we cannot have by natural birth. There is something deeper than DNA about us that is missing without Christ.
In fact, the Scriptures go further and teach that we are all born with a sinful nature. That means there is something natural about sinning that, left alone, will lead us further and further away from God over the course of our lives. And the Bible says that what is wrong goes deeper than just our actions.
As the Apostle Peter says, 1 Peter 3.21: “Baptism now saves you – not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus.”
Baptism represents our need for a washing that is more than just skin deep.
And as another one writer has expressed it, when Adam and Eve first sinned, it was like a breakup happened between their physical and spiritual nature.
We can understand this: rather than our spiritual nature giving power and direction to our bodies, we use our bodies in ways that weaken and mislead the spiritual part of us.
Baptism responds to this by reuniting what God created to be one and what sin tries to tear apart. In baptism what we do physically – have water poured onto our heads, receive holy oil, hold up a candle of new light in Christ – finds its true meaning in relation to the Holy Spirit. And so with all of life – what we see, what we hear, what we touch, what we say, what we taste – from now on all of this will be done by the leading of God’s spirit and with a focus on our spiritual well being and that of the people around us.
And finally, the visions of John teach us that the transformation which makes us Saints comes only by the blood of Jesus.
As one of the 24 elders explains to John, the reason the saints were wearing white robes is because they had washed them in the blood of the Lamb. This is an unusual metaphor, but it does make a lot of sense. As I have mentioned, the problem that makes sainthood unnatural goes deeper than culture or upbringing or DNA. Sin becomes soaked in so deeply that there is nothing like bleach that can get it out. If we try to use something stronger, or to scrub harder, all we will do is wreck the fabric of who we are.
What God offers is a beautiful exchange. We are made clean because Jesus took our sin upon him. “He became sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” We receive his clean, white garments, and he puts away our guilt through his death on the cross. It is through the ugliness of the cross that our true beauty finally begins to shine.
And once it begins to shine in us, it will radiate the beauty of holiness far beyond the walls of this sanctuary.
The Beauty of Holiness and of being one of God’s saints is all about what happens when we leave this room. Far from what we might imagine, holiness is not about escaping this world – it means getting ready to live for real in this world. It means there is nothing you will see or experience in this world that holiness is not meant for. That is why, in addition to All Saints, we wear white to mark the rites of passage in our lives: baptism, marriage, and funerals – this is to represent the importance and relevance of holiness to every day and moment of our lives.
We’ve been learning about Moses on Thursday nights recently, and in his case the calling on his life lay dormant from the time he was born until he was 80 years old. And it is possible for some of us that the gift we received at baptism is still asleep within us, waiting to come alive and change the course of our lives.
What we need, in this case, is not to get baptized again. As Jesus said to his disciples on the night before he was killed, if we have a part of him we are already clean. “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean.” This means that the washing at baptism is definitive, but we can find ourselves tracking around mud from our journey through this world. Repentance is how we keep our feet clean, and it is a reminder – no matter where we are or what we find ourselves doing – that at the core we are washed. And as the Apostle John says, if we are looking forward to seeing Jesus we will begin to purify ourselves now so that we will be like him when we see him.
As I mentioned, we are planning to have a baptism service (God-willing) on December 6th. If you have not been baptized, please accept this invitation to consider if this is the time for you to experience all that we have heard about this morning. And if you have been baptized but want to rekindle the Spiritual gift you received at that time, you are welcome as well to reaffirm your baptismal vows in a special way during the same service. All who are interested, we will begin classes today around 1pm in the Balsam room. I encourage you to join us.
I will close with the words of a song called “The Blood” by Bethel music, which I believe describes so clearly what a glorious journey it is for us to walk as saints of Christ.
Oh everything’s changed, it’s getting harder to recognize, the person I was, before I encountered Christ. I don’t walk like I used to, I don’t talk like I used to. I’ve been washed from the inside. I’ve been washed from the inside.
Hallelujah, I know it was the blood, could have only been the blood.
I cannot explain, but nothing’s more real than this, in the presence of God, Oh , what my heart experienced. When my shame hit the wayside, and my sin met the most high, I’ve been washed from the inside. I’ve been washed from the inside
It’s never been a about performance or perfection or striving for acceptance, let me tell you, it’s only by the blood. It’s never been about deserving or earning, it’s a give that’s freely given, let me tell you, it’s only be the blood.
Does anybody want to be holy and righteous, purified and spotless, let me tell you, it’s only by the blood. Does anybody want to be worthy, forgiven, justified, really living, let me tell you, it’s only by the blood.
The date is November 19th, 1999. A man named John Carpenter, an IRS agent, is making an appearance on the gameshow Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, hosted at the time by Regis Philbin. In a way that no one had in the history of the show, he easily answered all the questions up until he reached the $500,000 dollar level. He had not used any of the lifelines: 50/50, Ask the Audience, or Phone a Friend. After he is asked the million dollar question, he does decide to Phone a Friend, in this case his father. Once his father is on the phone, he says, “I don’t actually need help with this question, I just wanted to let you know I am about to win 1 million dollars.” And before Regis could ask “Is that your final answer?” he answered the question correctly and won the million dollars.
We come this morning to the end of Jesus’ engagement with the most important religious leaders of his day.
As we approach the end of our liturgical year in a few weeks, we will not follow to the end of this Gospel for now, when Jesus is betrayed and sent off to be crucified. And we will not hear more about the Scribes and Pharisees again for the time being.
But as we leave the Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Chief Priests, let us not forget about them; because as we have seen, their story here has been preserved down the ages for our benefit. And so before we watch them exit stage left, let’s take a closer look at why they finally turned away from Jesus why we must resist the temptation and the real possibility of doing the same.
As we have seen week-by week lately, these leaders have asked Jesus many questions:
By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority? They asked when Jesus entered the temple and drove out the people making it a place of business.
Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?
If a woman becomes a widow 7 times and remarries each time, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?
And today, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
They asked him this last question, we are told, in order to test him – and this is how.
Jesus had developed a reputation for eating and drinking with moral outcasts and failures. Even some of his disciples and some women like Mary Magdalene who followed him had come from that kind of background.
In trying to understand why he did this, one of the Pharisees thought that Jesus was simply not smart. When he saw Jesus allowing a former prostitute to kiss his feet and wash them with her tears and dry them with her hair, he said, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman is touching him – that she is a sinner” (Luke 7.39)
In our story today, it seems the theory is this: he does know that they are sinners, but he hangs out with them (and they seem to want to hang out with him) because he is working with a distorted version of the commandments.
And so in asking him, “which commandment in the law is greatest,” they are expecting him to expose himself as a false teacher.
In their minds, if they can get him to place a value on one of the commandments over another, they can then point out the hole in his holiness. If he comes out and says that the sins of his friends were not a big deal, this would be an immediate dealbreaker for the crowds (Jesus’ friends, we remember, were outcasts from the crowd).
If they can get him to come out and start freestyling on the commandments of God, then they will have the ammunition not only to discredit him with the crowds (who deep down are conservatives like them) but also to get him into legal trouble with the High Priest and religious establishment.
However, Jesus is again aware of their schemes and answers them directly from the Old Testament: “Love the Lord your God…” he quotes from the Ten Commandments in Exodus and “Love your neighbour…” from Leviticus. Jesus draws these two Scriptures together in order to teach the Pharisees that these two commandments are not in opposition to each other; in fact, he says, they are very much alike.
The Pharisees, we see in the Gospels, understood loving God as somehow in conflict with loving people. To them, loving God’s word meant following it and applying it rigidly even when it cuts across the lived experiences of people.
Jesus’ radical and challenging response to them is that their teachings actually show the opposite: that they do not love God.
What the commandments really teach is that loving God truly should open up for us a whole world of opportunities to apply that love to every difficult situation around us. Loving God gives us the will and the courage to go to those in need, to speak the truth in love, and to offer all we have to support them. Loving God is not the end but rather the beginning of our concern for the world around us.
In the next chapter Jesus says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.”
They were picking and choosing which laws to follow, and the ones which appealed to them the most were the ones that did not involve humbling themselves to care for other people.
Any attempt to separate these two commandments or to confuse the relationship between them, Jesus says, will cause us to fall short of the glory God intends for us.
Now, Jesus turns to them and asks them a final question.
“What do you think about the Christ (or Messiah), whose son is he?”
They answer immediately, because the answer must be obvious. Of course, anyone who has read Second Samuel 7 and other related passages knows that the Messiah will be a descendant of David.
But Jesus shows them they have missed something. One of the passages speaking about the Messiah, Psalm 110, refers to the Messiah, in the voice of David, as Lord. “The LORD says to my Lord – to David’s Lord.”
When Jesus says this, we read that they couldn’t give him answer, and so what they had already said turned out to be their final answer. From this time on none of them dared to ask him any more questions.
And in so doing they walk away for the last time from their Saviour.
Jesus’ question to them and their response goes back to their initial question to him about authority. In chapter 21, after he chased the money changers out of the temple, the blind and the lame came to him, right there in the temple, and he cured them.
This should have been significant to them, if they knew their bibles as well as they seemed to think. In Second Samuel 5, when King David was securing his kingdom after the death of King Saul, he approached Jerusalem with an army. The inhabitants of the city said, “You will not come in here, even the blind and the lame will turn you back.” This did not stop David, and he told his soldiers to climb up the water shaft into the city and attack the blind and the lame, “those whom David hates.” Because he said this, from that day on no blind or lame person was allowed into the house of God. We see even in Jesus’ day that they are often begging just outside the temple or on the road leading up to it.
When Jesus enters the temple, however, and heals the blind and the lame, the children start singing, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” and the Pharisees got very angry. They did not see the connection between what Jesus was doing and the prophecy about the Son of David. But what did the prophecy actually say? “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me” (2 Samuel 7.12-14)
The true Son of David will be called the Son of God. David, as we heard just now, was a warrior and a killer, and because he was a man of bloodshed, he was not the one to build the temple of God. The temple would be built by a Man of Peace, but his natural son and heir Solomon (which means peace) also proved to be unworthy.
Jesus welcoming the blind and the lame into the temple and healing them is revealing before their eyes the kingdom God had in mind – the Kingdom of Heaven. His parables had tried to tell the Pharisees more about what the Kingdom of Heaven was like, but they didn’t get it, and they weren’t interested.
In appealing to them in this way, I believe Jesus was saying something like this:
“You think that I have invaded your turf, but the truth is I came here today to be with you. I have made myself available to answer any questions you have, but you think I am only trying to humiliate you. I have used my authority to make the temple a better place, but you think I am trying to upstage you. You think I am here just for the love of the debate, but I came here to tell you the truth that will set you free.”
Or, as Jesus said to the woman at the well, “If you truly knew who is standing in front of you, you would be asking a different question.”
Jesus sees that all the self-important remarks and deceitful questions are symptoms of a heart problem, a blockage somewhere that is preventing the love of God from flowing through them as it should. He has made his one last attempt to remove this blockage before it becomes spiritually fatal. But as a spiritual director once said to me, Even God cannot change some people’s minds (which, by the way, should give us some perspective on our own ability to do so).
What they have chosen for themselves is to spend the rest of their lives away from the presence of God, and this is what Jesus is referring to when he talks about hell. There is nothing worse than turning away from what our heart, soul, and mind are desperately longing to love. That is why it is the first and greatest commandment – it is what we were made to do.
What makes separation from him so terrible (and described in such fiery and devastating images) is the contrast with what we are rejecting when we walk away from Jesus.
What the Pharisees and others in this story have done can be compared to this:
It is like having a terminal disease and when a cure is found and brought to you, you take the vial and throw it out the window.
It is like finding just the amount of money lying on the street that you need to pay off your impossible debt, and simply stepping over it and walking away.
It is like saying “I don’t” while standing at the altar about to marry the love of your life, whom you’ve found only after many years of searching
Surely the purpose of all their study, and self discipline, and debate was so that they could get closer to God. But when God came closer to them, they didn’t want anything to do with him.
And, you know, I think this has something to say to us as well. We also can get caught up in pursuing so many things and even pursuing God in so many places, that we fail to see he is right in front of us. Like the Pharisees we may choose to ask him all the wrong questions and in return give him all the wrong answers.
I know from my life – and I believe I am not alone in this – that often what I am so anxious or unhappy or dissatisfied about not having, is something that God has already given to me but I am not receiving.
God has doors waiting open for us that we will not enter.
He has placed opportunities before us we didn’t even know to ask for, and we will not grasp them.
He has put people in our lives to be with us and accompany us, and we push them away.
He has given us not only what we most need but also what we most want, but we insist on needing and wanting something else.
We so often feel unfulfilled and incomplete, but we do not come to the one who can and who wants to fulfil us and complete us.
The condition to all of this is that we must receive all of these blessings God’s way, and the little Pharisee in our hearts only wants to do things our way.
But in all of this there is tremendous good news. Jesus has not closed the doors for us, he has not withdrawn the opportunities, he has not taken back the blessings. They are still available to us.
All we have to do is to come to him. As we said in one of the prayers at morning prayer this week, the good news of Jesus is full of wholesome medicines by which all the diseases of our souls may be healed.
If today you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as the Pharisees did.
Jesus’ ministry to the Pharisees ends here, but it is not over for us.
Peter says that he is patient, and that Jesus has not yet returned because he wants us to have more time to accept him and all that he offers.
This is not a time to remain skeptical, questioning everything Jesus says, and being on the fence about whether he is worth your time or not.
Today and everyday, we are invited to walk through the door to joy, to hear Jesus knocking at the door to our hearts and open up for him. He says, “If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.” May it be so, both now and forever.
Sermon, Oct 18th In Jesus’ final-week teaching, the Pharisees and Herodians try to trap him with the question of paying taxes to Caesar. Jesus exposes their hypocrisy…
As I was preparing to preach this morning, I was reminded of a deacon named Laurence who lived in the Third Century after Christ in Rome. He was arrested by the Romans during one of their crackdowns on the church, and the other clergy he worked with at the time were beheaded. But he was kept alive because, as a deacon, he was responsible for keeping the money of the church. So the magistrate gave him three days to surrender all the wealth the church had or else he would die. On the third day, Laurence brought the magistrate outside to the courtyard, where he had assembled all the beggars, widows, lepers, people unable to walk and the mentally ill people from the church. He said to the magistrate, “This is the church’s wealth.”
I mention this because Jesus also is in conversation with people who have a similar misunderstanding about what Jesus was doing in his ministry and about what really matters to God and the value that he places on his people.
Jesus continues to speak in parables during the final week of his life, and as he says elsewhere, when he teaches in parables they will not be understood by those who come with their own agenda or bias about the Kingdom of Heaven.
In V.15 we see that the Pharisees have now clued in that Jesus is talking about them in his parables, and they begin to respond. They decide that since he likes talking so much, they should try to trap him in his own words.
V.16
Teacher, we know that you are sincere and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.
The Pharisees disciples say to Jesus, we know that you are true, and that you teach God’s ways truthfully
You don’t make anyone such a concern for you that you avoid telling the truth
A good teacher is not concerned about individual cases and just tells the truth whether people like it or not or it hurts. The opposite of this, is someone who claims to care about the truth, but will change their tune if someone important or terrifying wants them to say something else. They intend to test whether Jesus is really as committed to the truth as he seems.
“So they said to him, what do you think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
What they are asking this: since we are ruled by the Romans, that idolatrous and brutal people, would God really think it is okay for us to support that system by paying taxes? Caesar puts himself in the place of God; shouldn’t we only give money to the true God in heaven?
And their test here for Jesus is this: we know you are so bold to contradict and try to teach our religious professionals about God; but do you have the same courage about calling out Caesar and the Romans who actually have the power to take away your life?
They were expecting him to fold and to say something that would compromise his values. They wanted to expose him as just another pragmatist who pretended to have higher motives. They wanted him to reveal himself to be no different and no better than them.
V.18
Jesus knew their evil intent. He said, “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?”
Jesus saw straight through them – they weren’t interested in the truth or in learning from him. Their supposedly respectful and admiring introduction, was not sincere – they were just trying to expose him as a hypocrite. They were saying, “All the crowds are following you and listening to you because they think you are better than us. But deep down you are just the same as us: we all want power; you are just pretending you have higher motives whereas we are honest about what we’re about.”
They also seemed to think that Jesus was really just in it for the money. He was just trying to get the masses on board so he could unveil his real agenda: to reorganize the economic system for the benefit of himself and his close followers. “No one,” they say, ”goes out there to help all those poor, sick people unless they want to use it for their advantage.” In their mind, Jesus was just trying to build up a brand of caring for the poor that he could leverage later on for money.
The Pharisees see it as their duty (and as a public service) to call Jesus out on his hypocrisy. But he throws it back at them.
He said, “Show me the coin for the tax.” They showed him a denarius. He said to them, “Whose image and inscription does it have?” They said, “Caesar.”
It is the same with our bank notes and coins. Our $20 bill features the image Queen Elizabeth II (and come February it will feature King Charles III) and the signature of the governor and deputy governor of the Bank of Canada. It is their authority that gives the money its value, and we owe them for the privilege of using it. And for that reason they have the right – through taxes – to a say in how we use it. If they decide that they want us to spend money on garbage collection or road maintenance rather than on a new and expensive pair of shoes or risky trading on the stock market, they have the right to do that.
We may not agree with how they use the proceeds of our taxes or how much they are charging us (and I know this is on many of our minds as we are in election season here in Toronto), but the reality is, the money in our wallets does not belong totally to us.
If Jesus came in (as many people still imagine he did) with an agenda to overturn the economic order, then he would have spent his time at the nearest Roman outpost stirring up trouble until he got some attention. But if that were the case, Jesus would have spent all his time on that, and would have had no time for ministering to those affected by the misuse of the financial system. He would have to spend all his time getting power and control over people and the world system, and would have no time or kindness to give away to the needy. We can see clearly from how he actually spent his time what really mattered to him.
Then he said to them, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar; and give to God what belongs to God.”
Jesus did not want to take control of administering the financial system – he was happy to leave that to the professionals. He did not want his image and signature to be on every coin in the Roman Empire. He came into the world to claim what already belonged to him, the people on whom his image and signature already appear. In Genesis it says that God created male and female in his own image, and that image is still on us, and Jesus is still in the business of claiming what belongs to him.
What Jesus came into the world to build was a church, and to help and save all the people who bear God’s image. The reason he worked with people was not as some stepping stone to working with money. He worked with people, no matter how weak, broken, or poor, because he saw their immeasurable value as people made in the image of God.
What does it mean to be created in the image of God?
I believe it refers primarily to four things about us:
The Scriptures suggest that our physical characteristics – our bodies and the way they work – are relatable to God. In the first reading, it says that God would cover Moses with his hands while he passed by, and then Moses would be able to see his back but not his face. This is not teaching that we look physically like God, or that God has hands, a back, and a face, but rather that our physical characteristics can help us understand what God is like and what he does.
It can refer to our temperament and emotions. The Scriptures also speak about how God can feel angry or happy or sad. This does not mean that God has constantly changing emotions as we do; but the variety of emotions we experience, tell us something about how responds to different situations.
It can refer to God’s creativity and rationality: Just as God created the world and governs it wisely and decisively, we also have the ability to create things and translate our imagination into reality.
And it can refer to our sense of morality and justice. Just as God is everywhere in Scripture concerned with justice for those who are victimized and accountability for those who abuse their power, we also share these same concerns and some form of preserving justice is a feature of every human society, even when it is misused and falls short of what it ought to be.
The Scriptures also teach that, because of our sin, we need the image of God to be renewed in us. We do not need to become something new so much as to return to the way God created us to be. We lose track of God’s image in us, primarily in two ways. We treat the gifts God gives as if they were God himself; and we make God in our image rather than making ourselves more like the image of God that we are.
We take the image of God in us, our bodies, our emotions, our creativity, our minds, and our moral sense of right and wrong, and begin to feel that, armed with these gifts from God, we no longer need God to lead us or guide us. When we do not use these gifts for what they are intended, we misuse and abuse them so that they become harmful and dangerous to us.
Rather than treating our bodies like a temple, we worship our bodies or the imaginary bodies we wish we had.
Rather than ruling over our emotions to respond in a godly way to the situations around us, we let our emotions take control of our actions.
Rather than using our creativity to continue God’s creative work in the world, we devise evil against others and destroy God’s world in imaginative ways.
Instead of using our minds to act wisely according to how God has wired us, we worship our intellect and remove God from our thinking and our efforts at understanding.
Rather than using the moral sense of right and wrong to make the world a better place and to stamp out injustice, we worship our ability to know right from wrong and come up with our own systems of justice that align with whatever we want to give ourselves permission to do.
And once we have remade the image of God in this way, instead of coming back to God until we are in line with his ways, we tell God to get in line with our ways, so that he becomes the image of us.
We end up with a God who has all the same opinions and biases as us, who always thinks we are right, who supports every decision we make, whose laws are always convenient for us, and whose words never challenge or convict us.
We never look to God for anything, because whatever we feel we have, we make it fill in for God.
If we have a good relationship, we make love, sex and romance our God.
If we have some of the comforts of life, we make whatever brings us comfort our God
If we have money, we make that our God.
If we have a nice family, we make family our God.
If we are popular and people like us, we make this our God.
And even more tragically, we sometimes make these things our God precisely because we do not or cannot have them. We worship and idolize things we don’t have or the people who have what we don’t have. And the further we are from having these things, the more we worship them.
When all of these gods fail to live up to what we need them to be, we become obsessed with creating an image so at least we can project to the world that we have it all together when we know we don’t. We decide that it’s enough for the At least if I share carefully-curated moments of my day with the world on Instagram or TikTok, I can look to others like I am blessed. But no matter how many likes we get, this is never enough to satisfy the deep longing in our hearts for belonging and being known and truly loved.
The good news for us, not matter what the image of God in us has become, is what Jesus says to these Pharisees-in-training: Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God. And the first place we should look to figure out how to do this is to Jesus himself.
In Hebrews chapter 1, the writer says that Jesus is the “reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.” The word for “exact imprint” is χαρακτηρ which also refers to the imprint made in ancient coins of an image and inscription. We can say that every moment of Jesus’ earthly life, he fully lived out and put on full display what it means to be in the image of God. And so getting to know the Son of God in his earthly life will tell us a lot about what it means to live as God’s children for ourselves too.
it means we are called to do the same things the Son of God did in this world. To care for and minister to the eternal part of every human being. The Pharisees never seemed able to get this about him, and I believe we often don’t get it ourselves. Even when it came to his enemies, he still acted towards them as someone bearing God’s image to other people also bearing God’s image.
No matter how mean spirited or devious the attacks are against him, he always gives a response that is life giving and full of both grace and truth.
Jesus knows how our sin can damage and blur the image of God in us. Like old, worn, weatherbeaten equipment, we may find there is a layer of dirt and rust covering what we are meant to be. Like tools that have been used for the wrong purpose for so long, we no longer seem suited for or capable of what we were made to do.
But saying that we are made in the image of God is not the beginning of a quest to regain some long-lost innocence. We are not returning to what we once were, we are returning to the God who is, always has been, and always will be. As we follow his Son, who is himself the only Way back to the Father, we will find that just as his scars are part of his resurrection body, so our scars, our detours, our pain, and our sorrows can be redeemed too, and come to complement and illuminate the image of God in us.
This is exactly what he offered to the Pharisees who hated him, but they refused to change their minds and believe there was another way for them.
And what about us? How can we minister as people made in the image of God to other people also made lovingly in his image.
Wearing a clergy shirt as a sign of hope to people…
[when I first started wearing a clergy shirt, it felt quite uncomfortable, especially walking around downtown or taking the subway to pastoral visits around the city. Sometimes people would stare at me, and sometimes they would do everything possible to avoid eye contact. It got to the point where I was looking forward to winter so I could at least cover it up with a jacket. But when I shared this with a good friend, she told me that I shouldn’t be embarrassed to wear these clothes in public, because it can encourage a lot of people and be a sign of hope to them that there are still people who have faith in Jesus]
And it’s not just me: I wouldn’t be walking around with a clergy shirt if I didn’t also belong to a congregation that still has faith in Jesus.
Even without a clergy shirt, wearing the image of God proudly in our lives every day, wherever we are, can also be a sign of hope in a world where goodness and godliness seem so rare.
Wearing the image of God is not like a costume or a get-up intended to portray an image that isn’t real. If it becomes just an image where we externally follow God while our hearts our not with him, then we won’t become the signs of hope that we need to be in these difficult days.
If I may paraphrase Jay-Z for a moment, “This is not (just) an image, this is God-given.”
As you experience what it means to be “renewed in knowledge according to the image of your creator,” as the Apostle Paul describes it, may you discover that his image is the most important thing about you and the most important reality in your life, as well as the greatest gift you can offer back to him and to this world.
V.22
The Pharisees who had come to test him were amazed, but they left him and went away. This is unfortunate, but not uncommon. It is not uncommon for people to hear Jesus’ teaching, to be amazed by wisdom he uttered in this world, and still to walk away. I believe the Pharisees-in-training thought he was just another clever Rabbi with good one-liners. They were impressed that he got out of a difficult trap they set for him. They probably admired his confidence and his public speaking ability. But they missed seeing that he was not like any person they had ever met or seen or heard.
Jesus kept returning to them until they would see the truth, and we read and listen to his words every Sunday because we also want to communicate that he is not just another good man. We believe and teach that he is God. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who is coming to judge the living and the dead. And he is also the one who came into to this world to be with us, to comfort us, to plead with us, and to die for us. All he asks in return is that we don’t simply walk away amazed at him, but that we decide to follow him each and every day. I urge you then not to walk away, or to be in too much of a rush to get on to the other business in your Sunday, that you miss out on conversion, something we all need each day and each moment: deciding that even with all the other things that are pulling us in a million directions we are going to follow Jesus wherever he leads. If you have decided today that you want to follow Jesus, keep turning to him each day until you see him as he truly is. And in so doing, you will be enabled to see who you truly are: a reflection of God’s glory and goodness, for the good of this world.
While I wouldn’t recommend going well beyond your means for a wedding banquet, I understand that they are very important. The guest list really matters. It should feel like an honour to be invited when a couple puts so much into it.
Jesus uses this relatable experience from normal life to teach his listeners about the kingdom of heaven. More specifically, he is continuing to plead with his opponents in the temple. They have taken offence that he stepped onto their turf and was trying to tell them what they should do. He had dared to teach the religious professionals about God. And worst of all he is not intimidated by their attacks and schemes against him. He kept standing up and teaching anyone who would listen (and even those who refused to listen) about the kingdom of heaven.
The last few Sundays, we have heard alongside them a story about two sons – one who changed his mind and obeyed, and one who changed his mind and disobeyed.
We have heard a story about wicked tenant farmers who kill the landowner’s Son in hopes they will get his inheritance.
And today we are hearing a story about a wedding banquet where the guest list has to be revised at the last minute.
Each of these stories is meant to correct what Jesus’ hearers thought the kingdom of heaven was like, and we get to listen along with them and get our minds more in line with what the kingdom of heaven is really like too.
All these stories about the Chief Priests, and Scribes, and Pharisees are written in Scripture for our benefit. The fact is we all have a little bit of them in our own hearts. Their problem, as I said last week, is not that they were wrong about the kingdom of heaven – in a real sense we all are. Their problem is that when Jesus showed them the truth, they refused to change their minds. I pray that we would not be like them, but instead that our hearts will be softened by Jesus’ words and that we will be open to accepting his will and his kingdom for our own lives.
In the story, a king gives a wedding banquet for his son. He sent out his slaves to call those who had been invited. But when the slaves return, they have no one with them. The king assumes there must be a mistake: who would refuse an invitation to a wedding banquet for a king’s son? They must not be aware of what is in store for them. So he sends back other slaves to explain in more detail: Look, he says, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.
But they couldn’t care less about all the oxtail and beef curry the king had at his table. They turned down the invitation and went back to their lives – back to their fields or to their business. And some others abused or humiliated his messengers and even killed them so they wouldn’t invite them ever again.
This is shocking and confusing behaviour. Why would anyone respond this way to an invitation of such generosity and kindness?
Well, when Jesus tells stories like this, he means for us to understand that he is talking about people like us.
The slaves the king sent to invite his guests to the wedding banquet represent the prophets; This was the experience they had in the Old Testament: they were ignored, and treated harshly, and some of them were killed
We can say that the all writings of the prophets in the OT are an invitation to this wedding banquet that the guests keep rejecting over and over again. That is what the Old Testament is about: God inviting the people of Israel to enjoy what he had prepared for them, and them making light of the privilege and walking away to pursue other Gods or idols.
That was them, but this parable is also about us. We have our own experiences of rejecting the invitation of God to enjoy the wonderful things he has prepared for us. There are two ways we do this that come to mind.
Firstly, like the people in Jesus’ parable, we are often too busy trying to solve our own problems to allow God to bless us and to help us.
[Little old lady inviting the guy with the car battery to church]
I don’t know that man or what became of him, but in pastoral ministry I have seen a lot of people so busy struggling with the problems in their lives that they don’t have time to receive anything from God.
We are trying to ensure our own survival, and feel that if we take a moment away from worrying about our problems or trying in our own strength to solve them, our lives will fall apart.
I can assure you, your life will not fall apart if you take a moment away from all you are busily trying to do and pray to God.
The writer to the Hebrews says that it is Jesus who upholds all things by his powerful word.
If you really are worried about whether your life will hold together, take a moment to speak with the only one who is truly able to keep it together.
Come to church when you feel stressed and powerless in your life, and enjoy taking your place at God’s table, be reminded of who you are, and find in him the strength you need to carry on.
And secondly, some times we walk away from God and from the church because we make light of the invitation offered into fellowship with God.
We want a God who will just give us what we want, not the kind of God who is interested in a relationship with us.
And so, like Ancient Israel, we turn to idols – representations of what God can offer but without God. In their case it was the God of Nostalgia
In our first reading, Ancient Israel wanted a God of fertility so through the birth of children they could become strong and prosperous and safe in the wilderness (“Remember when Pharaoh and them were oppressing us, we just kept having babies and growing, then he was afraid of us – all we need is more of what we used to haveâ€)
But they are forgetting that even with all those babies, they still had no chance of getting out of slavery. It was only when God showed up and decided that it was time for his people to get a taste of freedom, that without lifting a finger or needing to fight at all, they were able to get up and walk out of slavery after 400 years.
We can also get caught up with worshipping the God of Nostalgia – “remember what used to happen or what things used to be like?†We talk like this sometimes and act as though everything was better in the past. And though we know this isn’t true – the past had its problems too – it is most often easier to look back with nostalgia than to look forward with faith.
If we have taken it upon ourselves to find deliverance from our problems, then nostalgia makes us feel like maybe we are good enough. We are the same people, so why can’t we do the same things we used to do?
But if we turn from worshipping the God of Nostalgia and instead worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we know that if Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then he is more than capable of doing today what he has always done in the past. He is able to give us new experiences and create memories for us today here in our lives and in this church.
Psalm 40 “He is able to put a new song in our mouths – a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord. (That is how we are going to fill up the pews). Happy are those who make the Lord their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods. You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts towards us; none can compare with you.â€
With a God like this on our side, there is no reason at any time to lose heart or to lose hope. He is more than powerful enough to revive us again.
So now the king has a problem: The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Do you know how expensive that much oxtail must have been? He couldn’t throw all that into the garbage.
The king’s solution to the problem – which says something to us about how to respond when the message we deliver from Jesus is rejected – is to go out there and find other people.
We are not meant to spend all our time begging and pleading with people who are not interested. We think that if we change the message, or start giving out free stuff, or make church about things that have nothing to do with God, then they will be interested. But this isn’t true and it doesn’t work.
God has prepared a banquet, he has prepared a feast, he has given his Son for the life of this world – that is the best thing we have to offer. If we feel that people don’t want that, all we can do is keep going out there inviting people until we find those who do want Jesus Christ.
We are to keep going out there until we find people who are interested in and longing for a life-changing encounter with the Son of God.
Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
Good and bad means that as we go out into the streets to invite people into the kingdom, we are not to judge based on what our eyes see.
When we went out last Saturday into the community, to invite people to the God’s wedding banquet, some people looked at us and (for whatever reason) decided they didn’t want anything to do with us.
I think we can understand what they were thinking because we can also have that knee-jerk reaction when we see people. We look at people and are sure they don’t want to hear about Jesus or that they aren’t interested in our ministry – just by looking at them. But we don’t know what is in their hearts – and we shouldn’t judge them the way we have experienced others judging us by our appearance.
In the parable, the only people who were counted as unworthy of the invitation are those who refused it. It has nothing to do with where a person is in their lives. Αnyone who accepts an invitation to God’s banquet is worthy of a seat at the table.
The people who said yes to the invitation, as we see elsewhere in the ministry of Jesus, are not the kinds of people who would feel entitled to be invited to such a gathering. These are lowly, humble, out-of-the-way people.
The crowd that followed Jesus was full of weak, sinful, unpresentable, and morally unattractive people. The kind of people that you wouldn’t want other people to know you go to church with.
The difficult thing about this is: it is still God’s will that the church be made up of the neediest people this world has to offer.
Jesus said it is the sick who need a physician not the healthy, and that he has come to call sinners to repentance.
Which means that if God has his way with us, we will be called upon to minister to the sick, the lost, the needy, and the broken. Those are the people we can expect to fill out the spaces in our pews.
The proof that we are doing something right at St. Stephen’s is not the kind of people we attract, but the kind of people we form. Not what people look like or act like when they enter the door, but what they are like when they leave the assembly of God’s people.
What will they experience among us so that, like the unbeliever in 1 Corinthians 14, they fall down and worship, saying “God is really among you!â€
Timothy Keller: God wants the world to overhear us worshiping him….We are called not simply to communicate the gospel to nonbelievers; we must intentionally celebrate the gospel before them.
Anthony Brown: You did not create me to worry, you did not create me to fear, you created me to worship
The people out there already know how to worry, they already know what it’s like for society to play up on their fears. What they need to see from us is not more of the same; they need us to show them how to worship.
We have the privilege of teaching people to do what they were created to do, and in the process to become who they are meant to be
Take a look at the empty seat closest to you – take a mental picture of it. I believe God is saving that seat for someone special whom you may not expect. Here is your homework: Each day this week, take a moment to pray for the person God intends to fill that seat, that by whatever means they will find their way to the place God wants them to be.
This is where the fellow who was not wearing a wedding robe comes in.
When the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?†And he was speechless.
We welcome and embrace openly those who are sick or weak in body, mind, and/or soul not for the purpose of celebrating the condition of being sick.
What we celebrate is the opportunity to be healed and made whole.
Can you imagine going to the hospital, and you finally get to see a doctor after 8 or 9 hours, and they say to you, “Why would you want to get better when you can enjoy your life with all these other people who are just as sick as you?†That would be ridiculous: what unites people who go to hospital is they all share the desire to get healthier again;
And what unites us in church is our desire to be healed and made better by the physician of our souls, Jesus Christ.
There is a clear note of judgement sounded in this parable. Those who reject the invitation of God or who do not prepare themselves to enter his presence face punishment.
There are consequences of disobedience and for refusing the calling God has placed upon our lives. The Ancient Israelites experienced this as well. His invitation is offered graciously, but that is no reason to take it lightly.
There is an urgency in Jesus words today which calls for a response – for the right response – from us.
If you feel like the man without the wedding robe, don’t remain speechless as he did. He had nothing to say because he looked within himself. He is like a person who says, “God just give me some time so I can get my life together and then I will be holy†or “I still want to enjoy life, I’m not ready to give my life to Christ yet†or “I am still trying out different options to find the spirituality that works for meâ€
What he should have said (and what we should say) is this: “I don’t know how I got in here without a wedding robe, but I would like to know. I want to believe, please Lord help my unbelief; I want to follow, please Lord show me your ways so I won’t wander anymore; I want to serve you, please Lord heal my selfish heart.
If this is your prayer, please join me as I conclude with this prayer to claim or to reclaim your rightful place, given by God’s grace, at the wedding banquet of God. You may repeat after me silently or aloud:
Lord Jesus, clothe me with your righteousness, so that I may take my place at your banquet table. Heal me and make me holy. Cleanse me from all my sins. Make me worthy to accept your invitation and to enjoy all that you have prepared for those who love you. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
Sermon Oct 4th On Oct 4th we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the dedication of church building in 1986, and the 73rd anniversary of our first worship service in 1953
Prayer: Almighty God, we have heard your words to us in holy scripture, and know your call to each of us. In every age you have spoken through the voices of prophets, pastors, and teachers. We give you thanks that over the years we have heard you speak to us through the preaching of your word in this place. Grant that those who preach in this place may proclaim the crucified and risen Christ and interpret your word with sensitivity and insight, that we may hear that word inwardly and respond to it in all our life. This we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, your living Word. Amen.
Thank you for a wonderful weekend of activities
We look back, today being 39 years since our church building was consecrated, and 72 years since ministry began in this parish.
And we look forward by rededicating our baptismal font, lectern, this pulpit, and later the altar to God, to minister to us and to all who come through these doors
Here are some photos of the day when the cornerstone of our church was laid, in May of 1956. Shared by Elizabeth Hanna and Marg Alderson, relatives of our first Incumbent Reverend Frank Fry.
It was blessed at that time by an Archdeacon
We can perhaps recognize where these scenes took place.
They remind us of where this church began – an outreach of St. John, Weston to the children of this area (nearly 500) Anglican families)
They were giving thanks for the first successful fundraising campaign which raised this building ($70,000; where we worship to this day), and their motto “Attempt Great Things for God, Expect Great Things from God.”
And they were looking ahead to the ministry that they believed God had in store for them.
In the fourth photo we see some children (from the original Sunday school?). I wonder what they were thinking, and what their experience was growing up in this church building.
The cornerstone of this building represents all that holds us together and gives us the staying power we have needed to remain faithful and strong through the years.
The physical cornerstone laid in 1956 is also a reminder of what Jesus had to say 2000 years ago about cornerstones. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.
In all their wisdom and expertise, the builders mentioned in Psalm 118 (which Jesus quotes) missed something. They overlooked the most important stone for whatever it was they were building.
The Chief Priests in our Gospel Reading knew Jesus was talking about them when he said this, which made them want to have him arrested. They couldn’t stand anyone telling them they didn’t know something.
Jesus had stepped on their turf and not paid his respects to them. And when they challenged him, he did not back away but kept coming back to challenge them in return.
They must have thought. Why is he so sure of himself that he isn’t afraid to be rejected by us?
Jesus kept going back to the temple, facing up to rejection day after day in the final week of his life, which would end in the ultimate rejection as false witnesses had him condemned to death. Why did he do this?
Jesus was not afraid of rejection because he knew something they did not. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes. The most important thing we need to hold our lives together may be something we are rejecting at the moment.
In the amazing mercy of Jesus, as we heard last Sunday in Philippians, Jesus let go of his equality with God – the acceptance he enjoyed in God’s presence – to enter a world in which he would be rejected by those he came to save.
John 1: “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not receive him”
I believe that it was precisely because he was so fully and completely accepted by his Father, that he was willing to experience rejection in this world so that we could be saved.
The Apostle Paul also rejected him at first. But in our lesson from Philippians today he tells the story of how he came to accept as precious that which he once rejected – and to recognize it as rubbish.
Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ, he says
His racial pride, his good works, his acceptance with important people – all of that had to go in the bin. Or, since there was so much of it, maybe it had to go in the big dumpster out back.
The Apostle had to reject that through which he had sought acceptance all his life.
But when he saw that the true acceptance he was longing for – the only acceptance which could satisfy him – is the acceptance of God, he was ready to risk rejection not only to embrace Christ but also to invite others to do the same.
As we look ahead to the future, how might our lives and the life of this church be transformed by drinking deeply of the acceptance of God.
I believe that it will make us bold and unafraid of rejection as we invite others around us to experience and receive the acceptance of God.
Inscription on a church bell in Wisconsin: “To the bath and to the table, to the prayers and to the word, I call every seeking soul.”
Can you imagine going up to someone and telling them they need to take a bath? We can imagine they might not respond well to that.
But sometimes we need another person to have the courage to tell us what we know is true but are not yet ready to believe or to do something about.
We, like this bell, unafraid of rejection like our Lord and Saviour, are to call every seeking soul, to the cleansing wash of baptism, to the illuminating ministry of word and prayer, and to the nourishing and satisfying food of Christ’s body offered on the holy table – the very elements in our space we rededicate today.
In doing so, we believe that the message we have accepted is worth risking rejection so that others can accept it too.
And more than that, Jesus life demonstrates for us what each of our lives can look like if we become totally secure in our Father’s love and acceptance of us.
And as we become more aware of how totally accepted we are by God, we can live with the courage and love of Jesus (as one of our Eucharistic prayers says, “Fill us with the courage and love of Jesus, that all the world may gather in joy at the table of your kingdom.”
Without this, we will be running scared our whole lives – torn between the fear of rejection by God and fear of rejection from other people.
But Jesus did not live like that, and in so doing holds out hope that we do not need to live like that either
In the parable we heard today, and the one last week, Jesus confronts the Pharisees about their refusal to change their minds.
The problem was not that they were wrong – about God, about Jesus, about the world. Their problem was when Jesus showed them something different and better they refused to change their minds.
Being courageous and unafraid of rejection does not mean that we will be able to change everyone’s minds
But as just as we once rejected that we now accept, so there is hope for those who – to us – seem furthest from the reach of God’s goodness and mercy.
May we, as we look ahead, standing firm on the cornerstone Jesus Christ, and the inheritance that has been given us in this place, continue to be built up as living stones, a spiritual house offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, Amen.
The Reverend Matthew Waterman Incumbent The Church of St. Stephen, Downsview
From the depths of Egypt to the teachings of Jesus, learn how humility and love can transform our lives. Are you ready to embrace the call for unity and compassion?
As I reflect upon the stories from the Old Testament, it becomes evident that this holy book not only serves as a historical account but primarily reveals the profound relationship between God and His beloved people. Despite our often ungrateful response, God continually treated us with compassion, mercy, and love. Even when faced with trials, God’s steadfastness remained evident.
Let me take you back to a time when God was rescuing the Israelites from Egypt. They found themselves at a place without water and began complaining against Moses. Complaint is far from a new phenomenon, isn’t it? We often find ourselves moaning about our circumstances, even when our lives are abundant with blessings.
The story unfolds with God instructing Moses to use his stick to bring forth water from the rock—an act of divine providence and greatness. Yet, even after witnessing such a miracle, the people questioned, “Is the Lord among us or not?” These are questions not only rooted in the past; they echo in our hearts even today. But let us remember, the Lord is indeed among us. We can find Him in our seeking, in our knocking, and in our asking.
The Psalms remind us to heed the teachings that pour forth like rain. Oral history kept the legacy of God’s good deeds alive through generations. Yet somehow, those deeds were forgotten amid complaints and doubt, with many yearning for the days of slavery over divine freedom.
The challenges we face today might be different, but they mirror this historic struggle. When we encounter difficulties, we ask ourselves, “Where is God?” But let us carry faith that God is ever-present among us.
In the New Testament, we find Peter’s attempt to deter Jesus, met with the reminder to follow, not lead. Paul’s epistles urge Christians to be of one mind, to act in accord, and not as programmed machines lacking emotion. I once owned a Samsung phone that prompted AI-generated responses, which often led me to forge my genuine reactions instead.
Our journey, too, must be genuine, rooted in love, humility, and obedience. These are virtues we must reclaim and nurture, for in them, we meet the Lord.
The temple held both economic and social importance; it was more than a place of worship, it was a hub for religious transformation. The chaos Jesus encountered—and His subsequent cleansing of the temple—underscores the purity our souls must strive for.
Pharisees and Sadducees questioned His authority, never recognizing John the Baptist, and thus, Jesus Himself. Yet, Jesus walked a path of teaching and healing, transforming the world through parables that left the wise contemplating profound truths.
In our lives, it is imperative to question whether the Lord is among us. Are we humble? Are we ready to sacrifice, even unto death? My brothers and sisters, to live as Christians is to live in concord with one another, with humility and unyielding love.
As Paul wisely advises, being a Christian extends beyond words; it calls us to follow through with our actions. Let us gather in unity, overcoming discord through steadfast love.
In closing, I urge you to reflect deeply on your influences and surroundings. “Show me your friends, and I’ll tell you your character,” as the proverb goes. Let us strive to be like children in faith, letting love and concord guide us through life.
Remember, the essence of our faith is brought to life in community and shared understanding. Let us talk about Jesus and the wondrous deeds He continues to perform in our lives.
In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Call to Action: As we ponder these reflections, let us actively seek to be a community that embodies love, mercy, and humility. Reach out, connect, and discuss these fundamental truths with someone today, sharing the light of compassion and understanding that God has shown us.
In today’s world, unforgiveness can seem as common as a plotline in a classic spaghetti Western; it might appear thrilling in cinema, but it’s disastrous when practiced in real life.
Gracious Lord, may your word today guide us, strengthen our spirits, and infuse us with wisdom. As we dive into this reflection, may we all be drawn closer to your blessed kingdom through the clarity and brightness of your holy word. Our desire is for light, wisdom, and nourishment to illuminate the paths we traverse daily.
The Essence of Forgiveness
The world becomes a chaotic Wild West when unforgiveness becomes a habitual way of life.
Yet, we often cling to it. Why? The core message for today is simple: We must forgive because God forgives. If we aim for lives less like tumultuous films and more like the kingdom of God, our mantra should be, “God forgives, so should I.”
A Biblical Perspective
Consider this: the Apostle Peter once posed a question about forgiveness to Jesus, asking, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Peter thought himself generous, but Jesus raised the bar drastically, saying, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
To illustrate, Jesus shared a parable about a king who forgave a massive debt owed by a slave—a debt that was insurmountable. Yet, that same slave failed to extend forgiveness to a fellow debtor. Jesus’ parable teaches us that the kingdom of heaven is not about rigid justice but overwhelming mercy.
Understanding True Forgiveness
The crux of this message is that forgiveness from God is not earned; it’s a merciful gift. If we grasp the full depth of God’s forgiveness, it transforms us, making us more forgiving individuals.
At St. Stephen’s, we aim to embody this transformation, allowing God’s grace to overflow from us, impacting everyone we interact with. It’s not about striving harder but opening our hearts to the abundance of God’s mercy, grace, and forgiveness.
The Impact of Forgiveness
Consider the woman in the book of Luke who, having been forgiven much, loved much. Understanding forgiveness doesn’t drive us to shame or distance from Jesus; rather, it emboldens us to love and worship Him unabashedly.
Our mission should extend beyond increasing church attendance; it should focus on introducing people to Jesus in the transformative way this woman experienced.
Navigating Challenges
Challenges in forgiving others exist, especially when faced with deep wounds or ongoing hurt. But remember, while we’re not always called to forgive sins—we leave that to God—we can extend mercy. Mercy invites others on a journey towards redemption without demanding they earn it from us first.
Conclusion
A poignant reminder comes from a sermon preached after the tragic events of September 11th, 2001. On that day, people crowded churches, seeking a path away from the destruction that unforgiveness wrought. It’s a stark reminder that revenge and grudges don’t lead to life but to death and destruction.
If you’re weary of the unforgiving path that leads away from true life, know there’s another path: the path of mercy and forgiveness that Jesus paved for us. Let’s walk this path boldly, trusting God to guide us and seeking the transformative life we’ve been yearning for.
Call to Action
Let us open our hearts to God’s abundant grace, seek mercy, and transform ourselves into beings of forgiveness. Reflect on what truly holds us back from being as forgiving as we should be, and step forward with courage. Together, let’s create a life rich with forgiveness, modeled after the kingdom of heaven.
In today’s reflection, I’d like to invite you to embark on a journey with me–the journey of forgiveness and healing. It won’t be an easy path, but it’s one that promises profound reconciliation and spiritual peace.
As we begin, let us pray: Gracious Lord, may your word be our guide and sustenance, bringing wisdom that renews us, drawing us all into your blessed kingdom through Christ our Savior.
Following Together, Forgiving Together
Our gospel readings teach us that following Christ is not a solitary journey; it’s a shared endeavor. We do not walk alone; we walk with those who will sometimes fail us. Jesus compares this community of believers to a shepherd who tirelessly seeks out the lost sheep, striving to reunite them with the flock.
He’s intentional about demonstrating the necessity of reconciliation within the church. When one person errs, restoration is a community effort. And while it may not come naturally, it’s an integral part of our faith.
A Process of Reconciliation
Often, our initial response to being wronged isn’t reconciliation. We retreat inward, judging the actions and character of those who’ve hurt us. But Jesus calls for a different approach: address the individual privately first, allowing truth and understanding to nurture healing.
If private conversations fail, we involve trustworthy community members as witnesses—not to condemn, but to remember who this person truly is, recalling their contributions to our shared spiritual journey.
Even when an individual strays further, Jesus instructs us to embrace them with open hearts and unyielding love, just as he dined with and cherished tax collectors and sinners. As a community, we must extend prayer and ministry to those in need of transformation.
Building a Christ-Like Community
To grow as a church, we must first grow in Christ’s image. It’s tempting to dream of overflowing pews and expanded ministries, but true growth begins with a community rooted in reconciliation and forgiveness. We must emulate Jesus’ joy and persistence in enduring the cross for the sake of unity.
Before inviting others in, we must create a garden of spiritual togetherness, where even if our aspirations differ from reality, we cultivate an environment of love and understanding.
Belonging Together Through Faith
Belonging to the church isn’t achieved through isolation or mere participation in virtual services. It’s found in genuine connections with fellow believers, embracing that the church community is a powerful source of God’s healing gifts.
Whether burdened by our own sins or others’, the church remains a sanctuary for forgiveness. Together, we confess, repent, and strive for the holiness God envisions for us.
Living Jesus’ Teachings Beyond Church Walls
In our broken world where discord is rampant, Jesus’ teachings offer a blueprint for healing beyond church walls. By resisting the urge to demonize and opting for truth and love, we set powerful examples in our personal and professional lives, manifesting God’s Kingdom on earth.
As stewards of reconciliation and forgiveness, we are called to live out these values not only in our spiritual community but also in our everyday interactions.
Call to Action
I encourage you to carry these reflections with you. Pursue forgiveness and healing in your personal relationships, creating spaces where others can feel the embrace of understanding and grace. Let’s embody Christ’s teachings, bringing about transformation not just within our church, but within the world. As we say in prayer, “Thy will be done,” let it begin with the steps we take together.
May God’s Word guide you and grant you peace. Amen.
“In the scriptures, the Lord says the people of Israel know Him by His acts, but Moses knew Him by His ways. Often, Christians follow Jesus for His acts–the miracles, prophecies, and solutions to their burdens. Similarly today…”
I’ve been to many Anglican churches, but there is a unique and powerful energy here, and I feel it strongly as we collectively sing hymns of praise to the Lord. Today, I want to focus my sermon on the profound gospel passage from Matthew 16:13-20, 28, where Jesus makes a pivotal statement: “I will build my Church.” This marks the first introduction of the word ecclesia, or Church, in the New Testament.
Before making this statement, Jesus asks His disciples two major questions. People had witnessed His miracles—healing the sick and casting out devils, an act unheard of in the history of Israel. Even in the Old Testament, while prophets performed miracles, casting out devils was never recorded. Jesus’ authority over demons and evil forces was unparalleled, and before His impending death, He turns to His disciples to seek their understanding of Him.
He first asks them, “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples respond with what popular opinion suggests, linking Him to Elijah or John the Baptist or comparing Him to prophets of old. Then, Jesus asks them for their personal view, pressing, “What about you? Who do you say that I am?” Silence follows this poignant question.
In the scriptures, the Lord says the people of Israel know Him by His acts, but Moses knew Him by His ways. Often, Christians follow Jesus for His acts—the miracles, prophecies, and solutions to their burdens. Similarly today, many seek churches with prophecies and miracles, attracted by the promise of relief and not an understanding of who Christ truly is.
Contrasting with that, Moses built a personal relationship with God, knowing Him face to face and understanding His merciful nature. When Jesus asks His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter stands up and proclaims, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This revelation wasn’t revealed by flesh but was a divine insight into His true identity—what many Jews struggled to comprehend.
The term Christ or Kristos means “the anointed,” synonymous with the Messiah in Hebrew—the Savior delivering humanity. Peter’s recognition of Jesus as Christ earns him a significant promise: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” Jesus’ declaration signifies that Christ is the foundation of the Church, and no force of darkness can prevail against it. The Church, built with the blood of Jesus, remains indomitable against persecution.
Jesus promises Peter the keys of the Kingdom, symbolizing authority and knowledge—insight into divine mysteries, a message for Christians today not to be mere followers. Let us strive for a genuine revelation of who Christ is. When asked about your faith in various settings, have a ready and authentic answer, affirming Jesus as the Son of the living God. Across religions, this divine attribute of Christ is often disputed, yet we affirm in our creeds His true essence with the Father.
By fully understanding this revelation, you gain authority. Don’t let fear overpower you—not from evil or illness, for with these keys, what you bind or permit on Earth echoes in Heaven. Believers must always profess positively, maintaining health during illness and light amid darkness. Demons cannot torment you because you are part of His Kingdom.
Let me pray for you. I thank you, Father, for your word today, reminding us that you are building your Church, with us as participants in its growth. Bless St. Stephen’s Anglican Church with an ever-deepening intimacy with you. May your followers here know you more deeply, benefit from your acts, and grow to impact their community positively.
As we conclude, I urge you to deepen your relationship with Christ, recognizing and voicing His divine nature, and wielding your authority and faith for a transformative life. Let’s build our lives on this solid Rock of faith—Jesus Christ. Amen.
