Pentecost 16C - "Who Told it Better?"

Saint Luke 16:19-31

I

In his book Class Clown, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Dave Berry, who wrote a syndicated column every week, was often asked where he gets his inspiration and he replied, “Costco.”1

As anybody who is old enough to have stared at a blank piece of paper in a typewriter or has looked at a blank computer screen under the pressure of writing a letter, a school paper, a sermon, or even a grocery list knows that inspiration can come from almost anywhere.

Today mine came from a reply to a Facebook post.

It was a picture of where one of my dogs was staying while I was on vacation, The Pooch Hotel.  Because we shopped around for the place Lowell and I were staying in Puerto Villarta we got a great rate on a really good room.  Our rate was so good that when we got home, we discovered that it cost more for my dog’s stay than it did for ours.

I thought it was funny, so I posted it on my Facebook page, and one response took me back.  It was an acquaintance who seemed to believe that it was not only his right but his obligation to make some kind of comment that seemed to pass judgement on everything.

His reply to what I wrote in jest was. “Some people take better care of their pets than they do of other humans.”

While that comment may or may not have been true in my case or the case of anyone here this morning it is true for some people who treat other human beings because their lack of resources, or immigration status, or position in life, like “dirty dogs.”

An incredibly wealthy man who surrounds himself with incredibly wealthy people who vie for the prime spots near the man who would be king once said of the homeless.

“We have people living in our … best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings . . .  where people in those buildings pay tremendous taxes, where they went to those locations because of the prestige. In many cases, they came from other countries, and they moved to Los Angeles or they moved to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city, and all of a sudden, they have tents. Hundreds and hundreds of tents and people living at the entrance to their office building. And they want to leave.” 

As Rex Huptke, columnist for USA Today, pointed out.

The modern rich man paints an incredibly sad picture of wealthy homeowners holed up in their penthouses and high-powered business types cowering in their corner offices in fear of those who are just outside the well-guarded entrances of their high-rise towers that perhaps even bear their name.

“Do you know what that does?” Huppke asked.  “That leads these people (who pay tremendous taxes) to leave, which, when you think of it, is a form of homelessness, except they still own multiple homes.”2

Huppke then goes on to point to several examples from the teachings of Jesus whom the rich man in question claims to follow.  One of those examples is today’s gospel.

While he may not be surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of tents our rich man is being held hostage by a poor man, a very poor man, who has apparently been dumped in front of his house.  There is someone on his doorstep who Jesus tells us was placed there by his friends perhaps in the hopes that the person who lived just beyond the golden gate would help him.

Jesus tells us plainly that to the rich guy he was a nuisance who had to be stepped over every morning on the way down the cobble stone drive to pick up the latest copy of The Jerusalem Post.  Because he was there special care had to be used when the Bentley was backed down the driveway lest he is run over and scratches a bumper or flatten a tire.  

It is even possible that since the beggar was dumped at the front door the rich man’s friends had to use the back entrance to avoid being bothered.  It was enough to make them all want to leave.

I have always wondered whether this parable wasn’t the inspiration for or, at least, running around in the back of Charles Dickens’ mind when he wrote A Christmas Carol.  Remember the response to the gentlemen who come to his office asking for a small gift to charity?

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge

“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge, “Are they still in operation?”

“They are.  Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”

“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigor, then?” said Scrooge.

“Both very busy, sir.  What shall I put you down for?”

“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.  “I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry.”3

The men protest that without his help people might die.

“If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”3

If I read both offerings correctly it seems to me that Dickens is filling in the blanks of Jesus’ parable.  Like this little peace of dialogue where the words of Dickens’ very rich man could have well been spoken by Jesus’ very rich man.

Jesus never gives the rich man “a name in the parable, despite several attempts early on to give him one. In popular usage, he is called Dives.  Which, as Dr. Thomas G. Long tells us in his massive work Proclaiming the Parables, “is not a name at all but simply the Latin word for ‘rich’.”  It’s such a generic term, observes Dr. Long, that “In the original Lukan parable, though, the rich man is nameless, period.”4

So, it would be fair game to call him a Scrooge because in popular culture it has come to believe any person who is miserly is a Scrooge. But, both Jesus and Dickins tell us that their protagonist is not just cheap, he is uncaring, unfeeling.

There is, however, one huge difference between Scrooge and the antagonist in Jesus’ story.  Scrooge repents!

When one of the ghosts of Christmas shows him exactly how difficult life was for his nephew Bob Cratchit and his family and when Scrooge begins to see them as real people things begin to change.

 

Scrooge is especially touched by the plight of little Tiny Tim and, for the first time in his life, shows genuine concern for another human being.  He watches as after Christmas dinner is over and Cratchit tenderly grasps his young son’s hand.  

"‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before. “Tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’  ‘I see an empty seat,’ replied the ghost, ‘and a crutch without an owner carefully preserved. If these shadows don’t change in the future, the child will die.’”

Scrooge cried out.  “‘Oh no, kind Spirit! Say he will be spared!’”

The Spirit throws Scrooge’s earlier words right back at him.  “‘If he like to die, he better do it and decrease the surplus population.’ Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.”5

Scrooge’s change of heart may be why our mailboxes are filling up about this time of year with flyers from theatre companies, large and small, inviting us to attend their annual production of the Dickens’ play while Jesus' vignette only shows up once every three years to be read by the faithful in church.

We would love it is Jesus’ rich man would have been more like Dickins’ Scrooge and seen the error of his ways, repented, took the poor man on his doorstep into his home, into his heart.  Wouldn’t it have been better if Jesus’ rich guy let Lazarus curl up in front of his hearth like an adopted puppy.  

That would have made for a great play!  An annual play!  Maybe even a musical!  However, Jesus is not a popular author trying to sell short stories, so his story does not have a happy ending. As a matter-of-fact Jesus story doesn’t have an ending at all.

The rich man Jesus is telling us about shows no such contrition.  Even when he finds himself in Hades and sees Lazarus resting near Father Abraham, he still treats this child of God with contempt. 

Up until now when Lazarus was just a heap of humanity, maybe even less than that of a flee-ridden dog ruining the very tasteful and expensive welcome mat he saw late one night watching QVC on his 1,072 inch television and ruining his prestigious neighborhood. He never acknowledged him but now he needs his help.  He needs a favor.

Still not speaking to Lazarus directly he implores Father Abraham to send him on an errand.  “‘Father Abraham, mercy! Have mercy! Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water to cool my tongue. I’m in agony in this fire.’”6

Here is something really important.  Jesus has hidden it so carefully in his story that we might have missed it.

Up until now we think that the rich man in Jesus’ story never even bothered finding out who the poor man was.  For all he knew, for all he cared, the fellow out front was just a speed bump on the highway of life.  It is only when the fires of hell are lapping at his lips do we discover that the rich guy  knew Lazarus’ name all along.  The vagrant had a name and the rich guy knew it!

At every turn of the story, he could have called to him, helped him.

That wasn’t some anonymous down-and-outer in front of the house his name was Lazarus and the rich guy knew it!  He knew it but never used it until he needed something.

When Lazarus was dependent on him, he never bothered to speak his name but now that he is dependent on Lazarus he is dropping the name frequently but only as an errand boy.

The arrogance is astounding as the rich guy continued to think that the only thing Lazarus was put on this earth to do was to serve him.  He demands that Lazarus be commanded to bring him water and when he is told that this will not be possible, he then asks that he be sent on yet another errand to go and warn his brothers.

Unlike Scrooge our rich man is so unrepentant that in trying to get Lazarus to do his dirty work for him that he goes so far as trying to order Father Abraham around.

Lazarus is still a nonperson to him.  He is still treating him like a slave who is expected to do his bidding at a moment’s notice.

The man who, in his earthly life, never took the time to pass a morsel of food through a front fence to Lazarus now expects the poor guy who has experienced so much torment on earth to pass through the fires of hell to bring him a bit of relief in the next. 

You have probably been sitting there waiting for me to drop the money card on you. You’ve been waiting for me to warn you about the dangers of the misuse of wealth and to tell you that you should be more generous but you know that.  This parable probably runs through your mind every time you pass by a beggar on the street. 

I know you and your probably bothered by this little story almost every time you stop at a stop light or reach the bottom of an expressway ramp and read the signs held by the downtrodden.  “Homeless!  Hungry!  Help Me!”

If, like me, you are bothered every time you speed past one of those poor souls that is good.  If that is the case, at least for us, Jesus’ words have achieved their goal!  Jesus has made us more aware of the plight of those who have less than we do. 

However, this parable is not just about money it is about indifference.   Jesus’ rich man was indifferent to the plight of the man at his garden gate. 

The man from our age who complained that we have “people living in our … best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings” is indifferent to the plight of the poor and only sees them as a drain on the economy, a bother.

This story may be about money but it is also about our indifference to the needs of others.  Not just monetary needs but emotional needs and spiritual needs and the need that all of us have to feel loved and cared for.

Jesus is not asking the impossible of us.  Just as it would not have been impossible for the rich man to share a crust of bread not only with the guy on his front stoop but, if he was that rich, he could have used his spare pocket money to open up a soup-kitchen for all the homeless in his neighborhood.

That is, if he could endure the wrath of his wealthy friends for encouraging more of the Lazarus types to move in and take up camp.

The good news is the Scrooge didn’t stay a scrooge.  After seeing the past, the present and the future all in one night he wakes up a changed man. 

Scrooge only began to treat the Cratchit’s like living, breathing, human beings when he learned their names.  Tiny Tim, Bob, Martha.

We know how The Christmas Carol ends.

Scrooge orders the biggest turkey at the meat market for the Cratchit’s Christmas day dinner. When Bob comes in late he doesn’t fire him but gives him a raise.  And when he comes across the men he had unceremoniously thrown out his office the day before for begging on behalf of the poor he gives them a donation that is so large it causes one of them to exclaim, ““My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?”

“If you please,” said Scrooge. “Not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you.”

He started to care about more than himself and his balance sheet.  And Dicken’s writes of him:

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.7

Of the three men before us today one of them changed; the other was toast; and the jury is still out on the guy who was more worried about shabby looking tents than the people who lived in them.

Last week's Sunday Morning program with Jane Pauley on CBS featured a segment on the unveiling of a mural in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

The mural depicts the Apparition at Knock and significant figures from the Church's history in America, including Mother Frances Cabrini, the first American citizen to be canonized. There's a stirring scene of nineteenth century immigrants disembarking in New York, and another of first responders, many of them descended from those immigrants.

But what may be most talked about are the portraits of present-day arrivals waiting to be welcomed.

The murals creator, Adam Cvijanovic, titled it “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding” and said that he wasn’t intentionally trying to make a political statement but then added, “there's been a shift in America recently. And one of the most important things that's happened in this last tumultuous decade is that there's been a permission to be cruel.”

As cruel as Scrooge and the unnamed guy in Jesus’ parable.  Scrooge at the beginning and the repentant and Jesus’ character ever unchanged.  

Dickens’ story comes with a happy ending.  Jesus’ with a warning characterized best by Cardinal Archbishop Timothy J. Dolan’s statement at the close of the CBS piece.

"When all is said and done, when I stand before Jesus, he's not gonna say, 'Hey Dolan, good work with the mural, good work with the restoration and repair of the cathedral…. I need to ask you something: when I was an immigrant, did you welcome me?' And if I said, 'I'm afraid I didn't, Lord,'" he's gonna say, 'Well, get the hell outta here,' right?"8

All Jesus is asking us to do is to take care of each other.  To  reach across life’s chasms and help each other in ways that might not even be expensive but will be meaningful beyond measure.

Jesus finishes this parable on the pages of your life and mine for it is only when we overcome our indifference and begin seeing each other not as liabilities but those who are loved by and loved deeply by Jesus that, in the words of Tiny Tim Cratchit, “God” will “bless us everyone.” 

________________

1. Dave Barry, Class Clown (New York, , NY: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025).

2.   Rex Huppke, “Shining Light on California's Homeless.” The Chicago Tribune, September 19, 2019, sec. 1.  p. 3.https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/rex-huppke/ct-trump-california-homeless-border-fundraiser-huppke-20190918-y3jfh5lnm5avzcqwkg7vlthv4m-story.html

3. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. (London: William Heinemann, 906)  8-9.

4.     Thomas G. Long, Proclaiming the Parables: Preaching and Teaching the Kingdom of God (Louisville: KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2024), 340.

5.  Dickens, op.cit., p.  69-70.

6. St. Luke 16:22–24. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).

7.     Dickens, op.cit.

8. Mo Rocca, “An Artist’s Remarkable New Vision for St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” broadcast, Sunday Morning (CBS, September 21, 2025).

 

Pentecost 15C - "Surely You Jest"

 

Saint Luke 16:1-13

One of the great comic minds of the twentieth century, and thankfully into this century, is the now 99-year-old Mel Brooks who has given us some of the most memorable moments on stage and screen.  His works include plays and movies that can make you laugh out loud while at the same time holding your hands over your face in embarrassment that you are laughing out loud.

From the lesser known, Spaceballs, to the better known, High Anxiety, to the almost classics Young Frankenstein, and Blazing Saddles and The Producers that was almost unbelievably about two charlatans, Max Bialystock and his protege Leo Bloom who are conning investors into backing a play that they are certain will be a flop so they can abscond with the money.  The plays title, as you should know is "Springtime for Hitler.” But the full title, designed to make everybody wince is “Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden” The full title alone is enough to offend almost everyone.

“Why Hitler?” Brooks was asked on the program Inside Comedy, "The only way to get even with anybody is to ridicule them," he said. "So, the only real way I could get even with Hitler and company was to bring them down with laughter."1

In his 2021 memoir, All About Me, Brooks said, “Nothing bursts the balloon of pomposity and dictatorial rhetoric better than comedy. Comedy brings religious persecutors, dictators and tyrants to their knees faster than any other weapon.”2

Dr. Scott Black Johnston, always a sermon inspirer is devoting the entire fall at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church of New York, to a series he is calling “Jesus the Jester” because he says.  

It’s impossible to know Jesus apart from the story that he lived but it is equally impossible to know Jesus apart from the stories that he told.  Apart from the beguiling stories that he told woven from the fabric of everyday life.  

Why does Jesus use these curious yarns to speak about the kingdom of God?  

Jesus uses parables because he knows how we are wired. He knows that or crafty brains want to put up walls and duck the truth. And because Jesus loves us, he is determined like some crazy fool to break through to places where we can grow.3

It will take a lot of stretching and growing to understand the parable put before us this day.  As Justo González’s observed: “It is not uncommon to see on our church windows portrayals of a father receiving a son who has strayed or of a sower spreading seed, or of a Samaritan helping the man by the roadside. But I have never seen a window depicting a man with a sly look, saying to another ‘Falsify the bill.’”4

Yet that is what we have before us today and, if we listened very carefully, we might find ourselves saying with those who heard it the first time. “Surely you jest.”  And we might have heard Jesus reply, “Surely, I do not jest.  And don’t call me Shirley.”

Almost everybody, scholar and students alike, are confused.  They can’t get over the fact that Jesus has made a crook almost palatable in this parable.  They can’t get over the fact that the manager heaps praise on this charlatan.  They can’t get over all of this because they can’t admit that deep down in their heart of hearts there is a grudging admiration for this steward.  He is one crafty character.

In the beginning of Jesus’ confusing little story, he doesn’t look so cunning.  He looks more like a crook who got caught.  At this point we are right with the master in firing the guy.  

We know all about him and his kind.   They are the ones who overinflate the earnings of their companies.  They make the profits seem bigger and the loses smaller than they really are.  When tax-time comes around their returns could win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. They have no second thoughts about “ginning the books.”  They would sell their souls to keep the company afloat or help get the company what it wants.

At first there are only rumors for the wayward manager.  Who knows where these charges are coming from but then the audit committee is called in.  They are going to try to add up figures that don’t add up.  These outsiders will try to reconcile books that cannot be reconciled no matter what kinds of Voodoo accounting practices are used.  Instead of rolling in dough they will find out that the company is actually drowning in debt.

The guy is in big trouble and he knows it.  He also knows his limitations.  

In my favorite line is all of scripture he sums up his skills perfectly when he says of himself: “I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.”5

He frankly and honestly assesses his skills and determines that he doesn’t have any.   So it is time for him to go to work and uses the only skill he has.  He may not be able to make the books balance but he is crafty and he is going to put that one ability he has to work full bore.

I don’t know about you, but I am beginning to like this guy.  He could have stood around staring at his shoes all day and wondering what is going to happen to him but instead he goes to work with the only skill he has left – his ability to be, let’s just call him this to be polite, a creative accountant.  It is what got him into this mess perhaps it can get him out.  So the shrewd guy gets to work.

“Ah, I know what I’ll do so that when I lose my position people will welcome me into their homes!"6   he says to himself. While money may not be able to, in the words of the Beatles, “buy him love” it might be able to find him a warm place to stay on a cold night.

Up until now when he has called one of his master’s debtors into his office, he has been the bearer of bad tidings.  Now he is Mr. Good News.

“Listen!” he says to the first.  “We’ve been going over the accounts and there has been some mistake.” You can feel the tension rising.   “It says here you owe $100,000 but I think someone has programmed in too many zeros.  It can’t be that much!  Let’s make it $10,000.”  The tension is gone as suddenly there are handshakes all around as he asks, almost as an aside, “By-the-way, do you still have that coach house out back of your place that you are not using?”

The next guy comes in and it is the same story.  “I’ve been looking over your accounts and that statement we sent you is all wrong.  That $50,000 you owe us should only read $25,000.  That’s it!  That’s all you owe!  Look for me at the pub and buy me a drink.  Winks and nods this time because everybody knows what is going on.

So it goes as one-by-one people come in and find their debts being magically reduced.  Before long the whole town owes the conniving manager a favor.  He is fast becoming the stuff of legend.

The unseemly steward is handling his misfortune by spreading good fortune all around and thus making certain that, at the end of the day, if he hasn’t made a few real friends at least, he’ll have more than a few people who will owe him big time. 

From little on we have been told that parables are earthly stories that have a heavenly meaning, but this one seems to have a lot of ungodliness thrown in. 

To make matters worse, we expect that when the rich man finds out what his manager was doing the police would be called, a grand jury would be impaneled, and the manager would be indicted.  There would be handcuffs for the man and maybe even a perp-walk but, much to our amazement, this isn’t what happens at all.  Proving once again that Jesus has the ability to cause us to say, “Surely, you jest.”

When the manager is finally called on the carpet he discovers that his boss has rolled out a red one.

Dr. William H. Willimon envisions the conversation between the man and his boss going something like this:

“You, you business genius you!  I wish all these priggish sons-of-light in this company showed as much individual initiative, worldly wisdom and commercial creativity!  You are one shrewd operator.  I’m moving you up to the front office.”7

I wonder how surprised he was when his boss commends him for his actions. It turns out that they are cut from the same cloth and “game recognizes game.” This sort of cheating the system ... is an acceptable way of doing business to a whole group of folks; Jesus refers to them as “children of this age.”8

“Maybe the parable ... is simply a grim but truthful portrait of the world as it is ... the real world in which we are called to be “children of light.”9

Dr. Thomas G. Long said “what Jesus wanted them—and us—to get out of this story [is that he wished] the people of God . . .  were as shrewd for the gospel as the wheeler-dealers out there in the world are shrewd for themselves.  In other words, there are people out there in the culture who get up every morning scheming for a buck, focusing every ounce of energy on feathering their nests, working in overdrive to save themselves and to scramble to the top of the heap.  ‘I wish God's people,’ Jesus says, ‘would be just as focused and energetic.''10

Richard Lischer called “The steward ... neither a child of the night or of the day, but of the twilight.”11

That’s where we live out our lives.   In the twilight sometimes doing what is good, and just, and right, and sometimes not so much.  

That is where we live and that is where Christ calls to be children of the light.  

Beyond the right-doing and wrong-doing in the parable there is Jesus the master storyteller who leaves us scratching our heads and wondering what we should do now, or next.

“Keep working on that, keep trying to live in the twilight and still be children of the light. Keep trying that, keep at that, Jesus seems to be saying with a laugh, and see where it takes you.”

To which we might say, “Surely you jest.” And Jesus would certainly reply. “Surely, I do not jest.  And don’t call me Shirley.”

________________

1. “Mel Brooks Talks about Getting His Comedic Revenge on Hitler,” HuffPost, March 9, 2012, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mel-brooks-inside-comedy-video_n_1334312.

2. Mel Brooks, All about Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business (S.l.: Penguin, 2022).

3. Scott Black Johnston, “Hidden.” Sermon preached at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church of New York. September 7, 2025.

4. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say September 21? 15th after Pentecost,” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, September 1, 2025, https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com

5. St. Luke 16:3c.  (NRSV) [NRSV= The New Revised Standard Version]

6. St. Like 16:3-4 (PHILLIPS) [J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English.  (London: HarperCollins, 2000.)]

7. William H.Willimon, “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.” Pulpit Resource. vol. 41, no. 3 (2013): 49–52.

8. Chelsey Harmon, “Luke 16:1-13,” Center for Excellence in Preaching, September 15, 2025, https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2025-09-15/luke-161-13-4/.

9. Debie Thomas, “Notes to the Children of Light,” Journey with Jesus, September 15, 2019, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/2365-notes-to-the-children-of-light.

10. Thomas G. Long, “Making Friends,” Journal of Preachers (University of Rochester, May 27, 2007), http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~tim/study/MakingFriends, 53.

11. Richard Lischer, Reading the Parables (Louisville, , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014). 103

Pentecost 14C - "Give It Your All"

Saint Luke 14:25-33

I must confess to you that I do not read any of our neighbouring churches websites or newsletters.  I don’t know why but I don’t. However, I do peek in on what other churches in far away places like Boston, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Charlotte and a couple in New York City are doing and it seems like all of them are planning big celebrations this weekend.

They come in all different names like “Get Connected Sunday”. One church was preparing for what they called “Homecoming Sunday” with pictures on their Facebook page of one of the pastors stocking the pews with those little pencils – popular in churches and golf courses – and another of their pastors eating a corn dog.

Those with exceeding long memories will remember that this day was known as Rally Day in which everybody received a ribbon with the year printed on it.  The ribbons were designed to be pinned to one's clothing, and the colors of the ribbons would change through the years. I remember some members, who at the time I thought to be quite old, but who are probably younger than I am now, had long flowing strands of ribbons that showed how long it had been since they have been attending this annual event.

At your Academy we try to match the Chicago Public School schedules and so we had all of our fun with backpack blessings, a tour for members of the church, student families and friends, an amazing lunch, followed parents and children romping in the playground serenaded by the music of Los Perros Cubannos in the middle of August.   Even so, for some of us who always returned to school on the day after Labor Day, it all seemed a little early for summer to call it a day.

So, we might envy those churches who are having today what we had a couple of weeks ago even as we wonder Jesus words from today’s gospel might put a real damper on things.  One of my favourite preachers has titled his sermon for this Sunday: “Envisioning My Year.” And another has promised in a promotional post that if you came to church you would find “fantastic music, revels, and clergy in unusual hats.”  Envisioning a year filled with revels and unusual hats? It’s just a guess but I doubt any of this will be based on Jesus words: “therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”1

You have to hand it to Jesus: he believes in truth-in-advertising. He doesn’t sugarcoat his message in order to sell it.  He doesn’t cut corners, and he doesn’t soften the blow.2  Jesus is not like one of those slick, smiling, television preachers who tell us that if you just follow Jesus we’ll get everything we want.  

In fact, he says that if we follow Jesus, it may cost us and cost us dearly.  We just may wind up like Mr. Rich Uncle Milbourn Pennybags from the Monopoly game.  He is dressed well, in perhaps a Georgio Armani morning formal complete with spats on his shoes, but his pockets are empty.  He’s broke.  Maybe that’s how we come to Jesus? 

We come empty-handed which is pretty uncomfortable for us self-sufficient people.  

We even had diluted the idea of carrying our crosses as something we can do.  “Bearing a cross has nothing to do with chronic illness, painful physical conditions, or trying family relationships. Cross bearing requires deliberate sacrifice and exposure to risk and ridicule in order to follow Jesus.”3

In our age we don’t even risk that.  Announce to someone that you are a member of a mainline Christian denomination and, if there is any reaction at all, it will be a shrug.  Perhaps you’ll be asked what church you go to.  Perhaps they’ll announced something like, “Oh yes, I was baptized a Lutheran.  Or was it a Presbyterian?” but after this exchange the conversation will most assuredly move on to something else.

To be a follower of Jesus in the early centuries of the church, as we know, meant being cut off from family, friends, society, and maybe even losing one’s life. In some fundamentalist Moslem countries to embrace Christ is to bring a death sentence upon oneself. And if you are a Mormon, even though you are a member of “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints”, or like David Auchuleta embrace who you are and your sexual identity, and you will be “dis-fellowshipped,” a polite way of saying, dead to your family and friends.

Jesus wanted his followers to count the cost and choose wisely so many took another look at Jesus, really heard what he had to say and bolted for the door. Some translations point out the obvious, that at this point the crowds become significantly smaller. I’ll bet!

Jesus is asking us to worship something other than our possessions, our accomplishments, maybe even worship something other than our family and friends.

Several years ago, I was presiding over a funeral that – even though there have been hundreds between then and now has stuck with me to this day. It was all because of a sign on one of the “memory boards” that the family had put together. The pictures, the crowds, the family all lead me to believe that the man was a good guy albeit a guy who had lots of stuff. There were pictures of him on his speed boat, an on his jet-skies, and at his “cabin” (which was nicer than my house), on snow skies, and water skies. The man had even souped up his lawn mower to make it go faster. At the center of all the pictures was a sign – the most inappropriate sign I have seen in my 50+ years in and around funeral homes. It said: “He who dies with the most toys, wins.”

I’m not making that up. I looked at the sign and then I looked at the 67-year-old dead guy in the casket. I looked at the sign and then I looked back at him and then back at the sign and back at him and the only thing I could think of was: “No, he who dies with the most toys is just dead.” 

While this man may have had more stuff than you or I could ever hope to have, in the end he was dead. Stone cold, definitely dead. 

He may have tried to build his own personal towers of wealth and possessions, but he failed to count the cost.

The painfully sharp point in Jesus’ words is that the sign just doesn’t work. Toys won’t do it for us. In fact, to have chosen them over everything else is not to have chosen life, but death. You have chosen life – a full, rich, life maybe – but still a life that is less than was intended.

This is the bottom-line truth that Jesus is insisting upon.

Choose to place your career in the hands of Jesus and it may not come back exactly as you wanted but it will come back raised to a higher purpose.

Choose to place your family, your friends, your dear ones, in the hands of God, and those relationships will come back tempered with a deeper love.

Choose to place your hobbies, your joys, your frustrations, your satisfactions, your sorrows, your joys, your money, your church, in the hands of Jesus and they will all come back to you with a higher and deeper meaning because you have chosen to place them where they belong.

If we are to follow Jesus, we have to do it with everything we have. It’s an all or nothing deal. It a core affirmation of the faith that when you place everything – your riches and your worries, your health and well-being, your family and friends, in the hands of Jesus in the end it won’t matter how many toys we have but it will matter that we have given it our all.

________________

1. St. Luke 14:33. (NRSVUE) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

2. Debie Thomas, “What It Will Cost You,” Journey with Jesus, September 1, 2019, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/2346-what-it-will-cost-you.

3. Brian Stoffregen, “Luke 14.25-33 Proper 18 - Year C,” Exegetical Notes, accessed September 6, 2025, https://www.crossmarks.com/brian/luke14x25.htm.

 

Pentecost 12C - "Must Be in the Front Row"

 

Proverbs 25:6–7a

Saint Luke 14:1 & 7–14

Last Sunday’s Chicago Tribune featured an article about Leo Burnett who, in the midst of the great depression, started an ad agency. People scoffed, wondering about “the waste and extravagance of advertising,” in the midst of the biggest economic downturn of the 20th century.

Burnett ignored the skeptics and over the years gave us some of the most memorable commercials in the history of television. Tony the Tiger’s proclamation that Frosted Flakes were “Great!” came from them.  The creative minds at Burnett made the Minnesota Valley Canning Company into a household name by posing their mascot “smiling broadly and holding a corncob like a barbell” like a very happy green fellow and eventually re-branding the entire corporation, The Green Giant Company.

For me the best of the best was the Miller Lite, “more taste lest filling” campaign whose drummed up controversy lives on until this very day.   And of those commercials one stands out as a classic.  It is Mr. Baseball, Bob Uecker's “I must be in the front row commercial” for Miller Lite! 

The premise is simple and begins with Uecker claiming that one of the best things about being an ex-big leaguer is getting freebies to the game.  “All I did,” he says pulling a ticket out of his pocket, “was call the front office and bingo.”  

Almost as soon as he sits down an usher approaches and informs him, “You’re in the wrong seat buddy.” to which Uecker says, “I must be in the front row.”

In the next scene we see him in the upper, upper deck of Dodger stadium about as far away from the action as one can be and still be in the ballpark. 

In real life Bob Eucker was an unassuming, humble guy who made constant fun of his lack of ability as a player, once saying, “Sporting goods companies pay me not to endorse their products.”

Eucker and the Milwaukee Brewers went along with the gag to the extent that there are two statues erected in the honor of their long-time broadcaster. One statue is in a prominent place outside of the ballpark and the other is way up there “behind the last row of section 422 in the upper deck.”

In getting a place of prominence and a place of humility, it seems to me, the Brewers said that while he may have always wanted to sit in the front row Eucker was still perfectly happy sitting in the back.

Jesus attended a dinner party once where it looked like a lot of the people there thought they 

deserved to be in the front row.

We might be feeling pretty good about ourselves remembering that Jesus “lived in an honor/shame society where everything someone did was to accrue honor for you and your family’s name and avoid shame.  At whose house you were eating and in which particular spot you were sitting mattered a [great] deal. Honor only meant something if it was publicly recognized; that is, if other people saw you do something honorable or witnessed honor conferred upon you. Likewise, shame was so damaging precisely because everyone else agreed that you were of less value.”1

There can’t be anybody here who thinks this practice has died out.  Just try organizing a wedding banquet and discovering that the only places left for the people the bride calls Aunt Bertha and Uncle Hermann, but who are really third cousins twice removed, are at the very back of the banquet hall near the swinging doors to the kitchen at the back of the hall. Do this and one must gird themselves and be ready for the dear couples wrath at being embarrassed like this “after all we’ve done for you.”

Jesus sees and notices, but Dr. Fred Craddock warns:

The human ego is quite clever and, upon hearing that taking a low seat may not only avoid embarrassment but lead to elevation to the head table, may convert the instruction about humility in a new strategy for self-exaltation. Taking the low seat because one is humble is one thing; taking the low seat as a way to move up is another. The entire message becomes a cartoon if there is a mad competitive rush for the lowest place, with ears cocked toward the host, waiting for the call to ascend.2 

Jesus does not offer a divinely approved way for a person to get what he or she wants.

Jesus is not offering a lesson on humility, or how to finagle you way into the front row, he is telling us how things are and should be for people who claim to be members of the Kingdom of God. Jesus is telling us that the secret for those of us who want to proclaim the reign and rule of God is to let everybody in and don’t worry about where they or we sit.

Go out into the streets, Jesus says, and "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you...”3

Make those people who are worried about who they are sitting with and where they are sitting, Jesus seems to be saying, if I hear him correctly, dine with everybody and anybody who wants a little lunch.  Maybe they won’t come. Maybe they will choose to stay home and pout or complain about the quality of the feast, or that they have to eat with the riff-raff from the wrong side of the tracks.  That’s their problem not yours, Jesus says, because they will be missing something.

Unfortunately, the today’s Gospel reading ends one verse too soon.  It leaves out the punchline!  For Saint Luke goes on to tell us that Jesus’ little admonitions triggered a response from one of the guests: ‘How fortunate is the one who gets to eat dinner in God’s kingdom!’”4

That’s us! We’re the fortunate ones who have been invited to the feast!  We’re the ones who Jesus has called to gather around his table!  We are not onlookers anymore because we all have been invited to dine with Jesus in his good rule and reign.

We’re not the ushers who are checking tickets to see if one person is not in their proper place, but neither are we the disinterested bystanders in the little dust up between Jesus and his hosts.  

We’ve been invited to the feast!  We are the fortunate ones!  We are the ones who are the recipients of God’s great grace. What we do with our good fortune is up to us.

I  know I have told you this story before and I also know that I have told you that when a preacher starts to repeat himself or herself too often they have been around too long but this is too good to resist because I think I might have seen this gospel being played out in some small way while worshipping one Sunday at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

The cathedral is, as one might expect from the Episcopalians, a first-class operation.  It has a history of great preaching, magnificent music, and liturgical pageantry that even on an ordinary summer’s Sunday would put most church’s worship on festivals to shame.  In other words: They process in everybody and anything that is not nailed down.

They also have a strong commitment to social justice and social outreach that feeds the poor, lobbies for the oppressed, and seeks to serve the least, the lost, and the lonely.

All the pageantry paled to something that happened at coffee hour following church when I caught a small glimpse of their care for everybody in person.

On the Sunday I was there about a dozen or so of the unhoused had congregated on the cathedral’s plaza before worship.  One man in particular looked especially disheveled.

 

After worship there was a coffee hour on the plaza for the people who had attended.  The usual was offered: coffee, tea, coffee cake, cookies, and juice for the children.

When things were winding down the bedraggled man slowly approached one of the tables as if he were working his way to the head table at a royal banquet or trying to sneak into the front row of the ballpark.

He started to reach for a piece of the well picked-over coffee cake when the well-dressed, well-coiffed woman serving said to him.  “Oh!  No!  No!  No!”  

I gasped and the man pulled back but then the woman continued.  “No! No! No!” she said again.  “Those have been out far too long.  They’re a little stale.  You don’t want those.  Let me get you some that are fresh.”

She reached behind her and grabbed another full tray of treats.  She unwrapped the cellophane and placed the tray right in front of the surprised man.

“Take as many as you like.”  She said.  “We always have plenty.  Enough for everybody!”  

He filled his hands and even put some in his pockets for later.  The woman smiled, so did I, and I must admit I felt a tear run down my cheek.

When the well-healed serve the downtrodden.  When the outcasts and the insiders feast together.  When it doesn’t matter who you know.  When a homeless man is treated as well, and maybe even better, than the wealthiest person in the congregation. When all are welcomed, it is then, Jesus says, everyone in the great and promised kingdom “must be in the front row.”

________________

1. Philip Martin, “The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost,” A Sermon for Every Sunday (asermonforeverysunday.com, August 23, 2022)

2.     Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 177.

3. St. Luke 14:12-14. (NRSV)  [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

4. St. Luke 14:15. (MSG) [MSG=Eugene H. Peterson, in

\The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1995