7th Sunday After Pentecost 2026

Well welcome friends.

Sometimes the best recruitment for the choir is for the priests to leave the hymns.

So that's what we'll be doing this week and the prelude is the prelude.

So if you don't know it, you don't know it.

If you do, you're welcome, of course, always to join along, and then we'll have the procession when it's time.

Do not pass me by.

Apologize if I'm a little faster than the notation.

But I got the mic on so you can get lost with me.

I don't know.

Heal the sick and preach the word.

Let the church neglect its mission and the gospel go under.

Help us with this show renewed integrity.

We hit us to your service that you promised my rich yeah, so you need to come and this my brother.

Yet we hold as pride treasure that you so freely kill.

And the kiss that lay my soul in mind eternity.

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's kingdom now and forever.

Men.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Our song of praise is hymn 400, verses 147.

Just to warn you, I'm gender inclusive, so I'm not going to use the words you see, you sing what your heart leads you to, but I'm going to be gender inclusive in the hymns as well.

Lift up your voices, let us sing Hallelujah, Aleluia.

Right, sun with golden kids.

Oh, praise them.

Oh, praise them.

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.

As you're being seated, our children, grades five and below, are invited to join Godly play in the back, I think.

A reading from Samuel.

Now the sons of Eli were worthless.

They had no knowledge of the holy God.

The practice of the priests towards the people was when any woman or man sacrificed an offering, the priest's boy came while the meat was boiling with a three-pronged fork in his hand.

Then he violently shoved it into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot, and all that the fork brought up the priest who took for himself.

This is what they did to all the women and men of Israel who came there to Shiloh.

Even more before the fat was burned to smoke.

For we will not accept boiled meat from you, but only fresh.

And if the woman or man said to him, let them burn the fat to smoke first, and then take for yourself what you wish, he would say, No.

Now you will get it.

And if not, I will take it by force.

That is the sin of Eli's voice.

It was very great.

In the sight of the one of old.

Now Eli was very old.

He heard all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay the women who were stationed at the entrance to the tent of the meeting.

He said to them, Why do you do these things?

I am hearing evil things from all of these people.

No, my sons, it is not a good report that I'm hearing.

The people of the Holy One of Sinai passing around.

If a woman or a man sins against another person, God can be entreated.

But if against the Holy One someone sins, who can entreat for them?

Yet they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the dread God to kill them.

The word of the Lord.

Those who trust in their wealth.

Certainly it cannot redeem a person.

For the redemption price of a soul is costly.

Shall one shall one should live eternally?

For when one sees the wise, they die.

Their dwelling places from generation to generation.

Humanity will not recline in grandeur.

This is the way of the foolish.

Like sheep, they are set for sheal.

Death shall be their shepherd.

The upright shall rule over them until the morning, and their form shall waste away.

But God will ransom my soul.

For nothing did we bring into the world so that there is nothing we can take out of it.

But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.

Now those who want to be rich fall into temptation and a trap, and many foolish and harmful passions plunge women and men into ruin and destruction.

For the root of all evil is the love of money, and some desiring it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

But as for you, child of God, shun all this, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness, fight the good fight of the faith, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and to which you professed the good profession in the presence of many witnesses.

I charge you in the presence of God, who enlivens all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good profession to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the appearing of our Redeemer Jesus Christ, who God will reveal in God's own time, God who is the blessed and only sovereign, the power beyond all powers and majesty of majesties.

It is God alone who has immortality and dwells in light unapproachable, whom no human has seen or can see.

To God be honor and everlasting might.

Amen.

The word of the Lord, summoned by the God who lead us rich in our diversity, gathered in the name of Jesus, rich and still an unity, spring of spend everywhere, church into me one in the radio sun from the satellite, and costing the spend everywhere and the goodness of creation, trust the spirit strong, the vision from the seed of what it's been everywhere to the church into being one in faith and love and race.

Bring the hooks of every nation, bring me up of every race, we the song of peace and justice.

Let it sound through time and space, a free of spend everywhere, church intogether at one table of human family, shape a circle ever wide, and the people ever free let us bring up his death and instead every waving a new church into being one in faith and love and praise.

Someone came to Jesus and said, Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?

And Jesus said to him, Why do you ask me about goodness?

There is only one who is good.

If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.

And Jesus said, You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother also.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The young man said to Jesus, I have all these.

What do I yet lack?

Jesus said to him, If you wish to be perfect, all your possessions.

Then give to the poor, and you will have treasure in the heavens.

Then follow me.

When the young man heard this word, he went away greedy.

Then Jesus said to the disciples, Truly, I tell you all, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the realm of the heavens.

Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the realm of God.

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, Then who can be saved?

Jesus looked at them and said, For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.

And Peter said to Jesus, Look, we've abandoned everything and followed you.

What then will we have?

Jesus said to them, Truly, I tell you all, when everything is made new, and the Son of Woman is seated on the throne of his glory, you all who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

And everyone who has abandoned houses or sisters or brothers or mother or father or children or fields for my name's sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.

And many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

I'm so grateful again to have had an opportunity to spend some time thinking about scripture and history and Jesus and church and community and to be able to share what I learned with you.

I'm pretty sure I'm in the right place to talk about these things.

So thank you.

I've been noticing that there are these forces, and maybe we could call them lenses.

And whether they're from thousands of years ago or from this morning, they're shaping what I see and what I don't.

One of those forces or lenses is the lectionary itself.

So come with me on a quick little lectionary side quest.

Lectionaries are pretty cool, I'm sure many of you know, but they for each Sunday and holy day in the year, they map out which scriptures we read.

And the thing is that lectionaries change.

They get amended and replaced.

And if you attended an Episcopal church that used the 1928 prayer book, the readings were on a one-year cycle, which means you'd have heard the same passages on the same Sundays, year after year after year.

The 1979 prayer book changed that to a three-year cycle.

And then the revised common lectionary came after that.

What we look at matters, and with each change the lens shifts.

So now here, this is our third year at St.

Thomas using a new lectionary created by a womanist, feminist, Hebrew Bible scholar, and episcopal priest.

Year A, which we are in now, was published just five years ago.

Through this new lens, we have many invitations to look at scripture differently.

And this echoes an invitation Jesus gave folks over and over again to see things differently.

In the standard lectionary, this story in Matthew wouldn't be read at all.

We'd only read the version from Mark in year B.

So this week's readings are a novel grouping made with a purpose.

And we know that the church and people and each of us can have a tendency to look at scripture as if through a peephole, where we don't take in as complete of a picture as if we opened the door and looked around the corners and down at the ground and up at the sky.

Father Mike has been talking about traditionalism, the kind of adherence to what's always been done that's restrictive and corrosive and dead.

This traditionalism trap is something humans have been falling into with scripture for thousands of years.

It's something Jesus noticed about religious people in his life and work.

And we see examples all through the Gospels that we read week after week and year after year, where Jesus says essentially, no, no, no, you guys, you're looking through a peephole.

Open the door and come look around.

The story is so much bigger.

In today's readings, we see Jesus doing exactly this, and he's really good at it.

Taking a traditionalist idea and expanding it into something new and so much more life-giving.

It's an invitation.

It's not just this, it's this and this and this.

In our reading in Samuel, we see the sons of Eli, the priests of the temple.

Their villainy is brazen.

They're like little devils with their three-pronged forks, grabbing as much as they can of sacrifices that don't belong to them.

And they're not just stealing the sacrifice itself, but they're stealing the faithful and dedicated women working at the tabernacle, just because they want to and they can.

It's truly terrible.

In Timothy today, we read it that the love of money is the root of all evil.

And we've heard this before.

We're supposed to love God and each other, not money or things.

But I think it's important to know that this passage isn't about, isn't just about worshiping worldly possessions.

Up to this point in the letter, the real focus has not been on false idols, but on false teachers.

The supposedly faithful people who are selling their wisdom, stirring the pot, and creating controversy.

Verse 5, right before today's reading, describes them as people who think godliness is a means to financial gain.

They aren't merely letting money distract them from what's holy and good, the way I might spend more time watching TV than reading the Bible.

Instead, they see the church and its people as a lucrative business venture, a means to an end.

They're driven by avarice.

And just like the priests in Samuel, they take advantage of faithful people.

So then we come to the rich man in Matthew, and it's a little different.

He's not stealing or lying or murdering or dishonoring his parents.

He's keeping the commandments and asking how he can be good.

I get the feeling that he's genuinely concerned and earnestly wanting to know how to get it right, or at least be reassured that he's done everything he needs to do to have eternal life.

And so he keeps pressing Jesus.

Yes, yes, I'm doing all the things, but what am I missing?

I just know I'm missing something.

And isn't it funny how sometimes we find ourselves having plenty, but worried, very worried that we're missing something important.

Like maybe just did we remember to turn off the coffee pot?

But maybe am I expressing love and appreciation to the people around me as much as they deserve?

Am I spending a lot of energy chasing after the wrong things?

Do I have some terrible personality flaw I don't know about that everyone else knows about, and I'm not working on it?

I'm sorry to say I find myself in this space all the time.

And so Jesus tells him if he really wants to stop looking through this anxiety-inducing peephole and instead get the whole life-giving picture.

He needs to sell his possessions, give to the poor, and come be part of this community following Jesus.

Not sell all his possessions and go live in poverty in a ditch somewhere alone, but give everything away and come be in a community where you're vulnerable and available and obligated to your neighbor, whom you shall love as yourself, without expectation of being repaid or enhancing your own status.

It would mean being economically entangled and dependent on the community, not insulated from it.

Being part of a village and also being a villager with needs and hopes and the possibility of belonging and purpose, but also potential hurt and disappointment.

So our lectionary groups these stories together, and they all contain a thread of status and power.

The priest in Samuel use their status to take what belongs to God.

The false teachers in Timothy use their status to extract from God's people like ancient televangelists.

And in Matthew, the rich young man really wants to use his status to be holy and safe?

When I think about status and power in light of these stories, the question that seems really relevant to us today is this is having wealth in a world of poverty inherently extractive, like it definitely is in Timothy and Samuel?

Or is it just a matter of uneven distribution?

In the ancient world, people generally assumed that wealth was zero sum.

If you had more, it meant someone else had less.

Scholars call this limited good.

The pie was only so big, and that's it.

We've largely been taught the opposite.

Instead of limited good, modern economists talk about resources like a growing pie.

So, yes, someone over here is a billionaire or trillionaire, but even so, the pie is growing every year, and there's plenty to go around if we could just get it to the right places.

And I tended to think of poverty and inequality as a distribution issue, like I'm not taking from someone else.

One day governments, nonprofits, and churches will crack the nut of corruption and exploitation, and then everyone will have what they need.

So I don't really need to change.

There's plenty of pie for everyone.

But in these stories, that's not the case.

The people have less because they're being stolen from or exploited.

The Greek word used to describe the poor people in the rich man story in Matthew is the strongest word for poor there is.

It means completely dependent on others for sustenance with nothing to fall back on.

In the book of Luke, the widow at the temple with her two coins has more than these folks.

But the rich man doesn't do what Jesus asks.

He doesn't sell his possessions and give to the poor.

Instead, he goes home grieving.

And I wonder about this.

Why does he go home grieving?

Does Jesus' advice just sound ridiculous and unrealistic?

Is that enough to make him grieve?

Does he maybe disagree that he has an obligation to be poor?

And he's disappointed that this great teacher didn't give him the answer he wanted.

I don't know.

But what I think is grief-worthy, tragic really, about this story and about our world, is that the connection between the rich man's action and his community is visible.

The pie really does seem finite here, not ever expanding.

And it's sad to think that my abundance, the stuff I collect to make me feel safe and successful and good, comes at a cost to someone else.

Wealth trains us to feel independent and insulated, even entitled.

But it isolates us too.

And the other side of that coin, poverty, is also isolating.

But for the rich man to let go of his possessions would be to let go of comfort and perceived protection from loss.

And that's not fun.

It's terrifying and anxiety-inducing.

And that is all of God wants for us, right?

Terror and anxiety.

Additionally, it would require the rich man to admit that he needed someone else's care too.

And there's risk in that.

What if the someone else has let me down or reject me?

And I think it's true that even though all the rich man's wealth and all my wealth isn't a cure for vulnerability and anxiety, it's still harder to give it up than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

The peephole view I choose much of the time genuinely makes me sad, like the rich man.

It's all big and heavy.

I know my comfort is at least partly tied to the discomfort of people I will never meet.

And it feels impossible to do anything about it.

And I don't say this to be mopey or make us feel guilty or ashamed.

We do a lot of really good things at St.

Thomas and should keep doing them.

You're a bunch of big-hearted, generous people, a bajillion percent.

And our guilt and shame don't help anyone.

So if the rich man's grief is the peephole and Jesus is opening a doorway to him and to us, and if the Trinity is relationship and community, and that's what we're invited to participate in, well, if if I can accept that, maybe I can grapple with another question.

Am I willing to live in a way where my lifestyle is actually disrupted by the needs of others?

Those with status and power have tended to choose the people view.

We see it in our readings today.

But we see this exact same people thinking in our modern history too.

On April 12th, 1963, a group of white clergy, including the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, published a call for unity in the Birmingham News.

In a nutshell, this call for unity said that the nonviolent demonstrators working to raise awareness around issues of segregation, economic oppression, and targeted violence should stop protesting, take their complaints to the courts, and be patient.

The tone is pretty much these things take time, calm down.

Even though the letter concedes that the activists were peaceful and nonviolent, were talking boycotts, sit-ins, and marches, the call for unity accused them of inciting hatred and violence.

It also included a thinly veiled accusation that Martin Luther King Jr.

was stirring the pot for the wrong reasons, essentially being the kind of self-interested outsider and troublemaker that 1 Timothy warns us about.

Except, of course, he wasn't.

The letter is not great, it's really not great.

And it's peephole thinking.

Dr.

King's response, a letter from a Birmingham jail, is worth reading in its entirety regularly.

King refers to Paul and Thomas Aquinas and Martin Buber and Shadrach, Nishek, and Abednego.

It almost sounds like a letter Paul would have written from prison if he were a black creature in Alabama in the 1960s, and I imagine that's no accident.

In his response, King knows something the rich man didn't.

He says, Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states.

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.

And it's a two and a half hour drive from Atlanta to Birmingham, which is how long it takes to get from the woodlands to Galveston on a really heavy traffic day.

So the idea that this is somehow a great distance really is pretty ridiculous.

Then comes the part of this letter that people love to quote when they're feeling fired up in social justice.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

And just knowing that someone was able to put this into words makes me hopeful.

And I don't think that's a bad thing, but I want to read you what comes next.

He writes, we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

Never again can we afford to live with the narrow provincial outside agitator idea.

King knew that his participation, where he spoke up, where he stayed silent, would have consequences.

He chose to get involved not to stir up trouble or profit off the people and not to steal from vulnerable folks.

He seems to have taken seriously Jesus' call to love your neighbor as yourself, even when that meant hardship and pain and messiness.

Things for the activists in Birmingham got worse before they got better, but their work led the city government to change their laws and started the process of creating the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

This is open doorway thinking.

King used the word mutuality.

And I think this is what Jesus is getting at when he explains perfection to the rich man and salvation to his disciples.

Neither happens alone.

The rich man chooses to be alone.

When Jesus tells the disciples how hard it is for a rich man to enter the realm of God, they're confused.

Traditionalism says the wealthy man is good, he's obeying the commandments, he's comfortable, and hashtag blessed.

If he's not on the express train to being saved, what chance does anyone else have?

And Jesus answers, for mortals it's impossible, but for God, all things are possible.

The impossible part makes sense to me.

I want air conditioning and my extra special comfy pillow and cold fizzy water and no bugs.

Maybe if I cared about something enough, I'd be willing to sacrifice these comforts, like Dr.

King and others did.

But would I actually let myself care about something that much?

I don't know.

That said, if Jesus came to St.

Thomas and told us to sell what we have and follow him, I actually think many of us might go.

The invitation and the task is clear and purposeful.

It even sounds a bit romantic to leave the world behind and follow someone inspiring and work for something important.

That might be something I could care enough about to sacrifice my comfort.

I hope it would be.

I can at least imagine it being enough.

But Jesus isn't here in the flesh concretely asking.

And then in some ways, the second half, for God, all things are possible, is actually super unsatisfying to me.

After all, how do we make sense of all the injustice in the world if God could fix it and doesn't?

And doesn't it kind of let me off the hook?

Like I can't let go of the stuff that gives me the illusion of security and choose solidarity over comfort, but I guess God can, so that's cool.

Where's the coffee?

In this country, we tend to believe that anyone can make it.

And if you aren't making it, if you aren't successful, you aren't trying.

And if that's true, I don't have to sacrifice my comfort for you.

Because your comfort is your responsibility to get for yourself.

Which is not only a really narrow, distorted peephole, it's also just not the gospel at all.

I think a bigger view, a doorway view, is that you don't get there yourself.

God does.

Can I tell you exactly how that works or why there's suffering in the world?

Not really.

Maybe academically, left-brainedly, I could research what theologians had to say.

But for my soul, not so much.

But if we are all connected and independence is a myth, I know that while God is doing the impossible, turning babies into mangers into messiahs, that the least I can do is let go of the lies, that my stuff will keep me safe, that I can earn my place in heaven, and that my actions are independent.

We belong to each other.

So maybe instead, you let God do the impossible stuff, and you love your neighbor, and you let your neighbor love you in a way that costs you something.

Amen.