Have you ever wondered why a story begins, the way it begins?

“Call me Ishmael…” Moby Dick, by Herman Melville.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.

‘“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.’ Little Women, by Lousia May Alcott.

Every writer begins their story with something essential. A name. An opinion. A situation. Immediate insight into a main character. Whatever it is, it is something the writer wants you to know.

The gospels are no different. They give the hearer or reader essential pieces of information, so that we will fully understand the story being told. Our passage from Luke’s gospel—such a familiar passage, so beloved—begins, oddly enough, with the names of some politicians. Luke locates the story in time and place for us, telling us that Caesar Augustus is the emperor of the mighty Roman Empire, and that one of his lieutenants, the one who is requiring this trip of Mary and Joseph, is Quirinius, the governor of Syria.

Why does the writer tell us this? Why should we care? …

Image: Nativity on Ivory, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=31702 [retrieved November 7, 2025]. Original source: Prof. Patout J. Burns.

I think of Joseph, a somewhat shadowy figure. No gospel records his words, but three of the four gospels tell us that he was a teknon, a word that has been misunderstood as meaning carpenter, but which probably indicated that he was a stone mason. The gospels of Matthew and Luke tell us that he embraced Mary and her son as his own. Matthew further tells us that, when Joseph was told that Jesus’ life was threatened, he took his wife and child and they became refugees in Egypt. He accepted Jesus as his son; he raised Jesus as his own, and he protected Jesus when he was threatened.

But that’s all we know. Who was Joseph? And how did he feel about… all this?

Image: Gandolfi, Gaetano, 1734-1802. Joseph's Dream, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54282 [retrieved November 7, 2025]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:'Joseph's_Dream',_painting_by_Gaetano_Gandolfi,_c._1790.jpg.

Why do people create genealogies? Why do we sign up for 23 and Me or Ancestry.com? I think the answer is this: We want to know about our families, so that we can understand ourselves. Joyce, a cousin on my dad’s side, was fascinated with genealogies long before internet searches and mail-in DNA tests via spitting in a tube were ways of exploring our ancestry. She went to libraries, and post offices, and wrote letters to the City Halls of small towns in places like Poland and Latvia. She sent in requests for birth certificates and copies of ships’ manifests from the early 1900’s. She learned that my paternal grandfather was Jewish, something none of his children knew until Joyce discovered it in the 1980’s, long after his death.

Unlike the Old Testament genealogies, which are lists of ancestors and descendants, meant to tell the stories of entire family trees, the New Testament genealogies in Matthew and Luke are all about Jesus. They all lead up to him. We are being shown his lineage—the fact that he is a descendant of Abraham, which makes him a son of God’s covenant; and he is a descendant of David, which, for us Christians, is an indication that he is the Messiah, the one whom the prophets assure us will come to judge and to heal.

We have just read a very unusual version of the genealogy in the gospel according to Matthew chapter 1. In any Bible, Matthew’s list will show you the traditional form of this same genealogy: Father to son. “Abraham was the father of Isaac; Isaac was the father of Jacob;” and so on. Scholar and Roman Catholic nun Ann Patrick Ware compiled the genealogy we have before us today based on information found in scripture. It is a genealogy telling of Jesus’ descent by way of the mothers…

Image: Swanson, John August. Story of Ruth, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56561 [retrieved November 7, 2025]. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson, https://www.johnaugustswanson.com/.

…The story begins with Zechariah, a priest, serving in the Temple. A messenger of the Living God approaches him. The messenger tells him, Fear not, calls Zechariah by name, and tells him, “Your prayers have been heard.”

We can make assumptions about those prayers, can’t we? My first assumption is based on the next sentence: Zechariah’s been praying for a child, probably a boy, who could go into the family business of priesting. But… that’s not the only thing Zechariah may have been praying for. Maybe Zechariah has been praying for the coming of the Messiah. And…we have no idea when Zechariah has been praying. Is this a current prayer? Did Zechariah dare to hope for a child, even in the couple’s advanced years? Maybe Zechariah is the kind of person who prays for miracles. I know some who do this, unapologetically. Ask for miracles—why not, as long as you’re already praying?…

Image: Zechariah Coming out of the Temple Speechless, Cathedral of Amiens, France. 1508-1519, painted medallion on choir-screen, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=29361 [retrieved November 4, 2025]. Original source: image donated by Jim Womack and Anne Richardson.

I have a question for you: Do you like to know the ending of a book or a movie before you’ve read or watched it? Or do you do everything possible to avoid knowing the ending? I’m the latter… I will avoid reviews, shush people who’ve already read or seen it, and in every way bury my head in the sand, metaphorically speaking, in order to NOT know the ending of something I haven’t yet read or watched.

Then, this week I heard this, by the marvelous preacher, Anna Carter Florence:

When I was in high school, I had an English teacher named Miss Hayes who was famous for giving away the endings of the books we read. In fact, she’d do it deliberately. On the first day of class, she’d stand up front with the list of novels and short stories we were going to read that semester and speed-talk through every plot, like a movie reviewer. And because she was so good at it, we were always drawn into the story—spellbound 16-year-olds, ready to go home and tackle Moby Dick or The Scarlet Letter—and then, with no spoiler alert…she’d tell us the ending. Every time. We’d groan, and she’d grin, and say, “The most important thing about a story isn’t what happens. It’s how it happens. I’m telling you the ending so you can read the story backwards.”[i]

And, in a way, that’s what both Jesus and the lectionary for the first Sunday in Advent are doing: They’re telling us the end of the story. And the end of the story is this: God’s love makes right everything that is wrong. God’s love banishes everything that is evil and amplifies everything that is good, and spreads it over the whole world, so that all creation lives in peace and joy and gratitude…

Image: Harpursville, after the storm. 2014. P. Raube

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the observance of Christ the King Sunday, introduced by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical, Quas Prima (“In the first…”). Today this feast is celebrated, not only by Roman Catholics, but by numerous protestant denominations, including the PCUSA. We celebrate Jesus Christ as a king unlike any other king in history. At the same time, we need to understand that this very same observance is being used in many quarters as part of a drive toward theocracy—rule of our governments by the Christian church. And that was the Pope’s intention in writing the encyclical—that a Roman Catholic theocracy should replace secular governments.

It's complicated.

It’s complicated to talk of kings at all right now. That complication begins in scripture, with God’s stern message to the people of Israel, who came to the prophet Samuel demanding a king, only to be told by God, “You’ll be sorry. But I’ll give you a king, if that’s what you want.”

It’s complicated because. After seeing a vision, the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the year 312 CE, installed Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the year 313. Before that, the world knew Jesus as the rabbi from Galilee who preached repentance and renewal and the kingdom of God, but never, himself, claimed a title of kingship. Jesus was the one who walked the length and breadth of Judea and beyond, teaching, healing, and feeding people, casting out demons and calling out the religious authorities of the day, and advocating for the poor, the outcast, and those called sinners. Jesus was the one who was crucified because he was believed to be a threat to Rome, and was raised again. And not once did he wear a crown, aside from the one fashioned from thorns which he wore on the cross.

It’s complicated, because we live in an era when, on the one hand, there are such things as “No King” rallies in protest of a government that was formed in rebellion against a king, and, that very monarchy against which we rebelled seems frayed and unstable at best.

Why do we call Jesus “king”? It’s complicated.

Image: Catacomb of Callixtus, 3rd Century, Rome, Italy - The Good Shepherd, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54382 [retrieved August 19, 2025]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/2594526135/.

…Throughout the ages, people have watched and wondered and waited for the end of the world. In the year 999, there was such great confidence that the end would come in the year 1000, people flocked to churches and monasteries to turn over their worldly goods in hopes of saving their souls when the end came.[i] (After the year 1000, there was a building boom, with churches being built and rebuilt throughout Europe.[ii])

It seems that just about every generation has believed it would see the end of the world. So why was Jesus talking about it almost 2000 years ago? And how do his words about it affect us?

Bokvoed, Temple Mount, Jerusalem, 2019. Creative Commons License, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

…I know that each of us can conjure moments when we stood in the midst of devastation—a broken life, a fractured marriage, a diagnosis; losing a job, losing a home, losing a parent; feeling failure, feeling rejection, feeling lost. Each of us can recall the bodily experience of grief, disbelief, and dread that come with those moments. But each of us can also understand—now, if we didn’t then—that God was with us. We felt God’s presence in a card we received, or a phone call, or an unexpected moment of peace. We were shown God’s presence through the love of friends, the caring of community, the counsel of someone we trusted. And even if we didn’t experience those things in that way, later we understand. God was with me, we think. God must have been, otherwise… we’re not sure we’d be here now.

And so is God with us, in this very moment, in this, our entirely loving, astonishingly generous, and ever-joyful community of faith. We are still and always a part of God’s beloved community, whatever has happened in the past and whatever God has in store for us in the future. We still worship a God who urges us to remember those words, “I am here!” any time we are feeling dismayed or disoriented or dispirited….

Image: Swanson, John August. Presentation in the Temple (1988, Los Angeles, CA), from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56557 [retrieved August 19, 2025]. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson, https://www.johnaugustswanson.com/.

I love a story of the saints of God. I especially love a story where we find an unexpected saint—someone we initially are pretty sure will turn out to be a villain….

…And that’s it! The heartwarming story come to an end. A tasty Middle Eastern dinner awaits, and the community has witnessed Zacchaeus’ transformation. Like the beggar in chapter 18, like the victim of robbers in the parable, Zacchaeus has been healed. The End. Or, is it?

What if that’s not actually what we just witnessed?

Image: Hochhalter, Cara B.. Zacchaeus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59050 [retrieved October 28, 2025]. Original source: Cara B. Hochhalter.

Merriam-Webster gives us two additional definitions of guilt:

3. feelings of deserving blame especially for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy
As in, “Even looking at the expensive dress made her feel guilty.”

4. a feeling of deserving blame for offenses
As in, “Wracked by guilt, he confessed his affairs.”[ii]

One of these can become problematic. In fact, one of these may well have kicked off the Protestant Reformation.

Augustinian Friar Martin Luther was a scholar and a priest. He was a theologian, pondering the nature of God and God’s relationship with human beings. He translated scripture into German, his native tongue. However, Luther suffered a terrible case of scruples. No matter what he did, no matter how often he prayed to God; no matter how many hours he spent in confessing his perceived sins to a priest, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he deserved blame and punishment. He feared hell, and despite his best efforts, had no confidence he would avoid it. Here are his own words, describing the spiritual scruples that plagued him:

They were so great and so much like hell that no tongue could adequately express them, no pen could describe them, and one who had not himself experienced them could not believe them.[iii]

Image: Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martin Luther, 1528, Public Domain courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

1. Prayer. Prayer is mentioned all through the Bible. In fact, with 254 individual uses of the word, prayer is mentioned, on average, 3 to 4 times in each book of the Bible, which is a lot. And that prayer doesn’t always look like sitting or kneeling in a sanctuary, eyes closed, hands folded, silent words on people’s lips. Sometimes it looks like a heartbroken psalm—“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1). Sometimes prayer looks like a horrifying petition for heartless killing: “Happy shall they be who take [the] little ones [of Babylon] and dash them against the rock!” (Psalm 137:9).

In fact, as one friend has written, “In scripture, humans argue with God ALL THE TIME, and convince [God] to change both [the divine] mind and [God’s] actions regularly. We ignore that ancient conversational possibility at our peril.”

Prayer is certainly about our petitions, our asking God for what we desperately need or want. But prayer is far more than that, far more complex and nuanced. One of the most moving prayers in scripture is David conceding to God that he has not always understood what God wants of him, but that he trusts in God’s promises to him (1 Samuel 7:18-29). And this prayer is followed by a list of David’s victories in battle—an account of an acquisition of land and treasure that resulted in what might be considered the golden era of David’s reign.

Luke advises us that prayer is at the heart of this parable. But what does that look like?

Image: John Everett Millais (1829-1896), Parable of the Unjust Judge (1863;  illustration for “Parables of Our Lord”), Public Domain.

…Reformer John Calvin, in his “Institutes of the Christian Religion,” defined faith as,

“…a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”

Calvin includes doctrine in his definition. But notice what comes first: a conviction that God loves us, a sense that God’s essential attitude towards us is one of caring and gentleness and goodness. And that conviction is not merely intellectual. It is sealed, it is stamped upon our hearts in such a way that we long for it to be true…

Image: Hochhalter, Cara B.. A Parable - The Mustard Seed, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59282 [retrieved September 26, 2025]. Original source: Cara B. Hochhalter.

…To be clear: the problem is not that the man is rich. The problem is that he is not obeying these basic and Biblical principles of simple decency. As Martin Luther would put it, this man is curved in on himself. That was Luther’s definition of sin: living only for the self, and rather than living outwardly, toward others and their needs. It is as if a great chasm exists between these two men. They might as well be on different planets. The rich man has been given someone to care for, and he has chosen not to do so…

Image: Wesley, Frank, 1923-2002. Lazarus at the Door of the Rich Man, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59195 [retrieved August 19, 2025]. Original source: Estate of Frank Wesley, http://www.frankwesleyart.com/main_page.htm.

In 2019 an American billionaire named Robert F. Smith. was invited to Morehouse College in Atlanta to give the commencement address. Smith, an African American businessman, spoke to the graduates of one of the nation’s most prestigious historically black colleges, and in that speech, he announced that he would pay off the student loans of the entire graduating class. That generous gift to the 400 or so graduates cost the billionaire about $40 million [dollars].

For many students other than Morehouse class of 2019, the student loan crisis remains dire. Students can graduate with an expected payment of $1000/ month, an enormous amount for most Americans who also need food, housing, and medical care. According to the Education Data Initiative,

For the 2025-26 school year, federal student loan interest rates are 6.39% for undergraduate direct subsidized and unsubsidized loans, 7.94% for graduate direct unsubsidized loans, and 8.94% for Direct Plus loans. Private student loan rates vary significantly based on creditworthiness, with lenders offering fixed or variable rates ranging from roughly 2.9% to over 17.9%.

Debt would seem to be always with us. In fact, ongoing, life-altering debt is at the heart of the parable Jesus is sharing with us today. I told our Bible Study this week that today is the first time I will ever have tackled this parable in a sermon. I just couldn’t understand it. It made no sense. The manager is in trouble for his frittering away the property of his boss, and then he reduces the debts owed to his boss, and then his boss congratulates him on the scheme? And, Jesus commends him too?

Image: George Frederick Watts (1817-1904), Mammon (or, Mammon, Dedicated to His Worshipers), (1885), Oil on Canvas, Tate Museum, London, UK. Public Domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Parables are tricky. They are stories, usually brief, always told for the purpose of putting some new and unfamiliar idea in the mind of the listener. And these ideas are often uncomfortable, unsettling. New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine says,

If we hear a parable and think, ‘I really like that’ or, worse, fail to take any challenge, we are not listening well enough. Such listening is not only a challenge; it is also an art, and this art has become lost.

Image: Fetti, Domenico, approximately 1589-1623. Lost Coin, Painting, between 1618 and 1622, Dresden, Germany, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54793 [retrieved July 24, 2025]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parable_of_the_Lost_Drachma_by_Fetti.jpg.

…The word of God as revealed to Jeremiah is told in an unexpected way. Rather than giving the prophet the hard truth unfiltered, God first sends Jeremiah to see the work of an artisan: A potter. God asks Jeremiah to observe the potter at work, and what Jeremiah sees is a moment familiar to everyone who ever threw a pot or sewed a quilt or painted a landscape or knitted a chicken: the moment when your creation is not to your liking…

Image: Potter, Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C. from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54856 [retrieved July 24, 2025]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurapadgett/3825087416/.

…I remember the first time I was invited to dinner as a grownup. It was my second year of college, and suddenly I had a whole new group of friends. One of them invited all six of us to her mother’s home for a spring dinner. It was a chance to get out of the dorms. It was a chance to taste my new friend’s cooking. It was a chance to get to know these people even better. I dressed up. There were candles. There were things I’d never eaten before, like Chicken Cordon Bleu, and a sauce made with cognac and sugar that my friend served over strawberries for dessert. A dinner like this is an occasion. It’s unforgettable. And it makes everyone there feel very special.

Contrast this to a dinner, maybe a large one, where you don’t know everyone, but you know who the important people are. A dinner where people make speeches. Let’s say, a wedding. The guests can be made to feel very special at a wedding, but there’s no question as to who are the ones in the spotlight: the couple being married. Their families. Their closest friends. And then, perhaps, what I think of as concentric circles of closeness or distance, depending on how you look at it. It’s one thing to go as to a wedding as a groomsman. It’s quite another to go as the spouse of a college roommate.

Jesus is at a Very Important Dinner in today’s passage. In fact, according to Luke’s gospel, this is the third time he’s been invited to dinner by some Pharisees, and it’s the third time he’s accepted. And, we are told, they are watching him…

Image: Cara B. Hochhalter, A Parable - Where to Sit. Print, 2019. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59048.

Throughout Luke chapter 12, Jesus is speaking to a crowd of thousands. And all throughout this time of teaching, he has been issuing warnings. Last week we read his warnings about readiness, watchful waiting for his return, the day of judgment. The week before that we read his warnings about greed, and the danger of placing our faith in possessions and not God. In passages the lectionary skips over, Jesus has warned about the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his time, a mismatch between their hearts and their lives, as well as a warning against worrying. All of which to say is, Jesus is speaking to the people about the perils of life in their day, their present time.

But today’s passage… well, if we weren’t moved by the warnings up until this point, Jesus is here today with words that are shocking, and which, at first glance, do not feel like good news. Someone I read this week said, “If you did a poll of people on the street, asking, Why did Jesus come into the world?, it’s a good bet none of them would say, “To burn it all down and cause division!”[i] Which is kind of what this sounds like, on first hearing. But we all use shocking language, metaphors, and turns of phrase from time to time. We do it because it feels like the most accurate way to tell the truth about our experience. Jesus is no different…

Image: "A New Command...", Public Art, Beijing, China, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54326 [retrieved July 24, 2025]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/portablematthew/3491085679/

Every once in a while, you may have a doctor’s appointment during which your doctor will say to you, “Now, what we do is move into a time of watchful waiting.”

This usually doesn’t feel like good news. The doctor is essentially saying, “Something may be coming. Or not. We’re not sure. But we’ll watch for it, and if it comes, we’ll definitely do something. Meanwhile, there’s really nothing we can do.”

And those of us who are watchfully, and possibly, impatiently waiting, aren’t thrilled. Really? There’s NOTHING we can do while we’re waiting? Nothing but watch?

Jesus talks today of watchful waiting, but, unlike our doctors, the Great Physician’s advice is filled with actions to be taken…

Image: Lamp of Wisdom, sculpture, freestanding, Waterperry Gardens, Oxfordshire, U.K., from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54977 [retrieved July 24, 2025]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rowanbank/5815103193/.

…It's not unusual for people to start early, planning what they want their life to look like after they have set down their careers and callings. We get advice, sometimes from our parents, sometimes from our friends, and sometimes from people we pay for that advice. And much of that advice centers on how to save enough money—of course! So that we can enjoy our retirement. So that we can, travel, if we want. Or pursue other interests. But surely, crucially, so that we can survive—have a roof over our heads, eat and drink. Maybe even be merry. You see where I’m going with this. At first glance, it’s pretty hard to fault with the guy known as the foolish rich man, who is at the heart of the parable Jesus shares. What did he do, except the same thing most of us have been told it’s wise to do, and foolish not to do? What did he do wrong?

Image: Watts, George Frederick, 1817-1904. For He Had Great Possessions, 1894, Tate Britain, London, U.K., from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58462 [retrieved July 24, 2025]. Original source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/oxfordshire_church_photos/413448324 - Martin Beek.