This is another of those Sundays I wish we had recorded! I departed from the text substantially in the second half of the sermon and have no record of what I actually said. What I did do was lay out the three ways of looking at this text more clearly:

• as a parable that tells of God’s super-abundance—unmerited and beyond imagining,
• as a reflection on Jesus’ own ministry and returning to the beginning of that ministry in temptation—which path will Jesus take? Wealth and power, or losing everything?
• as a story telling of Jesus’ solidarity with those whose lives are the third servant’s life—no matter what they do, even that is taken away again and again by The Man.

Here is the sermon:

• Sermon for the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost (2011-11-13, Year A) – OpenDocument version
• Sermon for the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost (2011-11-13, Year A) – pdf version

What an adventure!

Here I am, trying to unpack everything from the move from the United States to New Lambton. All the rooms in the rectory have their share of partially emptied boxes and several boxes in the lounge room haven’t even been touched! What goes where, what do we give away, what do we throw out, what do we put into the garage until the next move! These are the questions that are consuming us right now. What I do know is that we have too much stuff!

If only our spiritual lives were as rich as our material lives. Being a disciple of Jesus takes a lot more work than buying things. But it is so worth the effort.