Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing? Yet now take courage…
​~Haggai 2:3-4a
 
Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore,.
~Luke 20:34-36a
 
The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.
~Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination
 
What we have here is a failure of imagination. The Israelites return from exile in Babylon to a city that is a shadow of its former self, and all they can see is destruction. They cannot imagine a future that is not only rebuilt, but a better version of itself, seeded by a memory of God’s provision and fidelity even in the worst of times, watered and fertilized with lessons learned and new commitments to self and neighbor. The Sadducees cannot imagine a future in which everyone has enough, in which all humans regardless of gender or race or background have access to the best of what the world has to offer, so they resort to methods of control and power, to “gotcha” questions that resist a better future.
 
The prophet, according to Brueggemann, does not contend against such resistance with use of force, but armed with much more powerful weapons: imagination and creativity. This too is a time for imagination, for the naming and living into a better future by way of faith in a God whose specialty is nothing less than this—a new thing. Do you not perceive it?
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Haggai 1:15b-2:9 † Psalm 98 † 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 † Luke 20:27-38
 
About the Art, 2007 photo of painting Resurrection Icon, Chora Church, Instanbul via Wickimedia. Retrieved on October 27, 2025 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chora_Church_Constantinople_2007_013.jpg.  

Why have you struck us down
     so that there is no healing for us?
We look for peace but find no good,
     for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.
~Jeremiah 14:19b,c

At my first defense no one came to my support, but all deserted me. May it not be counted against them!
~2 Timothy 4:16
 
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
~Luke 18:13-14
 
In these interesting times it is not easy to span the differences among us that are so glaring and seem so weighty. Team tax collector, team Pharisee. We know which one we are on and we know who is on the other side as well. We have little doubt of the damage the other side is causing and little time to look in the mirror when so much is on the line. And that, it turns out, is what is so tricky about this familiar story Jesus tells in Luke’s gospel. In the parable Jesus blurs the lines with a truth that is sharp and unsettling. He seems to reward reflection and humility and question conventional wisdom and the sluggish assumptions it welcomes.
 
What might there be here for those of us whose politics are clearly married with our faith? We may imagine ourselves the tax (or toll) collector in the story, but our lives likely track more closely with the Pharisee’s. Is there an invitation here for us that might help find peace, a time of healing in a moment of terror and no good?
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22 † Psalm 84:1-7 † 2 Timothy 4:6-18 † Luke 18:9-14
 
About the Art: Anonymous. Seven Sins to Be Avoided in Life, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55752 [retrieved October 13, 2025]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SEVEN_SINS_TO_BE_AVOIDED_IN_LIFE.jpg.

But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”
~Genesis 32:26

And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
~Luke 18:6-8
 
Along many shallow tributaries and streams of Pacific Northwest rivers you can smell the stench of death and rot these days. It is a perfectly natural, and extraordinary thing—even if you don’t ever get used to the smell. On a small, unnamed tributary of the Nooksack, below Mount Baker all five species of Salmon return to the same small stream they have for millenia to spawn the next generation and die.
 
The takeaway, though, is not the death, but the amount of life energy that persists long past a casual observers expectations. A discolored, rotting Pink forces his way through three inches of water, his powerful strokes propelling him completely out of the water as he makes his way to the next redd—a depression made by the female that acts as a nest for her eggs. A female Chinook lies sideways, half out of the water, gasping for oxygen. This goes on forever, it seems. She persists.
 
The biblical stories this week speak to the persistance and forcefulness of life, of its insistence on getting what it wants, what it needs. Jacob wrestles with God, and he is blessed with a promise and with a wound to remind him of the blessing. A widow with no resources batters, like a boxer, a judge who just doesn’t care about her, until he relents and does what is right by her.
 
And the question Jesus leaves for those with ears to hear is this: will this generation have such faith? Will we recognize the power of life to reproduce goodness and mercy and justice and lovingkindness?
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Genesis 32:22–31 † Psalm 121 † 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 † Luke 18:1-8
 
About the Art: Moyers, Mike. Israel, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57141 [retrieved October 6, 2025]. Original source: Mike Moyers, https://www.mikemoyersfineart.com/.
 
Background: “A Painting depicting the night when Jacob wrestled with God. After the match was over, Jacob was given the name “Israel,” which means “God Wrestler.” This painting is intended to remind us of our tendency to struggle and wrestle with God’s calling, mystery, and sovereignty.” [from: https://www.mikemoyersfineart.com/about].

[S]eek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
~Jeremiah 29:7

Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
~Luke 17:17-19
 
Seek the welfare of the city. And for good reason, according to Jeremiah’s apparent logic: your welfare, our welfare is caught up in your neighbor’s welfare—no matter where you live, no matter your status, no matter how you’ve been treated.
 
Insiders and outsiders both inhabit all these texts. Jeremiah’s letter is sent to the Jerusalem exiles who have been remanded to Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon. He fills his pastoral letter with practical advice. Set up shop. Have a family. Make the very best of the situation you can. Be a good neighbor there just as the faith calls you to be a good neighbor at home.
 
This is, of course, an easier path if things are going well for you, and easier instructions to give if you aren’t the one making sacrifices. We should not lose sight of this!
 
In these stories, though, it is Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, caught up in loss who can find his way to faith in a God who redeems, in a world in which the logic of generosity, grace, and justice, in the logic of a God who is present keeps him in hope. It is not that different for Jesus. The healing of the lepers not only restores their health, but enables them to return to their communities where they, too, can presumably begin to rebuild.
 
But the one who returns to say thank you, the Samaritan, has no place in the community. His people are enemies of Israel, and he cannot be cleansed of his Samaritan-ness. Turning back to Jesus seems not only to be about gratitude, but about a turn toward a different kind of community, and a different way of community that resists the labels and limitations that end up restricting us through all sorts of othering. Could it be that the turn away from the common sorting systems of the leper’s day and ours may be the turning that Jesus is thinking of when he says to the Samaritan, “your faith has made you well”?
 
Enter into worship.
Readings: Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 † Psalm 66:1-12 † 2 Timothy 2:8-15 † Luke 17:11-19
 
About the Art: Bill Hoover, Ten Lepers, from BillHooverArt.com. Retrieved September 22, 2025 from https://bishopandchristian.com/2017/11/24/daily-bread-for-lepers/.
 
Background: Bill Hoover has been making art in Omaha Nebraska for over thirty years. His art is a dynamic synthesis of his interior and exterior worlds, with a strong emphasis on storytelling.

Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.
~2 Timothy 1:8-9a
 
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
     [God’s] mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
     great is your faithfulness.
~Lamentations 3:22-23
 
“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed,” Jesus tells his followers, you can move mountains, or, in this telling, transplant “a mulberry tree” in the sea (Luke 17:5). Small steps. Perhaps its better we aren’t trying to match Matthew 17:20’s confidence these days. Replanting a simple tree in the sea may feel a big enough lift in these faithless times.
 
But that’s just it. It’s not about the size of faith. A sesame or a watermelon or an avacado seed-sized faith won’t make up the difference in any of these scenarios the gospel tellers imagine. It’s not about that. It’s not so much, “once more, but with feeling.” It’s in the doing—and not so much our doing…”relying on the power of God, who saved us,” relying on God’s “mercies” that never come to an end.
 
Jesus had faith. Real faith. Bigger than an avacado. A Coco de Mer, say (look it up). And he was executed by the power of the empire that could not tolerate the possibilities he spoke of. He was raised to new life. How? In all honesty, we don’t really know, except, by the power of God.
 
This cycle of life is not unfamiliar. Cycles of injustice and unfaith are not unfamiliar. The poet of Lamentations saw it. The gospels see it.
 
Discipleship is a practice. It requires memory and exercise of all sorts. We need reminders of this story for our stories to go well. But the size of your faith is the least of it. And for that we can say together, “Thanks be to God!”
 
Enter into worship. Enter into hope.
 
Readings: Lamentations 1:1-6 † Lamentations 3:19-26 or Psalm 137 † 2 Timothy 1:1-14 † Luke 17:5-10
 
About the Art: Young, Art, 1866-1943. Jesus Wanted poster, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55832 [retrieved September 15, 2025]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jesus_wanted_poster.jpg.
 
Background: Art Young was a well-known American cartoonist and writer. First published in “The Masses” in 1917.

Hark, the cry of my poor people 
from far and wide in the land:
“The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved.”
For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt,
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of my poor people
not been restored?
~Jeremiah 8:19a, 20-22
 
If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?
~Luke 16:11
 
It seems that Jesus didn’t get the word you are not supposed to talk about money in polite company. By one measure, 16 of his 38 parables deal with the topic, and roughly one in ten verses in which he is the speaker address it. And, truthfully, the many writers and editors of the scriptures over the millenia didn’t seem to catch it either. Over 2300 verses broach the subjects of money, wealth, debt, and possessions.
 
Now, let’s breathe for a minute. This is certainly not to say that money or material is innately bad. Indeed, it is a frequent subject of faith because it is so important. It buys its way straight to the heart. With us, it has the power to bless or curse, to lead us together or tear us apart, to build health and wellness and peace or something else entirely, to serve God or to serve wealth.
 
It seems that this supposed “dishonest manager” (Luke 16:1-13), in one of these 16 parables about money, may have an angle on this that is more contemporary than we might have imagined. What might we learn from his surprisingly familiar position and his faithfulness with dishonest wealth?
 
Enter into worship.

Readings: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1 † Psalm 79:1-9 † 1 Timothy 2:1-7 † Luke 16:1-13
 
About the Art: Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940. Mill Children in Macon, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55696 [retrieved September 8, 2025]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mill_Children_in_Macon.jpg.
 
Background: “Some boys were so small they had to climb up on the spinning frame to mend the broken threads and put back the empty bobbins.” – [from photographer's note, Wikimedia] – Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Collections. Lewis Hine was a sociologist and a photographer, who used his craft to help improve the protection of children in labor laws. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

I looked on the earth…
I looked on the mountains…
I looked, and there was no one at all…
I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins…
~Jeremiah 4:23a, 24a, 25a, 26a
 
“Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
~Luke 15:8-10
 
You’ll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love’s confusing joy.
~Rumi
 
The psychologist Kenneth Clark, who testified in Brown v. Board about the harms of segregation argued that “the human capacity for empathy could counter the egocentric drive to accumulate power.” In his ultimately compelling testimony in the landmark case, he distinguished between “chauvinistic empathy” which extended only to other members of one’s in-group and “empathic reason” a “merging of intelligence with a sensitivity to others.” This became the basis for an argument against segregation in schools that precludes social trust and concern for classmates with ruthless competitiveness.[i]
 
Likewise, psychologist Jamil Zaki, in The War for Kindness suggested empathy is like a muscle. It can be exercised and trained; we can become kinder as a result.
 
“Rejoice with me,” the woman, who stands in for God, says once she has found the coin she had lost. It is the same with the one lost sheep among the hundred, and with the return of a prodigal. The math is challenged, but the message isn’t. “Rejoice with me!” Or, as Episcopal Bishop Barbara Harris put it, “We are an Easter people, moving through a Good Friday world.” There is little daylight between empathy and compassion—one of those golden threads that run through the Christian scriptures and equally through the heart of world religions.
 
True religion, it turns out, is a practice; it is exercised and we are trained and grow into a surprising logic for life. Our hearts expand toward one another as we follow in this way. Look at the earth. Look at the mountains. See not only the ruins, but remember. And practice what is possible.
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28 † Psalm 14 † 1 Timothy 1:12-17 † Luke 15:1-10
 
About the Art: Moyers, Mike. The Seeker, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57153 [retrieved August 26, 2025]. Original source: Mike Moyers, https://www.mikemoyersfineart.com/.
 
About the Artist: "An impression of the parable of the lost coin."
It is an honor and a joy to share my work with you. For years, I have illustrated, designed and directed many book covers, ads, logos, commercials and campaigns. However, my deeper side is the life of a fine artist. I love to paint with the palette knife to keep my work loose, textured and bold. You will see that I paint all kinds of subjects. My deepest passion, however, is to use fine art to communicate matters of faith.

I firmly believe that art is a communion with the soul. Through my art, I strive to make known the beauty and wonder of life and faith. The pieces in this exhibit are inspired by things that have touched my life in a meaningful way. They range from plein air and impressionism to abstract and conceptual. My hope is to successfully communicate those inspirations so that you might be touched as well.
[from: https://www.mikemoyersfineart.com/about]


[i] Jennifer Szalai, “How Empathy Became a Threat” in The New York Times, July 28, 2025.

So we can say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper;
     I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?”
~Hebrews 15:6
 
“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, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
~Luke 14:13-14
 
Rose, o pure contradiction, desire
to be no one’s sleep beneath so many
lids.
~Ranier Maria Rilke
 
It is the Sabbath. Jesus is heading to the house of a religious leader, and everyone has their eye on him. No wonder. He keeps doing it wrong; he keeps breaking the rules. Not long ago he healed a bent-over woman on the sabbath. Healing was considered a work—a red line for supposedly virtuous religious types. And he only continues to reimagine the Sabbath in light of God’s love.
 
So they are watching as he heals another, a man with dropsy. We would know it today as edema. Swelling that indicates underlying diseases, and possibly malnutrition. “Does the law allow for healing on the sabbath?” Jesus wonders.
 
If there is any wondering on the part of the watchers, they don’t show it. They are too busy, it turns out, elbowing their way into the best places at the sabbath banquet. That’s what Jesus notices. He notices the direct relationship between pursuit of self-interests and malnutrition and warring and all sorts of unsettledness. “When you give a banquet,” he preaches, “invite the poor…and you will be blessed” by the Lord who is our helper.
 
Pure contradiction. Could such a thing really be true? Do we dare believe it?
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Jeremiah 2:4-13 † Psalm 81:1,10-16 † Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16 † Luke 14:1, 7-14
 
About the Art: Sarajevo Rose. https://sarajevoroses.net/ [retrieved August 18, 2025]. Original source: https://sarajevo.travel/en/things-to-do/sarajevo-roses/484.
 
Sarajevo Roses pay a unique tribute to the Siege of Sarajevo and those who were killed during one of the most tragic episodes in the city’s history. During the Siege of Sarajevo, from 1992 to 1995, tens of thousands of grenades fell on the city, leaving many deep marks behind.
 
The grenades that struck the asphalt left characteristic marks that resemble a flower. After the war, these “flowers” were filled with red resin, in recognition of the horror Sarajevans endured during the longest-running siege of any city in modern history. These preserved marks are called “Sarajevo Roses”.

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me,
“Now I have put my words in your mouth.
See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”.
~Jeremiah 1:9-10
 
When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
~Luke 13:13
 
We don’t know much about the bent over woman in Luke. She could have been an old woman bent over for eighteen years by osteoporosis. She could have been a young woman born with a condition that she had known all her life. Or anything in between. He interrupts “church” to call to her. She doesn’t call to him. Is she just living her best life? Attending synagogue, studying the scriptures, praying, like anyone else? Some people are at home in their bodies in ways others of us could never imagine. Some are at peace with abilities that some think of as disabilities. ​
 
In any event, a healing that she may or may not have asked for comes to her, and when it does, she offers praise to God. She receives it, and for the first time in 18 years she stands up straight.
 
That’s when it gets interesting. Well, interesting in a different way. There are many ways in which we as individuals and as a people can be healed. And even while we can’t heal like Jesus heals, we understand that the church is to be a place of healing.
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings:  Jeremiah 1:4-10 † Psalm 71:1-6 † Hebrews 12:18-29 † Luke 13:10-17
 
About the Art: Leuthold, Julie. Tree of Hope, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57033 [retrieved August 12, 2025]. Original source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/julieleuthold/7521645058 - Julie.​

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”
~Luke 12:49-50
 
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…
~Hebrews 12:1-2

The unsettled parts of our scriptures become a little more apparent when our own time is unsettled. Whether this is a comfort for us probably depends on our location—the space of faith we occupy, that is, within the homeland of the Christian community between despair and complacency.
 
The texts for this Sunday, as the quotes above suggest, occupy multiple spaces, the range of human experience. Jesus knew the stress that results when one tells the truth—the fire of truth that inflames reactionary false prophets in a world where the meaning of words has been degraded, in which truthful messengers are attacked (or fired) for doing their job. And our life together is degraded and profaned, drip by drip. These truth-telling tongues of fire inflame, they raise the temperature—as Jesus knew so well. We trust, in faith, they will ultimately forge and purify and restore, that truth will not return empty. We find this promise embedded within the great cloud of witnesses, the baptismal life of faithful ones—completed and still underway—that finally douse the fires of discontent, confusion, and duplicity.
 
We who know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, the coming of the seasons and the weather, do well to draw on these promises to interpret the present time.
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Isaiah 5:1-7 † Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19 † Hebrews 11:29-12:2 † Luke 12:49-56
 
About the Art: Goya, Francisco, 1746-1828. Incendio, fuego de noche, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55585 [retrieved August 11, 2025]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Un_incendio_(Goya).jpg.