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.

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.
​~Hebrews 11:3
 
Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
~Luke 12:33-34
 
Do you have a prediction about where things are going in the world? While there have been no shortage of past prognosticators whose predictions have sometimes sucked all the oxygen out of the room, it seems these days we find fewer and fewer people who imagine they have a handle on what happens in the next six months, much less six years…or sixty. These are uncertain days, to be sure.
 
Abraham and Sarah knew uncertainty. They set out by faith for a place that was promised to be their inheritance. They set out “not knowing where [they were] going” (Hebrews 11:8). And each step of the journey, staying for a time in itinerant lands, waiting, and waiting, looking forward “to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (11:10).
 
We know that the story was a bit more complicated and messy, though. We have the documentation in Genesis. This too, the complication of life and our place in it, is surely true for us who know so little about the future.
 
What we do know is that this story of ours, this story of life, this story of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah and Rachel and Bilhah and Zilpah and of Jesus and his disciples—men and women—makes few specific promises about any future except that God is in it. And we know a lot about how the ancients have experienced God in it—as a seeker of justice, rescuer of the oppressed, defender of the orphan and the widow, as the One who desires our well-being far more than we do or can imagine (Isaiah 1). So, no matter the future, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Abba’s good pleasure to give you the kindom” (Luke 12:32).
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 † Psalm 50 † Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 † Luke 12:32-40
 
About the Art: Cross, Henri Edmond, 1856-1910. Landscape with Stars, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57008 [retrieved July 28, 2025]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Landscape_with_Stars_MET_DT736.jpg.

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
~FDR, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1937.​

This quote from FDR sounds almost like a reading from Proverbs. Or a rebuke from a prophet on the people in power being too concerned with their own life style of abundance and not caring for the widow, the orphan, and the alien in their land. It has been said that there were powers in our country who have used certain issues to distract from their own work to rid the country of social safety nets and give more money to the upper 1% and insuring white supremacy. What were the distracting issues? Women in ministry, abortion, homosexuality. In particular, these issues were used to divide mainline churches, and in so doing, take away their power to call out for justice for the poor. Holy Moly. Lots going on here! The Luke reading this week is the parable of the rich man who decides to build new, larger barns to hold his vast crops. He feels satisfied, finally. Now he can eat, drink, and be merry. EXCEPT! He dies that very night. Jesus says this would be the type of man who was rich toward himself instead of being rich toward God. “Rich toward God.” Just what does that mean?

Come. Let us gather for worship.

Readings: Hosea 11:1-11 † Psalm 107:1-9, 43 † Colossians 3:1-11 † Luke 12:13-21 

About the Art: Master of the Osservanza. St. Anthony Distributing His Wealth to the Poor, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55513 [retrieved July 30, 2025]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Master_Of_The_Osservanza_-_St_Anthony_Distributing_his_Wealth_to_the_Poor_-_WGA14603.jpg.