St. Matthew's Evangelical Lutheran Church, Welland, Ontario, Canada

Attendance today >16 – last year >15

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Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost September 28, 2025

Prayer of the Day
O God, rich in mercy, you look with compassion on this troubled world. Feed us with your grace, and grant us the treasure that comes only from you, through Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen.

Gospel: Luke 16:19-31 [Jesus said:] 19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24 He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ 27 He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house 28 for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30 He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”

REFLECTIONS: Granted, the setting for ‘act two’ of the parable is the afterlife. The point of this parable is very much about this life considering that it follows Jesus’ loan shark story. Jesus tells these stories to his followers so they reflect on their relationship with ‘stuff’.

The impoverished Lazarus is the only person in a parable who has a name—and it translates as “God helps”. For this poor Lazarus ONLY God helps.

Rich dude is too preoccupied keeping Party Central lubricated and fed to even SEE Lazarus suffering right there at his gate. God sees. God knows. God helps. Hereafter, Lazarus’ suffering is relieved as he rests in the bosom of Abraham, father of us all.

Hereafter, rich and terminally obtuse dude languishes in torment.

He begs Abraham to enlist Lazarus as errand boy to bring him respite. Get the irony? The law and prophets call on rich boy and us to relieve the suffering of others or at least not to make it any worse.

Ever the wheeler dealer, rich dude asks Abraham to conscript Lazarus to be a Marley’s ghost messenger to warn his siblings. No sale.

Where does that leave us?

What if Professor Barbara Rossing is right that we are the siblings of the rich guy? “We are those five siblings of the rich man. We who are still alive have been warned about our urgent situation, the parable makes clear. We have Moses and the prophets; we have the scriptures; we have the manna lessons of God’s economy, about God’s care for the poor and hungry. We even have someone who has risen from the dead. The question is: Will we — the five sisters and brothers — see? Will we heed the warning, before it is too late?”

Some studies suggest that the richest among us are the least generous and often the poorest among us are the most generous. Images of starving children in Gaza break our hearts— We watch people in town load up repurposed shopping carts with trash bags stuffed with all their earthly possessions and wonder how we might help. So I know we see the suffering at our gates.

Our churches give your contributions to the Hope Centre and Port Cares. Individuals give generously to international relief agencies like CLWR. Our bishops advocate to government leaders on behalf of the poor. There are instances where we’ve have shown kindness to people sleeping at our gates…or doorstep. Our actions are in keeping with tradition of the children of Israel heeding calls for generosity and compassion. Our generosity comes from Jesus’ example and preaching to remember the poor.

Yet, Greed remains voracious and poverty relentless. So maybe our warning comes new every day. As Jesus would say, if we have ears let us hear. If we have love and compassion let us live that out. Maybe our kindness and push for justice now are little echoes or hints about the grand and glorious feast in the kingdom in the hereafter.

Or as professor Rossing puts it,

-In Luke’s wonderful imagery, Abraham’s bosom awaits to enfold us in loving arms now and after our death. (Source: Working Preacher, Luther Seminary, St. Paul MN, US)

Sunday attendance today ->16 – last year ->24

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Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost September 21, 2025

Prayer of the Day
God among us, we gather in the name of your Son to learn love for one another. Keep our feet from evil paths. Turn our minds to your wisdom and our hearts to the grace revealed in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen.

Luke 16:1-13
1 Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2 So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ 3 Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7 Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ 8 And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly, for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 9 And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

10 “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11 If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13 No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Reflections— Once upon a time there was a loan shark whose enforcer started skimming from his boss. He gets caught. Gets sacked. Vinnie’s a quick thinker, see so he goes to the debtors and doesn’t let on he’s been sacked, see. Vinnie decides he needs these people, so he makes like his boss sent him with an attractive lower interest offer on their debts. Badda-bing, badda boom, it works! It works so good that the even loan shark is impressed. Not that Vinnie gets his job back…..

That little story is in essence the one Jesus tells….In Moses’ day and in Jesus’ day there were cultural and religious objections to charging interest; especially to poorer people. These folk knew the stories about rigged games like the one the prophet Amos railed on about some 800 years before Jesus tells the loan shark story. They likely had personal history in which so-called rent capitalism a scheme that reduced indebted small time farmers to sharecroppers and eventually to slaves working their own land to pay off unpayable debts.

Remember who’s telling the story here and bear in mind we’re hearing it in Luke’s Gospel; you know the one where Jesus’ mother sings about tyrants being toppled and the poor receiving good things while the rich are sent away empty? You know Mary’s boy telling people to stop building bigger barns and to sell their baubles and toys and give the proceeds to the poor? Sometimes people of faith take the hint.

Once upon a time, a church in the U.S. (it turns out that multiple churches did this) got fed up with payday loan companies charging their neighbours 400 percent interest. Know what the church did? They raised money and paid off the pay day lenders to stop the interest racking up and to give folk a fresh start. Guess what? The payday loan companies didn’t like it because even though repayment money came in, money that ultra compounded interest money didn’t anymore.

It should bother us that the nice cashier at Walmart makes about 29,000 US while their CEP took home 27.4 million. Journalist Julia Conley does the math for us that’s a 930 to one gap! The barista at Starbucks needs to work for 6,000 years to earn the same pay their CEO took home in 2024.

Again the church weighs in….Pope Leo writes in the Catholic outlet Crux that “CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving… it’s [now] 600 times more than the average workers are receiving,”

“Yesterday, the news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world: What does that mean and what’s that about?” he added. “If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble.” Pope Leo must have heard Jesus say we can’t serve God and the money scheme at the same time. Thank God some are listening!

Sunday attendance ->13 – last year ->14

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Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost September  14, 2025

Prayer  of the Day

O God, overflowing with mercy and compassion, you lead back to yourself all those who go astray. Preserve your people in your loving care, that we may reject whatever is contrary to you and may follow all things that sustain our life in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. Amen.

The Gospel – Luke:15:1-10

1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus.] 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3 So he told them this parable: 4 “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

8 “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? 9 And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Reflections: The grumbling is justified. Jesus publicly befriends people who have colluded with the empire that has occupied their homeland. Jesus invites sinners to dinner— sinners might mean about anything from being a misfit to someone who has brought shame to the community somehow. In light of this week’s troubling news about white nationalists demonstrating at the Brock Monument, one might wonder if Jesus would invite them to dinner too. What about people who believe that the US Civil rights act was a mistake and that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a bad person? What about the man arrested for gunning down Charlie Kirk….who not incidentally publicly declared his opposition to civil rights for people of colour and who spoke ill of Dr. King.

It’s hard to believe that Jesus was naive in his actions or even in the stories he tells to defend them…Parables, after all are meant to trip us up—Fun fact the world scandal comes from an older word than means something that trips us up.

Sometimes God’s mercy is scandalous. We might be happy for the woman who turns the house upside down to find a lost coin. Does she turn around and spend the coin for the party she throws to celebrate the finding if it? Who would actually abandon 99 sheep to their own devices and toddle off to search for one that went AWOL?

The coin nor the sheep get lost on purpose. They don’t come to their senses and try to find their way back either.

The heart of these stories is in the joy of finding—and true to Luke’s Gospel, the stories end with a party. God’s perspective over the lost being found is joyous and maybe in the abstract we think we’re rejoicing too.

One of my classmates used to say the kingdom of God is like a party—Yeah, Dave, but sometimes I have trouble with the guest list. Sometimes I’m like Jonah who objects to God’s mercy toward those who have caused harm. Sometimes, I scratch my head at the prophet Hosea who keeps taking back his unfaithful spouse. Thepsalmist says “surely Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”. How nice for the psalmist or for you and me maybe. But what about God’s goodness and mercy when it pursues the tax collector, and the sinner (however you define it). As the preacher and teacher Fred Craddock used to say, sometimes God’s mercy looks a lot like condoning when you view it from a distance. If repentance is about a totally revamped perspective and a way of life to go with it, maybe God would rejoice when grumblers like me finally come around.

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