Our gospel readings for the past few weeks have all been about prayer – faith, gratitude, and today persistence. Luke is very clear about Jesus’ intention in telling the parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow. He headlines it “a parable about the disciples’ need to pray always and not to lose heart.”

Which is a good thing.

Because we might get confused and think it’s a parable telling us about the nature of God.

It was the job of the judge to protect the vulnerable – the widows, orphans and foreigners – but either he couldn’t be bothered, or he had other ambitions which consumed him. One widow needed him to make a judgment on her behalf. We don’t know what exactly but probably it was to do with her deceased husband’s estate. And so she kept on at him. She kept demanding that he do his job and finally he did, just to get rid of her.

If this is a parable about prayer, does it mean that God needs us to keep reminding him of our needs before he gets round to doing anything?

Now remember that the parable is about the “need to pray always and not to lose heart.” And Jesus specifically says, “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.”

So there’s a problem.

If God will quickly grant justice to his chosen ones, what about the times we pray and God does not seem to respond, period? It’s not just that we don’t get an answer quickly, we don’t get an answer at all, or at least not the one we want. Does that mean that we are not God’s chosen ones, or that God isn’t paying attention? Or that we didn’t pray persistently enough or use the right words? Or maybe we weren’t sufficiently grateful or simply didn’t have enough faith. And what about situations of blatant injustice? Does God not care?

I suspect that we need a paradigm shift in our understanding of God and the way God works. And that’s not easy. We are used to thinking of God as being someone, like the judge. who listens to our prayers and then decides whether or not to answer them. And if we think about God like that, then we hit some unanswerable questions.

For example, when the Twin Towers came down on 9/11 2,700 people were killed. Yet on a typical day 50,000 people worked there, and around 17,000 people were in the towers at the time of the attack. What made the difference? Did God not care as much about those who died as about those who gave thanks that they survived?

In the last century there have been many new ideas about the way the universe works. Quantum physics has developed to show how the tiniest particles of matter work; chaos theory offers new insight into complex systems; string theory suggests that all of creation is based on vibration, and at the other end of the spectrum, cosmologists now think that the universe is expanding because of so-called ‘dark energy’. Scientists suggest that the cosmos is made of about 4.9% ordinary matter, like you me and this building, 26.8 % dark matter and 68.3% dark energy. And I really have no idea what they are talking about.

But if we have all this new information and all these new theories about the universe, isn’t it time that we revise our pictures of God?

What if God is not omnipotent in the way that my questions about the Twin Towers assume? What if God does not directly intervene in the life of the cosmos but rather participates?

That would mean that God is not directing the events of our lives, but is accompanying us and creating with us. Scripture tells us that God is love. If God is love then Love is what sustains us and pulls us forwards; Love is what always bring the highest possible outcome from every situation.

So when we pray, we are praying for Love to be manifest. We are not begging an omnipotent but distracted God to pay attention to our situation, rather we are adding our love to God’s love – we are co-creating the best possible outcomes together with the God who is participating in our lives and is participating in the continuing work of Creation.

From this perspective, persistent prayer makes sense because every situation is always in flux. Things are always changing. Prayer brings our love and the love of the Creator into that state of change. And that is powerful. And persistent prayer brings love persistently.

When we look at it like this, persistent prayer is not begging a bored judge to pay attention but more like keeping our foot on the accelerator. Steady and even. Though that metaphor also breaks down because the foot on the accelerator provides control and prayer is not a form of remote control.

Prayer brings our positive and loving energy into the state of flux which is our reality and God’s reality. Our love joins with God’s love and as we participate together in loving creativity so something new becomes possible. We don’t know the best possible outcome of any situation because there are so many variables which we don’t know about, and which are outside our control.

A simple example is that a couple of weeks ago I was on call for jury duty. After calling in twice, I was meant to call after 5 on Tuesday. I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I had forgotten to call. So early Wednesday morning I went to call in, but could not find the card with my jury number on it. We turned the house upside down looking for it. I kept praying for help to find the card. We didn’t find it. There was no-one in the jury office until 8:30 and when I got through, a nice woman called Jasmine told me that I should already have arrived and reported for duty. And then she helped me think of a truthful and legitimate reason that she could excuse me. By the time I came off the phone I was excused from jury duty for 12 months and excused from spending the whole day in jury selection.

As far as I knew, the best solution was to find the jury card and that is what I was praying for. If I had been in control, it would have turned up. But then I would have spent the day at the courthouse. But I was not in control and God was not sitting in the clouds deciding whether or not to help me find the card, God was participating in my life and in the unfolding of the universe for the highest good of all beings.

After talking with the disciples about faith, and demonstrating the importance of gratitude, in this week’s gospel Jesus encourages us to be persistent in prayer and not give up hope. There are many reasons why we may be tempted to give up hope. We live at a time when the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, where uncertainty and insecurity lurk at every corner, and our courts are under threat.

But our prayer helps to bring Love, love with a capital L into every situation. Our prayer joins with God’s activity and helps bring about outcomes we cannot even imagine.

So my friends, let us pray always and not lose heart.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 

I think it was Oprah who popularized the “attitude of gratitude.” Whoever it was, the idea of having a practice of gratitude has become part of popular culture. It’s an extension of the older idea of “counting your blessings.”

In this morning’s gospel reading, a group of ten lepers asks Jesus for help. Lepers were people with skin disease. It probably wasn’t what we know as leprosy or Hansen’s disease which is caused by a bacterial infection that can damage skin, eyes and nerves. Whatever it was, lepers were the outcasts of society. They had to stay separate from everyone else not so much because they were infectious but because they were ritually unclean, and in the event that their skin infection cleared up they had to get a clean bill of health from the priests before they could rejoin their families.

Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. They went.

Notice that they are not healed at the time they set out. They are still lepers. Yet they do what Jesus says. In the few verses before todays reading the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith, and here we have a story about faith. The lepers are healed and restored to the potential of full engagement in society as they are doing what Jesus told them. Not before, not after, but in the process of obedience to Jesus’ command.

Our faith increases as we are obedient to God’s word to us. The Holy Spirit always speaks quietly, prompting us to follow the highest leading of Christ. I think most of us don’t usually hear a voice or get an email from God. For most of us it’s probably an inkling or an intuition. I wonder how it is for you?

Let’s just take a moment to think about it. How does God speak to you?

Now please find someone else to talk to and think together about how you hear God’s voice speaking to you. If that’s not an experience you think you have had, that’s ok, you can think about how you might hear God.

It may mean changing seats but let’s make sure everyone has someone to talk to about how you might experience God speaking to you.

…
 
I think for me it’s a combination of things. First, I regularly ask God to lead and direct me in God’s paths, so I am actively seeking God’s direction. My days are usually pretty flexible, and so I am often asking which of the many things I could do, should I do next. And secondly I trust that God will guide me. Of course, there is a shadow side to that. I have a tendency to procrastinate and so it’s easy to think that doing the things I like to do and putting off the others is following God’s voice! Knowing my own shortcomings helps me to discern what is mine to do today.

I also hear God’s voice as I ponder the readings and prepare sermons, and in my conversations with you. I may start a train of thought which helps me to see things differently and consider my own responses in a new light. The spiritual path is one of constant re-evaluation in the light of Jesus’ teaching and the prompting of the Holy Spirit within the context of faith community. We teach one another. We are the voice of God to one another.

Our faith deepens as we dare to listen for God’s voice and then act on it.

The lepers heard Jesus’ instructions and set out to show themselves to the priests even though they were still unclean. The miracle occurred on their way. They were healed. As you know, only one of them came back to thank Jesus. He was so thrilled to be healed that he came running back hooping and hollering and praising God.

And Jesus points out that he wasn’t a good Jewish person, but a despised Samaritan. This guy was not a good Episcopalian but someone who never bothered to go to church. He wasn’t white and well educated but his family came from somewhere else and he only spoke broken English.  Not only did Jesus heal someone who wasn’t part of the in-crowd, he used him to demonstrate faith and gratitude.

Gratitude has been found to be very beneficial. It not only improves your mood but it can also lower your blood pressure, improve your sleep and improve your immune system.

But for us, as disciples of Jesus, gratitude is much, much more. We are not just generally grateful but we praise and thank God – it is an integral part of our relationship with God, our beloved.

Someone once told me that they didn’t see why God needs all this praise – like God needs us to say “good job, buddy.”  I think praising God is qualitatively different from praising a child or an employee. Our praise of God is a combination of worship, gratitude and awe. We continue to praise and worship God even when things are not going well for us, even when God doesn’t seem to be helping
.
The psalms are often a good example of this.

In today’s psalm we read:
Bless our God, you peoples; *
make the voice of his praise to be heard;
Who holds our souls in life, *
and will not allow our feet to slip.  
I think we can all get behind that but then the psalmist goes on:
9 For you, O God, have proved us; *
you have tried us just as silver is tried.
10 You brought us into the snare; *
you laid heavy burdens upon our backs.
11 You let enemies ride over our heads;
we went through fire and water; *
but you brought us out into a place of refreshment.

Remember these are reasons for praising and blessing God – because we have experienced heavy burdens and life has been so hard that we have been overwhelmed by enemies and went through fire and flood, but God remained faithful and sustained us through it all.

We are called not just to count our blessings but to continue to give thanks and praise to God for who God is regardless of what’s happening in our lives. This is a real challenge for me as I tend toward depression. We are not just to be grateful for the good things -food on the table and a roof over our heads – but even when food is scarce and the roof leaks. Because that does not change our fundamental reality that we are profoundly loved by the God who is always faithful and is always love.

And the nature of our relationship with God is love. Even when we are angry with God, even when things are not going well, we are sustained by the underlying love of the living God. And for that we are grateful.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 
 

I apologize for getting the gospel reading wrong in your bulletin. If the one assigned for St. Francis Day which I just read seems familiar to you it is because we read this just two months ago. I guess God wants us to take special note of this passage this year.

I play a lot of games on my phone and so I see a lot of advertisements. They are mainly for other games or for exercise routines but almost every day I see one asking me to send money to help orangutans whose forest is being cut down. I have enjoyed watching orangutans in the zoo and wondered why their native forest is being destroyed. There are several answers, but I was amazed to learn that one major reason is that Americans like RVs.

Yes, RVs. Recreational Vehicles.

When I think of the simple life of St Francis and how I might live more simply,  with very few possessions, one of the options seems to be to sell the house, get an RV and see where the Spirit takes me.

But RVs are made of a particular timber.  It is processed into a lightweight, moisture-resistant, flexible plywood then R.V. makers use it for interior walls, flooring, cabinets and other features. And where does that special timber grow? In the forests of Borneo where the orangutans live.[1]

In the last five years alone, tens of thousands of acres of the island’s forests have been chopped down. This has contributed to the disappearance of some of the world’s largest rainforests and wetlands, unleashing dense stores of carbon, upending the lives of Indigenous people and endangering the habitats of orangutans and other animals. All so that we can enjoy our RVs.

Who knew?

Of course we didn’t. But my friends, the information is out there.

The man in Jesus’ story knew that death was a possibility as any moment. The information was out there. But he chose not to think about that. Instead, he chose to build big barns to store all his goods. He chose to be rich in material wealth but not spiritual wealth.

And this is the challenge that St Francis gives us. He came from a wealthy family and as a young man had no trouble spending money on all the things that rich young men in the 13th Century spent money on. After a conversion experience and a big fight with his father, he became an itinerant beggar. He spent his time restoring local churches and nursing lepers. Eventually he built himself a hut and dedicated himself to a life of poverty – the complete opposite of the guy in the parable. He started preaching peace and brotherly love and soon gathered a group of men around him. The order was recognized by the Pope and grew rapidly.

There are many stories about Francis and animals. It is said that he preached to the birds and that on one occasion he brokered peace between a village and a wolf.  It is certain from his writings that he saw and honored God in Creation. In 1989 Pope John Paul II said that St Francis "invited all of creation – animals, plants, natural forces, even Brother Sun and Sister Moon – to give honor and praise to the Lord. [He] gives us striking witness that when we are at peace with God we are better able to devote ourselves to building up that peace with all creation which is inseparable from peace among all peoples."[2]

When we are at peace with God we are better able to devote ourselves to building up that peace with all creation which is inseparable from peace among all peoples.

So we can see that peace has three dimensions – peace with God, peace with one another and peace with all creation. And by peace I don’t simply mean no fighting. Peace in the spiritual sense is shalom – shalom means wholeness, or completeness. We might think of shalom as living in harmony with all beings, a state where there is abundance and an ethic of restraint which makes sure there’s enough for everyone.

The man in the gospel story is trying to create shalom for himself, but he doesn’t get that shalom is living in harmony, with generosity and care for all beings.

Jesus has already brought about our peace with God; it is a free gift, given purely through grace as a result of God’s amazing love for us and for all creation. Yet we get to live into it. We get to learn to live in peace by surrendering our lives – making a commitment to living shalom with all beings, guided by the Holy Spirit. I’m not sure if we ever get there, but the vision of God’s holy shalom draws us onward.

And it is that same vision of shalom which inspires us to cultivate peace in all our relationships. This is difficult. Relationships have at least two people involved and that means there are always at least two viewpoints. Even when we are estranged from someone, we can work to offer them shalom in our hearts; to cultivate an attitude of open love that allows them to be fully themselves – to know the joy of their own true nature. We can do that even when we disagree.

And then there’s peace with nature. This morning we are celebrating our companion animals, those creatures who share our lives and inhabit our hearts. Yet however much we live in harmony with our beloved pets, we know that the relationship between human and nature has become fundamentally disordered. And that disorder has reached a point where it threatens animal and human flourishing.

The orangutans of Borneo are not the only creatures threatened by our habits. Some scientists are calling our time the sixth mass extinction. There have been five previous times when huge numbers of living beings have been wiped out in a very short period. Now, due to human behavior we are losing biodiversity at a rate of somewhere between 100 and 1000 times the rate that would be expected were we not cutting down forests, wiping out coral reefs and increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

How then are we to love creation?

Perhaps it is time to take an inventory of our lives. The fourth step of Alcoholics Anonymous is “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” Perhaps it is time to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of the ways our lives impact creation. And then with God’s help look for ways to change our behavior and learn to live more simply with less negative impact.
There is a lot of information available about the impacts of which bank we use or where we invest our money, the food we eat and the food we throw away, the cars we drive and how much we walk; how to make our yards drought tolerant and insect friendly, and where we can send dollars to help save habitat for orangutans and other creatures. I could go on, but you know these things. The information is out there.

People of God, the big aha that we need is to realize that we are part of an incredible web of life – God’s ongoing creation. And our actions, our prayers, yes even our thoughts, impact that web. And we are called to pour love into the web. We are called to be points of Shalom which bring peace and healing. The love which we feel for our companion animals is a start and it is only a start.

St. Francis calls us to live simply so that we may share the abundance we receive from God with all beings and so that we do not use more than our share of creation. Because building bigger barns to store stuff for ourselves is missing the point. God made us to live in shalom with all beings. At peace with God, at peace with our neighbor and at peace with creation. 

      Shalom

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall


[1][1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/world/asia/indonesia-borneo-deforestation-rv.html#:~:text=American%20demand%20for%20tropical%20wood,clouded%20leopards%20and%20sun%20bears.
 

[2] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_19891208_xxiii-world-day-for-peace.html

It’s good to be with you all here this morning. Especially as it was touch and go earlier in the week… with all the anticipation around the Rapture. You heard about that, right? Apparently, someone shared with the world that Jesus came to them in a dream back in 2018 to let them know the Rapture would happen on September 23, 2025.[1] I realize this isn’t the first time the world’s anticipated an event like this, but this year, given where we are as a country and as a world, when I heard the Rapture was imminent, a part of me didn’t think it would be so bad. Even though this is absolutely not my theology, I like to think I keep a somewhat open mind … and, I must admit, I didn’t think it would be too bad to be proven wrong on this, and have the Rapture actually take place sometime on Tuesday, as promised.

… I’m not proud of it, but I was a little bit disappointed when I woke up on Wednesday and absolutely nothing had happened.

Having Jesus take care of it all would actually be so good, and so welcomed right about now. Nothing we’re doing seems to be making much of a difference, and so for a fleeting moment there I, too, longed for God to do something massive, to take care of it for it for us, in one dramatic and decisive divine act.

We live in a strange and peculiar world. We have millennia of accumulated wisdoms, tested spiritual knowings that connect us today with the ancients who came and lived before us. Our bodies, our physical selves, have evolved to be wonderfully and intimately interconnected with the world we live in, with the complexity of life we share this world with; and we have our Christian faith, born of a wildly long lineage that reaches back through the ages, a lineage of spiritual teachings that offer us firm guidance for how to live, how to be. We’ve repeatedly been told, through the ages, how to do life well together, how it all could be so much better than it is.

We’ve been taught a ton through the history of humanity; humanity has witnessed and responded to a lot; as human beings we sense a lot and have an instinct for even more, and yet … we, humans, tend to ignore all we “know”-  trading it, instead, for the junky ideas floating on the surface of the current moment. We get caught up here, on the surface, and we get frustrated and uncomfortable that things are the way they are. And so we yearn for the world to change, for something to happen, for someone to do something. For an event like the Rapture!

And the junk floating around on the surface, it’s only really concerned with the individual self. It places super-high value on comfort, on wealth, on having power over people and place; it values these things, actually, more than the life of the whole. And for those of us shaped by a society like this, all the world, the people, the plants, the animals, all of it can be thought of as existing solely to be ‘of service,’ all of it as resources to be taken and used, misused, and abused to indulge our comforts and wants. With this worldview, if we want things to be better, it’s the world that needs to offer it up – because the world ‘out there’ exists for us and for our needs.

Even when he’s dead, the rich man in our Gospel reading today, expects someone else to do something for him! “Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue” he calls out to Abraham. The rich man looks out, spots Lazarus, and immediately has a plan to put him to work for his own benefit, for his comfort.

In this context, it’s a staggering self-centered move! And yet, we’re the inheritors of a cultural way of being that shaped the rich man and still shapes us today. I think it’s highly likely that at some point or another, each one of us has thought: if only that person/those people would do what I want them to do, live or think or act the way I want them to – then, the world I’m forced to live in would be far more bearable. But people aren’t so quick to do our bidding, they have their own ideas, we are not of one mind - and so perhaps this is one reason why there’s so much violence of speech and action in this world we live in.

The rich man also begs Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house, to his five brothers, who – we must assume – are living as large he was. He wants to “use” Lazarus, a man from the dead, as a way to teach his brothers how they should be living, as a warning, so they can amend their lives and avoid ending up where he is. Abraham counters, he says if they’ve not paid attention to Moses and the prophets (if they’ve not learned from millennia of tested teachings and wisdoms handed down to this generation by the ancients) they absolutely will not listen, even to someone who’s back from the dead.

And this is true today, right?

We have it all, all the ancient wisdoms and teachings, God has given us Holy Scripture, a Savior, the Church, the Saints - but our society is noisy and demanding, and we are easily distracted. The culture we live in insists on being our primary teacher, so we learn to look out at the world around us, see it as separate from us, and we learn to claim and wield power over it to make it what we think we want, what we think we need, we learn to want to change it, and to change the people in it to suit us.

Yet, as Christians, we’re also inheritors of the Way, of Jesus’ Way – a way of living that draws our attention, crucially, to our interior world. Jesus’ Way teaches us to spend time ‘there’ get to know that world, work to transform that world, our own interior world. Jesus’ way is the most ancient of ways, and it emphasizes we are entirely interconnected, actually, and entirely dependent on God, and on this planet, and on one another for all of life, for all we have, for all we are; we are all in this together.

This is a ‘knowing’ that’s found deep in the being, in the heart; our relationship with God is a truth of our embodiment, of our whole selves. Jesus’ Way calls our attention to that, teaches and encourages our embracing of that, so that this inner knowing, our call to our own ongoing transformation, that is what we’re called to pay attention to, to listen to, and that’s what we can change.

Our best life, our true comfort, a healed world, an end, finally, to humanity’s abuse and exploitation of this planet and of one another doesn’t start and end out there, with everyone and everything ‘out there’ changing. There is no voice, no information, no new thought or well-articulated idea, there is no scientific development that can ever speak out a truth that will finally bring about the kind of change we’re all waiting for. … the change that’s needed must happen in here. It starts with each one of us taking seriously the immense impact our own conversion of life will have on the great unbroken story of life in God that’s still unfolding on this planet.

But it’s not easy, and it will take effort, and it’s going to take courage and creativity and commitment and faith,
it’s going to take all that for change to be lasting and to be real and good, and it has to come from within.
​
So, in these times, whenever we find ourselves longing for the world to change, longing for God to do something decisive that will heal this broken world, let’s remember that God already did. In Christ Jesus we have all we need, have been taught all we need to learn, have been told all we need to hear; it’s up to us whether we choose to listen. Amen.

the Rev. Linzi  Stahlecker
September 28, 2025
​
[1] https://www.today.com/popculture/rapture-tiktok-september-23-24-rcna233251