September 2025 – Relationalrealities

Setting the Scene
I was surprised but also heartened by the feedback I received about my weekly E-Epistle on Paul’s letter to Philemon, which appeared two weeks ago in the E-Newsletter. It reminded me how deeply we hunger for the bold wisdom hiding in Scripture, and how the appointed readings can open up unexpected conversations.

Each Sunday, we are given four scriptural readings, traditionally referred to as lessons because of their instructive potential. Often—at least on the surface—it’s hard to comprehend why the compilers of the lectionary place particular texts side by side. Yet, as a general rule, we can find thematic threads between the Old Testament lesson and the Gospel. The psalm may or may not extend that theme—it often stands in its own right as a hymn of praise or lament. But the New Testament epistle is the outlier. Rather than tying directly into the other lessons, its themes usually unfold sequentially over several weeks, offering us a parallel commentary on what it means to live as Christians in the world.

I know many preachers will default to the gospel lesson, and rightly so. But I find myself often drawn to the Old Testament—because the backstories are so rich, the narratives so captivating. Yet I do not turn to them for history alone. As the writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Human society repeats its patterns. Shakespeare was keenly aware of this. In order to keep his head on his shoulders, his history plays project Elizabethan social and political tensions back into historical settings. This is a tried and true device allowing any writer to speak about contemporary issues through the lens of history.

What goes around then comes around again. Jeremiah holds up ancient politics and divine lament as a mirror for our times when once again we find ourselves struggling to respond to the chilling effects of an unholy alliance between corporate greed and the political suppression of First Amendment freedom of expression.

Jeremiah’s Lament
The passage from Jeremiah, chapter 8, into chapter 9, is one of the most anguished laments in Scripture. Sometimes called the weeping prophet, Jeremiah gives voice to both his own grief and God’s grief as the armies of Babylon camp at Jerusalem’s gates. The line between prophet and God blurs: is this Jeremiah speaking, or is it God? Either way, his poetry is saturated with pain. My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

These are words of missed opportunity, of doors closing, of a people who refused to turn back to God until it was too late. Jeremiah then utters the piercing question: Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?

Everyone in his audience knew what he meant. Gilead, in what is today northwest Jordan, was famous for its resin used in medicine. Healing was available. The balm existed. But the people would not take the cure.

This is the paradox of prophetic ministry: to speak God’s truth is also to carry God’s heartbreak. Jeremiah embodies both divine compassion and human solidarity. God’s anger is real, but underneath it lies a brokenhearted love for a wayward people.

Little wonder then that the image of a balm in Gilead became a lasting metaphor for Christ’s power to heal and restore. And little wonder, too, that this image found its way into the heart-rending songs of the enslaved African communities in America who sang out amidst back-breaking toil and unimaginable cruelty: There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. When every other cure had failed, when every earthly power failed them, the enslaved sang of Gilead’s balm, and in so doing, their song became the balm that could not be taken away from them.

Jeremiah is not only the prophet of tears. He is also a prophet of hope. Even after Jerusalem fell, even in exile, he urged the people to build houses, marry, raise families, and seek the peace of the city where they found themselves. Life must go on. Even in Babylon, there was still a future in the unfolding of God’s dream for them.

Jesus’ Parable
In Luke’s gospel we hear Jesus’ perplexing parable of the dishonest manager, who is suspected of fraud, and now fears dismissal. Too weak to dig, too proud to beg, he concocts a plan. He calls in his master’s debtors and reduces their bills. He knows that when he is out of work, they will not forget his generosity towards them when it mattered most.

We recognize this as not only a morally dubious move, but a fraud of mega proportions. We are astonished when the master, aka Jesus, commends him for his shrewdness and holds him up as an example to emulate. Can we be clear here about what Jesus is commending? It’s not the steward’s fraud, but his shrewd sense of urgency. The man knew his time was short. He acted decisively, creatively—even boldly.

The children of this age, Jesus says, are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. If the crooked can act so cleverly to avert disaster, why do the faithful so often drift through life oblivious to the eternal implications of their complacency?

And then comes the sting in the tail, for Jesus boldly states that you cannot serve God and Mammon. Note, not should not, but cannot! Only one master can win our allegiance.

Drawing the Threads Together
So what happens when we place Jeremiah’s lament and Jesus’ parable side by side?

Both press us to live with urgency. Jeremiah shows us the grief of a people’s missed opportunity. Jesus alerts us to the necessity of seizing the moment.
Both warn us against misplaced trust. Jeremiah laments a people who refused the available cure. Jesus unmasks the rival god: Mammon – power, wealth, possessions – offering the illusion of security.
Both reveal God’s brokenhearted love. Jeremiah weeps God’s tears. Jesus names God’s rival and calls us back to the path of discipleship.

Together, they ask us the question: Where do you place your trust? Which master’s tune do we dance to? As we approach this year’s stewardship renewal season, a variation of the question arises: Do we celebrate our wealth and security because they are ours to possess alone, or are they the means for living a generous life in the service of the common good? The key to Christian living is to not resist for too long an invitation to be generous!

Application
We live in a world where false balms abound. Healing is sought in consumption, political power, financial security, and through transactional relationships of transient self-interest. We convince ourselves: if only I had a little more, then I would feel safe, my cup would be filled, and my life would be complete. But the harvest passes, the summer ends, and the wound of insatiable longing remains unhealed.

As God’s people, we live in a world where Mammon whispers constantly in our ear. It tells us: money and possessions are the only true masters, power the only true balm. And so, Jesus’ words strike hard: You cannot serve God and Mammon.

But as Jeremiah would eventually counsel the Babylonian exiles, here’s the good news: we are not abandoned or left without hope. The balm is real. The healer is present. The master who loves us is faithful. The question is: will we miss our moment, like Jeremiah’s people? Or like the steward will we act with urgency, with a shrewd sense of timeliness – no longer in the interests of selfish gain, but with a desire to invest in the values and expectations of God’s kingdom; to pour ourselves into generous living that fosters our work for peace with justice tinged with mercy to come to our world?

The Call
Jeremiah wept for the wounds of his people. Jesus called his followers to choose their master. And here we are, standing between lament and parable, asking the same question:

Will we trust false cures or the true balm? Will we serve Mammon, or the living God? The harvest is still here. The balm is still offered. The choice of masters is still before us. Let us act with urgency.

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; there is a balm in Gilead, to heal the sin-sick soul.

Unfortunately, we must choose.

I want to begin with a historical footnote that you will recognize is not without contemporary significance. We note that the parables of Jesus recorded by Luke in chapters 13 -15 are all set in the context of disputes between Jesus and the Pharisees. Christians have always read too much into this. Argument has always been a characteristic of Jewish biblical interpretation. As the Talmud’s tells us – two Jews, three opinions – at least.

That Jesus and the Pharisees argued over Torah interpretation was normal. But by the time the Evangelists were constructing their gospel narratives from the oral traditions that had grown up around Jesus and his stories of the Kingdom, the memory of his intra-communal (within the same community) disputes with the Pharisees had become highly colored by the growth of a bitter animosity between emergent Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity – both competing for the upper hand amidst the ruins of the Second Temple.

Thus, in the highly intercommunal (between communities) tensions between the developing Rabbinic and Christian traditions of the mid- to late 1st century, Pharisees became easy scapegoats for the other– convenient historical reference points for one another in a hyperpolarized Jewish world.

Jesus, himself, may well have been a product of the Pharisee movement, which in the context of Second Temple Jewish religion was a progressive movement that brought a deeper spirituality to Torah interpretation. The Pharisee movement placed a greater emphasis on the teaching of the prophets than the rigidly conservative Temple-based Sadducees. A progressive movement, whose power base lay in the countryside, not the Jerusalem temple. Through the system of synagogues, the Pharisees ran a network of local schools, and it’s probably in one such that Jesus received his education. We should view Jesus, if not as a Pharisee himself, but as someone who was certainly part of the progressive movement. Yet, within the progressive movement, there were tensions. And to use a contemporary lens, we might see the Pharisees as the establishment Democratic-Liberal establishment with Jesus as the more politically radical Democratic-Socialist fringe. I know this comparison is somewhat controversial – but I use it to highlight the nature of the tensions between Jesus and his Pharisee interlocutors. For Jesus, the issue is always political – esp. in Luke, who presents Jesus continuing in the highly political tradition of the Hebrew prophets.

Between Luke’s time and ours, has anything really changed much? The names change, but the dynamic of polarized worldviews stays the same. That Luke depicts Pharisee criticism of Jesus with such intensity is really code for the ongoing conflict between those who have and those who have not; those who are in and those who are excluded. Jesus is invariably presented as being an advocate for the have-nots, the excluded, the overlooked. If we look at the situations in which Jesus and the Pharisees get into it, they all concern the refusal of a male-dominated religion to recognize the needs of the weak, the sick, and the vulnerable.

Whereas Matthew views Jesus as the embodiment of the Torah’s fulfilment, the new and improved Moses, Mark views Jesus from the perspective of God’s identification with those at the rough end of empire power – Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. Luke adds a new socio-political dimension by presenting Jesus’ concern for the outcast and the discriminated against – women and children, widows and orphans, and the sick, in particular. Which is why Luke’s presentation of Jesus has a very contemporary feel. It’s within this larger political context that Luke presents Jesus’ championing of women as social inferiors. This is the background against which the parable of the lost coin needs to be read.

In chapter 15, Luke offers a wealth of images in three parables original to him. We might best think of Jesus’ parables as stories of the kingdom. In these three parables – the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son- Luke presents Jesus’ concern with the theme of lost and found.

Today’s gospel stops short, giving us, mercifully, only the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. As we have other opportunities in the liturgical year to explore the parable of the lost sheep and that of the prodigal son, it’s the story of the lost coin that piques our uncontested curiosity today.

Set between the two male-dominated kingdom stories exploring the theme of lost and found, the parable of the lost coin has a woman as the central protagonist. Because of this, it can often be overlooked. Although generally referred to as the parable of the lost coin, it might better be referred to as the parable of the diligent woman. For it’s not the coin or its value but the woman’s concern and diligence in searching that lies at the heart of this story of the kingdom.

The diligence of the woman who turns her house upside down in what amounts to the spring-clean of spring-cleans in search of her lost coin speaks to us of dedication or diligence. To be diligent means to exert constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken. Diligence requires a persistent exertion of body or mind. In my experience, diligence is a key quality displayed by women and particularly suited to the arena of everyday life.

Diligence is not heroic, nor particularly dramatic. Because diligence is an unobtrusive quality, it’s often overlooked or taken for granted. Diligence involves an attention to the details, taking care in ordinary everyday circumstances. It’s a woman who is this parable’s protagonist because diligence is a characteristic of the feminine principle in the spiritual life. It’s a gentle competence in ordinary things. Being a feminine spiritual principle, it’s an unsung characteristic of discipleship.

In my experience of the politics of gender, diligence is a quality more often displayed by women than by men. Even in the modern world, where the gender divides of traditional societies have been greatly eroded, the parable of the diligent woman symbolizes women’s care for the details in lives of service, nurture, and relationship building. Whether this is in the traditional areas of service to others in the family or today by extension in caring professions that serve us in communities, women blaze the way and are largely unsung in doing so.

Gentle, yet determined competence strongly shapes women’s experience in ways that are less evident than the lives of men. Men are less focused on nurturing relationships beyond those of mutual advantage. Competitiveness, drive, and ambition are more culturally acceptable in men, and it comes as little surprise that in contemporary America, where diligence is undervalued, it’s men who are increasingly lonely and isolated, deprived of the intimacy of peer relationships to support their well-being.

The average attention span in today’s media-driven age is approximately 8.25 seconds, which is shorter than that of a goldfish. This decline is largely attributed to the rapid consumption of content on social media and digital platforms. None of us needs reminding that diligence is less than sexy in the clashing and discordant cacophony of multiple distractions. As a society, we’ve lost our appreciation for diligence in public service as well as private life, preferring instead the peacock display of self-serving egotism.

I have already noted that diligence is a quality of the spiritual life, and my specific observation from this parable can be applied to the challenges facing us as a spiritual community. As we once more embark on a new program year, we acknowledge Ministry Sunday today.

I believe the quality exemplified in the parable of the diligent woman expresses the persistent exertion of body and mind to recover what’s been lost. Diligence, the perseverance to do what needs to be done with the resolution of heart, mind, and body, is the quality we most need to mirror for one another.

In the politics of Jesus, as Luke presents him, God does not welcome us into the kingdom; God invites us into the kingdom. We are not to wait within our walls and smile sweetly to those who venture through the doors, although in many parish communities, to do this is to take a much-needed step in the right direction. God sends us out into our lives to display the quality of diligence in our lives among friends, neighbors, and colleagues; to become living signs that things which were cast down can be raised up, things which had grown old can be renewed, and most of all, in the diligent search that what has been lost and might once again be found.

Ordinary people who faithfully, diligently, and consistently do simple things that are right before God will bring forth extraordinary results. Elder David A. Bednar . Happy Ministry Sunday!

Month: September 2025

Lectionary Threads

Parable of the Diligent Woman Luke 15:1-10