Good Evening, friends.
Ecclesiastes has been giving us rather good advice this week. Enjoy your bread. Have some wine. Make an effort before dinner. Considering how much time religious people can spend making one another miserable, it is refreshing to open the Bible and find someone recommending an enjoyable evening.
That conversation belongs alongside the harder one we’ve been having about human dignity. We are quick to measure people by what they produce, whether we agree with them, or how much sympathy their circumstances inspire. Then we turn the measuring stick on ourselves. Have I done enough to deserve a rest? Am I still useful? Can I really enjoy myself with everything going on? Faith gives us good reasons to question the terms of that examination.
Below, I’ve gathered the Sunday homily, our reflection on Newman’s prayer, and the conversation with Ecclesiastes. If you’ve recently joined us, welcome. This is a fair introduction to the conversations we have here. Bring your questions, and please don’t feel you have to catch up on everything before joining in.
Help me keep this teaching open
On Tuesday evening, we’ll gather to read the Sermon on the Mount together. Someone who has studied Scripture for decades can join the same conversation as someone opening a Bible for the first time. Neither will be asked whether they can afford admission. I want us to keep being able to do that.
Preparing those studies, writing these reflections, and responding to the people who reach out are the work of this ministry. It takes time, and the research and production tools have bills attached. We need more readers to help carry those costs. If this work has become part of your spiritual life and you have room in your budget, please become a paid subscriber today. An annual subscription gives me resources up front to prepare and fund the work ahead; monthly support helps keep it going steadily.
If money is tight, please keep coming without guilt. Your prayers, thoughtful responses, and the friends you introduce to this community are gifts too.
This Week from Message From the Margins
You Can Never Be Thrown Away
Someone’s treatment of you can do terrible harm without becoming a reliable measure of your worth. Beginning with a line from Saint John Henry Newman, this essay follows that promise into forgiveness, accountability, and our responsibility toward people whose humanity we find harder to defend. If you read only one thing from this week, I’d start here. Pay particular attention to the section about visiting a prisoner. Jesus leaves out several qualifications we might have thought to add.
Are We Allowed to Enjoy Our Lives?
Do we have to wait until everyone we love is well and the headlines improve before we can enjoy anything? Ecclesiastes has spent a great deal of time considering injustice, death, and the limits of human control. His advice about enjoying life comes with his eyes open. We meet this difficult, funny biblical companion and explore how gratitude can help us receive a good afternoon without demanding that it solve tomorrow.
Whose Image Do We Bear?
Before I was a priest, I waited tables in Manhattan, and a pocket full of tips could make a very long day feel worthwhile. Sunday’s homily begins there before returning to Jesus’ question about Caesar’s coin. We know how to calculate what we’ve earned and what we owe. What happens when we consider the person doing the earning, including all the care and faithfulness that never appears on a pay stub?
From the Archives
For another encounter with the limits we place on our concern, revisit Have You Ever Noticed This in the Good Samaritan?! Pay attention to the question Jesus asks at the end. It changes the conversation the lawyer thought they were having, and gives us practice in reading a familiar passage again.
The Real Reason Jesus Told Us to Care for the Poor takes this week’s discussion of dignity into the circumstances that restrict a person’s choices. It asks what Christian care requires beyond responding to the harm once it has happened.
A Podcast for the Weekend
If Tuesday’s reflection left you wanting more, try The Stone Which the Builders Rejected. We begin with a disabled man summoned by the king who has replaced his grandfather. He has reason to be apprehensive. His story opens a journey through the lives of people others have dismissed, and the gifts we miss when we do the dismissing.
New to the podcast? How Did the Bible Become the Bible? is another place to begin, especially if you’ve wondered how these particular books reached us.
In the Week Ahead
On Tuesday, October 27, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, join me for our live Bible study, “The Sermon on the Mount Like You’ve Never Heard It Before.” We’ll consider what Jesus’ words would have sounded like to people living under Roman rule, with families to feed and suffering to make sense of. Free and paid subscribers are welcome. If those words have become so familiar that you scarcely hear them anymore, come read them with us.
I’m also preparing A Walk With Jesus of Nazareth, beginning November 29. If you’d like to help shape that thirty-day journey while it’s being built, join the free Founding Community here. I’d love to know which questions about Jesus you’ve always wanted time to explore.
Let Us Pray
Lord Jesus, when we have begun to judge ourselves by what we accomplish, help us receive the love You have already given us. Teach us to recognize Your image in the neighbor who needs care and in the person we would rather dismiss. Keep our concern for the world faithful, and help us enjoy the goodness You place within our reach. May we share it generously.
Amen.
May God bless your weekend, refresh you where you are tired, and give you the pleasure of good company. Thank you for spending part of your week with me.
Your Brother in Christ,
And Before You Go…
How may we pray for you this weekend? Tell us as much or as little as you wish, including simply, “Please pray for me.” Other readers can see the comments, so keep anything sensitive private. And as you read one another’s requests, please remember the person behind each one in your prayers.
Father, hear the prayers of this community, including the fears and hopes we cannot yet put into words. Give strength to those who need to get through today, help to those who feel forgotten, and grace to receive one another with the care You show us. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.