Author: thebarefootevangelist

Sunday Reflection – September 28, 2025

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Have pity on me

Luke 16 19 There was once a rich man who wore expensive clothes and every day ate the best food. 20 But a poor beggar named Lazarus was brought to the gate of the rich man’s house. 21 He was happy just to eat the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. His body was covered with sores, and dogs kept coming up to lick them. 22  The poor man died, and angels took him to the place of honor next to Abraham.[d]

The rich man also died and was buried. 23  He went to hell and was suffering terribly. When he looked up and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side, 24 he said to Abraham, “Have pity on me! Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and touch my tongue. I’m suffering terribly in this fire.”

25 Abraham answered, “My friend, remember that while you lived, you had everything good, and Lazarus had everything bad. Now he is happy, and you are in pain. 26 And besides, there is a deep ditch between us, and no one from either side can cross over.”

27 But the rich man said, “Abraham, then please send Lazarus to my father’s home. 28 Let him warn my five brothers, so they won’t come to this horrible place.”

29 Abraham answered, “Your brothers can read what Moses and the prophets wrote. They should pay attention to that.”

30 Then the rich man said, “No, that’s not enough! If only someone from the dead would go to them, they would listen and turn to God.”

31 So Abraham said, “If they won’t pay attention to Moses and the prophets, they won’t listen even to someone who comes back from the dead.”

Kids Korner: Tell my siblings to be good (September 28th)

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Read Luke 16:19-31 with your family.

Some stories are hard to understand, but not this one.

When Jesus told stories he often exaggerated the setting and people to make it entertaining before he showed them the point. In this one Jesus makes the rich man richer than anyone could imagine, and Lazarus with nothing. So when they die (and this is not a story about like after death, this is a story about using money properly), they reverse their places. Suddenly the rich man loses everything, and Lazarus has the best place to be imaginable – with Abraham.

The people who heard this story would know several things.

First, that rich people were supposed to help poor people, so the rich man was wrong in his choices.

Second, that the best place to be in the after life was with Abraham.

And third, because it is interesting, they believed dog saliva healed cuts and made people feel better.

Jesus was telling those listening to his story that they were supposed to help each other so no one was so poor or so rich that they lived in extreme poverty or wealth. There was enough for everyone to share.

Lazarus and Rich Man Word SearchDownload
Lazaus and rich man Colouring PageDownload

Jesus and transgender folks

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There have been some very disturbing things coming out of various countries around the world aimed at transgender folks. They have always been a vulnerable community, and by all indications it is getting worse.

As an historian I am disturbed by how much our current century is paralleling the 20th century. In the 1920’s there were large queer communities in both Paris and Berlin, as well as other places in Europe, and they were some of the first targeted by the Nazis after political opponents were rounded up and put in the early versions of German concentration camps. Those communities, their literature, and medical advancements for the queer community were all destroyed in the process.

One hundred years later, those of us watching the rhetoric come out of the United States, and the denial of transgender identity in the United Kingdom should be worried. It is history repeating itself, and if cisgender folks stay silent and don’t stand up for the vulnerable in this community, history will keep repeating itself.

An argument that is continuously raised by the Christian right is that trans folks are not acceptable to God and that Jesus was against trans folks.

The only response we can give to that is FALSE.

While modern medical knowledge is part of a wider conversation on observable transgender identity in our modern era, it is naive to think transgender folks are only a phenomena of the 20th and 21st century. People do not change that much.

The fact that the Gospels, and the Bible as a whole, are silent on the conversation of queer folk is all we really need to know to realize for the early Christian community – and by extension the Hebrew community of our origin – did not have a problem with queer folks.

The counter argument often offered at that point is there were no queer folks around at the time. Another argument we can mark at FALSE.

All we have to do is look at the artwork of Pompeii, a community destroyed by a volcanic eruption just ten years after the destruction of the Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem, and thus preserved in a moment in time, to know queer folks have always been a part of society.

I am not a Queer historian, but I am a Christian historian, and there is absolutely no reason to even consider that Jesus was not accepting of everyone.

A considerable number of Christians stood against the destruction of the Nazis. Yes, some of them died, but they still stood for what was right.

We owe everyone in our society as well as those who came before us, and those who will come after us, the honesty of our faith in standing for the vulnerable and not allowing history to repeat.

THAT is what Jesus would do!

Sunday Reflection – September 21, 2025

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God or Money

Luke 16 Jesus said to his disciples:

A rich man once had a manager to take care of his business. But he was told that his manager was wasting money. 2 So the rich man called him in and said, “What is this I hear about you? Tell me what you have done! You are no longer going to work for me.”

3 The manager said to himself, “What shall I do now that my master is going to fire me? I can’t dig ditches, and I’m ashamed to beg. 4 I know what I’ll do, so that people will welcome me into their homes after I’ve lost my job.”

5 Then one by one he called in the people who were in debt to his master. He asked the first one, “How much do you owe my master?”

6 “A hundred barrels of olive oil,” the man answered.

So the manager said, “Take your bill and sit down and quickly write ‘50.’ ”

7 The manager asked someone else who was in debt to his master, “How much do you owe?”

“A thousand sacks of wheat,” the man replied.

The manager said, “Take your bill and write ‘800.’ ”

8 The master praised his dishonest manager for looking out for himself so well. That’s how it is! The people of this world look out for themselves better than the people who belong to the light.

9  My disciples, I tell you to use wicked wealth to make friends for yourselves. Then when it is gone, you will be welcomed into an eternal home. 10 Anyone who can be trusted in little matters can also be trusted in important matters. But anyone who is dishonest in little matters will be dishonest in important matters. 11 If you cannot be trusted with this wicked wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? 12 And if you cannot be trusted with what belongs to someone else, who will give you something that will be your own? 13  You cannot be the slave of two masters. You will like one more than the other or be more loyal to one than to the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Kids Korner: Chose between God or Money (September 21st)

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Read Luke 16:1-13 with your family.

Sometimes stories we read in the Bible can be really confusing. This is the first clue that something was happening in the days of Jesus and the writers of the Bible that we do not understand in our modern world, so we have to dig deeper to figure out what the story means.

This story was always called The Dishonest Servant in English Bibles, so right away we are supposed to think the servant is bad and the master is good, but that is not what we are told by Jesus in the end. We have to look at it a different way.

These are what the words meant: For Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, the “Children of the Light” were his disciples, his followers, and the “Children of this age” were everyone else. The same word used for squandering or giving away, was used in other places for sowing seeds on the ground. And the word for shrewd is also the word for wise.

So the conclusion we have to come to is that this was not a bad servant and a good master, but rather when the servant was giving money to people helping them build their business, the master did not know about it. Some people got jealous and gossiped to the master that the servant was doing a bad thing (he was not), so the master thought he had no choice but to fire the servant.

In fear of being fired, the servant went to all the people who borrowed money and told them to lower the amount so it would look like he had not given as much money. The master then saw the lower limits and how much good the money had done, and told the servant that he was shrewd/smart. In the end the master did not fire the servant.

Jesus tells us to be smart like this servant, understand the importance of what the world values and use it to make things better, but do not become focused on those things. We can only worship God or money, but not both. Money is to be used wisely, and Jesus understood it was important in society, but God is where we should put our trust and energy.

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God or money colouring pageDownload

How can we ‘pray without ceasing’?

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The first time I remember hearing the injunction to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), I thought it was the strangest thing ever. How can you do that? We have lives that need living, after all.

Admittedly I was a teenager at the time, and my imagination was still developing.

We do tend to take things literally, at least when we first hear something from the Bible. We have been conditioned that way through Sunday School and our cultural understanding of Christianity. It is one of our first reactions, so we need to wait for our second reaction before we make a move.

Pray unceasingly… it is possible. We don’t have to change our lives to do it though, just change how we understand prayer.

When many of us think about prayer, we think about long worded petitions to God, as we hold a certain prayer position that often includes our heads bowed, eyes closed, and hands pressed together. But prayer is so much more.

Walking prayers, like walking meditations, are things we do all the time, and we probably don’t even realizing it. Thoughts flow through our minds and get some attention before they flow out again. Those are prayer.

Hearing sirens and hoping no one is seriously hurt, is prayer.

Feeling joy at the wind blowing our hair and the sunshine on our face, is prayer.

Desperation to get out of a scary or abusive situation, is prayer.

Every moment of every day, every thought and emotion, every reaction or observation… those are all prayers.

We do not need to be long winded when spending time with God. Even in the Gospels Jesus says “when you pray, pray like this”. He did not say ‘pray this prayer’, as the church has reported for the last 2000 years. He said pray LIKE this.

Pray for what is around you, your concerns, your joys, your guilt, your awareness.

Pray with your heart, your soul, and your mind.

Pray with words and emotions and intentions.

Pray without ceasing, because every moment is an opportunity to be in God’s presence.

Sunday Reflection – September 14, 2025

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(There seems to be a problem with this site and YouTube videos. If by the time you are viewing this the problem has continued, you can access the reflection video at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6quhgUShFlI)

Lost Things

Luke 15 Tax collectors and sinners were all crowding around to listen to Jesus. 2 So the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law of Moses started grumbling, “This man is friendly with sinners. He even eats with them.”

3 Then Jesus told them this story:

4 If any of you has 100 sheep, and one of them gets lost, what will you do? Won’t you leave the 99 in the field and go look for the lost sheep until you find it? 5 And when you find it, you will be so glad that you will put it on your shoulder 6 and carry it home. Then you will call in your friends and neighbors and say, “Let’s celebrate! I’ve found my lost sheep.”

7 Jesus said, “In the same way there is more happiness in heaven because of one sinner who turns to God than over 99 good people who don’t need to.”

8 Jesus told the people another story:

What will a woman do if she has ten silver coins and loses one of them? Won’t she light a lamp, sweep the floor, and look carefully until she finds it? 9 Then she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, “Let’s celebrate! I’ve found the coin I lost.”

10 Jesus said, “In the same way God’s angels are happy when even one person turns to him.”

Kids Korner: Lost Things (September 14th)

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Read Luke 15:1-10 with your family.

We have had a lot of hard and heavy things to talk about in the stories these past few weeks. This week, however, we have a nicer story. Something that reminds us how much God loves us.

This week we are reading the stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin. The Gospel of Luke often does this, pairs a story about a man and a story about a woman, so we can really see what Jesus is trying to teach us.

Jesus is telling us that God loves us, no matter what. And if we, or anyone really, starts thinking God does not matter or does not care, God shows that is not true. God will leave all the rest of the people alone just to go after the one who is lost.

That is a great promise. No one is ever forgotten.

Were there white people in the Bible?

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I am sure by now most have seen the meme going around that declares there were no white people in the Bible and then suggest everyone waits while the person reading it gets with the message.

I respect the intent and the point being made. It is a direct rebuttal to “white Jesus”, that is not factually accurate in any way, shape or form.

However…

This is where as a Christian historian I have to pull the plug. I try to stay away from terms and arguments like “always” and “never” unless it is extreme circumstances, as they usually get a person in trouble. It sets up a dynamic that demands analysis, and so let’s analyse.

In this case, the meme is making a statement that is factually unprovable. There were thousands of people involved in the Bible as writers, characters, and editors. The Bible itself was composed orally for centuries before it was put into written form. Over that period more than a dozen cultures interacted, clashed, fought wars, invaded and expelled the people who had once lived in that territory. Bottom line: people moved around. This is before we take into account trade routes and caravans moving throughout Europe, Asia and Africa.

By the time Paul started writing his letters c. 50 CE, Rome had expanded to modern day Germany, Austria, Belgium, England, and all of Europe from south and west of those points. These people integrated into all levels of Roman society. Some Roman troops brought families with them wherever they were sent, and some of those family members stayed to form relationships with the local population. It was also the practice of Rome to move around military and government officials so no one would be fighting their own people.

So, were their white people in the Bible? Probably. But we have no idea who as none of this is provable. The vast majority, including Jesus, were Semitic peoples. That cannot be disputed. But to say absolutely that there were no white people in the Bible? No, we cannot do that with any credibility.