Sunday Reflection – October 5, 2025

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Have pity on me

Luke 17 5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Make our faith stronger!”

6 Jesus replied:

If you had faith no bigger than a tiny mustard seed, you could tell this mulberry tree to pull itself up, roots and all, and to plant itself in the ocean. And it would!

7 If your servant comes in from plowing or from taking care of the sheep, would you say, “Welcome! Come on in and have something to eat”? 8 No, you wouldn’t say that. You would say, “Prepare me something to eat. Get ready to serve me, so I can have my meal. Then later on you can eat and drink.” 9 Servants don’t deserve special thanks for doing what they are supposed to do. 10 And that’s how it should be with you. When you’ve done all you should, then say, “We are merely servants, and we have simply done our duty.”

Kids Korner: Growing our faith (October 5th)

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Read Luke 17:5-10 with your family.

In today’s story those closest to Jesus asked him to grow their faith bigger. The thing is Jesus cannot grow our faith, only we can do that through our choice to believe.

Jesus closest followers did not understand that and thought Jesus could help them have bigger faith, more faith.

Like Jesus did so often, he did not answer the question or request directly, but instead he pointed them in a different direction. Jesus talked about the mustard seed – the smallest planting seed they knew about in Jesus’ time. Jesus told them if they had faith as big as something that small, they could do wonderful things.

Through the parable of the mustard seed Jesus told his followers that they have a job to do and they have already started doing it. However, they would not be rewarded for just starting the job, they had to finish it. And even when they finished it, why should they look for a reward, especially when they only did the simple part of the job and did not put effort into it.

Jesus knew that faith was something that would only come when his followers put effort into believing in God, more than they were already doing.

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Why ‘barefoot’ and ‘evangelist’?

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I often get questions about why I chose the title Barefoot Evangelist for my website. The questions are mostly about the ‘evangelist’ part, if we are being honest.

The ‘barefoot’ is pretty straight forward. I prefer preaching in my bare feet, and once overheard a person in a church I preached at referring to me saying “you know, the one who preaches barefoot”. I liked it, and it was honest. There were already about eight “barefoot preachers” on social media at the time – most from Canada, interestingly enough – so I went with something else.

Evangelist…

I have had people not want to visit my website because they thought ‘evangelist’ automatically meant it was narrow minded, rightwing, conservative, and spoke of a doctrine of hate. A friend of mine said she encountered that when she recommended my website, and she quickly corrected their assumption. To the best of my knowledge that person listened, watched, and signed up to follow shortly afterwards.

Evangelist, evangelical, and evangelism are Christian words. It is unfortunate that these days they are associated with only one way of behaving that has nothing to do with the way people expect Jesus’ followers to act. Some who have never experienced people who are genuine Jesus followers assume that all Christians fall into that category, and that is both unfortunate and inaccurate.

There are many communities calling themselves Evangelical, and use the words evangelical and evangelism, who understand the historic meaning and therefore are using the word accurately.

Simply put, it means “Tellers of the story of Jesus” or “Tellers of the Good News”. That’s it.

Traditionally the assumed writers of the four Gospels have been referred to as Evangelists. Those who were travelling missionaries in the earliest days were also known as ‘evangelists’ because the task they took up was to share the story of Jesus and encourage people to follow Jesus’ teachings. The word appears in the Bible associated with certain people. In Acts 21:8 it is associated with a man named Phillip. In Ephesians 4:11, we read that with Ascension the Holy Spirit gave the gift of being an evangelist to some people. And in 2 Timothy 4:5, the writer told people to carry on with the work of being an evangelist even when the world was more interested in other teaching that ‘suited their own desires’.

To tell the story of Jesus makes us evangelists. Some of us do it casually, some of us more formally. But all of us who share the Good News of Jesus are by default, Evangelists.

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.

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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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