Homily for Proper 24 Year C
October 19, 2025
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Richmond VA

Lessons appointed:

Jeremiah 31:27-34
Psalm 119:97-104
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Luke 18:1-8

I’ve been traveling this past week, up to Buffalo to visit my Mom for some leaf peeping and catching up during our favorite time of year.  Like anyone who travels to one destination often enough, I have a preferred route and that involves connecting in Detroit, which is a gem of an airport and just a quick hop over Lake Erie, as the birds fly.  This time, that involved an early morning flight followed by a three hour layover, perfect for several cups of coffee and sit-down breakfast.  I also indulged a favorite travel treat, which is visiting one of the airport bookstores and picking out a book I never heard of before to read just for fun.

I picked up a book with a cute cat on the cover that was called, What You are Looking For is in the Library written by Michiko Aoyama.  I won’t give any spoilers, but just to say that this book is written by and reflective of Japanese culture, with five stories about people who are directed to a library where they are greeted by the ordinary, extraordinary “magic” of finding exactly what they need with the help of a wise librarian who has an uncanny ability to hear their deeper question-behind-the-question of what they are looking for. It’s a hope filled book, well worth a read.  

While I was reading the first short story of a young women seeking some computer-savvy knowledge books to take her beyond her retail career, I chuckled when not only were there self-help books but a “bonus” book recommendation from the librarian, a Japanese children’s book about two field mice and their adventures.  The young woman remembers the book from her childhood and checks it out for nostalgic reasons. But as she reads it, she realizes that she remembered it differently than she did as a child and sees new lessons in it.  She sweetly re-enters the wonder and curiosity of her childhood to find different ways to look at the current challenges of her life. As she’s talking about this with some friends, she finds that each of them also remember the book but they remembered it differently as well…and each of the things they remembered add even more so to her now more adult understanding.  At one point, she says “How could I have forgotten the story when I’d read it so many times before?  Or misremembered, more like…my heart sings as I think I may have just hit on some truth!”

And that my friends, reminded me of this week’s scripture lessons, another book which I had also been reading through in the days leading up to my travel.  We read in the Epistle lesson:

As for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

I also remembered those verses from my childhood.  They were sometimes used for scolding, and often for backing up a literalist interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, as if the inspiration of  God could only be spoken directly in the King James Version of English (but I digress). Sometimes this Epistle is quoted as a justification for “reproof” and “correction” than I believe it was intended.  Or, in keeping with the rest of the passage, perhaps there are itchy ears who like the idea of control more than the actual Good News of righteousness, goodness, grace and love also contained in our holy scriptures to be written on our hearts.  

Inspired by my airport reading, I want to suggest a different intention possible also on the heart and mind of our Epistle-writer, inspired by God. Like the re-reading of the familiar stories of our childhood, we often think we know what the story all about.  But when we are directed there by a person, a set of Sunday scriptures, a chance encounter even…what if we went back and revisited those seemingly familiar words and stories anew and discovered truths we had never seen before.

I believe there are always treasures awaiting us in the Good News of Jesus Christ.  If I were to ask each of you to tell me a story from scripture that has meaning to you, we probably wouldn’t all have the same story come to mind.  And, even if we did have similarities amongst our favorite…the way we remember and recall the story as we retold it would not be exactly the same.  This is why Sunday after Sunday, I can prepare a homily and it won’t be just like any other preacher’s…or perhaps even like my own from a previous lectionary cycle! I can listen to other preachers using the same texts and hear things that hadn’t come into my mind as I am preparing.  This is evidence of God’s inspiration, the way in which the Holy Spirit works through the holy words of the scriptures and of all the members of the Body of Christ to continually bring us back to the stories, the people, the lessons, the poetry, the laments, the hopes of places and ages past that still resonate for us in particular ways and help us to know and confidently move forward in the ways that reveal God’s covenant of love to the whole world.  

Our Epistle lesson reminds us that the whole of the Holy Scriptures are for us, for the beloved of God.  In them are the stories, the parables, the characters, the instruction that will help us and help us help one another.  The meaning of these stories does not only come alive for us only in the quiet corners of our own minds, but through conversation with God and with one another.

If we take that same frame of reference and read the parable of today’s Gospel, we hear the story of how even a faithless, disrespecting leader eventually gives in to someone pleading their cause for justice.  In the times in which we live, it may seem impossible to us that hard hearts might open to justice; the illustration probably seemed impossible to the people of Jesus’ time under occupation by the Roman Emperor as well.  We are reminded that even with the recalcitrant and heart-hearted there is a path through.  How much more so with God?  

In today’s Gospel we are reminded that our loving God who has so much more goodwill, love and respect for God’s beloved creation than any ruler on this earth is hearing our cries for justice.  That doesn’t mean that we get exactly what we want, or that justice suddenly appears overnight.  But as we sang in our sequence hymn, consider the possibility that we are all called to be like the woman who bravely demands justice. In taking up our pleas to God and joining with one another in those pleas for justice in this world, our voices come together and we begin to participate together in the unfolding of God’s justice in this world.  

And if there’s anyone I’d like to join with to participate in the cause of God’s justice, it is the good people of St. Mark’s who have been living out that justice on earth, as it is in heaven, for so very many years.

In this season where we reflect on God’s stewardship of our lives, and our stewardship of the gifts with which God has entrusted us, we are reminded that sharing the stories of our faith with one another is at the core of who we are.  Love is our tradition, because God who is Love unites us, connects us, empowers us, enlivens us.  Love flows through Zoom streams and children’s programs.  Love flows from the Mountain at Shrinemont where some of us are worshipping today here to those of us on Arthur Ashe Boulevard keeping the faith at home.  I know that love flows uphill, too, from this parish near the James River and all the way up to Orkney Springs to those on the parish retreat.  And you know what?  It flows through all of the parishes, towns, highways and backroads between those places, too.  I feel that love on the Sunday mornings where I’m traveling around the Diocese, and I’m wrapping in back to you, too. That love connects us in a way that allows a vision of justice to keep growing stronger, no matter how many challenges it may face.  And that love and justice comes to us through our study, our conversation, our lives of sharing.  It keeps growing as we talk, as we study, as we worship and learn together.

So, I’ll offer you a little challenge, St. Mark’s.  Don’t just take my word for it.  Whether it’s today at coffee hour or sometime during this season of stewardship and renewal, share your favorite story from scripture with a friend at St. Mark’s and ask someone to share theirs.  Share your favorite story of God’s working in your life, and ask someone to share theirs. Our lives of faith are demonstrations of God’s love and that doesn’t stop at the doors of this parish.  The love we experience here overflows to the world that needs it, our cries for justice received by God who cares deeply for us, and for all of God’s creation. 

Share that Good News today.