This sermon was preached at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fairfield, CT on October 22, 2023. Good morning, St. Paul’s. First and foremost, I want to say ‘thank you’ to you and to Fr. Curtis for this invitation to preach and speak today. It is always an honor and joy to get to go and be with a community of Episcopalians and share - or, rather, try to share - a word of Good News, particularly in the midst of challenging days. And, to be sure, these are very challenging days. If you are at all like me, you probably spent this past week listening to news of violence and war. You may have listened to first-person accounts of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel, or interviews with Palestinian civilians trying to escape Gaza, and you likely saw images and videos of violence and destruction that are hard to forget. Just yesterday, for instance, as I was packing for this visit, I listened to an interview with an Israeli mother desperately searching for her 23 year old son / and I recalled t...
Reflections on the role and history of money in Christianity from the first to the fifth centuries