“You are the light of the world. … [L]et your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”[1]
Last week, I read this story on Facebook:
I own a small bakery. Business has been slow. Rent is up. I was thinking about closing. Last Friday, a teenager came in. He looked nervous. He counted out change for a cookie. He was short 50 cents. “It’s okay,” I said. “Take it.” He ate it at a table, looking at his math homework. I walked over. “Quadratic equations?” He nodded. “I don’t get it.” I sat down and helped him for 20 minutes. He got it. He left smiling. The next day, he came back with two friends. They bought cookies. The day after that, five kids came. Apparently, he told the school, “The lady at the bakery helps with homework.” Now, my bakery is the after-school hang-out spot. It’s loud. It’s messy. There are backpacks everywhere, Yesterday, I found a note in the tip jar. It was wrapped around a $20 bill. “Thanks for helping my son pass math. A Mom.” I’m not closing the bakery. I think I finally found my purpose. It’s not cookies. It’s community.
This baker is a light shining before others. I think that both Jesus and the prophet Isaiah would have approved of this baker.
Do you all know what a tort is? Tort … T-O-R-T … no E on the end; I’m not talking about those wonderful little German or Austrian pastries. A tort is a civil wrong that causes harm to another person, resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the wrong. You leave a puddle of milk on the floor of your grocery store knowing it’s there, then someone slips in it and injures themselves: you have committed a tort. You speed through a stop sign, collide with another car, and injure the driver: you’ve not only broken the law, you’ve committed a tort.
I understand that St. Andrew’s Parish is, today, beginning its annual stewardship campaign, so I suppose it’s appropriate that we heard the story of Jesus being confronted by the wealthy man who wants to inherit eternal life in today’s Gospel reading from Mark. This tale must have been an important one to the earliest Christians, because we find it in all three of the Synoptic Gospels. Mark tells us only that the man is wealthy; Matthew adds that he is young; and Luke informs us that he is a ruler of some sort. But none of those details really changes the basic nature of the encounter: a potential disciple comes to Jesus seeking guidance and Jesus tells him that he must give up everything he possesses – “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor….”
Again this week as last, our first reading today is from the First Book of Kings and like last week’s, it is a prayer spoken by King Solomon. Last week, it was a private prayer spoken in a dream late at night. Today, it is a public prayer. As long as it was, this reading is just a small part of the dedicatory prayer that Solomon offered when the Temple was finished and consecrated. In it, Solomon asks an important question, “[W]ill God indeed dwell on the earth?”
What does it mean to say “Jesus is Lord”? The question arises because of today’s dialog between Jesus and some of the Pharisees about the relative importance of the Commandments. Jesus responds to a lawyer’s question about the greatest commandment and then follows his response with a question about the lordship of the Messiah, the anticipated “Son of David.” 
This is the second of three Sundays during which our lessons from the Gospel according to Matthew tell the story of an encounter between Jesus and the temple authorities. Jesus has come into Jerusalem, entered the Temple and had a somewhat violent confrontation with “the money changers and … those who sold doves,”
Heavenly Father,
This is an old and familiar story, a comfortable story if you will … the parable of the sower.
A clergy colleague suggested recently that this Sunday’s epistle reading
