A baby and a rich, powerful man: what is it that leads Jesus to welcome one and send the other away?
Hearts are beautiful fragile things - easily broken and often in pain. Everything in pain cries out for relief, and the heart is no exception. As Emily Dickinson wrote: The Heart asks Pleasure – first –And then – Excuse from Pain –And then – those little AnodynesThat deaden suffering Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.
To be saved is to be fully restored to a state of flourishing, where we experience peace with people, peace with creation and peace with God. The only one of those ten cleansed people to arrive at this place of flourishing is the Samaritan – the one with the uncertain pedigree, the incomplete scriptures, the incorrect theology. The reject of rejects.
We have no shortage of stories about saints and animals. There are so many that we have to conclude that either there may be some truth to those stories OR, at the very least, there is a human intuition that spiritual maturity is connected with having a deep affinity with animals. When humans reflect on how we are at our best, when we think about what we were created to be, and we imagine how we wish we could be, the human imagination takes us into the realm of deeper, clearer capacity to communicate with animals and with all of creation. (Available from 4 October 2025)
“You need to make the right friends if you want to get ahead in life.” “Correct”, says Jesus, “but you might be wrong about who those right friends are!”
Rev Pam Hynd's sermon for Pentecost 15
Rev Pam Hynd's sermon for 14th Sunday after Pentecost - Season of Creation
A woman whose back has been bent and stiff for eighteen years; A man whose heart has been bent and stiff for - who knows how long? Jesus came to bring freedom and healing to them both. But only one of them accepts.
Giving away money, power or platform to people who need them more is an investment in God’s Kingdom that changes our hearts and sets our attention more and more on that which we hope for but don’t yet see. And Jesus says we can do that without fear because it is God’s pleasure to give us the Kingdom. We don’t have to worry. We don’t have to exhaust ourselves trying to force God’s hand. God wants to do this for us and in us.