We have staff meetings every Tuesday morning. Similar to our wardens/clergy meeting on Wednesday mornings, we begin with prayer and bible study. This past week we were to study the text for today from the 20^th chapter of Matthew...with news of the Dow Jones Average having plunged 500 points hovering in the air, reminding us of the realities of economic vulnerability.  Internally I was wondering which news would be the gospel-voice for the morning...Jesus or the Dow? The staff and I found ourselves initially stumped by what we found in Matthew, and what we thought it said about God's economy and our understanding of the church and stewardship.  Jesus, to put it bluntly, turns upside-down our understanding of what is just in the economy of God.

"Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." This was Jesus' promise to those who first heard him preach. And it's God's promise to us today - that when we gather, not to advance our own needs and desires, but in response to God's love for us in Christ, Jesus takes flesh again here among us once more, in our life together as God's people....This morning's Gospel lesson is part of the 18th chapter of Matthew, which takes great pains to sort out the principals for life together in the sort of Christian community we're trying to build stronger here at St. Thomas' Parish. And so it's fitting that following an extended Sabbath, I get to raise up for us the very thing I've missed the most while I was away, the quality of Christian life together in the name of Jesus!

Happy Labor Day Weekend. For what do we labor? For whom do we labor? Taking out the obvious financial aspects of those questions, these two questions have stuck with me since Monday when I first read this week's Gospel. This is a complicated Gospel selection with: Jesus making his first prediction of his torture, death and resurrection; Peter objecting and being put in his place by Jesus; Jesus describing what it means to be a disciple and the cost of discipleship; and Jesus throws in some eschatology (end times) theology to boot! This is a dense and complicated Gospel.