We have reasons to give thanks today; we have reasons to celebrate life. We have been given a divine gift, a treasure we have not earned by our own merits but one that has been handed down, inherited from all those who have come before us, who have known and loved God, who have believed and lived by their beliefs, who have trusted God’s saving grace even against the most overwhelming odds.

Friends, sometimes reading the gospels can do surprising things to you. It can move you in surprising ways, it can form surprising connections in your heart. And sometimes, these ancient stories don’t lead straight to spiritual illumination, but instead to something unexpected, which is what happened to me this week. Because the thing that sprung to my mind first when reading this passage was the decor in my high school’s weight room, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Yeah, really.

If the parable in today’s gospel tells us anything, it is that it is impossible to reduce the Bible to some kind of rational, domesticated manual on how to be a “good person.” Parables in general tend to make our heads swim, but the parable of the “dishonest manager” in particular defies any attempt to garner a simple, straightforward meaning out of it. As disconcerting as that may be, however, this is as it should be. The teachings of Jesus, and the gospels that convey that teaching, are not meant to soothe and instruct so much as they are invitations into the deep, dark waters of the mysteries of the Holy One.

In April of 2013, the New York medical examiner’s office announced that it would resume sifting the wreckage of the World Trade Center for the remains of those who died in the bombing of September 11, 2001. The search for human remains had essentially been suspended since 2010. After years of relentless digging, sifting, and sorting, what was left to find? Of the more than twenty-seven hundred persons killed on that day, there are still more than 1,100 persons who have not been found. The families of more than a thousand of the dead are still, either literally or figuratively, searching for their loved ones.

One of my students from BU is taking the fall semester off – she is going to walk the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage route in Europe that ends at the tomb of St. James the Greater in Santiago de Compostela, on the northwest coast of Spain. The route, it is said, is not itself difficult, but it is long, especially for modern-day humans who are not accustomed to walking ten, twenty, or even thirty miles in one day. The most popular route is five hundred miles long, so it is not undertaken lightly.

The first thing I noticed in the readings for today brought an echo of a familiar voice – perhaps you heard it too. I read the last line of the epistle, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have…” and thought “Oh that’s where that comes from!!” It is of course the sentence that our rector Jeff just recently moved to Connecticut, used at every offertory I remember at St. Paul’s – I could even hear his voice saying it. What a lovely memory and connection – a reminder, with joy, of past gatherings of this community in praise and worship of God.