9th Sunday after Trinity + 1 Corinthians 10:6-13 and Luke 16:1-9
Grace and Peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Today’s appointed readings present us with examples of carelessness and indifference and where those lead. In the epistle lesson, St. Paul sets the ancient Israelites before the Corinthian Christians. The Corinthians, like the ancient Israelites, had become overly confident in their status as sons of God. Like Israel, they imagined that nothing could disqualify them this special status that God had conferred upon them. So St. Paul has to burst this bubble. In the wilderness, in between their redemption from Egypt and their entrance into the Promised Land, some become idolaters. At the base of Mount Sinai, while Moses was delayed, the people “ sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play ,” the very words of Exodus 32 when Israel forsook the true God and made a counterfeit God in the form of a golden calf. Three thousand men died as a result of their idolatry. Later in the wilderness they were tempt...