Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

Proper 20C

  • Bad Economics

    Jesus keeps teaching us about the limits of transactional thinking — and the life-giving beauty of sacrifice in his way of love.

  • A look at the gaps in the lectionary. This week: the gap between Proper 19C and Proper 20C. The text: Luke 15:11-32. You know this story. Even if you’ve never read it, you know it. It’s in your bones and in your imagination. Artists have mused with it. Writers have cribbed from it. Filmmakers have…

  • There’s a moment at the end of a night when the sounds have disappeared and conversations fade. You look around and see the stragglers are all that’s left of the party. Often ones who helped set up or planned to help clean up. Ones who wait until everyone else is gone so that the real conversation can…

  • a homily for Proper 20C Text: Luke 16:1-13 A strange little story Jesus is a master storyteller. He’s pulled off a sequence of three parables: a kind of meditation on a common theme: that culminate with the most beloved parable of them all, what we call the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It is a…

  •   In this parable about a manager and his master (Luke 16:1-13), we have one of the most resented parables in gospels. The reason for this is clear. It is a shockingly obnoxious story about deception that seems to say things about GOD we don’t like. Or worse, it leads good people to make ridiculous…