Every month, Connections offers stories, images, reflections and meditations relating to the themes of each Sunday’s readings.  Material comes from the evening news and the every day, from the stage and screen, from the music world and the marketplace – all designed to help homilists “connect” the world of Monday through Saturday with the Gospel proclaimed on Sunday.

To give you an idea of what Connections is all about, we’ve assembled the following sampling of stories, meditations and 'connecting' reflections from recent issues of Connections:

23rd Sunday of the Year [C] / 13th Sunday after Pentecost [Prop. 18C] – September 7, 2025.
Exaltation of the Holy Cross – September 14, 2025.
25th Sunday of the Year [C] / 15th Sunday after Pentecost [Prop. 20C] – September 21, 2025.
26th Sunday of the Year [C] / 16th Sunday after Pentecost [Prop. 21C] – September 28, 2025.

27th Sunday of the Year C / 17th Sunday after Pentecost C [Prop. 22C] – October 5, 2025.
28th Sunday of the Year C /18th Sunday after Pentecost C [Prop. 23C] – October 12, 2025.
29th Sunday of the Year C / 19th Sunday after Pentecost C [Prop. 24C] – October 19, 2025.
30th Sunday of the Year C / 20th Sunday after Pentecost C [Prop. 25C] – October 26, 2025.

Please note that, in every issue of Connections, we offer TWO stories/meditations for each Sunday’s Gospel.

After reviewing this “electronic sampler,” if you’d like information on subscribing – or receiving the next complete issue of Connections – CLICK HERE for subscription information and an order form.

Enjoy!         

23rd Sunday of the Year [C] / 13th Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 18C]

The parables of the tower and the king preparing for war:  “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple . . . Anyone who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”
Luke 14: 25-33

The girl in the photograph

It was the iconic photograph of the Vietnamese War:  A nine-year old girl with outstretched arms, running through her village screaming, her naked skin burning from a Napalm explosion. 

The haunting photo was taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut on June 8, 1972.  The photo was picked up immediately by news media around the world and would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

The little girl in the photo, Kim Phuc Phan Thi, is now a 59-year-old wife and mother living in Ontario.  She remembers that day 50 years ago:

“Nick changed my life forever with that remarkable photograph.  But he also saved my life.  After he took the photo, he put his camera down, wrapped me in a blanket and whisked me off to get medical attention.  I am forever thankful.

“Yet I also remember hating him at times.  I grew up detesting that photo.  I thought to myself, “I am a little girl.  I am naked.  Why did he take that picture?  Why didn’t my parents protect me?  Why did he print that photo?  Why was I the only kid naked while my brothers and cousins in the photo had their clothes on?”  I felt ugly and ashamed.”

In the wake of the photo’s publication, Kim became a propaganda tool for the Communist government, paraded before the world as a symbol of the horrors of the war being inflicted on the Vietnamese people by the United States.

Kim has struggled to make people understand that she and other survivors in such photographs “are not symbols.  We are human.  We must find work, people to love, communities to embrace, places to learn and to be nurtured.”

Kim defected to Canada where, with the help of her husband, friends and a newfound Christian faith, she realized her mission.  She founded the Kim Foundation International, which provides medical and psychological assistance to children who are victimized by war. 

“I know what it is like to have your village bombed, your home devastated, to see family members die and bodies of innocent civilians lying in the street.  These are the horrors of war from Vietnam memorialized in countless photographs and newsreels.  Sadly, they are also the images of wars everywhere, of precious human lives being damaged and destroyed today in Ukraine.”

“I have carried the results of war on my body.  You don’t grow out of the scars, physically or mentally.  I am grateful now for the power of that photograph of me as a nine-year-old, as I am of the journey I have taken as a person.  My horror — which I barely remember — became universal.  I’m proud that, in time, I have become a symbol of peace.  It took me a long time to embrace that as a person.  I can say, 50 years later, that I’m glad Nick captured that moment, even with all the difficulties that image created for me.”

[The New York Times, June 12, 2022.]

To follow Jesus is to take up our own “crosses.”  Our crosses may be traumatic pain or immeasurable loss that we have managed to survive that enable us to become the means of hope and healing for those bearing similar crosses.  Or our “crosses” may be opportunities we have or abilities, skills, resources we possess that can lead to changing a difficult set of circumstances or healing a broken situation into something whole and holy.  Kim Phuc Phan Thi takes up the “cross” of the photograph of that horrible day in her life and uses it as a means for obtaining help for children caught in the horrors of war.  Christ calls us to transform our lives and the world we live in by embracing the vision of his cross: to courageously and soberly take on the difficult and demanding “Good Fridays” that confront us in order to bring forth the lasting transformation of the Easter promise. 

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
John 3: 13-17

Christ lifted up . . .

The school bullies are at it again, going after Tim. They pull off his glasses and throw them into a water fountain and toss his books and papers on the floor, laughing at Tim as they go off in search of their next victim.  A classmate of Tim’s stops and helps him gather up scattered books, while another rescues his glasses from the fountain.  In their compassion for their classmate, Christ is lifted up.

The baby is having a bad night, so that means Mom and Dad are having a bad night.  It’s Dad’s turn at 3 a.m.  He goes into the baby’s room and gently lifts his daughter up and walks with her until she falls back asleep.  In a parent’s long vigil with a sick child, Christ is lifted up.

They see beyond the rhetoric.  These are not illegals but neighbors who contribute to the community, who seek a life of freedom and hope, who love their families and dream for their children as they do.  They know what their neighbors of color are going through – that volatile combination of fear and rage.  So they put aside their own safety and risk the censure – and possible arrest themselves – to pick up signs and march with their black and Latino neighbors.  In lending their voices – and feet – to the cause of justice, Christ is lifted up.

Today’s readings for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross recall Moses’ lifting up of the image of the serpent on a pole to save the Israelites bitten by a rash of poisonous snakes that had attacked their camp, and Jesus’ being lifted up on the cross to redeem all of humankind from sin and death.  We, too, can “lift up” and be “lifted up” by the grace of God, enabling us to heal and be healed, to forgive and be forgiven, to raise up and be raised up to the compassion and peace God’s Risen Christ. 

25th Sunday of the Year [C] / 15th Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 20C]        

The parable of the shrewd manager:  “The children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light . . .
“No servant can serve two masters.  He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and mammon.”
Luke 16: 1-13

The crafty steward among us

We all know this guy.

He always knows the right thing to say.  He can talk himself out of any problem.  He knows how far he can go; he has an uncanny ability to know when the deal is going south and how to save it.
He doesn’t care about the quality of the product he’s selling or the conscientiousness of the service he’s marketing — he could be selling a house or hardware, it doesn’t matter.  He’s all about the sale — and his commission.  His real product is himself.

We all know this guy.

You’re his best friend as long as your check clears.  You’re a terrific human being because of what you can do for him.  You can count on him — as long as you’re active on his client list.  You can trust him — until you can’t.

We know this guy.

He’s mastered the ability to turn on sincerity and humility like a light switch.  His life is a treadmill from one deal to the next.

Yeah, we know this guy.

We know his act — and still, we buy into it.

Because more times than we realize or care to admit, we are this guy.

The parable of the dishonest steward is one of the most problematic stories is all of the Gospel.  At first reading, it seems that Jesus is commending the larceny of the steward (is he prudent, dishonest, clever, incompetent — or all of the above?).  Perhaps most disturbing is that deep inside we admire his ability to land on his feet — part of us would like to possess his nerve.  So why does Jesus hold this guy up as a model of anything positive or commendable?  Because of his ability and ingenuity to get things done.  Jesus challenges us to be as ingenious for the sake of God’s reign as we are in our careers and professions, to be as ready and willing to use our time and money to accomplish great things in terms of the Gospel as we are to secure our own security and happiness, to open our hearts to the possibilities we have to build God’s Kingdom of compassion, mercy and peace in our time and place.   Profit and security are important, to be sure — but for disciples of Jesus, the good we are able to bring about, the work we are able to do in order to bring God’s reign of justice and compassion to reality, should be the motivating force in our lives.  Our faith should challenge us to be as eager and as ingenious for the sake of God’s reign, to be as ready and willing to use our time and “wealth” to create God’s Kingdom of justice and peace as we are to secure our own security and happiness. 

26th Sunday of the Year [C] / 16th Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 21C]

“Lying at the rich man’s door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table.”
Luke 16: 19-31

The Lazarus girl

A rabbi remembers the moment he felt that God had called him to be a rabbi:

The summer before he was to begin rabbinical studies he volunteered to work on a building project in Ghana.  For two months he lived in a tiny village with no electricity or running water; he spent his days mixing concrete to make bricks for a new elementary school and his evenings reading by gaslight and chatting with his new Ghanaian friends.  It was the most constructive and fulfilling summer of his young life.

The day before heading home, his friends planned a going-away dinner in a small restaurant in Ghana’s capital city, Accra.  When he got out of the taxi, it was raining and the air was thick with fog and smoke from burning trash. 

Then he saw her: a young girl, lying by a sewer, red muddy water streaming by her, with her distended stomach and jaundiced eyes, her painful look of despair.  Lying quietly in the rain, barely moving, she looked up at him, and they locked eyes. 

He froze.  After a summer of building and teaching and learning, a summer in which he felt as strong and as powerful as he had ever been in his young life, he felt powerless.  He remembers:

“I felt like she saw right through me . . . Seeing this nameless girl dying before me was like seeing the demarcation between God’s dreams and our actions.  I felt the call not so much as a clear prophecy from God but as a clarion cry of suffering innocence . . .

“My friends grabbed me and pulled me inside. Needless to say, I had no appetite. I was mixed up and confused about what had just happened . . . When I returned outside, I looked for her.  She was gone.  Maybe someone saved her.  Maybe she was swept away.  I just don’t know.  It haunts me still . . .

“When I came home, I knew what I wanted to do with my rabbinate.  To bridge the gap.  To take pain away.  To cross the chasm between oblivion and redemption.”

[Rabbi Noah Farkas, writing in The Christian Century, July 3, 2019.]

In his encounter with a starving girl, a rabbinical student encountered Lazarus, who opened his heart and spirit to a new awareness of the gap that exists between the rich and the poor, between hope and despair, between emptiness and meaning.  Today’s Gospel challenges us to look beyond our own self-centeredness to see God in the Lazaruses at our gates: the poor, the forgotten, the isolated, the marginalized; to realize the dignity of every human being as created in the image of God; to possess the humility that enables us to embrace one another as brothers and sisters.

27th Sunday of the Year [C] / 17th Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 22C]

“If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”
Luke 17: 5-10

Knowing what to say

After church one Sunday, a parishioner pulled the pastor aside.  He was a dedicated member of the parish’s ministry to the sick and homebound.  Just the day before he had visited the local hospital and discovered that a young couple in the church had just had a baby: a little girl with Down Syndrome. 

“I didn’t know what to say,” the man said to the pastor.  “We visited for a few minutes.  They let me hold her and I told them she was beautiful . . . I didn’t know what to say.”  He went on to describe how he had prayed with the couple, thanking God for their child and asking God’s peace and blessing on the family.

The pastor assured the man that he had said exactly the right thing and that his words and gestures were appropriate and kind.  The pastor said he could not have done better himself.

A couple of weeks later the man again pulled the pastor aside and showed him a note from the young mother.  She thanked him for his visit and prayer and then concluded her note:  “Thank you for not saying what so many people said and telling us how sorry you were.  We are so happy to have our baby.  Thank you for sharing our family’s joy.”

“That’s great,” the pastor said.

“But can you imagine people telling them how sorry they were?” the man wondered.

“Well,” the pastor replied, “I guess they just didn’t know what to say.”

[From “Living by the Word: What to say” by Patrick J. Wilson, The Christian Century, June 26, 2007.]

In his heart, the visitor knew exactly what to say even though he didn’t realize it.  He knew how to speak a simple word of gratitude for the gift of this child and speak a word of peace to her family.  That is “mustard seed” faith: the conviction that even the smallest act of compassion, done in faith and trust in God’s providence, has meaning in the reign of God.  May we embrace the spirit of the Gospel mustard seed: that our willingness to be vehicles of God’s compassion for the sake of others enables us to overcome our own doubts and self-consciousness in order to plant and reap God’s harvest of peace, justice and reconciliation in our own small corner of the Father’s kingdom.  

28th Sunday of the Year [C] / 18th Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 23C]

One of the lepers, realizing that he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.  Jesus said in reply, “Ten were cleansed, were they not?  Where are the other nine?”
Luke 17: 11-19

The tree of sorrows

There was once a very wise and compassionate rabbi who served a congregation in a small European village.  The villagers loved the rabbi and often came to him to pour out their hearts with their woes.  Nagging spouses, aches and pains, lazy children — the rabbi listened patiently day in and day out.  Why is God making my life so difficult?  Why must I suffer more than others?  Why can’t my life be as profitable as his or as comfortable as hers?  The rabbi heard it all over and over again. 

Then the rabbi came up with a plan.  He announced to the congregation, “Place your troubles in a bag with your name on it,” the rabbi said.  “On Friday, just before the start of Sabbath, we will hang the bags on the great tree in the center of the village.  Everyone will be allowed to exchange troubles and go home with those of your neighbor rather than your own.”

The rabbi’s proposal was enthusiastically greeted by the villagers, eager at the prospect to exchange their troubles for someone else’s, imagining that their lives would be easier and happier from that day on.  On Friday, just before sundown, the villagers gathered beneath the tree with bags in hand.  They tied their bags to the branches and the rabbi offered a blessing.  Then the rabbi directed:  “Now, if you will all move about inspecting the bags, you may choose someone else’s troubles to take home, thus freeing yourselves from your own.”

The villagers rushed to the tree and began peering into the bags of those they thought had happier lives than they did.  But before long the villagers grew quiet, moved by what they read of the plight of their neighbors’ struggles and disappointments — and feeling foolish.  And wiser.  Each family then sought out their own bag and walked home to celebrate Sabbath. 

The rabbi smiled.  It was just as he had hoped.  The villagers had come to realize the sorrows of others.  They became more thankful for what they had — and kinder to one another.

[Adapted from “The Tree of Sorrows” from Doorways to the Soul, edited by Elisa Davy Pearmain.]

The rabbi understood that both sorrow and thanksgiving are choices we make, attitudes from which we approach life.  We can be resentful and jealous and cynical – and we may have good reasons for feeling that way.  Or we can put aside our disappointments and be mindful and grateful for what we have, for the good we possess that cannot be taken from us, for what we are able to do for others.  Such a spirit of thankfulness can transform cynicism and despair into optimism and hope and make whatever good we do an experience of grace.  

29th Sunday of the Year [C] / 19th Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 24C]

“There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being.  And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, ‘Render a just decision for me against my adversary . . . ’”
Luke 18: 1-8

The persistent widow in our midst

It may be a spouse’s Parkinson’s disease, a parent’s Alzheimer’s, a sister’s breast cancer, a child’s leukemia.  The illness of a loved one, a catastrophe striking their family, the suffering of someone dear to them transforms these moms and dads and sons and daughters and friends into dedicated advocates and determined guardians.

They fight hospitals and insurance companies for the critical medical care needed by their loved ones.  They take on the most obstinate bureaucracies for the assistance and services their child is entitled to but denied.  They work tirelessly to raise awareness, raise money, and, when necessary, raise Cain, so that their loved one may live as full a life as possible, so that a cure might be found, so that other families will not have to experience the pain and anguish they have known.

These dedicated men and women are the Gospel widow in our midst.  They face down the “dishonest judges” of arrogance and avarice; they take on the “fearful judges” of insensitivity and unawareness; they go toe-to-toe with the “judges who fear neither God nor respect any human being,” save themselves.

Their love for the sick and suffering enables them to carry on “day and night;” their faith and conviction in the rightness of their cause empowers them to carry on despite the frustration and inaction they face.

The very compassion of God is their hope and assurance that their prayer will be heard.

The persistent widow of today’s Gospel lives among us:  She is the poor, the struggling, the ignored, the forgotten; she is the mother and father, the daughter and son, the family and friend of the suffering and dying who care for them and who work for a cure so that other families may be spared what they have suffered through; she is the victim of injustice whose sense of her own dignity enables her to fight on.  Christ promises that the Father hears the worthy prayer of the Gospel widow in her many guises and that her perseverance in faith will one day be rewarded — and Jesus confronts us with our own culpability for the widow’s plight when we become, in our obliviousness and self-absorption, “judges who neither fear God nor respect any human being.”  May the Gospel Jesus be our hope in our own struggles and an inspiration to us to become the answer to the prayers of the “persistent widows” among us here and now.

30th Sunday of the Year [C] / 20th Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 25C]

”The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or even like this tax collector . . . ’
“The tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’”
Luke 18: 9-14

My first five hours in prison

The visitor arrived at the prison at 10 a.m., well inside the 8-to-3 visiting hours.  This being his first time visiting, he didn’t know the protocols and rules; it took more than two hours before he was cleared to go to the visiting room.

He had finally come to visit an old friend who had plea-bargained for life without parole for murder.  His friend was summoned to the visiting room, not knowing who was there to visit.  He had lost a lot of weight — the visitor wasn’t sure it was him.  At first, the inmate didn’t recognize his visitor.  Then a moment of recognition: the visitor saw him mouth his name “Brad.”

As they sat down, the visitor told him about his adventure getting admitted, his friend laughing and shaking his head. 

Then the inmate said:  “I’ve got to ask.  When you’re locked up, society sees you as disposable trash.  Outside my family and some ministers at local churches, no one has come to see me.  Why did you start writing letters and come to visit a disposable like me?’

After an awkwardly long pause, the visitor began, “I want to be honest.”  Working up the nerve, he finally spit it out the word:  “Duty.”  He raised his eyebrows and shrugged.  “Jesus said: I was in prison and you visited me.  It’s what I’m supposed to do.”  The visitor took a breath, and continued:  “And . . . So many things from our hometown kept reminding me of you.  I started wondering what change in the wind would have led me to be out there and you in here.  And if our situations were reversed, I would want you to come and see me.”  His friend nodded again, appreciating his visitor’s honesty.

The visitor talked about his work as a minister and therapist.  He found himself talking about a particularly painful chapter in his own life.  His friend who had been a drug addict — even for a while after being in prison — was glowing with a serene peace.  He had an amazing ability to listen — eyes attentive, nodding appropriately.  There in that prison, the visitor saw a man — a “disposable” — who was a better therapist than he had ever experienced.

The inmate said that in prison he had become a “genuine Christian,” more than the mere church attender he’d been as a kid.  He apologized for not writing more, but his job in the fabrication center keeps him busy.  When his visitor apologized for taking so long to visit, he replied that it was good timing — his second wife had just filed for divorce.  Now the visitor saw pain in his eyes.  The inmate had listened so intently to his visitor’s story, all the while dealing with his own deep pain, managing his emotions to focus on the person before him.  

For nearly three hours, the two men laughed and occasionally cried, until a guard bellowed “Last call.”

The visitor drove home in silence, regretting that he had waited so long to visit his friend.  Twenty-three years from conviction to his first visit. 

May God have mercy on my soul, he thought.  Oh, wait — God has had mercy on my soul.  In the eyes and ears and embrace of my friend — one of the disposables.

[From “My First Five Hours in Prison” by Brad Bull, Spirituality & Health, May/June 2018.]

We often experience Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector as the conflict or tension created by seeking to fulfill our own needs or wants while remaining oblivious to the needs of those around us, of being so driven by our own agenda that we don’t realize the gifts and skills of those rejected “tax collectors” in our midst.  Such a reversal takes place between the convicted murderer and the visitor.  Both understand their need for God’s mercy and grace — and they come to realize their ability to be vehicles of such mercy and grace for one another.  Their initial awkwardness and unease are transformed into healing and blessing for both.  Jesus reaches that humility that compels us to treat others — even those considered “disposable” — with respect and generosity will be exalted in the reign of God, but self-righteousness that diminishes the good of others will be humbled.