October 12, 2025

Growing up in the St. Louis area, history was always a bit of a strange subject. And I say that because it imbued almost every aspect of our communal identity. So many elements of how we talked about ourselves, how we identified ourselves, what it meant to be a part of that larger identity and community was rooted in the past. We were the gateway to the west, the Arch being chief among those kinds of memorials. We were the place from which Lewis and Clark embarked on their great journey to the interior of the country and continent. Even further back, we were the location on the Illinois side of the river where I grew up, the place of a great Mississippian culture headquartered or located at Cahokia Mounds in the pre-European experience of the indigenous people in North America.

But very little of that ever felt present. It was relegated, quite literally, to history. It was preserved in dioramas and historical markers. So much of what we talked about or we memorialized had to be conceived of in the imagination because it hadn't been stewarded into the present age. It hadn't been preserved in a way that we could encounter it as a living experience. It was simply a part of what once was and is no longer.

Philip Deloria, who is part of a storied Lakota Episcopal family, is a professor of American history. And in the late 90s, he wrote a book called Playing Indian. I've referenced it a couple of times before. And I come back to it this year as well because I think that point is one for us to remember, too, when we reflect on history, when we reflect on stewardship, which I'm going to talk more about in just a minute. But Philip's point is that in the larger U.S. consciousness, the concept of the Native American, of the indigenous experience, by the middle of the 20th century, had been, quote-unquote, relegated to history. It was something of the past. It was the thing that you see in the Bonanza episodes on TV. It was not an ongoing, present, lived experience. And yet, as we all know, there are millions of Native Americans in the United States today who have a continuity with that past history. They have, in their own ways, often outside of the larger narrative of who we are as America, have continued to steward and bring forth the realities of who they have been, who they are in the present moment, and who they will be in a future time.

You may be wondering where all of this connects with our readings today. And I'll connect that in a moment. But I'm bringing all of this up, and I'm framing our conversation and our discernment today of these scripture readings, in the context of us launching our stewardship season this year. Our theme for stewardship is Stewardship Is... It's an invitation into considering what stewardship means for each of you, how you might answer that question of what stewardship means to you.

In our present use of the English language, stewardship essentially has two meanings. One, for folks that are part of religious communities like we are, it often has this point in time invitation or appeal for financial support. Stewardship is what you give of your financial resources to help your existing faith communities continue to exist in the future—keeping the lights on, paying the bills, etc. But stewardship, in another way, but not unrelated, is used in terms of land stewardship, conservation, organizations that try to keep the beauty and the wildness of our landscapes. And both of those have a historical connection to the English concept of stewardship. Going back into the late medieval period, stewardship related to the work of a steward, one who was in charge of the material assets of a household. So you can think about the financial element there, but also often the land on which an estate existed. They were in charge of both. And so these concepts kind of come forward into the present moment in both senses of that historical term.

But what does stewardship mean for us? Well, for me specifically, I think about this question of history. Because so often, when we consider what it is that we are stewarding, we can get trapped in these bifurcations of thinking the past is a discrete reality, the present is a discrete reality, and the future is a discrete reality.

I have been incredibly blessed in the last decade of my life to have very intimate and close friendships and relationships with a number of my Native American colleagues. Interestingly, some of you may or may not know this: In the middle of the 19th century, the Episcopal Church evangelized a number of Native American tribes on their reservation lands such that today the highest concentration percentage-wise of Episcopalians by zip code, if you were to go and look this up, are on Native American reservations—the Oneida, the Navajo, the Lakota. In some places, upwards of 95% of people on some of those reservation zip codes identify as being Episcopalian. And so as I have grown and deepened my relationship within the Episcopal Church, I have been gifted the great witness of that experience. And it's a way of stewarding our tradition that brings the past, present, and future into a cohesive whole in the present reality of who we are and how we experience the world. And it's shaped and changed me in some very important ways.

This is a connection point to especially what we hear in our gospel lesson today. Over and over again throughout the gospel passages, Jesus has this very positive regard for the Samaritans. Which, in a kind of similar dynamic, though not entirely parallel, the Samaritans were a marginalized, minority community within the larger ethos of first-century Israel Palestine. They were seen as a corrupted part of the Jewish tradition, so much corrupted by their intermarriage with the Assyrians that they were even considered at times, like Jesus talks about today, as foreigners. They were no longer legitimate, authentic people of the book.

We've similarly at many points in our history as the United States, alienated and marginalized our indigenous brothers and sisters, seeing them as foreigners in a land that is theirs first. But Jesus, again and again, both in his teaching and in his ministry, shows the authenticity of that faith. He actually has many times at which the Samaritans are the ones expressing the genuine response that Jesus is looking for. And that's the example we have today. That this one Samaritan, out of the group of those suffering from leprosy, is the one to return, to praise God for his healing, to thank Jesus for what he has done. He is the one showing authentic faith in this moment of transformation and healing.

There's a sense, a sense in which Samaritans, and not just this man but the variety of Samaritans who Jesus interacts with throughout the gospels, are the stewards of an authentic faith practice. When Jesus so often and so frequently criticizes the power structure, the faith experience of the Pharisees, of the Sadducees, of those at the very top of Jewish society, he simultaneously finds, over and over again, that the authentic faith that he preaches is being expressed by these on the very edge, these who have been rejected, these who aren't considered legitimate.

And when we come to our own discernments of stewardship, I think there are several elements of this experience that are instructive for us. In one sense, is this important connection to continuity and to a holistic experience of who we are. Again, as I mentioned, we so often want to put into discrete units the history of who we've been, the present reality of who we are, and our kind of optimal view of what the horizon holds and where we may go in the future. But those things aren't discrete realities. They all function together as one present experience in the present moment.

When we think about stewardship, beyond just the financial commitment, we so often can get ourselves in that place of discrete compartmentalization. We want to steward the best of who we've been and look always to the past and to the goodness of the past. We want to steward the present moment, constantly focused on the ever-increasing needs of the society and community around us. Or we want to steward forward a future reality that we are striving for. We want to just take all of our resources and put them into something beyond the horizon. And all three of those are insufficient or incomplete. Because in truth, to steward the whole of who we are is to do all three of those things simultaneously: to bring the best of our past into this present moment, to address and care for the needs of the present moment, but then to look forward to the future too, and to see the places of impact that we can have in a future time.

And very often, when we do that holistically, when we bring all three of those orientations into conversation together, we find the places and people and experiences on the margins to sometimes be the most instructive or elucidating of experiences for us to understand most fully who we are. We can get so focused and captured on the grand narratives, the important waypoints and key marks of who we've been, but miss the more significant, the more frequent experience of the day to day. Of who we are as a people, who we have been in the past, who we continue to be now, who we might become in the future. And by listening to all voices, by bringing into conversation all who have been transformed and experienced new life in this place, we can begin to sense a fullness of who we are and what it is that we are being called to steward.

So this year in particular, as we enter into this season of stewardship, as we hear this great story of healing and transformation, I invite us not just to focus on the money, which, I'm not going to lie, is a critically important part of our stewardship season. It is, quite frankly, what keeps the doors and the lights on. But in that discernment, to also think about what it is that we are keeping the doors open for and why it is that we are keeping the lights on.

Who are we as a community? What is the work that we are on about? Who have we been in the past? Who are we in this present moment? And who are we becoming as we follow ever more significantly the things that God is calling us to do? Because ultimately, beyond just the money and the financials, our discernment of stewardship is who we are as a community and what we are being called to do and be as that community. And that goes well beyond all of the other elements.

And so as we launch this stewardship season today, I invite us to be ever more mindful of the fullness of that stewardship. Of what it means for us to be in conversation with the whole of who we have been historically, to recognize that our history is a lived experience, even in this moment. But it is a lived experience in the context of also looking towards the future. There is all of that brought together in a seamless whole.

And as we hear this story of healing and transformation in the gospel, to recognize that in our own ability to seek that wholeness of perspective, we too will find our own places of transformation and new life. And my prayer for us is in this season of discernment, as we seek that sense of transformation and new life, that we may like this Samaritan, find at the end that what we fundamentally do, what we end up coming back to, is this return for praise and thanksgiving for what has been gifted us and how we might carry that forward into the new world and new reality that Christ is setting us up for.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.