Pip: Star Wars, Pharaoh, a donkey with delusions of grandeur — Fr. John is covering a lot of ground this week at Candle in a Cave.
Mara: The sermon for Proper 19 pulls together the Exodus story, the parable of the unforgiving servant, and a question that runs through all of it: what are you actually building with what God has given you?
Pip: Let's get into it.
"What Are You Building?" — Gifts, Empires, and the Kingdom
Mara: The sermon opens with a sweep through history — every great empire, from the British to the Mongol to the Babylonian, eventually collapses. That pattern sets up the Exodus reading, where Pharaoh insists the Nile is his own making.
Pip: And the sermon lands the line that becomes the sermon's spine. After the Israelites cross the Red Sea and receive Egyptian gold as a parting gift from God, they melt it into a golden calf — and the sermon reads that act as Pharaoh's logic recycled: "My Nile is my own; I made it for myself."
Mara: That phrase does the heavy lifting. The Israelites were liberated, given a gift, and then used the gift to rebuild the very thing they escaped — their own version of Egypt, their own small empire.
Pip: Which is where the parable of the unforgiving servant walks in and makes the same point at human scale. The king forgives an impossible debt — the sea parts, the servant walks through free — and then the servant immediately shakes down a colleague for pocket change.
Mara: The sermon draws the parallel directly: "The servant took the gift of mercy and, in his arrogance, began building his own little empire." Liberation received, liberation refused to others.
Pip: And then there is the donkey. Decorated with garlands to carry a sacred icon, he stops mid-procession and brays at the crowd, convinced the adoration is for him. The man leading him swats him and says, "The honor is not meant for you but for the image you are carrying."
Mara: That fable lands the sermon's practical point. The gifts — wealth, education, position, talent — are not the problem. The sermon is clear: "The gold was never the problem. Possessing the gold was never the problem. The question was what they built with it."
Pip: Wealth can build an empire or serve the Kingdom. Same gold, entirely different structure.
Mara: Saint James frames it as the law of liberty — freedom from sin that teaches liberated people how to live, and Saint Peter adds: "use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace… in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ."
Pip: Every empire falls. The sermon closes on that contrast — every empire we build eventually collapses, and God's Kingdom endures forever — and asks why anyone would choose the perishable project.
Mara: The closing prayer puts it plainly: serve without counting the cost, labor without seeking rest, spend yourself for glory that belongs to someone else entirely.
Pip: Pharaoh, a servant, and a self-important donkey — same story, different costumes.
Mara: The question underneath all of it stays simple: the gift is in your hands. What are you building with it?
Candle in a Cave 