"Not our First Rodeo" - Stewardship Sermon for 20th after Pentecost, 10-11-26
It was, in fact, my first rodeo.
† Last Friday I went to a rodeo.
I grew up on a sheep farm. I lived among neighbors who raised horses and cattle, hogs and chickens. Every summer I went to the county fair and walked through the livestock exhibition barns, admiring the ribbon-winning animals and the farmers who raised them. But I had never gone to a rodeo. Living out west now for five years, this seemed a westerly thing to do.
Wanting to fit in, I dressed the part. Cowboy hat and boots, pressed trousers and a western-cut shirt with pearl-snap buttons and a yoked shoulder; finished off with a string tie to fancy up my get-up. It’s better to be over-dressed, I reckoned, than under-dressed. I caught the Number Eight Muni coach, which took me from the 165-year-old-Saloon in North Beach – as good a place as any to begin my adventure – to the 85-year-old Cow Palace on the southern edge of the city.
As soon as I walked up, I knew by the way I was dressed that I would be welcome and fit right in. I came prepared. But that’s not always the case.
I recall travelling to New York City on business and going to finer restaurants that required of gentlemen jackets and ties. There would be a rack of loaners for the unprepared to put on (which, thankfully, never happened to me). I suppose that if one refused the proffered attire, one would be refused admittance.
That’s what we may surmise happened in Jesus’s parable. It’s unlikely that the gathered guests had been walking the streets wearing wedding attire, just in case someone came up and invited them to the wedding of people they didn’t know. It’s likely that guests without a wedding robe of their own would be given one at the door. And be expected to put it on.
What we don’t know is why this one unprepared guest didn’t put on the robe and join the wedding banquet.
I suspect a point of Jesus’s parable is to remind his hearers of when he said, “Many are called, but few are chosen,” and, “Not everyone who calls out ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of God; but only those who do my Father’s will.”
Entrance into the Kingdom of God, oft-times depicted as a banquet, just may require something of us. That we put on the robe.
Now, the Kingdom of God is not the Church. But God gives us the Church to help us discern just what the Kingdom of God is, and just what God requires of us.
The Church’s scriptures tell us of the greatest commandments to love God and neighbor. To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. To surrender ourselves, to take up our cross, and to follow Jesus.
The Church’s traditions equate the wedding robe with the baptismal gown, as the requisite garment for admittance to the banquet. Our baptismal covenant requires much of us, as do the reception of the Eucharist and the other five sacraments.
Scripture and tradition, learned and lived- into ever-more fully, help us to imagine what this Kingdom of God is that Jesus inaugurated, and to strive for our part in its continued enactment.
The Catechism of the Episcopal Church calls this our Christian duty.
Our duty is to follow Christ. To come together week by week for corporate worship. And to work, pray, and give for the spread of the kingdom of God (856).
This is the time of the year when I ask you what you will give next year, specifically in dollars and cents, to help each of us spread the kingdom of God. Soon you will receive in the mail my annual letter asking just that, along with a pledge card where you will give your generous and faithful answer. Later on, you will receive a letter from Rob Smith, our senior warden; and after that a letter from Larry Rosenfeld, our stewardship officer.
Seeking and securing your pledge is just that important.
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Last Friday, I attended my first Western rodeo at the Cow Palace, but this is not my first Church rodeo.
Nor is it All Saints’ first rodeo. Since 1903 we have asked you each year for some of your money. Amid two world wars and too many other wars; amid pandemics of influenza and AIDS and Covid-19; amid greater and lesser economic depressions; amid seasons of civil unrest and rebellion and reformation; amid changes in the language and liturgies of the Church; amid times of uncertainty, local and global, and in your own households and hearts.
For 123 years you have pledged enough and given enough. And here we are, still graced and growing. God must have more work for us to do. God is not done with us just yet.
Thank you, All Saints’!
And thank you, God!
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Jesus teaches us that the Kingdom of God is already here, but it hasn’t reached its potential and come to completeness.
The same is true for you and me, right?
What are we but a work-in-progress?
God loves us as we are right now, and at the same time God knows our potential and calls us to conversion: conversion of heart and conversion of life.
Some of what this conversion entails is our responding faithfully and generously to God’s invitation to us to give.
To give in thankful response for what God gives to us.
And to give in humble imitation of how God gives to us.
God offers you a wedding robe.
Every day.
Put it on, already!
And stay at the banquet. †
Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP
20th after Pentecost, Proper 23 – October 11, 2026
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco
“Not Our First Rodeo”
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