A sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 17
August 30, 2026, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
Readings: Jeremiah 15:15-21; Psalm 26:1-8; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28
There have been times I did not know fully what I was getting into. I must have been around 7 years old. I was a cub scout, and I was going on my first, ever, camping trip. Most of the other kids had been with their dads before. Not me. But I was excited. Cub scouts were supposed to be excited about that sort of thing, after all. “There’s nothing to be worried about,” I was told. “It’s nothing but fun,” I was told. We arrived at a camp that had old fashioned tents with cots. Us boys went off into the woods. We picked blackberries galore and took them back to our tents, I suppose for late night snacks. That’s when the bugs came–ants and spiders everywhere. There were coyotes yipping in the distance–I had never heard one of those. Earlier that day, while we waited to leave for camp, the other campers and I had watched the movie “Twister,” the 1996 movie about storm chasers and tornadoes. As I laid on my cot that night, surrounded by bugs and spiders, coyotes yipping in the distance, I heard thunder. And that was the last straw. I ran to the fire where the camp leaders were still up. Through tears, I told my troop leader I wanted to go home. I was done with the bugs and coyotes and thunder. I remember him asking me, “We’re camping outside! What did you expect?”
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