After reading today’s Gospel passage, I had grand ideas for a sermon about selfishness and how God would like us to rejoice when good things happen to other people.  The parable of the generous gentleman seems like a perfect setting for that, and it’s a message I often need to hear.  At some point in the future, I probably will preach that sermon.  But this week, once I opened my Bible to start studying our passage, something else struck my eye and started digging in my brain: the verse immediately before today’s Gospel used almost the exact same phrasing as the one at the end of our reading.