Baum Sermons

YEAR A 2026 pentecost 9

2026-07-26T12:15:51.073-04:00

Pentecost 9, 2026
Genesis 29:15-28
Psalm 128
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33,44-52
Final sermon at St. Timothy’s Church, Massillon, OH (where the football comes from)

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

As longtime listeners know, the apostle Paul and I do not always see eye to eye. But to be fair, that’s partly because he was working out his theology in public, in real time, through his letters to the churches. And by the time he writes to the church in Rome, he is really hitting his stride. There are absolute gems in the epistle reading we heard today.

The Holy Spirit prays for us in the times when we can’t pray. All things work together for good for those who love God. If God is for us, who can be against us? Who will separate us from the love of Christ? I am convinced that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Absolute bangers, Paul!

And that last one is key for us all to hold onto in the days ahead. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Back in 2001, my bandmate and I recorded an album we called “Something.” (Long story how we got the name.) The theme of that album was: Nothing can separate us from the love of God. The chorus of the second song was just that phrase: For I am convinced that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. And then between each song we would play the melody from that song on a variety of instruments, to remind the listener of the theme. And then, after the final chorus of the last song, we shifted back into singing the theme chorus one last time: For I am convinced that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. And we ended with the final chord played nine times—3 long, 3 short, 3 long.

After a couple days, I said to Michael, “You know, I think that pattern is Morse Code for SOS!” And we got really excited about the theological possibilities of working with that as a plea to God to save us. It was like a perfect serendipitous ending. Salvation is tied to the idea that nothing can separate us from the love of God. And that’s like our SOS, right? After we released the album, I checked to make sure I was right about that pattern. Turns out, in Morse Code, three dashes, three dots, and three dashes do not spell SOS. They spell OSO. Could have been worse?

For I am convinced that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. But here’s a list of things that can separate you from the love of God. I’ve heard preachers do this all the time. Smoking. Drinking. Who you love. Who you vote for. How much TV you watch. Everyone’s got their list of things that are a bridge too far. But notice, those things are about you, not me. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, except for some of your personal behaviors.

But Paul goes through the trouble of listing everything he could think of to show that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. Hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness(!), peril, sword, death, life, angels, rulers, things present, things to come, powers, height(?), depth(?), anything else in all creation. I think that pretty much covers it! Nothing means no thing. But we all still have those exceptions in our head. Something we’re sure makes someone else—or ourselves—unlovable. Beyond God’s love. Nothing in all creation . . . except for this one particular thing.

And that’s because we confuse God’s love for us with how we treat each other. Those lists of behaviors we don’t like serve to separate us from each other. To sow division. To say, “I’m in and you’re out.” Because things do separate us from one another. Time, distance, politics, anger, points of view, we are separate from one another in many ways. And there are plenty of things that foster that separation. Our news silos, gossip, grudges, football rivalry games. (Go Tigers!) Plenty of separation to go around.

But Paul says, nothing can separate US from the love of God. We are the body of Christ in this world. We are one body, like it or not. Paul doesn’t say nothing can separate you or separate me from God’s love. It’s us. Whether we are together or apart, it’s still us. Whether we agree or disagree, it’s still us.

Yes, things do separate us from each other. Over these ten past years, things I’ve said and done and preached have had that effect. Even when we’re not trying to separate ourselves from one another, it happens. But I’m just some guy. Sure, I’ve been invested with some authority and a pulpit because you chose to entrust me with it. But I’m still just some guy. The 20th guy, in fact. There have been 19 other guys, and there will be plenty more. And one day, God willing, gals as well. But priests are just people, walking alongside you, and hopefully doing our best.

The real ministry in this faith community is carried out by the people, not the priest. And when you read through the history of St. Timothy’s—which I will once again encourage you to do—you’ll see that it’s true. Priests come and go, but the people are where you see God working in this world. St. Timothy’s keeps going because nothing can separate us from the love of God.

And notice the inclusion of the word “love” in Paul’s claim. There are things that do separate us from God. (Mostly of our own doing.) This is why we have weekly corporate confession. In the catechism of our prayer book (page 855) we read that “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ." Restoring to unity implies some separation, right? The thing to hold onto here is that though we can separate ourselves from God and one another—sometimes without even trying— we can never separate ourselves from the love of God. Nothing can separate us means No thing. With a capital N. God’s love is relentless. Maybe even annoyingly relentless!

So what about right now? What about today and the scary unknown future? Even though nothing can separate us from the love of God, at the end of this week, you and I will be physically separate from one another. And that’s really hard.

But as I reminded you a few weeks ago, grief is borne of love. If we didn’t love, we wouldn’t care. So it is fitting that we grieve the absence of those we love. And grief is hard.

We don’t know what the future will hold for any of us. There will be hard times ahead, but there will be joy and laughter as well. Some of us will get discouraged, and others will find the courage to step up to help in new ways. St. Timothy’s will look different a year from now, just as it looks different than it did a year ago, or ten years ago, or a hundred years ago, or 190 years ago! And that’s a good thing. Because the church is always changing, always on the move, always looking for a new way to reach people with the unrelenting love of God.

May God make us all just as convinced as my frenemy the apostle Paul, that there is nothing in all creation that can ever separate us from the love of God. Nothing. Not even mistaking OSO for SOS. Because no matter what, God loves, and God saves.

Amen

YEAR A 2026 pentecost 7

2026-07-12T10:19:19.394-04:00

Pentecost 7, 2026
Genesis 25:19-34
Psalm 119:105-112
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

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

This is a fantastic gospel reading for us today. For where we are now, and for where we’ll be in the future. This parable of the sower shows up in all three synoptic gospels, by which I mean Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And in all 3 cases, Jesus offers an explanation of the parable. And—to be honest—I hate it when he does that, because it feels like it limits where we can go with a parable. But actually, in this case I think it helps refine the parable, provided we are willing to step out of our knee-jerk reaction to it. By which I mean, our tendency to make it all about ourselves. As we are want to do.

So with that in mind, let’s start here. This is a parable about the seeds; this is not a parable about the soil. If you’re anything like me, you probably automatically focused on the different types of soil. And wondered which type of soil you are. And wondered which type of soil your friends are. And that’s because our latent Protestant Work Ethic makes us assume that it’s all about the hardworking soil. And therefore gets us right into a competition to be the good soil. Or—more aptly—to be better than the soil next to us. But this is not about the soil!

And let’s look at what Jesus does not say in this parable, or in the explanation. He does not say that the good soil in any way benefits from being able to make the seeds grow. He does not say that the good soil is somehow saved and will be welcome into heaven. And by the same token, he does not say that the rocky soil is condemned, or that the soil with weeds will be sent to burn in the fires of hell.

He also doesn’t say in any way that the soil is to blame for it’s inability to receive the seed. As we have encountered in many other parables, it’s important to remind ourselves that soil is just soil, and cannot help being the kind of soil it is. It is up to the gardener to amend the soil. It is up to the clouds to send rain for the soil. It is up to hikers not to trample the soil. The soil just sits there, being soil. And along come the seeds, which either sprout or don’t sprout. It’s not up to the soil.

Okay okay, you’re saying. We get it. It’s not about the soil, but then what is this parable about? I’m glad you asked. This is a parable about the generosity of God and the unlimited reach of the good news of the gospel.

The takeaway is that the word of God is sown with reckless abandon. It is everywhere all the time! The word of God is not a precious delicate seed that is carefully planted to a depth of 1.5 inches in meticulously amended soil and then surrounded by a deer fence and two bottles of Roundup. The word of God is thrown every place imaginable because it is limitless! Some seed is choked by weeds, and God throws more. Some seed is carried away by birds, but the joke’s on them because those seeds will be replanted—with fertilizer! The word of God keeps coming, no matter the obstacles!

And it doesn’t have to take root everywhere because it is everywhere. And it’s worth noting that even the good soil varies in how much grain it produces. Some 30, some 60, and some a hundredfold. And here’s the kicker: what happens to the 30, 60, and a hundred fold grains? They fall back into the earth to create even more plants in that same good soil. We could even call this The Parable of the Magic of Compound Interest! Not all the soil has to nurture the seeds because some of the soil does nurture the seeds! Which brings us to the bigger point. Teamwork.

I was recently telling Andrew our Choirmaster that I had a huge epiphany over the past year in our choir. And it’s simply this: As one assigned to the tenor section (against my will), I am well aware that a good many of the notes are above my range. And I can kind of hit them if I strain, which makes them loud and screechy. However, if I pull back and flip to falsetto, the note doesn’t go away, because that note is right in the range of the sopranos, who can sing it perfectly. And when notes are too low for me, there is our reliable Joel Vogt to hit the bass pitches that will shake the building. The takeaway is that the notes I cannot sing don’t disappear, because someone else can quite capably sing those notes.

And we see this in team sports as well. When the Massillon Tigers football team wins a game, the whole team wins that game. Including the players who sat on the bench all game. Including the coaches who never set foot on the field. Including the parents who drove the kids to the game. Including the band members who inspired the fans and players. I mean, it’s why we say, “WE won!” One player fumbles, another player recovers. One player blocks a tackle, and another player reaches the end zone, producing 30, 60, or a hundredfold points. When we focus on the goal of winning the game, it doesn’t matter who does what along the way.

So, back to the gospel. Not all the soil is too rocky to be a good environment for seeds to grow. But some of it is; and that’s okay. Not all the soil is going to have weeds that choke out the plants. But some of it is; and that’s okay. Because though not all the soil is going to be exactly right to receive the seeds and produce 30, 60, and a hundredfold more plants, some of it is. And that is enough. That is enough for God.

We need to focus our attention on the success of the seeds, and not the condition of the soil. Let’s not make a story about Jesus into a story about ourselves—tempting though that is. Jesus does not end the parable by saying, “And all hope was lost.” He doesn’t finish by saying, “If only I had better soil.” And—most importantly—he doesn’t say, “And the bad soil was sent away to burn in unquenchable fire for all eternity.” This is a parable about unlimited seeds of good news that are spread in every direction without giving one thought to the condition of the soil. God’s love will not be hindered by some rocks and a few weeds.

Which brings us to St. Timothy’s. We have some challenges ahead, to say the least. And this parable is a great reminder that not everyone has to do every thing. There are a wide variety of gifts in this congregation, and you’re going to need all of them in the coming months. Some are called to leadership, some are called to support leadership. Some are called to donate financially, and some are called to be good stewards of those finances. Some are called to sing, and some are called to be inspired by that singing. And all the gifts that you will share with the world come from God’s unbounded, reckless, unlimited generosity. And there is some particular seed that will only flourish because it lands on you personally. I encourage you to let that seed grow, because it will indeed produce 30, 60, and a hundredfold. We're going to be okay, because of God’s abundant, generous, and unceasing blessings on us all.

Amen

YEAR A 2026 pentecost 6

2026-07-05T08:54:05.270-04:00

Pentecost 6, 2026
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
Psalm 45: 11-18
Romans 7:15-25a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

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

Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Come to me, he says. Which suggests that’s not our natural inclination, right? When we are weary, and carrying heavy burdens, where do we turn? When we need rest, what do we do? Well, Jesus comes right out and says that we should come to him in the times when we are struggling. And I think it’s a timely reminder for us all to keep that in mind. And here’s why . . . .

We have done our best to make sure everyone knows. So if this is the first you are hearing this news, I am sorry. After ten years serving with you here in Massillon, I have accepted a call to serve with the people at Church of the Ascension, in Lakewood, Ohio, starting in September. My ministry with you will come to a close at the end of this month. For those of you who did not see the email or receive a letter in the mail from me and the Wardens, there are copies by the door in the back and on the table in the parish hall.

So, the priest is leaving, and today we hear Jesus say, come to me. To me. Where might we naturally go instead though? To anger? To disappointment? To worrying about the future? Jesus says come to me, all you that are carrying heavy burdens. Where might we go instead? To panic? To despair? To hopelessness? We’ve got a lot of things to sort out in the next month. A lot of burdens to carry figuring out who does what and how things are done. A lot of things to organize and hand off and work through and—yes—we’ll all be carrying heavy burdens. And Jesus says come to me, all you that are carrying heavy burdens. Perfect.

Jesus also says, come to me all who are weary. I think it’s true that we have all been weary since at least 2020. We didn’t know how to navigate a global pandemic because we’d never seen one before. And rather than bringing us together, covid drove us apart. No matter what decisions were made and no matter for what reasons, we instinctively attributed the worst motives to everyone we disagreed with. And the resulting divisions have never really healed. The deep down exhaustion of those times has never really left us. And we are weary to the bone. And Jesus says, come to me all who are weary. Perfect.

And again, Jesus says come to me. Wherever we are tempted to turn when we are burdened, wherever we are tempted to turn when we are weary, if we aren’t turning to Jesus, then we’re doing it wrong. When we turn to Jesus first, we will find rest for our souls. St. Timothy’s will still be here in August. And Jesus will still be with St. Timothy’s in August, and still saying “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Rest for your souls.

We naturally grieve when relationships end. And lately I have been thinking a lot about the idea that grief is borne out of love. If we didn’t love, we wouldn’t care. If we didn’t love, we wouldn’t grieve. This is a painful time for all of us, because we care, and because we love. And so, we are right to grieve.

But let us all come to Jesus at this Altar today in peace. Come and meet him in the bread and the wine. Let us come to Jesus and find rest. And then, let us go out into the world to do the work God has given us to do, with our souls resting in Jesus. The one who says come to me, and I will give you rest.

Amen

YEAR A 2026 pentecost 5

2026-06-28T11:18:43.563-04:00

Pentecost 5, 2026
Genesis 22:1-14
Psalm 13
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42

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

Well, here I go again, preaching on the first reading. We call this story, “The Binding of Isaac.” It is one of the nine options for readings at the Easter Vigil, but I’ve never heard anyone actually use it. Because . . . well, because you can’t just read this story during a worship service and not say something about it. And no priest in their right mind chooses to spend their Easter sermon talking about the time God told Abraham to kill his only son.

As we heard, God says to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” You notice how it’s all right in there: Your son, your only son, whom you love!

Let’s take a moment to remember how we got here. At some point, God promised Abraham that his descendants would number as the grains of sand. Two weeks ago, we heard that Sarah and Abraham are very old when God gives them the miraculous birth of Isaac. And last week, Sarah has Abraham send away Abraham’s other son, Ishmael. And now here we are: The one and only chance to give Abraham the offspring who will number as the sands, being taken on a three-day journey to be offered up as a sacrifice. The end of everything God has promised. Something’s not right here, right? I mean, a LOT of things are not right here!

But . . . we must remember that child sacrifice was not unusual in the culture of the time. When we read the book of Genesis, we run into all sorts of things that seem unthinkable to us, things which were commonplace at the time the book was written. That world is not our world. We need to set aside our natural horror and revulsion, because in the wider culture all around Abraham, the gods were always demanding things like child sacrifice. To hear God requiring the same thing from Abraham probably seems expected to him, on some level. All the other gods were making demands of brutal domination and cruelty; that was the sign of a good leader, to make people suffer and cower in fear. It was a different time . . . sort of.

So Abraham dutifully takes Isaac up the mountain. We get the full description, from saddling the donkey and getting servants, to leaving the servants behind and going on ahead with Isaac and the stack of wood. We can’t believe he’s really going to go through with this. And Isaac asks his father, “Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” And Abraham tells him, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering.” And then we get to the dramatic climax as Abraham raises the knife, to sacrifice his only son, and the angel of the Lord calls out to stop him. The God of Abraham is different from those other gods. Thank God!

Which is kind of the point of much of the first few books of what we call the Old Testament. All those seemingly arcane laws and everything else show us that the God of Abraham is different from the other gods. And the God of Abraham’s people are different from the other people. All those dietary restrictions and moral codes serve to mark God and the Hebrew people as different from their neighbors. As being set apart, as a chosen people.

The gods of Abraham’s neighbors demanded sacrifice, and in Abraham’s mind, this would have made God just like the other gods. But the God of Abraham is different from those other gods. The other gods still want sacrifice, but the God of Abraham wants mercy and salvation. This is different!

And so the child Isaac is spared, and a ram in a thicket takes his place. But notice, Issac is not spared because of the ram. No, Isaac is saved because of God’s intervention. The ram is not there because God needed a sacrifice. My own guess is that Abraham still needed to sacrifice something, and God provides. But God does not require the sacrifice; God desires mercy, not sacrifice. It is not about the death of the ram; it’s about the life of Isaac.

And one thing this whole event gives to Abraham is a date to refer to. A moment in time. When his neighbors ask him, “How do you know that God desires mercy and not sacrifice?” Abraham can say, “One day, God called to me and told me to take my only son, whom I love, and go up this mountain . . .” He’s got a story to prove the point: God desires mercy, not sacrifice.

And as Christians, we have this same pattern with Jesus. Some Christians will tell you that Jesus needed to die because God needed a sacrifice. The technical term for this view is Penal Substitutionary Atonement. I know plenty of clergy who subscribe to this fancy-named Calvinist theory. But I don’t believe it for a second. God didn’t need a sacrifice, but we did. Like Abraham, we need a date that we can point to, a specific event, and say, “That’s the day everything changed. That’s the day when God did for us what we can’t do for ourselves.” And that day for us is not Good Friday; that day is Easter. That’s the day that matters for us. The day that God raises Jesus from the dead is our Mount Moriah. Our own story that proves: The Lord provides.

And even though the false gods of this world still want sacrifice, the God of Abraham wants salvation. Those false gods of selfish gain, and blind vengeance, and high moral principle want sacrifice. The God of Abraham wants redemption.

And so the obvious question is, well, how do we satisfy a God who wants redemption and salvation? It’s easy to satisfy the gods who want bloodshed and sacrifice. We do it all the time, by throwing people under the bus, or dropping bombs on their cities. But how do we conjure up mercy, and salvation? And the answer is back there on that mountain: The Lord will provide.

Everything necessary for salvation is provided by God, not by us. Our role is to listen and to trust, just as Abraham did. Our part is to discern the voice of the gods of this world for what they are, and where they lead us, and to choose instead to follow the voice of the God of Abraham. The one who cries out, “Stop!” and provides another way. Even though we naturally think that what God desires are sacrifice and rejection, God shows us over and over that mercy and acceptance are the better way. God’s story is about salvation and redemption, from the beginning of time until the day Jesus returns—Salvation and Redemption and Restoration.

We can trust that things really are going to be alright, because God will provide. We might not see it right now, we might not believe it right now, but God always provides. Because—like Abraham—we worship the God who chooses mercy and redemption, and always shows us a better way.

Amen.

YEAR A 2026 pentecost 4

2026-06-21T11:18:33.869-04:00

Pentecost 4, 2026
Genesis 21:8-21
Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
Romans 6:1b-11
Matthew 10:24-39

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

Jesus said, “For I have come to set a man against his father.” Happy Father’s Day everybody! Really some unfortunate timing to use that gospel text. But these things happen. So . . . let’s go to Genesis instead.

Remember last week how I was saying Sarah and Abraham are heroes of the faith for us? And remember that cute story about how Sarah got caught laughing at the absurdity of God’s generosity? And how we can all sort of identify with her? That was really great, wasn’t it?

An amazing story of how God brings hope to those who have no reason to hope. How God fulfills promises that are seemingly impossible. Life comes only through promise, and promise comes only through the actual bodies of the hopeless ones. A baby is born to a couple who are “as good as dead.” They have no reason to hope, they have no reason to dream, which is exactly the time God steps in. It’s an inspiring story, and a reminder that babies can bring hope to the world. But then today, that happy, hopeful story goes south. It all comes undone.

Some background though: before all this happened, Abraham and Sarah could not have children, for whatever reason. So Sarah arranges for Abraham to have a son with her handmaiden, Hagar, and the boy is named Ishmael (which means, “God hearkens”). Then, as we heard last week, because of God’s generosity, Sarah now has a son of her own, Isaac. An unexpected blessing in her old age. But, as we heard today, Sarah is worried that the “illegitimate” son will usurp Isaac’s birthright, since Ishmael is older. And so, Sarah tells Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away, which he does. Last week’s cute story of hope and laughter has given way to today’s unthinkable rejection of Abraham’s first son and his mother.

After they are sent off into the desert, Hagar runs out of water, and knows her son will die. She can’t bear to watch this, and so she puts him under a bush and goes off a good distance to watch him die of dehydration.

We’re now a long way from Sarah’s claim that “all who hear will laugh with me.” When Ishmael was Abraham’s only son, Sarah was fine with that. But after the birth of Isaac, after the unmerited abundance of God’s unwarranted blessing and grace, after she gets everything she ever wanted . . . she turns.

Sarah’s fears about the future lead her to treat Hagar and Ishmael as “other.” Just look at how she says it: “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” You notice who doesn’t get names there? We heard, “this slave woman,” and “her son,” versus “my son, Isaac.” Sarah is saying, I got what I wanted, and now I have no need of these others. Get them out of my sight.

It’s so easy for us to judge Sarah for this obvious betrayal. But as we sit between Juneteenth and July 4th, I can’t pretend not to see some obvious connections to things we’ve done. What we’ve been doing for 400 years, actually. The parallels are glaring, and they are real. We have enslaved people for our own needs, to build things and harvest crops. We have stolen people’s land and sent them away to live on reservations. We have quietly welcomed migrants to work the land and in meatpacking plants while telling them they are not welcome.

And once we got what we wanted, we turned our backs on these “others.” As a country, we have said, “Abraham, keep those other children out of sight and off our streets.” And then we invented redlining, and housing agreements, and Indian reservations in order to see that it gets done.

When we focus solely on our own children, when our invented fear of scarcity makes us turn inward, we say that the other children don’t matter, send them away. Let them go die in the food desert, now that I can see that I will be okay. And if hearing me say that upsets you . . well, I don’t know what to tell you, because it upsets me too.

But then . . . here comes God. The angel calls to Hagar from heaven and asks, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.” Heard the boy whose name literally means, “God Hearkens.” And as we saw, now she sees there is water in the desert; Hagar gives it to Ishmael; and the boy lives. And what’s more, God says, ”Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”

Sarah looks out at the world as a zero-sum game. If I am going to win, somebody else has to lose. If God blesses me, someone else must be cursed. In order for me to succeed, I must dominate, belittle, trample, and destroy. This is a very human way of looking at the world. If God is going to make a great nation out of Isaac, then Ishmael must die. So limited; so small; so pathetic.

But God says, I will make a great nation of Ishmael too. With God, it is never either/or, it is always both/and. God bless my children, and my neighbor’s children. God bless America, and the other nations of the world. We cannot control God’s unwarranted, unmerited grace. God will bless whomever God chooses. And it’s best not to get in the way of that. God does not abandon the people we reject, because God can make a great nation of them as well. If that strikes us as unsettling, well . . . good. Because God is about life, and hope, and mercy, no matter how much our fears get in the way of seeing that. Fear changes us. And not for the better.

And speaking of fear, Jesus said, “Whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” That’s pretty unsettling, isn’t it? I’ve heard countless speakers at youth gatherings use this text to scare kids into being complete jerks about sharing the gospel. Militarized good news.

It’s kind of tempting to use this Gospel text in a frightening way, which might explain why so many people do. And, the text sets a nice trap for the blissfulness of youth: “For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” You see how they are all the younger being set against the older? It’s almost a set-up for someone to tell kids that they need to hate their elders. What is up with that, huh?

Well, there’s a recklessness when we’re young. Over time, as we grow up, we start to see that in order to be accepted by those around us, we have to play some cards closer to the chest and play by the rules. You know, not let you know what I’m afraid of. Not let you know my concerns about my job, or my health, or my future. What keeps our society civil is a certain amount of secrecy . . . or, you know, propriety.

So, now you’re asking, “Where is this going, anyway?” Thanks for asking. We all have our various individual fears. Some irrational fears, some totally rational. But, if we’re honest, we especially fear being known. Or, being fully known. We hide our fears, and hope no one notices. And yet, in today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.”

This ought to scare us all quite nicely. All those things we keep bottled up inside, hidden from the world, and hidden from the ones we love the most, all of it will all be uncovered and known. All of it. And all God’s people said, “uh oh.”

But wait, there’s something else in there that seems out of place at first. Jesus asks, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

Now, as I’ve said before, God’s hair counting gets easier each year for some of us. But here’s an interesting thing about the hair on your head and the sparrows outside your window: They keep on changing and replacing and regenerating and on and on. It’s not as if you are born with 1 million hairs and that’s all you get. Your hair is constantly falling out and getting replaced.

And the same is true for the sparrows: it’s not like the same sparrows come back to our feeder year after year. There’s a constant turnover. At our one little bird feeder. In our one little town. Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from God. Not one sparrow will fall to the ground apart from God.

The sparrows are known. All of them. Each and every one of them. The hairs on your head are counted, each and every one of them. There is an intimacy in these images that can be comforting. And yet they both call to mind that phrase from Jesus, there is nothing secret that will not become known. Fully known, fully loved, never apart from God.

And this leads us back to Sarah and Isaac and Hagar and Ishmael. Although Sarah can send Hagar and Ishmael off into the desert, claiming never to have known them, they are still known to God, still loved by God. Though Sarah can turn her back on the ones she no longer sees as valuable, God turns to face them instead, still loved by God.

Hagar and Ishmael are fully known, fully loved, never apart from God. You are fully known, fully loved, never apart from God. And the children who still cry out for justice in our country are fully known, fully loved, and never apart from God. May God give us the will and the strength to lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring with the harmony of liberty.

Amen

YEAR A 2026 pentecost 3

2026-06-14T11:17:39.888-04:00

Pentecost 3, 2026
Genesis 18:1-15
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:8

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

Let me start by saying, people are people. That’s not exactly earth-shattering news, I know. In fact, Depeche Mode told us that back in the 80s. But it’s important to remember that, because over time we tend to glorify our heroes until we start to remember them as having done nothing wrong in . . . forever. And then they become these mythical Greek-like gods, who loom larger than life, and whose lofty perfection we can never hope to replicate. Heroes are different than mentors. It is fine to have heroes; but it is better to have normal people who show us the way. Heroes of the faith don’t usually help us in our faith journey; but friends do. And that’s because heroes are larger than life, whereas regular people point us to a life well lived. As I said, people are people.

So then these readings today . . . In the reading from Genesis, we heard about the birth of Issac. Or, more accurately, the pregnancy of Sara. It’s one of those strange little tales we encounter in the Hebrew scriptures that seems designed to tell us something else. But there’s something else in the “something else” here too. We think of Abraham and Sarah as being these giants of the faith. And yet, here is Sarah, having an ordinary reaction to a ridiculous promise. She is not really laughing so much as gasping for breath and saying, “AS IF!” I mean come on, right? She is an ordinary person having an ordinary response to an extraordinary promise. Abraham is like a hundred years old! As Paul said last week, as good as dead. Forgive my skepticism, says Sarah.

And yet . . . Here comes God, using ordinary people of doubtful ability to carry out an extraordinary event. Sarah laughs, then lies about laughing, then gets caught lying, and then says, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.”

And when we hear this story, we probably laugh too. I know I do. Maybe because we doubt the truth of it; or maybe because we doubt the possibility of it; or maybe just because of the absurdity of it. Which makes us prime candidates to also end up saying, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” My point is, Sarah is an ordinary person, having an ordinary reaction to an extraordinary event. And that makes her just like us: incredulous at the absurdity of God’s generosity and abundance.

And in Paul’s letter to the Romans, he writes, “Christ died for the ungodly. . . . God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” And we only get why that’s absurd when we look at how we think of our relationship with God. Deep down, we are all convinced that Jesus only died for the righteous ones, for the good people, for the people who go to church and stay out of trouble. And it is just as crazy to believe God loves sinners as it is to believe that a hundred year old woman is going to give birth to a son. It’s laughable, right? As Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.”

And then we come to today’s Gospel reading, from Matthew. It’s a long set of instructions about how and where and why the disciples are supposed to go out and turn the world upside down. And the parts of it we tend to remember are the parts that have filtered into our culture by way of Ben Franklin sounding phrases: Sheep among wolves, and shaking the dust from your feet. Those things are common to us, and we usually quote them completely out of context. As we are want to do.

But here’s what I want us to notice about this gospel reading today: The people who are listed as present with Jesus. Of course we have the usual ragtag group of fishermen, as always. Guys who have no idea what it is like to read and write or speak in public. But there are these three others I want us to notice. Matthew, Simon, and Judas.

Matthew is a tax collector, which means he is in collusion with the occupying Romans, as we heard last week. It’s hard for us appreciate what this means in that culture, because we’ve been independent for so long. But this would kind of be like a tax collector for the British, before the American Revolution. Someone aligned with the oppressors, but then also making his living by overcharging his fellow citizens. The Jewish people hated tax collectors.

And on the other extreme, we have Simon the Zealot (called Simon the Cananaean in this reading, to tell us that he is a different Simon from Simon Peter, as in St. Peter’s Basillica.) This Simon was a Zealot, which is where we get the word . . . zealot. And the Zealots in that time would be the ones working their tails off to overthrow the occupying Romans. Think of them as the Minutemen in the War for Independence. Simon was all about insurrection and asymmetrical warfare and doing everything he could to frustrate the plans of the Roman occupation. Most ordinary citizens would have thought of the Zealots as being over the top, and making life more difficult for them, by bringing down the Roman hammer in retaliation for their insurrection.

And then there’s Judas. At this point in Matthew’s gospel, Judas hasn’t yet done what we know him for, but Matthew wants to make sure we know what to expect of him in advance, so he calls him, “Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.” To continue with our July 4th theme, we can think of Judas as Benedict Arnold.

Now if we were making this movie, we would make all the disciples Zealots. We would not include Matthew among the ones being sent out to preach the gospel and heal the sick. We certainly would have Judas get hit by a bus or something right after Jesus stops talking.

But this is not a movie. These are real people. Ordinary people. People being told by Jesus that he is giving ordinary people extraordinary power to turn the world upside down. Not because of who they are, but in spite of who they are. Not because they are pure and righteous, but rather because they are messy and complicated. They are ordinary, and that is precisely the thing that allows God to use them to do extraordinary things.

Which inevitably leads us to this: Every Saturday, the Altar Guild comes in and sets some bread and wine near the Altar or on that little table back there. Ordinary things, sitting in ordinary containers. And every Sunday, we gather together here in the hope that something miraculous will take place. And as Paul says, “hope does not disappoint us.”

Because in what takes place here each week, God takes what is ordinary and turns it into something extraordinary. And I don’t just mean the bread and the wine. Because week after week, God is taking the plain old ordinary you and me, with all our doubts and laughter, our pain and our joy, and transforming us into something revolutionary and extraordinary: As each week we once again become the people of God, receiving the overflowing gifts of God.

Amen.

YEAR A 2026 pentecost 2

2026-06-07T11:20:21.143-04:00

Pentecost 2, 2026
Genesis 12:1-9
Psalm 33:1-12
Romans 4:13-25
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

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

Jesus says, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’.” It’s from Hosea, part of a long rant against the sins of God’s people. Hosea is a scary book, written at a specific time to a specific people. So tread lightly.

But, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” is a very strange sentence in the first place. Because mercy and sacrifice are not opposites. You would expect, “I desire mercy, not vengeance.” Or, “I desire sacrifice, not selfishness.” But Jesus says, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’.”

So, what does it mean, to set mercy opposed to sacrifice? Well, I think it helps to look at how they both are about power. Mercy is handed downward by the one in charge. Your boss could fire you for something, or could have mercy on you and let you keep working for less than you deserve. And, in a religious sense, sacrifice is handed upward by the less powerful. The Levite priests offer sacrifices to God, in order to win God’s mercy.

So, imagine yourself as the one with all the power. You could offer mercy, or you could demand sacrifice. Let’s say you own a chain of restaurants. As a good capitalist, you’d want sacrifices, right? You’d want people to work more hours for less money. You’d want them to work weekends and pick up extra shifts. Having employees who are willing to sacrifice is like the ideal situation for the person in power!

But consider, what kind of a manager would desire mercy instead? A manager who wouldn’t last very long, I can tell you that! You don’t feel like coming in today, Joe? Yeah that’s cool, we all get tired sometimes. You forgot to call in the order for all the produce for this week Sally? That’s fine, could happen to anybody.

Jesus said, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’.” This is a hard teaching, and it certainly runs counter to how the world works, right? Because we most certainly desire sacrifice over mercy. Imagine a football coach who desires mercy over sacrifice? Don’t push yourselves too hard getting ready for that Massillon McKinley game kids. I mean, it’s just one game. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” . . . said no successful coach ever.

Even though it runs counter to everything we believe about the world, God wants mercy rather than sacrifice. So, what does that mean for us? Well, in the simplest terms, when we are in a position to offer mercy we should do so. And, it is more important to God that we offer mercy than it is that we make sacrifices to God. Or, put another way, God gets more joy out of us being merciful to one another than anything else. So let’s do that!

But enough of that. Let’s back up to how this reading starts. As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” Follow me. The gospel of Matthew is said to be written, or compiled by Matthew. Hence the name. And here we are, in the ninth chapter of a book called Matthew, and Matthew appears for the first time. And it turns out, he’s a tax collector!

I’ve told you about tax collectors before, but shorthand is: the Jewish people hated them. And the reason people hated tax collectors is because—not only were they working for the oppressive Roman occupiers, but—the way they made their money was essentially by overcharging their neighbors. Like, you owe the foreign occupiers $1,000, but your bill is now actually $2,000 so that I can line my own pockets. They made a living by collecting for the invaders and by overcharging their neighbors. So, you can see why Matthew waits nine chapters to disclose what he did for a living.

Anyway, Jesus says “Follow me,” and Matthew does. Now here’s the thing about this moment: What do you picture when you hear that? Like Matthew just closes up his books and leaves his booth and starts following Jesus, right? Like a baby duckling following her mom. Okay Jesus, I’ll just be following you now, wherever it is you want me to go.

But here’s what’s weird about this story. They end up going to Matthew’s house. So Jesus says, “Follow me,” but he ends up following Matthew back to his own house. To follow Jesus seems to mean leading Jesus back to your own house. To the place where you probably feel the most comfortable. That’s certainly true for Matthew, who would likely be run out of any restaurant he walked into. When everybody hates you, the safest place is probably inside your own home. And that’s where Jesus meets him.

Now, some Christians will tell you that following Jesus means you have to prepare for a rugged survivalist journey. Like, if you’re going to follow Jesus, you better expect to endure a daily spiritual triathlon against the evil powers of this world. Standing up against Pride displays in retail stores, getting classic books banned from school libraries. To these people, following Jesus demands sacrifice! They are at war against the spiritual forces of darkness. When Jesus says, “Follow me,” he is calling them into battle. Into sacrifice. But Jesus himself says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

Look at Matthew. Jesus says to him, “Follow me,” but that means Jesus goes with Matthew to his own home. To the place where Matthew feels most comfortable. Based on the call of Matthew, following Jesus doesn’t mean you need to go into battle against the people who disagree with you. Jesus says “Follow me,” and then joins us right where we are, just as we are.

And, when Jesus tells Matthew to follow him, he joins Matthew at a meal. This is perfect! Because Jesus has called you to follow him and, guess what? He meets you in a meal this morning. Right here at this Altar. Jesus says, this is my body, this is my blood. Following Jesus means he joins us at this meal, just like he joined Matthew at a meal.

Jesus says to each of us, “Follow me,” and meets us where we are, just as we are. And Jesus walks beside us as we follow him on the pathway that leads to life, forgiveness, and the mercy God desires most.

Amen.

YEAR A 2026 trinity sunday

2026-05-31T11:28:28.612-04:00

Trinity Sunday, 2026
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20
Psalm 8

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

So, I went to a Lutheran High School. Then I graduated from a Lutheran college. I spent four years in an Episcopal seminary. I played in a Christian band for 30 years. I’ve studied Christian doctrine, Lutheran doctrine, Anglican doctrine (such as it is), and systematics. I have friends who are legitimate theologians. My brother and sister in law are both Lutheran pastors. I have read a lot of books on theology.

And so . . . I now stand before you on this Trinity Sunday to tell you in the clearest possible terms: I do not understand the Trinity.

How can three persons be one person? How can God be united and yet distinct? How can three persons all be present at one time and yet not together? And so again: I stand before you this Trinity Sunday to tell you that I do not understand the Trinity.

And anyone who tells you they do understand the Trinity is either lying or trying to sell you something—in the words of the Dread Pirate Roberts. Nobody has a clear and concise explanation of the Trinity, because if somebody did, we’d all know it by now, and preachers wouldn’t live in fear of this day. And yet, every year, the Sunday after Pentecost shows up, and here we are, another Trinity Sunday.

So, let’s look at the readings assigned to us for this day. The first one, from Genesis--the short one--starts us at the beginning. Of everything. If you open a bible to the first page, this is what you get. In the beginning, God. And you know what? The Trinity is there, though we don’t necessarily recognize the formula. As I’ve told you before, the Hebrew word for spirit, wind, and breath are the same word. And right there in the opening verses we heard, “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”

In the beginning, the Holy Spirit is moving over the face of the waters, before anything else happens or is created. And, remember how John’s gospel starts? In the beginning was the Word, that is, Jesus. When we put these two things together, we get the Trinity, right there at the beginning of everything. In fact, before the beginning of everything. Before there was anything, there was God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And in today’s second reading, from Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, we get a closing that sounds vaguely trinitarian, where he says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” But there’s actually no mention of God the Father, and it leads to the ongoing confusion of thinking of God being one person, and the Son and Holy Spirit being something else. Maybe Paul didn’t quite understand the Trinity either?

But then we come to the gospel reading, from Matthew. This is the closing of Matthew’s gospel story. Right before this, the women went to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus with spices. He was not there—as you hopefully recall—and the angel says, tell the others to go to Galilee and Jesus will meet them there.

And today’s reading jumps in. The 11 disciples are on the mountain in Galilee, just as they were told to do, and Jesus appears to them. As we heard, “They worshipped him, but some doubted.” This translation has been corrected recently to “They worshipped him, but they doubted.” And that’s an important update! Because it doesn’t mean that some worshipped but some doubted; it actually means all worshiped and all had some doubt. Which is a very different thing, when you think about it. All worshipped; all doubted.

But then we come to the trinitarian part, which is why we get this reading on Trinity Sunday. Jesus says, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And he adds, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” To the end of the age, Jesus is with us. And where Jesus is, the Father and the Spirit are also.

We saw it in the beginning, when God was creating the heavens and the earth. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were there at creation. Before there was anything. And now we hear that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will be with us always, to the end of the age, whenever that might be. And this means, from before we were born, to long after we are gone, God is with us. We all live our entire lives between those two points: before there was anything, and when there will be nothing. And in between God is with us, every step of the way, every moment of our lives, with every single breath we take, from our first to our last.

And in the meantime, like those 11 disciples, we worship, and we doubt. That’s true for me, and I’m willing to wager it’s true for you. We don’t know everything; we have doubts; and we worship. We gather together on Sunday mornings, with our doubts, and our insecurities, and our admission that after fours years of seminary we don’t understand the Trinity . . . but we keep coming back. We keep worshipping. We keep doubting. And we keep hearing that God is with us until the end of the age.

We don’t need to fully understand—which is good, because we can’t. We don’t need to fully trust—which is good, because we all have doubts. We only need to let God be God, and live our lives between the beginning and the end, which is exactly the place where God has promised to be.

Jesus said: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Amen

YEAR A 2026 feast of pentecost

2026-05-24T11:50:13.706-04:00

Pentecost 2026
Numbers 11:24-30
Acts 2:1-21
John 20:19-23
Psalm 104:25-35, 37

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

St. Timothy’s Church was founded in 1836. If you read through our parish history—which I highly recommend doing—you will see that there is only one sermon mentioned in all those 190 years of history. That’s around 10,000 sermons, and only one of them is noted as having had a positive impact in our parish’s history. That one sermon was preached on Pentecost, 95 years ago today, by the Rev. Dr. John Stalker, our 14th rector, in response to this . . .

In May of 1931, as most Massillonians know, the Greek gangster and bootlegger William Kirkilis was gunned down by a rival gang. Since there was no Greek Orthodox church in Massillon at the time, several priests were brought over from Canton, and Dr. Stalker permitted them to use this building for the funeral . . . which by all accounts, was a spectacular event!

Some members of St. Timothy’s and other nearby churches were outraged, feeling the church had been desecrated by being used for a gangster’s funeral. The following Sunday, which was Pentecost, 95 years ago, Dr. Stalker preached that one sermon that gets mentioned in our history. I happened across a typed version of it in a filing cabinet in my office back in 2020. There were 168 people in church that day--in this same room--hearing these words, reminding them what the Church is and what the Church does. I read it to you five years ago, and given . . . everything . . . I think it’s fitting we hear it again this Pentecost.

PENTECOST SERMON, 1931, BY THE REV. DR. JOHN R. STALKER

Today is Pentecost, the Birthday of the Christian Church. I think that we cannot do better this morning than to think about the Church and its purpose in the world. It is good for us to think sometimes about such subjects, because it clears our understanding and brings us back to definite conceptions of our Christian Faith.

You know that Our Lord spent forty days with His disciples after that first Easter. In His Resurrection Body He talked with them and instructed them about many things. Perhaps as they listened to Him they were in a kind of daze because it was a unique and overwhelming experience through which they were going. They were listening to God--to God actually talking in words which they understood. Then came Our Lord's second going away from them in His Ascension. When He had gone, I am sure that the forty days experience must have seemed very like to a dream which could not possibly have been real. But they still continued to come together for prayer just as they had done when He was with them. And on Pentecost came an experience which made clear their experience the past forty days, and brought back to them the meaning of all the directions He had given to them.

The things which happened are graphically described in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. As they were together for prayer, there came the rushing of a mighty wind that made them bow down with fear of what was going to happen. And there hovered over each of them something that resembled a flame of fire and immediately each seemed to be possessed of a new strength and a new vigor which made him eager to go on with work for his Lord and God.

I think that incident was the greatest event in history, after the birth and life events of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Immediately, things began to happen. Peter turned to the multitude and began to preach and to tell them of Jesus Christ and what they must do to become His followers. Hundreds, who had wondered about Jesus as they had listened to His preaching and teaching, now threw away their wonder and their hesitation as they came forward for baptism. The organization of the Church went forward at once; and the marvelous thing is that it was organized not as people would have done it, but according to a new plan, which could not possibly have been conceived in the minds of the Apostles. With their center and headquarters at Jerusalem they began a forward work which stretched in all directions, so quietly, and so surely that, before the rest of the world realized it, the effects of this new organization were felt even in the remote corners of the world.

Holy Baptism was the entrance into this Kingdom of God on earth; the rite of the laying on of hands was the strengthening and the making firm of the person who had entered into a spiritual relationship with fellow Christians and with God; the Lord's Supper was the regular means of bringing spiritual strength to those who sought to do the Lord's work; the setting apart in ordination and in consecration was the regular means of obtaining leaders for this organization of God. In the history of the early Christian Church, we find all these sacraments and rites which play so large a part in our Christian lives today.

And with all of these things there was the consciousness of a presence with them which was real but not seen by earthly and bodily means; a presence that led and directed and inspired; a presence that made itself felt particularly through these Christ ordained sacraments and rites. Read the Acts of the Apostles, which is the story of the life of the Christian Church in its first years; read the early writings of learned leaders and you will feel much at home in their thoughts and in their plans and in the narrative of the events of their lives. For there you will find difficulties very like the one that we encounter in our Church now, and you will find those first Christians turning to the same ways of obtaining help to overcome those difficulties.

I think that you and I would feel much at home in the early Christian Church, for in our own Church there are those things which have been carried down through the centuries of Christian life, not only because they have proven themselves the best things for the purposes of mankind, but also because they were the things which Christ taught and ordered for the body that would carry on the work which He had begun.

From all this we must realize that the Christian Church is not a body formed and founded according to the desires and the plans of man. It is God given. As I read the history of the Christian Church; and as I realize the weaknesses and the failures of those who have been its leaders through the centuries, I am more and more convinced of the divine origin of the Church. No institution conceived in the mind of mortals could have weathered the stormy seas. Strong nations have come and gone; new discoveries and new learning; new ways of doing all the details of life have come as new generations have lived. Everything else has changed, but that which was founded by the Son of God stands through it all. The Christian Church! The Kingdom of God upon Earth!

Let us examine the Church which Our Lord founded here upon earth to make sure that we have the proper conception of it. I find that as I talk with people today they do not at all understand what the Church is and what Christ intended it to be. IT IS NOT THE CLUB OF THOSE WHO HAVE ATTAINED TO RIGHTEOUSNESS AND SAINTLINESS!

Our Lord showed that plainly in all his attitudes toward men and women when He was here.

He knew the weakness of Judas Iscariot; but He did not say to him, "Now Judas, run along and show that you can live without dishonesty for six months and without such great desire for money. Then if you succeed, come and be one of my disciples." Rather I think that Jesus said to Himself, "Here is Judas, weak in his desire for money and power. He has strengths and possibilities. I will see if I can help him." And Our Lord failed in the case of Judas. At the end Judas was a traitor and a betrayer, even though Jesus had worked with him over a period of three years.

Jesus did not say to Mary, “Go to your home and live in purity for a year. Then come back and I will forgive you." He took Mary as one of His friends and helped her. He tried, and she tried. And they succeeded.

In just that way you may examine the whole life of Our Lord and you will find that same attitude toward sinful and weak men and women. An attitude of sympathy and helpfulness, as He sought to lead them on toward better life. I think that He intended to have HIS CHURCH do that same thing; to minister and to help and to be kind and sympathetic.

The treatment of sin and impurity is very like to the treatment of disease in the body. When a man is brought to a physician with a sad condition of disease in his body, the physician does not repel him. Rather he treats the diseased condition with healing and purifying agencies. The disease battles against the purifying process; sometimes the disease wins. But the man of healing still goes on trying in his efforts to make the body pure and healthy.

The Christian Church, as it tries to do the work of God in the world, is not a place of judgment. Jesus said, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." The Christian Church is a place of sympathy for those in sorrow; a place of helpfulness for those who are weak; a place of ministration for those who are in need. And it is the place where the Christ works through the ministrations of His Holy Spirit. The Church suffers through the sins of those whom it seeks to help, and through the condemnations of those who misunderstand the work that Christ gave it to do. But the Church is never so weak as when it permits itself to be a cold-storage warehouse for uncorrupted truth, or a gymnasium for the calisthenics of individual souls, or a Sunday Club for the edification of righteous souls, or an entertainment bureau which seeks to amuse, or a party which seeks to propagate political opinions.

When we have misunderstood the plans of our Lord, we have made the Church into that sometimes; and when we have, the Church is weak, for in losing the plans and the ideals of the Christ, it loses also the presence of the Holy Spirit, which seeks to work and not to glorify any condition or plan of mortals. Just as soon as the Church becomes an educational institution and self-righteous body of Self-satisfied people, it loses its divinity, and it ceases to be the Church of Christ.

The Church is the Body of Christ in the world today, for it is the place where Christ's spirit dwells. The Body of Jesus Christ who was called the prophet of Nazareth was never spared when the Son of God lived an earthly life. Do you remember what they said of Jesus? "Behold a man gluttonous and a drunkard, a friend of publicans and sinners." And He gave them reason for saying that, for "as Jesus sat at meal in the house, many publicans and sinners came and sat with Him." So if the Church is to be the Body of Christ in which the Spirit of God dwells, it must not hesitate to touch the impure and sinful world, whenever opportunity comes. That is what Jesus did then, and it is what He wants His Church to do now. Jesus was misunderstood and was condemned by those who governed their lives by the standards of respectability. If His Body, the Church, acts according to His example in the world now, it must often fail to live up to the standards of the world's respectability.

As I read of Our Lord's plans for His Church it seems to me that He intended it to be a great power house. But it was not to be power like that of a thunder cloud. Picture such a cloud as it rises on the horizon black and menacing. One cannot tell how much power it has within it. The thunder rolls and the lightning flashes as the cloud approaches borne upon the winds of the heavens. And the whole life of a community is disturbed by it; little children run to their mothers in distress; nervous people avert their faces; all are relieved when that powerful thing has passed. But all go back to their play and their work and forget it when it has gone.

That is not the kind of a power house that the Body of Christ should be. It is what they tried to make Jesus’ Body when He was here, the leader of a revolution, the commander of a great army, the leader to overturn the existing nations of the world. He refused to be that kind of a power house.

But the power house that Christ was--and planned that His Church should be--is like to a great electrical power plant built beside one of nature’s tremendous water falls. The rushing water turns the turbine wheels and they make the dynamos whirl and through innumerable wires the power goes forth to bring light to thousands of men and women and to turn the great wheels of industry; it goes forth to do its work not for a great roar and flash of a moment but through every minute of day and night, year in and year out, bringing constant blessings to people’s lives.

In just that way is the Church, the Body of Christ, a power house. Here do men and women receive the inexhaustible power of Christ's Holy Spirit through Sacrament and Prayer, and then like wires they conduct that power out into the world, to make the world a different place; the power of sympathy to one in sorrow; the power of companionship to one in need of a friend; the power of example to one in need of an ideal; the power of counsel to one in need of direction; the power of ministration to one in need of help. Not once or twice does the power of Christ go forth from the Church, but constantly as Christian people come to worship and then go out to work, not for themselves but for their Christ and His world.

We hear much these days about the failure of the Church to solve modern problems. The failure is not with the Church as the Christ planned it and founded it, a Divine Institution. The failure comes when we leave out the divine and make it a human institution, restricted by human limitations and bounded by human ideals. [and then he writes in all caps . . .]

CONCLUDE BY APPEALING FOR THE DIVINE AND POWERFUL INSTITUTION THAT CHRIST FOUNDED.

We don’t know what Dr. Stalker said by way of making that appeal, but apparently it worked, because St. Timothy’s Church is still here, just as the Church of God on earth is still here. Still empowering us to go out into the world, proclaiming the good news of what God has done, is doing, and will do in the future.

So, happy 95th birthday to this sermon, and happy birthday to the Church that God birthed on that first Pentecost by sending the Holy Spirit. May we never forget that this is God’s Church, and this Church is for everybody. Even gangsters!

Amen.

YEAR A 2026 easter 7

2026-05-17T11:18:17.072-04:00

Easter 7, 2026
Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
John 17:1-11

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

Albert Einstein said, “Time is an illusion.” Perhaps part of what led Einstein to that conclusion was reading the Gospel according to John. The other three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are called “synoptic” gospels, because they sort of agree; they sync up. They have similar stories, with similar wording. Two of them have the stories about Jesus’ birth, which we mash together into a pageant at Christmas time. But John’s Gospel has no mention of the birth or the Temptation of Jesus, or the Transfiguration, or the Sermon on the Mount, or the Lord’s Prayer.

The synoptics, most scholars agree, were written together in a sense. That is, they had common source material, or access to one another’s texts. Some material is exactly the same in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and much of the rest is very similar, with some exceptions. But John’s gospel brings in all sorts of different stories and teachings, such as the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and what we call the Farewell Discourse, which we’ve been hearing this month. John has completely different ideas about time too.

The Gospel of John starts at the beginning . . . of everything. He puts Jesus there at creation: In the beginning was the Word—that is, Jesus. Though the other Gospels don’t deny that Jesus is eternal, they all start their narrative with Jesus’ being born or being baptized. Only John takes it back to the start of everything and lays it out: before there was anything, there was Jesus. Time does not exist for John the way it exists for other writers. He seems unwilling to be held back by the conventions of a linear progression of time. For John—like Einstein—time is an illusion.

So, throughout John’s gospel, we can’t really tell where we are in the timeline of things. In many cases, Jesus is talking about something to his disciples, but then the narrator steps in and explains that they didn’t understand because he had not yet risen from the dead. It’s like we’re looking back with the author on things that have already happened, but are then tossed right back into the story in the next sentence. Time moves forward and backward with John.

And the reason I tell you all this is because I want you to keep in mind that John is not all that interested in giving us an accurate account of the events of Jesus’ life. John seems much more interested in the point of Jesus’ life. In his gospel, John does not so much care about the who what where and when; John wants to tell us why. Which is why John gives us big sweeping statements about Jesus’ coming so that we might have life. For John, the Kingdom of God gets replaced by life and everlasting life (which we’ll come back to in a bit).

So, as I mentioned earlier, one of the things John’s gospel includes is the so-called Farewell Discourse, which starts right after Jesus washes his disciples’ feet. We’ve been hearing pieces of it all month. Jesus is giving explanations about why he does what he does, and what it means for the disciples, and so on. And then, Jesus lifts his eyes heavenward and begins to pray, which is the beginning of today’s gospel reading.

Now keep in mind, starting with that foot washing, Jesus has been telling the disciples everything he wants them to know. Everything. It’s like the World’s Greatest Catechism Class. And it’s . . . a lot! But, now he begins to pray. Straight from what is a long lecture of deep material into a “let’s pray” conclusion. The disciples’ heads are surely spinning, trying to grasp some very heavy theology, and if they’re anything like us, they are not really going to follow along as Jesus starts praying. After three chapters of deep concepts, they’re probably ready to just kind of zone out and let Jesus pray.

So Jesus lifts his eyes and starts praying. And what does Jesus pray for? His disciples. He prays for us. Well, okay, he starts with some very weighty concepts that only John would write down . . . they are mine and what’s mine is yours as you are me and we are all together. You know, like The Beatles. But at the end of those confusing phrases, we get this: “Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

When Jesus prays to the Father, it is God talking to God. A united God having a conversation with God. When Jesus asks God for something, it is not in an effort to change God’s mind. Jesus is not trying to persuade himself to do something for us, you see? Jesus prays to the Father, in front of the disciples, so that they will hear him doing so. It’s like, the point of the prayer is to let the disciples know that these things are already done. They can trust that they are protected and will be one, as God is one.

And then here’s a classic moment from John that Einstein would appreciate: Jesus says, “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.” Picture the scene. He’s right there with the disciples. He’s not only in the world, he’s in the room, in front of their bowed heads and peeking eyes, saying, “I am no longer in the world.” It would be awfully strange in any other Gospel, but in John’s World we look for the why, not the who what where and when.

“I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world.” The disciples and Jesus are in the same room when he says this. If he is no longer in the world, then they are no longer in the world. And, if they are in the world, then he is in the world. You see what this means? There’s kind of a bridge between “in the world” and “not in the world.” If Jesus is ascended and yet in the room, and the disciples are in that room and yet with Jesus . . . Well, for one thing, it means that Jesus is not bound by the physical limitations of time and space. And, as Einstein said, “Time is an illusion.”

So remove time from the picture completely and just use statements of what we believe: Jesus is present with us, but is also no longer in the world. Jesus is praying to the Father (which is kind of like God thinking aloud) that we would be protected, and that we would be one as God is one. God is with us, and protecting us, and actually wants what is best for us: That we would have eternal life.

I said we’d come back to eternal life, and here we are. Jesus says, “this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

You notice how very different that is from saying, “And when they die, may they all go to heaven.” In the other gospels, Matthew Mark and Luke, Jesus often talks about the Kingdom of God, or heaven. 121 times in fact, whereas John only uses the term five times. In John’s gospel, Jesus uses life, and eternal life, rather than kingdom and heaven. Life, and eternal life. And in this prayer we heard today, Jesus even tells us what eternal life means: “That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

That is eternal life. Knowing God and knowing Jesus Christ, the one sent by God.

One of the stumbling blocks of John’s Gospel is that he often leaves us with more questions than answers. And the immediate question from us today is, Well, what does it mean to know God and Jesus Christ? To be honest, I think the answer can be different for every single person. But it has hints of being about a relationship. To know God and Jesus Christ implies we spend some time with them. Read about them. Talk to them. Get to know their friends—the ones we call the saints. Throughout our lives, we come to know God and Jesus Christ, just as Jesus prayed that we might.

To know God, and to know Jesus Christ. And here’s what I truly love about getting to know someone: The chance to share a meal together. To break bread together. Coming to someone’s house to share bread and wine builds bridges that span the meager bounds of time.

And when you come to share this meal of the body and blood of Jesus, God comes to you in a way only John could understand. In the world, and not in the world. Truly present, yet truly ascended. And in this meal, we are united as one—just as Jesus and the Father and the Spirit are one—along with the saints of every time and every place. And, turns out, Einstein was indeed right: Time is an illusion. And for that, I am very grateful indeed.

Amen

YEAR A 2026 easter 6

2026-05-10T11:17:00.000-04:00

Easter 6, 2026
Acts 17:22-31
Psalm 66:7-18
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21

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

So, this morning’s gospel text picks up where we left off last week, and that means that—even though we’re still in the Easter season—we’re still hearing about the night before Jesus dies. And to make sense of this passage, we really need to keep one foot on each side of Easter. Because, in the timeline of Jesus’ life, he has not yet died, but in the Church year, he has already died and is already risen. So, we need to keep both of those times in mind when we hear these words from Jesus to his disciples.

And then, just to complicate things a little more, I’ll remind you that this text was written and first read maybe 100 years after Jesus’ death. AND, here you and I are today, trying to understand it 1900 years after that. In a sense, we’re all over the map as far as timelines, which fits perfectly with today’s reading from Acts.

Okay, but back to the text . . . At this point in John’s gospel, Jesus is giving something of a pep talk to the disciples. He is trying to encourage them in advance of his departure, and part of his reassurance is that he will be sending the Holy Spirit (or paraklete) to guide them into truth. Now paraklete is a Greek word that gets translated something like, counselor, or comforter, or advocate. Literally it means, a person called to your side. Counselor and advocate, to us, usually get interpreted as having something to do with a court of law.

Many people will tell you this is important because the Spirit is our advocate and counselor before the judgment seat of God. That is, the Spirit will argue on our behalf so that God will not smite us into everlasting damnation. Essentially, that way of seeing things would lead us to these two conclusions:
1. God the Father will judge us, and judge us harshly. And,
2. God Holy Spirit is like the ultimate lawyer, defending each one of us against the punishments of this harsh judge.

To the first point there, I will just say that we believe—as we say in the Nicene Creed every Sunday—that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead. The judging God of popular imagination (you know, with the beard and the lightning bolt) is the Greek god Zeus, not the God of Abraham. Jesus will judge us, and in case you’ve never heard it before, I’ll give you this spoiler: Jesus loves you. Enough to give up his life for you. You do not need a defense attorney when you appear before Jesus, because Jesus is the one who loves and welcomes you!

And, to the second point—that the Holy Spirit defends us in the Court of God—I want to remind you that God is united, not divided. We do not need for one person of the Trinity to defend us against another. It is just plain wrong to think that Jesus saves you from the wrath of the Father. Or that the Holy Spirit argues God out of burning you forever. It does not even make sense to think that the God who created you really wants to kill you with everlasting fire, and is only thwarted by that pesky Jesus fellow. Or that God only decides not to punish you because that cracker jack lawyer the Holy Spirit built an amazing case that will get you sprung from the gallows.

But, just to be clear, the Episcopal Church is not a “confessional church.” And that means, I will not spend much energy telling you what to believe, because we are a broad tent. And that also means, you are certainly welcome and encouraged to disagree with me any given Sunday. Or every given Sunday.

So I will not often tell you exactly what you should believe about God; but I will happily tell you what you should not believe about God. And this is one of those days: I am telling you as clearly as I can . . . Do not believe that our loving Creator’s true nature is one of punishment and damnation. Do not believe that Jesus saves you from the Father. Do not believe that the God who created you is actually out to kill you, or that you need some Holy Spirit advocate in the court of the vengeful god Zeus. There is no basis for believing those things . . . except that everyone else already believes them.

So, with my heretical haranguing out of the way, if the Holy Spirit is not our heavenly lawyer, what then do we do with this idea of the Spirit being an Advocate, or Counselor? Well, let’s try looking at it from a different perspective. Jesus says he is sending an advocate. Now what if Jesus is sending the Advocate to make God’s case TO us? What if the Paraklete comes to our side to make God’s appeal to our judging hearts? Jesus says, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.” And notice he says, “another Advocate?”

Seems that maybe Jesus is the first Advocate, doesn’t it? Like Jesus came to make the case, to show us the love of God in his words and deeds, and now another Advocate will come to continue to make the case to us. But, “the case” seems the wrong term, really. “The case” sounds like legal talk. Because it’s not a court of law; it’s a romance!

The Advocate is not sent to be our helper in the courtroom, but is sent by God to win our hearts. What if God loved the world so much that he sent his only son? Doesn’t Jesus show the ultimate depths of God’s love for you, in that Jesus is willing to lay down his life proclaiming the love of God? Jesus walks among us, preaches the Good News to us, and then . . . well . . . we don’t want to hear it. His courtship is rejected in the Court of Human Hearts.

But God does not give up. Here comes the Advocate to deliver the same message. And, in a way, the Holy Spirit becomes like the Heavenly Postal-Carrier with a certified letter. The Spirit has a word for you—the Word for you—and will make repeated delivery attempts throughout all your earthly days. Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night will prevent this Counselor from the appointed rounds. The Spirit knocks on your heart’s door with the message of God’s love, and will continue to do so forever, because forever is how long God’s love for you lasts. Well beyond the grave, I might add.

And do you want to know the contents of the letter the Spirit is trying to deliver? Of course you do! I will tell you the most important part of the letter. Jesus says it himself in today’s Gospel: Because I live, you also will live.

There’s a lot more to the message, of course, but it all grows out of that main point: Because I live, you also will live.

And the importance of that message just increases, because of the time confusion that I mentioned in the beginning. Jesus is talking to the disciples in that room before his death. But Jesus is also talking to the community in which the words were written 100 years after his death. And Jesus is also talking to us, gathered here in Massillon 1900 years after that.

AND, he’s making a promise to all these listeners throughout the centuries that we can fully live our lives right here and now, because he lives. And at the same time, also making a promise to us about what will happen when our lives are over . . . in all these groups of listeners, across the ages, because he lives, we live, and also will live. Both in the here and now, and in the final judgement. Jesus is pleading his case, which the Spirit continues to plead to our doubting hearts: Because Jesus lives, we also will live. And, because Jesus lives, we live . . . right here, right now.

The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, comes to each one of us, constantly and continuously delivering the most important message in the universe: Because Jesus lives, you will live. Everything else in life grows out of that message. It is a message of love, a message of forgiveness, a message to live your life without fear and trembling. You don’t need an advocate to plead your case in the judgment court of Zeus and his thunderbolts. But you do need an Advocate to plead God’s case before the judgment of your own doubting heart.

We cannot come to Jesus unless the Father draws us. And the Father draws us by sending the Son, and the Advocate to plead with our hearts. And the Father, the Spirit, and the Son together draw us to this altar today, where with the saints of every time and place—with all of them—we meet the risen Lord in the breaking of the bread.

Amen.

YEAR A 2026 easter 5

2026-05-03T11:36:00.004-04:00

Easter 5, 2026
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
Acts 7:55-60
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14

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

There are a lot of time jumps in today’s readings. While you and I are still in the Easter season, today’s gospel reading takes us back to what we call the Last Supper, before Jesus is put to death.

And we’ve got another jump in that first reading we heard today. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, is stoned to death by the religious leaders, which happens long after the resurrection of Jesus. As far as the flow of the narrative, we’re kind of all over the map. But there’s a thread running through the readings today.

The first reading, from Acts, recounts the stoning of Stephen. Brutal, and horrible, and senseless. The religious leaders’ reaction to the gospel is unthinkable in our country today, but it still goes on elsewhere in our world. Plenty of places in fact. Christianity is still a dangerous road to travel, and we are offered no guarantees of protection. As Jesus says in today’s gospel, “Trust in God; trust also in me.” Stephen did exactly that, and his dying words are recorded as, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. In today’s Psalm we heard, “Into your hands I commend my spirit, for you have redeemed me, O LORD, O God of truth.” And, you probably remember, in Luke’s gospel, Jesus says from the cross, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Into your hands, I commend my spirit. For Stephen, for the Psalmist, and for Jesus. The connection I want us to see here is the continued unfailing trust in God to receive our spirit. When it all comes down to it, that is the most important part of our faith journey: trusting that God will indeed receive our spirit when it matters most.

So now, back to this gospel text. Keep in mind what happened right before this reading we just heard. Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet, predicted his own death, and told Peter that he will deny him three times. Then Jesus says, “Do not let your heart be troubled.” Huh? After all that crazy information, do not let your heart be troubled?

But the language is important here. Because “your” is plural, and “heart” is singular. He’s talking to everyone in the room, but he’s talking as if they have just one heart . . . one collective heart—a heart which is not to be troubled by what he is saying. Then he gives them the reason not to be troubled: “Trust in God, and trust in me.” It gets translated into “Believe in God,” in our translation, but the original word, pisteuo, is closer to confidence and trust, than it is to belief.

And this distinction is important, because there really is a difference between belief and trust. For example, I believe in democracy; but I trust in gravity. My belief in democracy might influence my decisions and choices and attitudes, sure. But my trust in gravity determines how I live my life. From picking up a glass, to going outside without a rope, gravity is something you trust, and it would not usually occur to you to do otherwise. Trusting in God and in Jesus is not something you choose to believe intellectually; it is not some preference for one thing over another. In a sense, we cannot help but trust in Jesus. It’s just the way we are. How we see the world, whether we know it or not.

And then Jesus follows up the Trust statement with something that seems puzzling to us, I think. And it seems puzzling because it has been interpreted certain ways for so long that we automatically think we know what it means. He says, “In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.” We have fairly fixed ideas of what a house is. And, for many people, the best part about that image is that it is plural—placeS, or roomS—meaning we don’t ever have to run into the people we don’t like.

But, as I’ve told you before, there is an interesting connection between the word interpreted as “dwelling places” and a temporary stopping point. Some scholars say this word monai is something like a place set up to receive visitors traveling through. Not a private place to kick back and live out your eternal retirement, but a public place, to be welcomed after a long journey, with good food and a place to rest. When we go where Jesus is waiting, we don’t put out our hand to receive our personal room keys. Instead, Jesus stretches out his arms to receive us. A “welcome to the party,” if you will.

And then here’s the part of this little story that I really like. Jesus ends his flowery speech with, “And you know the way to the place that I am going.” I imagine the disciples shoving hands in their pockets, kicking the dirt, not wanting to be the one to ask the obvious question that they’re all thinking. But leave it to Thomas to speak up. Leave it to Thomas to be the one who wants reliable information and a road map. Leave it to Thomas to look up and say, “‘Know the way’? We don’t even know where you’re going! How can we possibly know ‘the way’?”

And then Jesus says, “Ahem. People? I AM the way! Remember me? The way, and the truth, and the life? You don’t have to know where you’re going, because you know the way.”

Now of course, this is contrary to everything we learn about directions. You get directions as a means to get where you’re going. Knowing the way is never the point, is it? Tell me the destination, and then “the way” is just details, because there are many paths. I might take the 21 or the 77. Just tell me the destination. Lots of people view Christianity in exactly this way. “I want to ‘go to heaven’, so tell me the behavior-modification plan that will get me to the desired destination, and I’ll take it from there, Jesus.”

But Jesus stands this on its head and says, you do not need to know the destination; you just need to know the way. Trust in God and trust in me. If you know the way, you’ll end up where you’re supposed to, even though you don’t know the destination. And you—the collective you—you know the way. All of us together are on a journey with Jesus: destination, unknown. But we know the way.

It’s hard to believe we know the way right now, isn’t it? We look at where we are and where we want to be, and it doesn’t seem like we know how to get there. Show us the way to being able to have civil conversations with our family and friends again. Show us the way to feeling safe in a grocery store or a shopping mall, let alone a school. Show us the way not to wake up panicked in the middle of the night wondering if we’re going to have a job tomorrow. Show us the way to get people to come back to church again. Show us the way, Lord!

I can’t help but think this gospel text would be heard so much differently back in the 50s or 60s. Back when there was a discernible middle. Back when NASA had a room full of people in short-sleeve button down shirts and matching glasses, using slide rules to land a man on the moon. Back when vaccines were widespread and trusted and effective. Back when we knew the way, right?

And now, here we are in 2026, where almost half our citizens don’t trust science or data or medical professionals about anything. In a world where politicians try their darnedest to clear out the middle and get everyone to yell from the extreme corners. In a virtual world of AI and deep fakes, and a physical world of ongoing massacres in multiple countries. This is where we are together right now. This is the world in which we live, together. So now you tell me, how do we get out of this together? We don’t even know where we are going. HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY KNOW THE WAY?!?

And Jesus says to us, just as he says to Thomas: I am the way. We don’t know where we are going, but Jesus is the way. Trust in God and trust in me. If you know the way, you’ll end up where you’re supposed to be, even if you don’t know the destination. And you—people of St. Timothy—you know the way. You are on a journey with Jesus: destination, unknown. But you know the way.

We know the way to the Father because Jesus is the way. With Stephen, and the Psalmist, and Jesus, we pray that God will receive our spirit. Do not let our heart be troubled. We do not need to be afraid, because Jesus is the way.

It’s true: We do not know where we are going, but we are going there together. We are going there together. We disagree, and we stumble, and we walk in darkness, but we are walking together.

And as we walk together, Jesus walks beside us. And that is why we are going to be okay. Because we know the way. And when we have arrived at that unknown destination, God will receive our spirit, and say to us, all of us, “Welcome home, weary travelers! Do not let your heart be troubled, because you have known the way all along.”

Amen.

YEAR A 2026 easter 3

2026-04-19T11:15:00.000-04:00

Easter 3, 2026
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35

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

There are a few Sundays in the Church year when the best sermon following the Gospel is simply to point at the Altar, and sit down. This is one of those Sundays. “He had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” Point at the Altar. Any questions?

But, let’s start with this. “Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” What kept them from recognizing him? I think it might be helpful to think about how anesthesia works here. Doctors give you anesthesia to dull your sense of pain, so that they can do difficult things. The anesthesia is what allows them to do what has to be done to, hopefully, make you better. To heal you.

In a similar way—for our own self-preservation—grief acts like an anesthetic. The pain of deep loss is sometimes shut out by shutting down. The process of mourning can make us oblivious to what is around us, so that we might have time to be healed.

In today’s Gospel reading, two disciples are walking down the road, talking about the awful things that have happened in the past few days. Their friend and beloved Rabbi has been brutally executed and buried in a tomb. And they have heard rumors of his rising from the dead. And they are terribly confused and heartbroken as they walk together on the road.

And, suddenly, a stranger appears to them, and starts walking with them. (And this is where the anesthesia comes in.) “Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” The very person they are talking about, the resurrected Christ of God is suddenly walking with them, the one they were just talking about, and they do not know it is Jesus because “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”

They’ve been kept from seeing what is obvious to us. They have been “put under,” in a sense by grief, and they don’t recognize the person who is talking to them. As they are walking together, the disciples are able to very clearly recite the expectations they had of Jesus. It’s almost a credal statement when you look at it:

Cleopas says, “Jesus of Nazareth, was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. It is now the third day since these things took place.”

It’s a great opening for a creed, right? But it’s missing the good parts. It uses “hope” in a past tense: we had hoped. And it proclaims the tomb empty, but that does nothing to make hope present tense. They’re confused, and disappointed, and under the anesthesia of grief. They are being prevented from seeing that it is Jesus they are telling all this to.

And it seems kind of unfair that Jesus says to them “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” That’s like the doctor taunting you for not noticing that she is performing surgery on you. Can the disciples be blamed for not knowing that it is Jesus when, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”? It’s not their fault they don’t recognize him!

But a closer look reveals that Jesus is not taunting them for not recognizing him on the road. No, what Jesus is talking about is their inability to connect the dots. To close the deal. They’ve got the setup perfectly, they have all the pieces, but they’re missing the main point. When Cleopas rattles off that narrative creed thing, he stops at the grave, and that is why he uses “hoped” in the past tense, saying, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” All the clues are laid out in front of them, but their grief stops them from seeing the crucial connection. In a sense, they don’t believe the resurrection because they didn’t expect the pain and suffering of the Messiah.

The disciples were under the impression that Jesus cannot be the Messiah because he has suffered and died, rather than ride into Jerusalem on a white stallion. These disciples, like many, figure that the Messiah cannot suffer and die and then still be the one in whom they had hoped. And that is why Jesus asks them, “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?"

And so now, under the anesthesia of not recognizing the resurrected Jesus, Jesus will do what needs to be done. He begins with Moses and all the prophets, and shows them how the scriptures point to exactly what has happened. Jesus can explain to them why he is the answer to their hopes. Why he is the one to redeem Israel. And, because they do not recognize Jesus, they can take all this in, without the distraction of the resurrection. Because of the anesthesia, right?

They’re catching on, but they still don’t see Jesus. They can tell something is happening as he talks to them (they say that their hearts were burning within them), but the one talking is still a stranger in their eyes. Still the only one in Jerusalem who doesn’t know what has happened these past few days. And then they come to the place where the disciples are planning to stay the night, Jesus acts like he’s going to walk on. They plead with him to stay the night and he agrees.

So, they all go inside, and they sit down at a table together. And then . . . “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.” You’ve heard that around, right? As in, every Sunday morning, right? At the table with friends, blessed the bread and broke and gave it to them. Yes, that’s familiar, because we’ve heard it before. But this part is different:

Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. Isn’t that the strangest thing? It’s like as long as they just think he’s some stranger who hasn’t heard about what has happened, he is with them physically. As soon as they recognize him to be Jesus, in the breaking of the bread, he disappears . . . .

Now granted, it sounds a little trippy, but it’s almost as if the bread becomes his body, isn’t it? They can see Jesus in the breaking of the bread. They recognize Jesus in the bread.

And when they get back to the other disciples, they tell what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread. But there’s an interesting thing that is left unsaid in this whole story.

When Jesus meets the disciples on the road, they are heartbroken and confused. At no point in the story does it say the disciples became happy and understood. At no point does the text say that Jesus made everyone live happily ever after. It’s not as if the presence of Jesus replaces or ignores our sadness and pain.

Jesus comes to meet them on their walk, in the midst of their blinding sorrow and pain. And yet their hearts are burning within them as he opens the scriptures to them. Meeting them where they are; not judging them in their blindness. And in the breaking of the bread, they recognize the risen Lord who has been with them all along. In the breaking of the bread, they recognize Jesus, who has been with them all along.

Jesus does not take away pain and sadness. Jesus introduces hope and comfort. The promise of the resurrection brings hope. The presence of Jesus, made known to us in the bread, brings comfort. Can we have hope while still being sad? Certainly! Can we experience comfort while still being in pain? Most assuredly. And in the bread and wine, the resurrected Christ is made known to us, no matter our present circumstances.

As we heard, the disciples were confused and grieving on their journey. Maybe you have that today as well: some sadness, or worry, or bitterness that acts like an anesthesia, keeping you from hearing clearly the resurrection story. For those disciples, breaking bread with Jesus opened their eyes to see that he was with them, had been completely present with them on their walk, and has indeed been raised from the dead. You and I share their recognition of the Risen One, here today.

I would like you to listen to today’s Collect one more time:
O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

YEAR A 2026 easter 2

2026-04-12T11:03:00.000-04:00

Easter 2, 2026
Acts 2:14a,22-32
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31
Psalm 16

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

Today is the second Sunday of Easter. And every year on this day we get the same gospel reading. The story of Thomas and Jesus and the other disciples. Every year. So why is that? I think the answer might be that it is the best follow-up to the resurrection of Jesus. Like, last Sunday, Jesus rose from the dead. And the first question we should ask ourselves is, “What now?” Jesus has risen from the grave, and this good news should be shouted from the rooftops, and the disciples are doing what? Hiding behind a locked door.

And Thomas—who notably was not hiding behind a locked door that first Sunday—missed the whole thing. We don’t know where Thomas was, but we know that he was not there hiding with the others. And when Thomas sees the other disciples, they exclaim to him, “We have seen the Lord!” So . . . why are they still hiding? Everyone heard Jesus had been raised, and now the hiding disciples have had a personal encounter with Jesus, and . . . they’re still hiding. There’s a part of me that totally understands why Thomas couldn’t believe unless he saw Jesus with his own eyes. Because seeing Jesus sure doesn’t seem to have made a difference to the other disciples. “We have seen the Lord!” So . . . why are you still hiding?

And so Thomas lays out the terms of what it will take for him to believe. "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” I don’t take this as defiance or doubt. I take it as a simple statement of reality. Not “I refuse to believe,” but more like, “Given the lack of change in all of you, I cannot believe.” And after this statement from Thomas, we move to the next Sunday and the disciples are—surprise!—hiding in a locked room. And what does Jesus do?

He comes to them anyway. And he gives Thomas exactly what he says he needs. He meets Thomas where he is, and provides him with the very things he says he needs to have faith. To see the mark of the nails and put his hand in his side. It’s as if Thomas had prayed for the gift of faith, and Jesus shows up in person to give it to him. And Thomas makes a decisive statement of faith: My Lord and my God. Jesus gives him what he personally needs in order to believe.

But let’s go back to what the disciples say to Thomas when he arrives in the locked room. “We have seen the Lord!” And, again . . . why are you still hiding? You have experienced the resurrected Jesus in person. He spoke to you and said “Peace be with you.” Twice. He breathed on you and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He specifically said, "I send you," so why are you still hiding a week later? And I think it’s a question we can ask ourselves after Easter as well.

We too have seen the risen Lord. We too have received the gift of the Holy Spirit. Everything has changed for us. So why are we still hiding in ways that suggests nothing has changed? And I don’t mean you; I mean all of us. We continue on with our petty squabbles and imagined slights. We nurture our political divides and partisan sensitivities. We keep forming our little clubs and cliques that exclude others. We increase our attachment to lifeless traditions and an aging building. We give in to the fear of scarcity and put ourselves ahead of others. We too have seen the Lord, and everything has changed. So . . . why are we still hiding.

Thomas says aloud what he needs in order to be changed by Jesus. He knows what he lacks and he speaks it in front of the assembly. Unless I can see what I need to see, to experience what I need to experience, without Jesus coming to me, I will not believe.

What is it that we need in order to be transformed? What are our doubts? What are the obstacles to our faith? What stands in the way of each of us saying, “My Lord and my God?” Or, put another way, how would we finish Thomas’ statement, “I will not believe unless I see . . . ”

We too have seen the Lord. We too have received the gift of the Holy Spirit. Everything has changed for us. So why are we still hiding in ways that suggest nothing has changed? Jesus met Thomas where he was and gave him exactly what he needed in order to be transformed. I ask you to pray that Jesus will meet us where we are and give us exactly what we need in order to be transformed. Jesus is risen, and this changes everything. May this good news change us as well, so that we might change the world in his name. We have seen the Lord, so let’s unlock the door, together.

Amen

YEAR A 2026 easter sunday

2026-04-05T11:21:00.004-04:00

Easter, 2026
Acts 10:34-43
Colossians 3:1-4
Matthew 28:1-10
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

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

Happy Easter! The Lord is risen! The Lord is risen indeed. And . . . so what? Well, we’re all certainly very excited about it. We got all dressed up and came to church. We put up with the priest’s insistence on using incense on the high holy days. The Lord is risen indeed, and . . . so what? Why does it matter? Is it like, score one for Team Christian? What difference does it make?

Well, I think context is important here. But first, Easter is the pinnacle of the Church year. You might think that would be Christmas, based on how our society treats the two holy days. But Christmas is just a way to get the story started. The peak, the climax, the reason we even have Christmas is because of Easter. Easter is the third of what we call the Three Days. Maybe you’ve heard the word “triduum” before. It’s a Latin word that means “three days,” and those days would be Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter (which started last night with the Vigil). The three days are considered one long service in three parts. If you missed Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, you’re just in time for the final act!

Let me catch you up on what you might have missed this week. We heard different descriptions of the betrayal, arrest, beating, mocking, and humiliating death of Jesus. We also heard that story on Palm Sunday. So if you’ve been to church at all in the past week, you know how we got here today. And even if you weren’t in church, you probably know how the story goes.

Judas Iscariot offers to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. He leads the authorities to the garden, and one of the disciples draws his sword. Jesus says to put the sword back in its place. Then they take Jesus to the religious authorities, and then to Pilate, who supposedly does his best to release Jesus, but the crowd shouts over and over that they want Pilate to crucify him. He has Jesus beaten, whipped, and mocked, and sends him off to be crucified. Jesus’ guy friends all run away in fear, and he is nailed to a cross between two thieves, where he suffers an agonizing death. Two secret followers bury his body in a tomb.

All along the way in that horrible story, nobody says, “stop.” Nobody says “enough.” Everyone just went along with the people in charge. The religious leaders can’t be wrong. The government knows what it’s doing. The soldiers are just following orders. And nobody says, “But this is wrong. Enough!” It’s easy to see how that can happen. We naturally trust that those in charge must know what they’re doing. It sure feels wrong to arrest an innocent man, accuse him of treason with no evidence, and execute him in the most brutal way imaginable. But nobody said, “This is wrong. Enough!” When you live in a culture that glorifies death, and spends all its money on the military, this is what you get. Death rules. Death wins. Death has the last word.

And then we come to today. Act three in our three-day triduum. And—it turns out—death and violence and cruelty do not have the last word! The resurrection of Jesus decisively cries out ENOUGH! In rising from the dead Jesus has overcome death, has destroyed death, has declared that death does not have the last word. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is God standing atop all creation and screaming ENOUGH!

Easter is a declaration of war . . . on death. Killing innocent civilians can no longer be just “collateral damage.” Destroying entire neighborhoods is not “mowing the lawn.” Invading countries just because you can is not the way of Jesus. Easter is subversive, and it stands against the culture of death. Jesus has destroyed death.

And Easter says, ENOUGH!

When bombs are aimed at a school filled with children, and a second bomb is dropped on their parents who come to rescue them, Easter says ENOUGH! When leaders smile as they brag about epic lethality against civilians, Easter says ENOUGH. When countries intentionally starve citizens, or cut off electricity to hospitals, or drop bombs on apartment buildings, Easter says ENOUGH! Easter is a declaration of war on death. And you cannot embrace the power of the resurrection while glorifying death and destruction.

The Lord is risen indeed, and that changes everything. Everything. You and I can choose daily whether we follow the resurrection way of life, or follow the way of death. In rising from the grave, Jesus shows us that God chooses life. Death does not have the last word. Death has been defeated. The Church stands with God and says ENOUGH! Let us also choose life. Because the Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Amen

YEAR A 2026 good friday

2026-04-03T20:07:00.001-04:00

Good Friday, 2026
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42
Psalm 22

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

One of the risks of hearing this story so often is that we think of it as a tale from another time. Something ancient and distant. A thing that could never happen today because people are not like that, and faithful religious people are not like that, and governments are not like that, and we are not like that. We might think, “That could never happen here!”

But everything everyone does in this story is happening all around us, right now. The names and characters change, but this is not a story from another time. It is a story for all time, in every time.

Judas decides that making a profit is more important than human lives. Peter tries to solve a crisis by shedding the blood of an innocent bystander. The police who come to arrest an innocent man are just “doing their jobs.” Peter makes boastful claims about fidelity before abandoning the one he promises to be faithful to. A police officer becomes violent and beats up the defendant for insolence. The authorities accuse an innocent man of treason and call for him to be executed. The governor decides to give into the demands of a mob rather than upholding the law. The mob itself uses religion as a tool to persecute and eliminate their enemies. The religious leaders deny their own faith, and claim allegiance to a faithless king. The soldiers take an innocent man up a hill to kill him, after beating and mocking him, because they are just following orders. The women stay to watch the death of the one they love, while the men have all run away in fear to save their own skins.

This is not a story from another time. It is a story for all time, in every time. Every single one of us could step into this story and play any of the parts, except for one. At the center of this story is Jesus, the innocent lamb who is led away to the slaughter. And Jesus is where our attention needs to be on this day. Because as soon as we focus on any other characters in this story, we naturally start to think, “Well I would never . . .”

But yes, you would. And so would I. And so would everyone around us. Because all of this is happening right now, all across the world. And that is why we need to keep our focus on Jesus, the only answer to everyone else in this story. This is not a story from another time. It is happening today.

YEAR A 2026 maundy thursday

2026-04-02T20:37:00.001-04:00

Maundy Thursday, 2026
Exodus 12:1-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Psalm 116:1, 10-17

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

Maundy Thursday. We get the word Maundy from the Latin word, maundatum, which is also where we get the words mandatory and mandate. It’s related to command, and commandment. All these words give us the notion of being told what to to. What is required of us. And in the gospel reading we just heard, Jesus gives us a commandment. He says it’s a new commandment.

What is that commandment? Is it to wash one another’s feet? No. Is it not to eat pork? No. Is it to kill people who don’t believe like we do in a righteous holt war? No. The new commandment from Jesus—the maundatum of Maundy Thursday—is to love one another. Just love one another. And a necessary part of that commandment is the “one another” part. Because you cannot do what Jesus commands without other people. It requires community. There is no “me and Jesus” in this commandment. It requires us. Together.

On Palm Sunday, we once again ended the 10 o’clock service singing “O Sacred Head Sore Wounded.” Here’s the final verse of that hymn:

My days are few, O fail not,
With thine immortal pow'r,
To hold me that I quail not
In death's most fearful hour:
That I may fight befriended,
And see in my last strife
To me thine arms extended
Upon the cross of life.

And—as has happened to me before—I was so overwhelmed by that text, my eyes teared up, and I had to stop singing. I just couldn’t do it. And even though I could not sing, the song didn’t stop. Because of the community. Congregational hymns are not solos, thank God. We sing them together. And if the priest or anyone else has to stop singing, the song goes on. When you cannot sing, the community sings for you. When you cannot pray, the community prays for you. When you cannot believe, the community believes for you.

On Palm Sunday, I couldn’t sing, but the song didn’t stop. When one voice stops, the song is changed, but it still goes on. In our community, in our worship, in our singing, you add a part that only you can add. A certain flavor, a certain tone, a certain shakiness, a certain wrong note even! The song is different because you are there. When you can’t sing, or when you stop singing, the song changes . . . and it keeps going. The song goes on, and whether you’re singing or not, it was made different because you were there.

At the close of this service, after we have set aside the reserved Sacrament for tomorrow, we will adjourn for a time into the parish hall for an Agape’ meal. The word “agape’” means love. Unconditional love, actually. And the reason churches have this meal on this Maundy Thursday night is to remind ourselves of the commandment we have received. That we love one another. As Jesus said, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

There will come a day when each and every one of us stops singing. But the song will go on, because we love one another, just as Jesus loves us. The song goes on through eternity, and you are a voice in this unending hymn. Even if you have never sung a note in your life, you are a voice in the eternal choir, and your voice matters.

Amen.

YEAR A 2026 palm sunday

2026-03-29T11:16:00.000-04:00

Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday, 2026
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Philippians 2:5-11
Matthew 26:14- 27:66
Psalm 31:9-16

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

That was a very long and difficult reading, which took us through several dark days. It is especially jarring that we began this day by celebrating Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem with the crowd, waving our palms and shouting hosanna. Only to watch another crowd turn and yell “crucify him!” And, of course, we mentally separate ourselves from that crowd. We were part of the first crowd . . . not the second. So we want to know why this happened. How did we get here?

And I think the explanation is tucked away in a small comment Jesus makes in the Garden of Gethsemane. He says, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” We usually hear this phrase in our day-to-day life as “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword,” or something like that. Which really changes the meaning. It puts us in mind of Genghis Khan or someone. Killers are gonna get killed.

Or worse, it puts it in the realm of some sort of karma mindset. Like what goes around comes around. Or, the country that threatens another country might get bombed, kind of thing. And we can even think of the reverse as a hedge against violent death. Like, I’m not going to draw a sword, so that means I’m protected from dying by the sword.

But I think we need to pull back the lens a bit to get the true meaning here. Because it’s more systemic than that. The warning from Jesus is about introducing violence into the system. Once it is unleashed it only grows. All who take the sword will perish by the sword, along with everybody else. It’s like once the swords are out, this doesn’t end well for anyone.

We think we want peace talks and de-escalation and cease fires, and stuff like that. But what we really want is to inflict overwhelming violence so unspeakable that our enemies cannot strike back. Obliterate their weapons and declare victory. But that rarely happens. More often than not, violence begets violence. Martyrdom creates martyrs. Once the swords are out, everyone is in danger. Or, in the words of Jesus, all who take the sword will perish by the sword. The solution is not to use a bigger sword and cause greater casualties than our enemies do; the solution is to put away the sword.

But we naturally approach confrontation by just trying to escalate the violence faster than our enemies can. Be the first one to draw the sword. Be the first country to have enough weapons to destroy the entire planet 10 times over. We even see this escalation in our local police departments, when they buy up used military gear and act like they’re going into Fallujah when they’re heading to a domestic dispute in downtown Canton.

Which brings us back to the crowd. One minute shouting Hosanna, the next minute shouting crucify him. Somebody took up the sword; and we’re sure it wasn’t us. But, clearly, violence got into the system. And all who take the sword will perish by the sword . . . and everybody else with them.

What we see happen each year on this day is that our Palm Sunday celebration gives way to this Passion Sunday tragedy. Everything was going great. And then, well . . all who take the sword will perish by the sword. We cannot hide from the violence once it gets started. Whether that violence is started by drunk fans at a sporting event, or the leaders of nations drunk on power. There can be no bystanders once the sword is unleashed. And the only solution in the midst of violence is to follow the command of Jesus and “Put your sword back into its place.”

My hope is that we will each seek to follow this command, and put our own swords back into their place. Our swords are not likely to be literal weapons. They might be the words we speak, or the posts we make online, or the hate we carry in our hearts. But they are swords nonetheless. And all who take the sword will perish by the sword . . . and everybody else with them. Put your sword back into its place. Jesus offers us a better way, and a better world. Let us follow his way into that world, that we might finally know God’s peace.

Amen

The Burial of Grant Oberlin

2026-03-28T11:56:00.000-04:00

Grant Oberlin
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 23
2 Corinthians 4:16-5:9
John 14:1-6

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

In our Book of Common Prayer (pg. 819), there is a prayer for Church Musicians and Artists. We started all our music classes in seminary with that prayer, and we begin all our choir rehearsals with it here at St. Timothy’s. The text of that prayer is this:

O God, whom saints and angels delight to worship in heaven: Be ever present with your servants who seek through art and music to perfect the praises offered by your people on earth; and grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty, and make them worthy at length to behold it unveiled for evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Three things stand out to me about that prayer. First, that artists work toward perfecting our praises of God. I think this is true even for artists who don’t believe in God. Because—since God is the creator of all that is—any work of art or music gives glory to God. The created, giving back to the Creator, whether they know it or not.

Secondly, glimpses of God’s beauty. When we see beautiful things in the natural world, we are witnessing God’s creative power, and—dare I say—God’s creativity. Would it have occurred to human beings to make trees, or elephants, or even color? Maybe, but probably not. When artists witness God’s creativity, they are inspired to make creations of their own. It is in the nature of artists and musicians to make beautiful things, and also challenging things. Grant had the ability to see beauty where others didn’t think to look, and I am convinced that such recognition is a gift from God. And not everyone has it. Some people look at a painting and can only see a monetary investment or an insurance liability. Others can look at a discarded piece of junk and see its beauty where others can’t. People are wired differently, but thankfully we have those who can recognize beauty and can point us toward it.

And then thirdly, the phrase, "worthy at length to behold it unveiled for evermore." In this world, we see glimpses of God’s beauty, and artists strive to show us more than we can already see, and the prayer asks that one day, they will be deemed worthy by God to see beauty in its entirety. All the beautiful things, just as God intends them to be seen.

In the reading we just heard, from the gospel according to John, Jesus says, “In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.” Since we have fairly fixed ideas of what a house is, we might picture a massive mansion somewhere, maybe with marble floors and Viking appliances. And, for many people, the best part about that image is that it is plural—places, or rooms—meaning we don’t ever have to run into the people we don’t like.

But there’s an interesting connection between the word interpreted as “dwelling places” and a temporary stopping point. Some scholars say this word monai is something like a place set up to receive visitors traveling through. Not a private place to kick back and live out your eternal retirement, but a public place, to be welcomed after a long journey, with good food and a place to rest. When we go where Jesus is waiting, we don’t put out our hand to receive our personal room keys. Instead, Jesus stretches out his arms to receive us. A welcome to the party, if you will.

And I am convinced that that very public space will reveal those glimpses of God’s beauty unveiled for evermore. Spectacular artwork covering all the walls. Gorgeous music filling the air. And furniture that no one ever thought to make. And over in one corner we’ll see Grant Oberlin with a screwdriver in one hand and buckets of paint around his feet, delighting in seeing God’s beauty, finally unveiled in its entirety. The beauty Grant had glimpses of all his life, and sought to perfect through the gifts and talents God had given him. And I bet there’s probably a very funny joke he’s waiting to tell us.

But in the meantime, listen to that prayer again:
O God, whom saints and angels delight to worship in
heaven: Be ever present with your servants who seek through
art and music to perfect the praises offered by your people on
earth; and grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty,
and make them worthy at length to behold it unveiled for
evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

YEAR A 2026 lent 4

2026-03-15T11:41:00.003-04:00

Lent 4, 2026
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41

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

In the three-year cycle of the church year, this was the Sunday in 2020 when everything changed. It was the first Sunday when we somehow became a parish that only streamed services, though we had never streamed any services before that. That Sunday, we had these exact same readings. Cristin read them to you offscreen, as I sat in the chapel leading Morning Prayer for the first Sunday ever. Levi played the organ, and Andrew chanted the Psalm in an empty room. And we all wondered if people could ever return to this little postage stamp of Christianity. Would people ever get back inside the building we so loved?

And we did come back. And—of course—some people did not come back. Some people decided the priest was too political, or someone else was too conservative, or since their parents were no longer around to make them come to church . . . for whatever reason, some people decided this was no longer the place for them on Sundays.

There is no denying that the covid pandemic six years ago changed everything about church. And we can’t put the genie back in the bottle by wishing it was 1976 again. So I just want to acknowledge that the world changed six years ago, and the ramifications of those “unprecedented times” are still with us. Everything changed. But as you’ll see in our catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, the mission of the Church remains the same as ever: “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” That’s why we’re here, no matter how big or how small. To restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. And so, we press on.

This morning is called Laetare Sunday, and is intended as a small break during the season of Lent. That’s why we get a little festive pink or rose this morning, like it’s supposed to cheer us up, I think? But the word Laetare means, “rejoice.” And it’s in the imperative form, so REJOICE is a command, not an option! And this is why on the fourth Sunday in Lent we get treated to Psalm 23. It’s a reminder that God is with us in the midst of suffering. So I just want to spend a moment talking about that familiar psalm. And specifically, the table that gets mentioned.

We are all familiar with Psalm 23, particularly the King James Version of it. It’s got all that pastoral language about green pastures and stuff, which is why we hear it every year on Laetare Sunday. In the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, because God’s rod and staff comfort me. All is at peace, in the midst of turmoil, because the Lord is my shepherd.

But the table. Remember that line? In our prayer book it is phrased, “You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me.” In the King James Version it is, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” What do you picture when you hear those words? I have to confess that I’ve always imagined it means, I sit down to a feast in a green valley, while my enemies look on in hunger. God just keeps ladling out the food for me, while those who trouble me, “mine enemies,” stare on with jealousy.

The two phrases to hold onto here are “before me” and “in the presence of.” It’s not a table for me. It’s a table in front of me. And it’s not next to my enemies; it is in their presence. They’re already there at the table. God is inviting us to sit at a table with our enemies. God is saying, come share a meal with the very people who trouble you. To put it bluntly: If you want to eat, you’ve got to eat with people who hate you.

What the heck kind of offer is that?!? We share meals with our friends. We invite people we like to dinner. We don’t imagine sitting down to eat with our enemies. I thought the peaceful verdant valley was going to be a place where it was just me and God, my shepherd, leading me beside still waters. I didn’t sign up for this “have a bite to eat with people who trouble me by not voting the same way I do!”

And that’s because our vision of a table is too small. We imagine a card table for one, set up in an open field, while what God is offering is a huge banquet table, where everyone is invited. We see this over and over in the parables of Jesus. A king holds a wedding banquet and invites in all the poor and outcast. The fishing net gathers up every kind of fish. The lump of yeast leavens the entire loaf. The weeds are left to grow among the wheat. On and on, we hear that God is inviting everybody to the banquet. No one is left out or excluded. Even those who trouble me. Maybe even, especially those who trouble me.

A Lutheran musician friend of mine named Jonathan Rundman has a song called “Meeting Nixon.” In the chorus he sings, “We’ll be meeting Nixon, meeting Nixon, when we go to that White House in the sky.” I think it’s one of his best songs, because it makes everyone uncomfortable! Some people will say there’s no way Nixon is in heaven. And some people will say there’s no way Jonathan will be in heaven, because he’s a Lutheran. And some people will say, wherever either of those two are going is not where I want to be going. It’s a banger song, because, whether you like it or not, everyone is going to be at that same table!

And every time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist, we hear hints of this in the Sanctus, where we sing, with the angels and the archangels and all the company of heaven. Everybody! This morning’s man born blind and the religious leaders interrogating him. The innocent civilians being bombed half a world away and the people who gleefully boast about bombing them. You and me and all the people who trouble us, gathered around the same table and saying, holy, holy, holy Lord . . . heaven and earth are full of your glory.

The table is bigger than we think, and everyone has a seat at it. Including you and me. Again—as our catechism says—The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. All people. No matter who still shows up at church on Sundays, no matter who has drifted away or left out of anger, no matter what the pandemic did to the size and unity of our parish, the mission of the Church has not changed: and it is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.

The table God spreads before us is big enough for everybody. It’s only our own small thinking that would exclude anyone from that banquet. You are not excluded from this banquet, and neither are those who might trouble you. No matter our differences, we have unity in Christ, and that is why we rejoice on this Laetare Sunday. God’s table is big enough for everybody. Rejoice!

Amen.

Ecumenical Lenten Service, 2026

2026-03-11T19:56:00.002-04:00

MACA Lenten Service 2026
30 Pieces of Silver
Matthew 27:1-10

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

In all four of the gospel books, Jesus gathers his disciples for what we call the last supper. They are seated around a table (or all on one side, if you believe Leonardo da Vinci). And Jesus—seemingly randomly—announces that one of them will betray him. And how do the disciples respond? Depending on which gospel account you’re reading, they either ask one another who it could be, or they ask Jesus directly: Is it I, Lord?

Someone will betray Jesus. Is it I, Lord? What’s easy to miss here is that by asking this question, they’re all acknowledging that . . . it’s possible. They’re all capable of doing it. Someone is going to do the most horrible thing imaginable, and what I want to know is, is it I, Lord? It could be me. It could be someone else. The disciples don’t know who it’s going to be. But we do.

We know who is going to betray our Lord. We know his name. And I can 100% guarantee you that no one in this room is named Judas. So we KNOW it’s not one of us who will betray Jesus. We’re off the hook right? We can live our lives never having to ask, “Is it I, Lord?” We can confidently say, “It is not I, Lord!”

And I hope you can see the danger here. The danger is that we can walk ourselves right into thinking we are better than Judas. We can even convince ourselves that we are better than all the disciples, because we don’t have to ask Jesus if we might be the one to betray him. We can point to Judas. There he is. Case closed. Turns out, it is not I, Lord.

However, we could say that people who think of themselves as incapable of doing horrible things are actually just incapable of self awareness and reflection. The ability to ask ourselves, “Is it I, Lord?” should not be overlooked. For enough money, you can get a person to do just about anything. As they say, everyone has their price. Which brings us to the 30 pieces of silver.

30 pieces of silver sounds like a lot of money to me. Or, it did until I dug around a bit. Depending on which kind of coin we are talking about, the estimated value of these 30 pieces of silver, translated into today’s US dollars would be . . . ready? Between $91 and $441. At most, it’s like 450 bucks. Who would betray their friend and Lord for $450?!? Surely not I Lord! I am way better than Judas!

When we hear that Judas betrayed Jesus for such a tiny amount of money we feel a bit offended, don’t we? Like it’s just so crass and transactional. If he’d done it for lofty ideals and principles, that would be one thing. If it was because Jesus was actually an immoral and compromised leader, or something like that. Like we could understand that. But to turn Jesus over to the authorities for a pittance. To sacrifice his life for what is essentially a monthly car payment. It’s just so . . . paltry.

We just wouldn’t do that, would we. We wouldn’t trade anyone’s life for a few bucks. Certainly not I, Lord. People are made in the image of God. All people are made in the image of God. Even the people we don’t like are made in the image of God. You can’t put a price on somebody’s life, if they are made in the image of God.

I recently saw a headline in the NY Times that said, “Americans may turn against the war in Iran if they feel the pinch at the pump.” So far, there have been over 1,300 people killed in Iran, including hundreds of children. When 150 schoolgirls are killed in their school, along with their parents who came to rescue them, that’s just a cost of doing business. BUT if gas prices go up, that’s a whole different thing! Now you’ve got our attention! We could say that 30 cents at the pump is our 30 pieces of silver. But, hey, whatever it takes.

Back to Judas. As we heard, when Judas saw that Jesus had been betrayed, he repented, and brought the 30 pieces of silver back to the priests. He repented. Did the chief priests and elders forgive him? Certainly not! They said, “What is that to us?” and sent him away. Did Judas forgive himself? It seems doubtful, since Matthew tells us he went out and hanged himself. Did Jesus forgive him? Hard to say, right? But here’s a clue: Judas was still present at the very first Lord’s Supper. Jesus knew what Judas was going to do, and yet . . . in John’s telling, Jesus washed Judas’ feet. As best we can tell, Jesus did not reject Judas, his betrayer.

That’s hard to hear, isn't it? The very one who betrayed Jesus, who sold him out for—at most—$450 was not kept away. Was not rejected. Was not banished from the Lord’s Supper. Was not excluded from the washing of the disciples’ feet. And maybe that’s where you and I can find good news in the story of Judas and the 30 pieces of silver.

Because if we’re really honest with ourselves, if we’re really willing to do the hard work of being self aware, then the answer to the question “Is it I, Lord?” is yes. Yes, it is I. It is I who daily fails to see Christ in other persons. It is I who daily sins against God and my neighbor. It is I who does not love God with my whole heart or love my neighbor as myself. It is I who will throw away another’s life for 30 pieces of silver or 30 cents at the gas pump, because of my own selfish needs and desires.

I recently ran across this poem by the Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges, which seems apt:
The coin fell on my hollow hand.
I could not bear it, although it was light,
and I let it fall. It was all in vain.
The other said: "There are still twenty nine.”

It’s not easy to hear or to face, but the answer to the question, “Is it I, Lord?” is yes; it is I. But if Jesus can break bread with his betrayer, if Jesus can wash the feet of the one with 30 coins still in his pocket, then Jesus can welcome you and me as well. No matter what we have done or where we have been, God’s grace is big enough for us. God’s mercy is wide enough for us. And God’s love for us is more than we could ever ask or imagine. Remember that most of all. God’s grace, mercy, and love are for you.

Amen

Harriet Ross Tubman

2026-03-10T11:36:00.000-04:00

Harriet Ross Tubman, 1923, Social Reformer

Luke 11:5-10

Harriet Tubman is rightly honored for her bravery and persistence in freeing people suffering under the burden of slavery in this country. She worked tirelessly to bring others to freedom. After escaping to Canada herself, she knew that wasn’t enough, and went back to Maryland many times to free her family and others—over 300 enslaved people walked to freedom because of her commitment.

We’ve heard many stories about the struggles of her life and all the good she did, but I want to focus on something specific she said as she first crossed the border into Pennsylvania, where she was finally free. She said that, in sensing the feeling of the burden of slavery being lifted from her shoulders, “I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person.”

Obviously, yes, she was. But the overwhelming change of her status made her doubt. Because even though she was the same person, the reality around her had changed. The landscape shifted. A parallel question might be asked at that same moment: I looked at my freedom to see if I was in the same country. And yes, she was. Harriet Tubman did amazing things in her lifetime—a truly great woman. But she only needed to be great because everything around her was so awful. She had been so oppressed in the so-called “land of the free” that when she finally was free, she thought that she must have physically changed. “I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person.”

But I’ve been thinking that the gospel reading assigned for today might actually place our focus on the wrong person. We hear of the neighbor who won’t give his friend a few loaves of bread, but then “because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” When we combine that idea with the life of Harriet Tubman, we might be tempted to take the lesson that we just need to be more persistent in asking for what we need. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that.

But there’s the other player in this gospel story. The man who refused to help his neighbor who was suffering. It’s not just the persistence of the one in need; it’s also the evil system of oppression that must be overcome. Again, Harriet only needed to be great because everything around her was so awful.

Whether knowingly or not, we create systems that destroy people’s lives. And as long as those systems don’t destroy our own lives, we’re content to say, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.” Pairing this gospel reading with Harriet Tubman risks us putting the focus on her tenacity, while ignoring the system that made her have to rise to such greatness.

Yes, we are right to honor Harriet Tubman and all the others who worked so hard to abolish slavery. But we also need to remember that we live in a country that set that system up in the first place. And we continue to benefit from all the evils inflicted upon those slaves. And so my prayer is that we will resist the ongoing efforts to erase the past; that we face it unflinchingly. And that we make real efforts to see that someone like Harriet Tubman has no need to spend her life freeing people from slavery, and can look at her hands without questioning whether she is the same person. She was the same person all along—a beloved child of God, born to be as free as anyone else. May we be inspired by her dedication, and dedicate our own lives to dismantling every system of oppression.

YEAR A 2026 lent 3

2026-03-08T11:17:00.000-04:00

Lent 3, 2026
Exodus 17:1-7
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42
Psalm 95

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

Three years ago, when this gospel reading last came up, I had a revelation about what’s going on in this story. And that revelation changed how I read this story, and it is an important and crucial change that I don’t want to lose sight of. So, at the risk of repeating myself, let’s jump in.

Let’s start with how I always used to interpret this gospel text. How, in fact, I’ve always heard this text interpreted. Jesus finds himself alone with a Samaritan woman who has had five husbands, and she is surprised that he is talking to her. Everyone agrees on that part. But I’ve always focused on her being an outcast, by virtue of being a Samaritan. Adding the assumption that she would be an outcast among her own outcast people because she has had five husbands. (And lots of people imply that she is somehow a loose woman because of that.)

Then, we typically make the jump to explain why she’s at the well at noon, the heat of day. Because, nobody likes her, see? She comes to the well when no one else would be there. Like she’s hiding by coming at noon. Then I used to pivot to point out how awesome Jesus is, because he doesn’t see her the way everyone else does. Isn’t Jesus wonderful for daring to embrace someone who is so rejected by her own rejected people because she has had many husbands?

However, the text does not tell us why she goes to the well at noon. And all those years I had been patting myself on the back for making plausible excuses for why she’s had so many husbands, but the text doesn’t tell us that either. My starting point was always that she was an outcast, a nameless woman, and Jesus is extra great for hanging out with her. But I had been projecting all that onto her. Because it’s not in the text.

And treating her the way I always did, essentially just makes her into a pawn so Jesus can look cool. I mean, she doesn’t even get a name. How important can she be? But in the Orthodox tradition—and finally now in the Episcopal Church—this woman does have a name. And it’s not just any name. She is called Photini. Which sounds like some kind of fancy drink. But hear me out.

You can maybe hear in the name Photini that it is connected to the Greek word for light. Think of photosynthesis, photons, even photographs (literally translated to “light drawings”). The name Photini means, “the enlightened one.” And this is where it gets really interesting!

Think back to last week’s gospel text, from the chapter before this in John’s gospel. We heard the story of Nicodemus, who came to Jesus in darkness. Remember that? Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, and in darkness—both literally and metaphorically. And Nicodemus also leaves Jesus in darkness—both literally and metaphorically.

Nicodemus comes up two more times in the scriptures. When his fellow Pharisees send guards to arrest Jesus, he says that they shouldn’t do that without giving Jesus a chance to testify before them in person. And then he shows up with with the spices to help Joseph of Aramathea bury the body of Jesus, where he is referred to as a “secret disciple of Jesus.” That’s it. Comes in darkness, argues for direct testimony from the accused, and brings the spices to bury the body. In darkness.

But Photini meets Jesus at noon. Not the heat of the day, but rather when the light is at its brightest! She is not cowering by hiding at noon. She comes openly in the full light, which nobody else seems able to tolerate. Last week a religious leader came to Jesus in darkness and we felt no need to explain his secrecy. Today, a woman shows up in broad daylight and we reflexively revert to explaining why that’s a problem!

My starting point was always to assume she is an outcast. Well shame on me—and 2,000 years of western patriarchy—for trying to read something into this story that simply isn’t there. Jesus meets a beloved child of God at the well, and the standard reaction is to try to explain away her beloved-ness. But she is not hiding at noon. She comes in full light, and becomes a powerful evangelist who converts an entire town with her testimony.

The given name Photini gives us the roadmap here. She comes in honesty and light, and is exactly who she is, hiding nothing. This conversation between her and Jesus is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in all the scriptures. And it’s not a lecture. It’s an actual conversation, with give and take. She asks sassy questions, and won’t take lofty-sounding metaphors at face value. She wants to know the truth; she’s a theological thinker; she trusts that she does not have to grovel in front of Jesus, or anyone else!

And what does she do after this encounter with God incarnate? What does she do after she asks hard questions in broad daylight when no one else would dare to be there? She leaves her safe-investment water jar there, and goes to tell other people! She doesn’t prepare a big lofty presentation. She just tells people her story: “He told me everything I have ever done.”

He told me everything I have ever done. That sounds kind of scary, doesn’t it? Think about that. Don’t you hear that statement with fear and trembling? Like, you have a conversation with Jesus and your takeaway is, He told me everything I have ever done. Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound like good news to me, to be honest. Like the last thing I want Jesus to bring up is . . . everything I’ve ever done.

But maybe that’s because, like Nicodemus, my default way to approach Jesus is in darkness. Assuming that Jesus is just too precious and fragile to know about my own darkness. The last place I want to talk to Jesus is in the white-hot light of the noonday sun, where everything I’ve ever done is exposed. But that’s how Photini meets him. At a place where there is nothing to hide and nowhere to hide. What you see is what you get. And Jesus sees all of it . . . what she calls, “Everything I have ever done.”
And. Jesus. Does not. Reject her.

And can you see what that means for you and me? We too can approach God in true openness, in the true white-hot light of the blazing noonday sun, without fear of rejection. Asking hard questions of God, laying bare everything we have ever done, demanding real answers to things that don’t make sense, none of that can separate us from the love of God. We do not need to hide from the one who truly loves us.

And now my new favorite part of this story is the bit about the husbands. Because Jesus says, “Hey go home and get your husband and come back.” Now she could have said, “Yeah, good idea.” And then she could slink away and never come back. There is no reason for her to expect that Jesus knows she’s not married. But instead of getting the heck out of there, she says, “I don’t have a husband.” And Jesus says, “I know; you’ve had five husbands.”

And you know what? I picture them both laughing at that moment. Because it’s funny! Like Jesus is kind of teasing her. I love to think of it that way. Why don’t you go get your husband? Because I don’t have one. I know, LOL! There is a levity to this part of the conversation, if you look for it. Just two former strangers talking in the brightest moment of the day, and that brightness is reflected in Photini. Jesus shines his light on her, and she spreads that light to others. This is a glorious and powerful story of a person who meets Jesus with nothing to hide, and in reflecting the light, she brings everyone she knows to Jesus, the one who knows everything she has ever done.

May Photini remind us that we can bring everything to God, that we will not be turned away or rejected, and that the most powerful testimony of grace is to say to others, “He told me everything I have ever done. And, still, he did not hide his face from me!”

Amen.

YEAR A 2026 lent 2

2026-03-01T09:42:00.000-05:00

Lent 2, 2026
Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
Psalm 121

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

Today I want to focus our attention on what gets left out. And, specifically, what gets intentionally left out, in order to drive a harmful narrative. Because—when it comes to God’s work in the world—the part that gets left out is often the best part. You could say, God’s grace is reliably bigger than we want it to be, and we reflexively try to hide that for some reason. But let’s start here . . .

Religion and politics are often in tension. And I think it’s safe to say this tension has never been higher in our lifetimes than it is right now. Religion and politics are not supposed to mix, or so they say. But when it comes to staying in our lanes, it’s been something of a one-way street. Religious leaders are often told to avoid politics, but we seldom hear the reverse about politicians staying out of religion. And if it’s true that we clergy should stay in our lane, then it only seems fair that we expect the same of politicians. Two recent examples come to mind.

First, in defense of the horrendous actions of ICE officers, I heard someone say that we need to have a secure border because heaven itself has a secure border. They don’t let just anyone in, you see? And I’ll just say, even if I grant you that—which I definitely do not!—the most basic tenet of Christianity is that heaven has a pathway to citizenship for everybody in Jesus Christ. Every human being who has ever lived has universal access to that pathway to citizenship. It’s a core principle of our faith. And a Christian politician saying that heaven has a closed border to make their political point is leaving out the best part of the story, which is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Again, God’s grace is reliably bigger than we want it to be.

Example number two. Perhaps you saw last year’s interview with a prominent politician who made the claim that we should support Israel based on what we just heard in the reading from Genesis. When asked why the United States should stand with Israel no matter what, the politician said he was taught in Sunday school that God will bless those who bless Israel, and curse those who curse Israel. That’s why our country should support Israel: to be blessed rather than cursed.

The first problem with this is the naked transactionalism of it, but whatever. Secondly, as we heard, God was talking to and about Abram, thousands of years ago, not the geographical country that was founded in 1948. Thirdly, the politician didn’t finish the quote! He left out the best part. What God says in Genesis is: I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. ALL. That’s the best part! And he left it out! Again, God’s grace is reliably bigger than we want it to be.

And so let me just say, as a called and ordained servant of the Word, in pointing all this out, I am staying in my lane. It’s the politicians who are swerving out of their own lane and into mine. Just as I should not be trying to do politics, they should not be trying to do religion. Especially when they’re leaving out the best parts! But enough of that. On to Paul’s letter to the Romans, where he also talks about God’s promises to Abram.

Paul’s focus here is that the righteousness of Abraham is a gift, and not payment for his actions. This is a radical thing to say, especially since we are always so focused on rewards and payment being based on work and effort. As Paul notes, “. . . to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.” In other words, it is faith in the gift of God’s grace that leads to righteousness. Not our efforts, not our strength, not our adherence to the law. No, what makes us righteous is faith in God’s unmerited grace. But it gets even better!

Because as Paul says, For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham. To ALL his descendants. To everybody! To all who share the faith of Abraham in what God has done. And I’ll say it again: God’s grace is reliably bigger than we want it to be.

And then we turn to Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night. (Metaphor alert!) I find it interesting that Nicodemus only shows up three times in the scriptures. There is the story we just heard, and then he speaks up for due process when his fellow Pharisees want to arrest Jesus, and then he shows up at the end, to help prepare Jesus’ body for burial. He doesn’t get a prominent role in the life of Jesus, but he comes in darkness seeking truth, and he argues for the rights of the unjustly accused, and he makes sure that religious burial customs are followed. You could say he’s always there in the background, but never makes the leap of faith. And he is not rejected.

But that’s a conversation for another time. In the conversation we just heard, Nicodemus and Jesus go back and forth, talking past each other, as people are want to do in John’s gospel. And at the end of their conversation, Jesus says something you’ve heard many times in your life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” You’ve heard that before, I’m sure. John 3:16. You’ve seen it at sporting events, and maybe heard it referred to as “The Gospel in a nutshell.”

However, many people use this very verse to explain why other people are not welcome in the kingdom of God. I’ve heard them do it. It takes a little bit of reverse engineering, but they get there by saying that this verse implies that those who do not believe in Jesus will perish and will not have eternal life. Of course, Jesus doesn’t say that at all, but if you’re looking to exclude people, inverting any announcement of grace will do the trick. And how much better if you can use a verse that everybody already knows, whether or not they’ve ever set foot in a church.

Which bring us to the part that gets left out. Which is John 3:17: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Jesus did not come to condemn, but rather to save. Save who? Zealous believers? Committed Christians? Nope. The world. The world! Not to condemn the world but to save the world. That’s the part that gets left out of the “gospel in a nutshell,” and it’s the best part. And the reason we don’t focus on that part is because—again—God’s grace is reliably bigger than we want it to be.

We want a very carefully defined system that assures us we are loved and redeemed by God, while also wanting a system that says some other group or individuals are not loved and redeemed by God. It’s just how we’re wired, I’m afraid. And so, unfortunately, we tend to leave out the good parts. We leave out the part where heaven has a pathway to citizenship. We leave out the part where God will bless all the families of the earth. We forget that grace is a free gift to all Abraham’s descendants. And we ignore what follows the gospel in a nutshell, which proclaims that Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world but to save the world.

Though God’s grace is reliably bigger than we want it to be, may God daily remind us that that is a good thing. Because if God can welcome the ones we want to exclude, then it means God can welcome us as well. No matter what you believe or where you are on your faith journey, there is someone who wants to exclude you, to turn you away, to keep you out. Thanks be to God that God is bigger than that, that Jesus’ love is wider than that, that God’s mercy goes beyond what we could ask or imagine. Because even though God’s grace is reliably bigger than we want it to be, it is still big enough to include you and me. And please, don’t ever leave that part out.

Amen

YEAR A 2026 lent 1

2026-02-22T11:19:00.004-05:00

Lent 1, 2026
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11
Psalm 32

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

As we enter into this first Sunday in Lent, you might be expecting to hear condemnations about your sinful lifestyle and threat of eternal damnation. However, I’m pleased to report that all three readings today come together in a resounding declaration of unmerited grace. And their combined message is simply this: God’s grace is for everyone, because of Jesus. Now I could just say “amen” and move on to the Creed. But you’re probably expecting a little more detail than that. But if you hear nothing else of what I say today, hold onto that: God’s grace is for everyone, because of Jesus. That’s our roadmap.

So let’s start with the first reading, from Genesis. You’ve heard this little story countless times by now, I’m sure. Although Christians often call it “the Fall,” I personally don’t support that name for it. Chiefly, because there is no Jewish view of anything like “the Fall,” and it’s not clear that this little snippet puts into motion our inclination to do bad things. In fact, blaming my own sinful nature on the first man and woman is continuing the cycle of the man blaming the woman and the woman blaming the serpent. Sometimes called kicking the dog, in family narratives.

Now, far be it from me to treat the first two chapters of Genesis as literal historical newspaper accounts, but let’s look at the text we have in front of us. God says to the man that he will die on the day he eats of the fruit of one particular tree in the garden. The serpent asks the woman if there are any restrictions on what they can eat. And she says they can’t eat of this one tree or they’ll die, but she adds that if they even touch it they will die. Putting words in God's mouth. Interesting.

But we have God saying that on the day they eat they will die. And we have the serpent saying, on the day you eat of it you will not die. God says you’ll die; serpent says you won’t die. They eat of the tree. And on that day . . . did they die? No they did not. Nor did they die the next day. You see the quandary here, right? Turns out, the one who was telling the truth was . . . the serpent.

Could the serpent see the future? Was God bluffing? Are we missing something in the story? Hard to say. But I’ll tell you what I think. As best I can see, this story is about God showing grace. In fact, it’s the prototype of God’s Grace. Grace 1.0, if you like. The very first story of the very first humans ends with God’s unmerited forgiveness. It is like blueprint for how God will deal with human beings throughout the scriptures. God sets up rules for our own good, we disobey those rules, and God’s grace appears and saves the day. Saves lives, come to think of it, because on that day they did not die!

And, I hate to break it to us, but this is not how we run our society. The existence of mandatory minimum sentencing is your first clue. When we say people will be punished for breaking the law, we expect them to be punished. All the parenting books tell us the same thing. Don’t make threats you aren’t going to keep. God said the people would die if they did the thing. The people did the thing. The people did not die. That is pure undeserved grace. And I dare say that we don’t like it, at least not when it happens to other people.

And then let’s look at the second lesson, from Paul’s letter to the Romans, the “for everyone” part of my opening statement. Now, in classic Paul style, he uses way too many words to make a simple point, which threatens to make us miss the simple point he’s trying to make. As I’ve told you before, when we had trouble translating Paul’s letters in Greek class, the professor would often say, “Sometimes the problem isn’t you; sometimes the problem is Paul.” So let’s boil Paul’s words down to the point he is making.

Paul is suggesting here that death is a result of Adam eating that fruit we heard about in Genesis. And, since Adam dies, everyone dies. However, in this same way, the righteousness of Jesus is passed down to everyone as well. And here’s the key phrase: “Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.” Note that he says, “for all.” Justification and life for all. God’s grace is for everyone, because of Jesus.

And now we come to the “because of Jesus part,” in the reading from Matthew. From the start, I want you to imagine yourself being really hungry. I mean really hungry. Like haven’t eaten for over a month hungry. And then along comes this guy, The Tester, and he says, “Hey, wanna turn these stones into some bread?” I confess to you, people of God, that my answer would be “Heck yeah I do!” If I’m that hungry, and there’s the possibility of instant bread, I am all over it. And so, in this way, I would clearly fail the very first test from The Tester.

And don’t even get me started on giving in to the temptation to jump off the roof of the temple and have angels catch me in their arms! How awesome would that be?!? But thankfully—for everyone’s sake—this story is not called, “The Temptation of George Baum.” This is the temptation of Jesus. It is not a story about me; it is not a story about you. It is about Jesus.

It’s important to note that these temptations of Jesus start with a word that is closer to “since” than it is to “if.” The temptation is not to prove that Jesus is the Son of God. No, each one is a temptation to misuse the power of the role, to reject the calling on Jesus’ life. You know, since you’re the Son of God, why not make these stones into bread and feed all those hungry people you’re always so worried about? That’s very different from a challenge to show his power in order to prove who Jesus is.

The test is not to get Jesus to prove that he is the Son of God. The Tester knows full well that Jesus is the Son of God. That’s why he’s there, tempting him in the first place. The temptation is to use his identity to do something to show off, to glory and revel in being who Jesus is.

And—don’t take this personally, but—you are not Jesus. This is a story about Jesus, not us. It is easy— dare I say tempting—to put ourselves in the place of Jesus here. To make this into a story about how we can foil Satan when he comes to tempt us into doing wrong. And we can even build up big explanations about how Jesus is calling us to stand tough against giving people free bread or food stamps, or God’s unwillingness to save us when we hurl ourselves into dangerous situations. But our theme here is, God’s grace is for everyone, because of Jesus.

I would encourage us to see this story for what it is: the Temptation of Jesus. This is not the temptation of you and me. We have our own temptations, to be sure. And one of those temptations is to try to make ourselves into Jesus. To think of ourselves as the ones who are going to save ourselves by our proper actions and the good behavior . . . of ourselves. The temptations Jesus faced are completely different from the ones you and I face. But knowing that Jesus did not give in, that he did not stray from his mission of saving you and me from the power of death . . . well, maybe that can encourage us to trust enough not to take it personally when we hear that it’s not about us.

Perhaps the biggest temptation you and I face is exactly that: The temptation to take it personally. And by that I mean, the temptation to think it’s all up to us, that it’s all about us, that we somehow have to work at getting God to love us. We all face this temptation every day, when you think about it. And we get constant messages that we’re not good enough, that we’re not rich enough, thin enough, smart enough, blah blah blah. And when we take in those messages for too long, we start to believe those things about ourselves, because we start taking it personally.

So let me remind you of one place where it is personal. A time when it really is all about you. You’ll see it again this morning, when you are invited to this Altar to share in the bread and wine, the body and blood of Jesus, given FOR YOU. Jesus comes to meet you here this morning in the Sacrament. God shows up in your own two hands saying, “I can work with this.”

God’s grace is for everyone, because of Jesus. No matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done, God’s forgiveness is given freely, with no strings attached. God loves you more than you could possibly ask or imagine, and I hope you will take that personally. As I said at the start: God’s grace is for everyone, because of Jesus. And that means, God's grace is for you.

Amen.