• Genesis 1:1-2:4a
• 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
• Matthew 28:16-20
• Psalm 8

the sermon:

I got the Eucharist schedule from Father Mark, and I saw this week was Trinity Sunday, then looked in the “sermon” column and had my name there, and my initial reaction was…

*GRUNT* … How can I get the live feed to (air quotes) “not work?” Because I knew that trying to explain the Trinity would probably result in me preaching some kind of heresy. 

In fact, I just saw a meme that said, “How not to commit heresy preaching on the Trinity… Say nothing and show pictures of kittens instead.”

Then as I was preparing and digging through the readings, I started to realize that it’s not so much a doctrine to explain, but simply sharing who God has always been and what that means for us.

The Triune God is unique. And not just in what He does, but also in what He is before doing anything at all.

So let’s go back to the beginning…

who God is before anything exists

Genesis 1 starts it off by saying:

“In the beginning when God created…”

I’ll stop right there for a moment. I love getting into the original language grammar, because it always shows some fascinating stuff. Check this out…

God here is Elohim, which is one of the primary names for God in the Old Testament. But grammatically, it’s plural. 

But here in this opening statement the verb for created, which is bara, is used in the singular.

The more than one, acting in a singular way. I don’t want to overly read into this, but even before Creation, this points to One God, but not simple in nature.

Let’s jump ahead to verse 26 where it says:

“Then God (Elohim) said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…’”

Even ancient Hebrew scholars have debated the use of the plural in this verse for thousands of years, many referring to it as a “royal we” or some kind of divine council. But through the lens of Christian reading and canonical witness, it’s easy to hear the relational nature of the Triune God speaking from within itself.

This is actually one of the things that makes the Christian faith different. Many in our culture would say, “Don’t all gods just point to the same God?”

I would argue that they don’t.

Listen… Before anything existed, love already did. 

The Triune God wasn’t lonely.
Wasn’t incomplete.
Wasn’t creating in order to have someone to love.

God was already, in His very nature, a community of self-giving love. 

Creation doesn’t fulfill God.
Creation expresses God.

This is what makes the Christian God unique. Other monotheistic concepts of God create out of need or will. They create in order to find love.

The Triune God creates out of overflow.

And it’s this God, the One who spoke everything else into existence, said “let us make,” and then reached into the dirt with both hands and crafted us. 

The word used for that act is yatsar, which is like a potter shaping clay. It’s more like an artisan at work with intentionality and care. 

And then He breathes life into us through our nostrils… breath… the same word used in verse 2 talking about the wind, or the Spirit, of God moving over the face of the waters.

This says a great deal about God and His nature. But it also says a lot about us. Created in His image, we are a living declaration of the presence and character of God in the world.

And that changes everything about how we understand ourselves.

the parenting bridge

I have to say, I think I’ve learned more about God by becoming a parent than anything else I’ve ever experienced.

I remember the day my first child was born. Going into the day, I thought I knew what love was. But I was not ready for how this would impact me.

After all the preparation and waiting and anticipation, Samuel arrived. The nurses take him, clean him up a little bit, and then lay him down in (I don’t know what it’s called, I just always call it) the french fry warmer. He’s just laying there crying, screaming actually.

I asked the nurse if I could touch him. She said, “absolutely.” So I leaned down to him, gently touched his head, and said to him, “It’s okay Samuel, daddy’s here.”

And instantly, he stopped crying and turned his head towards the sound of my voice.

From that moment. I think we both knew that everything was going to be different.

He’s 23 now.

And over the years, we’ve laughed together.
We’ve cried together.
We’ve been mad at each other.

And we’ve had the best of times together.

Now he’s a man. Building his own life. Doing his thing. 

And I couldn’t be more proud of him.

And that’s pretty much what we see God doing in Genesis 1. Making mankind in His image, and sending them into the world as bearers of that image.

And if you know Samuel, then you know that he certainly bears my image. Krista looks at the two of us and says (*snipping motion*), “cut from the same cloth.”

But you know what’s awesome? I hear the same thing regularly about even my adopted kids. From time to time, someone will say something to me like, “Man, Andrew totally has your sense of humor!”

Image-bearing goes much deeper than just appearance. It’s that sense of humor. It’s the way we approach the world.

It’s not only biological. It’s relational. It’s formed through love and time and presence.

So when Genesis says we’re made in the image of God, it’s more than resemblance. It’s describing a relationship. A belonging.

what is man that You are mindful of him?

We struggle to get this sometimes, though, don’t we?

In our Psalm today, we even see David asking the question:

“What is man that you should be mindful of him?”

It’s a big question! Why does a God who is already complete in love, who spoke galaxies into existence, bend towards these small, dust-formed creatures with such attention?

The answer isn’t found in us. It’s found in God. It’s simply who God is.

God moves toward.
God attends.
God notices.

But belonging to a God like that doesn’t just make you feel secure in who you are. It eventually sends you somewhere.

the sending

And that brings us to our Gospel reading in Matthew 28.

Eleven disciples standing on a mountain in Galilee. In Matthew’s Gospel, mountains are where heaven and earth meet.

And in that place, it says that some doubted. These are the resurrection witnesses! They’ve seen the risen Christ. Yet some are still doubting.

But Jesus doesn’t address or correct it. He commissions them anyway. 

He commissions the doubters.
He sends the uncertain.

Listen, if you’re sitting here today, and maybe you love God, but you can’t get to certainty, take note. The mission doesn’t require resolved doubt. It only requires showing up.

Then before the commission, Jesus gives us a declaration:

“All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.”

When Jesus sends us out, it’s not going out under our own authority. It’s under the authority of the One who made you, formed you, breathed life into you.

This echoes the dominion given to image-bearers in Genesis 1:28. It’s the renewal of the original vocation.

Then Jesus sends out to all nations, saying:

“Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

This is the only explicit Trinitarian formula in the Gospels, and it’s not in a creed, but in a commission.

The Trinity isn’t given to us as a puzzle to solve. It’s given as the name we go in. The name of Love that existed before anything else.

And in the original language, it means more literally that we are baptized into the name. In other words, baptism is an entrance into the relational life of the Triune God.

Then the most beautiful thing happens. 

The commission doesn’t end with a task. It ends with a promise. Jesus says:

“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The God who hovered over the waters, who got in the dirt, who breathed life into dust, who stood on a mountain with doubting friends, says: I’m not sending you away from me. I’m sending you with me.

This is fascinating. I think we often treat the Great Commission like a recruitment drive. But Jesus frames it as something far more like what we just watched God do in Genesis. It’s not about adding numbers. It’s about extending love.

We’re doing the same thing God has done from the very beginning… extending this amazing Love to every corner of the earth.

into ordinary time

This is Trinity Sunday. It’s like the great kick-off party for the long green season. 

Ordinary time.

And if we’re honest, it’s anything but ordinary! It’s the season in our liturgical calendar when the Church stops looking at the life of Christ and starts living out the life of the Church.

It’s the season where the story shifts from what God did to what God’s people do.

And that’s exactly what Matthew 28 is about. The Triune God who existed in love before creation, who crafted humanity with intention and intimacy, who commissioned doubters on a mountain in Galilee, is now sending us.

Into our neighborhoods.
Our workplaces.
Our families.

Sending us to be love, and to extend love in all those places.

Paul, near the end of his second letter to the Corinthians, after walking a messy and complicated congregation through some of the hardest things they’d ever faced, doesn’t end with a to-do list. He ends with a blessing that sounds a lot like the blessing we get at the end of the Eucharist. A blessing that is also, in its own way, a commission. 

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

Paul doesn’t explain the Trinity. He blesses people with it. And then he sends them. 

So consider yourself blessed.
And consider yourself sent.

Amen.

Image: Our Lady of the Rosary Shrine at Saint Patrick Church (Merlin, Ontario) – stained glass, church nave, Symbols of the Persons of the Trinity, used via Creative Commons.

It worked. Sort of.

The honest truth is that some kids would come back in September having genuinely dug into the Word all summer. Others… not so much. And I never really had a way to know who was engaged, who needed encouragement, or who had totally fallen off by the second week of June.

That’s been gnawing at me for a while now, because reading and studying the Bible is a truly transformative experience. So this summer, I finally did something about it.

The Problem with Summer Bible Reading for Youth

Summer is genuinely hard for keeping youth engaged spiritually. There’s no regular gathering. No built-in accountability. No social thread connecting them to each other or to their faith community. School provides structure, youth group provides community, and summer quietly strips both away.

And teenagers are wired for social connection. They don’t do things in isolation — they do things together. They want to know how their friends are doing, whether they’re keeping up, whether they’re winning. That’s not a flaw. That’s just how they’re built.

The other challenge is that a printed flyer and an honor system only goes so far. There’s no momentum to it. No sense of progress. No moment where a kid feels the satisfaction of checking something off and watching a streak grow.

So I started thinking about what would actually work. And the answer turned out to be something we already had in our pockets.

What Actually Keeps Teenagers Engaged

If you’ve ever watched a teenager with a game on their phone, you already know the answer. It’s not complexity. It’s not difficulty. It’s the combination of three simple things:

A clear goal. They know exactly what they’re working toward. The finish line is visible.

A sense of progress. Every action moves the needle. They can see how far they’ve come.

Social stakes. Other people can see how they’re doing. There’s friendly competition. There’s community.

Bible apps already exist, of course. But most of them are built for solo devotional use, not for a youth group doing a challenge together. And none of them were built with the specific reading plans I wanted to use, the group dynamic I was trying to create, or the Episcopal tradition I wanted to honor (not that you have to be Episcopalian to use this, it works for any denomination).

So I built one.

Introducing The Dig

The Dig is a free Bible reading challenge tracker I built specifically for this. It’s a web app — meaning it works on any phone or device without needing to download anything from an app store (but you can “Save to Home” screen so that it functions just like any other app). You just go to thedig.bibledude.life, create an account, and you’re in.

Here’s how it works.

Pick Your Challenge

Right now The Dig is running a Summer Challenge with seven different reading plans to choose from:

Core Challenges (always available):

• Gospels & Acts — All four Gospels and the Book of Acts. 117 chapters covering the complete story of Jesus and the birth of the Church.
• Psalms — All 150 songs, prayers, and poems of ancient Israel.

Sprint Challenges (under 50 chapters):

• Early Israel History — Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. 49 chapters of conquest, faithfulness, and some genuinely wild stories.
• Exile & Return — Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. 33 chapters about God’s faithfulness in the darkest season of Israel’s history.

Challenge Tier (50-90 chapters):

• Minor Prophets — All twelve minor prophets, Hosea through Malachi. 67 chapters of voices calling people back to God.
• John’s World — The Gospel of John, 1-3 John, and the complete book of Revelation. 50 chapters of the theology of love and the end of all things.
• Paul’s Letters — Romans through Philemon. 87 chapters of the theological backbone of the New Testament.

Kids can pick one challenge or tackle multiple at the same time. It’s completely at their own pace — there’s no “daily reading” assigned, no missed days, no guilt. If you want to read ten chapters of Psalms today and nothing tomorrow, go for it.

Log It, Track It

When you open a challenge you see each book broken out with its individual chapters. Tap a chapter to log it. It turns green with a checkmark. Tap again to unlog it if you made a mistake.

That’s genuinely it. The simplicity is intentional. The friction has to be low enough that a teenager will actually do it before they put their phone down.

As you log chapters, your progress bar fills up. Your total chapter count climbs. And your streak grows every day you log at least one chapter in any challenge.

The Leaderboard

Here’s where it gets social.

Every reader on The Dig shows up on a global leaderboard, ranked by total chapters logged. Your youth group kids can see exactly where they stand against each other — and against kids from other churches doing the same challenges.

If your church has a group subscription (more on that in a minute), your kids also get a private leaderboard showing just your church group. That local competition is often more motivating than the global one — they know these people, they sit next to them at youth group, and they very much want to be ahead of them.

Badges

On top of the leaderboard there’s a badge system. Badges are awarded for things like:

• Logging your first chapter ever
• Hitting 7, 30, and 60 active days
• Completing a specific challenge (each one has its own badge)
• Reading 50, 100, 200, and 500 total chapters
• Completing multiple challenges in one season

Locked badges show up greyed out so kids can see what they’re working toward. That visible locked badge is sometimes more motivating than the one they’ve already earned.

The Covenant

One thing that was important to me from the start was integrity. It’s an honor system — there’s no way to verify that someone actually read what they logged. But there’s a moment before you ever check off your first chapter where you’re asked to sign your name to a simple commitment:

“This challenge runs on honesty. No one’s checking your work — that’s between you and God. By signing below, you commit to only logging what you’ve actually read.”

It’s not a lock. But it’s a moment of intention. And for most teenagers, that moment matters more than we give them credit for.

Free for Individuals, Affordable for Groups

The Dig is completely free for individual readers. Anyone can go to thedig.bibledude.life, create an account, pick a challenge, and start logging. No credit card, no trial period, no catch.

For youth directors who want a private group leaderboard for their kids, a Church Group subscription is $30/year. That gets you a custom group code you share with your youth, a private parish leaderboard showing only your group, and a director dashboard to see who’s engaged. For a church budget, that’s less than a pizza party — and it’ll get you a lot more engagement than one.

Beyond Summer

The Summer Challenge is live right now, but The Dig isn’t going away in September. The plan is to run seasonal challenges throughout the year — an Advent reading challenge, a Lenten challenge, and others as the church calendar moves. The reading plans will rotate so there’s always something fresh to dig into, and the leaderboard and badge system carry over so the momentum you build this summer doesn’t disappear.

Get Your Youth Digging

If you’re a youth minister, here’s what I’d encourage you to do:

1. Go try it yourself first — thedig.bibledude.life. Sign up, pick a challenge, log a few chapters. Get a feel for it.
2. If it resonates, grab a group subscription and share the group code with your kids before summer gets going.
3. Mention it at your last youth group meeting before summer break. Make it a challenge. Tell them the leaderboard is live and you’re watching.

And if you’re a parent reading this — send the link to your teenager. You don’t have to pitch it hard. Just drop it in a text. “Hey, this looks kind of cool.” That’s enough.

The Word is worth digging into. And if a little friendly competition and a streak counter is what gets a teenager to open their Bible this summer, I’m completely okay with that.

Start your challenge at thedig.bibledude.life.

The Dig is a free tool built by BibleDude.life. Church Group subscriptions are $30/year. Questions? Reach out to me here.

“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.

“I have said these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.

“I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you.

John 15:26-16:4

the sermon:

Last week, we were in the upper room with Jesus on the night before his death, learning about prayer and open hands.

Today, on the Sunday after the Ascension, we’re standing outside, looking up at an empty sky. He’s gone. The Spirit hasn’t come yet. And the disciples are just… standing there.

That’s not an unfamiliar place for all of us today.

Most of us, at some time (maybe even right now), have stood in the gap between a promise we believe and a fulfillment we haven’t seen yet.

Between the diagnosis and the treatment.
Between the prayer and the answer.
Between the life we had and the life we’re heading towards.

It can be a really uncomfortable place to sit. And wait. 

Last week, we talked about praying with open hands. Today, I want to talk about what we do while we wait.

the promise in the gap

So let’s go back to that upper room during  the Last Supper. What we explored last week was Jesus’s final instruction in what’s called his Farewell Discourse. This week’s Gospel reading is part of that Farewell Discourse, and Jesus leans into a promise that will guide and sustain them after he is physically gone.

He starts by saying,

“When the Advocate comes,”

I’m going to stop right here for a moment. The word here is Paraklētos, which is sometimes translated into English as Advocate. It’s the one called alongside. In Jewish tradition, it’s your defense counsel.

St. Basil of Caesarea refers to the Spirit as constant companion… not the one you call when things get bad. But He’s the one who is already there, already alongside, already at work before you know you need Him.

It’s even better than Morgan & Morgan or Dan Newlin!

It’s a pretty good picture of who the Holy Spirit is, but by itself it’s still incomplete.

The other way that word is translated into English is Comforter. John Calvin talks about this in his Commentary on John, and he says that this title is important because Jesus knows that the disciples are about to face grief, loss, and persecution.

And he notes that comfort in Scripture never means the removal of difficulty, but the strengthening of the person within it. In Latin, he used the word fortis, which means strong, powerful, courageous. It’s the root of our English words like fortitude and effort. 

The Comforter makes you strong enough to bear what you couldn’t bear alone.

Together, these two words Advocate and Comforter start painting a picture of the Holy Spirit. But then Jesus describes Him further by saying,

“The Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.”

This Spirit of truth isn’t bringing a new truth, but is bringing witness to truth already embodied in Jesus. 

And as we also testify to this truth, we’re not doing it independently. We’re doing it alongside the Holy Spirit. When we speak faithfully about Christ, it’s not just a human act. We do it in full participation with God the Holy Spirit, our Comforter and Advocate.

And then Jesus does something that might surprise us. He follows that beautiful promise with a warning. 

the warning they needed to hear

He says to them,

“I have said these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me.”

Here Jesus is pointing them to all the things that’ll happen in order to prepare them. The word in there for falling away or offended or stumble is skandalon, which translates best as a stumbling block, a trap, something that causes you to fall.

Jesus is pre-emptively removing the skandalon of the persecution by naming it before it happens. If they know it’s coming, they won’t trip over it when it arrives.

This is crazy! I get the picture in my head of Jesus calling his shots… like Babe Ruth pointing his bat towards the outfield after two strikes in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series just before he sends the ball deep into the center field bleachers for a massive home run.

For the disciples, Jesus naming the persecution like that would make His promises more credible. He knew it. He said so. Which means he also meant what he said about the Comforter.

Jesus even says specifically, “an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.”

It makes me wonder what the disciples thought when they saw a man named Saul coming into town, present at the stoning of Stephen (the first deacon), giving his approval. The same Saul who would later have his own transformation experience on the road to Damascus, eventually writing a large portion of the New Testament.

I’m certain they would have remembered these words of Jesus while witnessing it happen right in front of their eyes.

In that moment, imagine the resolve that would have risen up inside of them. Imagine the confidence and strength that would have grown in their testimony. 

And this is how the Spirit works, He advocates by forming people whose lives bear witness to the truth. It’s defense through transformation, not debate or superior argument. This completely reframes what it means to respond to a hostile world.

And then Jesus says something that holds all of this together.

remember

“I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.”

Here, Jesus is giving them exactly what they need to return to when everything else feels like it’s falling apart.

St. Augustine explores this in his Confessions, saying that memory isn’t merely the storage of past events. It’s the place where God is encountered in the present. He says that the memory of Jesus’s words is a form of ongoing presence.

The Desert Fathers from around the 3rd century had a practice they called melete, which was a murmuring, a ruminating, and turning the text over until it became part of you. It was formation through repetition. So when a crisis hits, the remembered word is already in the body, already available as an anchor. 

We encounter the same thing through the rhythms of the Book of Common Prayer. In it, Thomas Cranmer essentially built a memory-formation system. The same texts, the same prayers, the same rhythms, year after year, so they’re available when you need them.

Dr. Robert Crouse talks about the disciples during the post-Ascension time, saying that their standing around and gazing up into heaven isn’t wrong in their looking up. Rather, they were wrong to stay there. 

He points out, as we see in our text today, that Jesus has already given them what they need to stop gazing and start living. 

The memory of His words is the thing that moves them from the field back into the upper room, back into prayer, back into community.

So what does it look like to live in this gap? Peter has a pretty good answer for that from our New Testament Reading today.

the shape of the in-between

He starts by saying,

“The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers.”

As we explored last week, with open hands, we pray in His name with great confidence, “thy will be done, thy kingdom come…”

And when we pray in alignment with His will, with the Holy Spirit alongside us, we are free to pray and love and serve without the burden of securing our own future, as we are safely nestled in His presence. 

Peter continues,

“Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining.”

Some translations say it like this, “have fervent charity among yourselves.”

And that word fervent, means stretched out, strained, or at full extension. In other words, this isn’t casual affection. It’s not doing something because you’re already practically doing it anyway. It’s a love that actually costs something. It’s being a blessing to someone, even when you don’t feel like it.

It’s a sacrificial love, reminiscent of the sacrifice Christ made for us on the Cross.

And Peter says,

“Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.”

God’s manifold, or many-colored, or variegated grace… God’s grace comes in more varieties than we can catalog. Every gift in the community is a different color of the same grace.

And being good stewards of that grace means that we’re using what we’ve been given, not hoarding it or waiting until conditions are perfect.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together points out that these practices aren’t obligations imposed from the outside. They’re the natural expression, he says, of people who have genuinely internalized the Gospel.

Prayer, hospitality, the use of our gifts for one another… this is what the in-between community looks like when it’s functioning as Jesus intended.

conclusion

Last week I told you the victory was already won. The peace was already given. The Father was already leaning toward you.

Today I want to leave you with this.

You are not standing in an empty gap. The Paraclete is already alongside you — not waiting to be summoned, not arriving only in the crisis, but already there, already at work, already making you strong enough for what you couldn’t bear alone.

The memory of what Jesus said is your anchor. The prayers you’ve prayed in this place, the rhythms of this liturgy, the words you’ve spoken together year after year — they’re already in you. They’ll be there when you need them.

So don’t just stand there gazing up at the sky.

Pray. Love at full extension. Deploy the grace you’ve been given in every color it comes in.

The Spirit is already here.

Take heart.

On that day you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

“I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but will tell you plainly of the Father. On that day you will ask in my name. I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf, for the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father.”

His disciples said, “Yes, now you are speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech! Now we know that you know all things and do not need to have anyone question you; by this we believe that you came from God.” Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution, but take courage: I have conquered the world!”

John 16:23-33

the sermon:

Welcome, and Happy Rogation Day!

I know that you’ve probably had this day marked on your calendar as a big one, up there with Christmas and Easter.

No?

Yeah… most of us didn’t grow up with Rogation Sunday on our calendars. But the tradition points at something we all desperately need. 

It comes from the Latin rogare (roh-GAH-reh), which simply means “to ask,” maybe with a hint of “to beg.” And this Sunday, the whole arc of the lectionary is moving us to think honestly about what it means to ask God for anything at all.

If we’re honest, most of us have a complicated relationship with prayer.

We believe in it.
But, we’re not always sure it works.

We do it, and then feel guilty that we don’t do it more, or more faithfully, or with more confidence.

What does Jesus actually mean when he says, “ask, and you will receive?”

the invitation

This is the very question Jesus answers in our Gospel reading for today.

Let me set the stage first. It’s the evening of the Last Supper, just hours before he’s betrayed, arrested, and crucified. He’s well aware that this is His last opportunity to prepare the disciples on what life looks like after He’s gone.

And it’s in that moment, these final instructions, that He gives His closest friends the most intimate gift He can… direct access to the Father.

Ask in my name.
Ask and receive.
That your joy may be full.

That term “in my name,” in the original language is en tō onomati mou. And it’s not about a formula to get whatever you’re asking for. It’s more about a relational union with who Jesus is. To ask in his name is to ask in alignment with his character and will. 

So it’s not a “me” request, like “Father, please let me win the Powerball this week, and I promise to give 10% to the church. In Jesus’ name!”

And there’s nothing wrong with asking for things, what we call a petition. But it really only makes sense when adoration and surrender come first. Prayer makes most sense when it begins with orientation towards the One who is already our peace. 

Thomas Merton once wrote, 

“The value of our prayer is not to be measured by the feelings it produces in us… [but] is to be found in the fact that it is an orientation of our whole being to God.”

St. Augustine takes it even further in his Letter to Proba, essentially saying (paraphrasing) that prayer enlarges our capacity to receive what God already desires to give; the asking stretches the heart to hold the joy intended for us.

Just as Jesus said, “that your joy may be full.”

That word “full” in the original language points to a joy brought to its completion, not a fleeting happiness, but more like fulfillment. 

All this because, as Jesus says, “the Father himself loves you.” This approach to prayer isn’t about earning access. The Father is already leaning toward us.

the honest problem

Sounds amazing, right? 

But this is where it starts getting real for the disciples. They get this great insight from their Teacher and Master, and they think they’ve arrived, saying:

“Now we know that you know all things…”

They’re confident; ready to take on the world.

And then Jesus dismantles it. He says to them:

“Do you now believe? The hour is coming… you will be scattered. [You] will leave me alone.”

That scattering… It’s not like a strategic retreat as they go out on mission to plant and grow the Church. It’s more like being scattered like sheep. 

The trials and tribulations they’ll experience will shake them up and send them running for the hills.

Here’s the thing, the disciples were overconfident. And I get that! There’s this almost universal pattern as humans where we believe that comprehension is the same as transformation.

But Jesus flat out tells them, that’s cute, but you’re about to get shook.

Boxing legend Mike Tyson probably said it best when he was asked about his opponent’s “plan” for fighting him. He said:

“Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the face.”

It’s very different thinking you know something, until you have to live it out.

One of the Early Church Fathers, John Chrysostom, preached about this in his Homilies on John. He says that the disciples made the mistake of confusing the hearing of truth with the possession of it. They believe they understand, but their understanding hasn’t been tested by experience. 

He makes the case that Jesus allows the scattering precisely because it’ll deepen their faith in ways that undisturbed confidence never could. Tribulation isn’t the enemy of faith, it’s the kiln.

Here’s the thing. There will be times in our lives when we feel like we’re going through the unimaginable and that God’s not there (or not listening). In those moments, even praying at all is an act of faith.

And Jesus knows that. He sees it coming. And he doesn’t leave it there. 

peace and tribulation

He says to them (v. 33):

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

There are a few things happening in this verse that I want to draw your attention to. 

First, Jesus says, “in me you will have peace.”

This peace we find, we find in Him. This is relational. It’s through our proximity and connection to Christ that we find peace.

And we find an echo of this in the BCP’s Collect for Peace, which is part of Evening Prayer. It goes like this:

“Most holy God, the source of all good desires, all right judgements, and all just works: Give to us, your servants, that peace which the world cannot give…”

This distinguishes God’s peace from the world’s peace.

Listen, we all know that the things of this world can bring us a certain level of peace. And it’s not unusual to try to find that peace in lots of things… money, social approval, control, relationships, achievement, health… I can go on, but I think you get the idea.

And it’s not that these things are bad. The problem isn’t the things. It’s the weight we put on them. It’s the belief that they can deliver something they were never designed to provide.

But the peace we find in Jesus, the peace which the world cannot give, that’s where we find wholeness, right relationship, completeness.

In the original language, this peace isn’t the absence of conflict or tribulation. But it’s His presence with us in the middle of it.

In this statement, Jesus follows that up by encouraging the disciples (and us) to take heart, because He has overcome the world.

The original language grammar here is interesting too. It’s more accurately, I have already overcome. It’s a completed action with ongoing results. The victory is already accomplished, not still pending.

So Jesus is telling them to take heart, or be of good cheer, or have courage, because it is finished.

This is an Easter sentence if there ever was one. We’re still in the Easter season, still living inside the reality of an empty tomb. “I have already overcome” is just another way of saying He is risen.

Julian of Norwich, writing in the middle of her own intense suffering, captured it this way: 

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” 

That’s not a denial of her circumstance. That’s someone who has staked everything on the same finished victory Jesus is describing.

And that changes how we pray.

open hands

Henri Nouwen, in his book With Open Hands, explores this idea of how we pray. He says that we often come to God in prayer with clenched fists, clutching what we want, what we fear, what we demand.

He says that prayer is really the slow, and sometimes difficult, work of opening our hands. When Jesus says, “ask in my name,” it’s more about receiving on His terms, rather than demanding on ours.

But that means we need to release control, and trust that God really has overcome it all. And that can be a scary place for us.

So Nouwen suggests a prayer something like this:

“Dear God, I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands? Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me.”

This all really starts digging into the core of who we are, and Whose we are.

Our prayers become less about what we want and more about aligning ourselves with His heart.

It looks like the Lord’s Prayer prayed slowly, rather than being recited quickly without even thinking about it:

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

In fact, when we get to that point in the prayers today, I’d like to slow the pace so that we can marinate in it just a little longer.

conclusion

The ancient Rogation tradition had a beautiful practice where the congregation would physically walk the parish boundaries together, stopping to pray, and asking God for what was needed.

It wasn’t a magic ritual.
It wasn’t a performance.

But it was a whole community, together, opening their hands to receive from the Lord.

And that’s what Jesus is inviting us into today. Not a better prayer technique, or more confidence, or more discipline, or more feeling.

Just open hands.

A community that walks and asks and trusts together.

The victory is already won. The peace is already given. And the Father is already leaning toward us.

Let us pray.

Lord of all good desires, we come to you this morning with open hands. Not demanding. Not performing. Just asking, in the name of the one who has already overcome, that you would receive us as we are, form us as you will, and send us out as doers of your word. Amen.

It is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.

“He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth.”

When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

1 Peter 2:19-25

the sermon:

I remember a time when I worked in the corporate world when I felt like I was doing all the right things, but I still got the short end of the stick.

I worked hard, earned the respect of my peers, and always looked for ways to improve how we worked. And when a certain promotion came up, everyone who knew me assured me that I was by far the most qualified, and that I was a shoo-in for the role.

Someone else got it.

In fact, what I got was a trip to the corporate office (where my boss worked) so that he could tell me, “Dan, I know you love your family and all, but don’t let that get in the way of your career. You really do have a lot to offer.”

I was dumbfounded. I’d tried to be a genuine bright spot everywhere I went, and apparently that was exactly the problem.

Has anyone else ever been told, in one way or another, that who you are is the obstacle?

the world peter is writing into

Now, I want to be careful here. My story is one of frustration and disappointment. What Peter is writing to is something considerably harder.

In our reading today from Peter’s letter to the Church scattered across Asia Minor, likely written during the reign of Nero, Christians faced real hostility, real social rupture, and in some cases, very real persecution.

Rome called them atheists, not because they had no faith, but because their faith had no idol Rome could recognize.

And in those times, there was a code people followed. Peter is specifically speaking to the Haustafel, the Greco-Roman household structure for organizing social ethics. In this structure, it was the paterfamilias, usually the oldest living male, who had absolute legal authority over the extended household.

Peter works through this structure deliberately: governing authorities, then servants, then wives and husbands. He’s not skipping around. He’s moving through the architecture of daily life.

So when someone converted to Christianity without the paterfamilias converting, they were stepping outside the household’s religious identity. That’s not a small thing. That’s social rupture.

Peter isn’t endorsing this system. He’s speaking pastorally into this situation that his readers can’t immediately change.

charis and the two kinds of suffering

Into this structure, Peter starts by talking to the household servants, saying:

“It is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval.”

Pay attention to what’s happening here. The term often translated here as “a credit” or “commendable” is charis, in the original Greek. It’s accurate, but it really loses something significant. Throughout the rest of the New Testament, it’s the primary word for grace. And Peter uses it twice here, bracketing this whole instruction.

Listen to me. He’s not saying that suffering is good. He’s saying that God doesn’t abandon you inside it.

The grace is not in the suffering itself. It’s in who is present with you in it.

And he’s even calling out the idea of enduring suffering when you do wrong.

Sometimes, our suffering is something that happens because of our own choices or sin. That’s consequence. That’s the natural weight of our own choices.

What Peter is saying here is that suffering that comes from doing good, from living as a Christian, that carries charis. Grace is present and active within it.

Enduring unjust suffering while keeping your eyes on God isn’t just admirable behavior. It’s walking in something divinely graced.

called, hypogrammos, and paradidomi

“For to this you have been called…”

…Peter writes in verse 21. I love that he used that word, called.

When I began my discernment process for eventually being ordained as a deacon in the church, there were several levels of ensuring that I and the church were certain about my calling.

And Peter is using that same idea here, but not just for ordained people. He’s writing to household servants when he talks about calling.

Open a Book of Common Prayer to page 855.

This is from our Outline of the Faith (commonly called the Catechism). There’s a question and answer there that I want us to look at together.

Q. Who are the ministers of the Church?
A. The ministers of the Church are the lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.

In my training, I learned that with everything in the Book of Common Prayer, order is important. If there is a list of things, the first one in the list is the ideal option. So notice that in our Outline of the Faith, the first ones listed as the ministers of the Church are the lay persons.

Peter is speaking to this idea. He’s recognizing that the way we live our lives is a ministry to the people around us.

And here’s my favorite part of this. Peter writes:

“…because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.”

This idea of following Christ’s example, the word used here is hypogrammos. This is the only time this word shows up in the New Testament, and it literally describes a writing tablet students traced to learn their letters. Peter could have used any word for example or model. He chose this one.

What Peter is saying is that Christ is the pattern, and that we trace the shape of his life with our own.

Listen carefully. You’re not generating your own original response to suffering. You’re following the pattern that’s already been made.

There’s one more thing I want you to see to help understand this pattern.

In verse 23, Peter writes:

“When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.”

The word I want you to see in there is paradidomi. It’s not a, “He was handed over.” It’s, “He handed Himself over.”

It’s a posture of deep trust in the God who judges justly.

isaiah 53 and the Shepherd

That line, and the rest of verses 22-25 there, are heavy in Isaiah 53 language. You could even say that Peter is making a theological argument that Jesus is the Suffering Servant that Isaiah foresaw.

And he carries it by suggesting that the people who follow Jesus are invited into that same servant identity.

Watch how Peter lands this idea, straight from the Isaiah 53 text.

“For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.”

Psalm 23, which is also our Psalm for this week, has three movements worth naming here.

First, shepherd. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

Second, valley. “Even though I walk through the darkest valley… you are with me.”

And third, table. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”

Notice the posture shift. The Psalm begins talking about God. Then, when the valley comes, it shifts to talking to God. You are with me.

And where does it land? At the table.

Not a table of escape. A table of presence. In the middle of everything.

When we come to this altar during the Eucharist, we come bringing all of our brokenness, our suffering, everything we’re carrying. And we meet him there.

The one who was broken for us.

the third way

I love how Peter handles all of this.

He doesn’t deny or minimize the suffering. He also doesn’t baptize the unjust system that produces it, either.

Instead, he offers a third way. Endure it with dignity, trusting the outcome to a God who sees and judges justly, and recognize that Christ has already walked this exact path ahead of us.

We don’t need to make this up as we go. The pattern is already there. We’re merely tracing the lines that have already been laid down.

Tertullian, one of the early Church Fathers, wrote to Christians under Roman persecution around A.D. 200, and his words are worth hearing here. He writes about how Christians who are suffering unjustly aren’t losing. Rather, they’re bearing witness by a different set of rules than what the empire is playing by.

Almost 200 years after that, John Chrysostom preached a series on 1 Peter in which he leans into the charis language. He says that the Christian calculus of honor was genuinely inverted from the Roman world’s calculus.

In a culture where social shame was devastating, Chrysostom told his congregations in Antioch that what looks like humiliation from the outside is, in God’s economy, the location of real grace.

That was true in Antioch in the fourth century.

It was true for household servants in Asia Minor in the first.

And it’s true for us today.

So in just a few minutes, when we come forward to this altar, I want to invite you to bring it. Bring the thing that’s been done to you that wasn’t fair. Bring the promotion you deserved and didn’t get. Bring the relationship that ground you down. Bring the suffering that came not from your own choices but simply from trying to live with integrity in a world that doesn’t always reward that.

Bring it, and lay it down with the One who meets you here.

The One who was broken for us.

The Shepherd and Guardian of our souls.

Who has already walked every step of this path ahead of us.

By his wounds, you have been healed.

Each taunt a jab at his identity… “If you are the Son of God…”

The religious leaders, bystanders, and even the criminals crucified next to him all threw insults at Him.

And it was at that moment when He cried out with a loud voice…

“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”

Which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

This isn’t the first time these words show up. It’s the opening line of Psalm 22, a plea for deliverance from suffering and hostility.

In His darkest moment, Jesus reached for His prayer book.

And while the words he shared were few, those who were there — His followers, the religious leaders who put Him on that cross, those passing by — they would have recognized that line immediately.

In Jewish practice in that time, quoting the opening line of a Psalm like that was understood to invoke the entire Psalm.

By verse 24, it gets to… 

“For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but he heard when I cried to him.”

And by the end it becomes a song of praise and proclamation to future generations.

This cry… It’s not a failure of faith. It’s actually faith in its most honest and raw form. 

Even in the feeling of desperation and aloneness, he still says, “My God.”

He’s not renouncing the relationship, He’s leaning into it.

Martin Luther had a word he used for this feeling of suffering. He called it Anfechtung. It’s something like “spiritual assault” or “the terror of feeling Godforsaken.” It’s something he’s experienced many times throughout his life.

I remember a time in my life when I felt abandoned.

My first son was 17-months old. My baby boy. And the day after my second Father’s Day, we took him to the doctor where we received a Type 1 Diabetes diagnosis. It rocked us to the very core of our being.

At first, I had to be the strong one. I didn’t have time to process. Someone had to stay clear-minded enough to drive us to and from doctors and hospitals and eventually get us all home.

A day or so after getting settled back in at home, my wife and son were both napping. I stood in our kitchen, and something inside me just broke. Every feeling, fear, and sense of despair flooded in all at once.

Anfechtung.

I dropped to the floor, and sat there in the fetal position, just crying. 

At first, it was hard enough to even breathe under the pressure of it all. And then the words came out, almost involuntarily…

Why, God?

And in that cry, I couldn’t feel Him near me at all. But I still cried out to Him.

And I’ve wondered since then… was God actually there? Could He have been?

In the third century, Origen explores this idea, pointing out that the forsakenness that Jesus experienced was real in its felt quality, but was not a metaphysical rupture.

In other words, he understands that the eternal union between the Son and the Father could never be severed. So Jesus was never alone in that moment, even when He felt otherwise.

Origen says that Jesus entered the full human experience of spiritual desolation so that humans might never have to face it alone.

I’ll say that again… So that we will never have to face it alone.

And that’s where Jesus is.

Hanging on that cross, taking on the weight of the sin of the whole world, carrying unimaginable pain, and feeling abandoned.

Anfechtung.

He cries out, “My God.”

The relationship holds, even when the feeling doesn’t. When everything else is stripped away, there’s still “my God.”

And that’s what faith looks like sometimes.

No certainty that everything is going to be okay.
No comfort.

Just a voice in the dark, aimed at God.

That day, as I sat completely broken on my kitchen floor, I couldn’t imagine what the next day — the next moment — would look like. 

And as I look back on one of the hardest days of my life, I can see now what I couldn’t see then.

He was with me.

Huddled next to me in the fetal position, crying with me…

“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”

—

Note: This was written as a reflection for a Good Friday service at St. Edward’s Episcopal Church called “The Seven Last Words” reflecting on the seven last statements of Jesus before He died on the Cross.

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal 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.

“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.”

John 3:1-17

the sermon:

Have you ever believed in God… and still felt like you were standing in the dark?

Let’s be honest. God isn’t always easy to understand. Sometimes our struggle is simply understanding who He is. Or maybe we wrestle with those big questions like, “why does He allow suffering?”

Whatever the question, I’m willing to bet every one of us has wrestled with our faith. 

And on the outside, we want to look like the happy, got-it-all-together Christians, while on the inside we’re not always sure… maybe even have doubts.

If that’s you, I’d like to introduce you to someone. His name is Nicodemus.

It’s in our Gospel reading from John 3 today where we first meet him. He’s a Pharisee, which means that he was a teacher and interpreter of the Law. He would have been trained in Torah and oral tradition and deeply immersed in Israel’s covenant story.

He would have been able to interpret and debate the Law. He wasn’t just educated. He was elite.

Yet, when he comes to talk to Jesus, he does so at night.

Why at night?

Maybe he didn’t want to be seen.
Maybe he wasn’t ready to commit publicly.
Or, maybe he’s still just sorting it all out.

Haven’t we all done that? We all have our own reasons why we often struggle with God…

We want control.
We want it to make sense.
We want theology that fits in neat categories.
We want answers for suffering.
We want God to behave predictably.

And when He doesn’t… we wrestle.

But Christianity has always wrestled with mystery. Think about ideas like the Trinity, or Incarnation, or the nature of Jesus, or Grace. 

Some of the greatest minds in history have wrestled with these things, and often get to the point of just saying, “mystery.”

St. Augustine once said, 

“If you comprehend it, it is not God.”

God is just so big that our finite minds cannot always comprehend it all.

The problem isn’t that there is mystery.
The problem is that we prefer mastery.

You don’t have to understand everything to step into the light.

I think that’s why Nicodemus resonates so deeply with me.

I am Nicodemus.

the nicodemus struggle

Unlike most of the other religious leaders of that time, Nicodemus isn’t a skeptic trying to trap Jesus. He’s trying to understand Him.

He believes that Jesus is from God. And he recognizes something divine in Jesus. 

He’s not hostile or mocking. He’s actually sincere.

He says to Jesus,

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God…”

That’s a respectful thing to say. But it’s also a safe thing to say.

He puts Jesus into a category… teacher, from God, sent. It’s all so manageable.

And then Jesus blows that category apart. He doesn’t say, “Thank you.” He says,

“no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Look at what just happened here…

Nicodemus came looking for more information. He wanted clarification.
Jesus told him that he needed a new beginning. He demands transformation.

This unexpected direction threw Nicodemus into a mental tailspin. The confusion sets in, and he starts running away with questions… 

“How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

This whole idea of “new birth” was destabilizing for Nicodemus, because…

You can’t engineer it.
You can’t optimize it.
You can’t earn it.
You can’t control it.

For someone who’s whole life was built around keeping and teaching adherence to Torah, this goes against everything he’d ever learned and knew about God.

And it’s that same thing that unsettles us, even today.

We want a faith that makes sense.
We want doctrines we can diagram.
We want suffering explained.
We want God predictable.

In our reading today, we don’t even see Nicodemus getting it yet. He’s struggling with accepting these Truths. The last thing we hear from him in this passage is, 

“How can these things be?”

Nicodemus doesn’t get it that night. But that’s not the end of his story.

the long arc: from night to the Cross

And here’s what I love about John’s Gospel. This isn’t the last time we see Nicodemus.

There are three times when we see Nicodemus explicitly named in the Scriptures. But make no mistake. He was close to everything that was going on.

As a Pharisee and ruler of the Jews, he would have been part of the leadership circle that debated Jesus. He would have known the concerns, heard the accusations, and felt the tension.

Anywhere in the Gospels when we see the Pharisees involved, even if he wasn’t specifically there, he likely would have known about what was happening.

And the second time we see his name pop up, he’s with a group of the Pharisees. In John 7, there’s a story about the temple police being asked by the Pharisees about their failure to arrest Jesus.

The religious leaders want Jesus arrested. And in that interaction, Nicodemus speaks up. Not boldly or dramatically. But almost in a meek little way that makes a way to hear more from Jesus himself. He says,

“Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?”

He’s not confessing what he believes about Jesus. Rather he creates space to talk about it.

Sometimes faith begins not with a declaration, but with a question.

Then comes the response from the other Pharisees. He’s mocked by them, likely to just shut him up… “Aren’t you from Galilee too?”

Later in John 19, we get the story of the Crucifixion. Jesus is dead. The disciples have scattered.

And Nicodemus shows up again. Verse 39 reads,

“Nicodemus, who had first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds.”

This act… it was expensive, public, risky, and highly devotional. 

The man who first came in the dark of night, now stands at the Cross in full daylight.

John never tells us what Nicodemus believed. But he showed us where he stood.

There’s an old saying,

“We are not made whole all at once, but little by little.”

Nicodemus moved from night, to caution, to costly devotion in full daylight.

And all of this is building toward something that Jesus says in that first conversation, a sentence we all already know.

John 3:16.

for God so loved the world

We’ve seen the struggle. We’ve watched Nicodemus wrestle. And we’ve followed him from questions in the night to standing at the foot of the cross in the daylight. And now Jesus speaks to the heart of it all.

“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.”

It’s not “God tolerated.”
It’s not “God corrected.”
And it’s not “God analyzed.”

God loved.

This is God initiating.

Nicodemus came at night with his questions. But God was already moving toward him.

Listen carefully. Before you figured it out, before you solved your theology, before you resolved your doubts… God loved.

Who did God love? The world. In the original Greek, John used the word kosmos, a term he used somewhere around 78 times in his Gospel. 

In John’s Gospel, kosmos often describes a world that misunderstands Him, resists Him, even rejects Him. It’s not just the people who get it right. It’s the people who don’t.

If you were Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a teacher of Israel, you would expect, “For God so loved Israel…” or maybe “For God so loved the righteous…”

But Jesus said, kosmos.

That includes Romans and pagans.
Skeptics and religious elites.
Those who misunderstand Him.
Even those who crucify Him.

God’s love isn’t triggered by your understanding, it precedes and surpasses it.

The God who called creation good knew what it would cost Him to redeem it. And still, He created. And still, He loved.

So the Word who spoke galaxies into existence gave Himself over to the nails in order to make a way for us.

And Jesus says…”That whoever believes…”

This isn’t an intellectual agreement. It’s trust. It’s stepping into light. 

Belief, in John’s Gospel, isn’t nodding your head. It’s leaning your weight onto Him.

Like Nicodemus, it’s moving from night to daylight.

You don’t have to understand everything to step into the light.

not a slogan… a rescue

Nicodemus didn’t walk away from that conversation with everything figured out.

He still had questions.
He still had tension.
He still didn’t fully understand how this “new birth” thing worked.

But somewhere between that conversation at night and the foot of the cross in the daylight… something shifted.

He moved.

He didn’t master the mystery.
He stepped into it.

And that’s the invitation for us.

John 3:16 isn’t a slogan.
It’s not just something we put on signs or memorize as children.

It’s the announcement that the God who made the world loves the world.
Not the polished version of it.
Not the cleaned-up version of it.
The real one.
The confused one.
The doubting one.
The broken one.

The one that still comes at night.

It’s the declaration that before you solved your theology, before you reconciled your questions, before you untangled your doubts… God loves you.

And He gave His Son.

You don’t have to understand everything to step into the light.

You don’t have to resolve every tension before you trust Him.

Faith is not mastery. It’s movement. It’s turning your face toward the One who already turned His toward you.

And that is the hope of the Gospel.

Not that we have figured Him out, but that we are known and loved.

And that love is enough to bring us from the dark into the light.
Even when we don’t yet understand it.

Amen.

• Isaiah 61:10-62:3
• John 1:1-18
• Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7

the sermon:

Happy fourth day of Christmas!

If I’m honest, I’m a little disappointed that my true love didn’t give to me four calling birds today. I really had my heart set on that!

Seriously though… I recently learned that each of the gifts in the 12 days of Christmas song actually represent something. The 4 calling birds is representative of the 4 Gospels, going out and proclaiming the Good News. And that’s a pretty cool gift!

But here we are, we’re through the season of Advent, the time when we anticipate (in one sense) the coming of the birth of a Savior and (in another sense) the return of Christ.

And for most of us, with the gifts all unwrapped, the lights may still be up, but Christmas Day has passed.

Yet for all our anticipation, the world hasn’t suddenly changed. I’ve been checking the news, and I can confirm… It’s still much the same.

We celebrate that Christ has come.
Yet the world is still broken.

It leaves us with a lingering question…

Has God really restored us (as promised), or are we still waiting?

That’s a tension that I’d argue most of us live in at some level. 

We are living in the in-between.

And today’s readings have this amazing arc that runs through them that goes directly at this question.

The move from Isaiah through the John’s Gospel and into Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia, takes on this incredible journey right into the heart of this tension we live in.

Isaiah: God Speaks Identity Before Completion

First, let’s take a look at our reading from Isaiah today. This part of Isaiah (chapters 61-62) is looking ahead to the time after the Babylonian Exile, and even far beyond that into the future. So the audience is a people who were restored from exile, but not yet fully renewed. 

God is talking to an in-between people. 

They would have been free from the rule of the Babylonian Empire, but still looking around at a Jerusalem in shambles. It would have been a generation who grew up, their entire lives, in exile. Hearing from generations before them about the greatness of their God who would bring restoration. Imagine their surprise as they entered Jerusalem only to find it far from the great, holy city they were expecting.

And this passage, written to them, doesn’t instruct or correct them.

It announces.

It speaks to their identity, long before He completes their restoration.

for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,

God tells these in-between people that He clothes them in salvation and righteousness. This is relational language, not moralistic or corrective. And it’s God acting first, speaking to the core of who they are.

as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

This is wedding imagery, filled with delight and joy! And a little further down…

her vindication shines out like the dawn,
and her salvation like a burning torch.

The image here is of light, a light that breaks the darkness of night.

These words in Isaiah are incredible! 

Spoken to a people so filled with the hope of restoration, but still living in a world where it would’ve often been difficult to see… To them, God speaks identity before He completes restoration.

And likewise for us, as we live in the in-between, with all of our sure hope in Christ’s redemption, yet still living in a fallen, broken world…

We, too, are clothed before we are corrected. God has already declared it.

Isaiah tells us what God intends to do. Christmas shows us how God actually does it.

John: The Word Pitches His Tent Among Us

Now let’s take a look at our Gospel reading from John 1. I feel like this is one of the most brilliant pieces of writing in the entire Bible. In it John doesn’t just start with the birth of Jesus, he takes it back to Creation, His ultimate origin.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

John ties Jesus to the Creation, the beginning of all things. And then he ties it to the Incarnation…

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

The Eternal Word enters time.

That phrase “The Word became flesh and lived/dwelt among us,” carries this idea that’s more like he “pitched his tent.” It carries echoes of the tabernacle and God’s presence.

God moved into the neighborhood!

This is the Emmanuel, God With Us that the people were waiting for. This is God in the flesh, come to restore all things and make everything right. He came to live and walk with us.

And there’s this one little line in there…

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

And just a little side note here… don’t forget the imagery of light that we saw in Isaiah too.

But this line is significant, because it doesn’t say that everything is instantly fixed. The darkness is acknowledged, not denied.

When Jesus came, He stepped into a broken world. And His presence didn’t just magically make the brokenness go away once and for all (at least not yet). 

This… this is an idea that blows me away. When we’re feeling the brokenness and pain and everything else in our lives, Jesus doesn’t just whisk it all away. Rather, He walks through it with us.

And that’s what John is showing us through his version of the Christmas story… Christ (the One from the beginning) has come, and He’s pitched His tent among us… 

And the fullness is still unfolding.

John goes right at that big question of ours… 

Has God restored us, or are we still waiting?

His answer is, yes… and yes.

Galatians: From Guardian to Family

And now, let’s look at what Paul has to  say about this. Our reading from his letter to the Galatians starts with this…

Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.

In the original Greek, when Paul speaks of the law here, the words he uses carry this idea of the law not as a teacher, but more as a household guardian. It’s more like someone tasked with escorting a child safely until maturity. And once maturity comes, the guardian’s role ends.

In other words, the Law was never meant to be permanent.

Paul continues, saying…

when the fullness of time had come

God’s action isn’t rushed. It’s not delayed. It’s intentional, not reactive. It’s perfectly timed.

Paul continues…

God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law

This is incarnation language. God Himself, fully human… fully under the same constraints as Israel. Jesus doesn’t bypass our human condition, He enters it. The Word pitched His tent among us.

in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.

Here we see that redemption leans not just to freedom, but to family.

And that idea of adoption is a big one to me being an adoptive dad. Historically (in Roman times) and today, it means the child is given full legal status. It’s irreversible. And the child is granted inheritance.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the heart behind adoption. With our biological kids, love is assumed. We’re responsible for their existence, and therefore responsible for their care. 

But with our adopted kids, there was a moment when we looked at them and said, “Yes, I want you in my life, and I promise to give you everything that my biological kids get.” We didn’t have them through a regular pregnancy, but through a pregnancy of the heart. And we said, “I choose you.”

In the same way, God does that with us. He looks at us, even with all of our mess and brokenness and says, “I choose you, and I grant you all the rights of my own Son.”

And I love how Paul includes this too…

because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”

Being children of God, we have the Holy Spirit inside us crying out to the Father. It’s our identity in Christ being confirmed from within.

And that term, Abba… it translates technically as “father,” but it carries a more intimate, personal tone… more like, “daddy!” 

I can’t hear that without thinking about coming home after a long day and my kids running to the door, shouting, “Daddy, Daddy, I missed you!”

That is the cry of the Holy Spirit inside of us for the Father who sent His Son, Jesus, to be born as a human to redeem us into His family.

And while this world may still feel upside down, we are not defined by what is unfinished.

Christological Center

So as we continue to celebrate this season of Christmas, let me summarize this journey we’ve just been on through these readings for you.

In Jesus Christ, God doesn’t wait for the world to be ready, or for His people to be fully healed. 

The eternal Word becomes flesh and pitches His tent among us. He enters our in-between, a world restored and yet still broken, and speaks a new word of belonging. 

He doesn’t simply promise light; He becomes our light. 

He doesn’t merely offer freedom; He adopts us as children. 

And even as we continue to wait for the fullness of renewal, we do so clothed in grace, named by love, and held fast by the Spirit who cries within us, “Abba, Father!”

This is what Christmas means when the decorations come down and the waiting continues.

Sending: Clothed in Light

So what does this mean for us, here and now?

It means that even as we continue to wait, we don’t wait empty-handed.
We don’t wait unnamed.
We don’t wait unloved.

Isaiah tells us that God has already clothed His people in salvation and righteousness.
John shows us that the Word has already pitched His tent among us.
And Paul assures us that we’re no longer slaves, but children.

That’s why our Collect prays that the light of Christ, already enkindled in our hearts, would shine forth in our lives.

Not a light we create.
Not hope we manufacture.
But grace already given.

So even in the in-between, we live as people clothed in light, named by love, and held fast by God.

Amen.

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4

Image: Habakkuk the prophet, Russian icon from first quarter of 18th cen. via Wikimedia Commons

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David– that is my gospel, for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. The saying is sure:

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful–
for he cannot deny himself.

Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2:8-15

the sermon

When I was ordained as deacon last year, I stood right here in front of our bishop as he addressed me in what’s called The Examination. In it he lists off many things that I am to do as a deacon in the Church before asking me the question…

“Do you believe that you are truly called by God and his Church to the life and work of a deacon?”

To which I respond, “I believe I am so called.”

One of those I’m instructed to do reads like this, “You are to interpret to the Church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world.”

This is one of the marks of diaconate ministry, to have one foot in the Church, and one foot in the world.

And I’m sure it’s not a stretch for anyone here to look around and see a world in turmoil. 

It doesn’t matter where you fall on the ideological spectrum. It’s easy to see that we’re politically divided, socially fragmented, and many are living in economic uncertainty. This can leave any of us feeling alienated, like we’re strangers in our own culture.

Exile, if you will.

This isn’t a new thing, by any means. God’s people have always known this feeling. In our readings today, we hear from Jeremiah as he writes to the exiles in Babylon. And from Paul writing from a Roman prison. Both wrote to people tempted by despair or easy answers.

Through these readings we see that faithfulness doesn’t depend on perfect conditions. 

It’s about living as God’s people right where we are, trusting that His grace goes before us and follows after us.

Let’s start with Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles and what it meant for them, and for us.

Jeremiah 29: Faithful Presence in Exile

I’ll set the stage first. 

The year is about 597 BC. Jerusalem has fallen, and the first wave of exiles has been carried off the Babylon. They’re frightened, displaced, and deeply longing for home.

Just before our reading, we see a rival prophet tell everyone (basically), “Don’t worry! It’ll all be over soon… just two years!”

Then there’s our guy Jeremiah, the prophet who had a habit of telling people the things they didn’t want to hear. He’s not interested in offering comfort. He’s interested in telling the truth. He says to them, “Get comfortable… build houses, plant gardens, seek the welfare of the city.”

Just beyond our passage, Jeremiah tells them they’ll be there 70 years. And when the average life expectancy at the time is likely around 40 years (with the “lucky” ones reaching 50-60), this meant the people he was writing to would never see the end of exile. This is a multi-generational exile.

In fact, archaeologists have found cuneiform tablets from a settlement called Al-Yahudu, which means “City of Judah.” There were hundreds of them, mostly mundane, personal documents, promissory notes, marriage contracts, inheritance division, and receipts. And interestingly, they kept their Judean names.

It’s proof that they did exactly what Jeremiah instructed them to do. They built lives, raised families, and even in a foreign land, they maintained their identity as God’s people.

That historical evidence reminds us that God’s Word isn’t just spiritual, it’s deeply practical. It calls people to live, build, and bless right where they are.

Let’s take a closer look at these words… build, plant, marry, multiply.

These aren’t survival commands, they’re covenantal.

They echo the creation covenant in Genesis, “Be fruitful and multiply.” God is reminding His people of their first responsibility… to be image-bearers and life-givers.

Humanity broke that covenant in Eden, and we’ve been living in exile ever since. But God didn’t abandon His creation story; He kept writing it.

Even in Babylon, He begins to renew that covenant, pointing us toward its fulfillment in Jesus, who restores what was broken and calls us again to be fruitful in His grace.

And how about these words? Seek the welfare of the city…

The seeking is about active pursuit, not passive waiting. And the word for welfare here comes from the word for shalom, which is not just peace, but wholeness, flourishing, and harmony.

God is telling them to pursue shalom. They are not to withdraw from Babylon, but to work for its flourishing. In its shalom, you’ll find your shalom.

You know… I believe that sometimes exile is part of God’s plan, a season where comfort gives way to calling. When life doesn’t go the way we want, God may be shaping us for deeper faithfulness.

Let’s face it, we live in a world we can’t always shape to our liking. Faithfulness means not running from it, but showing up in it… planting, building, and praying for the shalom of those around us.

2 Timothy 2: Faithful Endurance When the Word Seems Chained

Fast forward six hundred years. Now Paul is in prison, writing to Timothy in Ephesus, a young leader facing false teachers, discouragement, pressure to conform, and the temptation to compromise. 

While Timothy struggles, Paul sits chained like a criminal, branded an enemy of the state. In Rome’s eyes, Paul is a failure and a danger to the society they’re trying desperately to preserve. 

Yet Paul sees beyond his circumstances, saying, “But the word of God is not chained.”

His message to Timothy is that they can bind the messenger, but not the message. 

He knows that grace cannot be imprisoned. God’s truth and grace are never confined by circumstance.

That makes anything he might endure worth it. This is bigger than him.

And from that conviction comes his charge to Timothy, a reminder of what truly endures.

His instruction for Timothy starts with, “Remember Jesus Christ.”

The Greek words used here carry this sense of keep on remembering. It’s not a one-time act, but a way of life. 

In our Eucharistic liturgy, we have prayers of anamnesis, memorial prayers that recall Jesus’ death and resurrection. And that word anamnesis isn’t just about remembering, it carries this idea of refusing to forget.

And that’s Paul’s instruction to Timothy. Don’t ever forget the unchained Gospel.

So he continues, saying, “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead.”

That verb, raised, is perfect tense. So it doesn’t mean was raised, as in a resurrection event that happened at some point in time in the past. It means is raised, as in the present reality we live in. It’s ongoing.

Again, pointing at something bigger than ourselves and our circumstances.

Paul eventually shifts to a message for Timothy’s congregants, telling them to, “avoid wrangling over words.”

I love this. I feel like so much of our society today gets stuck in this space. We seem to have this urge to state our points, and often tell others how wrong they are. 

Paul even explains why he offers this instruction, saying, “[it] does no good but only ruins those who are listening.”

That sounds an awful lot like every single politically charged conversation I’ve ever witnessed on social media, where no one listens and everyone leaves wounded. 

I’ve seen families torn apart over it.

Paul then encourages Timothy to rightly handle the Word of truth. That literally means to cut straight, like a craftsman making a clean line. The task is to handle the Word clearly, faithfully, and without distortion or hostility.

Like Timothy, we live in a culture that rewards noise over truth. 

But our calling is not to wrangle over words. It’s to handle the Word rightly, with integrity and clarity, rooted in the risen Christ whose Word still runs free.

Unchained Grace and Enduring Hope

So here we are. Two very different settings, Babylon and Rome. Yet they carry the same story.

In both, God’s people learn that His purposes are not defeated or defined by exile, imprisonment, or loss of influence. 

Rather, they show us that we’re not exiles of circumstance but image-bearers of a loving God, called to mirror His faithfulness even in hard places.

We see this truth echoed in both of their words.

Jeremiah says, ‘Seek the shalom of the city.’

Paul says, ‘Endure for the sake of others.’

One speaks of gardens, the other of chains. Both about peace and grace that keeps working.

This faithfulness in exile that we’re talking about isn’t about reclaiming power. No. It’s about embodying Grace.

Both prophets remind us that our calling is to remain who we are, even when we feel displaced. 

It isn’t easy. It takes faith and endurance. But not the kind we muster ourselves. It’s about the grace that goes before us into the hard places and follows us out again.

Grace That Precedes and Follows

The exiles of Judah maintained their identity. 

Paul remembered Christ raised. 

We remember too… in our prayers, in our worship, in the way we live… because remembering anchors us in grace.

Every prayer, every Eucharist, every act of service is a way of saying we refuse to forget who we are and Whose we are.

That’s why our Collect today says, ‘Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us.’ 

That’s the whole sermon in a single line. 

God’s grace goes before us into Babylon, into Rome, into our divided world… and it follows after, redeeming whatever we offer in faith.

No exile, no prison, no cultural storm can chain the Word of God or silence His grace.

Let us pray.

Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, `Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, `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.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

the sermon:

Imagine… After a long, busy day, you settle in to enjoy some dinner and relax for a bit. You spend some time with the family, take the dog for a walk, and get the kids tucked into bed. The house is still, the kids are asleep, and you finally settle in for the night yourself and drift off to sleep. 

Then sometime shortly after you slip into your slumber, there’s a noise that breaks the silence…

[a gentle knock]

But that doesn’t phase you. Then it gets a little louder…

[a little louder knock]

It stirs you enough to wake you, but not enough for you to know exactly what’s happening. So you lay there in bed considering what might be happening and what you might need to do about it. Then the next one gets even louder…

[heavy knock]

And that one wakes the dog up too, and now it’s barking at the noise that intrudes on the peacefulness of the house, which is now gone.

So you get up and go to the door to find out who’s knocking. On your way, you grab your phone to check the Ring camera and see that it’s your neighbor from three houses down.

So you ask through the door, “Hey… what do you need?”

And you hear the response, “Umm… do you have any bread I can borrow?”

Crazy, right?

We’ve gotta ask ourselves, why would Jesus tell this story after teaching His disciples how to pray?

the friend who knocks

In today’s Gospel reading, Luke tells about the disciples asking Jesus how to pray, and He shares what today we call the Lord’s Prayer. And then He launches directly into this wild story, saying something like…

Let’s say you have a friend, and you go to his house after midnight to ask him for some bread because you just had some guests arrive, but you’ve got nothing to share with them.

And Jesus continues, saying…

Your friend responds, “Dude! Go away! Do you realize how late it is? The kids are all asleep and everything is already put away and locked up for the night.”

Then He explains…

But when you think about going back to your guests empty handed, you decide not to just go away, and persist in asking your friend for some bread. And because of your persistence, your friend gets up and gets you some bread to share with your guests.

In this story, the man didn’t get what he needed because of friendship, but because he kept knocking.

The word that Luke uses here to describe this persistence is anaideia (an-nah-ee-die-ah), which more accurately means shameless persistence. It carries this idea of a bold tenacity that refuses to shrink back for fear of shame.

In the person who’s knocking, there’s no stopping until they get what they need.

It’s kinda like when I’m at the grocery store, and I’m not seeing what my wife sent me there to get. So I text her for clarity or other options (because I want to make sure I get the right stuff).

But she doesn’t respond. So I send another text with the pointing up hand emoji to make her phone alert again, directing her to my previous text. 

And still no response. So maybe now it’s a phone call, which she doesn’t answer. I know she’s home, so I keep trying until I get through.

Long story short… I’m blowing up that phone until I get what’s needed.

Jesus’s invitation: keep asking, keep knocking

After sharing this story, Jesus says something amazing…

“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

And here’s the really cool thing about this statement…

The verbs used here in the Greek are present imperative tense, which means they aren’t just one-time actions.

It’s not, “ask once.” It’s, “keep asking.”

It’s not, “seek once.” It’s, “keep seeking.”

It’s not, “knock once.” It’s, “keep knocking.”

Listen… Jesus is inviting us into a persistent pursuit, the kind of prayer that doesn’t give up when we don’t get an answer right away.

That’s something that resonates deeply for me, personally. 

As some of you know, I’ve felt called to ordained ministry for over 20 years. And I’ve prayed fervently for a lot of that time for something to break through in this area of my life. Now I stand before you, ordained, and feeling more fulfilled in ministry than I ever have in my life. 

It’s not about just praying once for something and expecting a breakthrough. It’s about building a lifestyle of dependence and trust. 

It’s about hunger, desire, and persistence.

Jesus is challenging us to live like we actually believe in God’s generosity and love for us.

a tale of two prayers

A few chapters later in his Gospel, Luke tells us another parable of Jesus about the prayers of two men. One was a Pharisee and the other a tax collector who both went to the temple to pray.

The Pharisee prayed like this…

“God, thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”

But the tax collector stood further off, not even looking up towards heaven, beating his chest, praying…

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

One of these men was concerned with performance, the other his brokenness.

One of them was filled with religious ego, the other with a raw and humble honesty.

Notice that it wasn’t just the tax collectors words, but even his posture and actions reflected his attitude.

Throughout the Scriptures, people didn’t just say they were sorry. They showed it with their whole bodies. Sackcloth and ashes, tears, and beating the chest were all ways of saying, “I am broken, and I need God.”

That same spirit continues today in small practices you see during the liturgy of the Eucharist. When we get to the Breaking of the Bread, we often recite the Agnus Dei (AH-noos DAY-ee) with a light strike of the fist on the chest, saying…

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

This is a way of stepping into that same ancient posture of repentance and longing for mercy. It reflects the passion that should mark our prayers.

the Father behind the door

And when we come knocking on the door in this way, we need to understand who it is behind that door. 

God’s not a reluctant neighbor. He’s a loving Father who delights in giving good gifts. 

Jesus continues by saying,

“Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead…? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you … know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

First, you need to understand that He’s there, expecting your arrival, ready and waiting for you. 

It’s like if you’re coming over to my house, and I’m expecting you, then before you arrive, I’m most likely already sitting in a chair in our front room waiting to greet and welcome you. If you’re that guest, you can confidently know that I’m there already waiting to open that door when you knock.

The other thing I want to recognize here is that the “good gift” of the Father is the Holy Spirit. I may come knocking thinking that I need something specific, but what I get when I arrive is His presence… which is what I need. 

The gift of the Holy Spirit is what brings the peace and healing and wisdom and strength for any circumstance that I might be going through.

God doesn’t just fix your problem from afar. He walks with you in it.

When you have the Spirit, you find that you have everything you truly need.

teach us to pray

Here’s the part that I really love. 

If we go back to the beginning of this passage, we see the disciples wanting to learn from the Son of God how to pray.

So Jesus gives them the Lord’s Prayer, which is a model for prayer, a specific prayer form, and even a summary of Christian life and discipleship.

But then He launches into this master class on how we should pray, with this shameless persistence marked by dependence and trust.

Even in each petition for things like bread (hmmm… the very thing the neighbor knocking after midnight was asking for), forgiveness, and guidance all require real trust and hunger.

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer during the liturgy, I get it… It’s really easy to just rattle off the words mindlessly.

But when we pray, we should make it personal and pray as though we really need what we’re asking for.

final thoughts: the door will be opened

So maybe today… you’ve been knocking for a while, and you’re wondering if God even hears it.

Or maybe you stopped knocking altogether.

What if Jesus is reminding you right now that the door is still there… and the Father is still on the other side, waiting?

You don’t have to say the perfect prayer. You don’t have to bring anything but your honest self.

Come boldly, come persistently, come humbly… but just come.

Because the door will be opened. And the One behind it isn’t annoyed or tired or indifferent. He’s a good Father who delights in giving His Spirit, His presence, to those who ask.

So, may we go today with confidence to keep asking, to keep seeking, and to keep knocking. May the Spirit of God fill us with persistence in prayer, trust in His goodness, and joy in His presence.

And may the door be opened wide.