Sermon for December 14, 2025

Readings:

• Isaiah 35:1-10
• James 5:7-10
• Matthew 11:2-11
• Psalm 146:4-9

This morning’s gospel passage records a very peculiar moment in the life of John the Baptist. I won’t call it a moment of doubt, though it could be that, but I think I would prefer to call it a moment of wonder. Wonder in the sense of being perplexed. Hopeful, but slightly unsure. Wonder in the sense of not having complete certainty. John is wondering about who Jesus really is. 

Now you may recall that John and Jesus are cousins. And you may also recall that John is well aware that Jesus is special. When Jesus comes to be baptized by John in the Jordan river, it is John who says to Jesus “I ought to be baptized by you!” John saw the spirit descend upon Jesus like a dove at his baptism. John said that Jesus was “the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” John knows that Jesus is special. John knows that Jesus is greater than himself. But in the gospel this morning we get a very different image of John the Baptist. Now John is in prison. His own ministry is about to come to an end, but he knows that Jesus is still out in the world doing work. So John who is in this very dark place and who has reached the limits of his own abilities, wonders. Is Jesus really the messiah or is he another prophet? John’s ministry has been about pointing people to Jesus, but now he is sitting in prison, powerless. Maybe he is wondering what kind of power Jesus really has. Is Jesus really the messiah? John knows that he is probably going to die very soon at the hands of Herod, what then? Is Jesus really the messiah? Or is the coming of the messiah still a distant dream? Is Jesus going to save us, or is the saviour someone else?

That is the message that John, through some of his followers, sends to Jesus: Is it you? He doesn’t ask him for any specific assistance; he doesn’t ask his cousin to come and bail him out of jail; he just asks, is it you? Are you the messiah, or are we still waiting for another? John, in his distress, is wondering.

Jesus responds in a way that he often does, not with a direct answer, but with an illustration. He tells John’s followers to go and tell John what they hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. Jesus’s response to the question “are you the messiah?” is a list of miracles. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. It is as if Jesus knows that that question needs more than a yes or no answer. It needs proof, but it needs more than proof. It needs illustration, illumination. Jesus isn’t just affirming his status as the messiah, but he is also coloring in the picture of who and what the messiah is. The messiah isn’t about one miracle. The messiah is about all miracles. The messiah brings good news and encouragement to the poor and the hopeless. The messiah heals the sick and mends the broken. The messiah opens eyes and opens ears. The messiah raises the dead. Jesus doesn’t just point to one proof, he points to all of them. The messiah isn’t about one miracle. The messiah is about all miracles. The messiah isn’t just the greatest prophet; the messiah is the power of God.

The prophets, they do amazing things. The prophets can work miracles. Jesus honors John as a prophet this morning, but even the greatest prophet is nothing compared to the power of God. John, as a prophet, is a messenger of the kingdom. His job was to announce and prepare the way for the kingdom. But Jesus is the kingdom. Jesus is God’s kingdom on two feet. He isn’t just someone who can perform A miracle, he is the power and the force behind ALL miracles. Jesus is the grand miracle. The miracle of God becoming a human to break the power of sin and death and to restore all creation to glory. That is the grand miracle that gives all other miracles meaning and force. He isn’t one miracle. He is all miracles. That is frankly more than some people are hoping for; more than they are expecting.

That might be more of a messiah than even John was expecting, and John knew that we needed to be saved. Many of us don’t really know that, or we are prone to forget it. We may pray for miracles now and then, but then how much time do we spend trying to fix the world and everyone in it on our own? I know that as Christmas approaches, some of you are out there trying to make miracles happen on your own. You are trying to turn a dime into a dollar. You are trying to get through meals with relatives that don’t like each other. You are trying to find the perfect gift. You are trying to juggle too many obligations with too few resources, all while trying to imagine peace on earth and good will towards men. I’m guilty of all that I know. So Jesus’s message to John comes at just the right time for us. God does not expect us to do this on our own. The salvation of the world, and all the necessary miracles that that entails, that is the messiah’s job. This messiah, whose birth we are about to celebrate, HE is the miracle worker. So let Jesus do his job. Let Jesus do his job. 

It is ok to prepare. It is ok to work for the kingdom, to point to it and hope for it. And it is ok to wonder what God is up to. John the Baptist did all of that. But at a certain point, like John, you are going to come to the end of your abilities and what you can do, and that is when you just have to step back and let Jesus do his job. He is the messiah. Miracles, all miracles, are his department.

Sermon for Remembrance Sunday, November 9, 2025

Readings:

Job 19:23-27a
Psalm 17:1-9
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38

Things in this world are not as they should be. Things in this world have been messed up for a very long time. The evidence of this is in this service today. Today, the second Sunday of November, Anglicans throughout the world will remember their war dead. Soldiers, men and woman, who sacrificed their lives in the two world wars of the last century and in so many other battles since then. It is right that we should remember them, and pray for their souls and pray for their families. It is right that we should honor sacrifice. That is as it should be. What is not as it should be, what is obviously messed up, is that we live in a world where war is sometimes a necessity. We live in a world where freedoms have to be fought for, and protected. We live in a world where basic human dignity cannot be taken for granted. So it is right that we should honor bravery and self-sacrifice, but it is not right that human beings have created a world where such sacrifices are necessary. 

But that is a part of the story of our faith. I’m not saying anything new or controversial here this morning. A fundamental Christian belief is that human beings were designed in the image of God and made to live in peace and harmony with God, the earth, and each other, but from the very beginning we chose to turn away from that and to treat each other as objects or possessions and not as equal children of God. That is the very beginning of the Bible, but it is a theme that runs through the whole book and all of history. Think about our gospel reading this morning. The Sadducees ask Jesus a ridiculous question because they want to make fun of his belief in the resurrection of the dead. They ask Jesus if a woman marries seven times and all of her husbands die, and then she dies, in the resurrection whose wife will she be? Think about what is implied in what they are asking there. What is their real question? Who will she belong to? That is what they want to know. That is their understanding of marriage. That woman is a possession to them, not an equal child of God. Even in our most intimate relationships we objectify people and treat them as possessions. Is it any wonder that there is war between nations? We are broken human beings.

Scripture is so spot on about human nature, and if you need evidence of its truth, look around. Read the paper. The reason that we need to honor and remember the war dead today is because we live in a world of broken human beings, that can and will do terrible things to other human beings. We live in a fallen world and we have to deal with fallen humanity. Wars have to be fought. Maybe not every war, but some of them. Some conflicts we can avoid, but some we cannot walk away from, not if we value and respect our own lives or the lives of others. What would the world look like today if our fathers and grandfathers just walked away from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan? Sure, our country is a long way from perfect, but it is still here. And you may or may not like some of the people who won elections this week, but you still got to vote. We cannot take that for granted. We owe a lot to those who fought. And one thing we owe them is to remember that humans are what they are. Humans are still not as they should be, as they were created to be, and that means that it is entirely possible that we will someday have to fight again. Things in this world are not as they should be. We are a long way from what God created us to be.

But God has not abandoned us to ourselves. We are believers in the resurrection. Unlike the Sadducees in our gospel story today, we believe that there will be a future day when God sets the world right again, and fixes all of us broken humans who cannot fix or save ourselves. No many how many wars we fight, we are never going to fix this world on our own. We cannot fix human nature, but God can. God can transform us and he can transform how we relate to each other. Think about Jesus’s answer to the Sadducees this morning. They ask who will the woman belong to? And Jesus’s answer is: she will belong to God. The Sadducees weren’t asking about love or marriage as we know it; they were asking about possession. And Jesus sets them right. In the resurrection, the only person she will belong to is God. This broken world and our twisted ways of relating to each other will be washed away and finally we will be able to see and relate to each other as God originally intended: as equal children of God. 

But that is a hoped for and devoutly believed in future day. We have been given a glimpse of that resurrection and our future glory in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but until the day we all live in that glory, we will have to deal with living in a world that is not as it should be. The world as it is. We need to honor those who help us live in the world as it is. We need to honor those who fight the wars that have to be fought, and honor those who sacrificed everything to try and make the world a little better and a little safer. 

Sermon for October 19, 2025

Readings:

Genesis 32:22-31
Psalm 121
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Luke 18:1-8

I think that it is only fitting that our first scripture reading this morning should be about wrestling, as I am sure that I am not the only one here that woke up feeling like I had just been body-slammed by Macho-Man Randy Savage. Everything hurts. I have sympathy for our biblical patriarch Jacob this morning as he limps away at the end of that Old Testament story. He’s victorious, he has been blessed, but it is a victory and a blessing that comes with tremendous effort and some pain. Some of us know what that feels like right now. If you are a visitor today and weren’t around this weekend, or are watching from home, we have had a big church fair for the past two days and a lot of us are pretty tired. So, we know how Jacob feels.

But I’m not letting you go home today without a sermon, and the passage that you heard from the Book of Genesis a moment ago is a mysterious one that needs some exploration. Jacob and his family are on the move for reasons that I can’t fully get into this morning because nobody wants to hear a long sermon, I will at least spare you that, but I will just say it is a lot of family drama. Jacob has a brother that hates him, a father-in-law that tricks him, not to mention two wives and eleven children, so drama is to be expected. And Jacob is not a faultless character either. He is not simply some great example of primitive virtue. He is as complicated and as crooked as any of us. But that is something that should give us hope, because even as a person who is kind-of messed up, he still has encounters with God. And that is what that first scripture reading really is all about. It’s what all of our scripture readings this morning are about. An ordinary person has an encounter with God. God interacts with people that aren’t always good; God still cares loves people who are complicated. God does not remain distant from the mess of everyday human lives, but gets right down into the midst of it and grapples with us. God is in the midst of the drama with us. If you get nothing else from the scriptures or my sermon this morning, please remember that. God has encounters with ordinary, sinful human beings in the midst of real life. Jacob doesn’t just wrestle with God, God wrestles with him.

One night when Jacob sends his wives and children on ahead of him, he is left alone and has an encounter with a mysterious man. Our tradition sometimes identifies this man as an angel, but the text doesn’t say that. It just calls him a man. Eventually we learn that he is not just a man. We are not told why Jacob is wrestling with him though; we are just told that this mysterious man could not, or would not, subdue and overpower Jacob. He says “let me go” and Jacob replies “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” Jacob is stubborn and bold, which I like to think of as qualities, though I personally probably exhibit more of one than the other. Anyways, in this moment the mysterious man confers upon Jacob a new name. He calls him Israel, a name which we means wrestled or striven with God, for as the man says, “you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.” Jacob then asks the mysterious man his name, because obviously he wasn’t wearing his name tag, and the man makes no reply. He just blessed Jacob, renamed him Israel, and disappears. But Jacob knows that something miraculous has happened. He knew that this was not just any man. This was God. He knows that his encounter with this man was actually an encounter with God, because he names the place Peniel, which means face of God. 

There is much that can, and has, been said about that mysterious Genesis passage, but in the end Jacob has an encounter with God and realizes it, because he is stubborn. He doesn’t give up easily. Jacob gets his blessing because he knows that a blessing is worth fighting for. Encounters with God are precious and they are worth a little pain and suffering. God is worth holding on to, even if it involves a bit of wrestling.

Now I must admit that everything I know about actual wrestling comes from watching professional wrestling as a child with my grandfather and uncle. Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Junkyard Dog, Ravishing Rick Rude, and Jake the snake Roberts…these were all names that I knew well as a child, so everything I know about wrestling comes from watching their crazy antics. If you don’t know who those guys are…well you have missed out on some high-class American culture. You can look them up. But the one thing I learned from watching all that is that wrestlers are constantly having to adjust and change their grips. Your opponent moves one way, you move another. You try this, you try that. Sometimes you are up, sometimes you are down. There are some predictable, standard moves, but then there are wild cards. It isn’t always the same exact thing. You have to be willing to adjust and change your grip. 

Now I am probably one of the most traditional people you are likely to meet, in the sense that I love tradition and traditions and I think that they are worth fighting for. Traditions are a blessing and blessings are worth a good struggle. Traditions are worth stubbornly holding on to, but how you hold on to them…THAT is what has to constantly change. You have to be willing to adjust your grip, move and change your position and even try something new now and then if you hope to prevail. The tradition of the Friendship Fair, for all of the pain that it is, is a tradition that I think is worth holding on to, because I think in many ways divine encounters happen because of it, not just in the two days of the fair, but in so much of the work that happens leading up to it. There are elements of the fair that really do produce joy and build relationships. These are the parts of the fair that we need to stubbornly hold on to; but then there are aspects of the fair that can and must change over time. We need to be mindful of that. We can maintain the tradition of the fair, but also change our grip here and there. Trying new things and sometimes letting go of old things that we just can’t do anymore. I’m not the sort of person who loves change, but it can be very good now and then. It was only a couple fairs ago that we started taking credit cards, and what a change that has made. We haven’t always had a beer tent or apple cider donuts, but those have both proved to be popular additions as well. Incidentally, in the beer tent on Friday, Michael Coyne challenged me that if I mentioned apple cider donuts in my sermon on Sunday that he would double his weekly pledge. Michael, you may consider that challenge accepted. Now, if all of you would do the same, we wouldn’t have to worry about the financial side of the fair at all; we could simply focus on the things that bring us joy. But we can talk about that more another day.

To our younger parishioners that are here and helping to lead this service today I would say this: the future of this fair is really going to be in your hands, not ours. I hope that some of the things we are doing now will be things that you see value in and will want to maintain, but I also know you won’t always do everything the way we do it and that’s OK. I hope that you will hold on to many things that you experience here in church: prayer, scripture, mystery, joy, encounters with God, and meaningful relationships. I hope that you hold on to the tradition of the friendship Fair, but how you hold on to it, may be a little different than how we have held on to it. And that is as it should be. I can tell you that it won’t always be easy, but there are blessings that come from all these mysterious divine encounters that happen in church, even in church fairs, and blessings are worth fighting for.

Sermon for October 5, 2025

Readings:

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4
Psalm 37:1-10
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, To Timothy, my beloved child:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 

I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. 

I wanted you to hear those words from Saint Paul’s epistle to Timothy again this morning, because sometimes I think we are so fixated on the big picture or the major names or themes in a scripture passage that we often miss smaller details and characters that have a story all their own to tell. So, let’s talk for a moment this morning about Lois and Eunice. They are mentioned in passing in Paul’s letter. “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” Who are Lois and Eunice? They don’t get much press in church history. Their names are not widely known or celebrated. Churches aren’t dedicated to them. I have been to plenty of churches named after Saint Paul, and I have heard of plenty of churches named after Saint Timothy. But I have never seen a church called Saint Lois. I have never seen a church dedicated to Saint Eunice. And it’s a shame really. Someone needs to go and start a church and call it Saint Lois or Saint Eunice. We don’t really know who Lois and Eunice are. All we know is that Lois was a woman of faith who passed her faith on to her daughter Eunice. And Eunice herself would become a woman of faith who would pass her faith on to her son Timothy. It’s a boring little detail and hardly worth mentioning, right? Insignificant?

Except, maybe it isn’t an insignificant detail. Because if it weren’t for Lois and Eunice, there would be no Saint Timothy. This faith that Timothy has, this faith that Paul praises and celebrates, it didn’t just materialize out of the air. It has a genealogy. It was handed down to him. Timothy’s faith came from his mother Eunice. And Eunice’s faith came from her mother Lois. This is a faith that Paul is willing to die for. He describes it as a treasure that needs to be guarded. But it is also a treasure that gets handed down from one generation to the next. It is a gift that we receive and it is a gift that we give. Sometimes, like with Timothy, we get it from our parents or grandparents. Sometimes we get it from other people in our lives: distant relatives, friends, neighbors, or even strangers, but none of us, not one of us, came to faith entirely on our own. We all had someone who shared the gospel with us, or shared their faith in God, in some way. Maybe it wasn’t some great sermon. Maybe it was through their actions or their prayers or their hope or their perseverance, but somehow, someway, if you are here today then someone has planted a seed of faith within you. Someone shared their faith with you. Who was it? Maybe there are multiple people in your life that you can think of that shared their faith with you. If so, then you are blest. You are blest because you have been given a treasure. Don’t forget that. You have been given a treasure. The treasure is this living hope inside of you that keeps reminding you that the struggles of this world are not all that there is. The treasure is the conviction that there is a God that is worth trusting in, more than we trust in anything else in this world. The treasure is the belief that love is worth fighting for. The treasure is the promise that death is not the end for us. That treasure is a powerful thing that even in the tiniest amount can transform our lives and change the way we look at the world. Think about how the belief in the Resurrection must have given Lois and Eunice strength. Think about the troubles that those women must have seen in their lives. They would have known Psalm 37 very well. They would have know of God’s promise to deal with evildoers and set the world right, but in the Resurrection that would have seen God in action. They would have seen God keeping his promises to his children and that was a treasure to them that they had to pass on. You have been given a treasure too, and the treasure is not this building, it’s not a place or an inanimate object. It is a living thing inside of you. I think it is important to note that Paul says the faith lived within Timothy, and lived within Eunice, and lived within Lois. The faith is a living thing. Living things grow when you feed them and nurture them; they wilt and dwindle and may eventually die when you neglect them. That is why Paul challenged Timothy to rekindle that gift, that treasure that was withing him. We have been given a precious and powerful thing, but it needs guarding, it needs regular rekindling and it needs to be handed on. 

Today is not Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. It isn’t All Souls’ day or All Saints’ day. It isn’t even Grandparent’s day. But a couple names in a single verse of one of Paul’s letters is a good enough reminder that we need to take time now and then to give thanks to God for the Loises and Eunices in our own life. Without them and their witness and their sacrifices we wouldn’t have the faith that we have. They have surely given us a treasure. 

They only get a passing mention this morning and we know nothing else about them, but if it wasn’t for Lois and Eunice, Timothy would not have had the faith and Paul wouldn’t have had anyone to write to. 

Sermon for September 14, 2025

Readings:

Exodus 32:7-14
Psalm 51:1-11
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10

I became an Episcopalian in college and the parish that sponsored me for the priesthood was actually a college chapel at the University of Miami. That chapel had a very interesting set of stations of the cross hanging on the wall in the nave. Now if you aren’t familiar with the stations of the cross, they are a very old devotional practice of remembering Jesus’s final moments through fourteen different reflections or stations that are often depicted in some artistic form. We have stations of the cross here. That is what those little pictures are hanging on the beams all around you. 

Well, at the chapel in Miami, it will come as no surprise that our stations had a very Caribbean flavor to them. They were actually all carved panels of wood that were done by an artist in Haiti. There were sometimes a topic of discussion though, because occasionally someone would make the observation that all of the Roman soldiers depicted, including those nailing Jesus to the cross, had distinctly African features. Now, the knee-jerk reaction that some folks would have to seeing this would be to proclaim that this artwork was racist in some way, because the “bad guys” were depicted as African. There is no question that racism finds its way into all aspects of human society because it is a product of human sinfulness and always has been. But the mistake some people made in their rush to pronounce a judgement on those stations of the cross is that they overlooked one crucial detail: the artist was Haitian. The artist was Haitian and he knew exactly what he was doing in depicting those Roman soldiers with African features. He wanted them to look like himself. He was putting himself into the story. The Romans, the crucifiers, the sinners, the “bad guys,” they needed to look like the person he saw when he looked in the mirror. The artist knew what he was doing. As someone who could have justifiably depicted the Romans as the French or the English, or any other nationality that had participated in the slave trade (and there are many), he chose instead to cast himself in that role. The oppressor in this artist’s depiction of Jesus’s journey to the cross, was himself.

Now I know that there are people who would want to analyze this on many different levels and make all sorts of pronouncements based on culture, history, or Psychology, and some of that may be perfectly true. But a fundamental part of the Christian journey of faith is the ability to recognize one’s own sinfulness. The ritual of baptism, where we actually become Christian, necessarily involves a recognition of one’s own sinful nature. It is not enough to point to the sins of others; we must take responsibility for our own sins. That is repentance and the Christian faith begins with an act of repentance. As September the 14^th is the Feast of the Holy Cross in the church’s calendar, I have been thinking specifically about the cross of Christ this week, and my mind was drawn to those stations of the cross in Miami carved lovingly and carefully by that Haitian artist. And I can’t help but marvel at the spiritual maturity that it takes to recognize sinfulness and evil within your own self. That is what that artist was doing. He was saying that I, am not merely a passive bystander in the story of Jesus, but I am a sinner, and I am precisely the sort of person that Jesus died on the cross to save. I am a sinner, not because of my race, my gender, or my circumstances, but because of my humanity. Despite all of our therapy, and don’t get me wrong I am a huge proponent of therapy, it is a wonderful and life-saving thing, but despite therapy being more common, the ability to publicly and honestly acknowledge our own sinfulness and broken human nature seems to be less common. It is becoming a lost art. And I’m sorry, but I have to think that part of the reason we are living in this age of vicious division and political violence and online hatred, is that we are losing the ability to own and claim our own sinfulness. It is so much easier to always be a victim. It is so much easier to always look for the fault in someone else. The situation we are in is because of the radical left or the reactionary right. It is the fault of the mentally ill, the gun lobby, the internet, politicians. In times of great upheaval and uncertainty we want someone to blame. It has become increasingly unpopular and uncommon to own our own faults. Everyone else is the problem. I don’t often reference or refer to Taylor Swift, I’m not a devotee, but I am quite fond of her song anti-hero because I think it does just this: it shows someone taking responsibility for the troubles in their own life.

It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me
At tea time, everybody agrees
I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror
It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero

Such a great lyric. We don’t want to look in the mirror. We don’t want to examine our own words or our own actions. We don’t want to acknowledge that we all share some responsibility for the pain and suffering in the world. Taylor’s song was very popular, but sadly the kind of honest introspection that she is singing about isn’t. We want to blame everyone else for our problems. The temptation to blame others for all your problems is so pervasive that it goes all the way back to the beginning when Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. We don’t want to take responsibility. And if all the problems in our lives are the fault of someone else, or some other group, then the solution is very easy: just eliminate them. Eliminate those people. This is what humans have done throughout history. This is what the Romans were doing nailing Jesus to the cross: eliminating a problem. This is what Paul was doing when he was having Jesus’s followers stoned to death. He was simply eliminating a problem. Until one day he realized that HE was the problem. 

In Paul’s letter to Timothy, he writes: “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners– of whom I am the foremost.” Of whom I am the foremost…do not forget that Paul added that little bit at the end. Paul isn’t just saying that YOU need Jesus. Paul is saying that I need Jesus. Paul is testifying to his own sinfulness and brokenness. He isn’t just saying y’all are messed up. Y’all are a problem. He is saying we are a problem. He is saying I am a problem. I am a sinner. We sinners, and that means all of us, we are the problem. We are the ones Christ came to save. We are the lost sheep. 

That is why the grace of the Lord is such an amazing gift for Paul, because he knows that is has nothing to do with merit or righteousness. Paul did not deserve the love of God. He says himself that he was a man of violence. But he says, he received mercy anyways. Paul did not deserve God’s mercy, but he received it. Paul did not deserve God’s love, but he received it. Paul did not deserve God’s grace, but he received it, because that is what grace is. Grace is a gift you don’t earn and don’t deserve. It is pure gift. Friends, our world needs more grace right now. Our world needs more people who know that they are sinners, who understand that they are not righteous, who can acknowledge that they have received grace and mercy from God and therefore must MUST show grace and mercy to others. Even if they don’t deserve it. Especially if they don’t deserve it. Because that is what grace is.

I am a big fan of the Wall Street Journal columnist and former Regan speech writer Peggy Noonan. Her columns the last couple weeks in particular have really been on point. Two weeks ago she shared an exchange that she had had with a veteran political consultant who was talking about young political operatives, and something she said really struck me. She said to this political consultant: “I write for those 33-year-old operatives you speak of who have actually never seen grace.” If they don’t know what it looks like they can’t emulate it, they can’t adopt it and give it new life because they don’t know what it was.”

We need to wake up and realize that there are young people in our world right now who do not know or understand grace, so it is up to us to tell them, but more importantly show them, what it is and how it works. We have been taught, and shown, grace by the master. Our Lord didn’t just come to save the persecuted, he came to save the persecutors as well. He came to save sinners of all sorts. He came even to save those Romans that were nailing him to the cross. He asked God to forgive them with one of his last breaths. That is how grace works. It is given to those who don’t deserve it. Those of us who worship beneath the foot of the cross week after week, need to remember that. We need to remind the world what grace looks like.

Sermon for September 7, 2025

Readings:

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 1
Philemon 1-21
Luke 14:25-33

The religious life is filled with paradoxes, or seemingly contradictory ideas that are nonetheless, both true. It can be frustrating sometimes, when you go looking for an easy answer. One of those paradoxes is that sometimes the more you know, the less you understand. This is especially true with scripture. Today’s gospel is a good example. 

Now on the surface, today’s gospel is about the cost of discipleship. What does it really take to be a follower of Jesus Christ? Can we just call ourselves Christians and leave it at that, or is Jesus looking for more substantial proof? And Jesus is shockingly blunt. He says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” What a thing to say! Welcome back families! Here I am trying to make this a very family friendly church, and Jesus goes and pulls the rug right out from under me on the day Sunday school starts back up. Hate your families. Thanks a lot Jesus that’s very helpful. So to try and make some sense out of what Jesus is saying and to give some context, naturally I went back and looked at the whole passage of scripture and everything that came before this. That’s when things got more confusing. The more I read, the less I understood.

You see immediately before Jesus makes this statement to the large crowd, he had been at dinner with some Pharisees. It was at that dinner that he taught about being humble and not taking the high place at the table. That was the passage that I preached on last week. But then at that same dinner, Jesus goes on to tell a story that compares the kingdom of God to a great dinner. The host invited many people to come, but they all found some excuse not to go. Everyone was busy. Someone just purchased some land, someone just purchased some new cows, someone just got married. Everyone had some good reason to turn down their invitation to this free banquet. So the host sends out his messengers to invite the poor, and the crippled, and the blind and the lame, and when he discovers he still has room for more, he sends out his messengers again and says bring in anyone so that my house may be filled. Jesus tells this wonderful story about the Kingdom of God and he compares it to a free banquet, that some people refuse their invitation to, and then, in the very next line, we get today’s gospel passage. The very next line is Jesus telling the crowd the true cost of discipleship.

So which is it? Is God’s kingdom a free gift or is it something that costs us dearly? The bible can’t seem to decide. You see my confusion? Is the Christian life, about receiving God’s blessings, or is it about serving God? Are we supposed to celebrate the feast or carry the cross? Which is it? These two stories seem to give contradictory images of a relationship with God: the first image emphasizes God’s grace as a free and undeserved gift; the second image emphasizes what God’s grace can cost us. And yet, we are obviously meant to hear these two stories together. They are side by side in the scripture, and I am convinced that that is not by accident. This is another paradox, a truth about God that is not simple. We need to hold these two contradictory images together. This is the paradox of God’s grace: it is completely free, and it can cost you everything. It is celebration and it is sacrifice. It is rest and it is work. God’s grace, God’s Kingdom, the invitation to the banquet, the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life, this is a free gift. We don’t earn it. We don’t deserve it. It is God’s love being poured out on us. That is a truth that is revealed to us in scripture time and time again. But, choosing to accept that invitation, does mean that some of the cares and pressing concerns of this world will have to come second. We will have choices to make. And sometimes choosing to put God and his invitation first, can be a really tough choice. It can and will involve hard decisions. It can and will involve sacrificing some of the things of this world. Maybe even our own lives. That was the problem with everyone that was invited to the banquet in Jesus’s story: they all had some other worldly concern that kept them from showing up. They didn’t hate the host, they were polite and sent their apologies, but they all had excuses that seemed more important. And those excuses kept them from receiving the great gift that God wanted to give them. This is the truth that Jesus and scripture is pointing us to: God’s love is a free and underserved gift, but how often do we choose to put lesser things first, before God? Is God always our number 1 priority?

You see, people get really worked up when they hear Jesus say “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” We don’t like to hear Jesus use the word hate, especially not when it comes to those we love, but we need to remember where that love we share with our families ultimately comes from. It comes from God. It is a gift from God. Your father, your mother, your wife, your children, brothers and sisters, even your own life…that all comes to you from God. If we put anything else before God, we are getting things out of order. We aren’t paying attention to the true source. Jesus doesn’t want you to actually hate your mother and father, because honoring your mother and father is a commandment of God. But the first commandment of God is I am your God, you shall have no other God’s before me, so everything else, no matter how important, has to come second. Without the first commandment to worship only God, none of the other commandments like honoring your parents have any power or authority. The first commandment is the foundation of all the commandments. God has to come first.

I think Jesus is trying to shake people up a bit and make them think about their lives. I think Jesus wants his followers to understand that following him means accepting God’s invitation to the banquet, and that means a radical shift in priorities that is necessarily going to change how you live in this world. It can mean making some tough choices, because the world we live in does not want you to put God first. The world wants to keep you busy with good excuses, so it’s tough. Despite the message that many people are sold about what it means to be a Christian, the Christian life is not a simple thing. In many ways it is a paradox that many struggle to understand and many oversimplify. God does want us to have life and have it in abundance; God does want to bless us with good things. But God also warns us that truly following him is not easy and involves real sacrifice and real work. This is one of those occasions where both things are true. God’s grace is free, but it will cost you something. It may cost you everything.