Leviticus 19:1-2,15-18; Psalm 1; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46

Did you ever have somebody you kept running into, and you were never really excited to see them? Today’s Gospel reading is another one of those encounters that always seemed to be happening between Jesus and the Pharisees.

Now, bear in mind, the Pharisees were not the bad people we are often taught that they were. There were several sects during the period in Israel, when Jesus lived.  You had the Saducees, usually of the priestly classes. Then there were the Essenes, an ascetic group who lived out away from Jerusalem. They are the people many scholars believe are responsible for preserving the Dead Sea Scrolls. There were the people called the Zealots, who only cared about kicking the Romans out of Israel.

 Then you had the Pharisees. The Pharisees believed in an expansive interpretation of Torah. They tried to parse the law so that it covered every circumstance. For any occurrence or situation in life, they believed you could interpret the Law to know what you should or should not do.

The Saducees rejected these and other newer doctrines. They wanted only a strict reading of Torah, and no additional books need apply. When I was a young Southern Baptist, I was taught how to remember the difference between the Pharisees and Saducees: “These people didn’t believe in the resurrection. That’s why they were sad, you see.”

I know, it’s an awful pun. But I remembered.

All of these groups believed in the Torah – the Law – and the importance of the Jerusalem Temple. What they disagreed on was details, and on some ideas that had grown up in Judaism following the Exile. Kind of reminds me of Christians today. The Essenes, for instance, believes in an apocalyptic end of the world, kind of like our book of Revelation.

The Pharisees are especially interesting because they are the only one of these three groups who survived the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. Their tradition of scriptural study and interpretation would survive and evolve into the people we know today as “rabbis.”

 One doctrine the Pharisees believed and taught was the resurrection of the dead. So you can see why the Pharisees may have assumed that Jesus would be an ally. That he’d be on THEIR side.

 I think the Pharisees were very, very frustrated by Jesus.

And vice versa. Because Jesus could see that the Pharisees just didn’t get what he was saying.

And who else do we know who was a Pharisee? That’s right, St. Paul. Before his change of heart, he was so convinced he was right that he saw the followers of Christ as dangerous, and wanted to stamp out this new, heretical sect.

I sometimes wonder if some people in these groups were interpreting scripture to justify beliefs they already held. It’s not an uncommon thing. I see it almost every day on social media. People take a stance, then seem to cherry-pick scripture to back up their position. How many of us do that?

 We must be incredibly careful when we are dealing with scripture. Interpreting scripture is an awesome responsibility, which is one of the reasons the Episcopal Church insists on educated clergy. And, as I am finding out, that education is not an easy one, even for someone who has already earned a doctoral degree. But here’s the dirty little secret about that doctoral degrees: what you really learn is how much you don’t know. And I’m finding the same thing at seminary.

Any time we try to use scripture to confirm to what we want to believe, we are going against the spirit of Christ. And this becomes especially dangerous when we are so sure of ourselves that we begin to see people whose interpretation is different from ours as the enemy. We are often so intent on guarding what we think is “right doctrine” that we ignore the welfare of those we are meant to be serving, or we actively work against it.

Rev. Ben Cramer, a Methodist minister, hit the nail on the head when he said, “Christianity should feel like ‘my love for others continues to deepen’, not ‘my beliefs are more correct than anyone else’s.’”

We are not called to be the “Orthodoxy Police.” Quite honestly, I don’t recall anything in our baptismal vows about setting ourselves up as authorities on exactly what our brothers and sisters are supposed to believe. Quite the opposite, in fact. As St. Paul says in his first letter to the church in Corinth, “Do not seek your own advantage but that of the other.” In our Baptismal Vows, we promise to “respect the dignity of every human being.” Part of that is allowing for the possibility that WE might be wrong about something.

If our interpretation of scripture does not lead us to act with love toward our fellow human beings — of our fellow human beings — then that interpretation is very, very wrong. Jesus, who is always more interested in our actions than what we say we believe, put it very succinctly, without saying a single word about “right belief”:

“Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.”

Whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me.”

Amen.

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32; Psalm 25:1-8; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32

From today’s Epistle Lesson:

“…in humility regard others as better people than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

It amazes me how ready we are to judge others who are not like us., often for the flimsiest of reasons. We judge people because they have different color skin, or because they have a different religion, or because they come from a different country, or they don’t love who — or how — we think they should love, or simply because they don’t live the way we do, or the way we think they should.

Perhaps it’s a normal part of our natural desire to differentiate ourselves, to form an identity, but it’s a terrible way to view people.  Let’s face it: we all do it, even when we know we shouldn’t. I find myself doing it more often than I like to admit. It doesn’t help that this attitude often comes from those we consider leaders.

This is in the forefront of my mind because of somethong that happened in St. Louis last week. The South Grand Community Improvement District sent a letter to its member businesses noting that, with the heat we have been experiencing, more homeless people would be showing up and asking for water. The letter urged businesses not to give water to these homeless folks, but to call the police instead and let the city government handle it.

I find this attitude simply unconscionable. To advise merchants to refuse water to the most vulnerable during a heat wave is simply an abominable thing to do.

It reminds me of a parable you may have heard: it involves someone traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho who is attacked, beaten, and robbed. While he’s lying there on the side of the road, two people see him and decide to leave him to his fate. The third is someone you wouldn’t want to be seen associating with. But this guy cleans the man’s wounds, puts him on his donkey, and takes him to an inn. Sound familiar?

The two men who passed by without helping I’m sure had perfectly good reasons why they couldn’t help. It seems we can always find reasons not to hejp. That we can always find reasons not to give second that drink of water.

That “Good Samaritan” did a lot more than just provide water.

If we are going to call ourselves Christians — which, after all, means “little Christs” — we have to behave like Christ. And Jesus was very vocal about helping people.

There’s another passage of Scripture, , this one in Matthew, that says pretty specifically who Christ accepts and who he rejects:

“…for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’”

Jesus never minced words about our responsibility to help people.

And in today’s Epistle: “…in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

In God’s view, none of us is more worthy of help than anyone else. When we are dealing with people who need help, we are told to HELP, not call the cops, not to foist the responsibility off on someone else.

Not to pass by someone who needs our help.

In our Old Testament reading today, The prophet Ezekiel said, “Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! ‘

We all still need that new heart and new spirit in dealing with those who need help, and God is willing to provide it.

 God give us grace to see all others as what they are: beloved children of God, no less that we are ourselves.

And worthy of all the help we can give.

Amen.

 Isaiah 55:1-5; Psalm 145:8-9, 15-22; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21

There are a lot of stories in the Gospels that we’ve heard so many times that we’ve gotten comfortable with them. We’ve heard them so many times that they don’t make much of an impact on us. And so, especially with the stories of miracles, we lose the sense of wonder we might have felt the first time we heard them.

For instance, today’s Gospel is the story we commonly call the Feeding of the Five Thousand. We read it on Sunday mornings pretty much every year from one Gospel or another. But does this miracle really make an impact on us? We read of story about feeding all these people with 5 loaves and 2 fish, and it’s kind of a feel-good story, a story about Jesus’ power. We tell it to our kids in Sunday school to teach them about giving what we have to God. But do we really learn anything from it?

First of all, “Feeding of the Five Thousand” is inaccurate. Let’s look at the last sentence in the reading: “And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.” So even if we assume only one woman or child per man, that number is already closer to ten thousand.

That’s a lot of mouths to feed. Double what we usually think of. And with nothing but a couple of fish and some hunks of bread.

We can say to ourselves “Oh, yeah, but this is Jesus. He could do anything. He’s God, after all.”

Yes, we do believe that Jesus is God. But we have a tendency to think of Jesus just waving his hand and saying (in the words of Jean-Luc Picard), “make it so,” and it was all done. No sweat. But we also read in the scriptures that, while he was God, Jesus was also human. He still had human limitations. He got tired from time to time. When the woman with a hemorrhage touched him, as we read just a few weeks ago, he knew she had done it because the scripture says “he felt power go out of him.” There were times when, after working with people for a while teaching, healing, etc. — he needed a break and had to get away.

So, it  appears there was a human cost to what Jesus did. I imagine there was some cost to the very human Jesus in taking that tiny amount of food and multiplying it to feed ten thousand people. But he did it. Right afterward, if we read on in the Gospel, “he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray.“ He didn’t hang around for praise. He didn’t tell people they needed to go to church. He didn’t ask for any payment. He just went away to be by himself.

 In feeding this many people, without asking for any payback or thanks, Jesus was simply fulfilling the words of the prophet that we read today:

“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

Here’a question: why, when someone is in need, do we feel like they need to do something to deserve our help. Or that we need people to give us something in return? Or that we deserve praise? When we feel like asking any of those questions, I think we need to stop and ask ourselves: when Jesus saved us on the cross, did he ask us to prove that we deserved it? He did not, and if he had, we would have been completely out of luck, because we definitively do not deserve what he did for us. So how can we possibly believe that we have any standing to decide who needs help and who doesn’t? And how would we make that decision? Do we only help people that can prove they are poor? What’s the cutoff income level? Do we factor in things like necessary  medications, childcare, or rent before we decided if someone is “poor enough” for us to help them? Do we turn them away because they are alcoholics or are addicted to drugs? Do we refuse to help people we helped before but didn’t say “thank you?”

When you start putting conditions on who you are willing to help, things go downhill really fast.

And how do we square that attitude the Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats? We’re told we need to feed the hungry, visit those in prison, take care of the sick. We are never told “help people if they can prove they deserve it. And if they don’t say ‘thanks’ you can write them off.”

No, we’re told to just do it. Take care of people. Without prompting. Without any proof that they deserve it. Without expecting anything in return, even thanks.

I don’t know how many of you are Star Wars fans, but there is Disney series called “The Mandalorian,” which is famous for having a figure that many people called “Baby Yoda” until they found out that it was certainly not Yoda. I just started streaming it recently after holding out for a couple of years. The title figure is a member of a religious sect that lives by what they call “The Way.” Sometimes one of them will say to the other “This is the Way,” meaning they have acted according to their ethical code.

It reminded me that early Christians didn’t call themselves Christians. Instead, they referred to themselves as “followers of The Way.” I think we should bring that back and use it to describe how we are to deal with the world’s needs. We can use it to remind ourselves of how we are to live.

“The Way.” I like it.

Give to everyone.

Give without expecting to be paid back.

Give without judgment.

Give without expecting praise.

Give from your heart.

This is the Way.

Amen.

 

Zechariah 9:9-12; Psalm 145:8-15; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Most of you who have known me know that I have THREE sons. The two older boys, Travis and Jacob, were Kim’s by a previous marriage, but I adopted them when she and I married.

Jacob, the younger of the two, was three years old when we married. Jacob had a best friend that lived just a few doors down, whose name was Adam James Cannon. Jake never referred to him any other way. It was always all three names: “my friend Adam James Cannon.”

Jake would often go to his friend’s house to play. One day Jake was over there playing. Something happened and there was a falling out. Jake came stomping back to our house.

Seriously, I never figured out how so much mad could fit into a body that small. At one point it bubbled out. He stopped in his tracks, turned around, and yelled toward his friend’s house, “I DON’T LIKE YOU ADAM JAMES CANNON AND I’M NOT GONNA PLAY WITH YOU FOR LOTS OF DAYS!!”

Nobody could be madder than 3-year-old Jake. And, of course, they  were back playing together later in the day.

It seems that the disagreement was over how they would play. How their shared fantasy would play out. This kind of disagreement was not uncommon for Jake, who had both a vivid imagination, and a stubborn streak a mile wide.

At the beginning of today’s gospel Jesus compares his generation to children playing and calling to each other: “We played the flute for you but you did not dance. We wailed but you did not mourn.” What a weird thing to say! I have a feeling all the parents listening to him had no trouble connecting with what he was saying. But for those who might not get it right away, he went on, “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’”.

My son Jake and his friend Adam? That’s the comparison Jesus was making. The people of his generation were saying to him – and to John the Baptist, “You’re not doing what WE want you to do!” Jesus was comparing his generation to whiny, self-centered children who were never satisfied.

John, and then Jesus just wouldn’t play nice with them.

John and Jesus wouldn’t live up to their expectations.

When people don’t live up to our expectations, we do not tend to be kind.

It is so easy to come up with reasons not to listen when someone has a message that we just don’t like. And the easiest excuse of all is to simply say the speaker has no standing, no authority to say what they are saying. That they are crazy. That they associate with the wrong people. It’s a logical fallacy called ad hominem. We attack the person to invalidate their message.

When someone says something we don’t like, we may say “Well, no wonder, they’re a Republican.” Or “They’re a Democrat.” I know I‘ve been guilty of this.

As they did to John the Baptist we can say “He has a demon!” or “They’re not Episcopalian” or even “They’re not a REAL Christian.” But there is something about living as followers of Christ that we just can’t avoid, and that is his command to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow him.

It’s that “deny ourselves” part that we have problems with. Part of living as people who are crucified to the world is that we have to give things up, and some of those things we have to give up will likely be our cherished preconceived notions. Notions of who is right and wrong in God’s eyes. Notions of who has value in God’s eyes (here’s a hint: it’s everybody). And it’s really difficult to act Christ-like when we are, at the same time, trying to live up to the world’s expectations of us, and judge people by the world’s standards. I might even say it is impossible.

Even St. Paul found that he was often of two minds, and fought against it. “I do not do the thing that I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” It is a difficult thing to go against years of conditioning by the world and instead pay attention to the will of God.

Later in today’s Gospel, Jesus says “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” How can this be? How can denying ourselves and taking up our cross end up being a light burden?

It’s really amazing how giving up yourself – and giving up trying to live up to the expectations the world has trained you to believe in – can simplify your life, can remove a lot of the burden that you go through. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy, or that the world will understand. Some people may, but most probably won’t. In fact, you may even face the same things that John and Jesus faced: being told by friends or family that we are not living up to their standards. That we’re not Real True Christians. In fact, I met with that situation a few years ago, when I was one of the administrators for my Order’s Facebook page. One of our other admins posted a picture supporting Pride during June. It was Pride month, after all, and Episcopalians everywhere celebrated. But we received an email from someone — someone not even a member of the Order — demanding that the post be taken down. When it wasn’t he sent a message to the admins wanting to know how we could claim to preach the Gospel and at the same time support Pride. He didn’t seem to understand that — in the words of our Baptismal Covenant — supporting the dignity of every human being is preaching the Gospel.   

The thing is, you eventually realize that being called out like that is OK, because you are no longer too concerned about what the world — or even some other Christians — think of you. We take our cues from a different source. We serve a different master.

Take my yoke, and learn. You’ll find rest.

Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.

They seem contradictory, but they are all one. This is true life in Christ.

Forget the expectations of the world. May we all be ready — even eager — to be called names for Christ.

Amen.

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

Good morning! Today, the first Sunday after Pentecost, is Trinity Sunday — the only feast day in the church that, instead of celebrating a saint, or some important events in the life of Jesus, instead celebrates…a doctrine. A belief. And it’s a doctrine that is, for a lot of people, really, deeply weird.

And it’s not something that was easy to come by. Most of our feast days are pretty obvious. Christmas? Feast day! Jesus’ Baptism? Feast day! Hs resurrection? Huge feast day! All are attested in the Gospels and definitely deserve to be celebrated.

But…the Trinity? There isn’t a single passage of scripture that you can point at and say it definitely says that God is a Trinity of Persons. Sure, there are a couple (like today’s Epistle and Gospel) that mention all three persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — but those passages never say the three are one God. It took a couple hundred years after Christ’s death and resurrection to hammer that out, and there was a lot of excommunicating going back and forth between bishops over it.

Trinity Sunday is a Sunday that a lot of clergy (and lay preachers) don’t seem to like to preach on. They don’t like to preach on it because it’s so easy to fall into one of the views of the Trinity that have been denounced as heresies over the years. I’ll try hard not to do that. No promises, though.

So, why do we even need a doctrine of a Trinitarian God? I mean, it seems like it would be much simpler to put all our eggs in one basket, so to speak. It would be easier to just look at Jesus, right?

But we can’t do that, because that would give us an incomplete picture of our Deity. Because only in the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — or, if you prefer, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer — do we get the full picture of God. The one God who, in one person, made us; in another person, put aside his godhead to redeem the whole world; and in the third person comes to us now to to lift us up and support us to work for God’s kingdom.

The Rev. Kara Slade, the Associate Rector of Trinity Church in Princeton, NJ, talked about it this way: we know the nature of God by looking at Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And we may not understand how it all works — I’m not convinced that anyone really does — do we really need to have a detailed understanding of such concepts as perichoresis? That’s the Greek term that describes how the three persons “interpenetrate”. Interesting, but I‘m not sure it’s something the average Christian needs in their everyday life.

What I think really we need to take away from Trinity Sunday what it points to for each of us. What the idea of “One God three persons” means for us today. The lesson we can draw from a difficult theological idea. Does the doctrine of the Trinity have any real-world significance for us? Or is it just something for bishops to argue over?

The three persons in the Trinity are quite distinct. I mean, we have very different ideas when we think about God, or think about Jesus, or when we think about the Holy Spirit. We use different mental imagery. We have different ideas about their action n the world.

That right there, my friends, is diversity. Three distinct persons, each recognizable as an individual. And yet, the doctrine of the Trinity says they are One. And that is Unity. Unity of substance, and unity of purpose.

Maybe…just maybe, this is a picture of what we should be as the Children of God.

We are distinct individuals, aren’t we?  You’d never mistake me for anybody else in here, and I couldn’t mistake you for anyone else ether. We each have different backgrounds, different talents, different callings, different ways of earning a living.

That, my friend, is diversity.

And yet, our Savior calls us to be one body in him. Maybe not one in substance, like the Trinity, but definitely one in purpose. And that purpose is really simple. We are to spread the love of God wherever we can.

We are called to be the body of Christ, to rejoice in our differences, to accept any who come, and to act as one for the growth of the kingdom of heaven. This is our calling and purpose.

But how are we do do that?

I don’t think it’s rocket science. But we need to do it every day, and we can use our thinking about the doctrine of the Trinity to guide us.

Every day, we can show the love of a God who created everything and said that it was good.

Every day, we can show the love of a Son who put aside his godhood to come and live among us and to redeem us after we had mucked up that good Creation.

Every day, we can show the love of the Holy Spirit who comforts us and guides us to do what is right.

See? Not rocket science.

Three persons.

Three ways of loving.

One God.

Amen.

Delivered on Easter Sunday 2026

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

I’m going to begin this sermon by referencing a Christmas story, if you can believe it.

One of my favorite Christmas stories is, as it may be for many of you, Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” It’s really not very long, only 85 pages.  You can read the whole thing in under 2 hours, but it has made an indelible mark on our Western culture.

One of the things that makes my personal favorite is the first paragraph:

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.’ Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Jesus was dead, to begin with. The Roman government said so. No doubt they had their own officials to certify a criminal’s death. Jesus was dead as a doornail.

I’m starting with this because there are any number of theories as to how Jesus’ resurrection might have been staged. One was that Jesus had a twin brother, and the twin brother had been executed instead, or that his twin had pretended to be the resurrected Jesus. Back when I was a teenager, there was a flash-in-the-pan sensational book titled, “The Passover Plot,” which suggested that there was a complex plan to fake the resurrection, including having Jesus take a drug that made him unconscious, simulating death.

But this doesn’t take into  account the fact that the Roman soldiers said Jesus was dead. Now, if there was a person in the 1^st-century world who knew dead, if was a Roman soldier. Dealing out death was kind of their business. And lying to their superiors or accepting a bribe would have been a quick way to get dead themselves.

So, yes, Jesus was dead, to begin with. Just like Marley,

And both of them came back and spoke ito people they had known in life.

But here’s where the differences start.

For one, we believe that Jesus was a real person, as do most scholars, even many atheists. Marley, on the other hand, was a character in a story. He was fictional.

And Marley stayed dead. When he appeared to Ebenezer Scrooge, he came as a ghost.

Jesus, on the other hand, didn’t stay dead. He came back as physically alive as you and I. He didn’t come back as a disembodied spirit, like Marley. The tale in “A Christmas carol” isn’t about resurrection. It’s just a ghost story. A really good ghost story, but still just a ghost story.

 But our stories: our story today of women finding an empty tomb, of Jesus speaking to Mary Magdalene; the story we will read next week of Jesus telling Thomas to physically feel his wounds; the story in Luke of Jesus meeting two disciples on the road to Emmaus; the story of Jesus actually cooking breakfast on the shore of the Sea of Galilee: these are experiences of a real, physical resurrection.

And these eyewitness accounts are why we are here: Jesus was brought back to real physical life by God. And we will be too. Because in his resurrection, Jesus made the down payment on resurrection for all of us. Not some ghostly, purely spiritual life flitting about with angels, but a real physical resurrection from the dead. He took what before had been a unproven belief and made it real.

That’s what we believe in and what we say in the Apostle’s Creed, the Creed we used last night during Cricket’s baptism: the resurrection of the body. In the Nicene Creed, which we will all say in a few minutes, we will say that we look for the “life of the world to come.” A new world, a world as it should have always been, where God will make his home with us. This is what Jesus made the down payment on.

That is what Jesus did for us, and that is why Easter is worth celebrating. That’s why Easter is IMPORTANT, all in capital letters.

So yes, put on your fancy clothes, have a fancy dinner. Have your relatives and friends over. You can come and celebrate at our potluck dinner in the parish hall after church. But while you are doing those things, don’t lose sight of why we celebrate today. We celebrate because our Savior, who really was dead, is alive.

Alleluia.

Amen.

Second Sunday in Lent, Year A, 2026

Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5; 13-17; John 3:1-17

We humans really like to be right. I mean REALLY like to be right. We hate to be told we are wrong. Well, at least I do, and I’d be willing to be you all do to. I hate it so much that I get terribly embarrassed when I find I was wrong about something. I would rather not say anything at all sometimes than to take the chance that I might be wrong.

In today’s Gospel reading we get what may be the single most famous verse in the entire Bible. We all know it, if we’ve spent more than a few years in the church. It’s John 3:16 — “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.”

And it’s a great verse! Martin Luther actually called it “the Gospel in a nutshell.” If you’re a young evangelical, as I was, you’re expected to memorize it — which I did, although it was in the King James translation.

But that same verse, that wonderful verse, that “Gospel in nutshell” — has also been weaponized. It’s been used to divide people into those who believe in Jesus — or rather, someone’s specific vision of him — and those who don’t. Those who don’t, of course, are not Real True Christians, and are condemned. They can’t possibly be born again, as Jesus says we must be, because they don’t believe the way I believe. They haven’t followed the “Romans Road to Salvation.” They haven’t had a “Road to Damascus” experience. Their salvation doesn’t measure up to mine.

But this verse wasn’t meant to divide, but to include. Remember how it starts? “God so loved the world…” Not just Episcopalians, not just Roman Catholics, not just Baptists. Not just Christians. Not just people who look like us. The world. Let that sink in. God loves everyone just as much as he loves you, just as much as he loves me. He loves Russians, he loves Chinese people. He loves the people of Iran just as much as he loves you and me. God always has room for more love. And I can imagine that he weeps when he sees us divided.

But sometimes we can get so caught up in our own theology or interpretations of scripture that we don’t see — can’t see — someone else’s viewpoint. And we put up barriers. We decide who is worthy of inclusion or exclusion. And to use an expression my Dad used a lot, that is above our pay grade.

We have to stop our focus on divisions between us, because it only hurts us. The problem is, dividing people is easy. Instead, we must practice humility. Which is hard.

There is a Peanuts cartoon that illustrates healthy humility. In the first panel, Snoopy is on the roof of his doghouse with a typewriter, and Charlie Brown says to him, “I hear you’re writing a book on theology. I hope you have a good title.” As Charlie Brown leaves, Snoopy thinks, “I have the perfect title…,” and proceeds to type, “Has It Ever Occurred to You That You Might Be Wrong?”

And that right there is humility in a nutshell. Any time we want to make theological pronouncements, to make statements that will divide people, we need to stop and ask ourselves that question. Has it ever occurred to us that we might be wrong?

We have to give up our desire to insist that we are right all the time, especially when being right means insisting that everyone else is necessarily wrong. And I know what I’m talking about, because that kind of attitude sort of runs in my family. We love correcting people, including each other. It’s something I’ve been trying to kill in my own personality.

Because being born again really does mean giving up the things that drove us in our previous lives. It means giving up our preconceived notions. It means giving up the idea that we are always right and anyone who differs with our opinion or our theology is always wrong,

It means giving everything over to Christ. And once again, this is hard. Because we all have things we want to keep for ourselves. Pet doctrines, pet opinions, pet likes and dislikes. Yes, we have to give those up too, because God wants us to love everyone like he loves us, or as much like Him as is humanly possible.

Being born again is not just a catchphrase or a buzzword. It means to become a new person. To work every day to become a person so attuned to God that people can actually see Jesus at work in us.

It is hard, yes. We will lose some things that we really didn’t need anyway. But if we do it, we will gain so much more.

Amen.

 Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-15

We don’t get a lot of information about Joseph in the Gospels. We get a lot about Mary, and rightfully so, but after Luke’s story about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph visiting the Temple and Jesus going off to talk to the elders, Joseph just kind of disappears. We only see his name when we hear Jesus referred to as “Joseph’s son.” Some scholars have suggested that he may have died before Jesus began his public ministry. We just don’t know.

But St. Joseph is very important in some circles. The Feast of St. Joseph – March 19 — is a very special day in the Italian community. I don’t know of any city that celebrates like Providence, Rhode Island, especially the area known as Federal Hill, well-known throughout the state as the center of the Italian community. Their celebration is a complete blowout — street fairs, a big parade, the whole thing. They will often move the celebration into June, because, let’s face it, March in Rhode Island can be a bit iffy for outside celebrations. But let’s just say that St. Joseph is really big for folks of Italian extraction.

Personally, I think it’s really important to take a good look at Joseph, and not because I spent a good deal of my life in Rhode Island. I think he can teach us a few things.

An interesting thing about Mathew’s infancy tale is that we don’t get Mary’s story. Unlike in Luke’s gospel there’s no Annunciation, no Magnificat, no “Hail Mary, full of grace.”. We just hear that Mary “is found to be with child.” She seems almost passive, an afterthought. Because Matthew is focusing on Joseph.

So we get Joseph’s story.

Mary and Joseph were “betrothed.” In the 1^st-century culture into which Jesus was born, a betrothal was pretty much the same as marriage. The only thing left was moving in together and the consummation of the marriage. Betrothal was a done deal.

And unfaithfulness after betrothal counted as adultery.

The punishment for adultery — at least for women — was pretty hearsay. Death was on the table. At the very least, Joseph would have been perfectly within his rights to denounce Mary in public, then throw her out to fend for herself.

But that’s not what he had decided to do. He had decided to “dismiss her quietly.” Being a product of his time, he couldn’t see any way he could marry her, that just wasn’t done. Be he could still be kind and not hold her up to the ridicule of others. I have a lot of sympathy for Joseph. These days we wouldn’t blink an eye at a pregnant bride, but back then it was a serious breach of social norms. Any way you look at it, Joseph was as nice a guy as his culture allowed him to be.

But God had other ideas. For God’s purposes, being a “nice guy” wasn’t quite enough.

So God sends an angel to Joseph in a dream, explaining what he is to do. “You can go ahead and get married,” the angel tells him. “It’s OK. This baby is going to be really important. Oh, and by the way, name him Jesus.”

Joseph was going to do the nice thing, the safe thing. But that’s not what God wanted. God had other plans. He wanted Joseph to take a chance. To take a chance that there would be talk. “Did you hear about Joseph? Mary was already pregnant when they married! It’s a terrible scandal!” There would be whispering behind his back. There would be snickering. Joseph might even lose business over it.

God is suggesting that Joseph put his reputation on the line for the sake of a child that he didn’t father. The amazing thing about Joseph is that he does it.

You see, God doesn’t think the way we do. God doesn’t worry about our social conventions, or our ideas abut how life is supposed to proceed. He rides roughshod over our plans, over the way we think things are supposed to work.

God never guarantees that what he has for us to do will be safe. In fact, Jesus often told his disciples that following him would definitely not be safe. That the world would not want to hear what they had to say. When we truly follow Christ, we will find ourselves doing things we never thought we would do, things we never thought we could do. Just as Joseph did, we can find ourselves doing things we couldn’t have even imagined doing. I can vouch for that personally.

As we celebrate this last Sunday of Advent, as we look forward toward the Nativity we will celebrate Wednesday night, are we willing to to do what Joseph did? Will we welcome this little child into our hearts, knowing what it may cost us?

Joseph did what was necessary so that the Saviour of Mankind could come into the world. Let us pray that we will have the same courage in showing that Saviour to the world.

Amen.

Genesis 18:1-10a; Psalm 15; Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42

Preached at St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church in Belton, MO, July 20, 2025

I’m sure many of you remember the movie “City Slickers,” starring Billy Crystal and the late great Jack Palance. It concerned some men from New York taking part in a cattle drive, led by Curly, an old cowhand played by Palance. Crystal’s character, Mitch, is convinced by his wife to go along hoping to cure his rat-race burnout. At one point he asks Curly about the meaning of life. Curly holds up one finger.

“Your finger?” asks Mitch.

Curly replies “One thing. Just one thing.”

Crystal’s character says “But what is the one thing?”

Curly smiles and replies, “That’s what you have to find out.”

Today’s Gospel is a familiar one. Jesus comes to Martha’s house, and Martha’s sister Mary is also there. Martha gets busy doing all the things any hostess would be doing — preparing food, making sure everyone is comfortable, etc.

Mary, on the other hand, just sits and listens to Jesus. Martha complains that Mary needs to give her a hand, and Jesus basically tells her to leave Mary alone. “There is need,” he says, “of only one thing.”

Hospitality was a major virtue in first-century Palestine. When someone came to your house, the women of the house saw to their needs —  it was a patriarchal society, after all. And we like to think we’re hospitable and polite now, but this went way beyond that. If someone stops by our house, maybe we’ll get them a cup of coffee or a glass of tea, maybe some cookies. Back then, you would be expected to go all out. You would likely get them a pan of water to wash the road dust off their feet, provide them with a full meal — as Abraham did for three strangers in the Old Testament lesson today — and likely even provide them with a place to sleep for the night.

So Martha is only doing what her upbringing and culture taught her to do. She’s not doing anything wrong there. What she does do is complain about Mary. But at no point does Jesus say, “Martha, you need to stop being hospitable.” He doesn’t tell her to sit down and listen to him. What he says is “Martha, you’re distracted and bothered by all this stuff. Mary is getting what she needs right now, and I won’t take that away from her.” Jesus chides Martha for her distraction and her complaint. Her absolute focus on her tasks is getting in the way. In effect, Jesus is saying “You’re so busy doing things that you’re forgetting why you’re doing them.”

It’s pretty easy to see how this can apply to our lives today. We all have a lot going on. Everything is clamoring for our attention. Family, work, friends, church. Everything screams at us to pay attention.

But we have an advantage that Billy Crystal’s character didn’t have. We already know what that “one thing” is. Or, if we don’t, as Christians we should already know. That one thing, for us, is Jesus. That’s where we need to keep our focus. Not on the news, not on what’s going on politically, not on our business. Our focus needs to be Jesus.

Now, all that being said, this does not mean that we lock ourselves away from everything and just concentrate on Jesus 24-7, totally ignoring everything else. That’s not how we’re meant to live. We need to listen to Christ, yes, but once we listen, once we understand what he is telling us, we have a responsibility to take that understanding out into the world, to be Christ’s voice — and hands — in the world. But we can only do that effectively by focusing on that one thing.

In a few minutes Gabriel Sparks is going to make some promises. Those promises are designed specifically for the focusing of one’s attention on that one thing –  on Jesus. He will promise to pray daily, morning and evening. He will promise to study the Scriptures. And he will promise to be held accountable by another to help him stay on track in keeping his life pointed toward that one thing.

Now, not everybody is cut out for the religious life, but you can still make room for Jesus in your everyday life. Maybe it’s just a short meditation when you get up in the morning. The thing is, we all know what that one thing is. And if we tune out all the things that are screaming at us and pay attention to that one thing, even for just a bit every day, our lives are so much better. I know that Episcopalians are not the best at praying during the week, even those who are deeply involved in the life of their parish.

We come to church on Sunday to be Mary — to listen to Jesus, to hear the Word of God, to be fed with his Body and Blood. But so often we go out into the world and for the rest of the week, we stop focusing on that one most important thing. We need to do better.

At the end of “City Slickers,” Mitch realizes that the one thing, to him, is his family. When he makes that connection, he can come home refreshed and ready to be the person he needs to be. If we can keep our lives focused on our own one thing — on Jesus — we can be the people God intended us to be. We can change the world.

Amen.