Sermons
July 13 / 2025
Proper 10: Love Recklessly
This sermon was delivered at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Williamstown, MA. It has been edited for online publication.
A recording of the original is available at this link, beginning at 17:50.
The best summer job I ever had—and one of my favorite jobs bar none—was working at a music camp in Maine. The camp was on the edge of a beautiful pond, and the cabins and practice rooms were dotted through the woods. It was an idyllic place to spend the summer. Several times each summer, we would have a massive game of Capture the Flag, in which we would take the entire camp, woods and all, and split it right down the middle. It must have been close to a mile, end to end. All campers and counselors would be divided into two teams, and we would then spend the better part of three hours trying to extract the flag from enemy territory. Besides being immensely fun, it was an incredible opportunity for counselors to blow off steam by competing against the campers who have been getting on one’s nerves all summer!
There were always two teams: the white team and the black team. Everyone had to wear the color of their team: players on the white team wore white, and players on the black team wore black. You couldn’t wear anything else, because that would create ambiguity. For example, if someone wore gray, you wouldn’t know what team they were on. You wouldn’t know whether to chase them, to run away from them, to trust them. In other words, if you didn’t know what team they were on, you wouldn’t know how to treat them.
This is just a children’s game, but it contains an important truth about human nature, one that extends to how we behave in our social lives, our political lives, and, to some extent, all our relationships. We have a tendency to split ourselves into teams and treat each other differently based on what team we think someone else is on.
This is precisely what this morning’s gospel lesson (Luke 10:25-37) is all about: the human tendency to divide ourselves into teams and to alter our behavior accordingly. This is, of course, the so-called “Parable of the Good Samaritan,” but I think it’s somewhat misnamed. Because if we just focus on the Samaritan, if we just focus on that part of the story, we’re missing the larger point. So, this morning, I want to focus on the lawyer who asks the question which kicks off this whole story.
A word of warning: this story is not very kind to lawyers; lawyers do not come off looking very good in this lesson. So, if you are a lawyer and happen to be reading this story, don’t take it personally: it’s not about you. [Except if it is, but that’s between you and God!]
The lawyer starts with this question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life? “ (Luke 10:25). And from the word go, we are given to believe that he’s not asking the question in good faith. The Gospel says, “a lawyer stood up to test Jesus” (Luke 10:25, emphasis added). So this is someone who wants to see if Jesus has the “right” answers, to see what Jesus is made of. He’s not asking from a place of sincere curiosity or a desire to grow.
And so, Jesus answers a question with a question: “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” (Luke 10:26). The lawyer—being a good lawyer—knows the answer: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind: and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). And that’s correct! That is the right answer! That is the heart of the Gospel: to love God and to love our neighbor. So Jesus says, in effect, good job, you got it: “Do this and you will live” (Luke 10:28).
The lawyer goes on: “But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (Luke 10:29). Of course, the phrase “wanting to justify himself” suggests that, once again, the lawyer is not really asking this question in good faith: he’s trying to show how smart he is, or maybe trying to trip Jesus up. Nevertheless, it’s an important question. Because if the commandment is to “love our neighbor as ourselves,” then, theoretically, it’s important to know who our neighbor is!
But it’s important to see what the lawyer is doing. If our responsibility is to love our neighbors ourselves, then the question “who is my neighbor” is really a way of asking, “Who do I have to love?”
Who are the people within the circle of the commandment?
Who are the people I have to love in order to inherit eternal life?
Who am I “on the hook” for, and who can I ignore?
In other words, what is the minimum requirement of this command to love my neighbor?
We’ve been ragging on lawyers a bit, but this is not just about lawyers: this is a very human tendency. We draw circles around who we care for, we draw circles around those to whom we think we owe our love.
So what does Jesus say? The lawyer asks, “who is my neighbor,” and Jesus does not immediately answer. Instead, he launches into this well-known story that I will recount only briefly. A man is robbed, beaten, and left bleeding on the side of the road. A priest, someone charged with serving God and God’s people, passes by, crossing to the other side of the road to avoid him, and keeps traveling. Likewise, a Levite, someone with special religious responsibilities in ancient Israel, passes by, crossing to the other side of the road. Finally, a Samaritan comes and is “moved by pity” (Luke 10:33). He bandages the man’s wounds, cleans him, brings him to an inn, pays for his care and feeding…takes care of him, in other words. And that’s where many interpretations focus: on the supposed surprise that it was a Samaritan who helped the man instead of the priest or the Levite.
Incidentally, it’s somewhat offensive to call this parable “The Good Samaritan,” as if the fact of a Samaritan being good were shocking in its own right! Imagine if there were a parable called “The Generous Episcopalian,” as if this were an inherent contradiction in terms. Samaritans, like Israelites, likely had the same mix of good, bad, and complicated that we all do. [There’s a hilarious commentary on this by a British sketch-comedy group that you can watch here.]
So I don’t want to focus on the supposed shock of the Samaritan. Far more important is Jesus’ question: “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” (Luke 10: 36). The lawyer responds—again, correctly!—“The one who showed him mercy” (Luke 10:37). And Jesus says, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).
At this point, we might reasonably ask ourselves: what is the answer to the lawyer’s question? Who is our neighbor? It doesn’t seem like Jesus has answered the question! When I was younger, this used to really bother me. Because whichever way I swung it, I couldn’t figure out Jesus’ answer. Sure, Jesus gives us a description of neighborly behavior, but he doesn’t answer the question of how to identify those to whom we owe our love.
But that is precisely the point. Instead of telling us who to love, Jesus tells us how to love. The lawyer asks “Who is my neighbor?” as a way of knowing where to draw the line of divine love, of figuring out who is in and who is out. Jesus’ response is a way of saying, that’s the wrong question! If you respond to the commandment “love God and love your neighbor” by trying to figure out a precise definition of “neighbor” so that you don’t have to love anyone beyond those who are strictly necessary, you have missed the point of what it means to love God.
Jesus is telling us to go and to love recklessly, not to figure out what team someone is on before we help them, not to figure out if they are on “our” side or “their” side before we love them. This is a “love first, ask questions later” approach to life. Jesus bids us to love the people we encounter, whatever “team” they’re on, whatever “side” they’re on.
This matters especially right now, because in this country, in the world, there are so many forces trying to divide people into “us” and “them.” It’s happening everywhere, on all sides of the political spectrum:
Immigrants are “them,” Americans are “us.”
Queer folks are “them,” straight folks are “us.”
Conservatives are “them,” liberals are “us.”
And you could do the opposite with each of these polarities. There are so many pressures in our lives that split us into opposing camps and tell us not to treat those in the opposing camp with love, dignity, or respect. We are, like the lawyer, always diving the world into “neighbor” and “not-neighbor” and varying our behavior accordingly.
But this is not the love to which Jesus calls us. In our baptismal vows, we promise to “seek and serve Christ in all persons.” All persons. Not just the ones we like, not just the ones we agree with. That’s easy. It is easy to seek and serve Christ in those whom we already love, those with whom we already agree.
We are called to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to go out and to love recklessly and with abandon.
Church is where we practice reckless love. We do not choose who sits in the pew next to us. The community is, in many ways, simply given to us. So we practice loving one another. We practice being neighbors to one another here so that we can go out and be neighbors to others in a world torn apart by mistrust and enmity.
My prayer for all of us is that we may heed Jesus’ challenging, disturbing story, a story that does not answer our questions, but rather sends us out into the world to love as God loves: recklessly and with abandon. Amen.
July 6 / 2025
Proper 9: Travel Light
This sermon was delivered at All Saints Episcopal Church of the Berkshires, North Adams, MA. It has been edited for online publication.
In this morning’s gospel lesson (Luke 10:1-11,16-20), Jesus sends seventy disciples out ahead of him to spread news of the Kingdom of God. This is a direct continuation of the story from last week, in which Jesus calls people to leave their homes and follow him. Despite–or perhaps because of–the urgency of Jesus’ call, he seems to have found at least seventy people who were willing to leave everything behind to proclaim the kingdom. So, Jesus sends them out to every town to which he himself eventually intends to go. They form a kind of “advance guard” in Jesus’ spiritual campaign towards Jerusalem.
The bulk of the lesson is Jesus’ instructions to the disciples: what to bring, where to go, how to interact with the people they encounter. While there’s a lot that we could talk about in these instructions, I want to focus on one specific section: the packing list. What does he tell them to bring, as they embark on this journey? Or, more accurately, what he does he tell them not to bring? Because it turns out Jesus wants them to travel light: “carry no purse, no bag, no sandals” (Luke 10:4). And while their lack of supplies may seem like a small detail, it has significant implications for the kind of attitude and behavior which Jesus wanted his disciples to adopt and the kind of attitude and behavior which in turn Jesus expects of us in our own lives.
Jesus’ instruction to carry no purse, no bag, no sandals is not just about accessories; if the disciples have no bag, that means they can carry no food. In Mark’s version of this story, this point is made explicitly: “He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff: no bread, no bag” (Mark 6:8). They can’t carry their own food. Additionally, they cannot carry any money. This is what is meant when Jesus says, “carry no purse.” Again, the Gospel of Mark makes explicit what the Gospel of Luke leaves implicit: [he ordered them to take]…no bread, no bag, no money in their belts” (Mark 6:8). So they have no food, no money with which to buy food, and no money with which to buy lodging. So far, the mission on which Jesus is sending them is shaping up to be a rather minimalist affair.
To top it all off, Jesus tells them to carry no sandals. And by “carry,” he really does mean do not wear sandals. The Greek word in question is βαστάζω, which can mean carry, bear, to put on one’s self. In other words, Jesus is telling them to go barefoot.
To summarize: the disciples are being sent out without any food, without any money with which to secure food or lodging, and without footwear. It seems like a recipe for a lot of hungry, cold, and unhappy disciples.
So is that it? Does Jesus just want his disciples to starve and be miserable? As it turns out, no; the point here is not to inflict needless suffering on his followers. He goes on to tell them exactly how they should secure food and lodging: “Whatever house you enter, first say ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid” (Luke 10:6-7).
Here we have the answer for how Jesus expects his followers to meet their bodily needs: they shall depend on the generosity and hospitality of the community to whom they minister. Eat and drink whatever they provide. Rely upon the welcome of others.
Here in the United States, we tend to celebrate independence and self-reliance. Our national mythology is full of people who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, who became successful through hard work and ingenuity. American culture still values these things today: we celebrate the person who got ahead on their own, who made something of themselves without help or handouts. It is the rugged individualism of the cowboy, or the explorer. We see it as a mark of weakness to have to rely on someone else, whether it’s receiving money, or a meal, or a place to stay.
But this is not the attitude that Jesus wants to instill in his disciples. If Jesus were intent on lifting up self-reliance and independence, he would tell his disciples to bring enough food for a week, a sword to protect themselves, and two pairs of sandals in case the first one wears out. He would tell them to bring their own tent so that they didn’t have to rely on others for shelter, and enough money to buy their way out of any tricky situation.
By sending them out so unequipped, Jesus guides his disciples into a posture of radical dependence: they are dependent upon the communities they work in and the people to whom they minister. And this posture is revelatory of our own, dependent nature as God’s creatures. We like to pretend it isn’t true, we like to pretend that we can be self-determined, completely independent beings, but the truth is that everything we have, and everything we are, depends on the web of being all around us, and ultimately on God. Everything we eat, from the tomato we grow in our own garden to the processed snack food we get in the grocery store, comes from the earth, and is the miraculous result of a complex biological process billions of years in the making. We depend for our shelter upon the trees that gave their wood, the materials pulled or manufactured from the world, and upon the labor of others. Our lives themselves, our very existence, is a gift that we could never earn: we exist only because our parents existed, and they exist only because their parents existed. We make it from childhood to adulthood only because countless hands have fed us, sheltered us, and protected us. And all of this, all of creation, points back to the mystery at the heart of existence, the Ground of all Being which we, in our limited and feeble language, call God. We are embedded in a web of interdependence, a collective, shared existence in which all of our lives are tied together.
In stripping his disciples of their supplies, of the usual goods they would carry in order to feel secure and self-sufficient, Jesus reminds them and us of this ultimate dependency. To follow Jesus is to admit that we are not self-sufficient. We are not independent. Rather, we depend upon the ultimate sufficiency of God, made known to us through the generosity of the others and the generosity of the earth.
Last week, I talked about the kingdom of God as a reality in which we are invited to participate. This morning’s Gospel returns to that theme: “Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near you’” (Luke 10:8-9). The kingdom of God comes near when we welcome the stranger, and when we are welcomed by strangers. The kingdom of God comes near when we speak peace to one another and break bread together. The kingdom comes near not when we try to escape our fundamental dependence upon one another and upon God, but when we embrace it.
The question of embracing our dependence—upon God and one another—is a deeply practical question that has implications for how we live our lives every day. Do we welcome strangers, knowing the ways that we too have depended upon the welcome of others? Do we share our resources, knowing that everything we have is ultimately a gift from God? Do we build a society in which we take care of one another, acknowledging the ways that our lives are tied up together? The alternative is to hoard resources, to be driven by fear and anxiety, to put up artificial walls between ourselves and others, which are, in the end, walls between us and God.
Church is a place where we practice and embody this kind of divine interdependence. Because no one can be the church on their own; we need one another in order to become the people of God. The Eucharist, our central act of worship, is a shared meal. Here at church, we give and receive, enacting the kind of interdependent community that we wish to see in the world.
As we go from this place today, as we leave church and go out into the world, spreading news of the kingdom, what do we carry? Are we burdened with the possessions, the practices, the habits that we think will keep us secure and safe? What can we let go of? Where can we turn over our lives more fully to God? Jesus invites us to travel light, acknowledging our dependence upon God and one another. Amen.
June 29 / 2025
Proper 8: The Urgency of the Kingdom
This sermon was delivered at All Saints Episcopal Church of the Berkshires, North Adams, MA. It has been edited for online publication.
A recording of the original sermon can be found at this link, starting at minute 24.
As I was preparing for this sermon, I do what I often do during the sermon-writing process, which is to talk things through with my partner. And when I read her this morning’s Gospel (Luke 9:51-62), her immediate reaction was, “Oh, I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.” She was particularly concerned about the final two things that Jesus says to a pair of would-be followers:
“Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60),
and…
“No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).
My wife’s reaction is very understandable; Jesus’ reaction does seem quite harsh! So let’s dive in.
Jesus says things as he and his disciples are traveling through Samaria to Jerusalem. The encounter starts when Jesus says to a man, “Follow me,” and the man replies, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father” (Luke 9:59). This is a very reasonable request: this man’s father has presumably just passed away, and he wants to take the time to go and lay his father to rest. He is being a good son. He is fulfilling his obligation to his family. He is, in fact, obeying one of the Ten Commandments, which is to honor your parents (Exodus 20:12). What’s more, he very clearly implies that, once his father is buried, he will come and follow Jesus. “Lord, first let me go and bury my father,” he says. He even calls Jesus “Lord,” a sign that, in some way, he already recognizes and honors Jesus and wants to follow him. This man is not being unreasonable; he is just trying to be a good son.
But Jesus’ response is quite clear: “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.” In other words, don’t go bury your father. Come now. Follow me now. Proclaim the Kingdom of God now. That is a harsh thing to say to someone whose parent has just died. Jesus is telling this man to abandon his duty, to leave the burial of his father to someone else, and go proclaim the kingdom of God. It is a difficult thing to hear.
And the next bit of the lesson is just as uncompromising. In response to Jesus’ call, “Follow me,” another person responds, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me say farewell to those at my home” (Luke 9:61). Once again, this is a very reasonable request. This person is in no way trying to reject the call: he wants to follow Jesus, and he seems to have every intention of following Jesus, but he wants to say goodbye to his friends and family first. If I were in his shoes, I would want to do the exact same thing. And if this person were my son, or my friend, or my partner, I would definitely want them to come and say goodbye before running off with a wandering prophet! I would probably have some questions about it. It is very reasonable and understandable that this person wants to go say goodbye to their friends and family.
But Jesus’ response is just as emphatic, and just as harsh, as the previous one: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Apparently, this person’s desire to say goodbye to their family constitutes a crisis of faith that renders them unfit for the kingdom of God. And this sets the bar for discipleship quite high; are we really not allowed to say goodbye to those in our household? Are we really not allowed to bury our parents? So my wife’s reaction of, “Oh I don’t like that at all” is very understandable. This is a hard lesson.
So what do we do with this? What do with this story where Jesus seems to set an impossibly high bar for discipleship, one that potentially means abandoning our commitments to friends, families, and community?
I want to offer two thoughts for making sense of this demanding story. The first is that this is primarily a story is about urgency, and the urgency of following Jesus’ call right here, right now, regardless of how inconvenient or difficult it may be. And the second is that this story only makes sense if we are willing to grapple with what following Jesus actually means.
The first point. Urgency. In both of these encounters, someone who genuinely wants to follow Jesus seeks to delay their commitment, to delay the moment of setting out to follow him, for very understandable reasons. And in both, Jesus responds by saying now, “No, I want you to follow me now. This, right here, is the most important thing you can do.” And the point isn’t that somehow Jesus doesn’t think we should honor our parents, or doesn’t think that we should honor our household and our communities. In fact, Jesus knows how important these things are. In the Gospel of Mark, for example, a man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus replies, in part, by listing some of the Ten Commandments, including, “honor your father and mother” (Mark 10:19). So Jesus gets that this is important. Jesus understands that honoring your parents matters, and he understands that burying one’s father would be a way of obeying this commandment.
Likewise, Jesus understands the importance of community, of family, and of taking care of one another. During the passion narrative in the Gospel of John, there is a moment when Jesus is looking down from the cross at a small group of his followers: “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home” (John 19:26-27). Jesus gives his disciple and his mother to one another, telling them to take care of each other, to be family to each other once Jesus is gone. In one of his last acts before dying, Jesus affirms the importance of community and family and reminds us that family is not just the people to whom we are biologically related.
So when Jesus tells one person to leave their father unburied, and another to leave without saying goodbye, it’s not because Jesus thinks these things don’t matter; on the contrary, these things matter very much, and Jesus has affirmed that they matter. Rather, the fact that Jesus tells these people to set aside even such important things as burying one’s father and bidding to farewell to one’s household drives home the urgency of Jesus’ call. Jesus wants us to follow him now. Not later, not when it’s convenient, not when it’s easy, but now.
There will always be reasons not to follow. There will always be reasons to delay. There will always be a reason why it is neither easy nor convenient to follow Jesus. But this is the calling that takes priority over everything else in our life. It is an urgent, present call. Come now. Follow me now.
So this story is about the urgency of Jesus’ call. That’s the first point. And the second point is that we need to grapple with what it means to follow Jesus. Because it’s all well and good to talk about following Jesus, and it’s all well and good to say that the call to follow is urgent, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot if we don’t have some idea of what following Jesus means. There is an unfortunate tendency in certain circles of Christianity to act as if the most important thing about being Christian is identifying as Christian. In this approach, which depends on an outsized-and arguably distorted-emphasis on the doctrine of sola fide (or salvation by faith alone), it doesn’t particularly matter how you act or what you do, as long as you claim to have faith in Jesus. The result is that Christianity becomes a club in which the most important thing you can do is be part of the club, and the main activity of the club is simply to get new members!
But Jesus did not come to establish a club. Jesus did not come to establish a new religion, group, or belief system. Rather, Jesus came to usher in a new way of being. He came to show us the way of life and free us from death. He cam that we may be transformed and renewed in the imago of God. In the words of Athanasius, “God became man so that man could become God.”
One of the ways that Jesus talks about this new way of being is the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is not some distant, far off land; it is not some future reality, reserved for the hereafter; elsewhere in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says, “The Kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17:21). The word “among” could also be translated “within;” “the kingdom of God is within you.” It is a new reality, a new way of being that is revealed by Jesus’ life and ministry and grounded in our deepest identity as people made in God’s image. When we are called to follow Jesus, we are called to participate in this kingdom. We are called to participate in the new life that Jesus makes possible.
The kingdom into which we are invited is directly at odds with the ways of the world. The world tells us to value wealth and excess, but in the kingdom, the poor are blessed; the world tells us that the more we own, the more we buy, the happier we’ll be, but in the kingdom, wealth is not stored up where thieves can break in or rust can corrupt; the world tells us that we can only be safe through violence and military might, but in the kingdom we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us; in the kingdom of God, the blind can see, the lame can walk, and the prodigal son returns; in the kingdom of God, there is a table where sinners and tax collectors break bread together, and grace abounds. The way of being into which Jesus invites us a radical break from business as usual, a radical break from the ways of the world.
When Jesus calls us to follow him, this is what he is calling us to. He is calling us to a new way of life, a new way of being that is grounded in God’s abundant love for all of creation. And now we can see exactly why this call is so urgent. Because the time to participate in the kingdom is always now. It is always the most important thing we can do. This is only too evident as we look at the world around us: conflict rages in the Middle East, war continues unabated in Russia and Ukraine, to say nothing of the countless places around the world where there is strife and violence and instability. Here in the United States, we seem more divided than ever, unable to find common ground or see the humanity in those with whom we disagree.
The world’s way of doing things is not working.
And so the call to follow Jesus is as urgent now as it ever has been. Not only for our own sake, but for the sake of the world and for the sake of all Creation. Following Jesus is not convenient. Following Jesus is not easy. Because it goes against the ways of the world, it goes against business as usual. We come to church to remind ourselves of the life into which we are called. We come to church to renew our identity as children of God, and commit again to following Jesus’ path of peace, justice, and reconciliation. As we encounter Jesus in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup, as we encounter the kingdom of God among us and within us, may we hear the urgent call to a new way of being, and may we have the courage and faith to follow. Amen.
June 15 / 2025
The Relatedness of God
The following sermon was delivered at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Trinity Sunday, which also happened to be Father’s Day. It was my last day serving as Director of Christian Education & Formation at St. Paul’s.
Today, as you all know, is Father’s Day. It is a day when we celebrate fathers and father figures in our lives. So to all of the fathers, and father-figures worshiping with us today: thank you. Thank you for all that you do to guide, guard, and love the children and people in your care. Happy Father’s Day.
But like all holidays, it has the potential to be emotionally complicated. After all, we do not all have universally easy and positive relationships with our fathers. I should acknowledge here at the outset that my own father is worshiping with us today, and please rest assured that this sermon is not about him. So Dad, you can relax. Nevertheless, the potential for complication remains. How do we celebrate Father’s Day if we do not have a good relationship with our fathers? What if our fathers have not been sources of protection and love, but rather harm, shame, and judgment? What if our fathers abandoned us? What if our father was abusive? In such cases, this day has the potential to not be a day of simple celebration, but rather one fraught with complicated and challenging emotions.
The complicated feelings that we may have about fathers, or fatherhood in general, are deeply relevant for our relationship with God, and for the language that we use about God. Because today is not only Father’s Day; it is, by a fun coincidence, also Trinity Sunday, when we celebrate the Christian doctrine that God is three in one. And of course, the three persons of the Trinity have traditionally been represented as Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. The Father is the first person of the Trinity, the Creator, the originator, the divine source of all that is: it is by the Father that the Son is begotten, and from the Father that the Holy Spirit proceeds.
And this language, of God as Father, is not always an easy pill to swallow, for the same reasons that Father’s Day may not always be an easy, fraughtless occasion. If we grew up with a father who was neglectful, or cruel, or abusive, what does that mean for our relationship with God the Father? If we call God “Father,” does that mean we should expect from God the same behavior that we received from our human fathers?
The use of the word “Father” to refer to the first person of the Trinity is especially fraught when we consider the ways that gendered language has been used to oppress, marginalize, and exclude. It is used to justify patriarchal hierarchies and male domination, in which the voices of women are silenced, ignored, or pushed to the side. If God is male, then men must be closer to God than women. If God is a Father, then surely fathers deserve a kind of divinely-ordained authority over their families. And something similar can be said about the maleness of Jesus: if the Son, the very Word and image of God, is male, then clearly men are closer to the image of God than women. This kind of logic has been used as a tool of oppression for centuries, to prohibit women’s ordination, or bar women from leadership roles, or from participation in the liturgy.
Certain views of God as Father perpetuate not only sexism, but all kinds of domination and coercion. Much of Christian theology developed in social and political contexts where the absolute power of a monarch was not only taken for granted, but was assumed to have divine blessing. Going back to Constantine, who is still venerated as a saint by Eastern Orthodox churches, stretching through the papacy, all the way to the divine right of kings in Europe, there is a long tradition in Christianity of modeling our leaders after an all-powerful, monarchical God. While many Protestant churches rebelled against this kind of hierarchy, they did not escape it: there are many Protestant and evangelical churches today where the leadership of a charismatic preacher amounts to a kind of absolute rule, free from scrutiny or accountability.
Of course, patriarchy, oppression, and domination are not the sole purview of Christianity. We find these same patterns replicated in other cultures and traditions, as well as in broader national and global events. Consider the global rise of authoritarianism and the decline of democracy: we are seeing a resurgence of leaders who seek to push through their agendas using as much force as necessary: they belittle their opponents and muzzle critics, seeking to dismantle any system of checks and balances that might impede the execution of their will. Just yesterday, there were hundreds of protests across the country—called No Kings protests—speaking out against the perceived overreach of the executive office and the erosion of civil liberties.
So these problems are not just the problems of Christianity. But in such a climate, we have to be realistic about how Christian theology and language feed into patterns of domination and coercion. After all, the violence of the Crusades was in large part possible because the church was already used to seeing God as a king who followed medieval rules of honor and justice. The language we use to describe God matters. How we talk about God matters. Who we say God is matters.
So with all that in mind, what do we do with the Trinity? How do we make sense of this notoriously confusing doctrine that seems to depict God in masculine terms, and which has the potential to justify systems of oppression and control? To say nothing of the way that it defies logic: how can God be three and one? How can we worship God in three persons and still claim to be monotheists? With all these questions in mind, it can be tempting to put the Trinity to one side, to write it off as too complicated, too problematic, too risky to engage with.
But I want to suggest that the Trinity, far from being a justification for hierarchy and domination, actually contains the seeds of a radical revolution in who we are and how we relate to one another. Properly understood, the Trinity reorients us towards relationships of reciprocity and mutual self-understanding.
In order to get there, I want to walk you through the theological controversies that rocked the early church, and out of which the doctrine of the Trinity emerged. If recounting the ins and outs of 3rd and 4th century theological debate doesn’t sound thrilling to you, please just bear with me: I promise it will be worth it.
In the first few hundred years of the Church, Christians had a wide range of beliefs about who Jesus was, who the Holy Spirit was, and how the related to God. One of the most prominent theories was Arianism, so-called because it was championed by a priest named Arius. For Arius, the most important quality of God was God’s transcendence: God was so sacred, so holy, that God was completely above and beyond anything of this world. There was no sense of immanence, of God with us. As a result, Jesus, who ate, drank, and slept, who lived and died a human life, could in no sense be God. Rather, Arianism saw Jesus as a creature—albeit a very important creature–of God, who served as an intermediary between humanity and the divine. In this worldview, God is removed, distant, and fundamentally non-relational, relating to creation only through the intermediary of Christ.
But the early church rejected this view. They rejected it because they believed that, in some mysterious, miraculous way, God was fully present in the person of Jesus. This was not a theoretical, metaphysical argument, but a conviction borne out of deep personal experience. For Jesus’ earliest followers, Jesus was not just a prophet, and not just an intermediary: he was Emmanuel, God with us. And those who encountered Jesus, through prayer, through his teachings, through the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup, felt that they were encountering God. Likewise, God is fully present with us through the Holy Spirit, sent to guide and inspire us. And so the whole of Trinitarian theology is born out of this conviction that God is fully present in, with, and for humanity. This is not a God who is removed, distant, sitting above us in some heavenly realm; rather, this is a fundamentally relational God, who is present right here, right now, in us, for us, and with us.
Furthermore, the doctrine of the Trinity asserts that God’s innermost nature, and therefore the founding principle of all Creation, is relatedness. The persons of Trinity are who are they are precisely because of their relationship to one another: the nature of God the Father is to be the one who begets the Son, and from whom the Spirit Proceeds; the nature of God the Son is to be eternally begotten of the Father; the nature of the Holy Spirit is to proceed from God. Each person of God is known not through some independent, autonomous essence that then interacts with another independent essence; rather, they are defined by their relationships. Each person of the Trinity exists in a reciprocal relationship that gives each one their own proper identity. And so, the Triune God is a God of relationship, a God of interconnectedness, a God who takes God’s own identity from mutuality and reciprocity, not domination and coercion.
This is the true meaning of the Trinity. It is not about gendered roles of Father or Son. If that language doesn’t work for you, use other language! God can be Mother, Christ can be daughter. The Holy Spirit can be “she.” All of our language is an imperfect, human attempt to capture the fundamentally relational nature of God. We would also do well not to get too caught up in trying to “solve” the Trinity, trying to logic our way to how three can be one and one be three. The Trinity is not a math problem; it is a relationship of divine reciprocity, a symbol of God’s relational being.
If we are made in the image of God, then we too are fundamentally relational. We are not autonomous, separate individuals who bump into one another like so many marbles. Rather, we find our truest selves in relationship with one another. We are who we are because of the relationships we form and the relationships that form us. The Trinity, then, is the key to understanding our own humanity as bound up in the humanity of others, our own being tied up with the rest of creation in a relationship of divinely rooted reciprocity.
I am keenly aware of this truth, of God’s relational nature, and of humanity’s relational nature, today. Because today is my final day at St. Paul’s. After over two years of working together, worshipping together, walking life’s paths together, I am, for now, saying goodbye. So perhaps its inevitable that I am thinking today about relationships, and about the ways that we are all bound together. I am who I am because of you, because of St. Paul’s. I have come to know myself more fully in relationship to you. And, in some small way, I hope the reverse is true is well: that the relationships we have formed have in turn formed you. And we will always carry that with us, wherever we go.
The world around us is full of brokenness: displacement and famine in Gaza, war in Ukraine, war between Israel and Iran, politically motivated violence here in the United States, and everywhere, it seems, division, strife, and the instinct to turn on one another, to label others “the enemy,” to divide into “us” and “them.” But the Triune God invites us into a new way of being. The Triune God invites us to remember that we are all interconnected, that we are all bound up together. We all exist in sacred relationship with one another, defined by our interactions with one another. This is the innermost heart of God, the deepest structure of our reality. And sometimes it seems to me that every problem the world faces is because we forget this, because we have believed the lie that our lives are not bound together, that our innermost self is not to be found in the innermost selves of others. We have been tricked into thinking that it does not matter how we treat others, how we treat the animals, and the trees, and the whole of Creation. We have been convinced that God is not relational, that God is not with us, or that God is not in the stranger.
So, it matters that we remember this. It matters that we ground ourselves in the truth of a relational, Triune God. Because no one can be the church on their own. We become the church together. We become who we are in relationship to one another. Grounded in divine reciprocity, we are called not to dominance and coercion, but to relationship, to reciprocity. And we are called to live out this truth in the world. So my prayer for you, my prayer as we say bid farewell for now, is that you may continue to discover yourselves in one another; that you may continue to find your truest selves in relationship; that you may honor God in others as you honor God in yourself; and that, in doing so, you may be a light and inspiration for a world that so desperately needs it. I ask all of this in the name of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who is Mother, Daughter, and Holy Ghost, who is Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
April 13 / 2025
Palm Sunday: Where do we stand?
This sermon was delivered at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wallingford, CT on Palm Sunday, during a “Palms-to-Passion” service that takes the congregation from Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem to his betrayal and death.
The story that we tell this morning is not a happy one. It is a story of betrayal, of abandonment. It is the story of an unjust trial, and an unjust execution. The story that begins with palms, with a triumphant entry and cries of Hosanna, ends with the Cross and the Tomb, and the slow, painful death of an innocent man. And we spend a lot of time on this story. Not only today, with the extended reading of the passion, but throughout this whole week. We will be back on Thursday, to commemorate Jesus’ last meal with his friends, a meal that ends with his betrayal at the hands of Judas, and then on Friday, to remember his crucifixion and death.
Of course, we know that the story doesn’t really end there. We know that the Tomb will be empty on Sunday, that God’s love is stronger than death. So if we know that, if we know that this story leads, at last, to the Resurrection, why do we spend so much time on the betrayal, pain, and death that precede it? Why don’t we skip from the triumph of Palm Sunday to the mystery of Easter, and spare ourselves the darkness of everything in-between?
But we need Holy Week. We need to recount the betrayal, and the pain, and the abandonment, and the death. We need to do so for two reasons. First, because this story forces us to confront the reality of sin and evil. It forces us to face humanity’s capacity for apathy, cowardice, and cruelty. From Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, to the abandonment of the disciples, to a trial that makes a mockery of justice, this story showcases humanity at its worst. And, of course, there is the cross itself. The cross is such a pervasive symbol that Christians can easily forget what it really is: it is an instrument of torture and death. It is an execution method specifically designed to prolong suffering in as public and shameful a way as possible. If you imagine, for a moment, that instead of a cross at the front of the sanctuary, we had the image of an electric chair, or a noose, you will begin to reclaim some of the cruelty and horror of the cross.
The story of Holy Week forces us to confront the reality of sin and evil. Because the crucifixion is not just a one-time, historical event that happened long ago; it is, rather, an ever-present theological reality. The apathy, fear, and hatred that killed Jesus two-thousand years ago still run rampant in the world, and if we think the Crucifixion has nothing to do with us, or we blame it only on the sins of others long gone, we miss the point entirely. The crucifixion is still happening. Christ is crucified every time gun violence claims another life. Christ is crucified every time our economic system dooms someone to a life of despair and hopelessness. Christ is crucified every time someone dies an unnecessary death because our country is too obsessed with wealth and profit to provide our people with healthcare. Christ is crucified every time a Palestinian child is killed by American weapons. The Story of the Crucifixion rises from the pages of Scripture and comes alive in the world around us. As we tell this story again, as we once again prepare to walk the lonely path to Golgotha, we are challenged to see God’s suffering in the world around us. We are the crowd that betrayed Jesus. We are the Empire that condemned a Palestinian Jew to die on a Cross. Through this story, through that cross, we are confronted with sin and evil not as abstract, intellectual ideas, but as reality, as all-too-real features of our daily existence.
Through this story, by walking with Jesus through the darkness of the passion, we also come to a deeper awareness of God’s love. Much like “sin,” or “evil,” the idea of “love” can quickly recede into an abstraction. Of course we know God loves us, and of course we know we should love one another as Christ loved us. But what does that really mean? It means the Cross. To show God’s love, Jesus goes to the darkest, most broken places of humanity. He endures the worst of what humans do to one another. It is the culmination of a ministry spent breaking down walls. Jesus broke bread with sinners, he shared water with Samaritans, he touched the sick and the unclean. He challenged the established hierarchies, the comfortable alliance between the religious authorities and the Roman empire. He overturned tables and drove money-changers out of the temple. In short, Jesus embodied a radical, challenging, and profoundly dangerous love that crossed boundaries, toppled societal expectations, and upset everyone in power. And this led him to the Cross. This is the love to which we are called. This is what it means to, in Paul’s words, “have the same mind in us that was in Christ.” We are called to embody this same love, no matter where it leads, no matter the cost. If we are always comfortable, if we are always safe, if everything we say and do is popular, and we have made no enemies, we are not actually embodying the love of God.
It is easy to stand with Christ on Palm Sunday. It is easy to stand with Christ when palms are waving, Hosannas are ringing, when doing the right thing is easy. But it is much harder to stand with Christ when the soldiers come. It is hard to stand with Christ in the face of the Cross. This is the question we must ask ourselves today. It is the question we must ask ourselves this whole week. Where do we stand? Where do we stand when Christ is crucified, over and over again? Where do we stand when refugees and immigrants are told, “you are not welcome?” Where do we stand when students are abducted off the street in broad daylight and denied any semblance of due process? Where do we stand when LGBTQ folks are vilified, rejected, and told that who they are is wrong? Where do we stand when politicians on both sides of the aisle care more about re-election than they do about helping the countless people laboring under the weight of oppressive poverty? Where do we stand when our tax dollars fund war and displacement?
Where do we stand?
July 14 / 2024
Proper 10: Speaking Truth, Hearing Truth
This sermon was delivered at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Williamstown, MA. It has been edited for online publication.
In this morning’s reading from Amos, the prophet gives an unfavorable prediction regarding the fate of Israel under King Jeroboam: “Jeroboam,” he says, “shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile, away from his land” (Amos, 7:11). Amaziah, one of the king’s priests, responds in the calm, thoughtful, and measured way that we might expect from a public official: he calls Amos a traitor to Israel, then tells him to leave the country and never prophesy there ever again. “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah,” he says, “earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom” (Amos 7:12–13).
It will be no surprise to even the casual reader of Scripture that Amaziah is, well, in the wrong in this situation: in the Old Testament, it is generally not a good idea to ignore prophets. Amaziah’s mistake is a theological one. “Never again prophesy at Bethel, he says, “for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.” But it’s not the king’s sanctuary, and the temple does not belong to the kingdom; it is God’s sanctuary, and it is God’s temple.
It’s right in the name: Bethel, or Beth-El (בֵּית אֵל) literally means “House of God” in Hebrew. So when Amaziah says “it is the king’s sanctuary,” he is fundamentally missing the point. He misunderstands to whom the temple belongs, and towards whom all worship within the temple is directed. Quite simply, he is committing the sin of idolatry, worshipping something other than God. In failing to grasp whose temple it really is, he gives ultimate importance to his political leader, ascribing to his king the honor and glory due to God alone. And in rejecting the words of Amos, he shows He cares more about the king than he does about the God, and that he will ignore the truth in order to preserve his king’s ego. What matters most for Amaziah, it seems, is keeping the king happy.
Amos, of course, doesn’t like this. In the verses to follow, Amos doubles down on his dire prophecy, predicting King Jeroboam’s downfall and Israel’s exile in even harsher, more personal terms (Amos 7:17). God, it seems, does not like being replaced by kings.
Then, in this morning’s Gospel lesson, we hear another story of how someone in power responds to being told something they don’t want to hear. John the Baptist has been saying that Herod’s marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, is unlawful (Mark 6:18–19). Herodias, understandably, does not like this, so she convinces her husband to throw him in jail. She really wants John dead, but Herod is afraid of him, and likes listening to him, and is therefore unwilling to have him killed.
So Herodias waits until Herod makes an extravagant promise to their daughter at his own birthday party: “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom” (Mark 6:23). When she dutifully runs to her mother to ask what she should request, Herodias answers, “The head of John the baptizer” (Mark 6:24). Interestingly, it is the daughter herself who adds the gruesome detail that the head must be delivered on a plate. Because Herod had promised, and especially because he had promised publicly, he feels he has no choice but to comply.
We can imagine why Herodias wanted John out of the picture: presumably, being married to the King came with a significant amount of status, prestige, and influence. And understandably, Herodias didn’t want to lose this things. I imagine John’s accusation had some truth to it, or she wouldn’t have reacted so strongly: he was threatening her status, and she valued her status over the truth.
Both of these stories invite us to ask ourselves how we respond when someone tells us something we would rather not hear. Do we respond in anger? Like Amaziah, do we tell them to be quiet and send them away? Do we, like Herodias, attempt to silence the voices speaking an inconvenient truth? How do we react when we are told something we do not want to hear?
These stories also provide us with clear examples of what it means to speak truth to power, to answer God’s call to prophetic truth-telling. Surely Amos knows that Jeroboam won’t like what he’s prophesying. Surely John knows that criticizing the King and his wife will get him into trouble. But they do it anyways. Because being a prophet is not about pleasing people, or telling them what they want to hear: it is about speaking the truth. Even when it is unpopular, even when there are consequences. And this kind of truth-telling, Amos tells us, is not just the purview of prophets: “I am no prophet,” he says, “nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from from following the flock and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, Prophesy to my people Israel’” (Amos 7:14–15). Now, I think Amos is being a little coy here; he says, “I am no prophet,” then immediately recounts that God told him to prophesy to Israel. And what is a prophet but one who prophesies? There is a little bit of false humility at work. But his point is that anyone, even a herdsman, can be called upon to speak truth to power. It is not the responsibility of a special few.
We are all potential prophets, because God speaks to all of us. God speaks to us through our lives, through the people around us, through the non-human world. We are called to listen to God’s still, small voice, to discern the truth whispering beneath all the noise and the chaos. And we are called to share that truth with the world: to speak truth boldly and uncompromisingly, no matter the consequences.
The question of speaking hard truths, and of accepting hard truths from others, is an urgent one. The stakes of doing so, or not doing so, are very real. We live in a country where “truth” is constantly contested. We seem increasingly incapable of agreeing even on the facts of life, let alone what to do about them. There are facts, and there are alternative facts; there is news, and there is fake news; there is information, and there is disinformation. And as Artificial Intelligence gets better and better at creating photorealistic images and mimicking people’s voices, the line between truth and lies will only become harder to discern. In the wake of the assassination attempt on the former president, wild theories and accusations are already springing up on both sides of the political spectrum.
In such an environment, we must have a prophetic commitment to the truth. Like Amos, we must not let the whims or delusions of the powerful silence us, or sway us from what we know to be true, from what the Holy Spirit has whispered to us in the depths of our hearts. Our country and our world need people who are unafraid to speak the truth, regardless of the consequences.
At the same time, we must listen. We must listen for God speaking uncomfortable truths in the voices of others, even in the voices of those with whom we disagree. We must watch for the prophets among the herdsmen. Scripture warns us not to be like Amaziah or Herodias, not to send away or ignore the bearers of bad news or challenging truths.
I want to leave you with two questions. First: where in your life are you called to be prophetic? Where are you called to speak truth with courage and conviction? That’s the first question: where are you called to be prophetic?
And the second question: where are you called to listen to the prophets around you? Who is speaking the truths that you don’t want to hear, and what idols are stopping you from listening to them? Where are you called to listen to the prophets around you?
The answers to these questions may be challenging, or difficult, or uncomfortable. If so, remember that it is God’s love that carries us forward in this work, that gives us strength and courage, that sets truth unshakably within us.
We are in difficult days.
We have difficult days ahead of us.
So may this love remain with us today, tomorrow, and in all the days to come, as we carry out God’s prophetic work in the Church and in the world. Amen.