Sacrifice as Spiritual Practice

 

February 23, 2025 – The 7th Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C

Genesis 45:3-11, 15; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50; Luke 6:27-38

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video can be seen here.

Last Sunday, we heard Jesus say some amazing things: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you…for surely your reward is great in heaven.” Those hopeful words convey Jesus’ vision for God’s reign. They give us a glimpse of what the world looks like when all of God’s promises have been fulfilled.

But Jesus wasn’t finished. With that hopeful vision came a terrifying reality: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.” With those words, Jesus reminds us that God’s reign is not only consequential for those who are poor and suffering. It also means transformation for those who are rich and comfortable. 

How are we supposed to get from here to there? How will we find the strength and courage and grace to let go of our allegiance to the powers of this world and embrace fully the kingdom of God? 

Today, in the verses that come immediately after those blessings and woes, we hear the answer. In this gospel lesson, Jesus invites us into that reality. Having described God’s reign and effectively announced its arrival, Jesus now helps us know how we are to live as citizens of that reign. And, for those of us who sometimes feel so very far away from God’s vision for our lives, hearing Jesus lay it all out for us is most definitely good news. 

Here's what it means for us to accept Jesus’ invitation to live in the kingdom of God: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you.” Faced with such lofty and challenging ideals, we may prefer to rest in the comfort of our abstractions, content to fulfill Jesus’ commands with nothing more than an artificial emotional gesture, but Jesus will not let us off the hook so easily. 

“If anyone strikes you on the cheek,” he continues, “offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.” This is not the language of intent or hypothetical encounter. Jesus means these words. He means for us to bear the consequences of our participation in the reign of God with our bodies and our wallets, with our dignity and our security. For what does it mean to dwell secure under the shadow of God’s wings without giving up our own earthly security for the sake of another?

So far, it seems as if Jesus hasn’t made this any easier. He’s told us what it means to belong to God and God’s reign, but we still need him to show us how. He hasn’t given us the answer we’re looking for—the simple and sustainable technique that will make all of this possible. But the answer we’re looking for doesn’t come from somewhere else. It’s already right here in front of us. It comes simply by accepting the invitation to follow Jesus into this other-worldly way of being not as a means by which we must save the world but as the path that leads to our own salvation. Here’s what I mean by that.

We tend to hear Jesus’ radical instructions as if God is telling us to do these things only for the sake of others. To the one who would take our coat, we offer our shirt as well so that they might be warm. To those who would beg or borrow from us, we give what they seek without asking anything in return so that their needs might be satisfied. It is good and right for us to respond to the needs of others. But it is our own need for salvation that we seek when we follow in the footsteps of Jesus. 

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” Jesus asks. “For even sinners love those who love them.” Jesus uses the accounting term “credit” to show us that it is we who will benefit from these self-sacrificial acts. “Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return,” Jesus tells us. “Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High.” It is in practicing this Christ-like generosity, even by emptying ourselves for the sake of others, that we discover our true identity as children of God. 

St. Basil the Great wrote, “Someone who takes a man who is clothed and renders him naked would be termed a robber; but when someone fails to clothe the naked, while he is able to do this, is such a man deserving of any other appellation? The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat, which you guard in your locked storage-chests, belongs to the naked; the footwear mouldering in your closet belongs to those without shoes. The silver that you keep hidden in a safe place belongs to the one in need.” [1] We give and give and give again not simply to meet the needs of others but to meet our own need to discover our place in the reign of God.

When we pretend that these sacrificial gestures do not benefit us as well, we cut ourselves off from the body of Christ. When we act as if our duty to care for others is not also a duty to ourselves, we make the way of Jesus a road too steep for any of us to climb. That does not mean that our radical generosity will fail to have a lasting effect on others. As St. Paul wrote in his Letter to the Romans, when we feed our hungry enemies and give those who thirst something to drink, we effectively “heap burning coals on their heads,” but isn’t that generosity more sustainable when we do it because it is as good for us as it is for them (Romans 12:20)?

Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the hungry. Blessed are those who weep. Blessed are those who suffer. Jesus announces that blessedness. He declares to us and, thus, gives to us the grace of God’s love which is manifest not in our accomplishments but in our shortcomings. That emptiness is where true blessedness is to be found. That is what it means to belong to God—to be a part of God’s reign. And that truth only becomes clear to us when we walk the way of the cross—when we follow in the footsteps of Jesus. 

Jesus has told us who we are. He has shown us what it means to belong to God’s reign—what it means to be a child of the Most High. We do not empty ourselves in order to become worthy of God’s kingdom, for that would be to rob the cross of its power and make it an idol of human greed. No, we empty ourselves in order to discover our true selves—in order to learn what it means to be a people who, by the grace of God, belong not to this world but to the world to come. We practice these impossible things because they teach us who God has already made us to be.

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1. From St. Basil the Great, Homilia in illud dictum evangelii secundum Lucam: «Destruam horrea mea, et majora ædificabo:» itemque de avaritia, §7, https://bekkos.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/st-basil-on-stealing-from-the-poor/.

A Most Necessary Conversion

 

January 26, 2025 – Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle (transferred)

Acts 26:9-21; Galatians 1:11-24; Matthew 10:16-22

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

Unity…is the threshold requirement for people to live together in a free society; it is the solid rock, as Jesus said…upon which to build a nation. It is not conformity. It is not a victory of one over another. It is not weary politeness nor passivity born of exhaustion. Unity is not partisan. Rather, unity is a way of being with one another that encompasses and respects differences, that teaches us to hold multiple perspectives and life experiences as valid and worthy of respect; that enables us, in our communities and in the halls of power, to genuinely care for one another even when we disagree. (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/24/bishop-mariann-edgar-budde-sermon-that-enraged-donald-trump)

Bishop Mariann Budde, the Bishop of Washington, offered those words near the beginning of her sermon at a prayer service held on Tuesday at the National Cathedral. It was the end of her sermon, when she asked President Trump to be merciful, that has received outsized attention, inspiring both celebration and vitriol. 

Some people are calling Bishop Budde a hero. Others are likening her to Satan. Hardly anyone is talking about whether it was a good sermon, which is what happens when preachers decide to tack on a juicy soundbite that overshadows the rest of their carefully chosen words. The polarized response to Bishop Budde’s sermon is further evidence of what she called “the culture of contempt that has become normalized in our country.” No matter what side of our nation’s political divisions you land on, how you heard her words is likely a manifestation of the convictions you held long before you knew that there was a prayer service on Tuesday at the National Cathedral. 

And you know what? No matter what those convictions are, you are still a child of God. And so are the people whose convictions are the opposite of your own. Those who celebrated Bishop Budde’s sermon love Jesus just as much as those who called her an instrument of Satan. Those who believe that her words were important, prophetic, and appropriate are seeking to be faithful to God just as much as those who believe that her words represent everything that is wrong with mainline Christianity and this country. Until we can accept that, the vision of unity that Bishop Budde held out in her sermon—the unity that God has promised in the kingdom of God—will remain nothing more than an aspiration. To achieve that unity will require our conversion.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle, the patronal feast of this parish. But I wonder what sort of conversion we should be celebrating. I think it’s safe to say that St. Paul was converted to the way of Jesus—to Christianity—but the word conversion implies not only a new destination but also a point of departure—a starting place or status quo which one must leave behind if one is to undergo conversion. 

Throughout the centuries, many Christian preachers have done a lot of harm—both to Paul and to his Jewish counterparts—by stating or implying that, when Paul became a Christian, he gave up being a Jew. But that isn’t the conversion we see manifested in Paul’s letters or the in record of his missionary activities contained in the Acts of the Apostles. Paul was Jewish from the day of his birth until the day of his death. But, when he met Jesus on the Damascus Road, he underwent a conversion which enabled him to recognize and participate in the reign of God. And, if we’re going to be a part of that reign, it’s a conversion that we must undergo as well.

“You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism,” Paul wrote to the Christians in Galatia. “I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.” Have you ever wondered why Paul was so angry at the early church? In his book, Paul: A Biography, N. T. Wright explains that Paul belonged to a branch of Judaism that believed that the kingdom of God was near—very near. Any day, they believed, God would send the messiah to deliver God’s people from their oppressors. And the only thing standing in the way of the fulfillment of God’s promises, they believed, was the faithlessness of God’s people. 

Paul believed that God’s reign would only come to the earth when God’s people were of one mind and one heart, purified in their religion and united in their worship of the one God. To a religious zealot like Paul, the way of Jesus—with its willingness to embrace notorious sinners and its less-than-scrupulous approach to sabbath observance and dietary restrictions—worked directly against all of that. And he believed that God had called him to put a stop to it. “If we can just get rid of these half-hearted believers and get everyone to take God seriously,” Paul might well have thought to himself, “then we can bring the kingdom of God to the earth.”

We know what happens when unwavering conviction is married to religious fervor. If you really believed that the fullness of God’s reign would come to the earth if you only took the life of another human being, you, too, would become as murderous as Paul. That may be the very bottom of a slippery slope that starts with something that seems far more innocent, but who among us isn’t tempted by the proposition that the greatest obstacle to God’s vision for the world is those people who disagree with us. The problem with that sort of thinking—besides the fact that it is based on an understanding that God’s reign could ever be revealed through violence—is that it makes the kingdom of God something that depends on us. And, as soon as the coming reign of God is something that depends on us, God becomes as narrow as our own idolatrous imaginings.  

What confronted Paul on the Damascus Road was his own failure of faithfulness. Despite being more advanced in Judaism than almost any of his contemporaries—despite being more faithful to God than anyone he knew—Paul had allowed his zealotry for God to stand in the way of God. But God did not let Paul’s failure stand in the way of God’s reign. Instead, that reign came to Paul in exactly the way that Paul sought to undermine it—through Jesus. In that moment, when Jesus showed Paul that God’s reign did not depend upon Paul or his zealotry but, instead, had already come through Christ’s own death and resurrection, Paul was converted. He was converted from a vision of the kingdom that began with his own faithfulness to a vision of the kingdom that begins with the faithfulness of God.

“I want you to know, brothers and sisters,” Paul wrote with clarity and enthusiasm, “that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” In other words, you couldn’t make this up if you tried. If it were up to us, we would tell God exactly how and when and where and to whom the kingdom of God should be revealed. And it would always be to people like us and for people like us and to the exclusion of people who are not like us. When God’s reign is only allowed to show up in ways that confirm our deeply held convictions, the result is always antithetical to the way of God—no matter whose deeply held convictions are in control. When we believe that God’s kingdom depends on us, we become inflexible, rigid, and unyielding, and that is nothing like God’s gracious and loving reign.

The fullness of God’s reign is not revealed through human effort or triumph but through the cross of Christ—the ultimate symbol of human failure. When we allow ourselves to believe that the kingdom of God is waiting on us to make the world right, we cut ourselves off from the work that God is doing in the world and in our lives. Then, we only hear from preachers and politicians what we expect to hear. And, then, we begin to demonize those who hear something different. And, then, our hope for unity falls apart because the kingdom of God is far from us.

If we are to receive God’s reign, we must be converted from the arrogance of believing that God’s reign is dependent on us. It’s not. And that is most definitely good news. Now, that doesn’t mean that we are supposed to sit idly by and wait on God to sort everything out. The apostle Paul did not stop working for God after he met the risen Christ. Instead, his zeal for God’s reign was transformed into a zeal for sharing God’s love with the world. There is much work ahead for the faithful people of God, but we labor not to make the reign of God a reality on the earth but because, like Paul, we have seen that reign in Jesus, and we have felt it take hold in our lives.

You Belong Here

 

January 12, 2025 – The 1st Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord

Isaiah 43:1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

How many of you remember your baptism? In our tradition we baptize infants, children, youth, and adults, so those of us who were baptized as little babies won’t remember it. Those of you who grew up in a tradition that doesn’t practice infant baptism have the advantage of remembering what it felt like, and I hope your memories of your baptism are joyful. 

I was less than two weeks old when I was baptized. My mother tells me that, when she realized that both sets of grandparents were already in town to meet their new grandchild, she called the minister and asked if we could go ahead and get it over with. It was short notice, and I can think of at least one seminary professor who would roll his eyes at how brief my parents’ and godparents’ catechetical formation was, but it still took. On that Sunday morning, I was sprinkled with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and I was sealed with the indelible mark of Holy Baptism.

We believe that Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as God’s own children and makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and, thus, inheritors of the kingdom of God. That’s what it says in the catechism in the back of the prayer book. As we say in the Thanksgiving over the Water right before someone is baptized, it is through the waters of Baptism that we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection and reborn by the Holy Spirit into a new life of holiness. In other words, a lot of important stuff happens to us in the moment of our baptism, but as today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles reminds us, our baptism is only a starting point. It’s what comes afterwards that really matters.

“When the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them.” Our lectionary only gives us a tiny piece of a much larger and more interesting story. It started with the death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who was stoned to death by the religious leaders as Saul, our church’s namesake, looked on. After that, a severe persecution broke out, and most Christians scattered throughout the region to avoid arrest, torture, and death. The apostles, we are told, stayed put in Jerusalem, but other leaders, like Philip, fled to the countryside of Judea and to Samaria.

As Tertullian would write about 165 years later, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, and it was during that dispersion of the faithful that the good news of Jesus Christ began to reach those outside the geographic, ethnic, and cultural center where it had started. Even under duress, Philip preached the gospel to the Samaritans—those ancient relatives of the Jewish people whose way had diverged from their southern counterparts after the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel. 

When the Samaritans, whose tradition included an early form of the Pentateuch but did not include any of the prophets who anticipated the coming of a messiah, heard about Jesus and saw the signs that Philip did, they were amazed. In accordance with the earliest Christian practice, these new converts were baptized into the faith. The Way of Jesus had spread beyond its Jewish roots. But something was missing.

When the apostles back in Jerusalem heard that the Samaritans had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. When the two apostles arrived, they immediately recognized that, although these new Samaritan converts had received baptism in Jesus’ name, they had not yet received the Holy Spirit. So the apostles, who were the bearers of the Spirit’s power—those who had received the Holy Spirit when it descended upon them at Pentecost—prayed and laid hands on the new believers, who were immediately filled with the Holy Spirit. 

I don’t know exactly what that looked like, but I’m pretty sure it was a noisy, frenetic, uncontainable display of energy, love, enthusiasm, and faithfulness. In some traditions, the primary manifestation of the Spirit’s power is the gift of tongues. We don’t do a lot of speaking in tongues in The Episcopal Church, but I absolutely think we’ve got to leave room for the Holy Spirit to surprise us and unsettle us and encourage us in ways we didn’t see coming. 

That’s what so interesting about this little story—that the Holy Spirit and Baptism are inextricably linked, but sometimes they don’t show up together. And I think the key to understanding why is found not only in the experience of the Samaritan converts but also in the experience of the apostles, who in this encounter faced their own sort of conversion. 

It is impossible for us to appreciate how radical it was that the Way of Jesus and, thus, the family of God bent around to include the Samaritans. They were universally and unequivocally hated by the Jewish people. Just as it is often easier for us to accept the inclusion of someone who never had a part in our endeavors than to welcome back someone who betrayed us, so, too, would it have been easier for the apostles to accept a group of Gentile converts than these Samaritans. They belonged to a religious sect that had defined itself largely through their rejection of the messianic tradition, especially one that was traced back to King David, and now they wanted to belong to God through Jesus the Messiah. 

It is no accident that the Samaritan Christians’ full participation in the Body of Christ and the community of the Holy Spirit is put on hold until the apostles can lay their hands on them. That’s not because the apostles have magic fingers. It’s because they are representatives of the church, and the church is the place where the life of the faithful is lived out, and the Samaritans cannot live out that life until the church has made room for them. 

The Samaritans were already believers. They already had faith in Jesus. As far as historians and theologians can tell, their baptism in Jesus’ name was the same trinitarian baptism that we still use today. What was different was the fact that the church had never received someone like them, and the church had to undergo its own conversion before these new Christians could live out their faith.

In our tradition, we use the sacramental rite of Confirmation as a way for those of us who were baptized as children to confirm the promises that were made on our behalf and accept the Christian faith for ourselves. But there’s a reason that we only allow bishops to administer the rite of Confirmation. That’s because, when we are confirmed, it is not only we who are confirming our acceptance of the Christian faith, but it is also the church itself, through its apostolic representative, who is confirming our place within the community of faith. Bishops are our link to the apostles, and, when Bishop Harmon comes for confirmation, he comes to make room in the church for each one of us.

The truth is that we don’t need a bishop to welcome us into the Christian community. We recognize that Baptism is the full initiation into the Body of Christ. But we also recognize that Baptism is only a beginning. As Father Chuck often said during baptism rehearsals, there’s nothing in the baptismal rite that says that, once you present your child for baptism, we have to give them back. This is the place where those who are baptized live out the faith that they declare or that is declared on their behalf. This is the community in which our faith comes alive. We are the family through which the Holy Spirit moves and breathes and comes among us with power. 

Whether you have been confirmed or not, whether a successor of the apostles has ever laid hands on your head, whether you think of yourself as a member of this church or you’re just here as a visitor, all of us who have been baptized into the Body of Christ are called to seek the Holy Spirit. Baptism is just a starting point—our initiation into the Way of Jesus. If we are going to follow that way and live out that life, we need the help of God’s Spirit, and we need the church, where we share in its power. 

The story of Philip and the Samaritan Christians shows us that the Christian life can only take shape within the context of the church and that the church can only take shape when it makes room for everyone. This is the family of God, the community of the Holy Spirit. If you have ever been baptized, this is where you belong. And, if this is where you belong and you have never been baptized, let me know. There’s already room for you here.

Always Part of the Plan

 

December 29, 2024 – The 1st Sunday after Christmas Day

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

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those are the four gospel accounts. There aren’t four gospels. There’s only one gospel—the singular good news of Jesus Christ. But there are four accounts of that one gospel, and we need all four. 

Some people love to argue that originally there were lots of gospels and that the institutional church only restricted the number to the four we have in the Bible to suit its own needs, but the people who claim that aren’t very good at history. They’re usually trying to sell you a book or get you to watch their series on the History Channel or convince you to share something on social media. Although there have been lots of different texts that call themselves “gospels” or “good news,” the four accounts of the canonical gospel—unlike almost all of those alternate texts—were in their current form by the end of the first century. And, by 180AD, the church, which had not yet developed an apparatus for centralized decision making, recognized by consensus that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John collectively represent the singular and true good news of Jesus Christ. 

What makes the four-fold gospel tradition even more interesting is its willingness to embrace diversity as an essential component of the fullest manifestation of the one truth. You probably know this, but none of the four gospel accounts start the same way. Matthew begins with a genealogy of Jesus before launching in with the story of Mary’s pregnancy and Jospeh’s dream-inspired decision not to break off their engagement. Luke starts with the parallel pregnancy stories of Elizabeth and Mary, the mothers of John the Baptist and Jesus, before giving us the beloved story of the shepherds, angels, and the manger, which we hear at Christmas. Mark skips all of that and begins his account thirty years later with John the Baptist’s call to repentance and the moment Jesus came out of the water and saw the Holy Spirit descending upon him. 

But then John came along and said, “Holy my beer.” We’re not going to begin with the start of Jesus’ ministry. We’re not going to start with Jesus’ birth. We’re not going to start with John the Baptist or even with a genealogy that traces Jesus’ ancestry all the way back to Abraham. We’re going to start at the beginning. We’re going to start even before the beginning—before time itself had been created. We’re going to start with God and God alone, when the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

When John and the community of Christians around him that grew together in faith sought to tell the good news of God’s love, they knew that the story of salvation, which stretched back even before the beginning of time, had always had Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, at its very center. For John, starting anywhere else was inadequate. The same unified work of God that brought light and life into the universe had brought Jesus of Nazareth into the world as its savior. 

The incarnation, the virgin birth, the presentation in the temple, the baptism by John in the Jordan, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the temptation in the wilderness, the sermon on the mount, the feeding of the five thousand, the walking on the water, the healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, the transfiguration on the mountain top, the dying on the cross, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, and the sending of the Holy Ghost—all of those moments in the story of Jesus have their origin in eternal and timeless Word that, in the beginning, was with God and was God. But the good news of Jesus does not stop there.

When God spoke and there was light, when the waters were gathered together into seas, when plants and birds and fish and animals began to grow and fly and swim and walk, when Adam was formed of the dust of the ground, when the breath of life was breathed into his nostrils and he became a living being, when Noah and his family were rescued in the ark, when Abram heard and answered God’s call, when Moses raised his staff and parted the Red Sea, when the Law was given to God’s people, when Israel crossed the Jordan and entered the land of promise, when they were set free from the Babylonian captivity and returned home, when they waited for the coming of God’s anointed—all of those moments in the history of time have their origin in the eternal Word that has always been.

The salvation of the world did not begin with the birth of Jesus. It began before the world was created. By starting his gospel account with this cosmic prologue, John lets us know that the good news of Jesus Christ is not a plan that God hatched in response to Roman oppression. The way of Jesus is not something God dreamt up as a solution to first-century problems or as an answer to the prayers of our long-dead ancestors. This is how the world was made to be. It was made by and through and for the one to whom we belong. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus, the incarnate Word, is the very foundation of and fulfillment of our existence.

And yet the incarnate Word—the universal light that shines from within all of creation—that light which can never be overcome by darkness—came into a world that did not universally receive it. As C.K. Barrett wrote of God’s sending of that light, it was “an almost unmitigated failure.” “The world came into being through him,” John tells us, “yet the world did not know him.” How can that be? How can God send us the savior whose work of salvation has been written into the very fabric of creation only to have us reject him? Because, as John expresses so beautifully, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.”

In the incarnate Son of God, we see that God’s nature is grace and truth—not coercion or violence, not force or manipulation, not threat or compulsion, but grace and freedom and love. And that means that, although we recognize the fullness of God in the person of Jesus Christ, not everyone sees what we see. Not everyone wants to receive the light. Yet even that—even the incomplete, unfinished, imperfect response to God’s love—is somehow a part of God’s saving plan. Even those moments of failure have their origin in the eternal and timeless Word.

“All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” The eating of the forbidden fruit, the murder of Abel at the hands of his brother, the wickedness that provoked the great flood, the arrogance that built the tower of Babel, the captivity under Pharoah in Egypt, the hardship God’s people suffered in the wilderness, the indiscriminate bloodshed by which Israel conquered the land of Canaan, the idolatry that corrupted the nation, the persecution of the prophets, even the rejection of God’s Son—they are all within the cosmic boundaries of what was created through God’s eternal Word. None of them is beyond the reach of God. God is not glorified by them, but God can and will redeem them for God’s glory. And that’s not all.

“The Word became flesh and lived among us.” There is nothing in all of creation that is beyond the reach of God’s saving love, and that means that there is nothing in our lives that God will not redeem. No struggle, no grief, no illness, no anxiety, no isolation, no failure, no doubt, no worry—nothing at all that we can ever experience that lies outside of God’s plan of salvation.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Why doesn’t God hurry up and fix everything that is wrong in our lives? Why doesn’t God just snap God’s fingers and make all things right? Because God is gracious. Because God invites us to recognize his love, and, when we don’t, God still finds a way to fold it into God’s saving work. How much easier life would be if God took over and forced the divine will upon us, but then we wouldn’t recognize our lives or our God.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Everything that has ever been has been created in and through and for God. Jesus’ work of redemption has always been a part of that story, and so have you. There is no part of your life that does not belong to God. There is no struggle in your life that is beyond the redemption of the cosmic Christ. John’s account of the gospel reminds us of that, and that is good news.

A New Start

 

December 24, 2024 – Christmas I

Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-15-20

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

It’s Christmas, which means that some of you are here because you came home for the holidays, and others are here because you wouldn’t go home if your life depended on it. Some of us, when we go home, actually enjoy spending time with our family but live in fear of running into a high-school acquaintance at the grocery store. Others, as soon as we get to our parents’ house, make plans to go out and meet our friends in order to spend as little time under their roof as possible.

Years ago, not long after college, I was back in lower Alabama and had the chance to swing by my old high school to say hello to some of the office staff that had helped me survive those difficult years. I wanted to reconnect with some people I loved and say thank you for all the times they let me hide out in the office. When I walked through the door and saw their familiar faces, I greeted them warmly and reintroduced myself, just in case they didn’t recognize me. Before I could say a word of gratitude, however, the office secretary belted out, “Evan Garner? I almost didn’t know who you were. You’ve gained so much weight!” I haven’t been back.

Going home can be a blessing or a curse. Usually, it’s a little of both. Some people relish the opportunity to reunite with family and friends, rekindling old relationships and telling stories about the way things were. Others have learned over the years that going back brings up more painful memories than nostalgic ones. And a few of us grew up in homes that we have never once wanted to return to. But, like it or not, Christmas has a way of making all of us look back. As we think about the Christmases of our childhood, we either romanticize the past or fantasize over what the past could have been. Every time we go back home, whether it’s in the flesh or in our mind, we’re either looking for something we once had but have since lost, or we’re searching for something we never had but have always longed for.

I bet the thought of returning to Bethlehem gave Joseph more anxiety than excitement. As his ancestral home, Bethlehem wasn’t the place where Joseph grew up or went to high school, but it was the town from which his family came. People knew him there. Growing up, his family surely would have made the six-mile trip south from Jerusalem a time or two after finishing one of their thrice-annual pilgrimages to the holy city. He may not have kept up with his distant cousins, but only a brief reintroduction would have been necessary to renew all those relationships, for better or for worse. 

This time, Joseph made the trip with Mary, his pregnant fiancée. Back then, people rarely strayed very far from familial connections when proposing marriage, so there’s a good chance that the people in Bethlehem would have known Mary or her parents, but I doubt this was how they wanted to share their good news with their distant relatives. Sometimes an unexpected pregnancy is all it takes to feel like we’ll never live up to other people’s expectations.

What was it like for Joseph to have grown up knowing that he had been born into a royal family only to come back to the city of David as a carpenter whose bride-to-be had become pregnant under inexplicable circumstances? There’s no evidence in the gospel that Joseph’s friends or family gave much thought to his Davidic lineage, but I suspect that this homecoming made Joseph wonder whether his life was measuring up. That he and Mary arrived in Bethlehem with no place to stay—no family member willing to take them in and not enough money or influence to convince the innkeeper to make space for them—lets us know that this trip wasn’t easy for the holy family.

But there’s nothing like the birth of a child to cut short all that wistful longing and self-criticism. While bedding down with the livestock, Mary went into labor, and, whether or not Joseph was ready, the child of the woman he loved was coming into the world. The infant Son of God was born not back in Nazareth, where Mary’s mother, aunts, and cousins could help her, nor in the home of one of Joseph’s relatives, where surely a sympathetic kinswoman would assist with the delivery. The King of kings was born in a stable, celebrated, we are told, not by family and friends but by some nearby, nameless shepherds—as if God wanted us to be sure that the only thing that mattered in that moment was what the future held. 

When the shepherds came to see the Christchild, they did so not as a link to generations past but as a sign that, with this birth, God was doing something new. On that holy night, we hear of no one who came to the manger that was able to say that the baby looked like his grandfather or had his great-aunt’s eyes. These strangers had no way of looking back. They could only see what lay ahead—what the angels had said to them—that this child would be the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord. 

At Christmas, God shows up in a way that only embraces the past by making all things new. Except for the city in which he is born, there is nothing about our savior’s birth that suggests that he is following in the footsteps of David. Joseph may have felt the burden of the past as he came into his ancestral home, but the birth of Jesus shows us that what lies ahead is not a repeat of what has come before. Christmas reminds us that the past may have brought us to this point, but it cannot define our future.

Christmas may feel like a time when the world is urging you to look back, but God wants you to see what lies ahead—something new and hopeful and wonderful. “Unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given.” The reason the prophet Isaiah speaks of an infant leader is because, at that time in Israel’s history, God’s people were desperate for a new start. People were sick and tired of the same old patterns of hardship and struggle repeating themselves in every generation. They needed a break with the past. They needed to start over.

Our new start comes at Christmas. In the birth of Jesus, God rewrites our story by writing ourselves onto Godself. Our past is only our past, but our future is found in God. This gift to the world is like no other. The world’s greatest hope arrives as a newborn—a perfectly clean slate, a sign that, though the work of redemption is not yet finished, the old patterns have been broken so that, within us, God can do something new.

This is the miracle of Christmas—that what we long for is not locked away in the past but given to us in this present moment. This season of hope has never been about recapturing something that was lost or yearning for something that can never be. With the birth of Jesus, it has always been about receiving something new. On this night, God comes into your life, right where you are, celebrating exactly who you are in this moment. Let the birth of this child interrupt any wistful longing or self-criticism that might distract you from that sacred truth. At Christmas, you are the child whom God is making new. 

The God-Bearer

 

December 22, 2024 – Advent 4C

Micah 5:2-5a; Canticle 15; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-55

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video is available here.

It was a hundred miles. Not long after Mary learned from the angel Gabriel that she would give birth to the Son of God, she set off on a hundred-mile journey from Nazareth in Galilee to the hill country of Judea, where her relative Elizabeth lived. As a gift of consolation for a scared, young mother-to-be, the angel had told her that her pregnancy was linked to Elizabeth’s pregnancy. It didn’t take Mary long to realize that the only person on this earth who could understand her situation was her wise, old cousin, who was in the midst of her own unexpected pregnancy.

It was a hundred miles of walking the pilgrim’s road from the northern territory, where Mary lived, to a village near the capital city. It is almost unfathomable to us that a teenage girl would dare to make that trip alone, and she probably had company along the way. Caravans of travelers would often make the journey together, because, along the wilderness road, there was safety in numbers. Mary may have even walked with some relatives or close friends, but, in his description of her travels, Luke doesn’t mention anyone else. It was just her—if not physically alone, at the very least emotionally alone—an unwed pregnant girl, who couldn’t help but hear the whispers of those around her, as she sought refuge in the home of an understanding kinswoman.

Something powerful happened when Mary walked through the door—something besides what is recorded in biblical text. In that culture, elders were revered and respected, so, naturally, Mary was the first to offer a greeting—the younger, in effect, approaching with humility a woman old enough to be her grandmother. But, at the sound of her greeting, all of that changed. Any culturally anticipated distance between the two women collapsed in an instant as Elizabeth felt her own child leap in her womb.

Elizabeth had known for decades the societal stigma that comes with not being able to have children, but now she had experienced in her body God’s great reversal of her status in the eyes of the world. Mary had just begun to feel the shame that bubbled up whenever she caught a glimpse of others’ judgmental stares. She had come to see Elizabeth in the hopes that her kinswoman would understand what the angel had said about the child she carried within her. And Elizabeth’s response to her greeting told her that God was already at work in both of them, changing their humility and shame into strength and renown, in one unified act of salvation. 

As an embodiment of the transformation that was already unfolding within them, the older mother-to-be began to honor her younger counterpart, effectively flipping their roles, as the revered one proclaimed with reverence the blessedness of her guest: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” As the words of Mary’s greeting rang in Elizabeth’s ears, the power of the Holy Spirit filled her. The one who had been asked to shelter this anxious expectant mother had become the one to welcome the Theotokos, the Mother of God, into her home. The blessing of receiving the blessed one was felt even by the child growing within her.

It is only in this peculiar context of role-reversal that Mary’s song can be uttered. Her words would be too much in any other setting. “My soul magnifies the Lord,” she begins, proclaiming with boldness a statement that, while ridiculous on its face, is as faithful on her lips as it would be arrogant on the lips of anyone else. How can it be that a frail human being could ever claim to magnify God’s surpassing greatness? How can it be that a girl whose pregnancy inspired ridicule could become the means through which God’s salvation comes into the world? From Mary herself, we hear both question and answer: “How can this be,” she asked the angel Gabriel, “since I am a virgin?”

The source of her shame becomes the channel for God’s glory. The very definition of her inability, which is to say the biological impossibility of her pregnancy, is the very means by which God acts. Had her womb been occupied by the child of another, she would not have had space in her body to carry God’s Son. Had her pregnancy been celebrated by those around her, she would not have had room in her heart to magnify the Lord. Only because of her poverty of spirit is Mary able to become the mother of our savior, even the mother of God.

In a world that is blind to what God is doing, Elizabeth can see it all. She has not only the wisdom of age and experience but also the insight of the Holy Spirit. A prophet in her own right, she identifies her young relative as the thrice-blessed mother of her Lord. “Blessed are you among women,” she names, celebrating the holiness of Mary’s womanhood. “Blessed is the fruit of your womb,” she declares, anticipating the holiness of the child within her. “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord,” she announces, switching from the second- to the third-person in order to let us know that, like Mary, those who trust in God’s promises will be made holy.

Mary is, for us, an icon of faithfulness because she believed what God had said to her and, thus, became the mother of our salvation. She did not heal the sick or raise the dead. She did not defy an empire or slay Satan with a sword. Yet it was through her perfect faithfulness—her eternal “yes” to God—through which all those saving deeds were done. God’s great reversal of humanity’s plight is accomplished through the one whose perfect emptiness gave way to the fullness of God’s glory.

A young, unwed girl, betrothed to a man of David’s line, travelled a hundred miles to see her relative Elizabeth because Elizabeth was the only one who could understand what God was doing within her. As one in whom that great reversal had already begun to take hold, Elizabeth was able to see in Mary what the world was unable to recognize—its salvation coming to fruition. Only when that reversal begins to take hold in us—only when Christ dwells inside our bodies—are we also able to see it.

That salvation—your salvation—is not manifest in the victories, rewards, or accomplishments of your life. Those are gifts of God, for sure, but your true hope is not found in any of them. Our hope is found in our own emptiness. Our hope is in the one who has lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things. Our hope is in the one who was carried in the womb of Mary and brought into this world by her faithfulness to God. Our hope is in Jesus, and, when we, like Mary, approach God with our own emptiness, believing that there will be a fulfillment of what has been spoken by the Lord, our souls will magnify the Lord, and our spirits will rejoice in the God of our salvation.

No One Chooses Thomas...Except Jesus

 

December 21, 2024 – St. Thomas (Blue Christmas)

Habakkuk 2:1-4; Hebrews 10:35-11:1; John 20:24-29

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Video of this sermon can be seen here.

I don’t want to be a Thomas. I don’t want to be defined by my doubts. I don’t want to feel inside myself that the truest part of me is the part of me that doesn’t have enough faith to believe in Jesus. 

I’d rather be a Peter. Or, if that’s asking too much, I’d be happy to be a John or a James or even a Bartholomew. I’d welcome the chance to be a minor character in the story of salvation if it meant that I wasn’t known as the one who wouldn’t believe—who couldn’t believe. I’d be almost anyone as long as it’s not a doubting Thomas.

But we don’t get to choose who we are, do we? We don’t get to decide for ourselves what part we play in God’s great salvation drama. Like Thomas, we don’t even get to choose for ourselves whether we have faith. We either have it or we don’t. In a frustrating and exhausting way, it’s not up to us. We can search for it. We can practice it. We can try and try again. We can fake it and hope that one day our pretense will give way to something real. But faith isn’t something we can manufacture. It’s almost as if faith is something bestowed upon the lucky ones for reasons we can’t discern while the rest of us are left to wonder why we missed out.

Why are we the ones for whom all the puzzle pieces never seem to come together into a coherent whole? Why don’t we get to be the ones that other people look to as examples of how to be calm in the midst of life’s storms or how to maintain hope when everything around us feels hopeless? Why are we the ones who are always playing catch-up, running after those who have it all figured out but without ever getting any closer to them? 

Just once, we want to know what it feels like to have our burdens of grief, loss, and disappointment lifted from us. We want to feel them buoyed by a faith in a God who, we are told, is making all things right but who, as far as we can tell, isn’t making them right for us. The never-ending struggle is wearing us out. The weight of pretending that we are okay when we are nothing that resembles okay is bending us over, literally hunching our bodies, pressing us ever closer to the ground.

Surely Thomas felt that weight upon his shoulders in the week after Jesus died. I can imagine that he didn’t bother to lift his head more than a time or two during those days. His teacher and friend had been taken from him. The one in whom he had trusted—the one whom he believed had come to save God’s people—had been betrayed by a member of their inner circle, effectively indicting all the disciples for failing to see it coming. 

“Why wasn’t I taken with him?” Thomas must have asked in his unanswered prayers. Back when Jesus was still alive, when he had decided to return to Jerusalem to face his opponents, Thomas was the one who had declared that he was ready to go and die with him. But, instead of standing beside his master, Thomas had wilted in the moment of truth. He had fled in fear and shame like all the others. It’s a hard thing to be the one who keeps on living when the one you love the most has died.

Worse, still, Thomas’ friends were convinced that death had not taken Jesus from them for good. Jesus’ humiliating execution, they claimed, had been reversed by God, who had raised Jesus from the dead. “He appeared to us!” they exclaimed to Thomas, “when you weren’t there. Even though the doors were locked, he came into the room, and he showed himself to us. He is alive! Why don’t you believe us? Don’t you trust us?” But finding faith isn’t as simple as taking someone else’s word for it.

“Why couldn’t Jesus have waited until we were all together?” Thomas must have wondered. “Why would he reveal himself to all of the disciples except me? Is it because I am not worthy? Is it because I failed him? Is it because I do not know how to have faith like Peter or James or John?” 

For the longest week of his life, Thomas carried that isolating grief with him wherever he went. He was the only one in the community of disciples who didn’t feel like celebrating. He was the only one who didn’t get to see Jesus—the only one who didn’t believe. And there was nothing he could do about it.

But that didn’t stop Jesus from doing something. A week later, the disciples were right back where they started, which itself suggests that maybe even seeing the risen Jesus doesn’t fix everything all at once. Or maybe it’s a reminder that the community of faith cannot fulfill God’s commission until everyone is able to join in. Regardless, this time, Thomas was with them. And Jesus knew that Thomas would be there. Jesus knew that he could not return to his Father without seeing Thomas first.

When Jesus appeared to the disciples a second time, the only difference was Thomas. He was the reason Jesus came back. “You, too, Thomas,” Jesus said to him. “I love you, too. My work cannot be finished until you know that you belong to me, just like all of the others. Look at my hands and my side. Reach out and feel the wounds for yourself. I want you to know and believe that neither my death nor your doubts have the power to defeat God’s love.” 

Jesus does not come back for Thomas because of Thomas’ faith. He returns because of his doubts. He returns because Thomas isn’t sure, because he can’t figure it out, because he can’t make himself feel what everyone else around him seems to be able to feel. If the resurrection of Jesus means anything, it means that those who have felt the sting of death rob them of their ability to celebrate the fullness of God’s love will one day be rescued by that love which cannot be complete without them. If the empty tomb means anything, it means that Jesus will come and find the Thomas in each one of us. 

Sometimes it’s hard to believe in God. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that a God who would create a world in which pain and suffering are so common will one day make all that pain and suffering go away. Most of the time, we want to believe that, but often we can’t figure out how. And that’s okay. God’s love isn’t waiting on you to figure it out. God doesn’t need you to believe in him in order for God to love you or to come and find you. That’s the real miracle of Christmas—that God’s love finds us no matter what—and we receive that miracle anew every time Jesus offers himself to us in the communion of his body and blood.