Wednesday, April 8, 2026

We Are Raised With Him


April 5, 2026 – Easter Day, Year A

© 2026 Evan D. Garner

Audio is available here. Video is available here.

On the Saturday before Palm Sunday, as we were getting everything ready for the next day’s procession around the church, children in Lebanon were going house to house, singing carols and collecting eggs for Easter. Nearly forty percent the people of Lebanon are Christians, and most of them are Maronites—Christians who trace their origins not only to the fourth-century saint from whom they get their name but also St. Peter, St. Luke, and St. James, whose influence shaped their distinct traditions. One of those traditions is the commemoration of Lazarus Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday.

You may have heard a little about this tradition on NPR this week. I did, and it captivated me so much that I rewrote my Easter sermon. On the day before Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we remember that he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. For Maronite Christians, the celebration of Easter would be incomplete without a celebration of Lazarus, whose resurrection from the dead was a prefigurement of Christ’s own resurrection—a gift he gave to his friends to help them understand what would happen to him on the third day.

On Lazarus Saturday, children in Lebanon go caroling from house to house, signing traditional hymns about Lazarus and how Jesus raised him from the dead. When a group of children arrives at your house, you are supposed to let them inside and allow them to reenact the miracle in your own living room. The children take turns being the one who gets to lie down on the floor as Lazarus, while the other children hold a sheet over the pretend-dead child and yell out, “Lazarus, get up! Lazarus, get up!” When he awakens from the slumber of death, the children sing, “Lazarus is screaming. He is hungry. He wants a lot of eggs.” And then you’re supposed to give them eggs, which they eventually carry back to the church, where they are boiled and dyed in anticipation of Easter.[1]

This year, however, things are different. Israeli military strikes on southern Lebanon have forced thousands of Christian families to flee their homes. The Israeli government has warned that they intend to continue to bomb villages throughout the region because of suspected Iranian-supported Hezbollah militants living nearby. Right on the cusp of Holy Week, congregations and families have had to decide whether to pack up and flee the violence or remain in harm’s way.

As the NPR story made clear, Lebanese military protection has largely been withdrawn as Israeli tanks have taken over control of the area. Homes are being destroyed. Civilians are being killed. So far, 1,268 civilian deaths have been reported by the authorities in Lebanon, including at least 124 children.[2] Their reenactment of Lazarus’ resurrection was cut short this year, but those who remained behind participated in the tradition as an act of faithful defiance. And I can think of nowhere on this earth where celebrating the power of the resurrection as a physical act in which we participate is more important than on those front lines.

“Set your mind on things that are above, not things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Paul wrote those words to Christians whom he had never met before. He had been told about their faith and about their struggle to remain faithful. They, too, had a hard time remembering that Jesus’ victory over sin and death was a victory that makes a real difference in our lives—not only in the life to come but here and now. All of us have that struggle. It’s hard to remember that we have already died with Christ and have already been raised with him to new life when the life around us looks like anything but heaven.

Our translation doesn’t really do justice to the encouraging words that Paul offers. The conditional “if” he uses at the beginning of this reading is that of a possibility he knows has already been satisfied. The rest of his words confirm that. As the New International Version puts it, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” Because we have been united with Christ in our Baptism and through our faith, we are one with him. That part of us that is subject to the powers of this world has died with him upon the cross, and we have been raised with him into new life.

But we are all still here. And the world isn’t yet the place God intends it to be. And, even if we have been raised with Christ, our lives on this earth are often plagued by struggle, illness, pain, grief, and sometimes even danger. But that’s exactly why Paul tells us to seek the things that are above—to set our minds upon them—not only by holding them in our thoughts but by searching for them, endeavoring for them, inquiring after them, desiring them with our whole selves, and requiring them as our daily food. We must remember every day that our true home is already in Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of God the Father.

But how do we do that? How do we set our minds upon things that are above so fully and completely that the struggles of this life, though real and painful, no longer have any power over us? Through repeated acts of faithful defiance—meaningful acts that refuse to allow the forces of sin and death to quench that resurrection flame that burns within each one of us. Paul wants us to take turns lying down on the ground, waiting for our friends to yell out, “Get up! Get up! Be raised from the dead!” until the truth of our own resurrection has settled into our minds and bodies and souls and spirits. And the most important time for us to reenact our own resurrection is when the tanks are rolling in and the bombs are exploding all around us. For it is in the face of death itself that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, and it is from the tyranny of death that you, too, have been saved.

Every time you come to church and receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ, you participate in his death and resurrection—an act of faithful defiance that refuses to allow the forces of evil to encroach upon it. Every time you dwell in God’s Word by reading the holy scriptures, you sit in the presence of the risen Christ, who is God’s Word and whose victory has set you free from the power of death. Every time you approach God in prayer, you stand within the body of Christ, who gives voice to the needs of your heart by interceding on your behalf to the Father. In prayer, therefore, you ascend again to the heavenly throne where you belong in Christ, an act of defiance against those hellish forces that seek to keep you earth-bound.

You are one with Christ. You have died with him, and you have been raised with him into the new life of the resurrection. The powers of this world can do their worst, but they cannot have you. You belong to Christ. You belong to God. So set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died [and have been raised], and your life is hidden with Christ in God. To him be all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Our Sins Hold Him There

 

April 3, 2026 – Good Friday

© 2026 Evan D. Garner

Audio is available here. Video is available here.

When you stand at the foot of the cross, what do you see? Today, we return to Golgotha, and we dare to look upon the one who was crucified for our sake. In looking upon him, we risk seeing the consequences of our failure, the exposition of our vulnerability, the magnitude of our faithlessness, the depths of our powerlessness. And yet we come to look.

What do you see reflected back at you when you gaze upon Jesus, who was crucified for your sake? What part of you do you see holding him there? What failure within do you need to see embodied by the one who was hanged on the cross, painful though it is to see it?

All our failures—indeed, all the brokenness of the whole world—is bound up in the body of the crucified Christ. He is nailed to the cross because his kingdom—the kingdom of God—is not of this world. The cross is the world’s rejection of God’s reign that comes to us in Jesus Christ, and we return here every year on Good Friday to remember that, as followers of Jesus—as citizens of God’s reign—our kingdom is not of this world.

In the passion narrative, we encounter two distinct forces that combine in a way that leads to Jesus’ death. Over the years, it has been fashionable among preachers and theologians to prioritize one over the other. Either we interpret Jesus’ death as the product of a Jewish plot to have him killed as an enemy of God and God’s people, or we describe his death as the outcome of a Roman imperial judicial process that led to his execution as an enemy of the state.

At times, both rationales have served the unspoken needs of the church. As Christians, we have a long history of using the death of Jesus as a justification for anti-Semitism, which in every instance is a sin against God and God’s people. More recently, in an attempt to exonerate ourselves from past sins, we have shoved the pendulum in the other direction, attributing the labels used in the gospel accounts to the purely anti-Judaic motives of the gospel writers and their mostly Gentile communities.

What if, instead, we encounter the death of Jesus, called for by the Jewish leaders and carried out by the Roman authorities, not as a moment for a singular historical reckoning but as a bifocal diagnosis of our own spiritual malady? What if we return to the cross of Christ not to understand why Jesus was killed but to see in him the embodiment of our own two-pronged failure to grasp both the religious and political implications of that reign which he brings to the earth?

“We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.” Those are the words the religious leaders used when they finally revealed to Pilate the reason they wanted to have Jesus killed. Aren’t they the same words we use every time we reject Jesus and his spiritual authority? Like those religious leaders, we are threatened by a God who prefers the poor and the outcast, who loves our enemies, and who forgives those who have hurt us. Like the chief priests and the Pharisees, we get angry when Jesus sides with our opponents. Like them, we are eager to reject anyone who says that they belong to God yet spend all their time and effort celebrating those who distort our faith and throw away our traditions.

We might not fuss over sabbath regulations and dietary restrictions, but, whenever Jesus blesses those who represent the things our faith stands against, we, too, are ready to call for his execution. Whenever we condemn a Christian who uses the Bible to justify their narrowminded approach to the world, we are condemning Christ. Thus, whenever we look upon the cross, we see our own religious failures—every instance of our refusal to accept the difficult teachings of Jesus—holding him there in agony.

But we also see hanged upon the cross our refusal to accept Jesus as the one in whom true power is manifest. His death may have been called for by the religious leaders, but it was also sanctioned and carried out by the political authorities. And it’s hard to know which of the two radical claims we find more threatening—his love for our enemies or his example of self-sacrifice.

When Jesus was brought to Pilate, the Roman governor saw nothing but weakness and failure standing before him. “What accusation do you bring against this man?” Pilate asked, struggling to recognize the threat to Roman rule that Jesus represented. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Pilate asked his prisoner, seeing nothing at all majestic in him. Don’t we ask the same thing whenever the crucified one tells us to take up our cross and follow him? Don’t we prefer the version of Christ’s kingship that doesn’t involve our own sacrifice and death? Are we really supposed to believe that following Jesus means accepting the way of rejection and suffering? Aren’t we more like Pilate—motivated by strength, power, and might, and fundamentally repulsed by the thought of our own weakness, poverty, and vulnerability?

In that way, we prefer a shallow encounter with the cross of Christ—one that allows us to assume that Jesus’ death is only a temporary setback—that his real victory will come on the third day—that we are allowed to follow him from the comfort of Easter’s glory. But Good Friday is about more than taking a passing glance upon the one who was crucified for our sake. This day, we are required to look deeply upon the savior of the world—the King of kings—whose death upon the cross is not only a sign of all the ways that we have rejected God’s reign but is itself the very encapsulation of divine power and might. True power, Jesus reveals to us, is the cross upon which he dies, and, every time we choose earthly power, we, along with Pilate, hand Jesus over to be crucified.

The religious leaders want Jesus to be executed because they believe his claim to be God’s Son will collapse under the weight of his death as a failed messiah. Pilate gives into their demand for Jesus’ death because crucifixion gives him the opportunity to demonstrate Jesus’ failure as a would-be king. And, only when we see upon the cross our own rejection of Jesus and his way of love and self-sacrifice, can we discover the path that leads us into the heart of God and God’s reign.

“My kingdom is not from this world,” Jesus says. “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over…But, as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Because we belong to Jesus, we belong to a kingdom that is not from this world. Because we belong to Jesus, we do not draw our sword to fight. Instead, like Christ, we yield our lives for the sake of others—even for our enemies and those who hate us.

As long as we expect Jesus to tell us only those things that we want to hear, we will join with those religious leaders who call for his death upon the cross. And, as long as we believe that power and strength are the signs of true authority, we will join with Pilate in condemning Jesus to death. Once we learn to gaze upon the cross and recognize our own propensity to drive the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet, we can be set free from our own narrowmindedness and relieved of our own need for security. After all, that is why we come here today—not to hide from our failures and vulnerabilities but to glory in the Cross of Jesus, upon which all our sins are forgiven and through which all our infirmities are healed. To him, the Crucified One, be all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

The King Nobody Wants

March 29, 2026 – Palm Sunday, Year A

© 2026 Evan D. Garner

Audio is available here. Video is available here.

We have a king, and his name is Jesus, but he’s the king whom nobody wants.

The religious leaders had always been suspicious of him. During most of his ministry, Jesus sparred with the Pharisees—that strictly observant group of faithful Jews who were prominent figures in synagogues throughout Palestine. When Jesus spoke with authority on religious matters like fasting, sabbath observance, keeping kosher, and ritual purity, the Pharisees took note, and they didn’t like what they heard.

But the confrontation in Jerusalem that led to Jesus’ death wasn’t with the Pharisees. It was with the chief priests and the elders—Matthew’s way of denoting the Sanhedrin or religious council that was responsible for overseeing the religious, political, economic, and social life of the Jewish people. While Pharisees held cultural esteem throughout the Jewish provinces, including Galilee, where Jesus was from, the council was focused on Jerusalem and what took place in the capital city. Jesus might have gotten under the skin of the religious leaders where he came from, but his popularity and anti-establishment rhetoric represented a real threat to the stakeholders in Jerusalem.

If the Roman authorities believed that Jesus of Nazareth was leading a revolt that had started to take hold in the capital city, they would crack down on everyone in Jerusalem with the full force of the empire. The chief priests and elders had worked hard to negotiate a détente with Rome. They were allowed to keep to themselves. They could skip out on imperial religious ceremonies and govern themselves outside of the Roman judicial system. They were exempt from mandatory military service. They could celebrate their Jewish religious festivals in the Jerusalem temple.

The swell of pilgrims in the city for the Passover had already made the Roman authorities nervous. If the throng of visitors who supported Jesus’ claim to the throne of David got out of hand, everything that the council had fought to preserve would be lost. The temple might even be destroyed. Yes, the chief priests and elders would rejoice to see their imperial overlords defeated, but they knew that this poor, irreligious, outcast-loving, establishment-challenging rabbi wasn’t the one to do it. So they turned against him rather than let him ruin the status quo they had established.

In a way, Judas Iscariot made an unlikely partner for the Jewish council because, as one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, he likely shared Jesus’ disdain for the temple elite. But his name Iscariot likely indicates that he was from the village of Kerioth—a town south of Hebron in Judea. Thus, as the only non-Galilean disciple, Judas may have become disenchanted with Jesus and his particular brand of messianic identity. Perhaps, when Judas realized that Jesus did not intend to claim David’s throne and lead a rebellion against Roman occupation, he offered to betray his master to the Judean religious leaders. Thirty pieces of silver was only a month’s wages, so Judas was probably more interested in preventing Roman backlash against a misguided rebellion than keeping the money for himself. In the end, his motives aligned with those of the Sanhedrin. Both realized that Jesus wasn’t the one to defeat the enemies of God’s people, and the deal was struck.

What about the crowd that called for Pilate to release Jesus Barabbas instead of Jesus the Christ? How were they so easily persuaded by the chief priests and elders? Likely, the people that had hailed Jesus as “the Son of David” when he entered the holy city were pilgrims from up north, where Jesus had become a famous teacher and healer. They were impressed by him and wanted him to succeed. But the crowd that showed up at Pilate’s headquarters early in the morning were probably locals whom the religious leaders had encouraged to gather to secure Barabbas’ release. As residents of the capital city, they weren’t interested in what a hick from Galilee might do. They were more impressed by Barabbas, who had already proven himself as the leader of an insurrection. He was a hero to the local Jewish community, and all the chief priests and elders had to do was remind the people who the real hero was.

Finally, we come to the other disciples, who scattered like the wind as soon as Jesus was handed over to the religious authorities. At their last meal with Jesus, all of them had agreed with Peter, who had insisted that he would rather die than desert his master. Yet three times, when asked if he had been with Jesus, Peter denied it until the sound of the cockcrow filled him with remorse. Initially, one of them had drawn a sword, prepared to fight for Jesus’ freedom, but Jesus rebuked him and told him to put his sword back into its sheath. “All who take the sword will perish by the sword,” Jesus proclaimed, and, with those words of resignation, all the disciples deserted him and fled. Perhaps they were ready to fight and die with Jesus, but to accept death and the defeat that it represented without resorting to violence was not something they knew how to do. So they ran away. Powerlessness can be scary like that.

“Are you the King of the Jews?” Pilate asked Jesus, confirming the charges that had been brought against him. “Hail, King of the Jews!” the soldiers said as a way to mock their powerless prisoner. “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews,” the sign upon the cross proclaimed as a warning to any who would think of rebelling against Rome. “He is the King of Israel,” said the chief priests, elders, and scribes in a mocking tone. “Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him”—because they knew that, if he were God’s real king, he would not have been defeated by the godless kingdoms of the world.

Jesus is the king whom nobody wanted yet exactly the king whom everyone needs. Only in his death is he able to give life to the world. Only on the cross is he able to reconcile humanity to one another and to God. He is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 2:24). In him, God gave himself to humankind for humankind, and, in his shameful death and defeat, God saves humankind.

To believe in a God whose power is manifest in utter powerlessness and whose victory is won in stunning defeat is risky and scary because it requires us to give up everything we know about winning, about success, about power, and about God. The cross is not the means through which the kingship of Christ is established. It is the kingship of Christ, and that isn’t what most of us want to hear.

Are we, like the religious council, so satisfied with our status quo that we would rather deny the kingship of Christ than risk declaring our allegiance to someone who promises to disrupt everything we hold dear? Are we, like Judas, tired of believing in a Jesus who tells us to pray for our enemies and to love them rather than one who comes and smites them with a sword? Have we been fooled, like the Judean crowd, into thinking that God’s anointed king hails from a place we know well and has already proven himself by standing up against our foes? Are we, like the disciples, unwilling to stand up with Jesus if it means losing the philosophical battles, losing the political campaigns, and losing the respect of like-minded members of the community?

We have a king, and his name is Jesus, but he’s the king whom nobody wants. We will accept him as the king we need most of all?

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Universal Blindness, Universal Healing

 

March 15, 2026 – The 4th Sunday in Lent, Year A

© 2026 Evan D. Garner

Audio is available here. Video is available here.

Around the world, there are an estimated 1.4 million children who are blind. Not all of them were born blind or became blind as infants, but many of them have never known what we would call normal sight. In developing countries, the leading cause of childhood blindness is vitamin A deficiency. Perhaps ironically, the leading cause in wealthy or middle-income nations is retinopathy of prematurity—ironic because it is a condition most often seen in premature babies that receive neonatal intensive care, during which supplemental oxygen interferes with the normal development of blood vessels in the eye. Babies born in countries where advanced neonatal care is not available are less likely to suffer from the condition.

Another cause of childhood blindness is measles, which has traditionally been associated with poorer countries but recently has been on the rise in this one. Sometimes children develop cancer, specifically retinoblastoma, which often results in the removal of one or both eyes if affected. Occasionally a child is born with an inherited condition, like Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis, which is passed on from one or both parents and which is now being treated with gene therapy.[1] But do you know what is not on the list of the causes of childhood blindness? Sin. Or is it?

“Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” When the disciples ask Jesus that question, they articulate a theological perspective that makes us wince. Thankfully, Jesus’ answer is, “Neither of them.” We don’t associate sin with blindness. We don’t believe that people who are born with a disability are being punished for their sins or for anyone else’s. God doesn’t work like that, and anyone who says otherwise has an understanding of God that I find repulsive—one that cannot be reconciled with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But, if we think of sin not as something an individual does—an act of disobedience—but as a condition that plagues us all—our universal state of being—we quickly see that sin is exactly why anyone is born blind. Sin is not the cause of illness; sin is our illness, and its symptoms are legion. Understanding sin as a flaw in human nature rather than a flaw in human performance helps us hear this passage from John’s gospel account not as a story about one man’s blindness but as an episode about the blindness that all of us share and, therefore, about our universal need for a savior.

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus says. “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” But with those words is Jesus not merely trading one terrible interpretation of disability for another? On the surface, it sounds like Jesus understands disability to be a mechanism for divine intervention, and I want you to know that I don’t like that any more than disability as a means for divine punishment. God doesn’t make babies to be born with congenital disease because God wants to show off when either Jesus or the miracle of medical science heals them. God doesn’t trade in human suffering for show. That’s not who God is.

We need to remember that this man’s blindness is not unique. His inability to see is just the version of the world’s brokenness that is manifest in his body. You carry your own version. We all do. In each person’s life, the imperfection of the world is manifest in particular ways, which is to say that the consequences of sin show up in all of our lives and only sometimes are they manifest in ways that other people can see. What Jesus says about this man being born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him is true for all of us. We were all born with some version of blindness so that God’s saving love might be revealed in us.

But that’s not easy for everyone to hear. I think there are two kinds of people who have a hard time believing that both sin and salvation are universally distributed among the human race, and they struggle with it for opposite sides of the same reason. First, we have the Pharisees—an imprecise label used by the authors of the New Testament to depict a faithful group of people whose faithfulness was misdirected. They were the Jewish leaders whose religiosity was regularly challenged by Jesus and his teachings. And they are still the religious people in our midst who cannot live with ambiguity or contradiction.

Repeatedly, they questioned the man and his parents because they could not understand how Jesus could have performed this miracle. Jesus had healed this man-born-blind on the sabbath, and, in the eyes of the Pharisees, that made Jesus just as sinful as the man whom he had healed, and they were convinced that God doesn’t listen to sinners.

First, they questioned whether the man had actually been born blind or whether it was just a temporary condition that resolved itself. Then, they attacked the means of the healing itself, as if to prove that Jesus hadn’t done what they were convinced he could not do. Finally, exasperated by their inquiries, the man turned the tables on them and began to teach the religious experts how anyone who had the power to give sight to a person born blind must be on the side of God. Quite naturally, the leaders panicked. “You were born entirely in sins,” they exclaimed, “and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out—because those who cannot imagine how the God of holiness would go outside the rules of religion to share that holiness with sinners cannot tolerate a living example of divine grace and mercy. They would rather push it away.

The second group does the same thing. Like the Pharisees, they, too, struggle to believe that God would break the rules of polite and religious society to save the sinful and the lost. But, in their case, it’s because they’re the ones who are sinful and lost, and they’re convinced that God would never want to come and find them. When that’s us, we instinctively push ourselves away every time God tries to draw near.

You don’t have to be a Pharisee to struggle to make sense of God’s love. None of us understands it. It doesn’t matter that sin is universally distributed among humanity if it feels like your sins are piled up higher than anyone else’s—so high that God would have to throw all the rules away to come and save you. But thanks be to God that that’s exactly what God does for each one of us in Jesus Christ.

We are all sinners. We are all equally sinners. And we are all equally loved and redeemed by God. We were all born with the equivalent of salvation blindness—the inability to find our way back to God—but that blindness is an opportunity for God’s work to be revealed in us. The religious rules we have can help us stay on the right path, but alone they cannot get us where we need to go. Our blindness—our sinfulness—is too profound. We take the rules and make them something that keeps sinners away from God rather than something that draws us back to the Father. But God won’t let that keep us away. There is no rule that God will let stand in the way of God’s salvation coming to us. Jesus shows us that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him, God will always come and find us and carry us home.


[1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_blindness.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

When The Devil Whispers

 

February 22, 2026 – The 1st Sunday in Lent, Year A

© 2026 Evan D. Garner

Audio can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

What are your favorite family stories that have been passed down through the generations—tales of humor, struggle, triumph, mischief, and joy? What stories did your parents or grandparents tell you about their childhood? What stories have you passed down? I want you to think of one important story—one moment from the past that you know is worth telling again and again. What makes that story special? Does it humanize some of the mythical giants that you revered as a young child? Does it encourage you to work hard and persevere in the face of adversity? Does it make you smile because it reminds you that you are an important part of your family’s much bigger story?

Today, in the reading from Matthew’s gospel account, we hear a foundational story from our spiritual family—the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. We know that it is a story worth passing down not only because it has been preserved in the gospel tradition but also because Jesus must have told it to his disciples. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know what happened to him out there, all alone, for forty days in the desert. Only the devil, the angels, and the wild beasts were with him. Yet all three synoptic gospel accounts—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—record this encounter with remarkable similarity, which suggests to us that Jesus told this story to his followers and that they knew that getting it right when telling it to future generations really mattered.

I think Jesus told the story of his temptation in the wilderness not only because it’s a compelling narrative but also because he wanted to teach us something—to help us remember that temptation is always strongest when we are trying to be faithful. It is in those moments, when we feel the satisfaction of a heart that belongs fully to God, that the tempter comes and whispers in our ears, beckoning us to turn astray. As the actor Denzel Washington one said in an interview, “When the devil ignores you, then you know you’re doing something wrong…When the devil comes at you, maybe it’s because you’re trying to do something right.”[1]

Jesus knew what it meant to hear the devil’s voice at precisely that moment when he was closest to God. At the end of Matthew 3, in the last verse before today’s gospel lesson, as Jesus came up from the waters of baptism, a voice from heaven proclaims, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” In the very next verse, with those words still ringing in his ears, we read, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” In each synoptic gospel account, when the story of Jesus’ baptism is told, it is always followed immediately by his temptation in the wilderness. There is a connection between Jesus hearing the Father’s voice of approval and Jesus hearing the devil’s attempt to get him to throw it all away. There is no temptation greater for us than the one we feel when we are closest to God.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t the first of God’s people to be led through the waters of baptism and into the wilderness of temptation. The family of God had long told the story of their liberation from bondage in Egypt—how God had delivered them from their oppressors by leading them through the Red Sea on dry land and how the forty years that followed were a time when God tested them through hardship and temptation. It’s not an accident that Jesus’ story about his own post-baptismal temptation is, in effect, a creative retelling of the story of Israel’s journey from the shores of the Red Sea into the wilderness before they could enter the land of promise. His story of temptation after a divine encounter, therefore, is one that spans the generations and that gets reenacted in the lives of God’s people.

If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down and let the angels catch you. All the kingdoms of the world and their splendor I will give to you if you will fall down and worship me. Three times the devil tempts Jesus by appealing to what he knows to be true about himself. He is God’s beloved. He is God’s Son. He is the one God has chosen to rule over all the kingdoms of the world. But the devil isn’t inviting Jesus to live out that identity faithfully. He’s tempting Jesus to accept a twisted and perverted understanding of divine sonship—one that sounds good and right but could not be further from the truth.

Are you hungry? After forty days of eating nothing, you must be famished. The Son of God isn’t supposed to be hungry. God wouldn’t want God’s anointed one to starve to death. Don’t you have the power to do something about it? God didn’t give you the ability to feed thousands of hungry people and ask you to keep that power tucked away in your pocket. Shouldn’t you eat, too? Doesn’t God want you to be happy—to have your basic needs met?

There’s nothing wrong with hungry people having enough to eat. It is God’s will that all people should have enough. But Jesus’ forty days of fasting are not an example of food insecurity. They are a spiritual experience of depravation and self-denial designed to teach him how to depend upon God for all things. To snap his fingers and turn stones into loaves of bread would satisfy his physical hunger, but it would leave his soul malnourished.

We, too, have the power to snap our fingers and satisfy our hunger for food, clothing, and gadgets, all of which Amazon is happy to deliver right to our front door in a matter of hours. But what sort of hunger are we seeking to satisfy with our appetite for consumption? God doesn’t want anyone to be hungry, but that’s not the same thing as God wanting you to have whatever you want whenever you want it. That’s the voice of the devil whispering into your ear. In an economy built on instant gratification, no one remembers how to be sustained by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

In the same way, the devil has tricked us into expecting certitude on matters of faith. Throw yourself down from here, he says. If you are the Son of God, the angels will catch you. Only, when he tempts us, it sounds more like, If you really believe in God, you won’t worry about your husband’s health. A real Christian like you always knows how to pray. Your faith is too strong to have a son that’s gay or a daughter that needs rehab or a marriage that’s hanging on by a thread. But that sort of thinking is totally and completely of the devil. We know that in the abstract, but, when it’s our faith that’s being tested, it’s easy to forget that that sort of black-and-white, all-or-nothing approach is not faith. It’s just a way of putting God to the test.

I know of no temptation more prevalent among today’s Christians than the temptation to conform the way of Jesus to the image of our political and economic agenda—to confuse the kingdoms of this world with the kingdom of God. Ever since Emperor Constantine ordered that the sign of the cross be painted on the shields of his soldiers in 312 AD, Christians have confused the power of Christ crucified with the power of military might. The Doctrine of Discovery was the devil whispering into the ears of the religious and political leaders of the fifteenth century, who in turn sanctioned the colonial genocide, dispossession of indigenous lands, forced assimilation of native peoples, and enslavement and forced labor of generations of human beings all in order to achieve a desired return on investment—a return from which most of us in this room have benefitted.

If you think we no longer use our identity as a Christian nation—as God's gift to the world--to justify violence, what would you say about the new Swarm Aero facility that has been opened at Drake Field? Swarm Aero is a company that specializes in creating autonomous aircraft (i.e. unmanned drones) that the military uses to kill people. Our university benefits from the research opportunities that come with it. Our city benefits from the tax revenue and employment it will generate. Our church will likely benefit from at least one employee or investor who, as a member of St. Paul's, shares a part of their income from Swarm Aero with our church. But at what cost? Can we separate the freedom and prosperity we enjoy as gifts of God from the kingdom of death we rely upon to preserve those gifts? All the kingdoms of the earth and their splendor I will give you if you will only fall down and worship me. Well, they were going to be ours anyway, we convince ourselves. What harm can it do?

There is no moment—there is no posture—in which we are more vulnerable to temptation than when we feel like our hearts belong unequivocally to God. Just when we hear God tell us that we are God’s beloved children, the devil comes and whispers in our ear that to be a child of God means wealth, confidence, and power—and at any cost. In fact, Jesus shows us that to be God’s beloved children means poverty, humility, and weakness. That’s why he tells us the story of his time in the wilderness. He knows that we are not strong enough to withstand temptation on our own. He knows that our only hope is in his victory over temptation and that his victory can only become our victory when we take up our cross and follow him, even to death. That isn’t a truth that’s easy for any of us to understand, which is why we tell this story to our children and our children’s children.


[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OO08-qXac-c.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

It's Not About The Ashes

 

February 18, 2025 – Ash Wednesday

© 2026 Evan D. Garner

Audio can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

Richard’s forehead was the perfect canvas for ashes. He knew it, too. When he came up to the altar rail, he leaned forward with a satisfied grin on his face as he offered his giant, smooth, gently sloping, perfectly bald head to receive the ashen cross. The first time I gave him ashes, I was intimidated by the opportunity. Unaccustomed to such a spectacular specimen, I choked. My follow-through wasn’t clean. The horizontal line started as a sloppy smudge and then faded not far past the vertical. I apologized to him after church and promised I wouldn’t make the same mistake next year.

We clergy aren’t likely to admit it to anyone, but we compete to see whose crosses are the clearest, boldest, and most symmetrical representations of our mortality and penitence. At least I do. The secret is to rotate your thumb ninety degrees when doing the horizontal stroke. That way the line stays narrow, straight, and well-defined instead of smearing into an indistinguishable smudge. But, no matter how much pride I take in being the very best at imposing ashes, when you walk out that door, I want you to wipe them off. Like John Keats’ famous epitaph, I want the evidence of my work to be “writ in water,” as ephemeral as a Buddhist mandala that gets swept away by its creator.

“Beware of practicing your piety before others,” Jesus says, and he means it. In Matthew’s gospel account, Jesus only cautions his disciples with the word “beware” five times: beware of false prophets (7:15), beware of those who will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues (10:17), beware the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees (16:6ff.), beware that no one leads you astray (24:4), and beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them. Jesus effectively equates showing off your spirituality with being fooled by false prophets and being persecuted by your enemies. Strutting around town with ashes on your forehead, therefore, is perilous. For Jesus, it’s an example of faithful disciples being led astray.

Ash Wednesday was never supposed to be about the ashes. In fact, in our tradition, we didn’t even have a spot in our liturgy for actual ashes until the 1979 prayer book was adopted. Earlier prayer books provided a penitential rite that could be added onto Morning or Evening Prayer, but the only mention of ashes was in the name Ash Wednesday, and that was only the stubborn relic of a medieval practice that Anglicans had put away during the Protestant reformation.

You may also be interested to know that there are no instructions in our prayer book for how the ashes are to be imposed. Making the sign of the cross with the ashes is a practice that belongs mostly to English-speaking Christians. Around the world, simply sprinkling them on top of the head is far more common. In fact, our prayer book makes it clear that ashes are entirely optional. We could leave them out completely. They have always been an add-on—a mere symbol of what the first day of Lent is really about. But do you know what isn’t optional? The invitation to the observance of a holy Lent.

This day is about starting Lent the right way. It’s about beginning our Lenten journey with a commitment to self-examination and repentance; to prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and to reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. And none of that happens on the surface where other people can see it. Our Lenten renewal happens, as Jesus tells us, in our rooms, behind shut doors, where only our Father in heaven is watching, where our Father who sees in secret will reward us.

The principal physical gesture we use to make a right beginning of repentance and as a mark of our mortal nature is not the ashes we receive but the kneeling posture we adopt. Even if kneeling is something you can only do in your heart because your knees gave out years ago, that act of coming into God’s presence humbly on our knees centers us and our frailty in a right relationship with the Almighty, who loves us as God’s own children. The ashes we receive must complement that gesture of humility. They must come from that posture and reinforce it. The ashes are not the end we seek but a vehicle through which we are reminded of our mortality—that we are made of dust and that it is to the dust that we shall return. Whenever we show off our ashes so that others can see them, the entire gesture is obliterated. An act of humility before God cannot withstand even the tiniest boast from within.

If we are going to make a right start of this Lenten observance, we aren’t going to enjoy it. Lent is about remembering the things we don’t want to hear: we are mortal; we are sinful; we are utterly incapable, which is to say we need God completely. Ash Wednesday is about remembering that, in the eternal sense, all of our accomplishments are worth no more than a pile of dust. And the reason that truth is worth celebrating is because God loves the pile of dust that he has made into you and me. We are precious to God totally and completely because God chooses to love us. God’s love is unconditional. Anything we do this day that seeks to make ourselves better in God’s eyes—more worthy of God’s love—more deserving of God’s grace—serves to undermine what this day is all about.

We are nothing more than a wonderfully, beautifully complex arrangement of dust. In time, every speck of dust that comprises your body will be returned to the earth and scattered to the wind. There will be nothing left, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. But God loves you anyway. And that love is the only thing that has the power to put you back together again. Today is about remembering that that love is a gift you don’t deserve, but it’s one God has given you anyway. Don’t throw that precious gift away because you want people to see the ashen cross on your forehead, even if it’s the prettiest one you’ve ever seen.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

A City On A Hill

 

February 8, 2026 – The 5th Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A
Isaiah 58:1-12; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; Matthew 5:13-20

© 2026 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video is available here.

Four hundred years ago, likely standing on the deck of the ship Arbella, John Winthrop delivered what has since been described as the greatest lay sermon ever preached. Historians aren’t sure whether Winthrop himself was the author or whether he was reading someone else’s work, nor are they sure whether he was preaching before or during the transatlantic voyage, but they are sure that his words to the members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 were a solemn call to fulfill their divinely appointed mission as settlers in the New World. 

Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck and to provide for our posterity is to follow the counsel of Micah—to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities. For the supply of others’ necessities, we must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own—rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together—always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.[1]

Even before they arrived near what is now Boston, Massachusetts, Governor Winthrop wanted his fellow colonists to know that they had an obligation to God and to future generations to establish a community guided by the Christian values of justice and mercy. But, for him, these were not merely abstract concepts to which their colony should aspire. They were real, governing principles that dictated actual communal practices like the requirement to lend generously to those in need without regard for their ability to repay the loan or to be sure that anyone who did not have enough bread to eat was provided for by those who did.

In the closing words of his sermon, Winthrop quoted today’s gospel lesson, reminding those who dared embark on this dangerous undertaking that their actions would be seen by others and that they must, therefore, build a society that would bear witness to their faith in God: 

We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: the Lord make it like that of New England: for we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world…we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us until we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.[2]

This was the first time an American politician quoted Jesus’ line about “a city on a hill,” and how things have changed! Over the centuries, Winthrop’s warning about the need to establish a godly community has been repeated and altered until the phrase is now most often used as a justification for American exceptionalism. As God’s shining city on a hill, some argue, our nation must remain a beacon of liberty for the world at all costs. That sounds quite different from Winthrop’s admonition that the eyes of the world are upon us, and the choices we make about the society we embody will be seen and judged by others.

But what did Jesus mean when he preached those words in the Sermon on the Mount? What sort of city on a hill did he have in mind for his followers? First, we must remember to whom Jesus was speaking. The crowd that gathered around him was amazed by his miraculous healings and captivated by his message about the nearness of God’s reign. They followed him because Jesus gave them hope—the kind of hope they hadn’t found in their ordinary lives. The religious and political and economic institutions of their day had left them wanting more, and Jesus was giving it to them.

These were ordinary people, working people, disaffected people. Jesus had taught them to believe that God could do more for them and the world than they were accustomed to seeing. He had invited them to give up their lives as they knew them and follow him into a way of freedom, inclusion, reconciliation, and peace. “You are the light of the world,” he told them. You are the ones through whom God’s light and love are shining in this world. Together, you are as a city built on a hill—a beacon of hope that cannot be hidden. So do not hide your light under a bushel basket but let it shine out so that everyone can see its glory—the glory of God that lives within you and through you.

Jesus wasn’t talking about the United States of America, but he was absolutely talking about this nation—this country, this community, this place we call home. Whenever God’s people come together to build a society, God’s ways must be at the heart of their common life. “I have not come to abolish the law or the prophets,” Jesus tells us. “I have not come to abolish but to fulfill.” And what are the law and the prophets that Jesus commands us to keep in his name? Into what way of being does he call us? “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

The prophet Isaiah reminds us what shape our common life must take, and Jesus calls us to fulfill that vision by giving us the Holy Spirit who lives and breathes and works through us until God’s kingdom comes. You are the light of the world, he tells us. God’s light of salvation has been given to us. It burns brightly within all who belong to God in Jesus Christ. Together, we are as a city that has been built upon a hill. Collectively, the light that God has implanted within us shines as a beacon to others. The eyes of the world are upon us, even now. This broken and hurting world is desperate for a message of hope that is more than mere words. And Jesus has given us that hope and called us to carry it to all the places in this world where evil resides.

We must, however, remember that we are not the source of the light we carry. When we forget that we are custodians of the divine light and mistake our own inclinations for the will of God that is only given to us by the Holy Spirit, we inevitably twist the meaning of Jesus’ words into a maxim that promotes our own exceptionalism. The history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, including its destructive relationship with the Algonquian-speaking tribes they encountered as well as its record as the first slave-holding colony in New England, is a stark reminder that even those who intend to embody the principles of our faith often miss the mark. We need God’s continual help to let our light shine.

To close, I borrow from the words of President-Elect John F. Kennedy, who, in a speech given to the Massachusetts state legislature, reminded this nation of the importance of a moment that I believe we still inhabit: 

Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill—constructed and inhabited by [people] aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities. For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arabella [sic] in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within. History will not judge our endeavors—and a government cannot be selected—merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these. For of those to whom much is given, much is required.[3]

Now, as much as ever, our light must shine before others, so that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven.


[1] Winthrop, John. “A Model of Christian Charity,” from https://www.masshist.org/publications/winthrop/index.php/view/PWF02d270.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Kennedy, John F. “Address of Delivered to a Joint Convention of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” January 9, 1961, from https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/massachusetts-general-court-19610109.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels:
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)