Blessed Assurance

 

May 10, 2026 – The 6th Sunday of Easter, Year B

Acts 17:22-31; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21

© 2026 Evan D. Garner

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

It’s exam season. Last week, as I drove one of my children to school, I noticed that the roads and sidewalks around the university were unusually empty except for a few, spaced-out undergraduates walking with that dazed look on their face that could only mean one thing. High school seniors are done with classes, but some of them still have AP exams to take. Other high school students are just gearing up for the stressful season. 

In a way, final exams still affect us all, even if it’s been decades since we sat for one. How many of you still wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming about studying for the wrong exam or showing up on the wrong day? Some of you spend as much time grading exams as your students spend studying for them. And, as the name Father Chuck gave our end-of-life planning workshop a few years back implies, all of us will someday be facing our “Final Exams,” whether we’re ready for them or not.

In today’s gospel lesson, for the second week in a row, we hear about Jesus’ disciples cramming for their final exams. This is the Last Supper. This is the moment when Jesus explains to his disciples that one of them will betray him. This is the dinner at which he tells them that he is about to depart from them and go to a place where they will not be able to follow. And the disciples’ response is a mixture of disbelief and panic. 

Last week, we heard Jesus reassure his disciples that they were ready—that they already knew everything they needed to know to carry on in his absence. “You know the way to the place where I am going,” he said to them. But Thomas wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure about anything anymore. “Lord, we don’t even know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And Jesus replied, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. If you know me, you don’t need to know anything else.” Then, we heard Philip speak up and say, “Lord, if you will just show us the Father, we will be satisfied.” And Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time and still you do not know me?”

The disciples are grasping at straws. And who can blame them? They now know that the moment of truth is right around the corner. Jesus is leaving them, and it will be up to them to follow in his footsteps—to maintain his ways and observe his teachings—without his help. He won’t be around to show them how it’s done. They want nothing more than to be found faithful in his absence, but they hardly know where to start. So, like any good teacher, Jesus speaks to them with calming words of reassurance. Jesus knows that this is his last chance to teach them and form them for a lifetime of being his disciples even after he is gone, so he lays it out for them as simply as he can.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Those words are supposed to make them feel better. They are Jesus’ way of telling his disciples that, as long as they focus on what is really important, everything else will take care of itself. But somehow, over the years, like anxious disciples, we’ve forgotten what Jesus was trying to tell us and allowed his words to take on a new meaning—one that doesn’t sound at all like what Jesus was meant. And it all depends on how we hear the word “if.”

Among the many challenges that come with translating the biblical manuscripts into an English text is the challenge of not being able to hear the tone with which Jesus said these words. How do you hear him? Does the way he says these words anticipate our success or our failure? I’m not sure I can adequately give voice to the distinction I hear in my mind, but one version sounds like the equivalent of, “[As long as] you love me, you will keep my commandments,” while the other sounds more like, “If you [really] love me, you will keep my commandments.” 

The first is a statement of reassurance—one which lets the disciples know that, as long as they love Jesus, they will be faithful to him. The second feels more like a thinly veiled threat—one which conveys to the disciples Jesus’ doubt that they will ever love him enough to be faithful—like an emotionally manipulative parent who tells their children that, if they really loved them, they would clean their room. To me, only the first one sounds like Jesus, but that doesn’t stop us from hearing these words as if Jesus were trying to shame us into obedience.

I bet all of us have had a teacher, coach, boss, spouse, or parent who has used that tactic to try to get the best out of us. In fourth grade, my PE teacher was like that. He went around telling students that he didn’t think they were fast enough, strong enough, or disciplined enough to impress him. And he was right. Plenty of us resented him so much that we tried our best to prove him wrong, but I know I didn’t come out of the fourth grade any better for it. His “tough love” wasn’t really love at all because the only things that it fueled with us were spite and hatred. 

How often does that same approach get transferred to Jesus by pastors and preachers and Sunday school teachers who don’t know how to think about discipleship any other way? There are so many Christians out there who teach children that, if they really love Jesus, they will always do the right thing. But that never works. Because we never do the right thing. We’re human beings. We’re sinners. And, if we have been taught that people who really love Jesus always do the right thing, whenever we fail, we will believe that it’s because we don’t really love Jesus. And that fills us with shame. And shame has never motivated anyone to be better. It only shuts us down. 

I once heard a pastor say to a congregation, “If I could scare the hell out of you, I would.” And he meant it. But turning Jesus into a chronically disappointed motivational speaker or frustrated life coach won’t help us one bit. We need a savior.

If all we’ve ever known in our life is “try harder or else,” it may be difficult to grasp the truth of the gospel. Jesus didn’t die on the cross to motivate us to work harder. He died to give hopeless, recalcitrant sinners the gift of God’s unbreakable love. And the only thing we need to focus on is nurturing within ourselves the love that God’s love for us inspires. 

Unconditional love is the only thing that has the power to change us for good. In Jesus Christ, you are loved with a love that has the ability to shape you for holiness—to form you into the image of the one who loves you—to love you into loving others as you have been loved. “This is my commandment,” Jesus says to his disciples, “that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). We are already loved. That love is not withheld from us until we clean our room, say our prayers, or reach a prerequisite level of faithfulness. It is showered upon us freely and indiscriminately even and especially while we are lost in our own failures because God knows that unconditional love is the only thing that works. Love inspires love, and love is the root of faithfulness.

Imagine showing up for the most important final exam of your life and being told that you have already received a perfect grade. Imagine your teacher or professor or doctoral advisor letting you know from the outset that you are already home free and that the only point of the exam is to give you a chance to celebrate and explore everything you already know. Imagine diving in not at all worried about the outcome but excited for the chance to delight in having already been found worthy. Axios! Worthy! That is the affirmation Jesus proclaims to us through the cross. His death does not highlight our failures. It makes us worthy.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. That is Jesus’ promise to us. His love teaches us how to love and beckons from us the love that is our faithfulness. 

He Walks With Us

 

April 19, 2026 – The 3rd Sunday of Easter, Year A

Acts 2:14a,36-41; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35

© 2026 Evan D. Garner

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

Today, for the third week in a row, we hear a gospel lesson that takes place on Easter Day. First, we heard from John about Mary Magdalene going to the tomb early that morning—how she found that the stone had been rolled away, how she ran to tell the disciples what she had seen, and how, after they had returned home, the risen Jesus came and revealed himself to her.

Last week, we heard another story from John’s gospel account—how, later that same night, the disciples were huddled behind locked doors, how Jesus came and found them and revealed himself to them, how Thomas had not been with them, and how Jesus came back a week later just to show himself to the doubting disciple.

Today we hear from Luke’s version of Easter. Luke also starts from the perspective of the women who went to the tomb early in the morning and found that the stone had been rolled away and that Jesus’ body was nowhere to be seen. Luke recalls how angels appeared to tell them that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and he explains that this was the moment when the women remembered that Jesus had taught his followers to anticipate his death and resurrection on the third day. But, when the women went and found their male counterparts and told them what the angels had said, the men dismissed their words as if they were an idle tale. They would not believe them. And that’s where today’s gospel lesson picks up the story.

Two of Jesus disciples—Cleopas and one whose name we are never told—are on their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They are walking the road of defeat. That they have left the capital city and the companionship of the other disciples lets us know that there is no sense among Jesus’ followers that the empty tomb is a sign of Christ’s victory. They are talking about the things that have happened, but the truth of Jesus’ triumph is still hidden from them, just like Jesus’ presence with them on the road. 

“While they were talking and discussing,” Luke tells us, “Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” Why do you think they failed to recognize Jesus? Was it their grief—tears that blurred their vision? Was it the unlikeliness of Jesus’ resurrection—an idea so far-fetched that they couldn’t see it even when it stared them in the face? Had Jesus’ body taken on some new and strange appearance that the disciples were unable to see beneath? Or was there something about the truth of Jesus’ resurrection that they could not grasp until Jesus had made it known to them?

Jesus begins his ministry to these grief-stricken disciples with a question: “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” He is willing to start wherever they are. “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” they ask in reply. “What things?” Jesus says back to them. Even though he was more aware of what had happened than any other person on the planet, Jesus knew that, in order for these disciples to discover the truth, they had to be the ones to guide the conversation.

In the retelling that follows, we see that they knew just about everything that had happened to Jesus. He was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, yet the religious leaders had handed him over to be crucified. We had hoped that he was the one to redeem God’s people. Moreover, some of the women in our fellowship had astounded us with the news that his tomb was empty and that they had seen a vision of angels who claimed that he was alive. Some of the men went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him.

In effect, they knew everything, yet they could see nothing. They got all the pieces right. They knew all the details. They had the whole story. Jesus was a prophet mighty in word and deed. He was the one to redeem God’s people. Yes, he had been crucified, but now his tomb was empty because, as the angels had declared, God had raised him from the dead in triumph. The disciples were not missing a thing. Yet, when they surveyed all that they had, they found that they had nothing—just a story that ended with emptiness, absence, a void. 

After letting them explain what they knew, Jesus helped them put the pieces together. “Oh, how foolish you are and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” Jesus speaks to them with tenderness and compassion. The word translated for us as “foolish” literally means “non-thinking,” as if to imply that they hadn’t thought through it all properly. And “slow of heart” speaks not of their lack of intelligence but of their failure to orient themselves fully to Jesus’ teachings. The disciples’ problem was not a lack of intellectual knowledge but a need for spiritual comprehension. And, if you think about it, we shouldn’t be surprised that individuals who had experienced such trauma and grief were struggling to understand what was really going on. 

Luke does not tell us exactly what biblical passages Jesus used to help the disciples make sense of what had taken place, but we can imagine that, during their walk together, Jesus spoke about God’s promise to Abraham, about Israel’s deliverance from captivity in Egypt, about the prophets who called upon God’s people to repent, about the one who would suffer for the sake of God’s people, about God’s restoration of the people to their land, and about God’s promise to redeem them from tyranny and oppression. When Jesus described the ways in which God’s anointed one was sent by God not only to reclaim the throne of his ancestor David but to do so by suffering and dying in order to save God’s people from the power of sin and death, we can imagine that the disciples’ minds were racing as they tried to make sense of everything that this stranger was saying to them. But, still, they did not recognize him.

Later on, after they knew who it was that had walked beside them, we are told that their hearts were burning as Jesus opened the scriptures for them, yet, still, they did not know who it was that was speaking. This reflects a profound truth about human experience. The disciples knew all of the details that they were supposed to know, and they had heard an expert make sense of the story. Jesus himself had explained to them why what had happened to him had to happen—who he was and how his life, death, and resurrection were the fulfillment of God’s purposes for all of humanity. And still they did not recognize who it was that was speaking to them. 

There are some truths in this life that we are unable to grasp not because of our lack of intelligence, nor because of our lack of information, nor because of our lack of understanding but because there are some truths that we can only receive as a gift. And, as long as we approach them as something we must figure out on our own, we will never obtain them.

I remember well the night when God’s love for me was finally a truth that I could receive. I was eighteen years old and had spent my entire life learning about Jesus. I had gone to church and read the Bible and said my prayers. I had sung in the choir, preached a youth sermon, and volunteered every time church had asked for help. I had given my life to Jesus more times than I could count, but I came up empty every time. I had all the puzzle pieces, and plenty of spiritual mentors had put them together for me dozens of times, but the harder I tried to see Jesus the further away he felt. Despite my best efforts—in fact, because of them—all I came up with was a void—an emptiness—until I stopped trying to find Jesus and began waiting for him to come and reveal himself to me.

When the disciples reached their destination, Jesus acted as if he would keep walking. “Stay with us tonight,” the disciples pleaded. “It is already late, and the day is nearly over.” Then, when he was sitting at the table with them, he took a loaf of bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them, and their eyes were opened. It was Jesus, who had been raised from the dead, and they knew him. Then he vanished, and the disciples got up and ran the seven miles back to Jerusalem to tell the others what had happened to them—how the risen Lord had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Jesus comes and makes himself known to us not in our knowledge of the story or in our understanding of the details but in himself, given to us as a gift for our salvation. You can study every verse of the Bible until you know it backwards and forwards, and you can learn from the wisest and most gifted spiritual teachers, and you can do all the things and say all the prayers, but, until Jesus comes and reveals himself to you, you will not recognize him. 

That is the truth of the cross. That is the heart of the gospel. We cannot make ourselves recognize Jesus. Jesus must show himself to us. And thanks be to God that Jesus comes and reveals himself to people who do not yet recognize him. That is the gift of our faith. The truth of Emmaus is that Jesus walks with us even when our eyes cannot see him. He is with us the whole way. Once we sit down and wait for him to be manifest, his presence is revealed, and our eyes are opened, and we recognize that God’s love has been with us all along.

We Are Raised With Him

April 5, 2026 – Easter Day, Year A

Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

© 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.

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[1] https://www.discoverlebanon.com/en/forum/viewtopic_p_891.html.

[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/war-and-conflicts/military/factbox-how-many-people-have-been-killed-in-the-iran-war/ar-AA1ZRq2r?ocid=socialshare.

Our Sins Hold Him There

 

April 3, 2026 – Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42

© 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.

The King Nobody Wants

March 29, 2026 – Palm Sunday, Year A

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 26:14- 27:66

© 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?

Universal Blindness, Universal Healing

 

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

1 Samuel 16:1-13; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

© 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.

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

When The Devil Whispers

 

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

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

© 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.

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