The Long Season of Salvation

 

June 8, 2025 – The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday

Acts 2:1-21; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17, 25-27

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

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

As a longtime fan of the Chicago Cubs, my life changed considerably in 2016. When they broke the Curse of the Billy Goat to win their first World Series in 108 years, my favorite team went from Loveable Losers to World Champions. Since they were no longer available as a sermon illustration for enduring hardship and repeated disappointment, I’ve had to find new ways to describe what it means for God’s people to wait for salvation. And I’m not the only one who had to come up with a new marketing plan. 

Back in 2001, I worked on the ground crew at Wrigley Field. It was a magical summer. One of the things that made it magical was how well the Cubs were doing that season. Week after week, the team remained at or near the top of the division. The veteran ground crew members, who had experienced years of disappointment, were giddy with child-like excitement. They kept telling me that this year felt different. And, sure enough, as the season wore on and the trade deadline approached, instead of trading away star players in exchange for prospects the way they usually did, the Cubs made a move that solidified their intent to compete that year. They acquired Fred McGriff, a veteran, all-star first baseman, whose bat might help them make a post-season run.

Baseball seasons are exceptionally long. Each team plays 162 games over six months, so, unlike football teams, whose hopes for a championship can be dashed in a single game, baseball teams deal in aggregates. The rhythm of the season becomes more important than individual games or weeks. The early part of the season lasts two months, during which teams give an indication of whether preseason expectations might be met. In the middle of the season, teams show whether they are worthy of giving up money and prospects to add stars at the deadline or whether they should give up their stars and save their hope for another year. And only in the final two months do fans discover whether those moves were right.

Normally, August wasn’t a great month for the Cubs. Once the July 31 trade deadline had passed, the team usually settled into a torpor during the dog days of summer. It was a familiar rhythm of hope giving way to disappointment, which was only broken by the occasional good season. I remember vendors selling t-shirts that had a list of “Top Ten Things Not Heard at Wrigley,” and somewhere near the top of the list was “August is our month.” For 108 years, those shirts made sense. Even in an exceptional year, when the Cubs made a run, fans knew that, as the end of the season approached, it was better to look ahead to Spring Training than to set your hopes on October—until, of course, all of that changed. Now, with a recent taste of ultimate success, it’s a lot harder for Cubs fans to remember that baseball seasons take a long time and that patience is even more important than a desire to win every game.

Many, many season years ago, the disciples were all together in one place, and the Holy Spirit came and filled the house where they were with a sound like the rush of a violent wind. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a blazing tongue rested on each one of them, giving to each disciple the ability to speak in other languages. So chaotic was the sight and sound, that faithful Jews from all over the known world, who were in Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, came and marveled. “What does this mean?” some of them asked. “They are drunk on new wine!” others sneered.

Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Peter stood up and spoke: “Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’”

These are the last days, Peter tells us. This is the final stretch of the season. With the death and resurrection of Jesus, God is winding up the story of salvation, and the Holy Spirit is God’s gift to the church for these last days. In the Holy Spirit, God has given us what we need to be faithful and fruitful until the very end, but what that means—what faithfulness and fruitfulness look like—depends very much on what we think the “last days” are. After all, it’s been 2000 years of last days, and it is hard to live with a sense of urgency for that long. But recovering a sense of where we are in the long story of salvation helps us remain faithful to God and faithful to the Spirit which God has given us.

When you hear a preacher start to talk about the “last days,” how does that make you feel? Most of us probably associate sermons about the end of the world with images like fire and brimstone, heaven and hell, wrath and judgment. That’s because most of the preachers who talk about the last days talk about them as if the signs described by the prophet Joel—blood, fire, and smoky mist—are close enough to scare us out of complacency. Because these are the last days, such preachers proclaim, the terrifying and decisive power of God demands radical and urgent action.

But you know what happens when human beings try to restrict and constrain God’s timeline until it fits neatly within their own understanding of chronology? It changes the way we think of God. It changes how we think of salvation. And it changes how we think of the Holy Spirit, tragically turning the gracious gift that God has given to unite us into a weapon that divides us.

Think about the Day of Pentecost. The very first gift that God gave the disciples after Jesus ascended into heaven was the ability to speak the good news of God’s salvation to all the nations of the earth. “How is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?” the crowd of Jewish pilgrims asked. These members of the Jewish diaspora, rather than needing to translate the story of salvation from the Hebrew language used in the scriptures and in the temple into the language of their birth, encountered the story of God’s people as if it were written specifically for them. The gift of the Holy Spirit, therefore, was one of invitation—invitation to relationship and intimacy.  

But intimacy takes time. And human beings aren’t patient. When we get a taste of something we want, we don’t like to wait, and, if we can use the urgency and immediacy of salvation to fuel our impatience, all the better. Instead of relying on the Holy Spirit for the long, slow work of building relationships across cultures, our ancestors in the church translated the gospel into other languages in order to conquer the people who speak them and enslave them. “These are the last days,” the clergy who held shares in slave trading companies might have said, confusing their bottom line with God’s. “If we do not bring the gospel to the ends of the earth now, all hope for the African people will be lost.”

The same desire for control and domination continues to fuel the efforts of those who speak about the last days as if damnation will crash upon us at any moment. The Holy Spirit empowers us for urgent and compelling action, but there is a big difference between speaking about the last days with urgency and speaking about them as a threat. 

The last days foretold by the prophet Joel are the days that come after suffering and hardship, not before them. Joel taught that God’s people will know that their time of punishment is over when God pours out the Holy Spirit upon all people—when everyone—male and female, young and old, slave and free—is caught up in God’s wonderful work of salvation. These are indeed the last days, but that doesn’t mean that we should be afraid that the end will come at any minute. Instead, we should rejoice because it means that God’s salvation for all people is at hand.

These last days are defined not chronologically but theologically—not temporally but teleologically. Because God has raised Jesus from the dead, we live in an era of salvation history that is defined by radical inclusion not cultural assimilation. In Christ, all people have been written into the story of salvation, and the work of the Holy Spirit is to ensure that everyone on the earth knows that they belong to God. And that’s good news!

It's hard to remember that the arrival of these last days is good news when it feels like the whole season might come to a tragic end any second. But, when we remember that the last days will last until God’s work is finished—until God’s perfect time has come—we can approach them with real hope—the kind of hope that is empowered by the Holy Spirit. God has called us to share the good news of the gospel with the whole world, and God has empowered us to do that through the long and slow work of building intimate relationships that transcend cultures. That work requires patience and vulnerability, not speed and power. In the end, that’s how God’s salvation comes to us all.

Dissonance and Resolution

 

June 1, 2025 – Easter 7C

Acts 16:16-34; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

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

Over and over, as she walked behind Paul and Silas through the streets of Philippi, a slave girl cried out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” Day after day, this girl, whose name we are never told, followed the apostles everywhere they went, relentlessly yelling to any who would listen who it was that had come into their city. You might think that the apostles would be glad to get this sort of publicity, but her cries had the opposite effect. Eventually, Paul couldn’t take it anymore. He was exhausted, annoyed, labored through and through by her incessant cries, so he turned and said to the ungodly spirit within her, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And it came out that very hour.

Who are the people that annoy you like that? Whose incessant cries drive you to the point of emotional exhaustion—to the point where the only thing you can do is turn around and yell at them to stop? 

Lots of people have the ability to bother us, but not everyone can get under our skin like that. I don’t like telemarketers, speed traps, or people who leave their shopping cart in the middle of the parking lot at the grocery store, but, after a moment of frustration, I am usually able to leave them behind. The people who really bother me are the ones who know just what buttons to push—the buttons that force me to confront not only what I do not like about the world but also what I do not like about myself. It is those individuals who instinctively identify that dissonance between the person I am supposed to be and the one who I really am and then hammer upon my inability to reconcile the two that awaken within me true rage.

The spirit of divination within that slave girl could see who Paul and Silas really were, and it knew even better than they did what was amiss within them. We cannot know exactly what brought this girl into the presence of the two apostles, but we can imagine that there was something about them—something about their identity as slaves of the Most High God—that drew this slave girl toward them. Maybe she knew that the God they served had the power to set her free. Or maybe she yearned for the companionship of some co-slaves. Whatever it was, as soon as she came near them, the spirit within her recognized a vulnerability within these two men. It could see the dissonance between the freedom that Paul and Silas proclaimed and the bondage that this girl endured. So the spirit began to shout until Paul couldn’t stand it anymore.

The Bible wants us to recognize and respond to the tension between our faithfulness and the world’s brokenness. The text makes a point of mentioning that it was on their way to the place of prayer that this slave girl found Paul and Silas. As Willie James Jennings writes, “As the disciples journeyed toward prayer, they gained a co-traveler who haunted their prayer walk. Such haunting is necessary and of the Spirit, as the tormented cries of the enslaved must always encumber the pious actions of the faithful.”  Even if the spirit within her was not of God, the Holy Spirit had the power to use its haunting voice to bring about God’s will. 

But Paul was not a completely willing participant, was he? The author of the Acts of the Apostles makes no attempt to redeem Paul’s impetuous decision to exorcise the demon spirit from the slave girl. There is no language about freedom or salvation here—only the language of annoyance. And that’s the point. When we are confronted by the dissonant collision between what we know to be right and our own failure to achieve it, our embarrassment masked as annoyance must grow into true pain and hardship before we can accept what God is trying to do within us.

What do you think Paul expected to happen when he cast that spirit out of the slave girl? I don’t get the impression that Paul thought a lot about it before he acted, but it wouldn’t take a fortune teller to know that, by eliminating her owners’ income stream, Paul was stepping into a world of trouble. To them, this nameless girl was nothing but property—an investment opportunity—and, now that the money had dried up, those owners wanted someone to pay. They dragged Paul and Silas into the marketplace—the center of commerce—and denounced them as Jews whose unfamiliar ways were threatening the peace and security promised by the empire. The sympathetic crowd was inflamed by their rhetoric, and they seized Paul and Silas, beating them and throwing them into prison.

It was in that moment that Paul finally knew that he had done something right. After being stripped naked, beaten with rods, thrown in jail, and bound in stocks, Paul and Silas began to sing. The hymns of praise they sang to God must have surprised the jailer. Surely he would have expected songs of lament and prayers of desperation, but these followers of Jesus were celebrating because they were wearing the marks of their savior. Regardless of his motives, Paul had managed to put upon himself the suffering of Jesus, which to him was a sign not of God’s abandonment but of his own faithfulness to the one whose reign stood in opposition to those who had imprisoned him. “If you can’t bear the cross,” the old gospel hymn declares, “then you can’t wear the crown.”

At midnight, while they were still singing, the ground began to tremble. An earthquake shook the prison to its foundations. The walls began to crack. The prisoners’ chains fell off. The cell doors swung open. All the prisoners had been set free—not just Paul and Silas but all who had been incarcerated. Fearing what would happen to him now that the criminals were let loose, the jailer drew his sword to kill himself, but Paul intervened. “Do not harm yourself,” he cried out in a loud voice, “for we are all here.” When God looses the chains and opens the doors and sets the prisoners free, the result is life, not death, and we must remember that.

Freedom in Christ means freedom for all. You cannot partake in the saving love of Jesus Christ and withhold that saving love from someone else without experiencing an unbearable dissonance. When you know that you are the underserved recipient of God’s unconditional love and are confronted by those to whom you would deny that same love, the experience is frustrating, emotionally exhausting, and spiritually draining. Often, when someone points out the inconsistency of our faith, our reaction is to use anger and self-righteousness to deflect our embarrassment and shame. Sometimes it just feels easier to retreat behind a wall of bluster and annoyance than to face the truth that, if God loves sinners like you and me, then God loves everyone—even and especially the people who get under our skin. 

Who are the people that annoy you to the point of emotional exhaustion, and what is it about them that God is inviting you to love the way that God loves them? In the end, it’s not really the people themselves who bother us. It’s the fact that they represent something about ourselves that we don’t like—something that we wish God would make disappear. But the only way that part of us will ever disappear is if we allow God to love it too—if we are willing to believe that even the least lovable part of ourselves is also loved by God—even that part of us which fails to love others the way that we have been loved.

Confronting that dissonance within us is costly. It usually leads to suffering and hardship. But Jesus has shown us that the way of the cross is the way that leads to everlasting life. “For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.”

_______________________

1. Jennings, Willie James. Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Westminster John Knox Press; Louisville: 2017, 159.

Becoming A Bridge

 

May 18, 2025 – Easter 5C

Acts 11:1-18; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

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

Back when Morgan County, Alabama, was still a dry county, people would drive just over the border into Madison County, where a liquor store had been opened by a savvy entrepreneur. Though I never witnessed it myself, I am told that Shine Peebles, a life-long Episcopalian and practical joker, would walk into the store and declare loudly enough for all the customers to hear, “Brother Billy,” invoking the name of a prominent nearby Baptist minister, “what are you doing in here?” Apparently it was enough to get most of the customers to duck out of the store, clearing the way for Shine to go to the front of the line.

The presumption, of course, is that Brother Billy would only have come to the liquor store to catch some of the members of his church red-handed. If he wanted to buy alcohol for himself, he would need to drive several counties over to avoid bumping into someone he knew. In more conservative Christian traditions, that’s all takes to get a minister fired from his position—the scandal of getting caught buying a bottle of booze. We might laugh with our superior sense of tolerance, but we have our own lines that we are unwilling for our religious leaders to cross. What if your bishop were caught coming out of a strip club? What if there was a photograph on social media of your rector at a MAGA rally?

There are people we don’t want to see our clergy hanging out with, and there are places we don’t want to see them go. Where do you draw those lines? In your mind, who are the people and where are the places that feel antithetical to who God is and what God wants in the world? What’s the group of people that, if you were to see me spending time and breaking bread with them, you would want to pick up the phone and call the bishop because you knew I couldn’t be an effective priest anymore?

In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is in that kind of trouble. Word has gotten back to the leaders in Jerusalem that Peter has been eating alongside Gentiles, and they are not happy about it. It’s hard for us to appreciate how controversial it was that Peter, a devout Jew and a leader among Jesus’ followers, would share a meal with the uncircumcised. Back then, Jews and Gentiles led wholly separate lives, not only because of the need for ritual purity but also because of years of oppression at the hands of their Gentile neighbors. Whether a follower of Jesus or not, Jewish people agreed that the one thing that most stood in the way of God’s vision for God’s people was the tyranny of their Gentile occupiers. 

To enter a house and share a meal with non-Jews, as Peter was reported to have done, was presumed to be a violation of the Mosaic law and a betrayal of one’s identity. Zealots like Saul of Tarsus, who later became known as Paul the Apostle, were convinced that Jews who failed to keep the religious standards of their people were the reason that God had not yet come to dwell among God’s people. Breaking bread with the uncircumcised, in other words, was itself the reason that God’s promised salvation was not yet manifest on the earth. The Christian leaders in Jerusalem may not have been zealots like Saul, but they knew that no good could come of Peter’s fraternization with the Gentiles, and they hauled him in front of them to explain himself.

What I find most remarkable about Peter’s defense is how flimsy it is. All he did was explain to them what happened, step by step: “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision.” Peter recalls for the leaders in Jerusalem everything that happened, but not once does he cite a verse from the Torah or the Prophets to justify his actions. Not once does he explain the theology behind God’s decision to include the Gentiles. His only defense is the experience itself, and experience is always the weakest warrant for any theological argument.

“There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners,” he told them. “As I looked closely, I saw four-footed animals, beasts, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter, kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane has ever entered my mouth.’” Three times, Peter saw this same vision, and, each time, as he protested, the voice proclaimed, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” And, as soon as the vision was gone, there was a knock at the door. 

Servants of Cornelius the Centurion, a Roman officer who had experienced his own vision, had come to take Peter to meet their master. Led by the Holy Spirit, Peter went with them and entered the centurion’s house, where he told them about Jesus. As he was speaking to them, the Holy Spirit fell upon the Gentiles who were gathered there, and Peter, remembering what Jesus had taught them about being baptized with the Holy Spirit, declared, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” After they were baptized, Peter remained with them for several days.

Looking back from the perspective of an almost completely Gentile church, it’s easy for us to see that God was at work bringing even non-Jews into the community of faith. But it’s remarkable how personal, individual, and therefore unconvincing Peter’s argument is. Imagine a reporter sticking a microphone into the face of an embarrassed minister as he came out of a brothel and hearing the minister say, “I had a dream last night that God wanted me to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the people who work here, too.” Wouldn’t we expect a more convincing story than that before we agreed to fund that pastor’s new ministry among sex workers?

But the leaders in Jerusalem didn’t need one. Peter simply told them what had happened, without engaging in any argument or attempt at self-justification, and that was enough to win the hearts and minds of the church. By offering himself and nothing more, Peter enabled those in Jerusalem  to see what God was doing and to put their hostility away. 

When we become as vulnerable as Jesus and allow the Holy Spirit to speak for us, God uses our vulnerability as a bridge that spans the hostility that divides us from others. Notice the reaction of the leaders in Jerusalem. Our translation tells us that “they were silenced,” but the word that is translated for us as “silenced” is a word that literally means “came to peace.” When they heard Peter’s story and witnessed his vulnerability, the people who were interrogating Peter came to peace. As other translations put it, they “stopped arguing” (CEV), or they “calmed down” (CEB). 

The only way to dissolve the hostility that exists between us and the people whom we believe are standing in the way of God’s vision for the world is with the vulnerability and humility of Jesus. Peter didn’t convince his opponents of anything. He didn’t win the argument or wear them down. He adopted the posture of the cross, trusting that what Jesus had already accomplished would be enough. And the result was peace—the end of quarreling. That’s how the world becomes the place that God dreams it to be. Not when we win the theological battles but when we become like Jesus and trust that his self-sacrificial love is enough to unite us all.

That’s what Jesus did on the cross. His body became a bridge that spans the hostility that divides us from God and that divides us from one another. Jesus’ outstretched arms are offered not only in a gesture of embracing love but also as a means of connection between aggrieved parties. The principal accomplishment of the cross of Christ is the reunification of all people to God and to each other. That’s what forgiveness means. Peter knew that. He had experienced it for himself. So, when God showed up in a most unexpected way, he was ready to receive it, and he was ready to offer his own body as the bridge by which the barrier between Jew and Gentile could be abolished.

Because of Jesus Christ, you have been made one with God and with one another—and not just with the people you like or the people you manage to tolerate but even the people you cannot stand at all—the ones whom you think are the very embodiment of everything that stands in the way of God’s vision for the world. Jesus has made you one with them. Do you know how all the hostility and hatred between us and them goes away? When we become like Jesus—vulnerable and humble and willing to lose so that God’s love might win.

Finding True Certainty

 

April 20, 2025 – Easter Day

Acts 10:34-43; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; John 20:1-18

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

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

Anyone have a picnic planned for this afternoon? Anyone buy a new outfit you were hoping to show off? Anyone hide Easter eggs all over your yard so your children or grandchildren could find them in their raincoats and galoshes? This isn’t the beautiful, sunny, picturesque celebration we had in mind, but Christ is still risen all the same. Alleluia!

Sometimes our plans don’t work out, but that doesn’t stop us from trying. Anyone here married to a planner? I’m talking about the kind of planner who has backup plans to backup plans—the sort who makes you leave for the airport four hours before your flight just in case a herd of elk decide to block the interstate. Anyone live with one of those? 

If so, these last few months haven’t been easy, have they? All of us are having to plan for contingencies we never dreamt were possible. And bad weather is only the start. How do you plan for retirement if you don’t know whether there will even be a stock market in five years? And what a luxury it is to even contemplate retirement! What’s it like to plan a wedding when you aren’t completely sure that your marriage will be legal by the time the date rolls around? What it’s like to plan to have children when you aren’t sure you would be able to get the life-saving treatment you need should that unlikely possibility come to pass? What’s it like to go shopping for a family dinner when you can’t be sure that your undocumented spouse will even come home from work tonight? In a world of deep uncertainty, we need the confidence of Easter.

Two summers ago, I decided it would be a good idea for our family to have an emergency preparedness kit. I bought a hand-cranked weather radio and phone charger. I bought some extra flashlights, toothbrushes, and toothpaste. I bought some peanut butter and canned chicken and other shelf-stable foods. I bought a can opener. I bought a little fishing tackle box that I could put some medications in. I bought some large jugs of water. And I put it all in a waterproof plastic bin, which I slid into the back of my closet. I was so proud of myself. We were ready.

A few months ago, I decided I needed to update its contents and switch out the shelf-stable items and medication for newer supplies. When I opened the bin, however, I discovered that everything inside was submerged in a pool of water. The seams on the water jugs had ruptured, and everything that was supposed to keep our family safe in the unlikely event of an emergency was immersed in the gross, rusty waters of my own miniature flood. The irony is not lost on me that my efforts to prepare for a disaster became their own disaster.

Having an emergency preparedness kit is a good idea, but pretending that it is an infallible means of protection only leads to disappointment. Striking the right balance between planning for the future and setting yourself up for frustration depends upon your ability to accept that, while you can anticipate some of what the future holds, there is no amount of planning that can make you immune from what life will bring. Ironically, the more you try to hold on to the myth of unassailable peace and security the more quickly those dreams slip through your fingers. Letting go of that need for certainty is the only way we can find certainty. That may sound like bad news, but I assure you that it isn’t. It’s how the true hope of Easter becomes manifest in us.

After Peter and the other disciple had gone into the tomb, seen the linen wrappings lying where the body of Jesus had been, and gone back to their homes, Mary Magdalene stood outside and wept. “Woman, why are you weeping?” the angels in white asked her. “They have taken away my Lord,” she said, “and I do not know where they have laid him.” Into that moment of paralyzing grief, Jesus revealed himself to her. “Mary,” he said tenderly. “Rabbouni,” she replied, overcome with joy. Her first instinct was to wrap her arms around Jesus and never let him go, but, before she could even touch him, Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ And Mary went with joy to tell them.

The instinct to seek the warm and loving embrace of our savior is a good and holy one, but all too easily our desire to be close to Jesus gets wrapped up in a different sort of hope—one that comes not from God but from the idol of security that put in God’s place. In uncertain times, we are desperate for certainty, and, often without even realizing it, we cling to Christ’s victory over sin and death as if it were a shield for the faithful in this life. When that sort of claim is made by others, it’s easy for us to recognize it as hollow. The false lure of the prosperity gospel or Christian nationalism is easy for us to spot. But, when it’s our retirement account, our pathology report, or our research grant that we’re worried about, it’s a lot harder to avoid the theological trap of thinking that, if God really were up there and if he really did raise Jesus from the dead, why doesn’t he step in and help me now?

The miracle of Easter isn’t about providing certainty in this life. It’s about the certainty Christ gives us for the life to come. As Saint Paul wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” If the victory of Jesus is only supposed to make this life—life in this broken and fallen world—easier, then we are the butt of a terrible two-thousand-year-old joke.

Jesus didn’t die on the cross and be raised on the third day to make this life easy. He died to carry us safely from this life into the next, and that unassailable truth has the power to shield us, not from hardship and suffering, but from the damning conclusion that the hardship and suffering we endure in this life will have the final word. They won’t! They can’t! Because Christ has defeated them once and for all. But that’s a victory we cling to not with our hands but only with our hearts.

“Do not hold on to me,” Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, “because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” The Jesus we hold on to is the one who has already gone into heaven to prepare a place for us. That part of us which is already linked to him—already united to the risen and ascended Jesus—clings to him even now in heaven. Even though, for now, the promise of salvation is only partially realized, its certainty is enough to sustain us when we encounter suffering in this life. How we face the challenges and uncertainties ahead of us is completely transformed by our faith in the one who was raised from the dead. We must not allow our hope in the resurrection to be diminished by pretending that it is supposed to make this life easy. But we can allow our confidence in what lies ahead to bring hope and light and life even to the hardest parts of our lives.

Sometimes the hardest part of being a Christian is remembering that the stronger our faith becomes the harder our lives on the earth become, too. That’s because, when that part of you that already dwells securely in the heart of the risen Jesus grows, your willingness to live not for this life but for the life to come grows as well. Those of us who belong to one who was raised from the dead and who now lives and reigns from heaven above are given courage and strength to let go of our need for security and certainty in this life. We cling, instead, to the promise of the new life that awaits us. We hold on to the one who is risen and who has ascended into heaven, Jesus Christ, to whom and with whom we belong for ever and ever. Amen.

Emptiness, Remembrance, Faith, Salvation

 

April 19, 2025 – The Easter Vigil, Year C

Romans 6:3-11; Luke 24:1-12

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

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

Tonight is the night when death becomes life, when darkness gives way to new light, when suffering is transformed into glory. But where is Jesus? Every gospel writer recalls for us the moment when the empty tomb was discovered, and all of them have their own particular way of telling this sacred story. Luke’s version, which we hear tonight, includes many of the same details as the other three—the early-morning setting, the stone having already been rolled away, the heavenly figures waiting nearby, and the women—always the women—who were the first to find it—but Luke is the only one who gives us a version that is this elaborate without including Jesus. 

Where is Jesus? “He is not here,” the men in dazzling clothes said to the women, “but has risen.” Why do you look for the living among the dead? The question implies a lack of understanding on the part of the women—as if they were confused about a detail that should be obvious to them. If only Jesus were here to explain it to them. If only Jesus were here to show us how to believe.

But Jesus doesn’t show up, at least not yet. Instead, the angelic figures say to the women, “Remember.” “Remember, they said, “how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” These women stood at the place where death had been defeated once and for all—the launching pad from which a categorically new moment in the story of salvation was springing forth—yet the truth of what God had done could only be found by going back—back into their memories, where they could inhabit that transformation for themselves. Only when we remember—only when we return to dwell in that place where our own emptiness is met by the fullness of God’s love—can the truth of the resurrection take hold in our lives.

Of course that truth was declared first to the women. Because of their status in that society, which is to say because they occupied a position of non-privilege, they were able to see the empty tomb and find within its absence the power of the resurrection. Although all four gospel writers remember that the women were the first to discover it, Luke is the only one who allows that discovery to be for them and them alone. In the other three, the women were told to go and share that good news with the male disciples. But not in Luke. Instead, Luke knows what will happen when the women go and tell the eleven all that had happened: their words were dismissed as an idle tale.

The men would not receive their testimony. The men did not believe them. The men did not even bother to go and see it for themselves, except for Peter. Something within Peter was different. Leaving the ten behind, he went to look into the tomb for himself, and, although he did not remember what the women disciples had remembered, he was amazed at what he saw, and amazement is a first step toward faith.

Eight times in Luke’s gospel account someone is said to remember something. Eight different times remembrance plays a role in the unfolding story of salvation. And, in all eight, that act of remembering takes place within a context of loss, weakness, vulnerability, or rejection: Mary’s Magnificat, Zechariah’s Benedictus, Abraham’s convicting words to the rich man in Jesus’ parable, Jesus’ instructions to his disciples about not looking back in their moment of trial, the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, the request of the penitent thief who hanged on the cross beside Jesus, Peter’s shame when he heard the cock crow, and the women’s moment of realization at the empty tomb. Every time, the act of remembering comes out of a moment of emptiness, and every time that emptiness leads to salvation. 

Peter was the only one of the eleven to go and look in the tomb because he was the only one who remembered his own emptiness—the haunting shame of having denied Jesus. The realization of faith may not have come to him yet, but his amazement was a starting point.

Tonight is the night when death becomes life, when darkness gives way to a new dawn, when suffering is transformed into glory. And where is Jesus? He is found right in the center of that transformation—in the very middle of the hollowed out emptiness that is filled with the promise of new life. Suffering must always precede glory. Struggle always comes before salvation. There is no other way. And we must remember that. And, when we do, we find Jesus.

It is hard for those of us who have it easy to see within the empty tomb something other than an absence. It is hard for those of us who live the good life to hear the women’s report as something other than an idle tale. But the message of the men in dazzling clothes is the same for us as it was for them: we must remember.

Remembering is more than a simple recollection. It is the reconstitution of a moment and the repositioning of ourselves within it, and that requires emptiness. When Jesus taught his disciples that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, be crucified, and on the third day rise again, none of them understood what he said. It was not possible for any of them to see how God’s anointed one, the savior of the world, could die a shameful death. And so, when Jesus did die that shameful death, none of them could put the pieces of their shattered expectations back together again until the women were asked to remember. Their example of remembering is God’s gift to us.

Salvation comes from faith, and faith comes from remembering, and remembering comes from being empty, and being empty is where we find Jesus. The women at the tomb teach us that we must be emptied of our self-sufficiency in order to make room for the risen Lord. That is harder for some of us than it is for others. It feels scary to be asked to give up the security we have established for ourselves. More often, it is taken from us without our choosing. But the good news of Easter is that Jesus is always found in the hollowed-out space that has been made within us. It is within that space that remembrance becomes possible, and it is from remembrance that faith springs forth, and that faith is our salvation—our own place within God’s story of new life.

Commitment To Christ-Like Love

 

April 17, 2025 – Maundy Thursday

Exodus 12:1-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

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

I mentioned in the announcements on Sunday that I’m always surprised that more people don’t show up to the Maundy Thursday service. It’s such a beautiful, tender, and dramatic way to begin these three holy days, and I’m glad you’re here. But, tonight, I’m also glad that there aren’t more people with us because I want to say something that, if the wrong people heard it, might get me into trouble. Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t really like the invitation we say before coming to Communion: whoever you are and wherever you are on your pilgrimage of faith, you are welcome in this place, and you are welcome at God’s table.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, that hasn’t stopped me from saying it. I remember the search committee asking me about it when they interviewed me for this position. I don’t remember what I told them, but I remember thinking to myself, “Oh boy! That sounds really important, and I guess I’m going to have to find a way to say it.” Later on, early in my time here, I forgot to say those words at one of the Sunday-morning services. It just slipped my mind. Sometimes that happens. But, on the way out of church, a parishioner stopped and asked me about it. “Why didn’t you say the invitation to Communion?” she asked accusingly. “Don’t you believe those words? Have you decided not to say them anymore?”

As a statement of invitation and welcome, those familiar words—whoever you are and wherever you are—are a fundamental expression of the character of this parish. It’s not that character that I have a problem with. In fact, that’s the thing I love most about St. Paul’s. It’s why I accepted the call to serve as your rector. The part that gives me pause is their incompleteness—it’s what we don’t say next. Hospitality and inclusion, regardless of denominational affiliation or doctrinal allegiance, are a hallmark of St. Paul’s and of the wider Episcopal tradition. But this sacramental meal that we share is nothing less than the complete offering of ourselves into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that seems to demand more than a simple word of invitation. 

Every time we receive Holy Communion, we reenact our sacred commitment to Christ’s way of living and loving and dying, which God has shown to be the way of salvation, and that seems like an awfully big ask for a first date. There’s no easy way to say to visitors and newcomers that anyone and everyone is welcome to take Communion in this place as long as they are ready to love other people the way that Jesus loved them, which is to say as long as they are willing to die not only for the people who love them back but even for those who don’t love them at all. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I want to hear that every week, either. But that’s what Jesus says to us tonight.

Do this in remembrance of me. It is an imperative. When Jesus was at the table with his disciples on the night before he died, he took a loaf of bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” After supper, he did the same with the cup of wine, saying, “Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” Saint Paul’s words to the Corinthian church are the earliest written record of Holy Communion. He shows us that Jesus’s followers have been sharing this sacred meal not only as a way of remembering Jesus but also as a way of “proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes.” 

The word translated for us as “proclaiming” literally means “down-declaring,” which carries the same connotation we might use when describing how an authority figure like a parent or a teacher has “laid down the law.” It means to announce something significant and with conviction. When we share Communion, therefore, we are not only recalling in our minds what Jesus did for us, but we are declaring to the world with conviction the centrality of Jesus’s death in our lives.

In the gospel lesson for Maundy Thursday, we hear another imperative that has its roots in the same meal. Interestingly enough, although Holy Communion has always been central to our identity as Christians, the Gospel according to John does not mention it. The other gospel accounts—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—all record Jesus’s command that we are to share the bread and wine—Christ’s body and blood—in remembrance of him. But John recalls another aspect of that Last Supper: the washing of the disciples’ feet. 

As Jesus put a towel around his waist and prepared, like a servant, to wash the disciples’ feet, Peter objected vehemently: “You will never wash my feet!” It is absurd, if you think about it, for the King of kings to stoop down on the floor and wash the feet of his subjects—his followers. Peter wanted no part of it, yet Jesus insisted. This was not merely an act of humility. It was a pattern for us to follow. “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet,” Jesus said, “you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” For us, Jesus provides not only a model of humble service but also of the radical love that undergirds it. That is the new commandment that Jesus has given us—that we love one another just as he has loved us—and we pledge ourselves to that way of love every time we gather at this table.

When the nature of that love becomes clear, the absurdity behind it becomes even more profound. As John’s description of that night shows us, Jesus not only washed the feet of Peter and the rest of the eleven disciples who remained faithful to him, but he also washed the feet of Judas his betrayer. “Not all of you are clean,” Jesus said, but he washed all of their feet. Similarly, in the synoptic gospel tradition, when Jesus gave the blessed bread and wine to his disciples, Judas was still there at the table. “This is my body, which is given for you,” he said even to the one who had betrayed him to death. The death of Jesus, which we proclaim every time we share Holy Communion, was not withheld even from the one who set that death in motion.

What did Judas feel in his heart as he looked down at his teacher, the one he would soon arrange to be arrested, washing his feet? What maddening thoughts must have gone through his mind as he received this gesture of incomprehensible love from the one whose love he would reject? What did Jesus feel in his heart as he knelt down before his betrayer and washed his feet as carefully and lovingly as he washed anyone else’s? What do we feel in our hearts when we realize that Jesus’s offering of himself upon the cross was not given for the sake of our best selves but even for that part of us that is utterly unworthy of his love? What does it feel like to know that we must love others like that?

In one sense, I need to hear those words beckoning me back to the table each time we gather in this place: whoever you are and wherever you are in your pilgrimage of faith, you are welcome in this place, and you are welcome at God’s table. That part of me that struggles to believe that Jesus’s sacrifice—his love—is meant for me yearns to hear those words of welcome. And so I say them each time—not only to you but to my own heart. And yet all of us must also hear the significance of that invitation—that, if we are going to share this sacred meal not only in remembrance of Jesus but as an expression of who we are and who we desire to become, we must make his sacrificial love the defining characteristic of our lives.

This is not a casual encounter. It is not a chance to get acquainted with Jesus and try his love on for size. When you come to that table, you are accepting that the way Jesus loves each one of us must become the way that you love others. And nothing about that is easy. Don’t let our genuine and wide-open invitation obscure the significance of what takes place within us when we partake of Christ’s body and blood.

You don’t need to have everything figured out to come to that table. You don’t need to agree with everything that the church teaches. You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t even need to love others the way the Jesus loved them. But you need to want that. You need to want the love of Jesus to break open your heart until you are able to love all people—even your enemies, even those who betray you—with that same love. Everyone is welcome at that table, including you, and that means that you must welcome anyone who comes with the open arms and open heart of Jesus.

Devoted To Mercy

 

April 6, 2025 – The 5th Sunday in Lent, Year C

Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

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

In the hallway just past the bookstore, right across from Sara’s office, there is a curious window. It is one of three painted-glass windows that depict different moments from Jesus’ life. In this particular window, the large, central image is of Joseph teaching his young son Jesus how to be a carpenter. But that’s not the curious part. The part that I find fascinating is in the upper left corner, in which there is a small, easily overlooked depiction of Judas.

Not every artist decides to include an image of Judas among the other disciples. Sometimes they leave him out entirely, and other times they go ahead and put in Matthias, who was eventually chosen to take Judas’ place. Each window in the hallway includes four different disciples surrounding the central image. They don’t have labels, so you can only tell who is who is by interpreting the iconography that accompanies each one. 

In Judas’ case, you can see that the halo or nimbus, which surrounds the heads of the other eleven disciples with a golden yellow glow, has faded out completely. There is a sadness in his eyes and slightly downturned mouth. But the most obvious detail that gives Judas away is the artist’s depiction of the money bags. While holding out with his right hand a tray that has two purses on it, Judas the betrayer clutches a third bag close to his chest, partially hidden by his robe.

We can thank the author of the fourth gospel account for that understanding of Judas. John is the only one who mentions that Judas stole money from the common purse. Whoever John was—perhaps the beloved disciple himself—he really had it out for Judas. Over and over in his version of the gospel, he adds editorial comments that leave the reader no doubt how evil and wicked Judas was. When Matthew and Mark recall this same episode of Jesus’ anointing at Bethany, it is not Judas who raises the objection about forgetting the needs of the poor but all of the disciples and some of the other people standing around. John, it seems, goes out of his way to throw shade on Judas.

To be frank, Judas probably deserved everything that John gave him, but I think his contempt for the traitor makes it harder for us to appreciate what really happened in Bethany that night. What if, just for a moment, we leave aside John’s dogged criticism of Judas—the portrayal of him as a thief—and, instead, make some rhetorical space in our minds to hear Judas’ question as if it were asked earnestly? What might we hear Jesus say to us if we were the ones who asked, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold for three hundred denarii—a whole year’s worth of wages—and the money given to the poor?”

It's a difficult question, and churches like ours, which spend lots of money every year on things as impermanent as incense and candles, would do well to consider it. I hope it won’t surprise you to hear that I don’t intend to use this sermon to justify our use of incense, candles, or any part of our congregation’s budget. I think the vestry does an excellent job of being faithful to God with the resources that you entrust to this church. What I want to do with this sermon is to wrestle honestly with the answer Jesus gives—an answer that is as hard to understand as the situation that provoked Judas’s question in the first place: “You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.”

What does that mean? And how is that supposed to help us feel better about the fact that Mary just poured on Jesus’s feet some perfume that was worth enough money to feed a hungry family for a year? Because we’ll always have the poor with us? What sort of convoluted justification is that?

Well, it turns out that Jesus was quoting a passage from Deuteronomy, which, I think, has the potential to change the way we hear his answer. Deuteronomy 15 lays out some of the regulations for what is called the sabbatical year. According to Jewish law, every seventh year is a sabbatical—or sabbath. During that year, farmers are not supposed to plant crops or tend to what grows in their fields in order that the poor might gather whatever the land produces. Similarly, all debts that have been incurred during the previous six years are cancelled, no matter how much is still owed. Deuteronomy 15, which Jesus quotes in his reply to Judas, deals with the cancelation of those debts.

In that chapter of the Bible, God makes it clear that generous lending and the periodic cancellation of debts will ensure that no one in the land is poor. That is part of God’s vision for justice—a balanced economic system that ensures that no one will suffer generational poverty while others become rich at their expense. Although it might not sound fair to our contemporary, capitalist ears, the system was designed so that everyone—both lenders and borrowers—got a fair shake. 

But God knows that a system of justice cannot be complete without mercy. That’s why, in Deuteronomy 15, the law states that, even if the year of release is near and you know that you will have to cancel a debt before most of it can be repaid, “you shall not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.” In other words, the merciful response to immediate needs must outweigh a logical or just approach to lending. Mercy outweighs justice.

Taking care of the poor by cancelling debts, the Bible teaches us, is an act of justice. But setting aside the logical implications of that system to be sure that no one goes hungry—even if it means an unfair redistribution of that wealth—is an act of mercy. To get this point across, Deuteronomy 15:11 declares, “There will never cease to be poor in the land; therefore…‘You shall open wide your hand to the poor and your needy neighbor.’” When Jesus says, “You will always have the poor with you,” he is quoting that verse to get across the same point—not to teach us to dismiss the needs of the poor but to recognize that becoming merciful is the only way we will ever be able to care for them fully. Mercy always outweighs justice, and Jesus uses Mary’s anointing of his feet to show it.

According to Jewish custom, even though contact with a corpse makes a person ritually impure, preparing a body for burial is an act of true kindness and mercy—one that can never be repaid. Though the laws of righteousness—of justice— prohibit it, the requirements for loving-kindness—or mercy—compel a person to tend to the needs of the dead. In a spiritual way, therefore, Mary’s act of devotion—of anointing Jesus’ body in preparation for burial—makes her a symbol of true mercy and a reminder to us that, even when it conflicts with our sense of right and wrong, mercy must come before justice. 

Perhaps for years, Mary of Bethany had kept that precious ointment for a special purpose. Without even knowing why, she had it tucked away, waiting for the right moment to come along. Not even the death of her brother Lazarus, which we read about in the previous chapter, was reason enough to use the perfumed oil. But there was something about this moment, as Jesus ate at the table in her house and laughed beside her brother, whose four-day journey into death had been miraculously reversed, that told her it was time.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. He had not disclosed to Mary and her siblings the fate that awaited him there, but somehow Mary could sense it. Perhaps the grief she experienced over her brother’s death had left a mark on her soul, allowing her to see what remained hidden from others. Like the black-winged Thestral from Harry Potter, which is visible only to those who have witnessed death, Mary is able to see that Jesus’s own death has come near. Although still a week away, it is close enough to stir up within Mary complex emotions of grief and love, compelling her to pour the perfume on Jesus’s feet in an act of pure devotion.

Yes, the needs of the poor are more important than a fancy bottle of perfume or the candles and incense we burn at the altar. But nothing is more important than our devotion to the one whose death is the fulfilment of God’s justice and mercy. In the cross of Christ, we see what Mary saw in Bethany that night—the death of God’s Son offered for the sake of the world. When it comes to pondering the nature of Christ’s death, we could remain comfortably in the realm of justice and ask such academic questions as for whom and under what conditions the death of Jesus is efficacious. But then we would miss the magnitude of God’s love enshrined upon the cross—a love that can only be approached as an act of mercy worthy of our complete devotion.

As followers of Jesus, who have been reconciled to God through the death of God’s Son, we must become like Mary of Bethany. We must leave behind our desire for clarity, fairness, and balance, no matter how appealing God’s justice may seem. Maybe that was Judas’s problem all along. Those who will not allow mercy to triumph even over justice cannot know the saving love of God, whose mercy never fails. Those who behold the magnitude of God’s mercy, revealed in Jesus Christ, are shaped by God’s mercy for a life of mercy, which is an offering that is pleasing to God.

Sitting Down With Jesus

 

March 30, 2025 – The 4th Sunday in Lent, Year C

Joshua 5:9-12; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

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

Some people just ooze faithfulness. They are the grandmothers, the kindergarten teachers, the little league coaches, and the librarians who quietly and faithfully radiate God’s love. Shaped by a life of prayer, they instinctively recognize who needs a hug, who needs a word of encouragement, and who needs another chance, which they freely give without even thinking about it. Many times without knowing it, they are the role models that we think of with gratitude when we recall those people who helped us get where we are.

People like that seem to dress themselves in kindness and compassion as easily as the rest of us put on a T-shirt. But they aren’t particularly showy about their faith. That’s not because they hide it from us. They are quite willing to engage in a conversation about religion, but their relationship with God has more to do with all the little things that guide their everyday lives than the sort of religiosity that grabs the world’s attention.

On the other hand, there are plenty of other people who openly claim their religious identity but lead lives that in no way reflect the faith that they say is theirs. They are the hypocrites, the self-seekers, the power-grabbers, and the manipulators who talk about how important their faith is right before they step on your neck as they climb their way to success. They say that they read the same Bible and worship the same God as the rest of us, but their life seems devoid of even the most basic principles of our faith. 

People like that always find a way to tune out the criticism of the religious community. Instead of engaging in meaningful discourse about teachings of our faith, they quote chapter and verse as a way of shutting down the conversation. They manage to shroud their self-interested agenda in a thin veneer of divine justification, appealing to the persistence of the powers of this world as a sign that God is on their side. And they are the ones with whom Jesus chooses to dine. 

Two thousand years later, we’re so accustomed to Jesus’ hostility toward the Pharisees and his embrace of tax collectors and sinners that we forget how good and righteous the Pharisees were and how terrible and wicked were the tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors were no better than thieves. They made their living collecting revenue for the occupying empire. They contracted with government officials, agreeing to pay the expected tax revenue up front and then using the authority of the government to threaten and extort their own people until they not only collected what was due but also enough to turn a profit. And the Pharisees were the faithful Jewish people who denounced that behavior and the tyranny of Rome that it represented. 

It’s hard to come up with a contemporary analogy that conveys the level of betrayal of God and God’s people that the tax collectors represented in first-century Palestine, but, whatever example of social, moral, and ancestral infidelity you can come up with, those are the people Jesus is having dinner with at the start of today’s gospel lesson. Whoever they are in today’s world, they are the very last people you would ever want to break bread with, and our savior’s decision to eat with them should be as controversial for church-goers like us as it was for the Pharisees back then.

The parable of the prodigal son, as it is often called, is not told to those who have lost their place in society—to those who yearn for a seat at God’s table—it is told to those who are not comfortable with the people whom God has invited to have a seat. How we hear this story depends on who we are. What do you need to hear Jesus saying today? With which of the two brothers do you identify more closely? Are you the sort who is still waiting for the father to come and wrap his arms around you in a loving embrace, celebrating your return? Then hear Jesus say without equivocation that you belong here—that you are welcome at God’s table and are a part of God’s family. But, if you are more like the older brother and you feel the cortisol rushing through your body when you see who it is that Jesus welcomes to his table, then ask Jesus for the grace to see what he sees in those whom you find hardest to love. 

Although I suspect that our congregation is more likely full of Pharisees than tax collectors—of older brothers than prodigal sons—I think there is a little bit of both in all of us. In the parable, the younger son dishonors his father, effectively selling his relationship with his family for his share of the estate. But, when he comes to his senses, he is still able to trust that his father will be merciful enough to accept him back, not as a son but as a hired hand. The older son dutifully honors his father every day of his life, effectively exchanging his own desires for his loyalty to his family. But, when his wayward brother returns, he is unable to accept his father’s forgiveness and mercy. There is no room in the heart of the older son for grace and undeserved love. It seems that neither son really knew who his father was.

No matter what side of the parable we find ourselves on, Jesus is beckoning us to sit down at the table with those from the other side. To those who feel unworthy of anything more than a place in the servants’ quarters, Jesus says, “Come and sit with me. Tonight, we share a feast to celebrate your place in the family of God.” To those who feel resentment toward the ones whom God would welcome with open arms, Jesus says, “Come and sit with me. Tonight, we share a feast to celebrate your place in the family of God.” The invitation is the same for all of us. No matter who we are, we belong at God’s table, and so does everyone else. When we refuse to accept that invitation, whether it’s because we feel unworthy or because we resent the unworthiness of others, we dishonor the one who invites us—we dishonor the generosity of God.

In a world that is divided by good and bad, holy and unholy, faithful and hypocrite, Jesus comes to abolish those divisions by welcoming everyone to his table. That means you, and it also means those whose faithlessness and hypocrisy you resent the most. The prodigal within us does not believe that we could ever be worthy of a place in the heart of God, but it is not our worthiness that matters. God’s love is what welcomes us there. The Pharisee within us tends to believe that, when the whole world takes God’s love as seriously as we do, God’s reign will be complete, and that means that those who don’t are standing in God’s way. But nothing can stand in the way of God’s love because God’s love belongs to everyone. Jesus shows us that God’s reign cannot be complete until they belong, too.

Our belonging—our belovedness—comes not from within us but from God. It is not a measure of who we are or what we believe or how we behave. No matter how good or bad, holy or unholy, faithful or hypocritical we are, we have a place in God’s reign—at God’s table—purely because of God’s infinite grace, acceptance, and love. And that means that the possibility of unity among us—even with those most different from us—is not a product of our intention or effort but of God’s love. That is the message of the parable. That is the message of Jesus. Our job is to accept the gracious invitation that God has given to us and to all people and to let that invitation shape us together into a people worthy of a place in God’s heart.

Under The Shadow Of Your Wings

 

March 16, 2025 – The 2nd Sunday in Lent, Year C

Genesis 15:1-12,17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

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

Madder than a wet hen—have you ever used that phrase? Have you ever met someone who fits that bill? I’m not sure that Appalachian farmers actually dunked their broody hens in cold water to stun them long enough to collect their eggs, but I am sure that anyone who treats a hen like that had better scamper out of the chicken coop before that hen recovers.

I’ve been chased by chickens before. I’ve been pecked and squawked at. I’ve seen mama hens care for their chicks with the skillful balance of watchful protection and fatigued indifference that we’d expect from overworked human mothers. I’ve seen videos of chickens who fight off crows and snakes that threaten their chicks and who peck relentlessly at farmers who waited too long to collect their eggs, which resulted in a broody hen.

It's a strange way to put it, but that’s how Jesus loves us—like a mama hen who will peck and squawk and flap and claw at anyone who tries to take away her babies. In today’s gospel reading, we join Jesus on his long, deliberate journey to Jerusalem, and we hear him speak of his desire to protect the residents of that holy city, saying, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” Jesus yearns to take care of them, he tells us, but they are not willing. The same is true of us. It is a battle of wills—Jesus’ and ours. He wants to shield us under the shadow of his wings, but we have something else in mind. 

“Get away from here,” the Pharisees warn Jesus, “for Herod wants to kill you!” Herod Antipas was the tetrarch or Roman-installed leader of Galilee. He was the one who, a few years earlier, had John the Baptist executed. Now, it was being reported that Herod was coming after Jesus. The Pharisees may have been looking for an excuse to get Jesus to move along more quickly, or they may have been sympathetic to someone who had provoked the ire of a leader whom none of them respected. Either way, those religious leaders encourage Jesus to run along before trouble finds him. 

But Jesus isn’t worried about trouble. In fact, he’s looking for it. He tells the Pharisees to go and say to Herod the fox that he’s not going anywhere until his work is finished. I’ll be right here, he says, casting out demons and performing cures, for the next three days. And after that, I’m going to Jerusalem because that’s the place where prophets meet their untimely death.

The Pharisees tell Jesus to run away because Herod is threatening to kill him, but Jesus responds by telling them that he isn’t going to run away from danger but right into it. That may sound to us like Jesus is flexing his muscles or showing some machismo, but he isn’t going to Jerusalem as a warrior or a superhero but as a mother hen—a broody and cantankerous chicken who wants to shelter us under something as wonderful yet vulnerable as his feather-covered wings.

Jesus didn’t have to describe himself as a mother hen. He could have likened his protection to that of a mama bear or a lioness, whose fierce love threatens to kill anyone who dares to come between her and her cubs. But, in this gospel moment, Jesus calls himself a mother hen, and he calls Herod a fox, and we know what foxes do to chickens and their chicks. Although ultimately it will be Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, who will pronounce the death sentence on Jesus, Herod will sign off on it, too.

When it comes to keeping the people I love safe from harm, I don’t want a chicken. I want a mama bear or a mama lion to protect them, but what we need is a mother hen. That’s because it isn’t the earthly threats we should worry about but those forces that stand in the way of love, and Jesus shows us that those forces aren’t defeated by violence or strength but by vulnerability and compassion. 

Jesus doesn’t promise to keep us safe from the dangers of this world. In fact, he promises us the exact opposite. He tells his followers that they will be handed over to the authorities, persecuted, tortured, betrayed, hated, and killed. There is nothing about belonging to Jesus that will make us immune to suffering in this life. The hope that Jesus gives us is not manifest in a triumph over our enemies. No, our hope is far more significant than that. Jesus promises to love us and shield us from anything and everything that could ever separate us from God and God’s love. That is our hope, and it comes in the form of a mother hen who is willing to die for her chicks. 

It's not easy to make that our hope. It’s not easy to accept a God whose power and love come vulnerably and mercifully. It’s not easy to put our trust in a savior whose love and protection might be as fierce as a broody chicken yet in the end they are just as vulnerable as a hen to a fox. But that’s the hope of our faith—the greatest hope God has given us. 

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” Jesus cries, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” In ancient Israel, those who claimed to speak for the Lord in ways that were perceived to be antithetical to the Jewish faith were stoned to death as blasphemers. They may have gone to the holy city of Jerusalem to speak God’s truth to those in power, but their words were condemned as blasphemy, and their voices were silenced by stones. How often have we thrown stones at those prophets who dare to suggest that our God is to be found among the weak and the vulnerable instead of the rich and the powerful? 

It costs us something to stand with Jesus—to seek protection under his wings. It costs us strength and security in this life, which we must give up in exchange for what awaits us in the life to come. If we choose to belong to Jesus, we must let go of our desire to be immune to the hardships of this life. We must accept the protection he promises us in place of the protection we wish he would provide. 

“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” Jesus tells us that we won’t be able to see him until we say those words about him. Those words signify our willingness to identify Jesus as the one whom God has sent—the one who comes to do God’s work. 

On Palm Sunday, we will join the crowd in saying those words as Jesus rides into the holy city because we expect him to ascend to the throne of King David. But, by Good Friday, our affection for the one who rode into Jerusalem will be lost. Our shouts of “Hosanna!” will become cries of “Crucify him!” because, instead of defeating our enemies, Jesus speaks out against us and our unholy desire for security and power.

“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” We also say those words every time we share Communion with one another, and they carry a different connotation when we say them in this sacred meal. In Holy Communion, we acknowledge the love that God has for us in the outstretched arms of Jesus. We recognize the cost that God’s selfless love incurs when it is brought to the world. We admit that God’s love is not the kind of love that keeps us safe in this life but the kind that brings us safely into the life to come. 

Every time we gather at this table, we declare that Jesus is the blessed one—the holy one who comes to us in the name of God. In this feast of bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood, we partake in the sacrifice of the one who died for us and who protects us through his death. Here we see that our savior loves us like a mother hen, and we confess that that is the love we need most of all.

Praying God's Kingdom Come

 

Tuesday in the First Week of Lent – March 5, 2025

Matthew 6:7-15

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

This sermon was offered as part of the 2025 Soup & Sermon Series shared by Central United Methodist Church, First Christian Church, and St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Good afternoon! My name is Evan Garner, and I have the privilege of serving as the Rector or senior minister at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church across the street. I am delighted that this Lenten Soup & Sermon series is continuing this year. It was an anchor for my own Lenten practice last year, and I look forward to being fed by it again this year. I’m grateful to be a partner in ministry with Jennie, Chase, Virginia, Ryan, Cheryl, Sara, and all those who help make it possible for us to be more than isolated and separate congregations. God is doing wonderful and amazing things in and through each of our churches, and, when we get to share them with each other, the kingdom of God becomes a little clearer in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and for that I am most thankful.

Today, I want to ask you to think about your prayer life. When do you pray? How do you pray? For what do you pray? Is prayer, for you, a daily habit? An occasional pursuit? Is it something you say before every meal? Is it something you only do on Sunday mornings? Whenever you pray, do you follow a set pattern—like the Rosary or the Daily Office or something prescribed in another devotional guide—or are your prayers more freestyle? Or maybe you prefer to sit in silence with the Divine as your gentle companion. 

What do you pray for? Do you ask God to help you in difficult situations? Do you pray for friends and family who are having a hard time? Do you stop to give thanks for those little flashes of grace and divine favor that shine in your life? Or is prayer for you primarily an opportunity to be in the presence of God as if God were a lifelong friend—the sort of companion with whom you could spend the whole day as effortlessly as a spouse of fifty years?

Sometimes I hear people say that they pray all day long, by which I hear them to say, “I don’t have a particular time when I pray, but I find myself praying in lots of different situations, like when I’m in the shower, driving, working, shopping, cooking dinner, and lying in bed at night.” Usually, people who say that aren’t asking me for spiritual advice, but, if they were, I’d tell them that that’s a load of B.S.. 

Yes, Saint Paul encouraged us to pray without ceasing, and it’s wonderful to make time throughout the day for moments of prayer, but, if your prayer life looks like a collection of 20-second check-ins with God while you’re stopped at a red light, you have a life that is sprinkled with prayer rather than a life that is nourished by it. That’s like leaving your house every day without your wallet and hoping you’ll find enough change on the sidewalk to buy your lunch. You can live that way if you have to, but it’s not easy.

I suppose what I’m really asking you to think about is not the why and when and for what you pray but the role that prayer plays in your life. Why do you pray? What purpose does prayer serve in your life? What purpose do you want it to serve? And are the ways that you are currently praying actually giving you what you really need? Or is your pattern of prayer more like trying to fill a swimming pool one teaspoon at a time?

Whatever your prayer life is like, the good news I have for you today is that there is no better time to work on it than Lent. Among the three classic spiritual disciplines of Lent—prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—prayer comes first. It is the first thing we are called to attend to during this holy season. Lent is a time when the faithful prepare their hearts for the joy of Easter, and the first way we do that is prayer. 

Of course, Easter will come whether we’re ready for it or not. Because of God’s grace and mercy, the hope of our redemption is found not in our spiritual preparedness but in God’s willingness to love us and save us despite our spiritual inadequacies. That is, after all, the message of the cross and empty tomb. But preparing our hearts for Easter allows the joy of our salvation to come more fully into our individual lives, and prayer is how we do that. Prayer is the way we invite the wounded and risen Christ to be present within us. Prayer is how we make space for Jesus, which means that prayer is the vehicle or channel through which the kingdom that Christ brings with him comes to us and through us. 

As hymnist Frederick Hosmer wrote,

Thy kingdom come! On bended knee
the passing ages pray;
and faithful souls have yearned to see
on earth that kingdom's day. [1]

He wrote that hymn for the commencement ceremony at Meadville Theological School in Meadville, Pennsylvania, in June 1891.  I suspect that choir directors have a field day with the first two lines of that hymn because, as you can see, there is no punctuation that separates them. Because of that, despite our instinct to take a breath after the word “knee,” we’re supposed to carry on, holding that note until the next one comes. If, instead, the choir and congregation stop to breathe, we end up declaring that God’s kingdom comes on bended knee—as if the kingdom itself has its knees bent—rather than recalling those who, throughout the passing ages, pray on bended knee that God’s kingdom will come. But I think Hosmer, the nineteenth-century poet, knew what he was doing. I think he wanted us to imagine the ways that the reign of God comes through those whose knees are bent in prayer.

In Matthew’s gospel account, Jesus lays out a radical vision of the kingdom of God: “Blessed are the poor in spirit…Blessed are those who mourn…Blessed are the meek…Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…Blessed are the merciful…Blessed are the pure in heart…Blessed are the peacemakers…Blessed are those who are persecuted…” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus describes for us what God sees—what the world looks like when God’s ways are fully established on the earth. This description is not delivered to us as an imperative. In the Beatitudes, Jesus does not tell us what to do in order to make God’s kingdom come. He simply describes it for us—he invites us to imagine it. But, in today’s reading from Matthew 6, which we heard a little bit ago, Jesus tells us how to make that vision a reality.

“When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases, thinking that you will be heard because of your many words. God already knows what you need before you open your mouth. Instead, pray like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus teaches us to pray God’s kingdom come. The coming of God’s kingdom and the doing of God’s will are not separate petitions; they are the same thing. And Jesus shows us that prayer is how that two-pronged reality comes to bear in our lives and, through us, in the world. 

Prayer is how we learn to accept with genuine gratitude the basic sustenance that is our daily bread. Prayer is how we find within us the capacity to forgive others so that we, too, might be forgiven. Prayer is what makes it possible for the turning of the cheek and the blessing of our enemies. Prayer is what brings us into the kingdom of God by uniting us with the one who brings the kingdom of God to us, our savior, Jesus Christ. 

Every time we pray, we invite God’s will to become manifest in us and through us. Whether it’s with the familiar words of the prayer that Jesus taught us or those of any other prayer we lift up to God, our prayers, Jesus teaches us, should always be like this one. They must always be a means by which the reign of God comes to us and through us into the world. That’s why a life of prayer takes more than a handful of 20-second encounters spread throughout the day, and it requires even more than a few hours set aside on Sunday mornings. We pray so that Christ will shape us for God’s glorious reign, and that takes deep connection and intimacy with God.

Frederick Hosmer knew that signs of God’s kingdom were already visible on distant hills, and he knew that prayer is the means by which they come into focus. For it is only on bended knee that we behold, as he wrote,  

The day in whose clear-shining light
all wrong shall stand revealed,
when justice shall be throned in might,
and every hurt be healed;

When knowledge, hand in hand with peace,
shall walk the earth abroad:
the day of perfect righteousness,
the promised day of God. [2]

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1. http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/t/h/y/k/thykcobk.htm.

2. Ibid. 

Fasting Is Intimacy With God

 

March 5, 2025 – Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 58:1-12; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

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

In the spring of 1538, the price of eggs skyrocketed. At the previous Easter, one could buy a dozen eggs for a penny. But, by mid-March of that year, a penny would only get you eight, and the reason for this fifty-percent egg-inflation was a strange consequence of church and state.

As Lent approached, King Henry VIII knew he had a problem on his hands. For unknown reasons, the nation’s catch of fish had plummeted, and for a kingdom of people who loved their religious fasts, a shortage of fish was a big problem. Back then, when people fasted, they abstained not only from meat but from all animal products, including milk, cheese, and eggs. And they fasted not only during the forty days of Lent but all throughout the year—on the eves of most major feasts, on Fridays, on ember days, and on lots of other days. Some were so pious that, on whatever day of the week the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25) fell, they would fast on that weekday for the rest of the year!

Fish, therefore, were a staple of the 16th-century English diet, and a nation that did not have access to its fish was prone to revolt. So Henry VIII, whose supreme authority over the church in England had already been declared by Parliament, decreed that “white meats,” such as cheese and eggs, were no longer prohibited by the Lenten fast. It was a royal, “Let them eat eggs!” if you will, and eggs they ate, sending their price through the roof.

Of course, not everyone accepts the religious decrees issued by the head of state, and many traditionalists refused to give up their Lenten devotions. In a sermon, Thomas Coveley, the Vicar of Tysehurst, denounced both the king’s act and, by implication, the supremacy behind it, preaching, “Ye will not fast lent, ye will eat white meat, yea, and [if] it were not for shame, ye would eat a piece of bacon instead of a red herring. I dare say there be a hundred thousand worse people now than there were this time twelvemonth [ago] within England.” [1] 

Among Anglican clergy, I have pretty strong Protestant tendencies, and, when it comes to picking a side between King Henry and Thomas Coveley, who also declared that Bible-reading was the detestable habit of “botchers, bunglers, and cobblers” and, thus, was to be discouraged, I tend to side with the reformers. [2] But, on Ash Wednesday, as Mother Church stands at the threshold of another holy season of Lent, I find that even my suppressed, lowercase-c catholic instincts are again being awakened, but only if we get our priorities right.

Surely the purpose and benefit of a Lenten fast lie not in its economic impact nor in its political motivation nor even in its denominational affiliation but in its ability to unite an individual—in body, mind, and spirit—with its Maker. The fasting, which we endeavor to keep these forty days, is not about meeting the expectations of our neighbors or fulfilling the obligations of our church but about making ourselves more fully available to God.

“Whenever you fast,” Jesus taught us, “do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” The word translated for us as “reward” literally means “payback” or “return.” The question that Jesus puts before us, therefore, is whether the goal of our fasting is to receive something in return from other people or from God, or, to put it simply, whether our Lenten focus is on earth or in heaven.

No matter how Protestant your proclivities, I think all of us can accept that not every Lenten discipline is devoid of spiritual power. Jesus says that, as long as our fasting is done in secret, God is faithful and will honor our spiritual work by returning to us the fruit of that labor. But remembering what form that fruit will take is essential. As Isaiah warns us, human beings tend to distort religious practices like fasting until they become empty gestures designed to serve our own interests. A real, true, and faithful fast, on the other hand, seeks “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke…to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house.”

If offered quietly to God, fasting has the ability to awaken our conscience to see around us what God sees—the unmet needs of our neighbors. And the grumbling of our empty stomachs becomes the voice of the chronically hungry—a voice that our fasting teaches us not to ignore. There is divine power, grace, and love that come from our Lenten fast. When we abstain from the ordinary pleasures and comforts of a full life as a means by which we draw nearer to God, we invite God to conform us more fully to the divine will—a will which is always lovingly responsive to the needs of others. 

But I think there’s more to it than that. There’s no doubt that fasting has the psychological benefit of quickening your conscience and that giving all the food you otherwise would have eaten to someone who is hungry will make a big difference in their life. But I believe that fasting, like prayer, is an offering to God that God can use to do amazing things in the world. When, with God’s help, we offer a holy fast selflessly to God, our fasting has divine potential. It is a channel or vehicle through which God acts, not only by inspiring the pious to seek God’s will but even in ways that transcend psychological or scientific explanation. When we draw near to God, God draws near to the world through us. Fasting, therefore, is a means for deep intimacy and exchange with the divine.

I don’t understand how that works, and I feel a little silly saying it out loud, but I believe that, when we fast, God receives the genuine offering our ourselves and responds to that offering in love. The faithful have always known that. Whether it’s an army assembling on the eve of battle, a parent caring for a sick child, a prophet preparing for an arduous journey, a nation fearing for its future, or a congregation anticipating a day of celebration, God’s people consecrate themselves through fasting in order that God might be present among them in ways that exceed their own abilities. But that will never be the case if their fasting is offered for their own interests and not for God’s. 

Jesus tells us to wash our face and put oil on our heads in order that our fasting might be done in secret. He says that not only to teach us the value of humility but also to ensure that our spiritual work will bear the fruit we seek. You can save a lot of money by giving up meat or eggs for Lent. You can lose a few pounds if you give up sweets and alcohol. You can even impress your family and friends by showing them how faithful you are in keeping your Lenten fast. If that’s the reward you’re after, go for it. I promise that you’ll get what you’re looking for. But, if you want to see what God can do, don’t tell anyone about it, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

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1. Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars. Yale UP; New Haven: 1992, 405.

2. Ibid.

Sacrifice as Spiritual Practice

 

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

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

© 2025 Evan D. Garner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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