Homily for the Feast of All Saints (November 1)

“The Saints and the Rest of Us”

This sermon was originally preached at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Denton, Texas.

Something that some of you have probably noticed about me through listening to my sermons week after week– or just talking with me– is my love of the movies. Perhaps you’ve noticed. Last week at the coffee hour after the 11 a.m. service, I was talking with a parishioner about movies and about the work of the actor Ralph Fiennes.

And I realized that I knew not only that he played Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies, but also that he was the villain Ramses in the animated Prince of Egypt and that he was the villainous Amon Goethe in Schindler’s List. But that he had also played good guys, like M in the most recent Bond movies.

Now, mind you, it’s not that I really like Ralph Fiennes or have gone out of my way to find this out about him. I just happen to know these things. I can name every movie that Martin Scorsese has directed in order and tell you the year they came out. How does this benefit me in life? And yet I know all these things because I love the movies.

And that realization brought home for me again the truth that it’s very human to find other people interesting and to want to know more about their life and work. And I realized that, in a sense, celebrities are the saints of secular culture. Celebrities are the people who most Americans really know about. So today on All Saints Sunday, we as the church celebrate the saints— we might say, the celebrities of the church. The Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Elizabeth, Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint Barnabas, Saint Athanasius, those great heroes of the faith. They are, we might say, the celebrities of the Church, the most interesting people in the community.

Now there was a time in the West when the saints really were celebrities. You may or may not know a well-known actor in the theater or the opera or a novelist, but everyone knew the saints. On the eve of the Reformation, the late medieval era, there was a recognition that a lot of the common piety toward the saints had become problematic.

And this was not just a criticism of the Reformers. Even the Dutch humanist Erasmus, in his Praise of Folly, pointed out some of the exaggerations of piety toward the saints. He wrote, “Each saint is assigned his own special powers and his own special cult. So that one saint gives relief from toothache. Another stands by women in childbirth. A third returns stolen objects and so on. It would take too long to go through the whole list. There are some whose influence extends to several things. Notably the virgin mother of God, for the common ignorant man comes near to attributing more to her than to her Son.” And this was a Catholic who wrote this.

So in the 16th century, the cult of the saints in the late medieval West had gotten a little out of hand. They were treated as sort of superhumans or demigods who had their own little sphere of influence. So during the Reformation, and in the English Reformation, from which we as Episcopalians claim our heritage, devotion to the saints was greatly minimized. But as is often the case in the Episcopal Church, there is a reaction against excess and then a streamlining of the faith. But then after the fires of controversy have died down a bit, a gradual return to fullness.

So in the Episcopal church today, we do remember the saints, not only on All Saints Day, but throughout the year in commemorations of the liturgical calendar. For those of you who come to the Wednesday noon Mass, if you come to that regularly, you’ll learn a lot of the different saints that we celebrate in the Episcopal Church. And so even though there was a reaction at the beginning, things have sort of returned.

And thankfully most Episcopalians nowadays are not allergic to anything that looks or sounds or feels Catholic— except maybe in moral theology. (Silence) That was a joke. (Laughter). Maybe a little too close to home. Ok! We’re in a place in the Episcopal Church where just saying, “Oh, well, we can’t do that, that’s like what the Catholics do!”– that’s not really a thing you hear anymore. That used to be a thing you would hear in the Church of England. Not so much anymore.

But there are other places in Christendom where that really is the case, where the saints really have gone away. The saints got pushed out at the Reformation and they never came back. And we hear this in the sentiment, “All we need is Jesus.” “Just give me Jesus.” “All I need is Jesus and the Bible.” It’s been said that nature abhors a vacuum. It could also be said that grace abhors a vacuum too, because this very human need to learn about interesting people and what they’ve done in their lives is not going away. It will be fulfilled in some way.

So there are Christians who have no devotion to the saints, maybe they’re even proud of that, but they’re very devoted to the lives of celebrities. They know who wore it better. They know when Tom Cruise was married and to whom, and why his marriage to Katie Holmes fell apart. And what Suri is up to now. They know lots about movie stars and musicians, both their work and their personal lives. But they don’t know much about or perhaps don’t even recognize saints who have been revered for centuries.

The fact is that the human need to look up to others and to learn about their lives will be fulfilled in one way or another. And so that’s why everything in the life of the Church is for our sanctification. God knows that we need ritual and repetition, that we need predictability in an unpredictable world, so he gives us the liturgy. God knows that we yearn to encounter Him, not only in our minds, but in the physical. And so he gives us the sacraments. And God knows that we naturally find other people interesting and that we want to learn more about them and imitate them… so he gives us the saints.

None of these are bad things. They’re good things. They’re part of what it means to be human. But these very natural desires need to be transfigured by God’s grace in the Church, because if they aren’t fulfilled here, we’ll seek to fulfill them using the resources of the world, and the results could be less than wholesome.

So devotion to the saints, remembering them and seeking to imitate their lives, is a way of broadening one’s spiritual vision. It’s like looking at a landscape and seeing not only the sun but also the moon and the stars and the mountains and rivers and valleys. Or if I may paraphrase Saint Paul’s admonition in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, beloved, whoever is true, whoever is honorable, whoever is just or pure or pleasing or commendable, if there is anyone of excellence, anyone worthy of praise, think about such persons.” It’s good to think about the saints, to know about their lives and their work. It’s a good thing to be mindful of the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us and to seek to imitate their virtue. Because if we don’t have room for the saints in our lives, we’ll surely find other saints to revere.

So that is my argument for devotion to the saints. Perhaps I didn’t really need to make that argument. Perhaps y’all are already on board with that. And you’re already on board with commemorating the saints. Maybe I’m quite literally preaching to the choir.

But there is in fact another danger associated with the saints, and it’s on the opposite end of the spectrum. If one danger is to ignore the saints and push them out of the church, the other is to idealize them, to view them as a spiritual caste, as a pinnacle of holiness that’s inaccessible to us. This is the idea that there’s the saints and there’s the rest of us, and never the twain shall meet.

I was watching a sitcom called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and there is a character who’s a Catholic priest. And he is probably the worst kind of pastor for giving counsel that I’ve ever seen in a television program. It is comedic how bad his pastoral counsel is. But this character, this Catholic priest, in one scene he’s wearing a black T-shirt with white lettering and it says, “I may be a priest, but I’m no saint.”

And that’s a common phrase that we’ve heard before, isn’t it? To say, Hey, I’m no saint. Well… why aren’t you? Or why aren’t you at least trying?

I really mean this. Why is it that to be a saint is a thing that we don’t take seriously? It’s very easy to sort of be ironic about sainthood to say, Well, hey, I’m no saint. And to be ironic with like a wink and a nudge and to accept that holiness is not really attainable for us.

It’s so easy in the modern world, not only to not try to be saintly, but maybe even to demonize people who do want to be saintly. To say, Oh, well, what, do they think they’re better than us or something? To think a person is “holier than thou” if they really try to be saintly.

But there are souls in the history of the church who really truly desired to be saints— to be holy. I think of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, whose whole life was about seeking holiness and union with God. He was very earnest about this. And so we see the truth that one cannot be a saint ironically. You can only be a saint earnestly and genuinely. And in fact, irony is really the easier posture to adopt because if we are sort of ironic and too cool for it, if we go down the road of pursuing holiness and fall down and fail, we can’t just get up and say, Oh, well, I wasn’t really trying anyway. If we go to God in prayer and say, “God, I want to be holier, I want my thoughts and my words and my actions to be more conformed to that of Christ. I want to be saintly.” That’s a very genuine prayer. And if we fall, there’s really no acting like, Well, we weren’t really trying. Because we were trying. So that moral genuineness, that spiritual earnestness has characterized all the saints, and not just the well-known ones.

That’s why we call it All Saints, both known and unknown: men and women who have earnestly, not ironically, not cynically, but actually and truly wanted to be holy. Because as we read in our reading from the Book of Revelation, when the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven, and there is a new heavens and a new earth, we are a part of that. We will be with the saints. There won’t be a divide between the people that we commemorate in the liturgical calendar me and you or your beloved grandmother or whoever it may be. We will all be there together, shoulder to shoulder. And so the saints are not separated from us, such that we’re not able to have any sort of hope in sharing their holiness. We are called to be saints.

And so that’s the question I leave with us today. A very non-ironic, very earnest question. Do you want to be holier? Do you want to be a saint?

Because if you do, God will help you. Because he always helps those who earnestly seek him. Amen.

Homily on the Rich Young Ruler: “Being Seen”

This sermon was preached at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas, on Sunday, October 13, 2024.

Texts: Hebrews 4:12-16, Mark 10:17-31

Being seen is, I believe, one of the great desires of the human heart. All of us want to know that others see us and care about us. None of us likes to be ignored or to think to ourselves, “No one even knows about me. No one even really sees me.”


And there’s an expression that millennials sometimes use. They’ll say, Ah, I feel so seen. And usually, they’re watching a television show, and there will be something that happens in the show that they relate to. And they’ll say, I feel so seen. What they’re really saying is, “I didn’t know that other people felt that way. I didn’t know that other people had that experience. I thought that was just me. But now I’m seeing it reflected in someone else’s experience.”


I was thinking about this when I was reading through our Gospel reading, because Jesus looking at or seeing the rich young man is the turning point in this conversation.


The Evangelist Mark relates to us that as Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus’s response may surprise us. He says, “Why do you call me good? No one is good, but God alone.” It may seem like Jesus is denying that he is good or denying that he is divine.

But this comment must be seen in the context of what the man believes Jesus to be. He’s not approaching Jesus as the Son of God, but as just another ordinary rabbi. Jesus sees that the man is trying to flatter him. “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus is saying, Why do you call me good? Only God is good. Are you saying that I’m God? If so, then you should listen to me. And if not, then you’re just flattering me. So Jesus is not denying his own deity, but rejecting human flattery.


Jesus continues, “You know the commandments,” and then he lists several commandments from the Decalogue. The man responds, “Teacher, I’ve kept all these since my youth.” We can hear in this response some pride, kind of like a student who wants to impress the teacher. “I’ve kept all the commandments since I was young.” He was wanting, perhaps, a word of praise, a commendation.


And then the Gospel text says, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” It could also be translated, Jesus seeing him, loved him. Now presumably he had already been looking at him, they were having a conversation, but St. Mark thinks it’s important to relate to us that at that point in the conversation, Jesus saw the man. He recognized something in him. He saw his very heart.


Looking at him and truly seeing who he was and what was important to him, Jesus loved him. And he said to him, “You lack one thing. Go sell what you own and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.” In the other account of this event in Matthew, he adds, “You lack one thing, if you wish to be perfect, go sell what you own and give the proceeds to the poor. Then come, follow me.” Sell everything you have, give the money to someone else, and follow me.

This invitation from the “good teacher” just floored the young man. This is not how he thought this conversation was going to go. He was so confident in himself. He thought he was going to approach this renowned rabbi and say, Good teacher, what must I do? And then Jesus would tell him, Do this, this, and that. And he would say, Oh, well, I’ve already done all that. I’ve done it since my youth. And then the rabbi would say, Well, very good. You clearly are going to have eternal life.


The rich young man entered this interaction with confidence, thinking it would end with him being praised. He didn’t think that the rabbi was going to call on him to sell everything he owned.


But even then, it’s less a commandment and more an invitation: “If you want to be perfect.” If you want to have eternal life, keep the commandments. But if you want to be perfect, sell everything you own and follow me.


Jesus commanded him to do this because when he saw him, he recognized that the main thing that was hindering this man’s spiritual growth was his excessive attachment to his material possessions.


And this is understandable, especially given the times in which they lived. Living in the first century Middle East was not easy. They didn’t have the modern comforts and amenities we have. It was a harsh desert landscape, and the Jewish people were under Roman rule. There had not been a prophet in 400 years. Life was uncertain and hard, and many people had begun to feel that God was not really looking out for them anymore. So many looked to wealth as a source of security. “If I can just make enough money, I’ll be okay.” “If I can at least have a comfortable lifestyle, I can make it.”


Whenever a person clings to something too tightly, it’s an expression of their fear. They are afraid of losing something or afraid of going without something. So Jesus saw that for this man, his fear resulted in his excessive attachment to wealth, to material comforts… to his possessions. Jesus saw the fear in this young man, and seeing it, Jesus loved him. Jesus was compassionate toward him because he understood the fear and the striving for wealth and security that had come to dominate this man’s life.


And if this was true in Jesus’ day, it’s certainly true today. So many of us are so worried about money, so worried about the future. And in that worry and fear, we strive harder and harder to make more money, so we can have a nicer house, with nice things, so we can go on nice vacations. We strive so hard for these comforts, thinking, If I just have enough money, I’ll be okay. If I can just be comfortable, I’ll be okay.


Because this is also a hard time to be living, for different reasons. The 2020s got off to a rough start. We had the pandemic, an assault on our nation’s capital, several wars, a toxic political climate. There’s a meme online that says, “You know, I’m really getting tired of living through major historical events.”


It’s understandable if we have fears in our heart. And it’s understandable if those fears cause us to cling to something that we feel will give us security or comfort. But God did not create us to live in fear or to seek refuge in the things of this world.


When Jesus sees you, He sees you completely. Sees you in all that you are. At your best moments and at your worst. With all the scars and wounds of your heart… Jesus sees you. “Before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). And seeing you, he loves you.


If you were the person in this Gospel story, when Jesus saw you and loved you, what is it he’d say? “You lack one thing. If you wish to be perfect, do this.” What is it you need to cling to less tightly? Or perhaps the one thing that you need to take on? Because sometimes the Lord calls us to give up something so that we may take up something else. What is it that God is calling you to give up or to give? Or put another way, what fear is God calling you to let go of?


And when God calls upon us to give up the thing that is hindering us or to take on some new thing we’re lacking, we can respond in one of two ways. We can be like the rich young man and go away sad, unable to let go of our fears and attachments. Or… we can rejoice at the opportunity to become more perfect, more mature, by loosening our grip on the things of this world. Because we know that the fullness of life into which our Lord calls us is immeasurably more valuable than any earthly good.


Let us let go of fear: the fear of scarcity, the fear that there won’t be enough. Let’s let go of fear. And if we’re going to cling to something, let’s cling to God. He is our comfort and security and consolation. And whatever we have given up or given away can never compare with what we receive from His most gracious hands. Amen.

Homily on John 6:56-69: “The Words of Life”

This is a transcript of a sermon preached on Sunday, August 25, 2024 at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A couple weeks ago, I was at my local gym changing out after a workout. And there was a song that was playing on the speakers in the locker room– it was also the song that was being played out on the floor where people were working out. It was a song by a contemporary female artist and it was about getting drunk and getting lucky and about what she was going to do on Friday night. And the music had a sort of seductive rhythm– the sort of thing you would dance to in a club. A very worldly song.

And I may sound prudish in saying this, but I was a little offended. I was like, You know, I’m just changing out here. I didn’t ask to hear this sort of song. The lyrics reminded me of a lifestyle that is very attractive to many young people and yet it’s a lifestyle that is ruinous and incompatible with the Christian life. If I’m being honest, it bummed me out a little, and I had to think of positive thoughts on the drive home to lift my mood.

It reminded me that we hear so many words in our daily life, a countless number of words. Some of them we have control over, some of them we don’t. There are words that we speak, words that are spoken to us, words we overhear. And there are words we read: news, media, books, emails, text messages. Our lives are just filled with words– and not all of them are good for us. That’s the thing about words: they are a spiritual reality. If we hear words, and we let those words become a part of us, and then we act on those words, that has an effect on our life, for good or ill.

So how do we know where we will find the words that will be good for us? Words that will feed and heal our souls– words that, if we truly let them become a part of us and we live according to them, that it will be for the salvation of our souls?

And the answer, of course, is in our Gospel reading for today. Our Lord Jesus has given one of his most difficult teachings, the Bread of Life discourse from John chapter 6. Jesus teaches about how he is the Bread of life that came down from heaven, and that in order to live, you must do the thing that you do with bread, that is, eat it. He says, “I am the bread that came down from heaven. I am the bread of life. And he who eats me will live because of me. And the food that I give is my flesh for the life of the world. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.”

This is very intimate language, even shocking language. And St. John records that many were offended by this language, by this teaching, by these words. And several of his disciples no longer follow him anymore. So Jesus looks to his apostles and he asks, “Do you also wish to go away?” And Simon Peter gives the answer for all the apostles, indeed for all Christians: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter speaks from the conviction that Jesus is the Holy One of God, the Son of God. And that, even when his teachings are difficult or hard to understand, there’s a recognition that Jesus comes from God and the words he speaks are the words of eternal life.

And so with all these words around us, we know that the words that give eternal life, the words that we know are good for us, come from our Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes I think about what a blessing it must have been to be a part of the 12 apostles, to be with Jesus day in and day out, to hear all the words that he spoke. How many words did Jesus speak? How many conversations did they have with him? And what a blessing it would have been for us to have been there and to hear all these words Jesus spoke during his earthly life.

But we don’t get to do that. What we can do is study and meditate on the words that are recorded for us in the Holy Gospels– and indeed in all the scriptures, which point to Christ.

And so what I want to do this morning is to reflect on the Holy Scriptures as the words of eternal life, as the Word of God, and offer some practical suggestions on how we may read the Holy Scriptures for the benefit of our souls.

The Holy Scriptures are, as we say, the Word of God. And that’s what we say in the liturgy: “The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.” The Scriptures are inspired by God. It literally means they’re God-breathed. Every other human writing comes from human beings alone. But the Holy Scriptures are breathed by God. God works through human authors to give his message to humankind. The Scriptures are God-breathed. That what the word inspiration means–spiration meaning breath. So inspiration, breathing in, or expiration, breathing out.

(And so when we pray in the Collect for Purity, Cleanse our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, we’re asking the Holy Spirit to breathe into us so that we may love God.)

So the scriptures are inspired by God, they’re given by God who inspired the biblical authors to give us the words God would have us to hear. But while all the scripture is inspired, not all of it is equally important or equally useful to our life in Christ. And this may sound controversial to say that, that all the scriptures are inspired, but not all of them are equally useful. But this is the way the Church has always approached Scripture.

The Gospels hold pride of place because they give the words and deeds of our Lord Jesus Christ. Only the Gospels are in a special gilded book on the altar. In the Gospel procession, the priest or deacon kisses the words of the Gospel as a sign of his devotion to them. So in our scripture reading, we want to prioritize the reading of the gospels. Every disciple of Jesus should read one of the four Gospels every day of his life. There should never be a day that goes by that we shouldn’t read a little bit of the Gospel. This could be a chapter, it could even be a part of a chapter. But we want to remain in the Gospels so that we know our Lord Jesus Christ more and more through the words he spoke and the deeds he accomplished. So the Gospels are preeminent.

And then after that, there’s the Epistles, which make up the majority of the New Testament. But even here, not every part of them is to be prioritized equally. There’s many sections of the epistles that are of a more exhortatory character. They’re more about how we live the Christian life. They’re very practical.

And we should emphasize reading these over some of the more dense doctrinal parts of the epistles. We still should study those, but in practical terms, in the Christian life, it’s better to know what the fruits of the spirit are than who Melchizedek is. So we want to emphasize those moral and practical parts of the epistles of the New Testament.

And then thirdly, there’s the Old Testament. We want to prioritize reading and praying the Psalter, which is the hymnal of ancient Israel and have always had a central place in Christian worship. We want to pray the Psalms and read those parts of the Old Testament that are most well-known and most referenced in the New Testament. So the most famous and well-known Old Testament stories, the kind you learn in Sunday school: the stories from Genesis, from Exodus, some of the most well-known passages from the major prophets like Isaiah. These are the scriptures that we want to know very well. And it would, again, be more helpful to know the story of Jonah than to know some obscure incident that happened in 2 Kings.

So all of the Scripture is inspired, but we want to be judicious in what we give emphasis to, what is most helpful to our life in Christ. Firstly, the Gospels, then the epistles, especially the practical sections, and then the Old Testament, especially the Psalms and the most well-known passages from the major books.

But even with that, even just those emphases, that’s still a lot of scripture. So how do we read the scripture profitably? A lot of Christians stumble here, because they set out to read the Scriptures, firstly, without the Church, and secondly in a way that’s pretty arbitrary. There’s so many “read through the Bible in a year” plans: start with Genesis and just go through to the end. And if you do that, you’re likely to lose steam somewhere around Leviticus and not even make it out of the Torah.

But the Church gives us in our tradition a wonderful way of reading through the scriptures. It’s called the Daily Office: Morning and Evening Prayers, in which every morning and every evening we read from the Psalms and we read from the Old and the New Testament.

And if you’re already praying the Daily Office, God bless you in that and help you to continue. But if you’re not regularly praying morning and evening prayers, you should start modestly. If you’ve never prayed the Daily Office before, I would not suggest you start with the 1662 prayer book, the unabbreviated version. It would be better to start a little more modestly. In the morning, you pray the Lord’s Prayer, and then one Psalm, a reading from the Old Testament, and a reading from the Gospel. And then in the evening, again, you pray the Lord’s Prayer, and then a different Psalm, and then a reading from the Epistle, and then a reading from the Gospel. Very simple. But even if you do just that little bit, you will be reading through the Old Testament, and through the Epistles, and through the Gospels, at a good pace.

You’ll be feeding your soul with these words of life, so that, whatever other words you hear in your daily life, both good and harmful, you will know that you will be steeped in the words of eternal life. These are the words which are given to us in the scriptures, the written Word of God– which always direct us to the incarnate Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be all glory and honor, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever, world without end. Amen.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

A Sermon on the Healing of the Woman with the Flow of Blood and the Raising of Jairus’ Daughter

Text: Mark 5:21-43

June 30, 2024

“Crossing the Boundaries”

Over the past several weeks, we have journeyed through Mark’s Gospel, and we have seen Jesus as the Man of Authority. He has authority over demons, over the forces of nature… and now, over disease and death.

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus brings new life to two women: one a grown woman and the other a young woman, a twelve-year old girl. And he gives them new life in different ways.

For the woman with the flow of blood, Jesus heals her and so gives her a new life— a new existence, unfettered from the restrictions of her condition. For Jairus’ daughter, Jesus literally gives her new life— he brings her back from the dead.

What connects these two women is the figure of twelve years. The woman has been suffering a flow of blood for twelve years, and the dying girl is twelve years old. Both these events (the beginning of the woman’s bleeding and the birth of Jairus’ daughter) occurred at about the same time. They probably didn’t know each other. And yet, in the providence of God, both women would be healed by Christ on the same day.

St. Mark writes that Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue, approaches Jesus and asks to heal his daughter, who is ill and on the brink of death. Jesus agrees and he and the disciples follow Jairus to the house. But the story is interrupted: There’s a woman who has a flow of blood who approaches Jesus as he’s on the way. In the Greek she’s called literally the bleeding woman, but this is variously translated. Some translations say she’s suffering from hemorrhages, others say that she has a flow of blood or an issue of blood. But the problem is that she is continually bleeding.

She’s not named in the Gospel, but there is an early church tradition that her name was Berenice, or in the Greek, Veronica. And this condition, this perpetual bleeding, was something that obviously was very distressing to her, and not just for medical reasons.

This flow of blood rendered her ritually unclean. In the Torah, a person became ritually unclean if they had contact with things that had to do with life and death. So anything involving giving birth: after a woman gave birth she was ritually unclean. Menstruation made one unclean. If you touch a dead body, you become unclean. And if you’re unclean and you touch others, they become unclean. It’s not a sin to become ritually unclean, but to become clean again you had to undergo a ritual immersion, what they call the mikveh. You must bathe your whole body and then stay clean for seven days. And until you’re ritually clean again, you cannot enter the Temple.

Of course, the problem for Veronica was that because this flow of blood was constant, no matter how much she washed, she could never stay ritually pure for seven straight days. She had this condition for 12 years. What this meant was that she could not enter the temple and partake in the worship for 12 years. That would be like if you couldn’t come to church, if you couldn’t enter the sanctuary and worship and receive the sacraments, for 12 years. That’s what it was like for her.

She must have felt profoundly isolated. Isolated from other people, because if they touched her, then they would become unclean and they’d have to do all this cleansing. She must have felt isolated from her religion and its sacred rites. Maybe she even felt isolated from God.

This condition would have prevented her from getting married – or, if she was already married when the bleeding started, it would have prevented her from having relations with her husband and might have been cited by him as grounds for divorce. And this is something that commentators don’t often mention, but I think it’s significant: if she’s always bleeding in that way, she cannot become pregnant. So not only is she constantly ritually unclean, but she cannot bring forth new life.

So this is a terrible condition, from every angle. There was the constant discomfort, the feeling of uncleanness, the isolation from others and from her religion. It made it impossible for her to marry or have children. She spent all her money trying to be healed, with no success. It has impacted her bodily, mentally, emotionally, socially, religiously, financially. This condition basically wrecked her whole life.

And all this plays into how she approaches Jesus. It’s very different from the way Jairus approaches him. Jairus is a synagogue official. He’s a man of some importance in the community. He just goes straight up to him and says, My daughter at the point of death. Come lay your hand on her and she will live. He goes straight to him. But Veronica does not do this. And we can see why.

Maybe she didn’t want to be embarrassed. There’s a whole crowd around. Maybe she didn’t want to say, Hey, I have this condition. Can you please heal it? That’s a very private thing to be talking about in the midst of a crowd. And then, of course, there’s the thought that if he touched her to heal her, he would become unclean and then he’d have to go through the washing and then he’d be unclean for seven days. So maybe she just didn’t want to take the risk of him saying no.

But we see her great faith in the inner monologue Mark gives us. She thinks to herself, If I just touch his clothes, I’ll be made clean. It’s great faith. She is so convinced of Jesus’ holiness that she doesn’t even need to touch him. She’ll just touch something that’s touching him.

So she goes up behind him and she reaches out in faith and touches the hem of his robe. And immediately she feels in her body that the flow of blood dries up. She’s healed. Twelve years of suffering. Ended.

But Jesus feels the healing too. Jesus feels the inverse of what the woman feels, in that same moment. She felt power coming in to her, but he felt power going out of him.

So Jesus stops and says, Who touched me? And the disciples say, Master, there’s all this crowd around you. A lot of people are touching you. What do you mean? And he says, No, I feel that power has gone forth from me.

Veronica sort of stole a healing from him. She didn’t ask for it. She just reached for it. And she’s afraid that he’s going to find her out and then maybe rebuke her— maybe even take the healing back. But she comes forward and she tells the truth of her condition and of why she reached out in faith. And rather than rebuking her, the Lord reassures her. He says, Daughter, take heart. Your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Be cured of your affliction.

But then some people come from Jairus’ house, and we hear that his daughter has died. We hear these two statements right on top of each other:  “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” “Your daughter has died.” But Jesus reassures Jairus and encourages him to have faith.

Jesus enters the house, puts out the mourners, and invites just a few of the disciples and the girl’s parents into the room where the dead girl is. Jesus takes her by the hand— which would have made him ritually unclean— and says to her, “Little girl, I tell you: Rise.” Not just get up or wake up. “Rise.” The same word used in the Gospel for the raising of Lazarus and for Jesus’ own resurrection. And life comes back into the girl, and she is restored to the land of the living.

…

This is a story about boundaries. There are all sorts of boundaries in our world, and in this story. The boundary between men and women, between clean and unclean, between life and death. And over and over, Jesus crosses these boundaries in his love for others. He does not begrudge a healing to someone who was ritually unclean and on the margins of her world. He takes the dead girl by the hand, which technically made him unclean. And then there’s the ultimate boundary, between the living and the dead. And Jesus was willing to cross that boundary too. He goes over to the other side to snatch the young girl back from the realm of the dead.

This story, and many others in the Gospels, show that Jesus is willing to be “unclean,” willing to associate with sinners, willing to be “contaminated” by the mess of human life— by disease and isolation and death. We see Jesus moving across religious and social barriers to offer his life-giving grace.

This willingness to cross boundaries and become submerged in the messiness of human life is prefigured in Jesus’ baptism, when he is plunged into the muddy waters of the Jordan. And it culminates in his willingness to go into the depths of the ultimate uncleanness: death. Even death on a cross.

This story is a powerful reminder that we should not be discouraged by the boundaries that exist between us and Christ. It is true that he is divine, and we are human. It is true that he is sinless, and we are sinful. But it is also true that the Son of God became human and took our sins upon himself and died and rose from the dead, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

And we must always bear this truth within ourselves when we approach our Lord. We can approach him, and we should not be worried that we cannot be in the presence of Christ because of our unworthiness.

You will not make Jesus unclean. He will make you clean.

You will not make Jesus unholy. He will make you holy.

So approach with boldness. With repentance and faith and love, draw near. For we do not merely touch the hem of his robe. We don’t just touch the outer garment of the merciful Christ. We receive him in the most intimate way possible. We receive his very Body and Blood, his very self, so that he dwells in us and we in him. And when we receive him, we are made clean. And we are brought to life.

And like Veronica and Jairus’ daughter, we too will receive new life… and set forth his praise in gratitude. Amen.

Fr. Lorenzo Galuszka is the vicar of Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman (https://www.facebook.com/saintstephenssherman) and Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Bonham (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61561060276714).

Holy Week at Saint Stephen’s, 2024

Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas, will observe Holy Week with a full schedule of services. As a traditional Anglo-Catholic parish, we will celebrate Our Lord’s Passion and Resurrection with the very best of the Western Christian tradition.

Our services feature sacred organ music, ancient and modern hymns, and readings from the King James Bible. Children are welcomed and fully a part of the celebration.

On Palm Sunday (March 24 at 9:30 am), we will commemorate the Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem with a procession and festal hymns.

On Holy Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we will pray Morning Prayer at 9 am and remember Jesus’ final teachings in Jerusalem.*

On Maundy Thursday (March 28 at 7 pm), we will observe the Washing of Feet, celebrate the Mass of the Last Supper, and remember the Lord’s betrayal.

On Good Friday (March 29 at 7 pm), we will hear the story of Our Lord’s Passion according to Saint John, venerate the holy cross, sing Good Friday hymns, and celebrate the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts.

On Easter Eve (March 30 at 8 pm), we will kindle the paschal fire and hear the story of our salvation in a tapestry of readings, choral anthems, and prayers. We will announce Christ’s Resurrection, sing joyous hymns, and celebrate the first Eucharist of Easter.

On Easter Sunday (March 31 at 9:30 am), our Easter celebration continues with a festal High Mass and paschal hymns. Easter brunch to follow in the Parish Hall.

Come and see!

Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church

401 S. Crockett St.

Sherman, TX 75090

*Morning Prayer on Holy Tuesday will be livestreamed to our Facebook page.

Homily for the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord: “The Good Catastrophe”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Christ is born! Let us glorify him.

I greet you on this radiant Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Today we celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation— that God became a human being; the eternal Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

This mystery should be a source of continual wonder for us; it should never be something we become used to or take for granted. Because it is a wonder that God would become human. It is a paradox in so many ways.

  The One whom no one can see has become visible.

  The One who dwells in unapproachable light can now be approached.

  The Almighty has become weak.

  The Impervious One assumes vulnerable flesh.

  The One who holds all things in the palm of His hand is held today by a human mother.

When we look at our Gospel reading, everyone involved in the drama is gripped by amazement at this Great Paradox: the shepherds, the Holy Family, even the angels. And they’re angels— imagine the things they’ve seen, and even they seem surprised.

The Incarnation is so wonderful and miraculous and strange, the created world doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. But all offer what they can: the angels sing, the shepherds adore on bended knee, the ox and donkey bow their heads in reverence, the Holy Family ponders the Mystery in awed silence. And we too are invited to offer our wonder and praise to this awesome Event.

Christmas is the opportunity to recapture our sense of wonder, to celebrate the Paradox of the God-made-man… and to revel in how fantastical it all is.

The birth of Christ is a strange story, and our familiarity with it should not blind us to this. In this story, we find a Virgin Mother, a chorus of angels, the God who becomes an infant. The story of Christmas is indeed fantastical and all the better for it. What a shame if God was limited to what modern people thought possible or “reasonable.”

Yet the Nativity is not just wonderful and strange and joyous. The point of Christmas is not merely to generate feelings of warmth and goodwill. The birth of Christ means something decisive in the story that is traced throughout the Bible— that is, the story of our world.

J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, wrote a lot about storytelling, and especially what he called the eucatastrophe, “eu” as in E-U, that is, the good catastrophe. It’s that point in the story where there is a sudden turn of events, a sudden reversal for the better. It is a catastrophic event which delivers the protagonist from certain doom.

The birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of history. It is the turning point in the story of our world.

And this becomes clear when we remember the dark backdrop of the Nativity. Ever since the Fall, the world has been shrouded more and more in sin and death. It has been a world filled with darkness. The Chosen People had suffered much: they had been enslaved and liberated, they were exiled and then they returned. But their future never seemed secure. And that was just the Chosen People. All the nations, who did not know the true God, were ensnared in pagan idolatry.

So the world was a dark place before the birth of Christ, and this is especially so in the decades before his birth. The Chosen People were under the thumb of the Roman Empire. Judaism had fractured into arguing factions. There had not been a prophet in 400 years. It seemed like God was not taking care of the Chosen People, that He had disappeared off the world stage.

And just when there seemed to be no hope, when many were asking whether God had abandoned the people of Israel and perhaps humanity, hope arrives in the form of a newborn child. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.” “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.”

Just when it seems God is no longer with us, God comes to be with us in the most intimate way possible: by becoming one of us.

This is not just that the story has taken a sharp turn, but that the Author of the story has become a part of the narrative. It’s like the Author of a novel becoming a character in his own book. Or the Director of a play stepping onto the stage and becoming a character, affecting the plot in the process.

The Good News of Christmas is that the true and living God is One who wants to be with us, who will not abandon us to the darkness of this world. The Word of God comes down from heaven to enter our story, to share our lot… to experience with us the joys and hardships of being human.

He too will know the love of family, the dignity and burden of work, the tedium of daily life, the limitations of being human in an imperfect world. He too will experience the depths of misery in His sacred Passion. He too will die. And this destiny is already foretold in the details of his birth: his swaddling bands look forward to the funeral cloths, the manger is like a little coffin, and the cave in which he is born prefigures the tomb in which he will be buried. The triumph of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection are only possible because he becomes human in the first place.

This is, I believe, the true reason for the joy and warmth we feel at Christmas. The joy of the season is not ultimately because of family, or the food, or the music, or the fun events. The real reason we feel joy at Christmastime, even if we can’t articulate it, is that we know instinctively that the birth of Christ is a great turning point in the Great Story.

Even in the midst of a very dark world, a world filled with cruelty and senseless evil, of tribulations both personal and communal, we still have hope that the story will turn out alright in the end.

We feel— we know in our depths— that ultimately the Villain of the story will be defeated. The Hero will be triumphant… and we will triumph with him.

And the turning point, that good catastrophe, occurred on that silent, cold night in the countryside of Bethlehem, when the almighty God entered the story to lead it to its glorious conclusion. Amen.

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent: “The Marian Silence”

OT Reading: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Gospel reading: Luke 1:26-38

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Mystery begins where words end.

There are some aspects of the Christian faith that cannot be expressed in words— they are mysteries to be intuitively felt, not propositions to be analyzed. The Blessed Virgin Mary, and her place in the story of salvation, belongs to this realm of mystery.

We do not preach Mary to the world. We preach Christ crucified and risen. That is our outward proclamation. But Mary remains a part of the inward memory of the Church, part of the inner tradition— “the secret joy” of the Church. Her presence is real, if elusive.

Mary is the one who says “yes” to God by saying yes to the Archangel Gabriel. He approaches her with the mission of being the Mother of the Messiah— of bearing God incarnate within her. And she accepts: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to thy word.”

Mary says yes to Christ— another way we can put it is that she makes room for Christ. There has always been a space in the world for God to dwell. He dwelt in the Tabernacle while the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. He dwelt in the Temple in Jerusalem. And now He comes to dwell in a new temple— a temple made not of stone but of flesh and blood. A living temple. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” But where did he first become flesh? In the silence of her womb.

So Mary is the one who makes room for Christ, makes room for him in her body but also in her life. By accepting this calling to be the Mother of the Lord, her life will change forever. Her life will now revolve around him. Any new mother will tell you that since the birth of her child, her life has revolved around that child— bathing him and clothing him and feeding him and caring for him. And even as the child grows up and gains more independence, the identity as the Mother remains.

This life that Mary shares with her Son is a mystery. We have various stories in the Gospel about her and Jesus— the birth of Christ, the visit of the Magi, the finding in the Temple, the wedding at Cana. But the great majority of their life together is not recorded for us in the Gospels.

We know that she raised him, that he grew up with her. They spend years together, as Jesus grows from infant to toddler to child. She nurses him, she teaches him and plays with him. He becomes a teenager and grows into a man, and she sees the changes. Between them pass thousands of hours, thousands of conversations, countless little moments. That intimate relationship between Mother and Son is a mystery: unrecorded and undisclosed.

And so Mary is also the one who contemplates the Word-made-flesh in silence. Because the mystery of Christ is not revealed to her all at once. A book does not drop from heaven that explains the meaning of Christ and of his life and of her life. It becomes clear to her only gradually, in the quiet moments she spends with him in those hidden years in Nazareth. She ponders all these things in her heart, in silence. And so she gradually realizes who he is, and therefore the dignity of her own role as his Mother. The mystery is revealed to her in that luminous silence. And it is the silence of Mary, not her words, that distinguishes her in the Gospels.

Certainly, she speaks in the Gospel— she speaks with the Angel Gabriel, she magnifies the Lord in her song of praise, she intercedes with Jesus to help the family at the wedding in Cana. But mostly she keeps silent. At the foot of the Cross, she doesn’t utter a word. And on the Day of Pentecost, when the other disciples begin to speak in the Spirit and St. Peter gives his sermon to the crowds, her voice is not heard. We may even say that they were granted the gift of tongues, and she the gift of silence. Mary is the one who attends to the Mystery of the Word in prayerful silence.1

By reflecting on Mary, we begin to see our own calling. Do we make room for Christ in our lives? Have we created that interior space where we can attend to Christ in silence? The world is so loud, so filled with noise and information. If we’re not careful, we can fill ourselves until there’s no room left in us for silence or mystery. Mary came to know her Son and her God not by mastering information, but by prayerful attention.

When we make space for Christ in our souls, he reveals himself to us. “Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him” (John 14:21). Christ reveals himself to us, not in words but in silence; not in information but in personal communion. We must make room for this silence. For it is abiding in the peace of that silence that we gain the strength to speak and sing and celebrate the mystery of Christ.

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas this evening, and especially as we head into the New Year, let us remember that Marian silence. We too can say yes to Christ. We too can make room for Christ and contemplate him in that interior space in our souls beyond words. We too can ponder these things in our hearts… and like Mary bear God within us. Amen.

References

  1. Zelinksy, Vladimir. “Mary in the Mystery of the Church: The Orthodox Search for Unity” in Mary: Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate: Theological Foundations II (Santa Barbara: Queenship Publishing 1997), page 188.

This homily was also inspired by the poetry of Karol Wojtyla, especially “Her amazement at her only child.”

Sermon on the Parable of the Sower

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

“Becoming Good Soil”

Gospel text: Matthew 13:1-23

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In all the Gospels, the Parable of the Sower is the first parable of Christ. It is also, according to the Lord himself, the key to all the other parables.

As he asks his disciples, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables?” (Mark 4:13)

This is the one. If we understand what Jesus is saying here, the other mysteries of the Kingdom will open up for us. If we don’t understand it, they will remain opaque.

The parable concerns a sower (that is, a farmer), indiscriminately casting seed on the ground. He throws seed on the path, on shallow soil, among the thorns, and on good soil.

If taken literally, he does not seem like a very smart farmer…

  • We are familiar with this parable, but of course the disciples are hearing it for the first time
  • They don’t get it
  • So they ask Jesus for an explanation, which he gives them privately:

The Sower is the Son of Man, Christ.

The Seed is the Word of God.

The Soil is different kinds of hearts, which receive the Word or not, for different reasons.

The Soil: The Heart (cf. Matthew 13:19a)

According to Scripture and teaching of the Fathers, the heart is the innermost self, the center of our being, where we will and love and know most deeply

Four kinds of soil: four kinds of hearts

First: The seed on the path

The Word never took root. They never understood or they never wanted to understand

Usually, persons who belong to this category are inattentive, scattered.

God is casting the Word onto the soil of their heart, but distractions and idle thoughts are snatching the seed away.

This is especially a problem for modern man. There are so many impressions that can be made on the mind. Countless distractions and entertainments— there’s the Internet, our iPhones, a constant news cycle. Many birds to snatch away the seed that is cast on our hearts.

If we are scattered, if we’re always going to the next thing, then we cannot be still and open to receiving the Word that God deigns to sow in us.

Second: The seed on the rocky ground

These receive the Word with gladness but the soil of their heart is not deep— they’ll accept the Good News of the Gospel and being a disciple of Jesus, as long as it’s not too hard. But when it gets too difficult, too challenging, they fall away.

They like the idea of being a Christian, they can accept it intellectually, but they have no root. The Gospel hasn’t gone from their mind to their heart, from the surface to the depths. And so when things get challenging, they fall away.

Third: The seed among the thorns

These have received the word and it has begun to take root and grow. The problem in this case is not that the soil is too shallow but that something else is growing alongside the plant— the thorns.

Worldly cares, anxieties, unsanctified ambitions, the desire for wealth and other worldly comforts

These thorns choke out the Word and prevent it from being fruitful

Finally: The seed sown on the good soil

This is soil that receives the seed, the soil is deep, the seed is allowed to take root, and nothing else grows up alongside it to choke it.

These are those who hear the Gospel, understand it, and respond to it in repentance and faith. They allow the Gospel and the demands of discipleship to take root in them. They nourish the life of God in them with prayer and rightly ordered Christian living. They don’t allow the things of this world to choke out the saving knowledge that has been planted in them.

And for these reasons their lives are fruitful to God and the world— they patiently bear fruit, thirty- or sixty- or a hundredfold. This is what we want to be.

Notice: In all four cases, the seed is the same. The soil is what makes the difference in whether the plant grows.

Now, this parable could become for us a source of anxiety. There are four kinds of soil, and three of them are bad, and only one is good. So it’s very important for us to know: How do we become the good soil?

The Good News, beloved, is that through Holy Baptism, through hearing the Word of God and through reading it in Scripture, through receiving the Body and Blood of Our Lord in Holy Communion, the good seed has been sown in your heart.

The question is, will you water it? Will you tend and preserve it, so that it grows?

And this is not a mystery as to how to do this, how to nourish the Word sown in our hearts.

There are spiritual practices, disciplines, that help us to tend the seed that has been planted in our hearts:

  • Repentance
  • Faith
  • Prayer
  • Fasting
  • Thanksgiving
  • Acts of mercy
  • Service to others

When we do these things, we nourish what has been sown in us.

And so each of us must look at our lives to see what threatens to turn us from good soil into bad soil.

Perhaps you need to be more on guard against distractions.

Or maybe you need to clear away some worldly cares and anxieties that are threatening to choke out God’s life in you.

Maybe you haven’t watered the seed in a long time and need to make the effort to be more regular in prayer and other spiritual disciplines.

With God’s grace, each of us can become and remain good soil.

And this is not a question of just trying really hard, in our own power = God is with us, God helps us with His grace.

And ultimately it shouldn’t be too torturous, because the Word of God is natural to us. It is not alien or foreign to us. Sin is what’s unnatural, sin is alien to who we truly are.

The divine life of God is the most natural possession of the human soul. So the seed is not foreign to the soil. It is what the soil was made for.

And when the seed is truly sown in the good soil, the plant grows up, gradually, mysteriously— as the Lord says in another parable, “day and night, it springs and grows up, he knows not how” (Mark 4:27).

The Gospel will take root in your heart, and when you water it and tend it, it will bear fruit in ways that may even surprise you. You will change, from the inside out, and become a more loving, gentle, generous person— that is, more like Christ. More like God made you to be.

Things that would have sent you off the rails or stolen your peace won’t anymore. Where you used to be stingy, you’ll be giving. You’ll be more attentive to God and more attentive to others. The seed will grow into a beautiful plant. And the birds of the air will find shade under its branches. Glory to God. Amen.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

A sermon outline

Reading: Genesis 24:34-67

“The Meeting of Isaac and Rebekah”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In romantic comedies and sitcoms, the “meet cute” is the scene where the two romantic leads meet for the first time.

In any love story, the one thing that needs to happen for there to be a story is that the boy and the girl meet. But it can’t just be a normal first interaction— there has to be something interesting about it. As a character in a 1955 George Axelrod play explains,

“Dear boy, the beginning of a movie is childishly simple. The boy and girl meet. The only important thing to remember is that— in a movie— the boy and the girl must meet in some cute way. They cannot… meet like normal people at, perhaps, a cocktail party or some other social function. No. It is terribly important that they meet cute.”

So to be anachronistic, our Old Testament reading today features the “meet cute” between Isaac and Rebekah— it’s the first time these two biblical figures meet. And whether or not it’s cute, the way it came about is at least interesting. There are several moving parts.

To give some context for this story: Abraham is 140 years old. Isaac is 40 years old. The sacrifice of Isaac, which was thankfully halted by the angel from heaven, has already occurred. Sarah has already died. And Abraham is nearing the end of his life. He has constantly kept God’s promise in his heart that his descendants would be as countless as the stars and that they would inherit the land of Canaan. God has already provided a miracle by granting that Sarah conceive and give birth to Isaac even in her old age.

But the next step is for Isaac to start having children. For that, he needs a wife. Isaac is already 40, which is kind of old to be unmarried, even in our day, but especially so in that day. He’s waited a long time. He’s ready.

So Abraham summons one of his servants, who is not named in the text, but some rabbinic traditions hold that it was Eliezer of Damascus, who was the heir of Abraham’s estate before the birth of Isaac. Abraham makes him swear to find a wife for Isaac. And Eliezer is to find her among Abraham’s kindred, not from the various pagan tribes of Canaan. The servant vows to do so, and sets off on his mission.

Our reading from the lectionary doesn’t give the whole account. Genesis actually presents the story in the third person and then has the servant recount the entire story in the first person, which is what we have here (which is, by the way, the longest speech by a slave in the Hebrew Bible, at 238 words in the Hebrew).

The servant has been invited into the home of Rebekah and her brother Laban and he recounts his story:

“I am Abraham’s servant…”

“I came today to the spring… and I prayed…”

Asks for a sign: generosity

Rebekah passes the test

The servant recounts this story and everyone agrees that it was ordained by God. Of course, back then, marriages were most often arranged, so Rebekah doesn’t have much of a say in this, but they do ask her, “Will you go with this man?” And she says, “I will.”

“So they sent away their sister Rebekah and her nurse…”

This is it— this is the first time they’re going to meet. “Isaac went out in the evening…”

And of course, Isaac and Rebekah will become the parents of Jacob and Esau, who will have their own role to play in the sacred drama.

Learn from this story?

Three lessons

  1. The providence of God
    a. The timing at the well
    b. Knew the sign the servant would ask for
    c. Knew Rebekah’s character
  2. Purity of intention; single-mindedness of purpose

The servant: earnest, no ulterior motives

  1. Being open to opportunities to be generous (Rebekah was generous, though it could have been easy to say no)

Three major actors in this story: God, the servant, and Rebekah. All played their parts.

When you wake up in the morning:

  1. Know that God is overseeing all things…
  2. Strive to be single-minded in your undertakings, to be simple and earnest in your dealings with others
  3. As you go throughout your day, be open to opportunities for generosity

And then we too will find that God will make our ways straight and bring all loving His purposes for us to fulfillment. Amen.

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost: “Peace with God”

A sermon outline/transcript

June 18, 2023 

Readings: Genesis 18, Romans 5, Matthew 9-10

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

“Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

So declares St. Paul in his magisterial letter to the Romans. What does it mean to have peace with God? 

This question has not been a theoretical one for many Christians throughout history. Some sensitive souls have been afflicted with what is called scrupulosity— an obsessive concern with displeasing God, a constant worry that they are not in the right with God, which leads to all manner of compulsive activities meant to alleviate these anxieties.  

St. Alphonsus Ligouri, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Therese the Little Flower, John Bunyan, and Martin Luther— all of them experienced obsessive thoughts about God being displeased with them. Luther in particular struggled with this. As an Augustinian monk, he felt that no matter what he did, he felt insecure in his relationship with God. He always felt uncertain as to where he stood with God. Every morning he’d wake up and feel like he was already in debt. God was displeased with him, and Luther had to work hard to get into God’s good graces— he would pray, he would fast, he would perform works of mercy and piety. But no matter how much he did, he never felt secure. He did not feel at peace with God. 

So the discovery that we are justified— that is, that we are restored to a right relationship with God— through faith and not through works, changed his life— and eventually the course of Western Christianity. 

Yet the subject of justification by faith, which is so central to our Epistle reading this morning, is by no means simple. Luther himself said that a preacher who could properly distinguish Law and Gospel deserves a doctor’s cap.  

Two extremes to be rejected: mere exhortation or antinomianism

This morning I want to look at what it means to have peace with God, according to St. Paul’s letters.

What it does not mean: 

Not about changing God (Romans 5): God is already “for” us, which he proves by sending His Son

The Gospel is not about affecting a change in God. We are the ones who need to change.

Still, some are not at peace with God (God is not at peace with their alienation from Him!) 

How are we restored to a right relationship with God? Paul’s argument in Romans: Not through works, but through faith 

Not through works (whether works of the law like circumcision, Sabbath observance, keeping kosher… or good works in general) but by faith 

What God wants most from us is faith—TRUST  

Cf. Genesis reading (Abraham, “reckoned to him as righteousness”, Sarah’s childbearing “is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”) 

We are restored to a right relationship with God not through our works but through faith. 

Effect on our spiritual life: Frees us up (anxiety to serenity) 

Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Peace, joy: Our relationship with God is not predicated on our performance, but on His goodness and love for us 

What, then, of the place of good works? The attitude of the antinomian described

Response: The faith that justifies us is a living faith (“faith without works is dead,” “faith working through love,” FAITH WORKS) 

If we truly have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, we will demonstrate this faith in the way we live.  

Grace is not just something that covers us, but something that fills us and changes us from the inside out (“the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us”)  

Good works are the fruit of faith: the expression of a living, saving faith 

In this context, good works have been transformed— rather than our works emerging from anxiety and compulsion, they emerge from a grateful heart 

And in any case, they’re not really “our” works

Galatians 2: I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Christ lives in me, doing his work

1 Corinthians 15: I worked harder than any of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Key verse: Ephesians 2 [salvation is by grace through faith but necessarily includes good works]

“Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions…

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith— and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

St. Paul is clear that we are saved by grace through faith, but that believers are made for good works and indeed, that we are the handiwork of God. If you are a Christian, not only will you do good works, your life will become a good work, that is, the good work of God.

Good News:

God loves us, even though we were far from Him, even though we have all rebelled against Him in different ways, God loves us so much He gave His only begotten Son to live and die and rise for us. For you to be restored to a right relationship with God, what God requires of you is not to perform a series of works but to turn from your sin and trust in Christ. And trusting in Christ with all your heart, reaching out in faith and holding on to the hem of his robe, you receive forgiveness and healing. You will have peace with God.

And God will live in you through the Holy Spirit and change you from the inside out, and your faith in Christ will express itself in how you think and speak and act. Your faith will be a living faith that works through love, and your good works will be the expressions of a grateful and joyful heart. You will move through life, not with anxiety or compulsion, but with joy and peace and confident serenity. That is what God wants for you.

And not only will you do good works, your life will be a good work: God’s work, as He works in you and through you. This is Good News, beloved. Since we are justified by faith, we have with peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.