god – The Pulpit and the Altar

Sermon for the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ

“The Miracle of Christmas”

This sermon was originally preached at Saint Stephen’s Church in Sherman, Texas, on December 24, 2025.

Christ the Lord is born for us! O come, let us adore him.

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

The birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ is a miracle and a mystery, shrouded in hushed awe and wonder.

At Christmas we celebrate the miracle of the Incarnation: that the eternal God took upon himself our nature and became human. The Almighty God entered our time and space, assumed our flesh, and was born of a human mother.

God becoming human is the ultimate paradox. God is invisible, unapproachable, almighty, unchanging— all the things we’re not. But in the Incarnation the eternal Word of God becomes what we are— visible, vulnerable, subject to change and suffering— the Infinite God made manifest in this infant child.

But it’s not just the paradox at the heart of Christmas that’s astounding, but that the Incarnation could have been so much different. It could have gone down way differently.

If God were of a different character, of a different spirit, how different his Incarnation could have been! If God were a tyrant, if He was evil or malicious, how unfortunate his arrival on earth would be! But as it is, the birth of Christ is a sign of how good and trustworthy God really is.

He comes not as a fierce man of war, threatening all things living with death, but as a newly born babe, bringing the hope of rebirth and life into the entire realm of death.¹

He comes not as a harbinger of destruction, but as a Sign of the good things to come, whose life will be the proof of God’s lovingkindness to all creation.

He comes not at first with a message, filling our ears with all the things we know and know not, but as a wordless infant, wrapped in the hushed silence of the cave.

Christmas reveals to us something about the God we believe in.

The God we believe in and worship is revealed to us in this holy Child— through him we know that God is good and lovely and worthy of our trust. And all the details of the Nativity point to this. Every detail of St. Luke’s account of the birth of Christ point to his humility.

The incarnate Word of God is born, not in a distinguished city like Rome or Athens or even Jerusalem, but in humble Bethlehem, little among the clans of Judah.

Christ is born, not in a regal palace, but in a cave where animals sleep for the night. He is laid, not in a solid gold crib designed for a king, but in a manger, the feeding trough of beasts.

The message of his birth is proclaimed first of all not to the eminent but to the shepherds, that most humble of professions.

And the newborn babe lies in the manger, in the silence of that holy night, among the ox, the ass, and the sheep, at harmony with not only his most holy mother and his righteous adoptive father, but with the animals and with all of nature.

Every detail of Our Lord’s Nativity points to his great humility: that he willingly embraced poverty and smallness, that his entrance into our world was not welcomed with regal fanfare and anxiety but with simplicity and joy.

Christmas is a celebration of everything that is good and lovely and gracious in our world. The highest joys of the human experience— family, love, celebration, nature —are not “beneath” God but are taken up by him in the Incarnation. He ennobles them by filling them with himself. The Word of God, by being born into this world, sanctifies and elevates, at once, motherhood, family, human love, and the bonds that tie together strangers over a shared celebration. Everyone is touched by this miracle: the Holy Family, the shepherds, the angels, even the animals who are silent witnesses to the great miracle. And the Magi have been summoned by the Star and are making their way, representing as they do all the nations of whom Christ is the hope.

Christmas should stir up in us a feeling of awe, of love, of gratitude. There is an atmosphere to Christmas, one that cannot be explained or put into words, a feeling that even secular culture seems to catch, despite aggressive commercialization and silliness. Even for those who don’t believe in the Incarnation, the Christmas season can bring feelings of warmth, of generosity, of “peace and goodwill toward men.”

And why not? Christmas is a celebration of all that is lovely and pure, and so it naturally stirs up in us the tenderness which belongs to the better side of our nature.

When Mary held the infant Christ in her arms, when she laid him upon her knees, she didn’t have to force herself to love him. She just loved him. He was eminently loveable. Here he was, the fruit of her womb, the fulfillment of that miraculous dispatch from the Angel Gabriel. Her eyes met his, and in her heart welled up all the affection which one person can feel for another. She didn’t have to make a calculation, she didn’t have to come up with a reason for loving Christ— her love was natural, warm, it sprung up within her.²

That’s how God wants us to love Him— not with rigid formulas or by jumping through religious hoops, but through simple, unpretentious love that arises warmly from the heart.

God did not become incarnate as an Idea. The Word did not become Information. The Word became flesh. The Word became this Holy Child, who is to be loved with warmth and gratitude.

But Christ is born for us, the eternal God becomes one of us, not simply because it is lovely, but for a purpose. God becomes incarnate in Christ so that we might be saved. He becomes poor that we might become rich. He shares in our humanity that we might share in his divinity. He becomes what we are so that we might become what He is.³

The birth of Our Lord is the everlasting sign that God loves us, that He wants to be with us, that He is not distant and apathetic but very near and very concerned with each of us. He has united our human nature to his divinity, that through him we might be filled with the life of God.

Did you know that God loves you and He wants to fill you with His life? Did you know that? He wants you for himself. And he calls you to lay aside sin and every weight and to leave off from every path that leads to death and embrace his Son, who will lead you back to the Father, back to our true home.

Let us embrace the newborn Christ with love. Let us take him up in our arms and feel all the warmth and goodwill this holy day inspires within us. Christ is born, and we too are reborn. Let us go even unto Bethlehem, with the angels, with the shepherds, with the Wise Men, with the Holy Family, and adore this Child who is the Sign of God’s everlasting love for us. Amen.

¹ St. Philaret of Moscow

²Fr. Austin Ferrer, THE CROWN OF THE YEAR: Weekly Paragraphs for the Holy Sacrament

³ Saying attributed to several Church Fathers.

Sermon for the Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity: “Signs and Wonders”

This sermon was originally preached at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church on Sunday, November 9, 2025.

Text: John 4:46-54

“Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”

Faith is a mystery. It’s a deep mystery of the human heart. What does it mean that a person has faith? And why is it that some people have faith and others don’t? Or that some have it and then they lose it? And how does a person acquire faith to begin with? How does it begin to take root in the heart?

There’s no straightforward answer to these questions, not least because there’s such a diversity in the way that Christian people come to faith. Some people are raised in church and in an atmosphere of piety. And they never remember a time when God was absent from their life. They’ve believed for as long as they can remember. And so, their spiritual growth in many ways went along with their physical growth.

But for other people, they did not have faith growing up. And it was only later in life that they came to faith. And it wasn’t something that was gradual and imperceptible, but something sudden and noticeable, perhaps a dramatic conversion experience.

So there’s all different kinds of ways that people come to faith. And these questions aren’t made easier by the fact that we believe a lot more than we’re able to express. And we see this especially in the faith of children. Children can have faith and they know a lot of things— and not just spiritual things, I mean, they know a lot of things about the world and about life and about themselves. They know a lot more than they can say. And so even if they’re not able to articulate their beliefs as eloquently as some adults, that doesn’t mean that the faith isn’t there.

So faith is a mystery. And in our Gospel reading today, although it doesn’t give us all the answers, it can be seen as a case study in how faith is born in a person’s heart, how it grows, and how it reaches maturity.

St. John tells of the royal official (older translations say a nobleman) whose son is terminally ill, and who comes to Jesus seeking a healing. This man was likely a Jew, a servant of the royal court of Herod Antipas, the Jewish governor appointed by Rome. The nobleman was distinguished, a man of importance. His son is ill and at the point of death, and like so many stories of healings in the Gospels, the man has heard of Jesus, the wonderworking healer of Galilee. He approaches the Lord and begs him to heal his son.

And Our Lord’s response might seem unexpected or even harsh to us. “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”

This is different from similar situations in the Gospels. Often when Jesus is informed of someone’s illness, he says, “I will go and heal them,” like with the centurion’s slave or Jairus’ daughter. But here he seems to rebuke the man.

We must understand this response in the context of what St. John has just told us. Jesus has returned to Galilee from Jerusalem, where he cleansed the temple for the first time. This is after he turned the water into wine at the wedding in Cana. So St. John writes that the Galileans welcomed him. They liked the signs he was doing, the symbolic demonstrations, the miracles. And so, they received him gladly.

The people of Galilee were hungry for “signs”— they wanted to see something eventful; they wanted spectacle. And it’s this dependence on the miraculous that Jesus criticizes. They weren’t excited because of who Jesus was but because of the amazing things he could do. The hunger for spectacle, for experiences, can be dangerous, because even Satan can work miracles and disguise himself as an angel of light. If signs and wonders produce awe, but not faith, then they have failed.

So Jesus is responding to this hunger for spectacle in the Galileans. “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” And the “you” here is plural: Unless “you people” “you-all” see signs and wonders, you-all will not believe. He’s addressing not the man only but the community.

Jesus’ response is a challenge to the nobleman: Why are you really asking this of me? Will you believe in me only if you see me work a miracle? In other words, Do you really have faith? Or are you depending on sight, on seeing something spectacular?

But the man persists: “Sir, come down before my child dies.” He expresses to Jesus his genuine concern for his son. He’s not asking because he wants to see something miraculous. He’s asking because he wants his son to be healed.

So Jesus grants his request. He heals the man’s son— but from a distance. He only gives him the promise: “Go, your son will live.” That is, Go back to see that the healing has taken place.

Now this is the man’s opportunity to prove that he really does have faith, that he doesn’t need to see before he believes. Jesus could have said, “Ok, I’ll come down with you and heal the boy.” Instead he says, “Go, your son will live.” He’s sending the man back home with nothing but his word.

And if the man objects, and says, “Well, I’d really like for you to come in person so I can see you heal him” then that just proves what Jesus was saying: “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”

The nobleman takes this to heart. “He believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went his way.” He makes the journey from Cana to Capernaum, about forty miles, so at least a day and a half journey on foot, maybe two. And when he’s making that journey, it could be that doubts begin to creep in. “Is my son actually going to be healed? Am I going all the way back home with nothing but this man’s assurance, and then finally arrive, just to find that he’s died? Is this real?” He could have had the whole drama of faith on that long journey: belief, doubt, uncertainty, reassurance, doubt again.

But finally he arrives home and finds that his son is alive and his condition is improving. He asks the hour he began to mend, and he’s told, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” That is, at 1 pm yesterday. And the father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, Your son will live. And so the nobleman believed, along with his household.

We see in this story how faith begins, how it grows, and how it reaches maturity. St. Bede, that great historian of the English Church, writes in his commentary on this passage: “The nobleman’s faith had its beginning, when he asked for his son’s recovery; its growth, when he believed our Lord’s words, Thy son liveth; its maturity, after the announcement of the fact by his servants.”

Faith had its beginning when he sought out the Lord— if he didn’t believe Jesus could heal his son, he wouldn’t have sought him out. His faith grew after the Lord challenged him to have faith without seeing, and he believed Jesus’ word. And his faith was brought to maturity after he finally saw what he had believed in, when the servants told him the boy was healed. And he came to believe, not just in the miracle, but in the person who worked the miracle— in Jesus.

So even though faith is a mystery, we can see something of how it begins, how it grows, and how it reaches maturity. And we can follow the same course as the nobleman.

First, faith begins in us when we have a desire for the Lord. When we seek out the Lord Jesus. And this desire is given to us by God; it is a gift of his grace. But without the desire, without the seeking, faith can’t begin in the heart. We have to seek out the Lord like the nobleman.

Secondly, we must believe in the Lord’s word. When he makes a promise, we must believe it. And to believe in his Word is not always an easy thing. Jesus may send us on our way with no more than a promise. “Go.” And then we have to make a long journey before what we’ve asked him for is ours. And during that long journey, there might be doubts, questionings, feeling certain and then not certain and then coming back around and feeling confident again— the whole inner drama of faith. But we have to be persistent. The Lord lets us make that journey so that we can learn to grow in our faith, without seeing anything tangible for a long time. This is how faith can grow, how we can retain a firm hope even in long seasons when heaven seems to be silent.

And finally, our faith reaches maturity when we finally have what we have asked of the Lord. We will see the Lord’s promises to us come to pass, but it may not be for a while. And it is faith that sustains us on the way, until it finally gives way to sight, and hope gives way to possession.

So whatever it is you’re facing in your life, continue to seek the Lord. Ask. Seek. Knock. Be persistent. Be importunate. And if the Lord doesn’t answer immediately or in the way you’d prefer, continue in the faith. Persist.

The Lord’s promises will be fulfilled, and the journey toward the fulfillment is a time when our faith can grow, when our trust can grow. Then our faith can come to maturity— we will come to believe not in signs and wonders, but in Jesus himself: the true Sign of the purposes of God— the true Wonder before whom all creation bends its knee. Amen.

Sermon for the First Sunday after Trinity: “The Lazarus in Our Lives”

This sermon was originally preached at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas, on Sunday, June 22, 2025.

Texts: 1 John 4:7-21; Luke 16:19-31

Martin Niemöller was a Lutheran pastor in 1930s Germany who was a part of the Confessing Church, which resisted the policies of Hitler. Niemöller is less known than his compatriot Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but he has left us with a haunting poem about indifference in the face of tyranny:

He writes,

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

…

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

…

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

…

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak for me

…

Niemöller writes about indifference to the suffering of others, because they are not us. They are different from us. We don’t care what happens to them. We do not advocate for them. But then when the hand of the oppressor reaches out to grab us, no one is there to advocate for us.

This extreme indifference, this lack of love for one’s neighbor is exemplified in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

It appears only in St. Luke’s Gospel. Our Lord describes a Rich Man who lived in luxury and a poor man named Lazarus who lived at the edge of his property. Lazarus was a pitiful sight: emaciated, desperate for food, and covered in sores, which the dogs came and licked. The Rich Man could have helped Lazarus, but he did not. He continued his life of ease, caring only about the satisfaction of his own desires.

Both men died and found that their fortunes in this life had been reversed in the afterlife: Lazarus was now at rest and the Rich Man was now in torment.

Is this just, for the Rich Man’s fortunes to be reversed so grievously? How do we know that the Rich Man knew about Lazarus? We might say, “Maybe he just didn’t know that Lazarus was suffering in this way.” But we know he did because he refers to him by name: “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to bring me relief.”

The Rich Man knew his name.

Lazarus was not just one of countless beggars whom the Rich Man might encounter on a trip to the city. This was someone he knew, someone on a first-name basis. The Rich Man knew Lazarus, knew that he was at the gates, knew how much pain he was in, but he did not care. He showed him no compassion, no sympathy, and he gave him no aid. And then Lazarus died at the edge of his property.

And even in the afterlife, the Rich Man doesn’t seem repentant: he doesn’t apologize to Lazarus for his indifference, doesn’t confess his hardheartedness. He sees Lazarus afar off but doesn’t even speak to him— he speaks to Abraham… who understandably is not interested in sending Lazarus across the chasm to help someone who clearly has not had a change of heart.

All this points to the truth that we cannot close our hearts to our neighbors. We cannot see others in need and close our hearts to them. We cannot view others with indifference, not caring about them or considering their suffering.

Whether we love the people in our lives is the test of our Christianity— the test of whether we can actually love God.

“If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).

If we want to be capable of loving God, we must love other people. And there are many opportunities every day to do a small kindness to others: to give to others, to suffer with others, to enter into their situation, if even just a little.

And we can do this whether or not we think they “deserve” our help— which is a prideful way for us to be thinking anyway. C.S. Lewis was once rebuked by a friend for giving spare change to a beggar. “He’ll just use it for beer,” said his friend. Lewis paused and responded, “But if I kept it, that’s what I would use it for.” When we help others, through time or energy or money, they may indeed take our help and use it in less than helpful ways. But then again, we waste and misuse our resources too. And the Lord is merciful to us all.

If we are going to call ourselves Christians, we must love other people. That’s the most basic thing I’m saying in this homily. We must have love in our hearts for other people, whether they are close to us or far away from us, whether they’re people we know or people we just hear about. We must love other people through the way we treat them and through the way we view them.

Because how we treat other people is just an extension of how we view them.

And this is a discipline, because it is extremely easy in the current moment to look upon groups of people we don’t like and dehumanize them. Political leaders in our country are calling their opponents “vermin”; saying that certain people are “not human, they’re animals”; describing certain groups of people as “poisoning the blood of our country.” (By the way, the last time a world leader said that a group of people was poisoning the blood of the nation, it didn’t end so well for the world).

This is the rhetoric that surrounds us. It is dehumanizing. It is not a Christian way of speaking; it’s demonic, in fact. In the latter days, the love of many will grow cold, and we see this coldness in the way the powerful in our country are talking about their enemies. It’s filtering down to us. We must resist this. We don’t have to agree with what everyone does, but we must be the first to say that other people are not animals, they’re not vermin, they’re human beings made in the Image of God. Like Lazarus, each of them has a name. And if we close our hearts to others when they are in misfortune, what is to stop others from closing their hearts to us when we are in misfortune? Like Niemöller, we may find that there will be no one left to speak for us.

We must love every Lazarus in our world, even if they are covered in sores and pitiful. For in a special way, Our Lord identifies with such people. He is the true Lazarus. He was poor and despised. He was covered in sores and wounds, and he died “outside the gate” on the edge of Jerusalem. Jesus identifies with the poor and the suffering, and if they come to us and we despise them, we despise the Lord.

So as you go through your week and you encounter other people or you hear about other people and their suffering, be attentive to your heart. Do we care about the suffering of others, or are we indifferent? Do we close our hearts to others, do we reason that their suffering is their fault, that they are only getting what’s coming to them, and that therefore they are unworthy of our compassion? In so many words, Do we care about other people and what happens to them? Because if the fate of the Rich Man is any indication, our salvation depends on it.

Sermon for the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord: “The Work of God”

Texts: Titus 3:4-8, Matthew 3:13-17

This sermon was originally preached on Sunday, January 12, 2025, at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas.

Today the Lord of all comes to the banks of the River Jordan to be baptized by the hand of John the Baptist.

Today the Sinless One receives the baptism declared to be necessary for sinners.

Today Our Lord emerges from thirty years of relative obscurity to commence his public ministry— a three-year period that will change the world forever.

The Baptism of Christ is an event so important that all four Gospels record it with great attention. Jesus comes from Galilee in the north to Judea in the south to be baptized by John. Jesus is, seemingly, just another person in the crowd, another person responding to John’s summons to repentance. And the rest of the crowd would not see anything extraordinary in Jesus coming to be baptized. After all, he’s just another man, no one famous.

But John knows who he is. Which is why he tries to prevent him. He knows Christ is sinless and so has no need to receive a baptism to wash away sins— it doesn’t seem right to treat Jesus like any of the other hundreds of peoples he’s baptized. And John also feels unworthy to touch the Lord— if he is not worthy to unloose the strap of his sandals, surely, he’s unworthy to baptize the Lord. As John says, “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me?”

But the Lord insists, because this baptism is necessary for Christ to show his solidarity with sinful humanity… a solidarity that will ultimately lead him to the Cross.

So John consents and baptizes Christ. And the heavens are opened, and the Spirit of God descends like a dove and rests on Jesus; and a voice from heaven thunders, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

The Baptism of Christ is a manifestation of the Holy Trinity. At once, there appears the voice of the Father, the Son who is baptized, and the Spirit, who descends like a dove.

This moment, this Event, is the prototype for all future baptisms. In the Baptism of Christ, we see what happens in every baptism. Whether it takes place at a grand cathedral, in the muddy waters of a lake, or in the humble parish church, at every baptism, the heavens open, the Spirit descends on the baptized, and the voice of the Father declares, “This is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

The Baptism of Christ announces the will of the Father for every human being. God wills for every person he has made to receive the Holy Spirit, to become a beloved son of God. God desires for the Holy Spirit to descend and rest on each one of you, so that you too might become the beloved children of God. And He begins to accomplish this through Holy Baptism.

Baptism is a work of God. It is God’s gift to us. When we are baptized, we are clothed with Christ, we “put him on.” We are given the right to stand where Jesus stands, to cry out to God with his voice, with his Spirit.

Baptism is God laying hold of us, not because of works we had done in righteousness, but because of his mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit. And this is something to especially remember when we bring our children to be baptized.

The great Anglican priest-poet George Herbert expresses this beautifully in his poem on Holy Baptism:

Since, Lord, to thee
A narrow way and little gate
Is all the passage, on mine infancy
Thou didst lay hold, and antedate
My faith in me.

When we are baptized as young children, God lays hold on us and marks us as His own before we articulate our faith. He gives us this grace before we ask for it, for narrow is the way, and we need all the help we can get.

And that’s why baptism can occur before we articulate our faith or after. Within the context of the covenantal community, timing is not so important. Life with God is not primarily about doing things in the right order. It’s not primarily about doing things. Life with God is about God reaching out to us and giving us His life, and calling forth our response, enabling our freedom to respond to God. God freely gives us his grace, so that we might freely respond in love. Freely. For God does not want robots but sons.

And part of being a son of God is the knowledge of His great love for us. One of the great consolations of life in Christ is that throughout your life as a baptized person, you will hear over and over, in infinitely varying ways, the voice of God declaring to you, “You are my son, my beloved. With you I am well pleased.” And this is a consolation that not everyone in this world experiences. So many people go through life without any sense that someone is in their corner. So many go through life isolated, feeling that no one really cares about them, that no one is advocating for them. And this is not true of course, because God loves all people and is looking out for everyone.

But as baptized Christians, we know that there is One who loves us, who cares for us, who is advocating for us, even if no one else is. We know the voice of the Father declaring to us, “You are my beloved.” We know that God is for us. And if God is for us, who can be against us?

Baptism, then, is a source of great comfort for us throughout our lives. It is an enduring sign and pledge of God’s undying love for us. Baptism is not primarily about what we do, not primarily about what we express, it’s about what God does and what God expresses. In Baptism, God expresses His promise to us that He will never abandon us, that He will always love us, that He will always draw to Himself his baptized children.

Yet while it’s true that baptism is a work of God, it is also a work that calls forth a response. Baptism is not magic. It does not infallibly guarantee our salvation. It does not eliminate the need for personal faith or make unnecessary the struggle to live a Christian life.

The Christian life is a journey, a journey into God– further up and further in, as C.S. Lewis would say. And Baptism is only the beginning of the journey, it’s not the end. Baptism purifies us and sanctifies us as we start out on our pilgrimage to God, and it will remain as the constant call to make this faith our own, to engage in our own struggles to be faithful to Christ.

As Lola, Loretta, and Callahan grow up, they will continue their spiritual journey with the help of their families, their church, and the wider Christian community. And they will need to make their own the commitments essential to Christian life. They will need to make their own the renunciation of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. They will need to confess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. They will need to come to a sound understanding of Christian doctrine, as it’s laid out in the Creed. And they will need to integrate into their lives the essential practices of the Christian faith: worship, fellowship, repentance, evangelization, and service to others.

Baptism does not eliminate the need for our response to Christ. It calls forth our response.

So Baptism is not something that is all about what we do, without God’s contribution, nor is it something that only God does without our needing to follow up in any way. Like so many things in the Christian life, it’s not one or the other, it’s both, and to the utmost.

Today the Lord comes to be baptized in the Jordan. And today these beloved children of God come to the waters to be baptized. Convinced of God’s love for Lola, Loretta, and Callahan, we bring them to the waters so that God may lay hold on them and give them His Spirit and adopt them as His beloved children. And empowered by the grace of this baptism, these children will start out on the great adventure, the great journey of life in Christ. May God receive them, and us, at the last, into His all-loving embrace. Amen.

Sermon for Christmas Eve, 2024

“Something New”

This sermon was originally preached at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church on December 24, 2024.

“Christ is born! Let us glorify him. Christ has come down from heaven– let us go to meet him. Christ is at last on the earth– let us be exalted.”¹

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

The birth of a child is a time of great excitement and joy, but of course also of anxiety and pain. Childbirth is one of those experiences where the line between life and death is indeed very thin. But when the baby has been born, after it’s been cleaned and placed in the mother’s arms, and eyes meet eyes for the first time… when the family sends out texts letting everyone know “mom and baby are doing well”— when things finally start to quiet down… all can begin to appreciate the miracle that a child has been born.

Something new has come into the world— someone new. This person wasn’t here before and now they are, and the world is different because of this. The birth of any child adds something to the world, something that wasn’t there before, and so the world is a different place. And what a child adds to the world is not just one more number to the global population, not just “one more mouth to feed,” but a whole world of possibilities.

The child that is born will, hopefully, grow up and bring all sorts of things to bear on the world. That child will create, will shape the world around them. Conversations will take place that never would have if this child hadn’t been born. Relationships will come into being. There will be events that will occur that would not have happened if this child hadn’t been born.

And that is the miracle of life, that every day we are creating the world around us through what we say and do. Of course, the older we get, the possibilities of what we can do with our lives become ever smaller. We come to see our limitations– that we can’t do all things and be all things in the short time we have on this earth. But a newborn baby has his whole life ahead of him. He is all possibility. So the birth of a child is a time of great hope, a time when we look forward to what he might become and bring into the world.

And if this is true for every child who is born, how much more is it true of the birth of Christ! To say that Christ is born is to say that the world has changed, forever, and it cannot go back. Before the birth of Christ, God was not incarnate in the world as a human being, and after the birth of Christ, He is. The Word of God has taken our human nature from the most exemplary member of our race, the Virgin Mother, and He has been born into the world like each of us is born into the world. God now has a human face, a human body. He can be present in the world the way we are. He can interact with others face to face. God has become one of us and dwells among us.

This is truly miraculous! It is indeed one of the greatest events in the history of humankind! And it may be easy to pass over the birth of Christ without truly appreciating its wonder. Familiarity with the Christmas story might dull our spiritual senses so that we do not feel the awe we should.

Because this event was awesome, in the true sense of that word, for everyone involved in the Nativity of Our Lord. Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the angels… all are in amazement that the divine Word of God has been conceived in the womb of a Virgin and has now been born on earth. The Angels sing their hymn of praise, the shepherds adore on bended knee, the ox and donkey bow their heads in reverence, and the Blessed Mother, face to face with her son and her God, treasures all these things in their heart.

What hope they must have felt. Here is a child, a newborn baby, a world of possibilities. And not only the normal possibilities that could be true of any newborn babe. Because this Holy Child is God incarnate. What possibilities! What sort of a life could this child lead? What miracles could he bring into the world? If God became a human and lived one life in our world, what sort of things would he do? Of course, the answer to that question is the Life of Christ, in all its fathomless beauty.

What the birth of Christ adds to the world is the proof that God has not abandoned us. That despite our sin, despite all our selfishness and folly, God still wants to be with us and share His life with us.

And the birth of Christ is proof of this, it’s not just words. We can say, “Well, God is good, God loves us, God wants to be with us,” but the Nativity is not just words, it’s the proof. There is the Christ Child, there is the proof of God’s desire to be with us, in flesh and blood and truth. Not just words spoken into the air, but the Word made flesh.

Christmas is the Good News that God is good, that He loves us, that He desires to be with us— and in Jesus, He is with us. He begins to be with us by being born for us. The whole life of this Holy Child unfolds in front of him— a life full of possibilities. And we, beloved, have the privilege of walking with Christ through the Events of his life, week by week in the Church.

And let me be so bold to say: If this is one of the two times a year you come to church—if you come to church on Christmas and on Easter— please join us every Sunday and holy day you can. The Life of Christ is the greatest thing that ever happened, and we get to walk through it, week by week. We start with his birth, then the events of his holy childhood, his baptism, his temptation and ministry, all the way through to his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.

Christmas is not the end of the Christ story; it’s just the beginning! We say, Christ is born, and it’s not like he was born and then nothing happened. A lot of things happened, and they’re all wonderful. So join us, and we will experience the beauty and truth of Christ together, week by week, in Scripture and sacrament and song.

This is the Joy of Christmas— it is a night filled with possibilities, with hope for the future, with the delight of knowing that God has more in store for us than we could ever imagine. Something new has come into the world— “newer than everything new, the only new thing under the sun,”²God-made-man. This Holy Child– the son of the Virgin Mary, adored by shepherds and hymned by angels– this Child has been born, and the world will never be the same. He has his whole life ahead of him, and with that life he will bring redemption to humankind and lead us all back to the God who made us.

And we who receive Christ become the children of God and know the endless possibilities of life with God. Christ is born, and we will never be the same, for we have known the mystery of the Light that shines in the darkness, that no darkness can overcome— the mystery of the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth. Amen.

Endnotes

¹ Sermon on the Nativity of Christ, St. Gregory of Nazianzus.

² St. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent: “The Beloved Judge”

This sermon was originally preached at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas, on Sunday, December 8, 2024.

Texts: Song of Songs 2:8-14, Psalm 50, Luke 21:25-33

Advent is a time when we remember and celebrate the coming of Christ into the world— but which coming?

For many Christians, it is the first coming of Christ into the world, when the Holy Child is born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And so, Advent is a time to remember Mary and her pregnancy— to prayerfully await the joy of Christmas, the birth of Emmanuel.

But for others, this emphasis is too sentimental, and the stress is instead laid on the second coming of Christ, when he returns in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead. Advent, then, is a time of repentance, of preparing for the judgment we all must face.

To focus on both at once may create for us a sense of dissonance in this season. We may ask ourselves, What is it we’re really getting ready for?

But the wisdom of the Church in ordering the church year this way is revealed when we realize that we cannot understand either coming of Christ except in relation to the other. We cannot understand the Last Judgment unless we truly understand the miracle of the Incarnation.

For the One who judges us is the One who was born for us.

Our understanding of the Judgment Day must be grounded in who Christ is, in who he has revealed himself to be as the incarnate Word of God, the Son of Mary. Otherwise, every Scripture about judgment can become distorted and turned into something of an anti-Gospel.

And there are many passages of Scripture about God’s fearful judgment of the world at the end of time. We have two of them in our readings:

In Psalm 50: The LORD shall call the heaven from above, and the earth, that he may judge his people. “Gather my saints together unto me…” And the heavens shall declare his righteousness; For God himself is Judge.

And in our Gospel, Our Lord speaks of his return to judge the world at the end of the age: “And there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”

These scenes of the fearful return of Christ and of his coming to judge the world have inspired some ghastly images in the history of Christian art— images of condemnation and terror, of fright and despair.

One of the most memorable scenes of the Russian film Andrei Rublev is when the titular character, the great painter-monk, admits that he is utterly unable to complete his assignment: to paint a fresco of The Day of Judgment, with the requisite images of sinners being cast into the flames while monstrous demons breathe smoke out of their nostrils.

For the saintly artist, this is unbearable. He cannot paint such a spectacle, because however much it might bewilder and unsettle his audience, to him, it doesn’t speak the truth about who Christ is— it does not fit with his idea of the lovingkindness of the merciful God.

(And in real life, the fresco he ended up painting is quite subdued— he doesn’t depict the condemned or any demons, but only the righteous).¹

If our idea of Judgment has no trace of love in it, if Christ the Judge is seen as vindictive and sadistic— in other words, if Judgment Day has been disconnected from Christmas— then something of the heart of the Gospel has been ignored.

Our Judge is the One who loves us. The Judge before whom we will stand on Judgment Day is the One who came as a Babe, laid in the manger. The Judge of the living and the dead is the One who took flesh of the Blessed Virgin Mary: the One who became human, who became like us in all ways but sin, who lived a human life, who faced temptation and sorrow, who longs for the salvation of all, and who died on the Cross and rose from the dead to defeat those infernal powers which constrain his beloved creatures.

The character of Christ does not change between his earthly life and his Return. He is who he is.

And one of the great miracles of the Incarnation is that the Judge of all has become one of us. God now has a human face— and not simply so that He may look upon us, but that we may look upon him. On the Last Day, we shall see our Judge face to face. We shall behold him who is our Life.

And if we have truly understood who Christ is, and if we are truly living as his disciples, his return and his judgment are not fearsome but something to be welcomed. “When you see these things taking place, look up and lift your heads, for your redemption is drawing near.”

When the celestial powers are shaken, and there are signs in the sun and the moon and the stars, and the Son of Man comes on a cloud with power and great glory, most of the people on earth will bow their heads in fear, but we will look up to behold our Savior. For we know that the One who comes into the world once more is not just the fearful Judge, but the Desire of every nation, the Joy for which every heart longs.

We look for Christ with the same eagerness the Bride looks for the Groom in the Song of Songs. “The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved says to me, ‘Arise my love, for the winter is past and the spring is here. The fig tree puts forth its fruit and the flowers blossom.’”

On that Last Day, the Lover of Humankind will bound forth to meet us. Jesus will look at us with his eyes of compassion, and we will raise our eyes to meet his, to behold that holy face. The Judgment Day is the revelation of the Beauty of Christ, whom we long to see and whose countenance delights us.

We want to meet him, we want him to judge us, to reveal to us who we are and who he is. We long for him to set all things right in us, to destroy all that is false in us so that what is truly real can endure. And it may be painful for us on that Day to see who we really are and how we’ve actually lived. The Truth is painful, sometimes. And Christ, for us, is Absolute Truth come to save us and heal us. The process will be difficult, yet it’s what is needed for us to enter the joy of our Lord.

And this process begins here and now, as we continually look to the Lord, repenting of our sins and falsehoods, so that we may become more and more the persons God has made us to be.

May we all see the Face of the Beloved, the Face of the One who loves us, the Holy Child and the Merciful Judge, the twice-Adventing Lord of Lords.

Come, Lord Jesus, and look on us even now in judgment and in love. And we shall behold thy face and be radiant, unto the ages of ages. Amen.

¹ Rublev’s fresco of the Last Judgment can be viewed here: https://www.wikiart.org/en/andrei-rublev/the-last-judgement-1408

Homily for the First Sunday of Advent

“Out of Time”

Sunday, December 1, 2024

Texts:

Amos 5:14-15, 18-24
Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 21:1-13

This sermon was originally preached at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas.

Sunday, December 1. So… the countdown begins.

24 days til Christmas.

We’ve made it through Thanksgiving and Black Friday. And now, we turn toward Christmas.

For most of us, the holiday season passes in a blur: there are parties and events to attend, gifts to buy, family to host. And so often in December we get the feeling that “There’s never enough time.” In our culture especially, there’s a frenzy to the holiday season, a sense that we have to do as much as possible. It’s that sense of FOMO, Fear of Missing Out. We don’t want to miss out on any experiences worth having. So we pack our calendars as full as we can, since Christmas only comes once a year.

If there were two months between Thanksgiving and Christmas, maybe it would be manageable. Maybe we’d have the time to do all the things we want to do. But as it is, we feel that we’re running out of time. And when Christmas arrives, perhaps we feel that it’s come too soon.

This sense, that time has run out, that there wasn’t enough time to prepare, is key to today’s Gospel reading: Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

Now some of you may be thinking, “Why are we hearing about Palm Sunday on the First Sunday of Advent? I don’t remember that.”

Starting this Sunday, we’re going to be following the readings from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, which is basically the historic lectionary of the Church of England. This lectionary has its roots in the Middle Ages. So if you were an Englishman in the 1300s and you came to church on the First Sunday of Advent, you’d hear this Epistle reading from Romans and this Gospel reading from Matthew. (And that’s something to keep in mind as we go through this church year, that the readings you’ll be hearing on Sunday are the ones Christians have been hearing for centuries).

But the reason this Gospel is appointed for the First Sunday of Advent is found in the proclamation of the prophet Zechariah: “Behold thy King cometh unto thee.” And the crowd meets Jesus as he arrives, exclaiming, “Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord!”

This is the major theme of Advent: The coming of Christ, his arrival, whether we’re ready or not.

And when Our Lord arrived in Jerusalem, the people were not ready. As the Lord said, they did not recognize the time of their visitation.

They had three years during his ministry to prepare for the arrival of the Messiah, but they were not ready in heart to receive him. And so, the crowd that hailed him as King on Sunday was clamoring for his crucifixion by Friday.

This brings to us the question: Are we ready for the coming of Christ? If Christ were to return today, would we be ready to meet him? If Christ were to return today and judge us, just as we are, would we be able to say that our lives are in order? For most of us, the answer is probably not.

“Woe to you who desire the Day of the Lord! Why would you want the Day of the Lord? It would be darkness and not light” (Amos 5:18).

Almost all of us, if we are honest, have not truly repented of our sins. We have not ordered our lives to prioritize the things of God. We do not love others as we should. In general, we are not living the Christian lives we should be.

So this realization should create in us a sense of urgency. We must prepare. There’s no time to lose. As St. Paul says, “It is high time for us to wake from sleep.” So we hasten to “cast away the works of darkness,” to stop doing anything that’s hidden or shameful, anything we would do in the cover of night. We cast away the works of darkness so we can live honorably, as in the day, in the light. Like the Lord who casts the money changers out of the Temple, so we cast out our sinful passions so that we may be a holy temple to the Lord.

And if we really plan to do this, we must go against the grain of what the rest of the culture is doing. For Christians, the next twenty-four days should be a time, not for drunkenness and over-indulgence, but for sobriety and moderation.

Advent should be a time of fasting, not feasting. We feast at Christmas. But now, we curb our appetites to prepare ourselves. Because anyone will tell you, it’s hard to think straight and to have energy when you eat too much. You wanna take a nap or slump down on the couch. So in Advent we eat less, we forgo certain indulgences, so we can be freed up— so both our mind and body can be lighter and able to move quicker and act with more clarity.

And as for our busy schedules, there is an opportunity here as well. We can use this season to make time for spiritual activities, and not just recreational ones. So many of us have that sense of frenzy I mentioned earlier when we’re making plans: “They’re having the Christmas lights, and then we gotta go to this party, and then we gotta go to this event on the 12^th…”

Imagine if we had that same eagerness for spiritual activities! What if we had that sense of urgency to create time for prayer and reading of Scripture, for devotions that help us to draw nearer to the Lord? Because after all, Advent only comes once a year.

And all of these spiritual disciplines– the fasting, the prayer, the times for quiet reflection– are not an end in themselves. They have a purpose: they help prepare us to meet Christ. For if the major theme of Advent is the coming of Christ, its hidden wisdom is the truth that Christ is not what we thought he would be. The people of Jerusalem did not expect the Messiah to be like Jesus. And we may have our own ideas of what Jesus is like. But he has a way of surprising us. The Lord is both more loving and more severe than we could have imagined. More demanding and more forgiving than we could have expected. As C.S. Lewis said, “Aslan is not a tame lion. But He is good.”

Advent is a time to discover Jesus anew, to be stirred in spirit and to ask, along with the people of Jerusalem, “Who is this?” To the extent that we enter the spirit of the Advent season, Christ will reveal Himself to us… and he will be more than we ever imagined, and in ways we did not expect.

So, beloved. Let us wake up and await with expectation the coming of the Lord. Let us cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light… or better still, let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision to gratify the desires of the flesh.

Behold our King cometh unto us. Let us prepare in heart and mind and body to meet him. Amen.

Homily for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost: “A Tale of Two Widows”

This sermon was preached at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas, on Sunday, November 10, 2024.

Texts: 1 Kings 17:8-16, Mark 12:38-44

Sometimes a story from the New Testament can only be truly understood when it’s viewed alongside a story from the Old Testament.

Our Gospel reading today is the story of the poor widow’s offering. At this point in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has entered Jerusalem for the final week of his earthly life. He is daily teaching and healing the sick in the Temple. On one afternoon, Jesus is sitting opposite the Temple treasury, and he observes people from the crowd putting money into it. He saw that there were many rich people putting in large sums. But one woman, a poor widow, puts into two copper coins, which together make a very small amount, a mite or a penny. Barely anything.

And Jesus is so affected by this act that he calls his disciples to himself and says to them, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole livelihood.”

And that’s the story. It’s brief and leaves out many details we might like to know.

Why was the widow putting into the treasury the last bit of money she had? How did she feel about this?

And what does Jesus really think of this? Does he approve of this act? Does he want his disciples to imitate this?

Because on the face of it, this is not advisable. If you are poor, if you are a widow in the ancient world and therefore without the ability to support yourself, and if all you have is two coins, you should not be obligated to give to the Temple. You’re clearly in need and shouldn’t feel you have to be responsible for giving your money away— if anything, people should be helping you out.

This passage is sometimes used in stewardship seasons to encourage generous giving, even when people are in real financial need. The message goes, “She didn’t have much but she gave all she had. So we should give generously too, even if we don’t have a lot, even if we’re struggling.”

This is, I believe, a flawed reading of the story and ironically the very sort of thing Our Lord was criticizing just a few verses before this episode.

The Lord warns against the scribes, the scholars of the Law, who like to be honored with salutations and the best seats in the synagogues and at feasts… and who do what? Who devour widows’ houses. They encourage the faithful to give large donations to the Temple or the synagogue— what we would call the church— even if they are in a financially precarious situation. And some widows will do it because they want to be faithful, and after all, these are holy men who are encouraging them to do this.

So the leaders of God’s people have a great responsibility when it comes to the financial counsel they give, because people listen. We just concluded our stewardship season, and I was clear about my belief in the benefits of tithing– probably more so than most Episcopal priests. But a tithe is 10%, it’s not 100%! It’s good to give to the church, but we have to do it in a way that’s responsible. We give generously within our ability, in a way that’s not reckless.

So this story is a commentary on the greed of religious leaders, but it’s also a story about faith… about trust in the face of despair. Its counterpart is the Old Testament story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath.

In those days, there was a drought in Israel. There was no water, and because of course there’s no rain, the crops can’t grow, so there’s no food either. The LORD commands the prophet Elijah to go to this young widow who lives across the way in Sidon. The widow and her son have run out of food. They’re starving, and she has enough meal to make one more small loaf of bread. She’s gathering sticks to make a fire to bake one last piece of bread to feed herself and her young son. This is a woman who is resigned to her fate. Unless a miracle occurs, they’ll soon be dead. She’s accepted that this will be their last meal.

And here comes this man of God, asking for some water and a piece of bread. And she tells him, “I don’t have any bread, just a little bit of meal. And if I make any for you, I won’t have any for me and my son.” But he assures her to trust him, and to make him a little cake and afterward there will be enough for them too.

Though she had good reason to deny his request for hospitality, something in her told her to do this generous act. She could have denied him his request. She could have said, No there’s only enough for me and my son, get lost! But she was generous and gave Elijah what was meant for her and her son.

And the miracle she had been hoping for, but didn’t expect, occurs. The handful of meal is not spent, nor the little bit of oil, but both last many days. They’re able to subsist on the bread the meal and oil make until the drought ended, the crops returned, and the people were able to eat again. Elijah saved the life of this widow through her generous act.

This story gives us the key to the story of the poor widow’s mite. The poor widow may have also reached the end of her rope. She was in poverty. Maybe she had been hungry and malnourished and poorly clad for a long time. Maybe she had been poor for such a long time that it all was starting to take its toll on her health, and she was nearing the end. Unless a miracle occurs, she’s not going to be able to live much longer.

All she had left was these two copper coins. And those added up to something like a penny— not even enough to buy one meal or even a loaf of bread. So if that’s really all she has left, maybe she thinks to herself, “This isn’t enough to sustain me. If I have to spend it, at least I’ll give it back to God.” So she places it in the Temple treasury as an act of faith, as one last act of generosity in the face of the abyss. Like the widow of Zarephath, she gives away what little she has to someone else, because if she’s going to be dead soon anyway, she might as well do one last act of kindness.

And Jesus notes that this offering, given in the face of despair, is more generous than every other offering that day, because the wealthy give out of their abundance, and their offering is just a small percentage of their livelihood… but she gave the last bit of money she had— she gave everything.

We don’t know what happened to the poor widow. Perhaps she did find a benefactor and was able to get the food and necessities she needed. I like to think so. But even if she didn’t, her act of generosity is immortalized in the Gospels, and she takes her place on that noble list of people whom Jesus praises.

This story is not really about how much we should give to the church. It’s certainly not a justification for encouraging giving that’s reckless. This is a story about choosing to act with kindness in the face of despair.

You may feel defeated in some aspects of your life. You may feel that you’ve come to the end of your rope, that your resources have run out, and you don’t know how you can go on.

Some of you may be disappointed by the outcome of last week’s election and concerned about the direction our country is heading. Or perhaps something else is weighing on your mind.

All of us can have seasons in life where we feel defeated. When it’s hard to imagine a better future. It’s hard to envision a solution to our problems. We feel hopeless. And maybe we’ve even resigned ourselves to the idea that things won’t get better. And if we get to that point, we can become despondent, give up, or maybe even lash out at the people around us. Despairing people are rarely good company.

Or… even if we feel defeated, even if we feel like things are hopeless, we can refuse to give in to despair. We can keep living, and when the opportunity presents itself, we can be kind. We can give to others, even if we feel that we should only have to be concerned with ourselves. Because after all, the widow of Zarephath and the widow in Jerusalem would be justified in saying that they shouldn’t have to look after anyone but themselves. “Hey, I’m starving. Hey, I’ve only got a penny to my name. I shouldn’t have to do anything for anyone.” And yet, they both chose to perform an act of kindness for another.

This is especially relevant when we’re going through a time of crisis— a medical crisis, marriage problems or family problems, financial hardship, depression. We may think, “I shouldn’t have to do anything, I’m going through this or that. I shouldn’t have to deal with other people’s problems.” And it is good to not overextend ourselves when we’re stretched thin. But when the opportunity presents itself, we can still do a kind act— even as something as small as a smile or a kind word.

So if you are in a hard place, if you feel defeated or depressed, if you don’t know how to move forward… just keep trusting. Keep on living, and be kind to others every opportunity you have. And who knows? Maybe God will provide a miracle for you too. And you will find a way out of the drought, out of the mire, out of the seemingly hopeless situation you find yourself in. And the acts of kindness you did along the way, in the face of despair, will remain unto the ages. Amen.

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.