Showing Up When You Can’t Take Control

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

Sermon for the fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A.

The text is Matthew 1:18-25.

When my wife and I were in seminary, there was this Chinese restaurant that we liked to eat at. And at this restaurant, there was this spicy peanut noodle soup that I absolutely adored. But of course, we couldn’t eat there all the time because we were a couple of broke seminary students. So I decided, I’m going to try to figure out how to make this at home.

So I looked up some recipes, bought some ingredients, and decided I was just going to try and wing it. We had the noodles and the vegetables, of course. But the real kicker was chili oil, milk, and peanut butter. That’s how you got that nice sauce.

So, I was putting it all together and I thought to myself, “The peanut flavor in that soup was pretty strong, and this doesn’t seem like a lot of peanut butter. I better add some more to be safe.” So I did.

But what I ended up with was not so much soup as soggy clumps of peanut butter laced with noodles. And of course, it was completely inedible.

I got myself in over my head. And I learned that day that enthusiasm cannot make up for the fact that I have no idea what I’m doing.

It’s funny when the stakes are low.
It’s harder when they’re not.

Sometimes in life, we get in over our heads with something that really matters, and still, we have no idea what we’re doing. We care, but we’re clueless.

Most painful of all are those times when we get in over our heads with something that’s happening to someone we love, and we have no control over the outcome. We want to step in, help out, take charge, and fix it. We figure if we’re smart enough, committed enough—if we just love them enough—we can manage the outcome and stop the situation from getting messy.

But real life doesn’t work that way. Other people’s lives are not problems to be solved, no matter how much we love them. We can’t control who they are, what they go through, or how their story ends. It’s their life. They have to live it—even if we’re pretty sure we could do a better job living it for them.

All we can really do is show up and stand with them while they go through it. And that gap—that gaping chasm between love and control—is one of the most uncomfortable places a human being can stand.

And it’s exactly where St. Joseph is standing in today’s Gospel.

The story begins with our buddy Joe finding out that his fiancée, Mary, is pregnant. And for reasons that were probably explained to you in biology class, Joe is pretty sure that he is not the father. So, what’s a guy supposed to do in a situation like that?

The text of Scripture tells us that Joseph was a righteous man. And that’s important. He’s not reckless, cruel, or indifferent. He’s just a guy trying to do the right thing in a situation that he didn’t choose and doesn’t understand.

He’s caught between the competing goods of compassion and law, love and responsibility, mercy and obligation. He’s hit the limit of what he can manage. And it’s there, in the stunned silence of that moment, that God finally gives him the answer he’s looking for.

It’s not a full explanation or a long-term strategy, or even a promise that everything’s going to work out okay. What it is is something much quieter and more grounding.

The first thing Joe hears is his name: “Joseph, son of David.” Before he’s told what to do, he’s reminded who he is. Identity before instruction.

Joe is reminded that he’s not just some working-class bumpkin. He’s the descendant of kings. In modern language, we might render “Joseph, son of David” as “Joe Davidson.” And we can imagine his dad saying to him, “Hey, Joe. Buck up there, kiddo. I know you’ll figure this out, because you’re no chump. You’re a Davidson. And I believe in you.”

We all need to hear that sometimes.

The second thing the angel does for Joe is name what he’s feeling. The angel says, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.” And that’s important too.

So often, in the midst of a crisis, it’s easy to get caught up in what’s happening on the outside and forget to pay attention to what’s happening on the inside. The problem is, when we do that, we’re still being controlled by our emotions—it’s just happening unconsciously. So we’re just reacting.

The better way is to pause, take a breath, and pay attention to what’s happening inside, so we can choose to respond from our deepest morals and values rather than just reacting emotionally. We have to be aware of our emotions before we can do that.

And that’s what the angel does for Joseph. He’s not shaming it. He’s just naming it. “Joe, you’re afraid. Anybody would be in your shoes. But now that you know that, you don’t have to let it control you.”

Fear is not failure. It’s just a part of life. But if you can stay aware of it, Joe, you can stay awake and stay present with yourself and with Mary, because she needs you right now. She doesn’t need you to fix it. She needs you to show up and listen and stay engaged with her while this important thing that God is doing is still working itself out in her life.

Joe, that’s your job. That’s your role in all this. Don’t try to manage the mystery. Just stay present to it. Because what’s coming to birth through her is nothing less than Emmanuel, which is Hebrew for “God is with us.”

And that’s true. God is with us—here and now. Not after everything makes sense. Not after the crisis has passed. Not after the fear goes away, but right here and right now. In the mess. In the uncertainty.

Later on, when Joe woke up from the dream where all this happened, he woke up to a world where nothing had changed—and yet, everything had changed. The future was still unclear. The risk was still real. And poor old Joe still didn’t have the answer to the big questions.

But what he did have was the next step. The choice to relinquish control over the story and just show up in it instead.

And that kind of faithfulness is not the kind of thing you can learn overnight. It takes a lifetime.

For me personally, the place where I’ve had to learn that lesson over and over again is with my family, and especially my kids. They say that parenting doesn’t come with an instruction manual, and boy, they’re right.

Just when I think I’ve got one stage of my kids’ lives figured out, they go ahead and move on to the next one, where once again I find out that I have no idea what I’m doing.

The first time it hit me, I was standing in a hospital parking lot the day after my first child was born, and my task was to install a car seat for the first time. It hit me that I was now responsible for the life of another human being, and I was in way over my head.

I understand when people say they don’t feel ready to have kids, because the truth is, you’re never ready. You just take it as it comes and do the best you can. So I wedged my knee into that hard plastic, yanked the seatbelt through the loops, and did what I guess was an okay job—because we made it home from the hospital in one piece.

It was the first time, but certainly not the last time, that I felt that sense of panic.

As time went on and the kids grew up, we dealt with new challenges as they came to us—homework, friendships, drama, dating, breakups. Each stage of life offered something new that my wife and I were not prepared for. Our responsibility kept increasing, and our certainty never quite caught up.

This week, that same child for whom I installed the car seat told us that what he wants to do over his Christmas break is take a day trip to Chicago by himself. He showed us his plan of where he wants to go and what he wants to do. He’s got all the train schedules and the phone numbers. He’s ready, but his mother and I are not. And yet, we are taking that leap of faith anyway.

What faithfulness often looks like in real time is not confidence or control, but the choice to stand alongside a life that is unfolding at its own pace and in its own way. It takes courage. And I’ll let you know how it goes, because I don’t know yet.

Earlier this week, many of us read about another act of courage and faithfulness that took place during the massacre at Bondi Beach, Australia, where several of our Jewish neighbors had gathered to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah. In the midst of the carnage, a Muslim man named Ahmed al-Ahmed, “in the name of conscience and humanity,” ran toward the shooter and wrestled the gun away from him, taking five bullets in the process.

He did it to protect people of a different faith and culture from his own—people he didn’t even know. And in so doing, Ahmed al-Ahmed demonstrated to the rest of us that the faith of Joseph is still alive in the world today: the courage not of control, but of presence; the courage to step toward life even when the outcome is unclear.

That kind of courage is real, and it is still available to us today.

Kindred in Christ, there are moments in life when all of us are asked to stand alongside people we love in situations we cannot control.

Where is that happening for you today?

How are you being asked to protect without possessing, to care without controlling?

Where might faithfulness look less like fixing and more like staying?

Joseph shows us how faithfulness sometimes means showing up when walking away would be much easier and much safer. Joseph shows us how courage sometimes means staying engaged when we cannot manage the outcome of events.

That is the courage and the faith that St. Joseph holds before us in today’s Gospel.

May we also have the grace to recognize that courage when it is asked of us, trusting that God is with us even when the way forward is not yet clear.

Amen?

Tripping over Jesus

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon Advent 3 A 2025
Advent 3, Year A

Text: Matthew 11:2–11

People sometimes ask me, “What’s a typical day for a priest?”
And I usually say, “As soon as I have one, I’ll tell you.”

It gets a laugh—but underneath it is something more honest than funny. Most of us assume that if we plan carefully enough, if we follow the right steps, life will eventually settle into something predictable that we can wrap our minds around.

And then it doesn’t.

Occasionally, things fall apart all at once, but more often they just stop lining up the way we thought they would. The plan works—until it doesn’t. The explanation helps—until it doesn’t.

It seems that by now things should be clearer, that faith would feel steadier, that doing the right things would eventually lead to a sense of arrival.

Instead, it feels slower. More complicated. Less certain. And sometimes the hardest part isn’t the pain itself. It’s the disorientation—the sense that the maps we were given no longer match the terrain beneath our feet.

That’s not a failure of faith. That’s simply what happens when life refuses to fit our expectations.

Which is exactly where today’s Gospel begins.

John the Baptist sends word to Jesus from prison. And that detail matters. John is not asking this question from a place of comfort or curiosity. He is asking it from confinement, from danger, from a situation that has already gone very wrong.

“Are you the one who is to come,” he asks, “or are we to wait for another?”

This is not the question of a weak believer. This is the question of a faithful prophet whose expectations have been stretched to their breaking point. John has done everything right. He has prepared the way. He has spoken truth to power. He has named injustice. And now he is sitting in a cell, waiting.

John expected the Messiah to bring urgency. Fire. Judgment. A turning of the tables. What he gets instead is something much gentler.

Jesus doesn’t say yes. He doesn’t say no. He doesn’t explain why John is still in prison. He simply says, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.”

Look.
Pay attention.
Notice what is happening.

And then Jesus adds a blessing:
“Blessed is anyone who does not stumble because of me.”

The word translated stumble means to be tripped up—to lose your footing. And in this story, what trips people up is that Jesus does not match what they were expecting.

That’s not an explanation.
It’s not a justification.
It’s not a promise that things will turn out differently.

It’s simply an acknowledgment that what Jesus is doing will unsettle people—that his way of being Messiah will not line up with their categories—and that some will walk away because of it.

And yet, Jesus names blessing here—not for those who understand, not for those who can make sense of it all, but for those who do not turn away.

Notice what Jesus does not do. He does not rescue John. He does not clarify the timeline. He does not explain the suffering. John remains in prison. The empire does not fall. The story does not resolve.

What Jesus offers instead is a larger horizon. A deeper reality. A God who is present—but not in the ways John expected.

That’s the promise buried inside this strange exchange. The mismatch is not a failure. It’s a revelation. It reveals that reality is larger than the boxes we build for it. That God is larger than the categories we carry. That faith sometimes matures not through clarity, but through disorientation.

And if I’m honest, this is where the text presses closest to home.

I’m learning—slowly, and not without resistance—that some of the most important moments of faith are the ones where the old frameworks stop working. Where the explanations that once brought comfort start to feel thin. Where the answers I memorized don’t quite reach the questions I’m living now.

My faith hasn’t gone away,
but it no longer fits into the box where I used to keep it.

What I’m losing is the version of faith that promises things will go right if I get things right. And that loss matters.

I’ve realized over time that I’m much more familiar with Advent than with Christmas—with waiting in the cold and the dark, trusting that God is present, even though that presence doesn’t look the way I expect.

That’s been unsettling.
But it’s also been honest.

And I suspect I’m not alone in that.

So this is the courage Advent asks of us.

Advent becomes the courage to let our boxes break open, to let our faith deepen, mature, awaken—not toward easy answers, but toward deeper participation in reality, even when that reality unsettles us.

Staying awake looks like resisting the urge to label uncertainty as failure.

It looks like refusing to rush past questions that don’t yet have answers. Like remaining present to lives and stories that are still unfinished.

Advent doesn’t ask us to stop hoping. It asks us to hope without insisting that reality conform to our expectations.

John never gets an answer that explains his suffering. He gets a blessing—and a larger horizon.

He remains in prison.
The empire does not fall.
The story does not resolve.

And still, Jesus says,
“Blessed are those who do not stumble because of me.”

Not blessed are those who understand.
Not blessed are those who are certain.
But blessed are those who stay awake to a reality larger than their expectations.

That may be all the blessing Advent gives us.
And it may be enough.

Amen.

The Winnowing Wind

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent, Year A

Click here to read the biblical passages.

So, we are now into that time of year when everybody hunkers down to watch their favorite holiday movies. Some people like It’s a Wonderful Life. Some people like the Hallmark Channel, but I only count that one as one movie because they all have the same plot. (No offense, I’m just preaching the truth.) Some people like Die Hard with Bruce Willis. Instead of deck the halls, he likes to deck the terrorists. But for me personally, there can be only one. And it’s The Muppet Christmas Carol. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Because not only is it absolutely hilarious because of the Muppets, but Michael Caine, as Ebenezer or Scrooge, is just (*) chef’s kiss perfection. And finally, it’s actually one of the more faithful renditions of the classic novel by Charles Dickens. Most of us know the story already. Ebenezer Scrooge is a grouchy old miser, who gets visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve. The ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. And through these visits, Ebenezer comes to a greater understanding of himself in order to make some necessary changes in his life. It’s a story about personal transformation, and that’s the exact same theme we find in today’s gospel.

The passage focuses on the ministry of St. John the Baptist, and as you may know, John could be more than a little intense, like camping. He walks in screaming,

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,”

calling people names, and talking about pitchforks and unquenchable fire. That’s why he’s called John the Baptist (because if he was John the Episcopalian, he would have been much more polite about the whole thing). But he wasn’t polite. He was a prophet. And the message that God spoke through this prophet was a pretty direct one.

I think it might help if we were to unpack that message just a little bit. So, first of all, we hear that word repent, which makes a lot of us think about those angry preachers we see screaming and waving a Bible around on TV. We think that to repent means to feel guilty or ashamed, but that’s not actually what it means. In Greek, the word is metanoia, coming from meta, meaning “change,” and noia, meaning “mind.”

So in the language in which the New Testament was written, the word repent actually means, “to change your mind.” Anybody here ever change your mind about something? It happens.

It makes sense to change your mind when you get new information. The poet Maya Angelo said it beautifully,

“Do the best you can until you know better. And then, when you know better, do better.”

That’s what repent means. It’s not easy, but it also has nothing to do with guilt or shame. And that’s the core of John the Baptist’s prophetic message.

He tells people to

“bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

This has to do with how they live their lives. This is what Maya Angelou was talking about: “When you know better, do better.” No need to wallow and shame. Just learn from your mistakes.

After that, John starts to get really deep, but we miss what he’s saying if we get stuck on that idea of punishment and shame. John says,

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

Okay. I want you to remember those words: “Holy Spirit and fire.” They’re important. Specifically, I want you to remember that the Greek word for spirit is the same word they use for wind. So what John just said to the people is that the one coming after him (that’s Jesus) will baptize them with sacred wind and fire. I know that sounds weird, but stay with me because it’s about to become important.

John says,

“his winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Couple of unfamiliar terms in that sentence. They are agricultural terms, and I’ll deal with them in reverse order. First for us, and second for John, is the term chaff.

Chaff is a part of the wheat plant. It’s a kind of husk that protects the grain while it’s still growing on the stalk. It’s very important, because without it, the grain would be vulnerable to predators and the elements. So the chaff isn’t bad, it’s necessary.

The only problem is that it’s not very tasty or nutritious. So, if you want to harvest that wheat and bake bread, you have to get rid of the chaff first. That’s where winnowing comes in.

Winnowing is another agricultural term. After the farmers would harvest the wheat, they would heat it up over a fire, which would crack open the husks that surrounded and protected the grain. And then the farmers would take their winnowing forks and sift the wheat by tossing it up into the air, letting the wind blow the tough husks away and allowing the delicious and nutritious grain to fall back to the earth, where it could then be collected into baskets, and later baked into bread.

So, the thing to remember about chaff is that it’s the part of the plant that protects the grain while it’s still growing, but no longer serves the purpose of what the grain is meant to become. That’s the winnowing process, if we’re talking about wheat, and it’s also the repentance process if we’re talking about us, and using the word repent in the way that it was originally intended.

That’s what I see happening in Ebenezer Scrooge, throughout the story of A Christmas Carol. Our friend Ebenezer was taken on a journey through his childhood and youth where he saw how he had used study, work, and money as a shield to protect himself from the rejection that he experienced from his family and friends.

His skills made him very successful as a financial manager, but they left him empty when it came to the really important and valuable things in life. Miserliness for Ebenezer was like the chaff that protected the grain while it was still growing, but it was also the very thing that kept him from becoming the person he was meant to be. The work of the Holy Spirit in his life, the wind and the fire, was to help him let go of his old protective shell and embrace the truth of who he really was in God’s eyes, and I think the same thing is true for each and every one of us.

We all have old habits or beliefs that hold us back from living authentically as our truest and best selves. We might think that staying thin and beautiful is the key to a long and happy marriage. We might believe that next drink might make us the life of the party. We might wonder whether we will finally feel acceptable in God’s eyes if we could just pray the gay away. But none of these things are true. They are all chaff, and the work of the Holy Spirit in your life is the work of God, helping you to like yourself just the way you are and living that truth boldly and bravely in the world, just as God intended for you.

That’s what winnowing means. That’s what repentance means. And that is the message of St. John the Baptist for us in today’s gospel and in this season of Advent.

Kindred in Christ, I pray that you will come to know this message more fully for yourself during this holiday season, and that you will bear fruit worthy of changed minds by loving yourself, your neighbors, and God more authentically. When we finally come to that blessed celebration of Christmas, I pray that you will see the light of Christ being born in you in a new way, so that you can be that light for others and let your light shine for all to see.

Staying Awake

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Advent 1, Year A

Click here for the biblical readings.

We were supposed to gather at church today. Plans were made. Schedules were set. And now a storm has rearranged all of it. The roads aren’t safe. The building is closed. And here we are instead—in living rooms, kitchens, basements—still together, but not in the same place.

It’s not the end of the world. But it is the breaking open of the illusion that everything is under our control. We make our plans. We set our calendars. We line up our routines. And underneath it all is the unspoken hope that if we stay organized enough, life will stay predictable. But life rarely cooperates with our plans.

When Jesus says in today’s gospel, “No one knows the day or the hour,” that planning part of ourselves feels the tension right away. Not knowing feels dangerous. Change feels risky. We want a roadmap. We want signs. We want time to prepare.

But underneath that need for predictability is something even more tender: the fear of what might be revealed if the surface of things were ever to crack. Many of us carry the quiet suspicion that the order we see every day is fragile—that if it gives way, what’s underneath will be dark and dangerous. So we work hard to keep everything looking normal. And when the sense of normal is threatened, fear rises fast.

Most of us know that feeling. A weird sound coming from the car. The boss asking, “Can I see you in my office?” A phone call that begins with, “Your child has been in an accident…” A moment ago everything felt stable, and now suddenly it doesn’t.

That’s what Jesus points to when he talks about the days of Noah. People were eating and drinking, marrying and building their lives. Ordinary life. But ordinary life wasn’t able to hold together. It eventually fell apart, as all things do.

Was it the end of the world? In some ways, yes. It was the end of the world, as they knew it. But Jesus hints at a deeper truth. Not about the end of the world, but about what comes after it.

We often fear that if the surface of life ever falls apart, what comes next will be a nightmare. When our carefully constructed order gives way, what we meet first often feels like chaos. But after that first rush of chaos, there is something else.

Today’s gospel reading only hints at what that might be, but our first reading, from the book of Isaiah, dares to name it:

Isaiah sees the nations of the world gathering together instead of marching against each other. He sees people laying down their weapons because they have learned a better way to live.

Swords become plowshares. Spears become pruning hooks.
What once took life now gives life. What once drew blood now grows bread.

That is the apocalypse beyond the apocalypse. Not just the exposing of what happens when things fall apart—but the unveiling of what is trying to be born. A world no longer organized by fear, but by learning. By shared life. By the slow conversion of violence into nourishment.

We see the same pattern in the natural world all the time. In the hollow of a fallen log, an animal makes her home. From the remnants of a supernova come the building blocks of life itself.

We might wish for a world where everything is under control and nothing is chaotic. We might be afraid that, in reality, nothing is under control and everything is chaos. But the fact of the matter is that neither of those things is ultimately true. Life isn’t completely chaotic, but neither is it completely under control. Life grows in the creative tension between chaos and order. And over time, it keeps leaning toward connection. Toward relationship. Toward more belonging, not less. Faith dares to say that this same love is what’s holding the whole universe together.

That’s why Jesus can say, “Stay awake,” without meaning, “Be afraid.” Staying awake doesn’t mean scanning the horizon for disaster. It doesn’t mean planning for every possible contingency. Staying awake means paying attention to what really matters.

And that kind of waking up doesn’t just happen in dramatic moments. It happens in the small ones. It’s the pause before snapping back at someone. It’s the choice to listen instead of trying to win. It’s the moment when we decide whether we’re going to lead with fear—or with love.

Staying awake isn’t about knowing what’s coming. It’s about choosing how to live in alignment with what really matters.

So—here we are. Not in the same room. Not in the way we expected to be. The storm has interrupted “the best-laid plans of mice and men.” Our illusion of control has already cracked.

And still, beneath it all, we are being held.

Even here, in separate homes. Even on an altered Sunday. Even in uncertainty. Beneath the inconvenience, there is care. Beneath the disruption, there is still connection. Beneath what unsettles us, there is love doing its quiet, steady work.

So our invitation this season is simple. Don’t cling in fear. Don’t shut down in despair. Stay awake to what matters. Choose what grows life. Trust what is deeper than the storm.

Amen?

The Merciful King

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

Sermon for Christ the King Sunday (Proper 29), Year C.

Click here for the biblical readings.

Back when I was newly ordained in my previous denomination and serving my first congregation, the time came for me to request a Sunday off in order to attend a friend’s wedding. Not wanting to be too forceful, I intentionally phrased my request very gently. And one of the board members commented, “Gosh, you sound like a kid asking for candy.” I was a bit taken aback by this comment because the board member had obviously mistaken my kindness for weakness. Looking back, what I wish I’d said was, “Ma’am, if you think this is me asking for candy, then you have seriously underestimated just how much I love candy!”

It’s funny how often people mistake kindness for weakness. In this world we live in, it’s the blustering, strong-man style of leadership that tends to get the most attention: leaders who are loud, decisive, never apologize or admit when they’re wrong, who rule by force, fear, and the power of sheer will. Such leaders are not confined to any particular political party, country, or era of history; even going back to biblical times, they’re everywhere — even inside our own heads. Who among us doesn’t sometimes hear that harsh voice in the back of our minds, yelling at us when we struggle?

“Suck it up, Buttercup. Quit your crying, loser. Forget about your feelings. You don’t need a break. You need to push harder.”

If we listen to that voice in our heads day in and day out, we become our own tyrants. And society rewards us for it. The message we hear again and again is: “That’s just how you get things done. You may not like it, but reality doesn’t care about your feelings.”

But let me share something with you that I have learned from reading up on leadership science. Strong-man and fear-based leadership styles are useful in the midst of a sudden crisis because they’re very good at achieving fast results in the short term. But in the long term, they’re subject to the law of diminishing returns. Over time, fear-based environments become less and less effective because they lose talent by stifling creativity and causing burnout among their best performers. Mercy-based environments, on the other hand, foster resilience, creativity, and loyalty. They have lower turnover and higher productivity.

So if we’re going by the numbers, it’s not about feelings at all. It’s about results. Compassionate leadership is more effective than fear-based leadership. Mercy isn’t a feeling. It’s a method — a strategy for transforming the world from the inside out.

Which brings us to our Gospel reading for today. Today we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, which was added to our liturgical calendar exactly 100 years ago, in 1925, by Pope Pius XI. The Pope created this new festival in direct response to the rising tide of fascism in Italy at that time. By establishing this new liturgical feast, Pope Pius was declaring that Jesus Christ is Lord and Benito Mussolini is not. It was a direct challenge to the authoritarian strong-man style of leadership that was so prevalent in the culture at that time.

In today’s Gospel for Christ the King, we get to see firsthand what Jesus’ merciful style of leadership looks like. His throne is not a majestic chair of gold, but an old rugged cross. His crown is not made of jewels, but of thorns. Beside him are not trusted advisers, but criminals.

Traditionally, one of them has been labeled as “the good thief.” But here’s the thing: he was neither good nor a thief. The Romans didn’t crucify pickpockets. Crucifixion was too slow and too expensive for such petty crimes as that. Crucifixion was reserved for the most severe crime of sedition against the authority of the empire.

So the man commonly known as the “good thief” was not like Jean Valjean, who was thrown into prison for stealing a loaf of bread. He was most likely a religious zealot who believed that God had called him to overthrow the Roman Empire by violent force. He was probably a killer, an extremist. In modern-day terms, we might even call him a terrorist. So you can imagine the kind of person to which that term might apply today.

That’s the person to whom Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” That one line exposes every lie that we have ever been told about what true power looks like. Jesus doesn’t say this line to someone who has proved his worth through good deeds or correct theology. He says it to the least likely and most despicable person imaginable. By speaking words of forgiveness to the terrorist on the cross next to him, Jesus demonstrates that his only method is mercy. It is the entire basis of his kingship and authority.

William Shakespeare said it well in The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene 1:

“The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.
It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest;
It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown…
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.”

Mercy is the foundational principle of Christ’s kingdom, just as equality of all persons is foundational to the American system. Mercy is a direct challenge to the strong-man style of leadership in any age, because there is always another strong man waiting in the wings somewhere who promises salvation, saying, “Fear me, follow me. I will protect you, and I will punish your enemies.”

But Christ doesn’t promise those things.
Jesus Christ says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.”
Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

If God wanted the world to be saved by force, Jesus would have come with an army of angels. But instead he broke bread with outcasts and forgave sinners like you and me. He led with mercy — not because he is soft or weak, but because mercy is the strongest force in the universe.

Some people imagine that when Christ comes again in glory, he will drop the mercy act and behave like the conquering king we all expected. That apocalyptic idea suggests that mercy was just a temporary mask, and violence is the true nature of God. But I wholeheartedly disagree with that sentiment.

The Christ who will come again is the same Christ who came before, who broke bread with outcasts and sinners, and forgave the unforgivable. Mercy isn’t the exception — it is the essence of who Jesus Christ is as the King of kings and Lord of lords.

During World War II, a Dutch woman named Corrie ten Boom hid some of her Jewish neighbors in her attic from the raiding parties of the Nazis. Eventually, she was discovered, arrested, and sent to a concentration camp, where her sister, Betsy, eventually died. Several years later, she was preaching in a church on the subject of forgiveness when a man approached her whom she recognized. He confessed to her that he had been a guard at the concentration camp to which she and her sister had been sent.

“Since that time,” he said, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein, will you forgive me?” And he extended his hand.

Corrie ten Boom said,

“It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed like hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. For I had to do it — I knew that. I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.

“And still I stood there, with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion; forgiveness is an act of the will — and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ‘Jesus, help me!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’

“And so, woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
“I forgive you, brother,” I cried, “with all my heart!”

For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands — the former guard and the former prisoner.

“I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.”

Kindred in Christ, what does this mean for us? It means that sometimes our kindness will be mistaken for weakness. But each time we choose to lead with mercy instead of fear, the kingdom of Christ comes a little bit more on earth as it is in heaven.

Leadership is not about getting people to do what you want — it is about helping them grow into the kind of people they were always meant to be. And that applies just as much to our leadership of ourselves as it does to the way we relate to other people. Many of us know the voice of the inner tyrant, who expects perfection and punishes us when we fall short. But that voice is not the voice of Christ.

Christ did not come to replace one tyrant with another — including the tyrant that lives in your own head. Let Christ’s mercy reign in you. Be patient with your own healing. Forgive yourself for the mistakes you keep making. Speak to yourself as Christ spoke to the terrorist on the cross next to him: “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Today. Not someday. Not when you’ve cleaned up your act. Not when you’ve fixed everything that’s wrong with you. Not when you’ve come up with airtight answers to the doubts and the questions that plague your mind.

Today — because mercy begins here and now.

This is where the kingdom of Christ begins: in you. But it doesn’t stay there. It flows out. It changes how you speak to your spouse, how you raise your kids, how you treat your neighbors and your coworkers, how you handle difficult people — and the people who find you difficult.

This is how the kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven: not by brute force or fear, but by mercy, dropping like the gentle rain from heaven, as Shakespeare said.

So today, on the centennial anniversary of the Feast of Christ the King, you and I stand together beneath the old rugged cross — the throne of grace — and we hear Christ saying to us, as he did to the penitent terrorist:
“Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Not someday, but today.
Here and now — let mercy reign in you.
Let it flow out from you.
And let it change the world through you.
One little bit at a time.

God of the Living

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Proper 27, Year C

OK, Church, I’ve got a bone to pick with you today. You all are throwing me off my game. See, I’m 45, so I know how work works, okay? I know that I’m supposed to have an annoying boss breathing down my neck, and I’m supposed to come home at the end of the day exhausted and drained, plop down in my recliner with a remote control, and say, “I don’t get paid enough for this.” That’s how I know I’ve been to work.

But I’ve been with you wonderful people for almost a year now, and I come home every day feeling more alive than I ever have. So let me ask you—how am I supposed to know when I am tired? I had a system before. I worked as hard as I could until I couldn’t take it anymore, and that’s when I knew it was time to take a day off. It was a good system. It worked for me.
But now it doesn’t work anymore—because of you amazing people. After the big funeral we had yesterday, both the junior and senior wardens came to me separately and said, “Hey, you’ve been working too hard. You need to take a day off. So pick one this week.” And my honest-to-goodness first thought was, But I don’t want to! And they both said, “Nope, you’ve got to take care of yourself. It’s important.” So I said, “Okay,” but I still didn’t like it.

The thing is, they’re right. I had a system that I relied on for my whole career up to this point, and it worked. But it doesn’t work with you because it feels like I’m cheating. I get to the end of the day and I feel energized, so my body doesn’t think I’ve been to work. I had a good system, but you all are so amazing you messed it up for me.

I’m wondering, half joking and half serious right now, because I’m still figuring out what to do with it. And that’s not much different from what’s happening in today’s gospel. You see, the Sadducees had a system too, and Jesus was messing with it—just like you.

The Sadducees were a class of elite aristocrats. They were the priests in the big temple in Jerusalem. They were on the payroll of the Roman Empire, which reserved the right to appoint their priests and expected them to maintain decency and order so that the Romans wouldn’t have to worry about what was going on. On the whole, it was a pretty good system—except that from time to time, the Jewish people would get riled up by some self-proclaimed Messiah who said that God had sent them to overthrow the Romans and restore the Jewish people to a time of holiness, prosperity, and peace.
The Sadducees’ whole job was to shut that down, and to do it, they used theology. Unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees believed that there would be no resurrection of the dead. They considered questions about the afterlife to be irrelevant. What they cared about was the survival of their people and their way of life in this age.

And Jesus, from their perspective, was threatening that way of life. Just a few days before the passage we read in today’s gospel, Jesus had barged into their temple and driven out the merchants who were running a fairly profitable business there. He said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.”

This did not sit well with the Sadducees. Not only did it cut into their profit margins, but it also threatened the safety of their people.
Before we judge them too harshly as the bad guys of this story, let’s take a moment to imagine ourselves in their shoes. Imagine that today at coffee hour, some random guy comes stomping into our parish hall, starts flipping over the tables, and tells us that we’re all a bunch of heretics because we baptize infants.

As a priest, I can tell you that I would be very disturbed in that situation. I would probably do whatever I could to shut it down and restore order. If I had to argue theology until the cops came, so be it. My job as a priest would be to keep people safe in that situation.

I imagine that the Sadducees in today’s gospel probably felt the same way. So let’s remember that before we judge them too harshly.

They had a system. It wasn’t perfect, but it was working—until Jesus came along to mess it all up.

The Sadducees decided that they would restore order by debating Jesus on religious grounds. They knew that he believed in the resurrection of the dead while they didn’t, so they decided to pose a hypothetical question that would make Jesus look stupid in front of his followers so that they would stop following him and listen to the Sadducees instead.

They appealed to the law of levirate marriage from the Torah, which says that when a man dies childless, his brother should marry his widow so that she can bear children in her late husband’s name, thus preserving her security for generations to come. The Sadducees thought this was a perfect trap for Jesus because it would show the absurdity of his belief in resurrection and thus prove the Sadducees to be the more knowledgeable and competent leaders of the people of Israel.

But Jesus, as usual, manages to sidestep the trap that they set for him. What he said to them, in effect, was, “You’re asking the wrong question.”
Their question—about whose wife the woman would be in the resurrection—assumed that the same system of ownership and property management that exists in this age would continue in the age to come. But Jesus said, “It doesn’t work that way.” Life in God’s kingdom is not based on ownership but on fellowship.

A single woman in the kingdom of God will have no need of a man to speak up for her because she can speak for herself. In the kingdom of God, all people—men and women—are created equal, and God makes no distinction between them.

“You had a system for managing that,” Jesus says, “but in the world to come—the world as God intends it—that system won’t work anymore. The rules no longer apply.”

In order to underscore the point, Jesus quotes from the Torah—specifically, the pivotal scene where God speaks to Moses out of the burning bush. In that scene, God says to Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
Pay attention to the tense of that verb. God says I am, not I was. As Jesus says, “God is the God of the living and not of the dead, for all of them are alive to God.” Therefore, resurrection is real, and the sexist ownership rules of the Sadducees do not apply.

The mistake that the Sadducees made was in trying to protect whatever exists rather than participate in what is emerging. For them, survival of the status quo was the way of the future. But for Jesus, the way of the future was the way of resurrection—for God is the God of the living, not of the dead.

Survival means stopping things from changing, and it is a losing game because everyone and everything is mortal. If our only goal is survival, then we have already lost.

But resurrection, on the other hand, is not about what has been, but what is becoming. Every Sunday in this parish, we recite the Nicene Creed, and my favorite line is the part that comes right at the end, where we say, “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

And I really like that. I like that we look for the resurrection of the dead not just in some far-off future, but today—here and now. I like that resurrection for us is a matter of perspective—that the eyes of faith are looking for what God is doing today in our midst.
Even though it might make us uncomfortable, and even though it might challenge us to grow beyond our current categories of existence, we believe that life is claiming the territory that fear once held.

I am currently experiencing this claiming in my own life. Many years ago, when my wife and I first found out that we were going to have a baby, we were told that we were having a girl. So we picked a name, and we decorated the nursery, and we picked out all the toys that we thought would go along with that proclamation.

We made it our goal to raise a strong, independent, and intelligent young woman who would think critically and challenge us in all the ways that we needed to be challenged.

What we didn’t expect is that the child we raised would feel increasingly uncomfortable in the body that child was given. We watched the anxiety increase until the point where it became unbearable. And this child whom we loved asked us to hide all the pain pills in the house because the temptation to take them all at once and end the suffering was becoming too strong to resist.

So we then employed the assistance of therapists and doctors, who confirmed what our child had already been telling us: That our child was experiencing a mismatch of gender between body and mind, and the energy required to sustain that tension was quickly running out.
So my wife and I made a decision. We wanted our child to live—above all else—so we made the necessary adjustments to using new pronouns and a new name. Under professional medical supervision, we began a course of hormone replacement therapy so that our son Sage could finally feel at home in his own body.

In the year that followed, I witnessed a transformation of unprecedented proportions. The energy that he had previously expended just trying to exist was now freed up to give to other pursuits. He found that he had a talent and a passion for journalism and finally had the energy to give to it.
He thrived in this field at school, and in his first year broke the all-time record for the number of articles submitted to the school paper. He won multiple state awards through the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association, and just this past week, at the age of 16, was published in a Kalamazoo newspaper with an article about the public transportation system.
Kindred in Christ, this is one example of what resurrection life looks like. It does not conform to previously conceived patterns. It does not match our expectations. But it is life nonetheless, and it is no less—but rather more—than the life we envisioned for our child when my wife found out she was pregnant.

Life changes. Love does not. The love that is God and the God who is love was and is and is to come. That part is unchanging. Everything else is negotiable—but God is faithful.

Jesus believed this. Do we? Can we trust in Jesus when he leads us beyond the categories that were established for us when we were young?

Do we have faith in the Lord who ate with tax collectors and sinners? Do we dare trust in the Savior who met St. Paul on the road to Damascus and called him to become an apostle of the church he once persecuted?
Do we have that kind of faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior?

Based on what I’ve seen this past year, I think we do. And I trust that you, the amazing people of this church, are going to continue to disrupt the established patterns of the status quo because you, wonderful Christians, believe in the love that has the power to overcome every obstacle, every barrier, and every name that is named in heaven or on earth, in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Lord and Savior, forever and ever.

Amen.

The Next Evolutionary Step

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for All Saints Sunday, Year C

Click here for the biblical readings.

Biological instincts are a funny thing. Our cravings for safety, sustenance, and status evolved as tools for survival, but often they are the very things that hold us back from living our best life.

Let’s take Grog the caveman, for example. Grog was born with an inherent craving for sugars, fats, and salts because he was born into an environment where those things were rare. So it behooved him to eat as much of those things as possible, because he never knew if or when he would come across them again.

Fast forward to 2025, where you and I have inherited Grog’s cravings for sugars, fats, and salts, but live in a very different kind of environment where those things are not rare. So we look at a TV commercial and go, “French fries!” and proceed to eat as much of them as possible, even if we know it’s going to eventually kill us. It’s a mismatched instinct.

So we’re out here living with Flintstone brains in a world of Jetson technology, and we wonder why we struggle. This is true of other instincts too.

Let’s go back to our friend Grog the caveman. He is walking along through the jungle and goes, “Hear sound in bush! Might be saber-toothed tiger! Must fight!” because he developed his fight-or-flight instinct as a means of protection against predators.

But here we are in 2025 with the same brain that Grog had, and we’re like, “Notification on phone! Man on Facebook has bad politics! Must fight!” And we proceed to react as if we ourselves were being attacked by a saber-toothed tiger. It’s not the same thing, and our mismatched instincts are leading us farther away from life rather than toward the preservation of it.

We’re living with Flintstone brains in a Jetson’s world. What we need is a way to take that next evolutionary step so that we can get back to the work of preserving life instead of working against it. Thankfully, that’s exactly what Jesus gives us in today’s gospel.

When we practical-minded people read Jesus’s teachings on the Beatitudes and the principle of nonviolence, it sounds at first like a bunch of impractical, high-minded nonsense. Our natural, God-given instincts for safety, sustenance, and status lead us to want to be rich, full, joyful, and well spoken of. But Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the hated.”

So it sounds like nonsense, as does all this talk about loving our enemies, turning the other cheek, and giving to everyone who begs from us. Our inner caveman hears these things and goes, “No! Bad!”

And yet Jesus teaches them, which raises the question: Does Jesus just want us to fail? It certainly seems that way on the surface, and that’s a disturbing thought.

It might seem a bit obvious and self-serving for me, as a Christian priest, to say this, but I don’t think that Jesus is saying these things because he just wants us to fail at life. I think that what Jesus is doing is pointing us toward the next step in human evolution. Unlike our previous evolutionary steps, which were driven by biology and survival instincts, this next step that Jesus represents is driven by morality and conscious decision-making.

In other words, the next step of human evolution is not biological but spiritual.

Jesus’s earthly ministry was characterized by compassion. The movement he initiated was characterized not by who it excluded but by who it included. Jesus shared his family table with the most despised and outcast members of society.

He used nature imagery to direct his followers’ attention to the divine abundance that exists all around them. He directed their attention to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, who neither farm nor sow but are still fed and clothed by the God who loves them.

He invited his listeners to consider the sun and the rain, which shine and fall without discrimination, bringing life to the earth—both sinners and saints alike.

Jesus was convinced that this is the way the world truly works, in spite of the walls of human self-preservation that we have constructed around it and through it. Jesus said that, in spite of our egotistical selves, compassion reigns supreme because God wills it.

The question that he puts to us is: What would our lives look like if we lived as if we believed this is true—as indeed it is?

If you are a person of a certain generation, the name Robert McNamara will probably mean something to you. For those who do not know this name, he served as the Secretary of Defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. His legacy is controversial, and it’s not my job to either endorse or denounce that legacy. But I heard him say something very interesting about his involvement in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

For those who are too young to remember, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union about the Soviet Union’s placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba—well within striking distance of American soil. The tension escalated to the point where President Kennedy was considering an invasion of Cuba in order to stop the deployment of these missiles, a move which almost certainly would have resulted in a launch of said missiles, triggering a counterstrike of nuclear missiles on the American side, resulting in the mutually assured destruction of both countries and possibly ending human civilization as we know it.

At the height of the tension, the world was mere minutes away from nuclear annihilation. But Secretary McNamara reported that it was saved at the last possible moment by a cabinet member who used his empathy and imagination to understand what it was that the Soviets really wanted. As a result, they were able to negotiate a diplomatic solution that avoided a nuclear holocaust and allowed humanity to continue to exist as it does to this day.

It is not too much of a stretch to say that empathy, or love of one’s enemies as Jesus commanded, saved the world that day. That’s just one example of a time when Jesus’s teachings proved to be more practical than high-minded.

If President Kennedy had listened only to his basic survival instincts, the game of survival would have been over. But by listening to the voice of empathy, he was able to transcend those basic impulses in a way that preserved life—not only for Americans but also for his Soviet enemies, and for the rest of the world as well. It was the moral principles of Jesus, and not the instincts of Grog the caveman, that saved the world that day.

That’s why I say that Jesus’s teaching is not just spiritual wisdom or high-minded idealism, but the next step in human evolution. We won’t get there by playing games like survival of the fittest, but we will get there by loving our enemies and doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Of course, it’s likely true that most of us will never find ourselves in a position where our personal decisions could affect the nuclear annihilation of millions. But it’s a near certainty that we will find ourselves in a position where we will have to choose between the way of self-preservation and the empathic way of Jesus. The repercussions of that decision may not affect millions, but they will affect individual lives—not least of which is our own.

Which impulse will we choose to follow on that day? The broad and well-trodden path of self-preservation or the narrow way of Jesus? Will we stay locked into familiar patterns of the status quo, or take the next step in human evolution? The choice is up to us.

Today, we celebrate the Feast of All Saints—a holy day when we give thanks for those who have come before us in the faith. Those whose lives have been remembered not because they were successful in amassing copious amounts of money, sex, and power, but because they were faithful in choosing the more difficult way of Jesus when it would have been easier to default to familiar patterns of self-preservation.

They are the vanguard who show us the way to embody the teachings of Jesus and take that next step in human evolution in our own day, just as they did in theirs. The Church honors the saints because they remind us that the work of Jesus is not yet done, and the loving power of Jesus is still at work in our lives today.

I have already seen this power at work in you, the people of this congregation. Your creativity, courage, and compassion are obvious to all who walk through our doors, and even to those who have never attended a service but have borne witness to your good works in our wider community.

At no time has this been more obvious to me than it was last Sunday afternoon, when this church was packed to standing room only with people who gathered to give thanks for a recent member of the communion of saints, our own dearly departed sister, Mary Dally.

She touched so many lives in her decades of teaching in this town, and so many of them showed up to pay their respects that I could scarcely walk from my office to the sacristy. As far as I know, Mary never commanded a nuclear arsenal, but I do know for a fact that her empathy and her commitment touched the lives of hundreds—and I know this because I saw them here in this room.

Someone once told me that I should live my life in such a way that there would be standing room only at my funeral. As far as Mary Dally is concerned, I would say: mission accomplished.

The rest of us are still engaged in that mission, and I watched each of you show up and put in the extra work to honor the dead, care for the bereaved, and support the whole community. This is the next step in human evolution, and you are taking it.

Even as we said farewell to one of our members last week and celebrated one saint’s entry into the Church Triumphant, so in a few moments will we be adding two new members to that fellowship on earth, as we baptize Barak and Cyrus into the Body of Christ.

As Mary’s journey on earth is ending, so theirs is just beginning. Our continuing task is to nurture their growth in the faith, support them with our prayers, and be to them an example of what the next step in human evolution looks like—just as we learned it from Jesus.

Continue to be strong in this faith, and keep up the good work. Amen.

Laughing at Ourselves

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for Proper 25, Year C

Click here for the biblical readings

As I was coming up with an opening illustration for this week’s sermon, it occurred to me that the one thing you’re probably learning about your new rector this year is that he watches way too much TV. But then again, maybe that’s just something I’m learning about myself. Anyway, what came to my mind this week was a scene from an episode of the famous sitcom The Office.

And in this scene, the boss was on his way to a very important meeting when he slipped and fell into a koi pond. When he got back to the office, soaking wet, he tried making up all kinds of stories to hide his embarrassment about what really happened. But the thing is that all his rationalizations and excuses just made people laugh at him more.

Later on, when he finally admitted the truth about what happened and started poking fun at himself, people’s laughter started turning into compassion. Instead of making up jokes at his expense, they said, “You know, Michael, that’s really the kind of thing that could have happened to anybody.”

I find that moment in the scene very fascinating. It’s like the situation itself was calling for laughter, no matter where it came from. If Michael couldn’t laugh at himself, then the universe was going to make sure that somebody was laughing about it. But when Michael finally did learn how to laugh at himself, the laughter became a gateway to mercy and understanding. It’s as if laughter had this secret power to unlock the doors of compassion in our hearts.

How like life! When we as human beings stand on the firm bedrock of safe and supportive relationships, we gain the ability to laugh at ourselves. And that kind of laughter, rather than tearing us down or pushing us farther apart, has the ability to build us up and pull us closer together — provided that our relationships do, in fact, stand on that solid ground of safe and supportive love.

As a Christian, I do believe that the entire universe stands on just such a solid ground. When we say each week in the Nicene Creed that we believe that Christ will return in glory to judge the living and the dead, I imagine that judgment not as a verdict in a courtroom, but more like a funny story told around the Thanksgiving table. The embarrassment is there, but so is the love. And that love gives us the power to laugh at ourselves.

That’s how I imagine the final judgment of the living and the dead — not as a sentence to hellfire and damnation, but as a side-splitting laugh at ourselves. Because we learn from Scripture that God is both just and merciful. The one who judges us is also the one who knows and loves us best.

In today’s gospel, we get a glimpse of that justice and mercy in action. Jesus tells a parable about a Pharisee and a tax collector. Pharisees, as we know, were very educated and religious people — upstanding citizens and pillars of their community. Tax collectors, on the other hand, were the scum of the earth: bottom feeders, liars, and traitors to their own people.

The Pharisee in this story is doing exactly what we would expect an upstanding citizen to do — holding his head up high in church, listing his accomplishments, and thanking God that he is not like other people, especially this tax collector here. The tax collector, meanwhile, is standing at the back of the church, looking down at his shoes, and the only prayer he can manage to get out is, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

It’s the tax collector, according to Jesus, who went down to his home justified that day, despite his lack of religious or moral qualifications.

Now, what I find interesting about this passage is that at no point does Jesus say that the Pharisee is not justified. Our English translation says that the tax collector went down to his home justified instead of the Pharisee. But the Greek word translated as instead of in our English Bibles is actually the word para, which literally means alongside. So another way that we might translate this verse from the Greek is to say that the tax collector went down to his home justified alongside the Pharisee, not instead of.

And I really like that. Because if I’m really honest with myself, then I have to admit that there is both a Pharisee and a tax collector within me. Like the Pharisee, I too have the capacity to act like a self-righteous windbag. And like the tax collector, I too have the ability to act like a selfish dirtbag. And if I’m being really, really honest, I’m often doing both at the exact same time.

So it’s very comforting for me to be able to read this story as one where both the Pharisee and the tax collector go down to their home justified alongside each other — because most days, both of those guys are coming home with me.

Several years ago, I had a job interview at the hospice agency where I ended up working for several years before I came here. The interview went really well. I came home all excited and ready to talk about it. But then I walked through the door, and my wife Sarah had just had a disaster of a day. Things were stressful at her job, the kids were acting out, and she needed to unload about all of it.

At the end of the night, we went to bed, and she had forgotten to ask me how my interview went. One part of me was seething — this is the Pharisee part of my brain. Except I was imagining him as more like a tough guy from New Jersey. And he said, “Here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna get that job, and you’re gonna work there for like six months, until one day she asks you, ‘Hi, honey, how was the hospital today?’ And you’re going to be like, ‘Lady, I ain’t worked there in six months! But what do you care?’ And then she’s gonna feel real bad about it. Forget about it.”

So that was one voice in my head — the Pharisee from New Jersey. I decided I should name him Carl. So that’s Carl.

The other part of me was not from New Jersey, but rather from the Midwest. So obviously, he was a nice guy, because we Midwesterners are nice people. And this part of me was saying, “Oh, don’t you know, Sarah’s really busy, and she’s worried about a lot of really important things. You’re not that important, so you should just keep your yapper shut. Remember that you love each other and just get back to your darn life.”

I didn’t give that voice a name, but it was more like the tax collector side of me. That’s the part that just wants to stand in the back, look down at my shoes, and make myself small and invisible.

But let’s be honest: if I was to listen to either of these voices by itself and do what it says, would either one lead me toward having a more honest and loving relationship with my wife? No, it wouldn’t.

So instead, I took a deep breath and imagined myself sitting at a table with both of these guys. I let each one have their say, and even wrote out what they said in a journal. Because the thing is, each part of me was actually trying to help me — they just weren’t being very helpful in the way that I needed at that moment.

So I heard them out, listened with compassion, and tried to understand where each one was coming from. And what I ended up doing was sitting down with Sarah the next day and saying, “Hey, I’m sorry you had such a rough day yesterday, but I had that really big job interview with hospice, and it hurt my feelings when you didn’t ask me about it.”

And Sarah, my wonderful wife, said, “Oh my gosh, you’re right. I’m sorry. Please tell me — how did it go?” And I did tell her about it, against the advice of the Midwest nice guy, because I am important to her, even though she does have a lot of other really important things to worry about.

And I also went against the advice of Carl from New Jersey and his elaborate ruse about working a job for six months without telling my wife, because obviously that plan would not have worked — but mostly because I didn’t actually want her to feel bad. I just wanted my wife to take an interest in my life and the things that are important to me and to our family. Which, of course, she does. We all just have bad days sometimes.

I tell this story as a personal illustration of the Pharisee and the tax collector that exist within each of us — because they both do. That’s why I’m glad that the text of Jesus’ parable can be translated as, “The tax collector went down to his home justified alongside the Pharisee.”

At the end of the day, it was neither the religious and moral observance of the Pharisee nor the humility of the tax collector that justified each of them in the eyes of God. It was God’s own mercy that supported them both. The only difference between them is that one of them recognized that truth and the other did not. But they both needed it, and they both got it — whether they realized it or not, whether they deserved it or not.

Kindred in Christ, the same thing is true for each and every one of us today. We stand in right relationship with God not because we deserve it by virtue of our righteous deeds or our honest confession, but simply because we need it, and it is there. We stand in right relationship with God because God loves us, whether we realize it or not, whether we believe in God or not.

We receive love because God is love. And that is the central truth not only of our faith but of our entire existence. And that love is what gives us the ability to laugh at ourselves — when we trip over our own shoelaces, or when we strut around like a bunch of pompous and self-righteous Pharisees, or when we betray our moral values and closest relationships like the tax collector did. Beneath all of that, the central truth holds firm: you are loved, whether or not you realize it, whether or not you deserve it, whether or not you believe in it. It’s still true — for you and for everyone else in this hurting world.

My prayer for you today is that you would come to know this truth more fully for yourself, and that knowing it will make it easier for you to reflect that same love onto the faces and into the lives of the people around you.

Living Prayer

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon2 Comments

Sermon for Proper 24, Year C

Click here for the biblical readings

For several years, my family and I enjoyed watching a TV show based on the classic comic book character The Flash. For those who may not be familiar, The Flash is a superhero, real name Barry Allen, whose special power is that he can run very fast. 

Early on in the series, Barry figures out that, if he runs fast enough, he can actually go back in time and change the past. So, being a hero with his heart in the right place, he goes back in time to prevent his mother’s untimely death. He succeeds at this task, but then returns to the present day to discover that his good deed has created unintended consequences. Much of the rest of the series involves Barry repeatedly going back in time to correct past mistakes, against the advice of his friends and mentors. Each time, he creates a new set of unintended consequences, which he then feels compelled to go back and fix.

If this sounds frustrating and repetitive, that’s because it is. I don’t actually recommend the show. Not for moral reasons, but simply because it gets too annoying to watch. During the opening credits, the hero introduces himself, saying, “My name is Barry Allen and I am the fastest man alive,” but the kids and I took to shouting in unison over that line. When he said, “My name is Barry Allen,” we would all shout back, “and I make poor life choices!” Eventually, it got so bad that our family decided to give up on watching the show.

Barry Allen’s main problem in The Flash is that he tries to control things that he cannot, in fact, control. Some people call this kind of behavior codependent and some call it neurotic (and they’re both partially right, even though codependency and neurosis are both much bigger than that one thing, but that’s a topic for another day). 

We all know what it’s like to live in a world where things, as they are, are not things as they should be. Trying to control things we can’t control is one possible response to this situation. As we can see with The Flash, this approach often leads to unintended consequences. Other responses include sticking our heads in the sand denying that there’s a problem at all, lashing out in anger and becoming the mirror-image of the evil we resist (like the Soviets did when they replaced the oppression of the Tzars with an even more oppressive regime in 20th century Russia), or giving into the demon of despair, thus giving up on any possibility of making life even marginally better for ourselves and our neighbors.Understandably, none of these sounds like a particularly appealing option.

In today’s gospel, Jesus offers us another way to respond when we come face-to-face with a world that is not as it should be. He does so, as he often does, by telling a parable about a scene that would have been all-too-familiar to his audience.

The story begins with a judge, “who neither feared God nor had respect for people,” and a widow. Widows, in that time, were among the most vulnerable members of society because they lacked a male voice to speak up for them in public affairs. Such was the sexism of that society.

Biblical scholars have pointed out several details, based on context clues, that would have stood out to the people who heard Jesus tell this parable the first time. First of all, as we already noted, she has no male representation in court. This would mean that she has no living father, brothers, or adult sons. 

Second, we know from the legal practices of the time that women were entitled to keep whatever property they brought into the marriage, whenever that marriage ended by death or divorce. If she had a lot of money, this would make her an appealing target for her late-husband’s relatives, who may have wanted to keep the dead man’s estate for themselves. 

Third, we also know, based on legal practices of the time, that a quorum of three to seven judges was supposed to rule on cases of inheritance law, like this one. So, the fact that there was only one judge in this case would have been a major red flag to Jesus’ audience. It would seem most likely to them that the judge was taking bribes in order to cover up a backroom deal to cheat the widow out of what was rightfully hers. That kind of corruption was not uncommon in Jesus’ day. 

So, what was the widow supposed to do about it? According to Jesus, she had to keep showing up and speaking up for what she believed was right.

The author of Luke’s gospel tells us, in the editorial note at the beginning of the parable, that this is a story about prayer. God, the author says, is not like the unjust judge, but “will quickly grant justice” to those who cry out for it.

This, admittedly, is a tough phrase to hear. After all, people in pain have been fervently crying out to God for thousands of years, but still the world is not as it should be. Was Jesus wrong?

Well, that depends on what we mean by the word prayer.

If we define prayer as, “getting what we ask for from the all-powerful Man in the Sky,” then the unavoidable answer is Yes, Jesus was wrong. After two millennia of waiting and praying, God has still not set right the wrongs we see in the world around us, despite our frequent crying out. If however, we define prayer as, “the foundational act of reorienting our lives around the central fact of Love,” then the answer is a resounding No, Jesus was not wrong. Prayer works.

My favorite teaching on the subject of prayer comes from the 20th century saint, Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She says, “I used to believe that prayer changes things; now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.” 

Mother Teresa, as we know, spent her days living out the truth of these words. She worked tirelessly in the slums of India to bring relief to those who suffer and encouraged people around the world to find their own Calcutta in their own backyards. She is a saint, not because she said a few pious words, but because she lived out the words she prayed. Her life itself was an act of prayer, continually seeking and serving Christ in all people, just as we have promised to do in our Baptismal Covenant. Mother Teresa showed us the way.

This, I believe, is the answer that Christ calls for in response to the injustice of this world. It is neither denial, nor control, nor anger, nor despair. It is an acceptance of the fact that things in this world are not as they should be, and that the way things are is unacceptable.

Therefore, kindred in Christ, we are called to keep showing up: for ourselves, for each other, for what is true, and for what is right. Whether we are raking leaves for an elderly neighbor or marching in a protest, we keep showing up. Whether we are kneeling in church or going to therapy to repair our broken relationships, we keep showing up. Consistently, persistently, and even obnoxiously showing up is the way of prayer, as Jesus described it in today’s parable. 

At the end of the Prayers of the People in our weekly liturgy, the priest prays a short Collect. The Book of Common Prayer gives several options. My favorite is the one we are using today. Listen for it when we come to that section of the service in a few minutes. It says, “Almighty and eternal God, ruler of all things in heaven and on earth: Mercifully accept the prayers of your people, and strengthen us to do your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

What I like about that prayer is that it connects the idea of God accepting our prayers with the idea of us doing God’s will. In my mind, that connection is key. I cannot, in good conscience, pray for God to change the world if I am unwilling to do anything about it. By the same token, I cannot successfully change the world if I don’t ask for help, because the task is far too big for any one person to accomplish alone. We need God and God needs us, if this world is to be any different from the way it has been for all of human history.

Prayer is the lifeline that keeps us connected to each other and the Source of Life. It works slowly and gently, like the water of the Colorado River eroding the walls of the Grand Canyon. It may not make a visible difference overnight, but in time, it will create a geological spectacle that is a wonder to behold. 

All we need to do, as the author of Luke’s gospel said, is to “pray always,” and in all ways, and “not to lose heart.”

Amen.