Desire (9th Sunday after Pentecost; 7/26/2026)

Leave a reply

Readings (Track 1)

“So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.”

That line from our first reading sounds very like two of Jesus’ parables: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

Desire: it drives Jacob; it drives the protagonists in the parables. And Jesus says that’s what God’s reign is like. Now that’s downright interesting. When people think about the kingdom of heaven, or, more broadly, the Christian life, they often to do so in terms of the fear of God or of duty. And both the fear of God and duty are important—as guardrails. But here Jesus is talking about something else: desire.

The kingdom like a hidden treasure, the kingdom like a pearl of great price. And the finder responds neither through fear nor duty, but through desire. And the sacrifices the finder makes are like the fourteen years that Jacob dedicated to gaining Rachel.

Where does Jesus get these two parables? In this case I think he’s describing his own experience. How so? From the perspective of the Gospels, he’s left the carpentry shop and now has nowhere to lay his head. From the perspective of Paul in the letter to the Philippians, he “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” The Jesus we encounter in the Gospels: a man motivated not by fear, or by duty, but by desire.

Jesus desires God’s kingdom, God’s reign. Thinking primarily about what we’ve heard in this year’s reading of Matthew, what might that mean? That’s a question worth asking, because it’s reasonably clear that Jesus wants his disciples—us—to share that desire.

Matthew summarizes Jesus’ message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (4:17). Let’s unpack that. Way back in the early chapters of Genesis:

“Lamech said to his wives:
‘Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.’” (4:23-24)

In Genesis’ chronology that’s from before Noah’s flood, but it’s recognizably our world. Lamech’s T-shirt is some version of “When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil For I’m the meanest dude in the valley.” The question: is there an alternative? And God seeks an answer by starting a pilot project: Israel. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (protagonist in our first reading), Joseph, and, generations later, Moses.

In Moses’ time Israel is now a people. Through Moses God frees them from slavery and gives them the Law at Sinai: love God; love your neighbor. No physical images of God also because the society itself is the image of that society’s god. It’s an attempt to create a society that contrasts with those around it. If it succeeds, it sells itself, as in Isaiah’s vision:

“Many peoples shall come and say,
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.’
…
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.” (2:3-4)

Love God; love your neighbor. In this world can a society based on that not only survive, but thrive?

As we know, the results of that project were mixed. There were lives of great beauty and power. But too often the powerful in Israel looked more like Lamech than anything Moses has described.

So God sends Jesus. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Mt 4:17). God’s moving this project forward. The question for “this generation” is whether they want to be part of it.

So the Beatitudes: the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, etc: do we want to be a society in which these are the people who are obviously “blessed”? Later in the Sermon on Mount: “do to others as you would have them do to you” or the current “Do unto others as they do unto you”? Which is it going to be?

God’s reign is about health, healing. So Jesus’ healings and exorcisms are signs of that, but that’s the easy part. The harder part: aligning behavior with “Love God; love your neighbor.” And as Matthew’s story continues Jesus focuses increasingly on the disciples:

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (20:25-28).

Towards the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, we hear the angel tell Joseph: “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (1:21). That saving is probably multi-dimensional. The dimension we’ve been exploring: reforming God’s people to be the contrast society that God intended from the start. Jesus’ giving his life “a ransom for many” is multi-dimensional, but one of those dimensions is not dying for us so we can keep living like Lamech.

In those words about the rulers of the Gentiles, Jesus is trying to shape his disciples’ desires, to align them with his, to get them more fully desiring God’s reign, desiring that God’s people contrast with the surrounding societies, showing that “Love God, love your neighbor” is the recipe for not only not self-destructing, but thriving. And in those words to the disciples, Jesus is addressing us.

OK. I’ve been trying to describe what Jesus’ desire for God’s reign might mean. If something like this is true, it supports our ongoing work of recovery. North American culture tends to reduce church to a place we go for an hour a week, a far cry from Jesus’ desire that church be the ongoing construction of a counter society so that the world can glimpse an alternative to Lamech, can glimpse what God is really like.

The good news—as Paul celebrates in our second reading—is that God isn’t leaving us to do this work on our own. “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?”

In other words, while I started with Jacob’s desire for Rachel as an image for Jesus’ desire for God’s reign, the underlying reality is that Jacob’s desire for Rachel is an image of God’s desire for us, collectively and individually. And the invitation in this sermon: to continue nurturing our answering desire, which will always be a faint echo of our God’s desire.

Does God hope? (8th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/19/2026)

Leave a reply

Readings (Track 1)

If we’re feeling some whiplash after today’s combination of readings it means we’ve been paying attention. They mostly go in different directions—so let’s attend to them separately.

Genesis. Last week we watched Jacob get Esau’s birthright in exchange for a serving of stew. Since then, that strange scene (equal parts farce and tragedy) in which Jacob, dressed up to smell and feel like Esau, tricks his blind father Isaac into giving him Esau’s blessing. Since then, all Esau’s fantasies have focused on ways to kill Jacob, so Jacob’s been sent off to the relatives until Esau’s anger cools. And in all this God has said nothing to Jacob.

Doubtless, Esau would have had plenty of suggestions as to what God might say—or do. “Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God!” (v.18 from our psalm). What God does say: a reiteration of the promises made to Abraham and Isaac, and “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

In short: “I love you; I have hopes for you; I look forward to what we can do together.” (Paul talks about hope in our second reading; we’re not the only ones who hope!) Scripture as a whole encourages us to hear these words to Jacob as God’s address to each one of us. Take today’s lessons home and reflect on these words during the week. Imagine God expressing that love to you. In today’s psalm (v.13): “I will thank you because I am marvelously made; / your works are wonderful, and I know it well.” Texts like today’s Genesis reading help us believe that.

We let the Genesis reading run a bit farther than the Lectionary assigned to hear the rest of Jacob’s reaction. It’s pure Jacob, that Jacob that’s part of many of us. God’s promise is too general: Jacob wants it nailed down: “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then…” This distrust doesn’t serve Jacob well, but it’s part of the package, part of the package that God—unsurprised—is dealing with. “Lord, you have searched me out, and known me” applies also to Jacob. And perhaps Jacob’s distrust is part of the futility that Paul talks about that we bring to the table.

Romans. There’s a lot we could notice here; for today I’m focusing on futility. ‘Futility’: Paul uses the word the Greek translation used for the hebel ‘vanity’ that the preacher wrestles with throughout the book of Ecclesiastes. Paul describes it—in passing—as being God’s choice. If asked to explain, I think Paul would say that faced with human disobedience and valuing human freedom, God chooses to let the history play out, including the effects of these disobedient choices, a divine choice that admittedly brings significant pain. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12) says Adam, and so sets the stage for patriarchy. And, since—as the ecologists keep reminding us—everything is connected to everything—human choices damage all creation, so that, as Paul puts it “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.” So an important take-away: if groaning is part of our present experience, it’s not because we lack faith, or have hit a particularly rough patch (although these things could also be true), but because that’s an appropriate response to our situation, a situation survivable, as Paul reminds us, only by hope.

Matthew. Two weeks ago, we hit the question: if Jesus is “the one who is to come” (John the Baptist’s words), why isn’t there more visible progress? And we heard Jesus’ answer: the “wise” and “intelligent” wouldn’t recognize the Kingdom if it was right in front of them; come to me (all of you!) and I will give you rest. But, since it’s not a simple question, we heard another answer last week: even the divine word is at once powerful and vulnerable: the soil really matters. So “Let anyone with ears listen!”

And because it’s not a simple question, we hear another answer in today’s reading: the Son of Man isn’t the only one sowing seed. (This is another dimension of the futility Paul mentions!) Perhaps the clearest echo of this parable is in our baptismal rite:

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

I renounce them.

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?

I renounce them. (BCP 302)

As soil, we need to choose which seed to welcome, and keep choosing.

Equally relevant is the interchange within the parable:

Then do you want us to go and gather them?

No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.

As other New Testament texts show, in some circumstances “Let both of them grow together” is not the end of the conversation. But it’s a standing warning that attempts to separate weeds and wheat bring their own dangers. Recall Joseph McCarthy and the red scare in the 50s or the church conflicts over women’s ordination and sexuality. It’s relevant on the personal level. Star Trek TNG fans may recall the episode “The Tapestry.” Captain Picard’s artificial heart is failing. He has an artificial heart because of an impetuous decision in his youth. The character named “Q” gives him the chance to go back in time and make a different decision. But as a result of the different decision, he turns out to be a colorless ensign quite unfit for any command. Wheat and weeds: not always so easy to distinguish.

Psalm 139. The psalms are tools for both prayer and reflection. Tools for prayer: there are circumstances in which what’s in our hearts can only be expressed by verses 18-21 (“Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God!”). Prayer is not the place to pretend we’re other than we are. And since God knows who we are (the rest of Psalm 139)… For that matter, wheat and weeds: if “the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God” don’t move me to anger, something else is wrong. So the verses are there—but precariously. The psalms as tools for reflection: Jesus’ example (“Come to me, all you…”) warns me that my “restless thoughts” and “wickedness” (at the end of the psalm) might relate to vv.18-21 in uncomfortable ways. Both vv.18-21 and 22-23 may have their roles: vv.18-21 to guard against assuming I’m so “advanced” that these would never cross my lips, vv.22-23 to guard against getting stuck in my anger.

How do we wrap this up? Maybe like this. The psalm’s v.13: “I will thank you because I am marvelously made; / your works are wonderful, and I know it well.” That points to our past and present. At the end of today’s Gospel: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!” That’s the future God hopes for for each of us. With Jacob, we might find it too general, not nailed down enough. Nevertheless, it does give us our marching orders: “Let anyone with ears listen!”

“Let anyone with ears listen!” (7th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/12/2026)

Leave a reply

Readings (Track 2)

How did the world come into being? Israel’s neighbors gave wildly diverse answers to that question. The first chapter of Genesis, echoing one of the Egyptian answers, tells us that God brought the world into being through the word. “Let there be light…” (v.3) “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place…” (v.9) “Let the earth bring forth living creatures…” (v.24). Whatever else we learn from that chapter, we learn that God’s word gets things done.

The psalms return repeatedly to the theme of the word’s power. Psalm 29, which we use every year at Jesus’ Baptism, is one of the better known: “The voice of the Lord is a powerful voice; / the voice of the Lord is a voice of splendor. / The voice of the Lord breaks the cedar trees; / the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon” (vv.4-5).

So when the Word of the Lord—by now clearly with a capital ‘W’—assumes human flesh, we expect it to be powerful, irresistibly powerful. Anything less, and we ask the question John the Baptist asked: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matt 11:3). We heard some of Jesus’ responses to this puzzle last week; in today’s reading we encounter another of his responses.

Jesus tells a story about a sower who sows on different sorts of soil. The seed fares rather badly in the first three soils, but produces yields of 30, 60, and 100-fold in the fourth.  The meaning of the story is not self-evident. Fortunately for the disciples—and us—Jesus explains: the sower is sowing the word of the kingdom. The story invites us to wonder about the ways in which the word of the kingdom and a seed are similar. A seed is at once powerful and vulnerable. It can multiply at astounding rates. (Those of us who are not farmers mostly experience this with weeds.) It is vulnerable—to birds, to thin soil, to inhospitable surroundings. The word of the kingdom—the announcement that the kingdom is near, the description of the life of the kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount—is powerful. In the right soil: St Peter, Catherine of Sienna, Martin Luther King Jr. But it is surprisingly vulnerable: even John the Baptist struggles to accept it, and many of Jesus’ hearers don’t even try.

So the story tries to help Jesus’ followers understand the decidedly mixed reception Jesus is receiving. It is a hopeful story: there will be a spectacular harvest. It is a sober story: much of the seed sown will not bear fruit.

Nevertheless—why does God play it this way? It causes us constant confusion. We’re used to power being used to compel. God has that power, but chooses not to use it that way. Something about valuing our freedom. So the seed is vulnerable as well as being powerful.

But Matthew, Mark, and Luke include this story not simply because of its importance in understanding what was happening in Jesus’ ministry then, but also because the Word comes to us repeatedly, and the challenge comes to us as it did to the original audience: “Let anyone with ears listen!”

Frederick Bruner writes “Everything is focused on the essential: that the seed enter the soil—that the Word be heard for what it is, the Word of God. Nothing else matters as much.… The soil that regularly lets seed in, regularly gets fruit out; it is that simple. ‘Seed in, fruit out.’ The soil’s whole task can be summarized in one mandate: give the seed room!” (Matthew, A Commentary 2:7).

“Seed in, fruit out.” That’s a different vision of a life well-lived than our culture offers us. It’s a more hopeful vision of a life well-lived, for rather than splitting life into pre-productive, productive, and post-productive, it tells us that at any age we can receive the seed, give it room, bear fruit.

“Let anyone with ears listen!” This imperative is behind one of Archbishop Cranmer’s greatest contributions as he re-formed the English church in the 16th Century. The monks had the Divine Office; the laity had the stained glass windows. Cranmer boiled the eight daily services of the Divine Office down to two, simplified the schedule of readings, and made these two offices, Morning and Evening Prayer, the backbone parish life. So, open the Book of Common Prayer, and, voila, these come first. And today a variety of smartphone apps make the Daily Office even more available.

“Seed in, fruit out:” that sounds pretty passive. So, a different image. Our life as Christians is improv. We’re baptized into a long story: Abraham and Sarah, King David, Queen Esther, Mary and Joseph… Jesus’ harvest metaphor and books like The Revelation give glimpses of the story’s ending. Our challenge is to improvise, to live in ways that fit into and maybe enhance the story. And for that most of us need ideas, so Nehemiah in the Persian bureaucracy, Tobit exiled in Nineveh, Dorcas of Joppa and her sewing machine: good friends. So, the Daily Office.

“Let anyone with ears listen!” It turns out to be remarkably difficult to listen. William Stringfellow, a lawyer/lay theologian/activist who will probably enter Lesser Feasts and Fasts once the normal 50-year waiting period has past:

“Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance or impressing the other, or if you are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or if you are debating about whether the word being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters may have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered. Listening, in other words, is a primitive act of love, in which a person gives self to another’s word, making self accessible and vulnerable to that word. It is very much like that when a person comes to the Bible…”

“Let anyone with ears listen!” And so we’re reminded, once again, that the challenges of relating to God and relating to each other are intimately related. Habits of careful listening (or not) in one sphere will bleed over into the other, for better or worse.

Listening to Jesus’ parable in today’s hyper-polarized context, two additional observations. First, we’d probably misread the parable if we assumed that any of us are only one sort of soil. Speaking personally, yeah, all four soils. Second, and related, it’s important to keep listening. Even the best of our improv can go off the rails remarkably quickly. It took the French revolution less than three years to get from the Declaration of the Rights of Man (8/26/1789) to the guillotine (4/25/1792).

But it would be a mistake to orient a sermon on this text toward exhortation. The bottom line: the Sower has come and is with us. There will be a rich harvest. Left to ourselves discouragement and despair might make sense—but we have not been left to ourselves. “I am with you always—he promised—to the end of the age.” So, today, this week, “Let anyone with ears listen!”

“Let’s do this together!” (6th Sunday after Pentecost; 7/5/2026)

Leave a reply

Readings (Track 2)

The oracle from the prophet Zechariah—our first reading—may sound familiar, for Matthew uses it to interpret Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week. Perhaps we’re hearing it today because Jesus’ self-description as humble (πραΰς) echoes Zechariah’s description of this victorious king (עָנִי/ πραΰς).

In any case, the oracle was probably puzzling to Zechariah’s hearers. Now only an insignificant bit of a vast Persian Empire, “Lo, your king comes to you; / triumphant and victorious is he” would sound like very good news, the restoration of David’s Empire. But “humble and riding on a donkey”? Better a war chariot; you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight! Zechariah doesn’t explain how this will work, but it’s probably a clue as to what ‘humble’ means. This king’s triumph and victory isn’t from having a bigger army, but from trust in Israel’s God, who earlier in the book had proclaimed “Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! For lo, I will come and dwell in your midst, says the LORD” (2:10).

And this humility, by which also we find our humanity in our dependence on God, is probably related to Zechariah’s addressing his hearers as “prisoners of hope.” Hope’s a hard sell, whether then or now. The majority opinion: better to have enough clout so that you don’t need to hope. But “enough clout” is a moving goalpost (never quite enough), and Israel’s God is trustworthy, so hope is something to lean into, rather than to avoid.

Let’s turn to today’s Gospel. Despite their best efforts, neither John the Baptist nor Jesus have managed to move the needle much towards repentance and renewal. Matthew juxtaposes two of Jesus’ responses to this. The first: Jesus’ description of “this generation:” like children who want too many contradictory things, or haven’t figured out or faced what they really want. For a modern treatment of the theme, recall C.S. Lewis’ novel Till we have faces: “How can [the gods] meet us face to face till we have faces?”

(Perhaps coincidently, the semi-continuous reading of Romans in our second reading has us hearing Paul’s description of the divided self. Remarkably, after twenty centuries commentators are still unable to agree as to whether Paul is describing his past [pre-Christian] or present [Christian] experience. If nothing else, this underscores the difficulty we humans have in giving—or recognizing—a useful account of ourselves!)

Jesus’ second response: a prayer—and here we’ll need to slow down. “The wise and the intelligent:” wisdom and intelligence per se are good (Deut 1:13; Hos 14:9 etc.). The problem is that they can be used in self-serving ways, as Isaiah in particular observed (19:11; 29:14), ways that can spell disaster for others. Matthew gives us an example of this at the beginning of his Gospel. Herod’s cruelty and paranoia were proverbial. “Better to be Herod’s pig than son” is commonly attributed to the emperor Augustus. But when asked where the Messiah was to be born, the wise and intelligent respond considering only their own interests, consigning the infants of Bethlehem to certain death. Later, as John’s Gospel recalls, the wise and intelligent—in this case, the high priest—reason “it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” (11:50). So the Father “hiding” things in Jesus’ prayer turns out to be simply letting the effects of the decisions of the wise and intelligent play themselves out. Where the Father’s initiative comes in is in nevertheless revealing to infants, as we’ve watched in Jesus’ calling of Peter, Andrew, James, John…

By the way, circling back for a moment to this business of self-knowledge, if I’m reading these stories about Jesus’ opponents and thinking “What bad people!” I need to recall Paul’s words to  the Corinthians: “Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did.… So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall” (1 Cor 10:6, 12).

“[N]o one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son.” That reflects the conflict that’s been building between the wise and intelligent and Jesus over what their people’s history is about, what the commandments are about. Jesus’ reading of the situation: his opponents have so painted themselves into a corner that they’re no longer hearing their own Scripture, e.g., today’s psalm: “The Lord is loving to everyone / and his compassion is over all his works.” So yes, Jesus eats with “tax collectors and sinners” (& 9:11) and repeatedly recalls Hosea’s “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (9:13; 12:7). In other words, as Matthew portrays it, the assumption of the wise and intelligent that they know enough about God to be able to write off Jesus is delusional.

Today some assume that they know enough about God to be able to evaluate the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad, etc. as potential guides. Others assume that in proclaiming “Jesus is the only way to God” they know who that God is. Jesus’ words might give both groups pause. What Jesus’ words imply may be something like this: for everyone—the preacher included—discipleship is the lifelong process of coming to know the God of Jesus (Segundo Galilea).

“[A]nd anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” And what Jesus chooses: an open invitation: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” What an invitation, and how easy to misunderstand. It’s not a rest in which I have everything under control. It’s not a rest in which I have enough clout that I don’t need to hope. It’s rest because I’m not trying to play god, and am learning—however slowly—to trust Jesus’ God.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart…” Other teachers would talk about the yoke of the Torah or of the commandments; “my yoke” would have raised eyebrows. It follows from Jesus’ unique relationship to the Father, so that back in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus repeatedly says “You have heard it said…but I say.” But Jesus puts this unique relationship at the service of his hearers: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,” rather than taking it as a reason for separation or self-protection. “Gentle and humble in heart” indeed.

“For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” I suspect Jesus throws in things like this also to see if we’re paying attention.  Easy, light? In the Sermon on the Mount we heard: “For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life” (7:14). Easy, light? I suspect Matthew wants us to wonder about that, wondering that might take us in a variety of directions. I wonder if in the context of Matthew’s Gospel as a whole it isn’t something like this: “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” because we’re doing this together.

Triumph and victory arriving not in a war chariot, but “humble and riding on a donkey.” An invitation to double down on hope, rather than seek enough clout to leave hope behind. That’s also the invitation of the Table around which we’ll soon be gathering. Everyone is welcome; there is room for everyone; there is enough for everyone. For Jesus continues to extend the invitation: let’s do this together.

The God who makes a way where there is no way (5th Sunday after Pentecost, 6/28/2026)

Leave a reply

Readings (Track 1)

Looking back at God’s deliverance at the Red Sea, one of the psalms: “Your way was in the sea, / and your paths in the great waters, / yet your footsteps were not seen” (77:19). One reader summarizes: “God makes a way where there is no way.” God makes a way where there is no way: that’s perhaps the most important thing to learn from our first reading.

The story gives us something of both God’s and Abraham’s perspectives; let’s look at both.

God’s perspective. “After these things God tested Abraham.” Why a test, and why such an extreme test? Recall the project as announced in Genesis 12: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God’s future with the human family is riding on Abraham. As Mark Twain put it, “Some folk say not to put all your eggs in one basket. I say: ‘Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket!”

Why such an extreme test? Well, recall Abraham’s servant’s words: “The LORD has greatly blessed my master, and he has become wealthy; he has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female slaves, camels and donkeys.” So is Abraham serving God for God’s sake, or for the flocks and herds? Throughout the history of Israel and the Church this has been one of the recurrent core questions. Pick your favorite worst moment in the Church’s history, and this issue is probably at the core. What was the bottom line in the Spanish conquest of the Americas: God or Gold? We have “In God we trust” on our currency. Really? And in which god are we trusting? As the Book of Job frames the question, is God worth serving for nothing? At least, please God, may Abraham, the Father of the faithful, get it right.

So I think we hear sheer relief on God’s part toward the end of the story: “The angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, ‘By myself I have sworn, says the LORD: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.’”

No less intense, of course, was the experience from Abraham’s perspective.

Our issue, how God could command human sacrifice, would not have been Abraham’s. While prohibited in the Law of Moses, it does not seem to have died out in popular religion until the destruction of the Temple in the 6th Century BC.

Rather, the issue both for Abraham and the Bible itself: what happens when the promise of God and the command of God are in conflict. “I will make of you a great nation;” and just how is the sacrifice of Isaac part of that?

Gideon —one of the judges—with God’s promise to deliver Israel from the Midianites. And what does God command? Get rid of most of your army.

Ahaz —King of Judah— caught between a very hungry Egyptian Empire and an equally hungry Assyrian Empire. Isaiah the prophet issues God’s command: call all your ambassadors home, tear up the mutual assistance treaties, trust in God alone.

Jesus, with “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” ringing in his ears. If there was ever a mandate for action, there it was. And so he meets the tempter in the wilderness, and the command of God as recorded in the Law of Moses vetoes all the tempter’s suggestions for putting the Kingdom on the fast track.

If Jesus is not going to turn stones into bread, not going to let the angels deliver him very miraculously & very publicly, not going to negotiate with the one credible power broker this side of heaven, what future does Jesus’ Kingdom have?

God has given us some breathtaking promises. An almost inevitably —that’s why there are so many stories of this in the Bible— we encounter situations in which the promise of God and the command of God are in conflict.

In countries where it’s dangerous to be a Christian, Christian parents face this challenge. Raise our son or daughter as a Christian, or let the local mosque/temple/party headquarters handle their formation? In other contexts there’s still the challenge captured by Thomas More in Bolt’s A Man for all Seasons: “But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought…” Nevertheless we raise our children to be more like Thomas More than, say, Richard Rich, whose perjury at More’s trial greased the skids for his execution.

Sometimes it’s more narrowly focused, some version of the warning with which last week’s Gospel ended: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

In these situations the rationale for the command may be opaque, without rhyme or reason. We need the parish around us in such moments, not only to keep us confusing God’s command with our own fears, but also, when it is God’s command, to remind us that Abraham, Gideon & Jesus don’t make bad company.

So we pick up the knife, pick up the fire, and walk with Isaac up the hill. What happens when we get there is not in our control. Abraham got a divine voice and a ram. Gideon sent the Midianites packing. Hezekiah, Ahaz’ son, was rescued from the Assyrian army. Jesus got three nails, a cross, and a crown to go with it. And on the third day that turned out to be the case of God making a way where there was no way. What is in our control is our obedience, our witness.

All well and good —some of us may be thinking— unless you’re the ram. The Jews, out of their generations of experience in serving God “for nothing” have a story about this.

Rabbi Hanina ben Dossa said: Nothing of this sacrifice was lost. The ashes were dispersed in the Temple’s sanctuary; the sinews David used as cords for his harp; the skin was claimed by the prophet Elijah to clothe himself; as for the two horns, the smaller one called the people together at the foot of Mt Sinai, and the larger one will resound one day announcing the coming of the Messiah.”[1]

And so we follow this God who makes a way where there is no way into the coming week.

[1] Wiesel Messengers of God 101.

Sarah and that “God’s Story + My Story = One Story” Idea (4th Sunday after Pentecost, 6/21/2026)

Leave a reply

Readings (Track 1)

Sam Kamaleson, a pastor from the Indian subcontinent with whom I worked at World Vision, used to talk about God’s story (one hand) and my story (the other hand) becoming one story (fingers interlaced). Easier said than done; today’s lessons give us an opportunity to think about it.

God’s story. Three weeks ago (Trinity Sunday) our first lesson was the creation story, seven days of God declaring this is good, that is good, the whole thing very good. It’s a very different perspective than the Babylonian (creation itself and humans in particular formed from the corpses of defeated gods of chaos) or the Greek (only a second-rate deity would be fool enough to deal with matter). No: creation is good, the material world is good.

We can pick up the story in Eucharistic Prayer C:

From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another.

We should be, I think, surprised that the prayer doesn’t continue with “And so You pulled the plug on the whole thing” or “And so You decided to hang out with the dolphins for the next few thousand years.” Surprisingly, God calls Abraham and Sarah to be the beginning of a pilot project aimed at what the Jews call tikkun olam, repairing the world. God comes to Abraham and Sarah: what might we do together? God’s story + their story becoming one story. That’s the story contained in the Old Testament, the story rebooted when God takes on human flesh in Jesus, the story we enter with our baptism.

It’s probably fair to say that from Sarah’s perspective the project didn’t start out well. She had not borne Abraham an heir, to the point that, bowing to custom, she presented Abraham with her Egyptian slave Hagar so that she might produce an heir by proxy. Hagar conceived, and, understandably, passed up no chance to remind everyone that she was the birth mother of Abraham’s heir. So Sarah had an enemy, and there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. Until, finally, God promised her a son, and delivered on that promise Now Sarah can do something about her enemy. Foreshadowing the treatment her people will receive from the Egyptians some generations later, she demands that Abraham expel Hagar and Ishmael. And Abraham does so—only after receiving God’s promise to look after Hagar and Ishmael.

And in the story we’ve just heard God keeps that promise to Hagar, preserving Ishmael’s imperiled life as God will preserve Isaac’s imperiled life in the next story. “Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him fast with your hand; for I will make him a great nation.”

The Jews, descended from Isaac, and the Arabs, descended from Ishmael, already in the OT are often at odds. And here Sarah’s God is providing a well for Ishmael. The Jews have a legend about that: “the angels appeared against Ishmael before God. They said, ‘Wilt Thou cause a well of water to spring up for him whose descendants will let Thy children of Israel perish with thirst?’ And God: “well, yes.”

God’s story + my story = one story. For Sarah in this episode, not so much, because she’s hit one of the really difficult bits: that someone is my enemy doesn’t mean they’re God’s enemy, that God listens to me when I pray Ps 86 (today’s psalm) and listens to my enemy when they pray Ps 86.

This is a difficult enough bit that the OT keeps coming back to it. Here are a couple more stories.

Some generations later Moses has led Israel out of Egypt, and Joshua has just brought the people across the Jordan to take possession of the promised land. Reading from the fifth chapter of Joshua:

Once when Joshua was by Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” He replied, “Neither; but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” (Jos 5:13-14)

“Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” “Neither.”

Some centuries later the Northern Kingdom of Israel and Aram (modern Syria) are at war. In a legend from that period, the king of Aram learns that his recent raids have been unsuccessful because the prophet Elisha has been warning the Israelite king about them. He sends out a large force to surround Elisha’s city and capture Elisha. Elisha sees the force, and asks God to blind the soldiers. God does so, and Elisha leads them to the Israelite capital. At this point the Israelite king enters. Reading from the sixth chapter of 2 Kings:

When the king of Israel saw them he said to Elisha, “Father, shall I kill them? Shall I kill them?” He answered, “No! Did you capture with your sword and your bow those whom you want to kill? Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink; and let them go to their master.” So he prepared for them a great feast; after they ate and drank, he sent them on their way, and they went to their master. And the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel. (2Ki 6:21-23)

So when Jesus talks about loving one’s enemies as an integral part of what God’s kingdom is about, this isn’t new. Jesus is simply reporting how he’s observed the Father acting “for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous”—not to mention Hagar, the reply to Joshua, Elisha’s treatment of the Aramean raiders.

So when Jesus sends his disciples out to announce this kingdom, he understandably anticipates opposition, because everyone knows that right-thinking people try to help their friends and hurt their enemies. Right-thinking people will take Barabbas over Jesus any day.

“But this love of enemies business can’t be that important to God. If it were, God would impose it.” But that takes us back to the creation story. God thinks that human freedom is good. God thinks that the church’s freedom is good. So God does what God can do, like the woman in one of Jesus’ parables, putting leaven in the dough in the hope of the whole thing rising. God continues to stretch out the now nail-pierced hand to us: how can we make My story and your story one story?

God’s story; my story; one story. There are many ways that invitation will come to us in the coming week. Some of them may have to do with how we choose to respond to our enemies. May our choices bring God joy.

Time, trust, patience (3rd Sunday after Pentecost, 6/14/2026)

Leave a reply

Readings (Track 1)

As summer fast approaches, our lakes become inviting in a new way. For, what do you need to swim? [Water.] What happens if you don’t have any water? [You don’t swim.] So if God came to me and said “You’re going to be a great swimmer,” a fair question would be “Where’s the water?”

This is more or less the situation Abraham was in at the beginning of today’s text. At the beginning of Abraham’s story God promised “I will make of you a great nation.” He was 75 then, and that was 24 years ago. Since then he and Sarah have had exactly…zero children. To make matters worse, his name would have been a sort of standing joke. God had insisted on changing his name to “Abraham,” which was explained as “father of a multitude of nations.”

How many of us have been praying for something for a long time? St. Paul called Abraham the father of all who believe, and he’s also our father in this sense, that he knows what it is to pray for something for a very long time. And one of the reasons this story’s here is to remind us that God regularly works with time frames that we find uncomfortable, painful, and completely inexplicable.

This is particularly difficult for us in this culture, which demands everything now, if not yesterday. So living as a Christian in this culture means being more than a little counter-cultural, being willing to live sometimes for long stretches in the tension between what we are asking God to do and what God is doing.

Anyhow, back to Abraham. After all this waiting, all this predictable scorn, we might expect someone more than a little anti-social. So it might surprise us a little to watch Abraham receiving the three strangers. On the one hand, he is showing the hospitality that custom demands. The frontier between the town and the steppe demands that sort of hospitality, or else no one lasts very long. On the other hand, it is hospitality beyond what convention required, generous hospitality, extravagant hospitality. Watching Abraham and Sarah swing into action we’re given a glimpse as to why God chose them to start a new and decisive chapter in human history.

The narrator has told us what Abraham doesn’t know: these aren’t any three men, but the Lord God. (The narrative, incidentally, goes back and forth between Abraham relating to three and Abraham relating to one, which has lead Christians to see here an early revelation of the Holy Trinity.) Watching Abraham relate to the Stranger or Strangers, we’re reminded of a theme we meet repeatedly in Scripture: how we relate to other people determines how we relate to God. We human beings are simply not designed so we can run one program for relating to people, and another program (a much better program) for relating to God. We’ve got one program that runs for persons, God & others included, so the Judeo-Christian tradition has always encouraged us to pay careful attention to it. This, by the way, is the pragmatic reason for the command to love our enemies. How we treat our enemies spills over into how we treat those we love.

The meal conversation transitions into a conversation about a son, and Sarah, offstage, cannot contain her laughter. The LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” That’s a question the text puts pretty directly to Abraham and Sarah and us.

It’s easy to answer that question in the abstract. But the important questions are never abstract. That situation, that wound, I’ve been praying about for years, if not decades: is it too difficult for the Lord? It’s so tempting to reduce the tension: God doesn’t care. The situation doesn’t matter. We don’t matter. And any of these moves erode the generosity displayed in our first reading.

You may recall how Scott Peck began his classic The Road Less Traveled. “Life is difficult.”[1] But, Peck observes, since we don’t like difficult, we often opt for work-arounds that end up compounding the difficulty. You may remember the sitcom Cheers. In a frequent story line a difficulty appears, the regulars opt for an avoidance strategy, that strategy consumes increasing amounts of energy and resources until it all comes crashing down, the final scene including tacit agreement to learn nothing from the experience. Sounds rather like last week’s “She’s my sister” episode.

As Christians, life is difficult also because we confess “God is faithful” and “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2 Pet. 3:8). To live as daughters and sons of Abraham and Sarah is to guard this tension: it’s part of our identity.

Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? The answer for Abraham and Sarah comes the next year and its narrative is included in the Old Testament reading. Sarah —well, Abraham and Sarah, but particularly Sarah— has a son who is named “Isaac,” which simply means “Laughter.” The laughter of Sarah’s incredulity has become the laughter of her joy, the sort of joy we also see when a child’s put in a bathtub or a swimming pool. Yes, this family is going to become a family of excellent swimmers.

Now, having heard again this rather bracing story that moves from desolation and barrenness to joy and fertility and in the process challenges us to more faith, more faithfulness, we could easily stop.

But the combination of this story and the Gospel suggests a further step. I’ve read the Old Testament lesson as an invitation to learn from Abraham and Sarah: learn from them the wonderful things that God can do, and imitate their faith, their faithfulness. The Gospel reading with the commissioning of the disciples suggests that we go back to the Genesis story and wonder about how we’re called to imitate the three Strangers. Because that’s what Jesus is sending them and us out to do: go to those who’ve had every reason to give up hope with the words of power and deeds of power that will free them to hope and believe. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. And we proclaim this good news in hope, for not all the sick among us are cured, and, barring Jesus’ return, these bodies too will die. This is part of what it means to be sons and daughters of Abraham. And even as we proclaim the good news, we keep the welcome mat out for the Three Strangers who—often in ways beyond our imagination—continue to show up at our doorstep.

[1] Peck continues: This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

Abram: God’s call, God’s project (2nd Sunday after Pentecost, 6/7/2026)

Leave a reply

Readings

Today’s readings pretty much set the preacher’s agenda: faith—the faith of Abraham Paul celebrates, the faith shown by the woman with the hemorrhages in the center of Matthew’s story. So let’s attend to how Genesis chooses to start the story.

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”

Genesis opens with the creation story we heard last week. The following chapters narrate the repeated human distrust (lack of faith) that results in the expulsion from the Garden, Cain’s murder of Abel, the violence that brings on the flood, the tower of Babel project thwarted by God’s confusing their language. A fellow named Lamech captures it:

“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”

Our world. And, as the flood story made clear, simple punishment does nothing to change the human heart. What can God do?

Parenthesis: religion is often described as trying to answer our questions: Why do we live? Why do we die? What are we supposed to do? What may we hope? Holy Scripture has a different starting point. It speaks of God and the challenge God faces: a world of beauty filled with creatures bearing God’s own image—often acting as though they’re set on auto-destruct. How to heal this world? If we have questions for which we want answers, so does God!

In God’s initial address to Abraham there’s a fundamental shift in God’s strategy, from dealing with the whole human race, to focusing in a particular way on one family: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Abraham and Sarah are the beginning of a pilot project, not because God doesn’t care about the world, but because God’s strategy is to influence, to bless the world through this family. As in any pilot project the point is to show that something can and does work, in this case, God’s vision for what authentically human life looks like. This is what a human community looks like that isn’t set on self-destruct. The reason for Israel’s existence—and for the Church’s existence, for that matter—is the healing of the world. As William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1940s said, “The church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

But back to Abraham. Almost the first event after that divine call is…a famine. The folk preaching a simple theology of prosperity (obey God and God will make you rich) really do need to read their own Bibles. Abraham obeys God and arrives in Canaan just in time for…a famine.

So they continue south to Egypt in search of food.

When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.” (Vv. 11-13)

That really should have worked. As the brother, Abraham can control access to Sarah, stringing along suitors until they give up or the famine is over. But Murphy’s Law kicks in: Pharaoh takes an interest in Sarah, and what Pharaoh wants, Pharaoh gets.

Now at this point the silences in the text are truly remarkable. We aren’t told what Abraham makes of the situation: he’s lost Sarah; he’s gained a lot of wealth. We aren’t told what Sarah makes of the situation: Abraham or Pharaoh? Nor are we told how long this goes on. But as the story continues, it’s clear that what is decisive is not what Abram or Sarai make of the situation, but what God makes of it.

But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh called Abram, and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone.” (Vv. 17-19)

We began our reading with that extraordinary divine call. At the end of our reading both God and Abraham have new problems. Abraham: this divine call apparently does not mean that life’s going to be a bed of roses. There’s still plenty of room for famines and rapacious rulers. “Would it have been that difficult for God to have put me in a less hostile environment?” How am I supposed to trust a God who apparently leaves me so unprotected?

But if Abraham has a problem, God has an equally serious problem. God’s made this promise to Abraham: “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” But it turns out that Abraham is quite prepared to lie and offer up his own wife to save his own skin, putting at risk not only his own reputation, but God’s. All those plagues on Pharaoh’s house are not a very promising beginning to “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

I’ve described it as God’s problem; today’s Gospel gives us another possible angle. “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Sinners—like Matthew the tax collector, like Abraham, like us.

What do we see in the Egypt story? A God whose call does not translate into an easy life for God’s people, a people of God who can cause profound embarrassment for God. How much does God love us? Enough to be this vulnerable…and we’re only at the 12th chapter of the Bible. And it’s in this context that our faith can grow.

Being & Making Disciples (Trinity Sunday, 5/31/2026)

Leave a reply

Readings

Trinity Sunday: it’s the classic banana peel in the Church Year, tempting preachers to explain the Trinity. So: no explanation, but an observation. Between Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, published in 1687, and the Fifth Solvay Conference on Physics in Brussels in 1927, the doctrine of the Trinity seemed an embarrassment. Things were supposed to make sense, to be understandable. One God; Three Persons; doesn’t add up. It’s turned out that at Brussels Bohr had the better argument than Einstein: reality at the quantum level is strange. We’ve been able to write complex formulas, harness this strangeness in our technology, but—judging from the Nova episodes—no one’s claiming to understand it. That, of course, does not prove the doctrine of the Trinity, but it should make us less nervous about its strangeness. We’re talking, after all, not about the creation but the Creator.

Our readings opened with the creation account, an opportunity to contemplate the skill and glory of the Trinity at work: the Spirit hovering, God speaking (the Word). In recent centuries scholars have rightly pointed out that the Old Testament writers didn’t know the Trinity as such, so rather than “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (KJV), we have “while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (NRSV). But it’s equally true that once Genesis and Matthew are in the same book, it’s hard to imagine the Trinity being completely offstage until, say, Jesus’ baptism. So, not a bad text for Trinity Sunday.

Genesis and Matthew are also connected in another important way. Genesis: “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” We’ve rather made a mess of that. Matthew’s “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” is also about getting that back on track.

But preacher, you might be thinking, earth-keeping doesn’t sound like one of Matthew’s themes. True enough. But recall what Jesus does in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. Arguing against anxiety: “Look at the birds of the air…  Consider the lilies of the field.” No point in talking about dominion if the audience isn’t paying attention to the created order. Learn from creation; then we can talk about dominion.

It is, as Psalm 8 celebrates, a glorious thing to be a human being. Jesus is about reclaiming that glory: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

Notice that the command isn’t “Go therefore and make Christians of all nations.” ‘Christian’ is usually simply a box to check in a census: “Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Other?” Disciple: a life-time learner. Other rabbis had disciples, but the goal there was to stop learning from that rabbi at some point and hang out one’s own shingle. Not with Jesus, certainly not Matthew’s Jesus, identified from the start as Emmanuel (“God with us”). It’s a life-long personal relationship.

That’s the implicit challenge in “Go therefore and make disciples:” are we still learning from Jesus? That, by the way, is the big downside to Confirmation, which can encourage us to think that now we’ve learned all we need. All those big words in the Baptismal Covenant that we regularly repeat: “evil, Good News, justice, dignity:” we need to keep learning from Jesus what those words mean.

“Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Why does Matthew’s Gospel talk about baptism? That might sound like a strange question, but recall the Sermon on the Mount. “You will know them by their fruits.… Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.… Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock” (Mat 7:16-24). It’s what we do that matters. Where does baptism fit?

It’s back to the logic of being Jesus’ disciple. The other rabbis: folk decided which rabbi (if any) they’d like to be a disciple of. Jesus throughout all the Gospels chooses his disciples. Peter, Andrew, James, John at the lakeshore, Matthew at the tax booth. As we hear in John’s Gospel, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father” (6:44); “You did not choose me but I chose you” (15:16). That’s what my baptism says: Jesus chose me; my vocation, to be Jesus’ disciple. Baptism isn’t so much about the Christian life being my project as me being Jesus’ project.

And, since we’re celebrating Trinity Sunday, the other thing to say about my baptism, your baptism, is that it’s the invitation to the Mother of All Banquets. Without something like the doctrine of the Trinity “God is love” is a non sequitur, for ‘love’ is a transitive verb, demanding an object. The doctrine of the Trinity: before creation, an eternal community of love, joy, celebration: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Scripture’s vision of the human destiny: entry into that community, an eternity of participating in the inexhausable mystery and joy of the divine life. Let us not be slow in continuing to respond to that invitation!

“You renew the face of the earth” (Pentecost, 5/24/2026)

Leave a reply

Readings (Acts, 1 Corinthians, John 20)

“You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; / and so you renew the face of the earth.” That line from today’s psalm isn’t a bad summary of what we’re celebrating today. The same Spirit that hovered over the chaotic waters in creation is now at work in re-creation, in renewal.

One of the things I appreciate about our tradition is that at the major feasts the liturgy itself does the heavy lifting. The sermon has more the character of the program notes that accompany concerts at the Overture Center. So, some program notes, and then back to the celebration!

In a Bible that opens with two accounts of creation, Genesis 1 with its majestic six days crowned by the Sabbath, Genesis 2 with the creation of the earth creature and—finally—the creation of an authentic counterpart, perhaps it’s no surprise that there are two accounts of the Spirit’s arrival. Acts is the familiar one; our reading from John’s Gospel gives us the other, with John’s version of the Great Commission included. As in Genesis there’s no point in trying to harmonize the two, but there’s plenty to learn from both.

“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’”

It’s a single action, beginning with “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” We’ll hear Matthew’s version of the Great Commission next Sunday (“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”). Sadly it’s too often been hijacked in support imperial projects. John’s version reduces that danger: “as the Father has sent me,” that is, without coercion or violence, vulnerable.

That approach to mission is hard to sustain, so just as the Spirit comes on Jesus at his baptism, so Jesus breathes on the disciples: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” As many readers have noted, it recalls the creation scene back in Genesis 2: the Lord God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen 2:7). As other New Testament writers recognized, it’s a new creation (2 Cor 5:17).

“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” That verse, as you might imagine, has occasioned heated debates: basis of sacrament of reconciliation or (more broadly) the proclamation of forgiveness? Perhaps it’s there to underscore that whether the hearers accept or reject the disciples’ message really matters.[1]

John’s “Pentecost” occurs in a locked room; Luke’s—recorded in Acts—spills out into Jerusalem’s streets. Among the many things we might notice: the Spirit’s translation strategy. The multinational crowd doesn’t hear and understand Peter’s Aramaic. “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, etc.… in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” That’s another way “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” plays out: Jesus speaks our language; Peter’s audience hears in their own languages. As the Gospel spreads to and past the edges of the Empire that frequently means that the missioner’s first task is to learn their hosts’ language.

And it’s not simply a matter of language in any narrow sense, but of the concepts, the ways of seeing the world. We heard the beginning of Peter’s speech in our first reading. It goes on for some length and ends with “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” How do we translate that for our time and place? While the continuity is crucial (“one holy catholic and apostolic church”) every time we cross cultures—if we do it right—it’s also a new creation. Do we always do it right? Of course not, so it’s a good thing that the Spirit that brooded over the chaotic waters isn’t easily scared off.

What might be the take-aways from these readings? Let me suggest three, and then back to the celebration.

First, it’s obviously not Jesus leaving, and leaving us to sort things out. The Spirit arrives, and, as Jesus does, takes the lead. As more than one commentator has suggested, the title “Acts of the Apostles” is a misnomer. Better: “Acts of the Holy Spirit—with the Apostles playing catchup.” We’re usually playing catchup. So discernment is always the first priority. What is the Spirit doing? How do we align with that, not get in the way of that? That pretty much organizes Peter’s sermon at Pentecost as he seeks to discern in light of Scripture what the Spirit’s doing now.

Second, not only two creation stories, two accounts of the giving of the Spirit. Four Gospels! Some years at Pentecost we hear the story of the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. It’s often said that Pentecost is the reversal of that. That’s true in a way: mutual understanding in place of confusion. But it’s equally true that Pentecost is the Amen to the Tower: The profound difference between Creator and creation demands multiple languages.

And that runs parallel to Paul’s discussion of the Spirit’s gifts in our reading from Corinthians. We need those different gifts not only to address the different needs within the body (the congregation) but equally as windows on the mystery that is God. (And Paul’s listing of gifts is by no means exhaustive.)

Paul’s vision is that every congregation is an ongoing experience of Pentecost, the Spirit speaking to us, molding us, through the particular gifts the Spirit has given each of us. That can be exhilarating. That can be scarry. Had we extended that Corinthians reading we would have heard Paul dealing with the ways we deal with that fear: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (v.21). We do that too often. The other person may well have drawn the wrong conclusion, but they are probably also seeing or feeing something the Spirit wants us to pay more attention to.

Third, many different languages, many different gifts. If we’re doing it right, it’s periodically just about to all fly apart. But it’s God’s project, not ours. It’s not for us to pull back on the throttle. Jesus elsewhere in John: “You did not choose me but I chose you” (Joh 15:16). God’s project, driven by love, God’s love for us and that love for one another Jesus commands.

Or, returning to Paul, at the end of our long chapter focusing on the Spirit’s gifts, speaking to an audience overly concerned about which gifts are the Most Important, Paul pivots:

“And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.… And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 12:31; 13:1, 13).

It’s love that keeps us listening to each other, trying to understand, even when it’s uncomfortable. Love isn’t the frosting on the cake. It’s what holds the whole thing together so that the Spirit can teach us both what we want to know and what we’d rather not know. It’s either that or what Paul describes at the beginning of the letter: “each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or I belong to Christ’” (1Co 1:12).

Love “hopes all things” (1Co 13:7), so God sends the Spirit, hopes that we’ll continue to discern, to accept the Spirit’s leading through each other’s diverse gifts and perspectives, to let our love hold it together even when we understand far less than we’d like. Nothing less than the face of the earth needs renewing, in which our God calls us to joyfully participate. Amen.

[1] Cf. R. Brown, John XIII-XXI pp.1042-104.