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.
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.
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.
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.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 