Tag: love

Why We Fight

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for Proper 18, Year A

Matthew 18:15-20

HE Proper 18 A 2026Download

When we Christians fight, we fight to win.
The question is: “Win what, exactly?”

Athletes are trying to win a game.
Politicians are trying to win an election.
Lawyers are trying to win an argument.
But what are Christians trying to win?

Church is not a game.
I don’t slam-dunk the gospel book after the reading.
(Although… someone did send me a meme this week that said: “If people cared about church as much as they cared about football, they would dump Gatorade on their pastor’s head, whenever he makes a good point.” All I can say to that is: “Please don’t.”)

But you know… there is a game that we play in our broader society. That game is called “the economy.” And the points we score are called, “dollars.” Sometimes we can get caught up playing that game.
Unlike politicians, we’re not trying to win an election. We’re not trying to beat an opponent to gain power.
When we argue, like lawyers often do, we’re not trying to win an argument.
So, what then are we trying to win?

That’s exactly what Jesus is talking about in today’s gospel. He has a lot to say about why we fight and how we fight.

To begin with, he talks about the facts of the fight itself.
He says, “If another member of the church sins against you…”

Has anyone in this room ever sinned against anyone else in this room? I have.
We are human beings. We are flawed. We are going to disagree with one another.

As you have heard me say many times before, and will hear me say many times again, that is baked into our Episcopal tradition. For us, faith is always a dialogue between Scripture, tradition, and reason. People sitting in the same pews, sometimes for years, will disagree on particular interpretations of Scripture or ways of doing church. We, as Episcopalians, recognize that. On top of that, we recognize that we are indeed all flawed human beings, who are doing our best and sometimes failing. That’s life.

Jesus gives us an example of how we’re supposed to have these fights. He says, “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.”

That’s an invitation to relationship: A direct encounter with our siblings in Christ. We, as Christians, may not always see eye-to-eye on everything. But at the very least, we can have those conversations face-to-face.

Next, Jesus gets into why we fight. What is the goal that we are trying to accomplish? What are we trying to win?

He says, “If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.”
Notice that he does not say, “If the member agrees with you, you have won the argument.”
He says, “If the member listens…”

It’s about listening to one another, even if we don’t agree, to the end that, hopefully, we will have “regained that one,” which is actually a poor translation of this text. In Greek, that text literally says, “you have won your brother.” Which, of course, can also apply to our sisters and non-binary siblings in Christ.

It is about people.
That’s why we fight.
We’re not fighting to win an argument.
We’re fighting to win each other.

After that, Jesus talks about what happens when this conversation does not go well, and what happens when it does go well.

When that does not go well, he says, “If the member does not listen, take along two or three others.”

He’s talking about widening the circle of community, a little bit at a time. The point is not to gang up on someone, but to increase the scope of the conversation. It’s about asking ourselves, “Whose voices are not yet in this room? Who else do we need to be listening to, that we are not listening to right now?”

And then there’s a follow-up step to that: If they don’t listen to the smaller group, bring them to the wider community, in hopes that, by widening that scope of the community again, you can continue to hear more voices, more perspectives, and gain greater wisdom.

As Proverbs says, “In a multitude of counselors, there is wisdom.”

Finally, if even that doesn’t work, Jesus says, “Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a Tax collector.”

That’s not about kicking them out. That’s about saying, “We cannot come to a mutual understanding that will allow us to remain in relationship.” And so, sometimes, the community needs to draw a boundary. But that does not mean giving up on those who are on the outside.

Because Jesus said, “Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a Tax collector.”
Do you remember how Jesus feels about Gentiles and Tax collectors? He gives them unconditional love. He makes them the special recipients of mercy and compassion, especially as those who are outside the community of faith.

So, what happens when it does go well? What happens when, somewhere in this process, each of us begins to step outside of our own little egos, meet one another face-to-face, and really listen to one another?

Jesus tells us, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. And again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am in their midst.”

This talk of binding and loosing is a little confusing. What Jesus is saying is that there is power in community. When we come together face-to-face, work through the hard conversations, and listen to one another, there’s a power in that, and it gives us the ability to make a difference in our lives and in the wider community.

At the end, Jesus says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Somehow, in this process, of gathering, listening, and working through the hard stuff, Christ is indeed among us.

My favorite verse of scripture is 1 John 4:16, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”

If God is love, then the only way to really worship God is by loving one another. The only way to honor love is through love.

In later Christian tradition, the fathers and mothers of the Church came up with what we now call the doctrine of the Trinity. Our conception of “God” is not simply that of an “old man in the sky.”

For Christians, God is a community of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, existing in a state of eternal and perfect love. That is why we say that “God is love.”

God is a community, so paying attention to the quality of our life in community is the way to honor the God who is love and who is a community.

As Christians, this is how we fight. And this is why we fight.
We fight to win.
Not to win points, or to win power, or to win an argument.
We fight to win each other.

Whenever we do that, by sitting down, face-to-face, and listening, we will find in some mysterious way that Christ is indeed here among us.

The Gates of Hades Shall Not Prevail

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Proper 16, Year A

Matthew 16:13-21

When I was in seminary, I had a friend named Cole.

Cole and I had a class together that met out of town, about two hours away, and Cole would regularly give me a ride. Two hours was a long drive, so we’d get to talking, and we would talk about everything: Faith, family, the future.

We talked about where God might be calling us in life. We talked about family because he was about to become a dad, and I was about to get married. Those conversations became really important to me because I was at a moment of transition in life, thinking about my future and my calling.

I had gone to seminary thinking that I was going to be some fancy professor, but along the way, I started sensing something changing. It began to occur to me that I might actually be called to be a priest. And Cole was one of the people who was alongside me while I was wrestling with that question. Cole was a friend who could truly see me.

Maybe you have had friends like that in your life: Someone who really sees you, deep down. Sometimes they can see things about you that you can’t even see about yourself. Somebody who helps to shape you into the person that you are becoming. And maybe you’re helping shape them in that same way. Those kinds of friendships are really special and mysterious.

I bring that up because there is a moment of a deep seeing between friends that happens in today’s Gospel.

Jesus and his disciples are traveling through the region of Caesarea Philippi, and Jesus conducts an opinion poll of the disciples: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is? ”

The disciples gave him the answers they had heard: “Some people say John the Baptist, or Elijah and Jeremiah, or the other prophets.”

Then Jesus makes the question a little more personal: “But who do you say that I am?”

Simon Peter is the one who answers, saying, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Simon sees Jesus for who he is. And Jesus then blesses Simon.

And there’s something else in this passage that I had never noticed before this week:
Jesus then turns around and talks to Simon Peter about who he is.

Jesus says to Simon, “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

So, Peter sees Jesus.
Jesus sees Peter.

I see you.
You see me.

I don’t think Jesus is only seeing a secret identity that Peter already had inside of him and was waiting for someone to notice. He is seeing who Peter is becoming. Because Peter isn’t finished yet.

Peter gives a pretty good answer, today: “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.”
But next week we’re going to hear the story that comes right after this in the Gospel, where Peter gets it completely wrong.
So, that should assure us that being Jesus’ disciple and friend isn’t about having all the right answers, because none of us do.

Peter is still becoming the person he’s going to be. Jesus sees that in him, even as Peter sees Jesus for who he is.

I see you,
and you see me,
and we become us.

This is not just about Peter. It’s about all of us.

Jesus says, “On this rock, I will build my church.”

He’s not talking about a building or an institution. He’s talking about the community of gathered disciples that now covers the Earth and spans the last 2,000 years. This is about all of us seeing each other and loving each other into who we are.

And then, finally, Jesus says something else that’s really, really remarkable:
He says, “The gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

Which brings me back to my friend Cole:

At the end of seminary, in those days before social media made it possible for us to stay in touch with everybody we’ve ever met, Cole and I decided that we respected and loved each other too much to lie to each other.

I was going to the East Coast and Cole was going to the West Coast. We weren’t going to make false promises about calling every week or writing letters. We knew that probably wasn’t going to happen.

So, instead of fooling ourselves, Cole and I told each other the truth. We gave thanks for the beautiful time we had together, for the ways that we had shaped each other as fellow disciples of Jesus, for the love we shared as brothers in Christ, and then we went our separate ways.

A couple of years later, Facebook became a thing, and we got back in touch. We were never as close as we had been on those days when we were making those drives, but the fondness remained.

And then, about a month ago, Cole died of cancer.

I reached out to his wife. I attended his memorial service online. I got to hear all these amazing stories of the people who had loved him in the 20 years since I had last seen him. I got to hear about the kind of husband, and father, and pastor that Cole had become. And I was filled with so much gratitude for him, even as I was missing him.

That’s when I was struck by Jesus’ words about the gates of Hades not prevailing:

Hades means death. It is the Greek name for the underworld and the god of death.
According to Jesus, Hades has gates.
And gates are defensive.

We tend to think of death as something that is attacking us, so we huddle in our churches and pray that it will eventually give up and go away, but that’s not how Jesus sees death.
According to Jesus, we are the ones attacking death, and death is on the defensive.

We’re afraid of death, but it’s death that should be afraid of us.

Jesus says that Hades is behind those gates and the gates will not hold.
Death will not have the last word.

I think I learned something about that at Cole’s memorial service.

The love that he and I shared was greater than the geographical space between us, and even bigger than the space between life and death itself.

Death cannot undo what love has made.

Kindred in Christ, I think our calling this week is fairly simple:
Look deeply and really see one another, not just with the eyes of our heads, but with the eyes of our hearts.
Know one another deeply and allow yourself to be known.
Help nurture one another into who we are becoming,
so that, like Jesus and Peter, we too can say:

I see you,
you see me,
we become us,
and, by the grace of the living God,
death cannot undo what love has made.

Pastor Cole Meckle

The Sin of Stupidity

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Proper 15, Year A

Matthew 15:10–20, 21–28

Dearly beloved kindred in Christ:
Don’t be stupid. Amen.

Okay, I should probably unpack that a little bit before I sit down. When I say, “don’t be stupid,” I’m not talking about a lack of intelligence or knowledge. That’s ignorance. And the fact is that every single one of us is ignorant about something (or many things).

Stupidity is not a lack of information.

Learning is hard work, but there comes a point when it takes more work to not learn something than it would take to just go ahead and learn.

And when we reach that point, we have become committed to our ignorance. And it’s that commitment to ignorance that I define as “stupidity.”

Therefore, stupidity is not an intelligence problem at all. It’s a moral problem.

Stupidity is a sin in the eyes of God.

I bring this up because today’s gospel contains a story where Jesus refuses to be stupid.

The scene begins with him traveling to the region of Tyre and Sidon. This is Gentile territory, not Jewish. A bunch of pagans running around with different culture, and different customs. Things that Jesus and his disciples were probably not familiar with on a day-to-day basis.

While they’re traveling through this area, a very impertinent woman comes and starts shouting after them. “Jesus, Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

And at first, Jesus is just ignoring her, not responding at all, until his disciples get annoyed.

“Jesus, can you send her away or something? She’s really getting annoying.”

Jesus says, “Listen, ma’am, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Does she listen? No. She stays on him, blocks his path, kneels in front of him, and says, “Lord, help me.”

Jesus says something really rude at this point. He says, “It is not fair to take children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

He’s calling this woman a dog. We have a word for that in English. I’m not going to repeat it, but you know what it is. It’s really uncomfortable to imagine Jesus talking to someone in that way, especially someone who’s just a mother seeking help for her child! So what if she’s from a different culture?

But still, this woman doesn’t give up. She says to him, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs receive the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

Jesus is taken aback.

“Woman,” he says, “great is your faith.”

And let’s not gloss over that moment. Remember that Jesus, a faithful Jew, the central figure of the Christian religion, is talking to a pagan and saying, “You’ve got a lot of faith.”

That’s the way Jesus interacts with people of different religious beliefs.

What we see happening here is Jesus changing his mind.

That also might make us uncomfortable.

We have this idea that Jesus is perfect, he’s the sinless son of God, and things that are perfect don’t change. So why would Jesus change his mind? Unless… changing is part of his perfection.

Jesus here is refusing to be stupid. He’s willing to change his mind when love demands it.

In the beginning, it seems like he really thought his whole movement was just for Jews only. But then, as a result of this encounter, Jesus changes his mind.

In Luke’s Gospel, it says that Jesus “increased in wisdom.”
In the letter to the Hebrews, it says that Jesus as the son of God “learned obedience.”

Jesus learns.
Jesus grows.
This makes sense because Jesus was fully human.
And human beings grow.

If that’s true for Jesus, then it can be true for us too.

I think of the people who I tend to write off because they disagree with me, or because I think they don’t know as much as me about something.

Sometimes I get a big ego about it.
I want to write them off, and in that moment, Jesus comes to me and warns me about the sin of stupidity.

The sin of stupidity is not about being wrong. It’s about being so convinced that I am right, that I am not willing to consider any other perspectives, or change my mind, no matter what truth or love demands of me.

That’s the sin that Jesus avoided and gave us an example for how to avoid.

Here in today’s gospel, the incarnate Son of God is willing to be challenged. He’s humble enough to consider someone else’s situation and change his mind when he’s presented with new information.

Jesus refuses to be stupid.
Our invitation is to do likewise.

As we go into this week, encountering people who may differ from us or disagree with us, let’s remember how Jesus acted with someone who disagreed with him:

Let’s keep an open mind.
Let’s be like Jesus.

And most of all,
Let’s not be stupid.

The Last Word

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Proper 13, Year A

Matthew 14:13-21

When my wife and I argue (and believe me, we do), we don’t usually shout or call names. We do something much more insidious: we commit time abuse. We take an issue and analyze it to death, sometimes into the wee hours of the morning.

We do this because each of us is vying for the last word in the discussion. We don’t just want to win the argument; we want to drop that last bit of wisdom that makes the other person go, “A-ha! I see your point. You’re so wise. I’m so lucky to be married to you.”

Of course, when both of us are trying to get the last word, nobody really wins.

In life, too, we often assume that the last word is the thing that defines everything else. Whether or not this is actually true, we often live as though it is.

Today’s Gospel is a story about what gets the last word. But that fact only becomes clear when we realize that this passage is the second half of a two-part story. The first half happens in the twelve verses immediately preceding the section we heard today. Our lectionary skips over that first half because it is far less pleasant than the one we read this morning.

In the first half of the story, King Herod Antipas holds a luxurious banquet for his courtiers. At this banquet, his stepdaughter performs a dance that delights the guests so much that Herod rashly promises to give her anything she asks. At the urging of her mother, she asks for the head of John the Baptist on a platter.

Matthew tells us that Herod is grieved by the request. But in the end, he gives in because he is afraid of losing face before his guests. Herod allows fear to have the last word. And the final effect of that word is death.

Our Gospel picks up immediately after that story.

Jesus hears that his friend John the Baptist has been murdered.
Understandably, he withdraws by boat to a deserted place to be alone.
If anyone had reason to say, “Not today,” it was Jesus.
But the crowds follow him. And Matthew tells us something very simple:
“He had compassion for them and cured their sick.”

The story that follows is another banquet.
Unlike Herod’s banquet, this one is not held among the privileged elite in luxurious halls of power, but among ordinary people in a deserted place.

Jesus blesses and shares what little is available: five loaves of bread and two fish. When everyone has eaten, twelve baskets of leftovers remain.

At Herod’s banquet, fear has the last word.
At Jesus’ banquet, love has the last word.

Jesus refuses to let his own pain have the last word in how he responds to others.

Herod, tragically, allows fear to become the final voice, and the result is more death.

But for Jesus, love has the last word, and the result is more life than we know what to do with.

This is what Jesus is like.
This is what God is like.
And this is why, from this hillside to the upper room to the empty tomb, love always gets the last word.

Dorothy Day, the Catholic activist who founded houses of hospitality during the Great Depression, was frequently asked whether there was room for one more hungry person at the table.

Her answer was always the same:
“There is room for one more.”
Years later, she titled her memoir of that ministry Loaves and Fishes.
Like Jesus, she trusted that God’s love was greater than human scarcity. She lived as though love, not fear, should have the last word.

Kindred in Christ, every one of us comes to this place carrying something, whether that is grief, anxiety, frustration, or exhaustion.
We cannot always choose what happens to us. But by God’s grace, Christ can slowly reshape how we respond.
He meets us in our own pain.
Not by pretending it isn’t real.
But by refusing to let it have the final word.
And as we are fed at his table, Christ teaches us to let love—not fear, not cynicism, not pain—have the last word in our own lives.

This week, someone will cross your path while you are carrying your own burdens.
Perhaps the invitation of this Gospel is simply this:
Before fear, cynicism, or pain gets the last word…
Remember the One who came ashore grieving, saw the crowd, and had compassion.
He refused to let his own pain have the last word in how he responded to others.
Because in Jesus Christ, love gets the last word.

At Herod’s table, death had the last word.
At Christ’s table, love had the last word.
At Calvary, death seemed to have the last word.
At Easter, love had the last word.

And because love gets the last word, there is always enough grace, enough mercy, and enough room for one more at Christ’s table.

Love Has a Vision

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Proper 9, Year A

Genesis 24: 34-38, 42-49, 58-67

When people ask my wife and me about how we met, we have to ask them to please be more specific.

Because, here’s the thing: We met twice.

The first time was at a campus ministry conference in western North Carolina in the late 1990s. It was not unlike many of the brief encounters one has at a conference. We shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, established that we had a mutual acquaintance, and compared notes on what we were learning.

Then we said goodbye. And that was that. Or so we thought.

The second time we met was four years later, on a bus in Vancouver, Canada. I was a fresh-faced seminarian, and she was a year ahead of me. She had noticed me around campus and wanted to welcome me to the school. Once again, we exchanged pleasantries and established the same mutual acquaintance as before. In that moment, we both experienced a sudden case of déjà vu.

Hadn’t we had this exact conversation before?

Sure enough, we were the same two people who had met years prior, over three thousand miles away.

What are the odds of that happening?

To make a long story short, we started dating a month later and got married a year and a half after that. So that’s why, when people ask how we met, we have to ask them: “Which time?”

Stories like that raise interesting questions.

Was that God? Was that coincidence? Was it somehow both?

If life is nothing but random coincidence, we might wonder: Does that mean our lives are nothing more than accidents? But if every detail has already been planned out ahead of time, we might wonder something else: Are we really making choices at all, or are we just actors reading from a script someone else wrote?

Somewhere between meaningless accident and a rigid script, people of faith have always looked for another way.

Pastorally, I frequently sit with people who wrestle with this question, not as an abstract philosophy problem, but as a very personal one: “If God has a plan for my life, how do I know if I’m following it correctly?”

People ask this when they are deciding what to do about a job, a relationship, or any number of important decisions. Underneath all those questions is usually a deeper one: “What if I choose wrong?”

And that creates a lot of anxiety because sometimes we imagine God’s plan like a hidden treasure map. Somewhere out there is the one correct answer, the one perfect path, the one thing we are supposed to do. And if we make the wrong turn, we worry that we have ruined the whole story. But what if God’s plan is less about what happens to us and more about who we are becoming?

When I hear the words, “God has a plan,” I like to translate that in my head as: “Love has a vision.”

Scripture tells us that “God is love,” and love’s vision, I think, is less about predicting every event in our lives and more about shaping us into the kind of people we were created to be.

Love’s vision for my life is that I become more loving. Or, to put that in more traditional Christian language: God’s plan for my life is for me to become like Jesus, in my own particular way.

That is exactly the kind of mystery we encounter in today’s reading from Genesis.

The story of Isaac and Rebekah is one of the great romantic “meet-cutes” of the Bible. I like to think of it as Sleepless in Seattle for arranged marriages.

Abraham sends his servant on a mission to find a wife for his son Isaac. The servant prays that God will guide him to the right person, in the right place, at the right time. And then along comes Rebekah.

The amazing thing about Rebekah is that she does not wake up that morning saying, “Today I am going to participate in the divine unfolding of salvation history.” She goes to the well and sees someone who is thirsty, so she gives him water. That’s it.

She sees a stranger in need and does the next loving thing.

The servant sees providence. Rebekah sees a neighbor. And somehow, mysteriously, both are true. Maybe providence looks like ordinary people choosing compassion.

There is no booming voice from heaven. No angel appears to explain the plan. There is simply a person choosing compassion in the moment that is in front of her.

The Church has a word for this process of listening for God’s guidance. It’s called discernment.

Discernment is not easy. It is more art than science. It involves self-awareness, education, paying attention to our intuition, seeking guidance from wise people we respect, committing ourselves to prayer, and studying Scripture. But ultimately, discernment comes down to learning to ask the old question: “What would Jesus do?”

Because we may never know for certain whether God wants us to marry a particular person, take a particular job, or choose a particular path. But we do know the kind of people Jesus calls us to become: compassionate, courageous, and wise.

Yesterday, I got a phone call from one of our long-time parishioners, who has asked to remain anonymous. This person was passing by the church and saw several people and a dog sitting in our memorial garden. Knowing how hot it was outside, this person felt moved with compassion to buy lunch for the people and their dog. And when I heard that story, I immediately thought of Rebekah.

I don’t know whether this parishioner woke up yesterday thinking, “Today I am going to fulfill God’s plan for my life.”

Probably not.

They saw people who were hot and hungry. So they did the next loving thing.

So far as she knew, Rebekah was just being kind to a thirsty stranger and his animals. She could not have known the full story that was unfolding around her.

And maybe that is true for us too. Maybe God’s plan is less like a treasure map and more like a compass. We do not always know where we are going or how to get there. But we know if we are walking in the right direction—the direction of love.

In today’s gospel, Jesus says: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

That is who Jesus is: A safe place for the weary. A place of compassion in an often unkind world. And that is who we are called to be.

We may not always know what the future holds. Maybe it’s not even our place to know. But we can trust that whenever we choose compassion, whenever we offer kindness, whenever we become a place of rest for those carrying heavy burdens, we are stepping into love’s vision for our lives.

We are becoming more like Jesus, doing the next loving thing. And maybe, without even realizing it, we are exactly where we need to be.

How God Handles Rejection

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon2 Comments

Sermon for Easter Sunday

“The same stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:22-23)

“The same stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:22-23)

These two verses from Psalm 118, which we read this morning, have something to teach us about how God handles rejection. And they are absolutely perfect for Easter Sunday.

Most of us have some funny ideas about God and rejection. Maybe because we’ve been taught them, or just picked them up from human relationships, but we have this idea that if we reject God, then God will reject us. That we have a kind of constant level of anxiety with that assumption in our minds.

We think, well, what does rejecting God entail? And often the answers people come up with are believing the wrong things, doing the wrong things, saying the wrong things. That, oh, you know, if I leave this church, then I’ve rejected God. If I don’t believe this or that doctrine, or if I commit some circumstance, then I turn from God, and therefore God will reject me right back. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go directly to hell.

Again, we assume this based on human relationships, because humans, as we know, have needs. Humans have egos. A lot of our relationships are built on that mutual exchange where we help one another out. I’m nice to you, you’re nice to me, but if I’m not nice to you, maybe you’re not so nice to me.

And we project that onto God.

But the thing is, God doesn’t have any needs. And God doesn’t have an ego to bruise. So that kind of creates a question mark over our assumption that if we reject God in some way, that God will reject us.

But that’s where this verse comes into play:

“The same stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.”

I was reading a story earlier this week that illustrated this really well.

There was a five-year-old kid in a store who wanted his mom to buy him a toy, and she said no. And the five-year-old kid, as five-year-olds sometimes do, lost it and just shouted, “I hate you!”

And the mother—her mom was so great in this moment. Mom didn’t freak out, didn’t punish, did not reject the kid who had rejected her, and said, “Okay, you hate me. But I love you. And your hate doesn’t change my love.”

That’s how good parents are.

And when we think of our image of God in the Christian tradition, that parental imagery is a big part of that. And so if our human parents can understand that rejection is not mutual—that the parent’s love is not undone by the child’s hate or the child’s momentary tantrum—how much more does God understand that?

Here on Easter Sunday, of course, we are celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. Our first reading outlines this handling of rejection a little more concretely.

They say Jesus came among us doing good, healing those who were sick. And people didn’t like that, for some reason. And they killed him by hanging him on a tree—a euphemism for crucifixion.

But then God raised him up on the third day.

That is the ultimate way of rejecting rejection, which is what God does.

God does not reject those who reject God.

God is love itself, and therefore love itself rejects rejection itself. That’s just how love works. And it is the fundamental truth of our entire existence—of your existence.

You are loved. Full stop.

That’s it. You are loved, and there’s nothing that you can do about it. Absolutely nothing.

We think that oftentimes our doubts about theology or faith or belief get in the way of our relationship with God. We think that our sins have that power. We get anxious about that. And we’re anxious, and, oh no, my doubts, my sins, can keep God from loving me.

But then sometimes these fancy preachers tell us, “Oh, God is loving and God will forgive you,” but we’re still feeling anxious. So now I’m anxious about the fact that I’m anxious, and I’m just spiraling.

And it is in that moment that it’s worthwhile to remember that fundamental truth of your existence: that you are loved. There’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

God rejects your rejection, but does not reject you.

So when those feelings are arising in you—your doubts, your sins, your anxiety, your anxiety about your anxieties—just take a breath and let it be there in that moment.

Because that’s the raw material of your own resurrection that’s happening.

You know, if you’re experiencing doubt, that just means you’ve got a really good, critical-thinking brain. If you’re wrestling with sinful desires of whatever kind, all that means is that you have some legitimate needs that you’re trying to get met. If you’re anxious, that just means you’re trying to keep yourself safe. If you’re anxious about being anxious, what that means is you care about what’s right.

And all of those are good things that God will work with in the building—perhaps the rebuilding—of your world.

You are not rejected. You don’t have that much power.

You know what? This isn’t even theology—it’s just math.

Think about it: a finite creature does not have the power to out-sin the love of an infinite God. It’s just math.

So if you’re experiencing any of those anxieties, or your anxiety is about your anxiety, if you live with that fear that something you’ve said or believed or done is going to separate you from God, I invite you to let that go and return to the fundamental truth of your existence:

That you are loved, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

That is how God handles rejection.

And that is the truth that the Church proclaims on this and every Easter Sunday:

That the Lord is risen indeed.

Alleluia.

One Step Closer

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

When my family and I first adopted our two cats, we didn’t see them for about a month. They hid down in the basement and would only come out after the noisy humans had all gone to bed.

That’s just how cats are:
If you try and chase them, they will look at you like, “You make poor life choices,” and then run away.
You can’t chase a cat into loving you back. You have to respect its boundaries, sit still, and let the cat decide if and when it’s going to come close to you. If you do that, it might, eventually, cuddle up to you.

Now, that’s not just about cats. It’s about us too. Because human beings, like cats, don’t open up unless they feel safe.

This is certainly true in our relationships with others, but it’s also true in our relationship with ourselves, and it’s even true in our relationship with God.

Tonight’s Gospel places us in a small room. Before the crowded spectacle of the cross and the empty tomb, this is a very quiet and intimate scene.

And it’s also deeply uncomfortable, because Jesus does something strange: He gets up from the table, takes off his outer robe, wraps a towel around himself, and then he kneels down to wash their feet. Not as a teacher giving a lecture. But as a servant. He comes uncomfortably close.

When he comes to Peter, Peter does what many of us would do: He resists.
He says, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
It’s too much for Peter.
And Jesus doesn’t force him.
He doesn’t grab Peter’s foot and say, “You’re going to get this, whether you like it or not!”

Instead, he has a conversation.
He says, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”
Peter doubles down, “You will never wash my feet.”
And Jesus responds, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”

Jesus doesn’t coerce Peter, but he’s honest about what’s at stake:
Because, at some point, if we never let ourselves be loved in ways that might make us feel uncomfortable, we miss the opportunity to be in an honest relationship.

Love meets us where we are…
and then it respectfully asks, “Can I come a little closer?”

I saw something like this play out years ago when I was in chaplaincy training.

In my training cohort, there was a resident who was very clear about their boundaries from the beginning—emotional boundaries, physical boundaries, what was okay and what wasn’t.

Someone else in the group kept trying to push past those boundaries… and it created a lot of tension.

But there was also someone in the group who took the boundaries seriously.
Who let things be what they were—and didn’t push or try to get more than what was being offered.
And over time, something shifted. Trust began to grow.
And one day, the person who had been so guarded was the one who initiated a hug with the one who had respected their boundaries…

Respect created trust, which made intimacy possible.
It wasn’t forced.
It was chosen.

And that brings us to tonight.

After washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus said to them, “I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you… If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”

So, in a few moments, you’ll be invited forward to participate in a reenactment of Jesus’ foot washing ritual.
And I want to say this clearly:
You have options.

  1. You can come forward and have your feet washed.
  2. You can come forward and have your hands washed instead.
  3. You can remain where you are and take it in with your eyes.

And here’s the most important moment in this ritual:
Not the moment when feet are getting washed, but the moment just before that, when you’re deciding which option you will accept.

Pay attention to what you’re feeling in that moment.
What’s happening inside of you?
Is it fear? Curiosity?
And then—after checking in with yourself—I want you to honor your boundary.
If it feels safe enough…
take one step beyond your comfort zone.
Not ten steps all at once.
Just one step.

Because love meets you where you are.
And it invites you to come closer.
But it never forces you.

This isn’t just about what happens here tonight.
This moment is a small picture of something larger:
It’s about how love works in the rest of your life.

There are places where you need to draw boundaries—and that is good.
Healthy boundaries protect what’s important.
But sometimes, we draw those boundaries farther out than they need to be. Instead of protecting us, they keep us from experiencing the love we want.

There are places where love is waiting, not demanding, but inviting us to come closer.

Maybe it looks like a conversation you’ve been avoiding.
Maybe it looks like telling yourself a hard truth about something that matters.
Maybe it looks like offering a small act of care where it would be easier to just look the other way.

Not a leap.
Just one small step.

Tonight, we begin with a ritual: A symbolic act where the deepest pattern of love is revealed.
But the real test is how we choose to live, after we leave this place.

Love meets us where we are…
and invites us to come closer.
The question is: What do we do with that? Will we take the next step?

Just like Jesus said, “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”

Laughing at Ourselves

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for Proper 25, Year C

Click here for the biblical readings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossing the Impassible Chasm

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Proper 21, Year C

Click here for the biblical readings

Several years ago, I was working at a job for which I was particularly unsuited. I believed in the mission of the organization I was working for, but it became clear, as time went on, that my skills were not a good match for the skillset that was actually needed in the position I was filling.

The ever-increasing tension led to a concurrent increase in my depression. I would come home from work every night, drained and exhausted and hopeless. It felt to me like there was this huge chasm opening up between me and my coworkers and my family and my friends. Eventually, it got so bad that I felt like I just couldn’t carry on anymore.

Suffering, unfortunately, is an inescapable fact of life in this world, or so the Buddha taught in the first of his great noble truths. One of the hardest parts of suffering is not the pain itself, but the isolation that it creates between we who suffer and those around us. The paradoxical truth is that pain is a human universal, but it makes us feel like we are alone in the universe.

Maybe your pain is like mine was at that time, coming from dissatisfaction with a job or a relationship. Then again, maybe for you, that pain comes from grief at the loss of a loved one. Or maybe it’s the hopelessness you feel when you look at the world through the screen of an iPhone, doom-scrolling through social media as people respond to the nastiness of the world by getting nastier and nastier with each other.

The causes are manifold, but the result is the same. We feel the chasm opening up between ourselves and our neighbors and widening to the point where it feels impassable. That chasm, that feeling of emptiness between us and our neighbors, is where I want to start as we look at our gospel for today.

The impassable chasm between one person and another factors highly in the parable that Jesus tells in today’s gospel. This is a parable about a wealthy man whose name we do not know and a poor man named Lazarus. On the surface, this looks like a story about the afterlife, but the main thing to understand is that it’s not.

Here’s how I know: This is a parable, and parables are never about the surface-level imagery in the story itself. Think about it: The parable of the lost sheep is not about animal husbandry. It’s about the joy that God experiences in each of us. Likewise, the parable of the Good Samaritan is not about highway safety; it’s about the care that each of us is called to give to one another. So, in the same way, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is not about the afterlife. That’s just the surface-level image. So what, then, is it about? That’s what we’re here to talk about today.

I already talked about the isolation that I felt when I was going through my experience of suffering at my job. That experience of isolation, that depression, felt like an impassable chasm between myself and the people around me. In the same way, an impassable chasm appears in this parable between the rich man and Lazarus.

This chasm exists in the afterlife, where the fortunes of the rich man and Lazarus have been reversed: The rich man is suffering in Hades, while Lazarus is resting comfortably in the presence of Abraham, or, as some older translations have rendered it, in Abraham’s bosom. The rich man cries out for help, but Father Abraham tells him that there is an impassable chasm between them that no one can cross.

I think this chasm between them had always existed. It’s just that it couldn’t be seen before, when they were alive. The missed opportunity for the rich man was the opportunity to cross that chasm while it could still be crossed in this life. That, I think, is the point of this parable.

To drive the point home, let’s look at the name of the poor man: Lazarus. Lazarus is a Latinization of the Hebrew name Eleazar, and the name Eleazar translates into English as “God helps.”

God helps. That’s the true message of this parable. That’s the fundamental truth that Jesus was trying to communicate to his listeners through the symbols of heaven and hell, or Abraham’s bosom and Hades, as the parable presents them.

Where is God in the midst of suffering in this world? God is helping. That’s what God does because that’s who God is.

In the wake of the terrible events of September 11th, 2001, one of my spiritual heroes, Mr. Rogers, spoke to the families of America and gave them some solid guidance about what to do when terrible things happened. He said, “When I was a boy and would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

That is the wisdom of Jesus that we find in today’s parable. The name Lazarus literally means “God helps,” and that’s exactly what God does in the midst of suffering that separates us from one another. It’s the opportunity that the rich man missed in this parable, and it’s also the very thing that God did for us in the mystery of the Incarnation.

Christian theology tells us that in the Incarnation, God “took on flesh and dwelled among us.” When humanity was suffering in the isolation of sin and death, God in Christ became one of us — “just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home,” as songwriter Joan Osborne told us in the 1990s.

In Christ, God crossed the impassable chasm between heaven and earth, between time and eternity, between sin and righteousness, between death and life. God crossed the impassable chasm. Therefore, according to Jesus in this parable, we are called to do the same with our neighbors.

Returning to my initial story about the job for which I was so ill-suited: My depression got so bad that my mental and physical health were in jeopardy, so I reached out to my priest, Father Randall Warren of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Kalamazoo, and Father Randall listened while I told him what was going on. He validated my feelings and gave me some unsolicited advice, which was rare for him.

He said, “You need to get out of there now.”

Thankfully, I listened to what he said. I quit my job and spent the next year at home with my kids. It transformed our relationship and helped me to become the kind of father that I had always wanted to be. After that, I entered a chaplain training program and spent the next six years as a healthcare chaplain.

During that time, I was able to get back the confidence I had lost while working in my previous job. At the end of that time, I was able to come back and resume my work in parish ministry as the rector here at St. Mark’s, Coldwater, where I am proud to serve you today and hope to do so for a very long time.

When I was younger, I used to say that I wanted to become a priest in order to be the kind of priest that I needed. But now, thanks to Father Randall, I can say that I want to be the kind of priest that I had — a priest who reaches across the impassable chasm of sadness and suffering with the arms of love. I can never pay back the gift that was given to me by my priest, so I will do my level best to pay it forward to others.

Kindred in Christ, that is what this parable is about. God reaches across the chasm of suffering to reach us with the arms of love and calls us to do the same for one another. This is not a calling only for priests, rabbis, imams, and pastors. It is a job for each and every one of us.

When you show up for a friend or a neighbor who is struggling, who is grieving the loss of a loved one or a job, who is going through a divorce, who is in the early stages of recovery from an addiction or a mental illness, who is suffering from the effects of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or any other kind of social injustice, you are crossing the impassable chasm that exists between the rich man and Lazarus while there is still time.

Friends, I don’t believe this parable is about the afterlife. It is about the way we care for each other in this life. It is about reaching across the chasm of suffering with the arms of love. It is about being the hands and feet of Jesus in the world today. That is what God has done for us in Christ, and that is what we are called to do for each other today.

Amen.

Lost & Found

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for Proper 19, Year C

Click here for the biblical readings

I don’t usually like to toot my own horn, but I’m going to make an exception in this case, because when it comes to the subject of getting lost, I am something of an expert. According to my extensive personal experience, there are at least three ways in which I tend to get lost.

First, I know where I am and where I want to be, but I don’t know how to get there. Physically speaking, this is a pretty common experience for a lot of people. This is why we have GPS—or in the old days, these funny little pieces of paper called maps. Of course, the hardest thing about maps was that you could never quite figure out how to fold them right. So by the end of it, you would need a map for figuring out how to fold a map.

Spiritually speaking, this is why we have our spiritual practices: prayer, meditation, the reading of Scripture, and, of course, the seven sacraments. These things are like a map for the spiritual journey that we are all on—a journey from self-centeredness to reality-centeredness, as philosopher John Hick calls it.

The second way of getting lost is when we know where we want to go and how to get there, but we don’t have a clear idea of where we actually are. Physically speaking, this reminds me of a photo I saw this week of a sign in the Salzburg airport that says, “Sorry, this is Austria, not Australia. Need help? Press the button.”

Spiritually speaking, this is like the scribes and Pharisees in today’s Gospel reading. They saw themselves as good, righteous, decent citizens, offended that Jesus was hanging out with tax collectors and sinners. In their inflated sense of self-righteousness, these religious leaders mistakenly believed that they were morally and spiritually superior to the people Jesus was choosing to spend time with. They forgot that they, too, were sinners who needed grace just as much as everybody else.

The third way of getting lost is when we know where we are and how we want to travel, but we have no idea—or the wrong idea—of where we’re going. This would be like somebody who sets out from Coldwater to travel to Rochester, New York, but ends up in Rochester, Minnesota.

Spiritually speaking, this reminds me of people who think that their religious lives are only about getting their ticket stamped for the afterlife instead of trying to make this world a better place. It also reminds me of people who think that the spiritual life is about gaining some kind of mystical knowledge that makes them superior to others. Finally, it reminds me of those so-called Christian nationalists who see their religion as a means through which they can gain power and thereby force their will or beliefs on others. These people might have a clear sense of who they are and how they are living, but their final goal is very different from what Jesus Christ envisioned as the ultimate purpose of the spiritual path he taught.

So then, these are just a few examples of the many ways in which I tend to get lost in life, both physically and spiritually.

The theme of getting lost figures rather prominently in today’s Gospel reading. Here we listen to Jesus tell two stories about things that got lost: a sheep and a coin. Both are stories Jesus told in response to the religious leaders of his day getting upset about the kind of people he was hanging out with.

The scribes and Pharisees were educated and observant people who cared deeply about their faith and about how they thought it ought to be practiced. In contemporary terms, they would be like clergy or seminary professors. The tax collectors and sinners, on the other hand, were somewhat less respectable in the eyes of polite society. They were the riff-raff, the outcasts—the freaks and the geeks, if you will. But even more than that, they were people who, in the eyes of their neighbors, were not just sketchy but actually scary.

If we were to search for modern equivalents that would have the same emotional impact tax collectors had on Jesus’ audience, we might have to replace tax collector with sex offender or meth cook or gang member. Tax collectors and sinners were a rough crowd not just because of how they looked, but because of how they lived. These were genuinely scary people to Jesus’ audience. So it makes sense that polite, upstanding citizens would be disturbed by Jesus’ choice to spend time with them.

The shocking part of the good news Jesus proclaimed is that God’s love extends even to these most despicable human beings. And Jesus doesn’t flinch from saying it.

What I would like us to notice is the emotional tone of the words. The text says that the Pharisees and scribes were grumbling, but the emotional term Jesus uses—no fewer than five times—is some variation of the word joy or rejoice. The shepherd rejoices when he finds the lost sheep. The phrase rejoice with me is repeated twice. Jesus says there is joy in heaven and among the angels at the finding of what was lost.

Modern psychologists tell us people need about 5.6 positive compliments to balance out each negative criticism in order to be emotionally healthy. In this passage, Jesus actually comes close to that, with five repetitions of joy compared to one mention of grumbling. That’s kind of cool.

What this tells us about how Jesus sees the world is that unconditional love is the foundational fact of all reality. And that fact can be a source of joy when we learn to embrace it for ourselves and for others.

But this is easier said than done. Many of us find it hard to accept the gift of unconditional love, because there’s nothing we did to earn or deserve it. That makes it harder to extend love to others, because we can hardly believe it for ourselves.

Jaye Brix, a trans woman and former pastor, points out:

Many of us were taught a theology that prioritizes retribution over transformation. It’s not about making things right; it’s about who deserves to be punished. Someone needs to pay. So, when someone who holds a theology of retribution hears the words, “You hurt me,” they don’t hear, “Let’s fix it.” They hear, “You are a bad person.”

The fear that accompanies this theology causes people to look for any way to avoid guilt, because in their world guilt doesn’t mean growth; it means punishment. And who among us hasn’t felt the fear that being wrong might lead to being unloved?

According to Jesus, this is not a fear we need to carry any longer, because the good news he proclaims is that love is the foundational fact of all reality—and it applies equally to each of us. Believing this good news, trusting in the foundational fact of love, frees us from the power of fear that turns guilt into shame.

I like to tell my kids when they mess up that regret is a wonderful teacher. It means you’ve grown as a human being. It means you care about what is right. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t feel guilty. Guilt, then, is not a sign that you are a bad person, but actually a sign that you are a good person. The only kind of person who truly lives with no regrets is a psychopath.

Kindred in Christ, I want to encourage you this morning with the good news that all of us get lost—at some time or another, in one way or another. Therefore, none of us can claim moral superiority over anyone else. What we can do, because unconditional love is the foundational fact of our existence, is learn to practice the art of radical self-acceptance and then extend that acceptance to those around us—even people we don’t like, people we disagree with, and people who scare us.

If God is love, as Scripture says, then the single greatest act of worship we can offer is to find joy in accepting that love for ourselves and extending it to everyone else. This is the heart of the Gospel. It is who we are, and it is what we are called to do as Christians on this earth.

Amen.