Tag: sermon

Gentle Glory

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday (Last Epiphany)

Today’s sermon had a rather unusual opening.
The rest of it will make more sense if you watch the following video (2 minutes).

Sermon audio:

How are you feeling after that?

That’s an honest question, not a rhetorical one. Really check in with yourself.

You might be feeling amused.
You might be feeling a little scared.
You might be thinking, I think our priest has finally lost his mind!

Whatever it is, just sit with it for a moment.
You don’t need to fix it or judge it.
Just notice it.

Because that reaction—whatever you’re feeling—is actually where today’s Gospel begins.

In Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration, everything is turned up to full volume.

Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain. And while they are up there, the story erupts into spectacle. Jesus’ face shines. His clothes become dazzling white. Moses and Elijah appear, representing the Torah and the prophets. A bright cloud overshadows them. And then a voice from heaven booms out:

“This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him.”

This is the kind of moment you would expect to end with a thunderous command or a cosmic revelation. This is spiritual fireworks.

And the disciples respond exactly the way human beings tend to respond to overwhelming stimulus:
They fall to the ground, terrified.
Their bodies hit the floor before their minds can catch up.
Fear takes over.

And then—almost surprisingly—the story changes direction.

The cloud lifts.

Jesus walks over to them, touches them, and says, quietly and simply, “Get up. Do not be afraid.”

That’s it.

After all that buildup, the divine message is not a cosmic revelation or a new set of commandments; it’s just reassurance:

“Do not be afraid.”

Dramatically speaking, that feels like a letdown, but humanly speaking, it’s exactly right.

When fear has taken hold, what we need most is not more information. What we need is grounding and presence. We need something—or someone—that can interrupt the automatic fear response and bring us back to sanity.

Jesus doesn’t argue with them, or shame them, or dismiss their feelings.

He meets them where they are, puts a hand on their shoulder, and steadies them with reassurance.

That should tell us something about what real power looks like.

We tend to assume that power proves itself by being louder, bigger, more overwhelming than everything else. But the Transfiguration suggests the opposite. The glory is real—but it resolves into gentleness and expresses itself as reassurance.

True strength does not need to shout.

That matters, because human beings are deeply responsive to spectacle.

Evolution has hardwired us to pay attention to whatever is loud, dramatic, and overwhelming. Biologically, that makes sense. For our early human and pre-human ancestors, the things that announced themselves loudly were often dangerous. If something came crashing through the underbrush or roared unexpectedly, they didn’t pause to think about it. They just reacted, which is why they survived.

The trouble is that we now live in a world where almost everything is loud.

The news is loud.
Social media is loud.
Politics is loud.

And so we find ourselves living in a constant state of low-grade activation—always braced, always alert, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Over time, we begin to assume that whatever is loudest must also be most important. Whatever stokes our fear must deserve it.

That’s not moral failure.
It’s human nature.

People talk to me all the time about how overwhelmed they feel by the state of the world. But over the years, I’ve noticed something: The loudest forces are rarely the strongest ones.

I sometimes picture it like this:

I imagine evil as a little yappy chihuahua. It barks and yips constantly, trying to convince everyone that it’s a very big deal.

And then I imagine goodness—love, truth, whatever name you give it—as a much larger dog. Like a mastiff. Big enough to be calm. Big enough to endure the noise without needing to match it.

The little dog has to shout to feel strong.
The big dog doesn’t.

We’ve all seen this in real life. And it teaches us something important: Noise is not the same as power.

We see that in human behavior. The best people are rarely the loudest. Emotional maturity looks calm. Regulation looks quiet.

And that is the promise at the heart of today’s story.

When human beings are afraid, we almost always assume that whatever comes next from God will be just as loud and overwhelming as the fear itself.

We expect holiness to overwhelm us rather than steady us.

And it’s exactly that expectation that the Transfiguration quietly overturns.

Notice what happens on that mountain:

God does not leave the disciples overwhelmed by light and thunder and fear.

Instead, the vision fades and the cloud lifts—until all that remains is Jesus, standing close enough to touch them.

God zooms in: From cosmic glory to a hand on a shoulder.

That’s the gentle glory that we get to experience in the gospel story of the Transfiguration.

It’s also the same gentle glory that we get to experience every week in our celebration of the Eucharist.

The Eucharistic Prayer begins at the edge of the universe—naming galaxies, stars, deep time, the long unfolding of creation. It is as cosmic as prayer gets.

And then, very quickly, it narrows.

From the vastness of the universe to a table.
From deep time to a human life.
From cosmic language to bread and wine placed in your hands.

We don’t encounter sacramental grace through ideas or abstractions. We encounter it through our bodies—through touch, repetition, and practices that train our attention and calm our nervous systems.

That’s why the center of Christian worship isn’t the sermon, but the sacrament.

After all the cosmic language of the prayer, the climactic moment comes in six words, as you and I look each other in the eye and I say to you:

“The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven.”

Small.
Ordinary.
Quiet.

And yet—everything is there.

The world may be loud.
Fear may be persistent.
Voices may demand your panic.

But the deepest forces shaping reality are not the noisiest ones. They are the ones that endure.

In both the Transfiguration and the Eucharist, God always seems to move in one direction.

God moves inward.

From the universal to the particular.
From glory to grace.

God zooms in so we are not overwhelmed.

And then, once we have been steadied—once we have been touched and fed—we are invited to move in the opposite direction:

To zoom back out.
To regain perspective.
To see our fears in proportion.

Fear traps us in the narrowest possible focus—this moment, this threat, this noise. But reassurance restores our ability to see the bigger picture.

That’s why Jesus doesn’t leave his disciples on the mountain at the end of the story. He leads them back down.

And that’s why the Eucharist doesn’t end at the altar.
It ends with a blessing and a sending.

So let me offer one very small, very concrete practice for the week ahead.

The next time you find yourself pulled into an argument—whether it’s in person or online—the next time something makes you angry, indignant, or afraid, try this:

Don’t respond right away.
Wait a while.

Not because the issue doesn’t matter, or because you’re avoiding it, but because not everything that demands an immediate reaction deserves one.

Loud voices thrive on urgency. They need us to react quickly in order to stay loud.

But steadiness doesn’t.
Steadiness can wait.

Waiting gives our nervous systems time to settle.
It gives us perspective.
It helps us tell the difference between the yipping dog and the steady one.

And sometimes, after some time has passed, we realize how to respond in the right way, or sometimes that we really don’t need to respond at all.

If God is strong enough to be gentle, then we don’t have to mirror the noise of the world to be faithful.

We can endure.
We can stay grounded.
We can act without panic.

Not because everything is okay and nothing is wrong, but because Scripture tells us:

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18).

After all the sound and fury of this world has faded, the most important voice we should listen to is the quiet voice of Jesus telling us:

“Get up and do not be afraid.”

Taking Off the Training Wheels

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

Sermon for the fifth Sunday of Epiphany

Matthew 5:13-20

When I was a kid, and first learning how to ride a bicycle, I started the way most kids do: with training wheels. They were great. They made me feel safe and helped me get used to the feeling of being up on the bike.

But eventually the day came when my dad said to me, “Okay son, you’ve done great so far, but now it’s time to take off the training wheels and ride the bike for real.”

That’s when the whole game changed. Suddenly, I felt wobbly and not so sure of myself. What if I fell over and got hurt? I thought I knew how this whole bike-riding thing was supposed to work, but after my dad took the training wheels off, I wasn’t so sure it was still worth the effort.

Isn’t that just like life?

We start out with certain rules and beliefs, certain that the things we are told to believe and do are right and true simply because the people we love told us so. Those beliefs give us a sense of clarity and purpose—a framework of right and wrong—that feels grounding and reassuring in the early stages of life.

But then, for many of us, something changes.

Life, by its very nature, gets more complicated. The answers we once memorized in Sunday School no longer seem sufficient. The boundaries that once helped us make sense of the world no longer match the terrain in which we are living.

That’s when the training wheels come off—and things start to feel scary.

In moments like that, there are two very understandable and very human reactions.

One response is to retreat into rigid certainty—to cling tightly to the rules and answers that once felt safe and familiar. I don’t blame anyone for feeling this pull. It offers clarity and security, and it promises protection from confusion. But if we’re not careful, this response can keep us from asking hard questions and from truly loving people who fall outside the neat categories the system prescribes.

Another response is to give up on riding the bike altogether—to decide that the whole effort simply isn’t worth the risk. This response makes sense too. It spares us the fear of wobbling and the pain of falling. But it also robs us of the freedom and skill that come from actually learning how to ride. We can avoid pain by never trying, but we also miss out on one of the deep joys that comes with growing up.

Both of these responses make sense. The pull toward rigid certainty and the pull toward cynical disengagement are deeply human. But neither leads us into the full maturity of an adult faith—one capable of navigating nuance, complexity, and real life as it actually is.

That’s why Jesus gives us a third way in today’s Gospel.

The option Jesus offers is not a retreat to certainty or an escape into doubt, but a deeper, more demanding faith—a faith that has learned how to ride without training wheels.

Jesus says, in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”

Jesus knows that what he is about to say will be unsettling to his listeners. He goes on to say things that seem, at first glance, to undermine the authority of Scripture as they understand it. He says things like, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer.” And again, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies.”

What Jesus is doing here is not discarding the Torah. He is taking the training wheels off our moral and spiritual lives.

As a faithful Jewish person, Jesus is simultaneously honoring the Torah of his ancestors and bringing that tradition to its next stage of costly faithfulness—an evolution that comes not automatically, but through struggle, resistance, and risk. That is what he means when he says, “I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”

Like training wheels on a child’s bike, the Torah is the beginning of wisdom, not its end. The purpose of training wheels is to bring a child to the point where they learn how to balance on their own. That is where real freedom of movement begins.

Emotionally, though, this moment does not arrive with freedom. It arrives with fear. The system suddenly feels wobbly. The danger of falling and getting hurt is very real.

But here is something else I learned while learning how to ride a bike: my dad didn’t disappear when the training wheels came off. He ran alongside me—not preventing the falls, but refusing to abandon me when they happened.

No matter how wobbly things got, no matter how many times I fell down, my dad was there to pick me up.

That, I believe, is what Jesus wants us to understand when he says, “I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”

Kindred in Christ, I cannot stand in this pulpit, in good conscience, and promise you that a life of faith will be simple or easy. Life in this world is complicated, and a life of faith lived honestly in this world will be at least as complicated.

What I can promise you is this: we are not alone.

God is with us, running alongside as we learn how to pedal our way through life. We may not always be able to see God clearly, but God gives us the gift of each other—teaching us how to hold one another up so that none of us falls permanently before reaching our destination, so long as we do not abandon one another along the way.

We Episcopalians, who practice the Christian faith in the Anglican tradition, have a particular set of tools to help us live this kind of faith. For us, faith is not based on the Bible alone, but on a continuing dialogue between Scripture, Tradition, and Reason—not so that faith becomes easier, but so that it can remain faithful in a changing world.

For us, the fulfillment of the Torah is ongoing because life itself continues to present new complexities. Faith is lived by real people in real circumstances, and it must be robust enough to meet the world as it is.

It would be far easier to put the training wheels back on—retreating into rigid certainty—or to abandon the bike altogether and give in to cynicism. But the Christian faith we practice is one that asks us to stay rooted while still moving forward, trusting that God is with us and that God is not finished with us yet.

Such a faith leads us to ask questions like:
What does love require of me in this moment?
What am I responsible for, even when I am unsure?

Such a faith asks us to stay in conversation longer than comfort allows—refusing to dehumanize, choosing curiosity over contempt. It is not a faith that costs less, but one that costs more.

Immature faith offers assurance; mature faith invites accountability.
Immature faith offers comfort; mature faith invites courage.

So, as people of faith, let us give one another permission to ask hard questions without shame. Let us resist the urge to rush toward easy answers. Let us practice a love that is deeper than compliance and broader than comfort.

And when we wobble—and we will—let us remember that Jesus Christ has come, not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

Turning the Lights On

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Epiphany.

The biblical text is Isaiah 9:1-4.

Back when I was a little kid, I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, maybe after a nightmare, and I would look around my room in the dark.

And this place that felt so comfortable and so familiar to me in the daytime suddenly felt very foreign and strange in the nighttime. I was certain that there was danger in the darkness. And some of it, to be fair, was real. I never did a good job of keeping my room clean—either then or now—so it was entirely possible that I might trip and fall over something without the lights on. But some of that danger, I now know, was imaginary—like the monster under the bed or the boogeyman hiding in my closet.

But either way, whether I was thinking about real danger or imaginary danger, the feeling of fear was real.

I think we’ve all felt that way at some point or another in our lives—whether it was back when we were kids or maybe even now that we’re grown-ups. The things we’re afraid of might be different, and they too might be real or imaginary. But the fear itself stays the same.

The people of the kingdom of Judah in the 8th century BCE felt that fear too—the terror of a kid waking up in the middle of the night and not recognizing their own bedroom—Except that the people of Judah were feeling it about their country.

They didn’t recognize it anymore. There was trouble brewing at home and abroad. Their leaders had become self-absorbed and inhumane. And the prophet Isaiah—the one person in the capital city who was making any sense at all—wasn’t being listened to by anyone.

The Assyrian Empire was lurking on their borders, threatening invasion, and meanwhile Ahaz, the king of Judah, was busy flirting with their king and trying to impress him in any way that he could. It was as if a deep darkness had settled over their country, and the familiar landscape had suddenly become unrecognizable.

These were scary times for the people of Judah. And that’s where our first reading, from the book of Isaiah, picks up today.

And the prophet Isaiah doesn’t beat around the bush: He gets straight to the point, saying, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.”

Light is a funny thing. It doesn’t change much, but it makes all the difference.

For that kid who wakes up in the middle of the night, turning on the light is the one thing that can assuage that overwhelming fear. When the light is on, you can see a path through the messy room to the door. When the light is on, you can see that there are no monsters under the bed or in the closet. When the lights are on, you can remember that the place where you are now is the same place where you felt so at home before—you were just temporarily blinded by the darkness.

Turning on the lights doesn’t bring the night to an end any quicker, and it certainly doesn’t cause the room to be any less messy than it was before, but it makes it possible for you to see a way through the mess to the other side, and it gives you the comfort and strength you need to make it through the night until a new day dawns.

That’s the hope that the prophet Isaiah was giving to the people of Judah during their time living “in a land of deep darkness.”

The candle in the night was a sign of better days to come.

The word Isaiah uses to describe this new day—the word he repeats over and over again—is joy. He says, “You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy… They rejoice before you, as with joy at the harvest.”

It’s joy, joy, joy.

Isaiah says to his people, “I know things are tough right now, and in the darkness, you don’t recognize the country that once felt so familiar to you. But I promise you that a new day will dawn—a day of joy. And it will come when you least expect it, and in a way that you didn’t see coming.”

He said to the people that, “the yoke of their burden… the bar across their shoulders… and the rod of their oppressor,” would be broken “as on the day of Midian.”

And that’s a very interesting phrase.

When Isaiah talks about “the day of Midian,” he’s talking about a very specific scene from the book of Judges.

In Judges, chapter 7, the hero Gideon defeats a vast army in battle with an impossibly small force of underdogs. By the numbers, it should not have worked. But God was with them, and they stood up for what was right anyway, in spite of the overwhelming odds. And in the end, they were victorious.

So when Isaiah says that “the rod of the oppressor will be broken as on the day of Midian,” he’s saying to the people of Judah, “Just as God was with our ancestors in their struggle for what was right, so God will be with us too in ours.”

And I believe that message applies not just to the people of Isaiah’s day in the 8th century BCE, but to us too in our own day.

It’s easy to look around at the way things are today and see the darkness.

It’s easy to feel the fear and want to lash out in anger.

But what God asks of us instead is to be the light and let that light shine for all to see.

As we already talked about, light doesn’t change much—but it brings clarity. It allows the truth of our present moment to be seen for what it is. Light beats back the darkness of fear with the brightness of perspective. When we look around the room with the lights on, we see what’s really going on, and we are not afraid.

With the lights on, we can say to the monster under our bed, “You’re not really there. You have no power over me.” With the lights on, we can say to the mess on the floor, “I’m going to clean you up tomorrow, and you will not cause me to stumble and fall during this temporary time of darkness.” With the lights on, we can say to our fears—both real and imaginary—“You don’t scare me anymore.”

So, kindred in Christ, my message to you today is this:

Let your light shine. Now more than ever.

When the darkness of this world threatens to overwhelm you with fear, answer with light—light that brings truth and clarity, light that refuses to let you deny the evidence of your eyes, light that exposes monsters for the illusions that they are, light that dispels the darkness of fear for the brightness and warmth of home.

Because that is where we are.

Scripture tells us, in the Gospel according to John, chapter 1, verse 5, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

My dear, beloved kindred in Christ, I proclaim to you today, in this season of Epiphany, that the scripture is true: The darkness has not overcome the light.

In fact, darkness is simply the absence of light. So, wherever the light shines, the darkness flees in terror.

You need not fear the monster under your bed, because the truth is that the monster is afraid of you.

So, let your light shine, my friends. Say to yourself, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”

Let it shine through the cameras of your cell phones.
Let it shine in your posts on social media.
Let it shine in your conversations with friends and family.
Let it shine in the acts of mercy and justice that you share in solidarity with your neighbors.

Let it shine.
Let it shine.
Let it shine.

Because, “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.”

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Amen?

To Fulfill All Righteousness

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for the first Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of the Lord.

The biblical text is Matthew 3:13-17.

Two cows are standing in a field. One of them says to the other, “Have you heard about this mad cow disease that’s going around?”
The other says, “No, I haven’t. What is it?”
The first one says, “Well, it’s this sickness that makes cows go insane.”
And the other one says, “Gosh, that sounds awful. It’s a good thing I’m a chicken!”

It’s funny how we can be so invested in our perspective—so convinced that we are right—that we don’t even notice how that commitment to being right is disconnecting us from things that matter, like reality or relationships.

When my kids were younger, I had a more authoritarian style of parenting. When they would act up, as kids do, I would try to think up a punishment that was appropriate to the offense and uncomfortable enough to dissuade the child from committing that same offense again.

But I’m not proud of that.

Because here’s what I’ve learned about that style of parenting: it suffers from the law of diminishing returns. Each time the kid would repeat the offense, I would repeat the punishment. But eventually, the kid would get used to it, so I would have to increase the severity in order to achieve the same result. And then the process would just repeat itself.

Until I eventually backed off.

Because I was not actually trying to harm my kids—I was trying to help them. And I could ground them for a week or a month, but there’s no way I could ground them until they’re 30, as much as I might want to.

So the system of crime and punishment seems great on paper, but it falls apart in reality because it can’t deliver on the results it promises. Eventually, the authority figure becomes the bad guy, because the punishment surpasses the severity of the crime. And it’s in that moment that character-building becomes cruelty, and discipline becomes demeaning rather than defining.

God understands that law of diminishing returns, which is why we have this story of the baptism of Jesus in today’s reading from the Gospel according to Matthew.

In this story, which takes place at the outset of Jesus’ ministry, Jesus approaches John and asks to be baptized. John looks at him and says, “Wait a minute—that’s not right! You should be baptizing me, not the other way around!”

And Jesus answers, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

That phrase—fulfill all righteousness—is very interesting.

In Greek, the word translated here as righteousness is a sailing term. It refers to the state of affairs when the mast of a ship is perpendicular to the line of the water. In that situation, one can say that the ship is sailing upright. So the definition of righteousness—or being “righted,” as sailors still say in modern terms—is about the relationship between the mast and the water. They are in right relationship with each other.

And that’s the definition of righteousness we see in today’s Gospel.

It’s not about following the rules. It’s about being in right relationship with each other.

What happens next is a concrete illustration of what this looks like in practice. Jesus enters the water and is baptized by John. Jesus does this not because he has any sins of which he needs to repent, but as a callback to the story of Israel, when they passed through the waters of the Red Sea in the book of Exodus.

Jesus, in this moment, is entering into Israel’s story in order to bring that story to the next stage of its development.

In other words, Jesus meets them where they are in order to bring them to where they ought to be.

And the same thing is true of the relationship between us and Jesus today. In Jesus, God enters into our story in order to bring us deeper into God’s story. That’s the meaning of the mystery of the Incarnation.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria, one of the early Church Fathers, said this beautifully. He said, “God became human so that humanity might become divine.”

Contemporary singer-songwriter Derek Webb said it like this: “You must become what you want to save.”

It’s not about being right. It’s about being in relationship. It’s about meeting people where they are in order to bring them to where they ought to be.

This is a very different vision of righteousness than the one we see most often in the world today. Most often, the kind of righteousness we hear about is compliance with laws laid down by powerful people. Those who comply are left alone, while those who don’t are punished.

But that definition of righteousness suffers from the law of diminishing returns I described a moment ago. It lacks the ability to bring us to that deep transformation of character and relationships that Jesus intended when he used the word righteousness in today’s Gospel.

Christ-like righteousness happens when we attend to the quality of our relationships rather than simply force compliance with an established law. It happens when we enter into each other’s stories so that we can help one another enter more deeply into God’s story—which is the reconciliation of all things in heaven and on earth, as it says in the letter to the Colossians.

It’s not about being right. It’s about being in relationship—with ourselves, with each other, and with God. That’s the kind of righteousness God is interested in, and that’s the kind of righteousness Jesus fulfills in today’s Gospel.

What it requires of us is empathy, imagination, and a willingness to listen—to apologize, to make things right, and ultimately to forgive.

We can’t get to that kind of relational righteousness by punishing people until they comply. We have to listen and try to understand if we want to make things right.

As Christians—particularly as Episcopalians—what this requires of us is that we consider carefully the words of our own Baptismal Covenant. In it, we vow to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. Furthermore, we vow to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being.

These vows are not just about rules we follow. They are about relationships.

We make these vows as part of the covenant of baptism, just as we make marriage vows as part of the covenant of Holy Matrimony. It’s not about rules we follow individually; it’s about the relationship we are building together.

In baptism—the sacrament of solidarity—we are made one with Christ and one another. Those who have passed through the waters of the font—whether Venezuelan, Chinese, Russian, or American; whatever their skin color or native language; gender identity or sexual orientation; political affiliation or preference in pizza toppings—whatever distinctions we make between ourselves, they cannot erase the fact that we are one in Christ Jesus.

We are in relationship with one another, and therefore, we ought to act like it.

That’s what the fulfillment of righteousness means in the eyes of Jesus. It’s not about who deserves to be punished. It’s about who is my family.

And for Jesus, the answer is everyone.

Several years ago, a friend of mine went through a test of his faith in this Baptismal Covenant. His name is the Very Reverend Dr. Peter Elliott, and he was the dean of the Anglican Cathedral in Vancouver, Canada.

[On a personal note, Peter was one of my strongest friends and supporters in my journey to the Episcopal Church. So if you appreciate my standing here before you today, you have, in part, Peter Elliott to thank for it.]

The Very Rev. Dr. Peter Elliott, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral (retired)

During his tenure as cathedral dean, Peter lived through the Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver in 2011. These riots happened not as an outcry against social injustice, but because their favorite team lost a hockey game. And these Canadians—who are normally so polite—absolutely trashed the downtown corridor of their own city.

Windows were broken, cars were burned, and people were hurt. And my friend, along with the rest of the city, was left stunned in the aftermath.

News reporters called them hoodlums and hooligans. The mayor declared that he was going to deal with these troublemakers. Some Canadians even declared that this would be a good time for Canada to bring back the death penalty.

And Peter sat back watching, and he noticed how the worst behavior of those who took part in the riot was bringing out the worst in everyone else.

When asked about it by a reporter, he said that the city’s response to the rioters could be more creative than simply throwing them in jail. He said that justice, in this scenario, was more about healing the community than punishing the offenders.

So Peter joined with others to lead a restorative justice initiative in Vancouver after the Stanley Cup riots. Through this process, victims and offenders willingly sat down together. Victims were heard, and offenders were held accountable—not just through punishment, but through working with others to restore the community they had damaged by their actions.

Peter led this movement as a priest in Christ’s Church. He stepped up because he believed—and still believes—that the gospel of Christ and the way of Jesus have the power to change lives and save sinners like you and me.

Kindred in Christ, we will eventually come to the fulfillment of all righteousness that Christ talks about in today’s Gospel. But we’re not going to get there by simply punishing the right people or making those punishments severe enough that they learn their lesson.

We’re going to get there by deepening our relationships with one another—by taking time to listen and understand those who are different from us.

We’re going to get there by remembering that justice doesn’t come from a loaded gun, but from an empty tomb.

That is the gospel that Jesus Christ demonstrated in his time on this earth and continues to demonstrate in his Church today.

May we ever be faithful to this gospel, as we have received it.

Amen.

Home By Another Way

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sermon for the Feast of the Epiphany

The text is Matthew 2:1-12.

When I was younger, I used to believe that there was one specific right way, and a whole lot of wrong ways, to practice spirituality. I thought I had to believe all the right doctrines and follow all the rules perfectly, or else God would get mad at me and punish me accordingly.

Now, to be fair to my younger self, there were a few upsides to this way of thinking. For one, it gave me a very strong moral compass, which is a good thing for a young person to have. And number two, it gave me a strong sense of community with others who were trying to practice their spirituality in the same way. And that’s also a good thing.

The downside, however, was that I lived with a constant sense of dread—that if I asked too many tough questions, or failed to live up to my moral code, I would be in deep yogurt with God, who watched everything I did, listened to every word I said, and knew every thought I thunk, and was keeping a meticulous record of all of it, for which I would one day have to answer.

I knew very well just how much I failed to live up to the high standard I set for myself, and I figured that God was looking at me in just the same way—only more so, because God could never forget.

I’ll be honest. Living with that kind of fear, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, was crazy-making. I was told that I needed to trust in God, but the God I believed in—the all-seeing and all-knowing micromanager—wasn’t trustworthy. That kind of God was less like the lover of our souls and more like an abusive ex-boyfriend. No matter how hard I tried, nothing I did would ever be good enough.

I believed these things about God because I thought that’s what it said in the Bible. But then I made one fatal mistake: I actually read the Bible. And what I found there was something more complex, more nuanced, and more loving than the abusive ex-boyfriend I had been in a relationship with up to that moment.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how the Bible is a central source of our theology, but actually reading it can completely wreck that theology?

The gospel for the Feast of the Epiphany is one of those biblical passages that absolutely wrecked my theology. But it didn’t just break me down—it broke me open. This story opened my eyes to the reality that God is both bigger and more loving than all my narrow ideas about God.

This story—the visit of the magi, or wise men from the East, as our translation renders it—is one of the best-known and least-understood stories in the New Testament. The magi themselves were not Jewish. In all likelihood, they were Persian, from somewhere around the modern-day city of Baghdad in Iraq. The dominant religion in that area at that time was not Judaism, but Zoroastrianism. And these magi were astrologers.

And that’s the first place where the Bible starts to mess with my theology. Because I had always been told that astrology was fake and bad, and that I should stay away from it. But here was this famous story in the Bible, no less, where spiritual seekers are using astrology to find their way to the presence of Jesus. That made me go, wait, what?

And it didn’t stop there. It gets weirder—so hold on to your seats.

These Persian astrologers determined, by practicing their craft, that a great king was being born in the land of Judea, so they figured they should go and pay their respects. And if you’re looking for a newborn king, where else would you go except to the king’s palace in the capital city, right?

So they ring the doorbell and say, “Hey, congratulations.” And King Herod is just standing there like, “What? There’s no newborn king here. What are you talking about?” So he goes and consults with the bishops and the theology professors, and they tell him, “Yeah, it’s not happening here. It’s supposed to happen in Bethlehem, according to the ancient prophecies.”

So Herod sends the magi back out to find this new king—not because he wants to pay his respects, but because he wants to eliminate any possible threat to his power. But the magi don’t know that. So they set out again.

And another really interesting thing happens. The text of Matthew’s Gospel specifically says that the magi didn’t follow the directions the clergy had given them from the Bible. It says that they set out, and they saw the star again, and they followed that instead—and lo and behold, it led them to the exact same place the clergy had told them to go.

They weren’t following the “right” way that was prescribed by the Bible. They were following the light they knew, and it led them to the same place.

It’s hard to be a fundamentalist when you actually read the Bible.

So they get there, to the presence of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. They pay their respects. They offer their gifts. And just as they’re getting ready to go home, they have a dream. And in this dream, God warns them not to return to Herod, but to return to their own country by another road.

Other translations render this sentence as “they went home by another way.” And I really like that turn of phrase.

The magi were going home by another way—not just at the end of the story, but the whole way through. They were not members of the God Squad in the traditional sense. And they didn’t follow the guidance of the Bible. They walked by the light of their own star and ended up exactly where they needed to be anyway.

That says something to me about the God we believe in today—not the abusive ex-boyfriend god, not the all-knowing micromanager, but one who is not afraid of people who ask questions, make mistakes, and travel by their own light. God was with the magi in ways that broke the rules. And that same God is still with us today and has been all along.

One of the many things that I love about the Episcopal Church is that we have a theological tradition where diversity is baked in. Our theology is not about obedience to a single infallible authority. It’s an ongoing dialogue between scripture, tradition, and reason. There is room in our theology for differing viewpoints, and the God we believe in is bigger than all of it.

No book or person or institution is capable of having the last word, because we believe that word hasn’t been spoken yet.

Like the magi, God is still guiding us closer to the presence of Jesus by many and various paths. So none of us has the right to pass judgment on another, or say with absolute certainty, “You’re wrong, and I am right.”

We might think we’re right, but God is usually standing off to the side with a little smirk, going, “Are you sure about that?”

If God could lead the magi to where they needed to be by the light of a star, then surely it’s no big problem for God to lead you wherever you need to be by means of whatever light you follow—no matter the size of your questions, the severity of your mistakes, or the strangeness of your personal beliefs.

Kindred in Christ, that’s the good news of Epiphany for us. What that good news asks of us is the courage to ask the big questions, the humility to make mistakes, and the confidence to trust that we are still loved, even when we don’t get it right.

That is the light that will lead us home by another way.

Amen?

Hope First

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for the second Sunday of Christmas

The biblical text is Jeremiah 31:7-14.

Sermon recording:

In September 1940, at the height of World War II, the German Luftwaffe began a sustained bombing assault on the British capital that eventually became known as the London Blitz.

As the city burned above them, the people of London gathered and slept in the underground subway tunnels for safety.

And yet, even as the city was being bombed night after night, something remarkable happened: Concerts continued, drama troupes put on plays, teachers taught classes, and an inter-shelter darts league formed. One pianist, Myra Hess, organized daily concerts at the National Gallery. People would come on their lunch breaks, not because the war was over, not because things were safe again, but because something in them knew this mattered.

They didn’t sing because the bombing had stopped.
They sang because without beauty, without meaning, without joy, they wouldn’t survive the bombing at all.

And that human instinct — to cling to hope before everything is fixed — is exactly what we hear in today’s reading from the prophet Jeremiah.

This passage comes from one of the bleakest books in the Bible. Jeremiah is not an easy prophet. He doesn’t offer quick comfort. He doesn’t soften his message. He spends much of the book warning his people — the people of Judah — that a crisis is coming.

For the first large section of the book, Jeremiah is doing one hard thing over and over again. He is speaking the truth about his nation’s injustice, exploitation, and unfaithfulness to God’s covenant, even though he knows the king won’t listen. He keeps telling the truth anyway, even though it gets him ignored, mocked, threatened, and eventually imprisoned.

And the truth he speaks is this:
“If we have lost faith in the core principles that make us who we are as a nation, then no amount of wealth, power, or political strategy will be able to shelter us from the consequences of our own actions.”

Jeremiah is not speaking as an outsider. He is speaking as a concerned citizen. He loves his people. That’s why he tells the truth.

Later in the book, the tone shifts again. By that point, his warnings have gone unheeded. The moment of truth has come and gone. The disaster Jeremiah spoke about has arrived. Jerusalem has fallen to the Babylonians. The people have been carried off into exile.

So, for Jeremiah and the people of Judah, the question is no longer, “How do we avoid this?”
The question is, “How do we live now that it’s here?”

That final section of Jeremiah is about acceptance — not resignation, but the sober recognition that what’s done is done, and all that remains is to make the best of it.

But right in the middle of those two sections, between the warnings and the acceptance, we get a third section that scholars call the Book of Consolation. Chapters 30 through 33. This is the section where today’s first reading comes from.

What’s striking about the Book of Consolation is that Jeremiah offers hope before the exile is resolved. Consolation comes before acceptance. Not because everything is okay, but because Jeremiah knows that, without hope, the people will not be able to survive what lies ahead.

Listen again to the imagery Jeremiah uses. This is not quiet, private reassurance. This is public celebration. Singing. Shouting. Gathering. Grain, wine, and oil. A watered garden.

And notice who’s invited:
The visually impaired.
The mobility impaired.
Those who are pregnant.
Those in labor.
The people who cannot move quickly. The people who cannot carry much. The people who are exhausted, vulnerable, and easily left behind.

If you step back and picture it, what Jeremiah is describing looks less like a church service and more like a street party.

This is not a party for the strong. This is not a celebration of victory or success. This is a gathering that moves at the pace of the most vulnerable. No one is told to wait until they’re healed. No one is told to come back later when they’re stronger.

Everyone belongs.

Jeremiah even says, “I will give the priests their fill of fatness” — as a priest myself, I’m trying not to take that one personally.

But the most important thing to notice is this: the party happens before anything is fixed.

The exile is still real. The losses are still fresh. The future is still uncertain. And yet — the singing continues.

Just like the music during the Blitz, this isn’t a celebration because the danger is gone. It’s a celebration because without joy, without meaning, people won’t make it through what’s coming.

What’s fascinating is that psychology tells us something very similar.

Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi concentration camps, noticed that people didn’t endure suffering because it stopped. They endured because they found a reason to keep going. Meaning came first. Relief came later — if it came at all.

Or as Frankl famously put it, those who have a “why” to live can bear almost any “how.”

In other words, hope comes before acceptance. Without it, people collapse.

Developmental psychology tells us something similar from the very beginning of life. Erik Erikson wrote that hope is the first human virtue, formed not through explanation or reasoning, but through trust.

You don’t argue a baby into trust.

You don’t sit down with a newborn and say, “Now listen here, if you’ll just consider the evidence, you’ll see that you have been fed and changed, that your parents love you very much, and that it’s in everyone’s best interest that you lay down and go to sleep…”

Obviously, you don’t do that. You hold them.

Trust comes before understanding. Hope comes before explanation.

That explains why Jeremiah doesn’t wait until the exile is over to offer hope. He offers it first — because without it, the people won’t survive the truth they’re about to face.

The kind of hope Jeremiah is talking about is not mere optimism or denial, but something tougher.

I read a Tweet online that illustrates this kind of hope perfectly. It was written by someone named Matthew @Crowsfault and says:

“People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.”

I absolutely love that. That’s the kind of hope you need when you’re living in exile.

And that kind of hope matters not just for us as individuals, but for us as communities.

When communities come under strain, they tend to split into two instincts. Some respond by saying the only faithful thing to do is expose every failure, until there’s nothing left but despair. Others respond by saying the only faithful thing to do is protect what’s good, even if it means refusing to see what’s broken.

Jeremiah refuses both extremes.

He loves his people too much to flatter them — and too much to abandon them.

That’s why hope comes first. Accountability without hope turns into cynicism. Hope without accountability turns into denial. Jeremiah offers hope not to erase the truth, but to make it possible for the people to face it.

And this isn’t just about nations or communities. It’s about individual lives, too.

I once read about a mother whose child was born with a severe and terminal disease. There were no long-term plans. No grand ambitions. None of the milestones people usually imagine for their children.

From the outside, many would have called that situation hopeless.

But the mother wrote about discovering a different kind of hope — not hope that things would be different, but hope rooted in love, presence, and fierce attention to the life in front of her. She described learning to delight in small moments, celebrate what was real, even though the future looked nothing like what she had imagined.

That’s the hope Jeremiah is pointing toward.

Not hope that skips over suffering.
Not hope that waits for everything to be resolved.
But hope that shows up anyway — and holds us together while the story is still unfinished.

The music during the Blitz didn’t stop the bombs. But it reminded people who they were.

Jeremiah’s street party didn’t end the exile. But it reminded the people that their story wasn’t over, that God wasn’t done with them, that life itself still carried the possibility of renewal.

So the invitation in this passage is not to pretend that everything is fine. It’s to accept the fact that things are pretty messed up and practice hope anyway. To create moments of joy. To notice what is good and celebrate what is being born, even though the ending is still unclear.

Kindred in Christ, as you look around at our troubled world today, gape in horror at the latest news reports, and wonder what it’s all coming to, I dare you to practice hope as a spiritual discipline.

Not a vague optimism that everything will work out fine, not a distraction from the real problems that we are facing, but a defiant commitment to keep hoping in the face of despair. An unshakable faith that God is not done with us yet, so we owe it to ourselves and each other to keep holding on and keep looking for opportunities to do what good we can, where we can, with whomever we can, and for as long as we can.

Like the people who lived through the London Blitz, we too have a need to sing before the war is over.
We too have a need to gather before the exile ends.
We too have a need to hold tightly onto one another, not because everything is okay, but precisely because it isn’t!

Because hope isn’t what comes after we heal the world.
Hope is what makes healing the world possible.

Amen?

The Light by Which We See

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Christmas Eve, Year A.

The text is John 1:1-14

I have a small confession to make:

I am not very good at returning text messages.
Or emails.
Or remembering meetings I genuinely meant to remember.

I see a message come in, I think, I’ll get back to that, and then life happens—another email, another conversation, another thing that needs attention—and suddenly it’s two days later and I’m apologizing.

It’s not because I don’t care.
It’s usually because I’m trying to care about too many things at once.

Some days my mind feels like an internet browser—nineteen tabs open, three of them frozen, and I have no idea where the music is coming from.

And living like that can feel exhausting—like I’m always moving, always trying to keep things from dropping.

When life feels like that, God can start to feel like just one more thing to manage—one more idea to keep track of—rather than a presence we actually encounter.

And I don’t think it’s just me that feels that way.

Most of us know what that scattered feeling is like—not because we don’t care, but because we’re trying to care about too many things at once.

We live in a world that keeps asking for our attention, and it doesn’t often slow down enough for us to catch our breath.

So we miss things, forget things, and drop balls without meaning to.

And over time, that constant commotion can start to wear us down.

We arrive at nights like this—Christmas Eve—exhausted. Looking for something meaningful and hopeful, but not always sure where to look anymore.

And when life feels fragmented like that, God can begin to feel distant—
not absent, exactly, but more like an abstract idea.

Something we talk about, or remember from another season of life, rather than something alive and near.

Underneath the candles and the carols, there’s a quiet question many of us carry:

Is there anything that truly holds all of this together?
And does it still have room for me?

Tonight’s Gospel has an answer for those questions.

John doesn’t begin his Christmas story with a baby in a manger. He begins with a claim about reality itself.

“In the beginning,” he says, “was the Word.”

Before anything existed—before stars or stories or people—there was a deep coherence to the universe.
A living wisdom.
A pattern that held everything together.
John calls it the Word.
The Greek term is Logos.

And what’s striking is that John doesn’t describe this Word as something we can point to or look at directly. Instead, he talks about it the way we talk about light.

We don’t actually see light itself.
We see by it.

Light makes everything else visible. Without it, the world dissolves into darkness—not because things stop existing, but because we can no longer perceive them.

John says God is like that.

Not one more object in the universe, not a thing alongside other things, but the light by which everything else becomes visible.

The same is true of the deep order of the cosmos.
We don’t see it directly either.
But we see its effects everywhere—
in galaxies and nebulae, in atoms and molecules, in the astonishing emergence of life itself.

Reality is not random noise.
It has structure.
It has pattern.

And John dares to say that this coherence, this life-giving order, this light—is not distant from God.

It is God’s own life at work in the world.

Which makes what John says next so startling:

“The Word became flesh and lived among us.”

Every religious tradition has its own way of speaking about how the sacred meets the world. Some find God through sacred texts. Some through law, or wisdom, or prayer, or practice.

What is distinctive about Christianity is not that we claim more of God—but that we claim God met us in a person.

Not finally as an idea to master, but as a life to encounter.

The light that makes all things visible did not stay abstract. The wisdom that shaped the universe did not remain distant.

It took on flesh.
It moved into our neighborhood.
It became a human life.

And because of that, Jesus is not where we stop looking for God—it’s where we start.

Jesus becomes the lens, not the limit.

In him, we see what divine life looks like when it is lived in human form—in compassion and courage, in mercy and truth, in love given freely.

And once we have seen that light in Jesus, we begin to recognize it everywhere else.

The world itself becomes sacramental—charged with presence, thick with meaning, alive with grace.

Which is why the miracle of Christmas is not that God once came to visit us.

It’s that God, in Christ, showed the world what it always had the capacity to be.

As we learn to look at the world through the lens of Jesus, the clutter and commotion of life’s busyness begin to fade into the background, and what truly matters becomes clearer.

I saw that kind of shift happen in real time just this past week.

Debi Wright—who has graciously given me permission to share this—stopped by the church on a Friday afternoon to take care of something quick in the kitchen.

At least, that was the plan.

We met in the hallway, exchanged a few words, and she asked me to pray for her father-in-law, who was nearing the end of his life.

And so we sat down.
And we talked for a while.

I won’t share any details about that conversation—that’s private. What I will say is that it was an honor to sit with her as she paused, paid attention to what she was carrying, and noticed where God was meeting her in the middle of it.

There was nothing to fix.
No answers to offer.
Just presence.

When the conversation ended, Debi said how meaningful it had been. And I joked that sometimes God makes my schedule for me.

But afterward, I realized something:
That moment wasn’t a disruption of my day. It was the whole point of my day.

That’s what John is pointing to in tonight’s Gospel.

God doesn’t come to us as one more thing to manage, or another responsibility to juggle.

God comes to us in flesh—in human lives, in moments of attention, in presence we didn’t plan for.

And what that is slowly teaching me is that faith may not be about doing more or holding everything together, but about learning how to notice where—and when—the light is already shining.

So this is where Christmas leaves us.

Not with another task to complete, or one more thing to add to already full lives, but with an invitation to see things in a new way.

Because God came to us in flesh, we come to expect God in the flesh of this world—in one another, in ordinary moments, in lives that are fragile, complicated, and real.

Christmas trains our eyes.

It teaches us not simply to look for the light, but to look through it—not only in carols and candles, but in conversations we didn’t plan for, in moments of deep presence, in love that shows up quietly and refuses to leave—even when it interrupts our plans.

So as we leave this place tonight—as we step back into busy lives and open calendars—we go trusting that the light John speaks of is still shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

The light of Christ shines not just in heaven, but here.
Within us.
Among us.
And even through us.

May we learn to notice that light this Christmas, and follow where it leads us in the coming year.

Amen?

Tripping over Jesus

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon Advent 3 A 2025
Advent 3, Year A

Text: Matthew 11:2–11

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

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

And then it doesn’t.

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

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

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

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

Which is exactly where today’s Gospel begins.

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

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

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

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

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

Look.
Pay attention.
Notice what is happening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I suspect I’m not alone in that.

So this is the courage Advent asks of us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Staying Awake

On By J. Barrett LeeIn SermonLeave a comment

Sermon for Advent 1, Year A

Click here for the biblical readings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen?

The Merciful King

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

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

Click here for the biblical readings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corrie ten Boom said,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today — because mercy begins here and now.

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

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

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

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