Sermon — December 7, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,
so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
(Romans 15:4–13) Amen.

I almost want to end the sermon there, with Saint Paul’s beautiful words, written to the members of the early Christian church in Rome. He had never met them, but you can feel the love and compassion in his words. What a beautiful way to mark this Advent season of hope. In fact, it hits three of the four Advent themes that I learned as a child, when we were taught that the four Advent candles symbolized hope, peace, joy, and love. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace,” Paul says. And in this dark season, who doesn’t need some of those?

But peace, hope, love, and joy are not the only Advent themes. Advent is a season of contrasts: of hope and warning, peace and chaos, joy and fear. It’s a season that’s suspended between the First Coming of Christ at Christmas and the Second Coming on Judgment Day. Advent is a season of “duality.” And for me, nothing symbolizes this better than the fact that there are actually two different sets of themes that have been assigned to the four Sundays of Advent: while many of us may have learned the four themes of hope, peace, joy, and love, there is an older, traditional set of themes for the four Sundays of Advent: those were death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Two rather different moods.

Our readings this morning are born out of that duality of Advent, that disconnect between Advent as a season of joy and hope and Advent as a season of judgment and repentance.

The prophet Isaiah describes the hope of a new and transformed world of peace, a world that has been freed from violence so completely that even the predators have become vegans. “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze,” Isaiah says, “and the lion shall eat straw like an ox.” (Isaiah 11:6–7) The prophet envisions all the nations of the world united at last. Rival nations who in our world only meet one another to make war will come together in prayer, instead, and “they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.” (Isaiah 11:9) The world that God proclaim through Isaiah is a world of justice and peace, wisdom, knowledge and love. This vision feels beautiful, and safe; maybe even cozy.

The world of John the Baptist is anything but cozy. John’s a wild man, a figure of chaos and judgment, who embodies in his own appearance the radical nature of his ministry: he lives in the wilderness, he’s clothed in camel’s hair and leather, he eats locusts and wild honey. (Matthew 3:1, 4)

And the roughness of John’s appearance is matched only by the sharpness of his tongue, because the tone of his message isn’t much like Isaiah’s “Peaceable Kingdom.” John doesn’t encourage his people to hope; he commands them to repent. He doesn’t tell them about a beautiful world where little children will play over the dens of vipers; he calls them a “brood of vipers!” He doesn’t reassure them with the message of peace to come, he asks them, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Matthew 3:7)

(…You did? Five seconds ago? When you said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!”)

John’s message is a message of judgment and warning and repentance. It doesn’t matter that you’re the children of Abraham, John says—God can take these stones and raise up children of Abraham. What matters is what you do, not what your ancestors did. “Even now, the ax is lying at the root of the tree,” John says. (3:10) Don’t make Jesus chop you down! Oh yeah, he’s coming, and he’s going to be way more powerful than me. I just baptized you in water, and that was pretty good, right? He’s going to baptize you, too, and it’s gonna be fire…I mean, literally, he’s going to baptize you with fire. He’s got his winnowing fork right there in his hand, and he’s going to gather the wheat into his barn… “but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Matt. 3:12)

(Show of hands: Who would rather hang out with Isaiah than with John?)

These two readings seem to capture two poles of Advent, the duality of the season’s traditional and modern themes. The prophet Isaiah may lean today toward peace, hope, joy, and love, but John the Baptist wants to remind us about death, judgment, heaven, and hell.

But that’s not exactly true. There’s a distinct note of judgment in our wonderful world of Isaiah: the Peaceable Kingdom in which “they will not hurt or destroy” comes only after the Messiah will “kill the wicked” with “the breath of his lips,” (Isaiah 11:4) although that may be metaphorical, a matter of persuasion, not violence; he’s not a dragon, after all. And there’s plenty of hope in the prophecies of John. The images of baptism and pruning and winnowing are not about destruction, but about cutting away that which isn’t serving its purpose any more, enabling transformation and new growth. John’s language is extreme because that process of redemption might require radical change, quite literally; “radical” comes from the Latin radix, meaning “root,” as in, “the ax is lying at the root of the trees.”

Beneath the apparent contrasts, there is a deeper unity here. The core distinction of Advent is between what is already “now” and what is “not yet,” between the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry and its culmination. In Advent, we await our Christmas celebration of the First Coming of Christ, when he began to establish his reign of peace. We await that Second Coming at the end of time when the Peaceable Kingdom will finally be made complete. And we acknowledge that we live somewhere in the middle, where things are a bit of a mess.

John’s words aren’t harsh because God is harsh, and wants to judge a peaceful world. John’s words are harsh because the world is harsh, and the distance between the life of our world and the dream of our God is vast.

I’ve been struck by the scale of that distance especially this week, reading the newspaper, and thinking about American military strikes on boats in the Caribbean. The scope of the debate itself reveals the distance between our understanding of the world and God’s. What’s been striking to me this week is that what finally brought Congress to discuss what’s going on was not the steady stream of attacks in which the US government acted as judge, jury, and executioner for alleged drug smuggling, but the question of whether it’s crossing a line to go back for the survivors of a first strike. Both political parties, for decades, have agreed that the President can order such attacks, anywhere around the world. And I’m not a lawyer or a national security expert. There may be good reasons they could give for these attacks. But the distance between the world in which we live and the world in which “the wolf lies down with the lamb” seems vast to me.

And, to step back from current events, that distance isn’t only there in the geopolitical realm. It’s there in our own lives: the world of the Peaceable Kingdom, the world of love and joy, in which suffering is no more, can sometimes feel very far away from the reality in which we live.

But that’s not a cause for despair. An imperfect world is exactly what we should expect, in these “now and not yet” times. The very fact that our hearts break at the violence of our world, or the suffering of the people we love, or our own failures to love them as we should, is a sign that God is working in our midst; that the Holy Spirit is here, pointing us back toward the example of Christ, the Prince of Peace. God came among us, once, to show us a very different way of life. And God is with us now, working to reshape us and our world.

The “repentance” John proclaims is the long process of turning away from the road that leads to destruction to follow another way. That process of change can be hard. It may feel like we’re being baptized with fire. And it’s a lot of work to get from here to there. But God doesn’t leave us alone in that work. God is here among us, with a winnowing fork in hand. That little child born in Bethlehem is leading us toward the kingdom of peace. It can be hard to believe that we will ever get there. But giving in to despair leads only to inaction. And so I join in Saint Paul’s prayer: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon — November 30, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

“Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”
(Matthew 24:42)

Well, the cardboard cornucopias and tin-foil turkeys have been banished from the shelves. The first snow flurries have fallen. The Christmas tree is up in the window across the street from my office—in fact, the Christmas tree’s been up in Thompson Square for about three weeks by now! It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and so I want to turn my attention to the question I know that we’ve all been pondering since last December: What’s the difference between Jesus and Santa Claus, anyway?

Think about it. We have two bearded men, loved by billions of people around the world. We spend all December in a season of eager anticipation, as we wait for them to arrive. They come bearing hope and joy, but we also associate each one of them with a stern message of judgment. (They see you when you’re sleeping, they know when you’re awake…) And finally, and perhaps most importantly: both Santa is going to show up in your house in the middle of the night; and so is Jesus, at least according to our Gospel reading today.

And these last two themes—of impending judgment and sudden arrival—are actually at the heart of the season of Advent, which we begin today.

One of the most startling things about observing the season of Advent in church is that it feels really different from the “holiday season” happening in the world around us. In our readings, and in our prayers and hymns, Advent is not primarily a time of sweetness and joy. It’s filled with surprise and alarm. Advent points back to the first coming of Jesus in the humble form of a baby born in Bethlehem, but it also points forward to the second coming of Christ in glory to judge the world. Of all the seasons in the church’s year, this is the only one that leans into this imagery of the end times, of chaos and judgment—and it can come as a surprise when someone’s just decided to come back to church in December for a little Christmas cheer and gets Advent instead.

This sense of impending judgment is one of the ways in which Jesus and Santa can be similar in some people’s experience. Both of these beloved men are often used to try to keep people in line. For example, I quoted earlier, from my least favorite song, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” To me, it’s the perfect example of how we sometimes imagine an all-knowing being—be it God or Santa Claus—as a kind of supernatural surveillance state. Many people are taught an idea of God that essentially says, “He’s making a list / Checking it twice, / Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice… He sees you when you’re sleeping / He knows when you’re awake / He knows if you’ve been bad or good / So be good, for goodness’ sake.” But this isn’t actually what Christianity is about. It’s exactly the kind of moralistic legalism that has been opposed by the greatest figures of our religion—by Jesus and Paul, Augustine and Luther—even though their followers often replicate it. The idea that there is a naughty list and a nice list, and that presents will come to those who are nice, but only coal for the naughty, is in fact the exact opposite of the good news of Jesus Christ, which tell us that every one of us is on both lists, the naughty and the nice; and that every one of us has nevertheless received the greatest gift, the love of God made flesh in Jesus Christ. But of course, that’s the magic of Christmas, too—we do in fact misbehave all year, we are not the perfect people we pretend, but nevertheless, Santa Claus is coming to town, and let’s be honest: how many people actually end up being given a lump of coal?

So whether it’s Jesus or Santa Claus you follow, the good news is actually the same: while he wants you to be good, for goodness’ sake, in the end, the abundance of his mercy and love far exceed the strictness of his judgment. 

But there is one difference between Santa Claus and Jesus. (At least one.) And it’s about the timing. You know when Santa Claus is coming to town: Christmas Eve, late at night. He wants you to prepare, with cookies and milk, which you know won’t spoil because you know exactly when he’ll arrive. Santa Claus is so predictable that you can even track him in real time, on the NORAD Santa Tracker.

But Jesus is coming at an unexpected time. And that’s the real heart of what Jesus has to say in the gospel today. This passage has become caught up in conversations about what some modern Christians call “the Rapture,” this idea that there will be an end time in which Jesus will take some of the faithful away, and the rest will be “left behind.” This tends to lead to intense speculation about the exact timeline. You may have heard that another round of this occurred online this fall, when a preacher went viral with the prediction that the Rapture was coming on September 23, 2025. (Which it did not.)

This kind of calculation completely misses the point. Jesus tells us, again and again, that we do not and we cannot know “on what day [our] Lord is coming.” (Matt. 24:42) In fact, even Jesus doesn’t know, but only God the Father. (24:36) Jesus, the Son of Man, will return at an “unexpected hour.” (24:44) Ands the way it’s put in Biblical Greek is even stronger: at the very hour that you don’t expect, that’s when he’ll appear. So “keep awake,” Jesus says. (24:42) Don’t try to calculate the unknown date. Pay attention, every day, as if it might be the last.

Now, if Jesus really meant that he was going to return on a specific day and time to take away some of his followers and leave the rest behind, to inaugurate the end times on a day that we could name—on some particular Tuesday in 2025—then this would be the strangest practical joke of all time. “Keep awake!” Jesus said to his followers, in the year 33 AD. “Be alert!” And then—what? He did nothing for 2000 years, while they waited? While 80 generations of people were born, and lived whole lives of faith, and remained alert, and then died, Jesus just… didn’t show up? They waited in vain? Christianity is a weird religion, but come on. Even Christianity isn’t that weird.

If what Jesus says makes any sense at all, then it must be the case that Jesus has shown up during those 2000 years. Not predictably, like Santa Claus, once a year on Christmas Eve. But not just eventually, either—not only once at the end of time. For this to make sense, it must be the case that Jesus has shown up, continually, in our lives, at the very moments that we’ve least expected him.

Jesus has shown up, when we, like the generation of Noah, have been eating and drinking, marrying and being married, grinding meal and threshing grain and typing at our desks. Jesus has shown up while we’ve been roasting turkeys and hanging wreaths and sitting in holiday traffic. All the while that we’ve been living what we think are just our ordinary lives, Jesus has been breaking in, silently, sneakily, like a thief in the night.

He appears to us when two or three people are gathered together in prayer. He appears hidden under bread and wine on the altar. He shows up in the nagging feeling that there’s something you need to change in your life, and in the moment of surprising grace that allows you to be patient with the most frustrating person in your life or to be reconciled with someone you’ve struggled to forgive. Jesus tells us here in Matthew 24 that we should stay awake, lest we miss him appearing in our midst; and he also tells us in Matthew 25 that whenever we feed someone who is hungry, or clothe someone who is naked, or visit someone who is sick or in prison, he is there, and we do those things to him. (Matt. 25:34-40)

December is, for many people, the busiest time of the year. Ironically, this season of quiet anticipation is the time when most of us have the least attention to spare; when it’s difficult, amid the frenzied holiday preparations and complicated holiday emotions of this time of year, to pay attention to anything at all. But Jesus is going to appear to you, this Advent, at an unexpected hour. He is going to break into your life, like a thief coming in the night. And the question isn’t whether you’ll be ready to greet him, with cookie and with milk; it will be an unexpected hour, after all. The question isn’t whether you’ll be distracted, or busy, or tired; you probably well. The question is only whether you’ll be just awake enough to notice that he is there, and to accept the gifts that he is bringing into your life.

Sermon — November 23, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

This isn’t how the story’s supposed to end.

At least, this isn’t how the story of a hero on the rise usually goes. At some point, in the long process that leads from his betrayal to his trial, from his arrest to his death, something is supposed to happen. Jesus is supposed to act. In the Marvel version of the Life of Christ, this should be the climax of the first issue: at the moment of greatest sorrow, when it looks like all hope is lost, that’s when the gamma radiation is supposed to kick in, and Jesus is supposed to swell into a big green Hulk and tear the Cross apart.

This kind of superhero story is a modern favorite, of course. But it’s not just a modern idea. Ancient people had their superheroes too, who miraculously snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Jesus and his friends had grown up hearing stories of the heroes of old; from the mighty warrior Samson, who was strong enough to kill a thousand Philistine warriors armed with nothing but the jawbone of a donkey, as long as you didn’t cut his hair; to the shepherd boy David, who overcame the great champion Goliath when he was just a kid.

They’d grown up hearing of prophets who’d predicted the arrival of a coming king. By Jesus’ day, there hadn’t been a king in five hundred years or so, and even then, they hadn’t been all that great. The prophet Jeremiah was active in the dying days of the old Kingdom of Judah, and he pretty much captured the tone when he wrote, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” (Jer. 23:1) He wasn’t talking about the kind of shepherds who keep watch over sheep. And he wasn’t talking about priests or rabbis, the spiritual “shepherds” of their people. He was talking about kings. From the ancient Egyptian pharaohs to the shepherd King David, “shepherd” had always been a favorite image for a king, whose job it was both to care for and to lead his people.

But not every shepherd is a good shepherd. Not every shepherd really cares for the sheep. And so Jeremiah prophesies against the kings of his day: “It is you who have scattered my flock!” The very people who were supposed to shepherd the flock have driven them away. But God has a solution: God “will raise up shepherds…who will shepherd them,” not exploit them. (Jer. 23:4) He will raise up for David a “righteous Branch,” who shall “reign as king.”

Now, it had been six hundred years since Jeremiah wrote these words, and there had never been another king. There had been years of exile in Babylon. Then rule by governors, and by high priests. King Herod was kind of a king, but he had been made a king by Rome, and he was a polarizing figure at best.

But word about Jesus has been spreading for months. They said that he could heal the sick, that he could cast out demons, that he could feed five thousand people with a couple of loaves of bread. They called him the beloved Son of God. Some even said that he was the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed king who would finally set his people free and bring about the kingdom of God on earth.

But here he is: betrayed, arrested, crucified. And some people in the crowd stand by, waiting for Jesus to act, hoping that he really is what his followers say; hoping that he really will go into Hulk mode and set his people free. And the skeptics in the crowd have fun mocking yet another would-be king.

You think you’re the savior of the world? How about you save yourself? You think you’re the King? Come down off the Cross and show us! Even one of the criminals who’s crucified next to him asks—with some mixture of sarcasm and hope: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!?” (23:39)

Everyone agrees that if he’s really the Messiah, it will mean a show of force. If he really is the anointed King, he’ll come down off the Cross, and smite the soldiers who mock him, and seize the throne for himself. Some people hope he can still pull it off, some say his crucifixion proves he isn’t the real deal. But everyone thinks they know what it looks like to be King, and it isn’t this.

Jesus isn’t clothed in royal robes; he’s stripped bare. He isn’t crowned with gold and jewels, but with thorns. He isn’t leading a mighty army to set his people free; he’s suffering at the hands of the only soldiers in sight, and his followers are nowhere to be found.

But as their final moments approach, one of the other men being crucified still holds out hope. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” he says. (23:42) And Jesus reassures him that his kingdom is coming soon; it’s coming now: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (23:43) And then, all three men die.

This Sunday, the Last Sunday after Pentecost, just before the season of Advent begins, is sometimes called “The Feast of Christ the King.” As far as the church calendar goes, this observance is new—it only dates back a hundred years or so, to the time between the First and Second World Wars. The greatest kings of Christendom had just ordered the deaths of several million men in a pointless war, the fascist dictators who would shape the 1920s and ’30s were just beginning to rise, and the Pope decided it was a good time to remind people who was really King.

On Christ the King, we declare that we owe our highest allegiance not to human kings or kingdoms, politicians or nations, but to the Messiah: we claim that Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords. We pray that the peoples of the earth, who have been divided from one another and enslaved by sin, may be set free and brought together under his most gracious rule. And sometimes all this talk of “Christ the King” rubs people the wrong way.

The hymns and the prayers and the name itself can sound like a kind of triumphant Christian nationalism. They can sound like they lend themselves to the idea that if Christ is King, then we should live in a Christian nation, with divine law established as the law of the land, and “Christian values” shaping our public life. (Of course, this idea always raises the question, “Whose understanding of Christian values?” Because we’ve never yet agreed on what that means.)

But Jesus is not that kind of king. When Christ is King, it doesn’t look like a theocracy: it looks like death on the Cross. Jesus never tries to pass a law to ensure that all people will live according to his teachings. He refuses to marshal his followers to throw the Romans out and establish the kingdom of God on earth. He doesn’t go looking for a donkey’s jawbone with which to smite his foes.

Instead, he prays for them: “Father, forgive them. For they know not what they do.” (23:34) And then he dies to save them from the power of death. He gives his own life on behalf of those who have let him down. And these two acts—the act of gracious forgiveness and the act of self-sacrificing love—are what it looks like in this world when Christ is King. This is what it looks like when we are finally led by a good shepherd.

And every one of us has a chance to follow him where he leads. Some of us, have some power or influence in the world, and following Christ the King might mean following his form of servant leadership, using the power we have not to puff ourselves up, but to build other people up. Some of us have no power than Jesus did when he was in his last moments on the Cross, but even then, we have the same power he had at the last to forgive one another, as we have been forgiven. This may not seem like much power at all, in the face of all the evils of the world. But it’s an essential part of the work of healing the world’s divides, of bringing people together again who have been divided. If our efforts at healing the world don’t start from the same posture of grace, and mercy, and love that Jesus held even on the Cross, they will always fall short of the kingdom of God. But what a gift: every one of us, whoever we are and whatever other power or influence we have, has the chance to follow Christ as King, and to use our lives to participate in the reconciling work of Christ himself, “through [whom] God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.” (Col. 1:20) Amen.

Sermon — November 16, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

People come to church for various reasons. But not many people come to church because they want to suffer more. Some appreciate the chance, once a week, to sit in a beautiful place, to listen to music and poetry, and to be at peace. Some want to make the world become a better place, and know that the church is committed to peace and love. Some people who come to church because they want their families to be shaped by service and prayer, or because they want to pass on some of the comfort and joy they’ve found in their faith to their children. And there are many other reasons, as well: from a deep relationship with Jesus or a curiosity about the Bible to the simple need to be with other people. But I’ve never in my life had someone shake my hand at the door and say that they’re here for the first time because they want to be “hated by all.” (Luke 21:17) I don’t know what I would say. “I’m not sure anyone here is going to hate you, this morning, but—do you want to come to Coffee Hour? There might be leftover pie.”

Very few of us come to church because we want to suffer, and yet in the Gospel reading today that’s exactly what Jesus has to offer his disciples. And in a way, Jesus is pressing them to think about a question that still speaks to me today: If all these reasons fell away—if our faith wasn’t guaranteed to come with beautiful buildings or to make the world a better place or to bring our families together—what would remain?

The disciples have finally made it to the end of the journey we’ve been reading about all fall, as they travel from home up in Galilee down to the big city of Jerusalem, the Holy City, where the Temple of God was found. And the Temple was an impressive place. King Herod spent decades building it up from a small shrine into the largest religious complex in the ancient world. It was massive, and it was shiny, and it was new: an architectural testament to the devotion that the people felt for their God.

But Jesus asks the disciples: “Do you see all these beautiful stones, these gifts dedicated to God? The days will come when not one stone will be left on another; all will be thrown down.” (Luke 21:5–6) And we can imagine Jesus saying the same thing to us. The beauty of our buildings and our art may seem eternal, but it’s not; the greatest monuments of every civilization eventually crumble into dust.

And we disciples, ancient and modern, might say that yes, okay, we know that “the church isn’t the building”: the church is the people, and what really matters is the mission of those people in the world. We’re here to help build the kingdom of God. We’re here to make the world in which we live look more like God’s dream of love. The disciples thought that Jesus was the Prince of Peace, who would finally come to set his people free. But Jesus has a more alarming vision of what the aftermath of his ministry will be. “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,” Jesus says, and many scary things besides. (Luke 21:8–11) Jesus’ teaching and disciples’ ministries will not immediately bring about an era of world peace: wars and insurrections will soon come, and even these are not the end!

And so those disciples may have thought, as some Christians always have, that the answer is to withdraw. The world outside may be chaotic and violent, and I can’t control that—but I can create a little bubble for my family or my church, and I can control things in there—right? But Jesus’ prophecies of doom touch even our closest relationships: it may or may not be the case that “the family that prays together stays together,” as the saying goes; but Jesus wants his followers to know that they “will be betrayed even by parents and siblings, by relatives and friends.” (Luke 21:16)

And it’s worth saying: what Jesus said was true. Within a few decades of his death, war had broken out, a rebellion against Roman rule that ended in civil war and defeat. The Temple they were gazing at would indeed be destroyed, and every stone cast down, so that all that stood of what was once the Temple Mount was the Western Wall. It really was true that Jesus’ followers would be arrested and persecuted, put on trial before governors and kings, betrayed by friends and family and sometimes put to death.

These predictions applied in a very direct way to the first disciples’ lives, and they have continued to be true for every generation since. It is as true for us as it was for them that our beautiful holy places can fade or be destroyed. Despite our best efforts, the world is a violent and a dangerous place. Our own families may be torn apart by strife, over religion or politics or many other things. And so while Jesus was speaking to his disciples two thousand years ago, his words still speak clearly to us.

Today happens to be our stewardship ingathering day, which really just means that in ten minutes or so, during the offertory hymn, we’ll have a chance to formally hand in cards on which we pledge to support the church in the year 2026: by offering our skills, by giving our time to volunteer, and by making a commitment to support the church financially during the year ahead. In large part, this is a planning tool: it allows our Treasurer and Vestry to put together a reasonable budget for 2026 based on expecting giving. So if you’ve never pledged before but you give in the plate or online regularly, you might consider this year making a pledge to commit to continuing that in 2026; every pledge, whether it’s $10 or $10,000, really does help with that planning process.

Now, you might think that this is an inauspicious set of texts with which to conclude the stewardship campaign. “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” (At least it’s not a capital campaign.)

But in fact, I think the clarifying effect of Jesus’ words is perfect today. And so, I want to return to that question with which I began: If everything Jesus said were true, what would we be building here?

If this beautiful building collapsed, and our nation was torn apart; if wars covered the face of the earth, and families were divided over questions of religion as often as they were united; what would we be left with?

The answer is the same as it was two thousand years ago, because the situation is more or less the same. In the long history of Christianity, it has always been the case that our beautiful monuments to God are temporary and fragile at best; that our world continually churns with violence and conflict; that we are betrayed, from time to time, by the people we trusted the most.

And yet the same two things remain for us that those ancient disciples had: when everything else falls away, we have each other, and we have God.

Jesus would die, and Jesus would rise, and Jesus would ascend into the heavens, but the community of the disciples would remain. They might be betrayed by family, or scorned by friends, but they would be embraced by a new family of faith. They would become the Body of Christ, and it was in them that the Holy Spirit came to dwell. (1 Cor. 3:16) Not in the physical Temple that was going to be destroyed, and not in the church buildings that the disciples would build, but in the people, the Body of Christ.

They might face wars and insurrections, earthquakes and plagues. They might be brought on trial before governors and kings. But that won’t mean that they’ve been forsaken by God. God will be with them, Jesus says. And in their darkest moments, when they will be completely at a loss, Jesus will be with them, and he will “will give [them] words and a wisdom” that nothing can “withstand.” (Luke 21:15) And it’s by their endurance—not by their success, but by their endurance—that they will gain their souls.

I can’t guarantee you that this building will always be beautiful—although, to be honest, it’s looking pretty good right now. I can’t guarantee that we will make the world a better place. I can’t guarantee that you’ll never be betrayed by family or friends.

But in this place, I’ve seen a community of faith brought together by the love of a God who will never forsake us, a community of people who show up for one another in the hardest moments of life, and in the most beautiful ones. And although for two thousand years we have continually endured dark times, God has not forsaken us, and we continue to walk together in love, knowing that one day, “the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” (Mal. 4:2)

Sermon — November 2, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

We sometimes think of the saints as the superheroes of the faith, the extraordinary subset of Christians who actually manage to follow the challenging way of life Jesus just described. These are people like the soldier Saint Martin, who cut his own cloak in half on a cold winter’s night to share it with a poor a man begging on the street. People like the martyrs of the early church, who were reviled and defamed, and finally put to death when they refused to give up their faith, but prayed for those who persecuted them, all the same. People like Saint Francis of Assisi, who never hesitated to give to everyone who begged from him, even though he had already given away everything he had. Our calendar of holy days commemorates too many saints for me to name, and admittedly, some I can barely pronounce. (My apologies to St. Mechthilde of Hackeborn.) We can’t always commemorate each one individually, but on All Saints’ Day, we recognize All the Saints at once.

But the “saints” are not only these famous figures. In fact, the Bible never uses the word “saint” as a title for a single person. The Biblical authors always use the plural form, “the saints.” And this doesn’t mean a list of named saints—Mary and James and Paul and John. “The saints” means the whole body of “the holy ones of God.” So Paul, for example, often addresses himself to “the saints” in thus-and-such a place, and this is a way of addressing the whole church. You, the whole church, are the saints—you all are the holy ones of God. And so All Saints’ Day is a day on which we remind ourselves, not only of the many famous named saints, but of all the unnamed saints, who appear in our lives in ordinary ways: the holy people who can be met, as one popular hymn says, “in school, or in lanes, or at sea; in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea.” (Why, yes, that is a British hymn… What gave it away?)

And of course, many of us primarily know All Saints’ Day as a time in which we remember those whom we have loved and lost, a commemoration of the faithful departed who have died and gone before us into eternal life. It’s a day on which we remember that their souls now rest in the loving hands of God; that, as our opening hymn said, while “We feebly struggle, they in glory shine.” Although we know that they are in the hands of God, we still feel their absence, and we mourn their loss. Even if we believe with all our hearts that we will one day see them again, we know that this is not that day, and so the joy of our memories is mixed with the sorrow of our loss.

These might seem like three different things—a celebration of the great heroes of the faith, a reminder of the ordinary members of the church, and a chance to mourn the loved ones we have lost. But All Saints’ Day really does combine all these things. It’s a day on which remember the extraordinary figures of the past, and we commit ourselves to emulating their lives as we try to follow Jesus’ words. And it’s a day on which we look for the Holy Spirit working in the lives of people we know, who will never make it into the history books, but who inspire us nevertheless. And it’s a day when we pray for the faithful departed, that they may receive a share of that inheritance that God prepared for them long ago.

 And for me, these three disparate elements all come together in that same challenging Gospel text of the Beatitudes that we read today: in this series of blessings and curses in which Jesus describes what it means to live faithfully as the holy ones of God.

Jesus really does lay out a program of extraordinary things, the kinds of things for which the capital-S Saints became known, things that are challenging or even dangerous for us to do. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you.” (Luke 6:27) Few of us can manage this at our best. “Give to everyone who begs from you”—to be fair, I’ve known a handful of people who do this—“and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.” (Luke 6:30) Come on, Jesus. That’s theft! No ordinary Christian I’ve known in my own life really manages to live this way.

And yet, Jesus really is speaking to you, to us, to ordinary people. This part of Luke’s Gospel is sometimes called “The Sermon on the Plain,” rather than the “Sermon on the Mount.” Jesus comes down from the mountain, among the crowd. He sets himself on an equal footing with the ordinary people following him, and he says, not “Blessed are those who are poor,” but “Blessed are you.” Blessed are you who are poor, blessed are you who are hungry, blessed are you when people hate, exclude, and revile you. And yes, woe to you as well, who find yourselves in good times, because the kingdom of God is a world turned upside down. Blessedness in the eyes of God doesn’t look the way we expect. The holiest saints of God might be people whom the world, or the church, excludes or reviles, or just the faithful people who you’d never think to thank for what they do. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, ordinary people who shape our lives in extraordinary lives every day.

In all of this, Jesus reminds us that the story is not over yet. Jesus says, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” But “woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.” (Luke 6:21, 25) In part, this is just a literal truth: we all pass through these cycles in life. No weeping and no laughter last forever. But these cycles extend beyond this life, as well, and God has promised that there will be a day when he will wipe away the tears from our eyes.

On All Saints’ Day, we give thanks to God for the bonds of love that connect us to one another. And we make the claim that those bonds do not disappear with death: that just as we still love and care for those for whom we pray today, so also those who have died before us still love and care for us. They now dwell with God and with all the saints of generations before, but they still surround us with their love. They still inspire us to do our best to “Do to others we [we] would have them do to [us].” (Luke 6:31) And the strength of their love gives us a taste of the steadfast love of God, who has pledged to us that we, too, have a part in the inheritance of the saints, and that there will one day break “a yet more glorious day,” when we will see them again.

One of the advantages of track and field as a sport is that I could tell you, at any given point in time, exactly how good I was. There are numbers still etched into my brain from track meets that took place when I was a teenager. I can tell you, to the hundredth of a second, my fastest-ever mile time, or how long it took me to run the only half marathon I’ve ever run, both fifteen years ago.

I hear the same thing from friends who have taken up power lifting: they know exactly how much weight they can lift, and how that compares to six months or a year ago. And the same is true, I think, for golf, although—do we have any golfers here?— I try to avoid golf as much as possible.

The same thing is true with variations for some other pursuits: maybe for you, it’s when you’ve mastered a new knitting stitch, or learned a new recipe, or picked up a new instrument that you’d never learned before. There are times in life when we know how we measure up against ourselves.

But there is no easy way to calculate a “moral handicap,” to look at your life and know exactly how close you come to being on par for the course. You can’t measure your strength of character like you can measure the strength of your limbs. It wouldn’t make sense to say that fifteen years ago, you once prayed the rosary in 4 minutes and 36 seconds flat.

In the most important parts of our lives—in the questions of ethics and character and faith that really matter in the end—there’s no easy way to measure how good we are. And if we don’t trust that we are good enough, there’s always a temptation to prove that at least we’re better than someone else.

Consider our Pharisee today. He’s so desperate to be good that he’s willing to settle for “better than.” Jesus doesn’t tell this story the Pharisees were especially hypocritical or bad. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Jesus tells this story because the Pharisees were widely known to be good. They were the 20% of every society who do 80% of the prayer, the hard core of people who set aside the time to think about how to serve God and their neighbors while everyone else just goes about their business. The Pharisees stood in the same relationship to their society as the people in this room do to ours: they were the conscientious, spiritual people of the day.

The tax collector is another story. Tax collectors made their living on the backs of their fellow citizens by collecting taxes and tolls on behalf of the emperor in Rome. The tax collector was the government agent who most clearly symbolized the injustice and immorality of the regime. For many of Jesus’ fellow-citizens, the tax collector’s profession alone would have marked him as a bad man.

The Pharisee certainly feels that way. And so he prays, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.” (Luke 18:11) And let’s be honest. In my heart of hearts, I have often prayed this prayer. Thank God I’m not like those other people: Bible-thumping fundamentalists, members of the other political party, or even like this guy who just cut me off by turning left through a red light and then honking his horn! I’m guessing that I’m not alone, many of us have probably said this prayer. We come to church. We serve the community. We give tithes of everything we get. (Right?) Most of us are decent, thoughtful people, and it’s easy to look at the world around us and compare.

And the Pharisee is right. The tax collector even agrees! There’s no political polarization here, where Pharisees hate tax collectors and tax collectors hate Pharisees. The tax collector knows he’s in the wrong. And all he has to say for himself is, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13)

And it’s this man, Jesus says, who returns home justified.

The moral of the story seems clear: We should be humble, not boastful; compassionate, not judgmental. We shouldn’t be like that Pharisee, who puffs himself up: “I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” (Luke 18:11) Don’t brag about how great you are. Don’t put other people down.

Do you see the problem here? It’s so easy for us to read this story about this contemptuous, self-right man, and end up thinking to ourselves, “God, I thank you that I am not like those other people, who are so pious but so judgmental, so critical of others’ lives—or even like this Pharisee!”

It’s a trap! It’s so much easier for us to walk away thinking, “Don’t be like the Pharisee” than it is to really embrace, “Do be like the tax collector.” It’s so much more comfortable for us to look at someone else and say, “Okay, well at least I don’t have that flaw,” than it is to look honestly at ourselves and admit our own shortcomings.

It might be uncomfortable even to hear the tax collector’s prayer, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” as a model for our own prayers. So many of us are used to hearing this kind of language used to divide people into two buckets—they’re the sinners, we’re the saints—and to exclude them from the circle of God’s grace and love. And that is wrong. That’s the Pharisee’s mistake.

But there’s a real freedom that comes from the tax collector’s prayer. Most of us conscientious people never quite feel we measure up. Mother Teresa herself wrote to her closest friends of the deep sense of hypocrisy she felt, enduring decades of spiritual emptiness while publicly sharing God’s love. And I’m no Mother Teresa! The temptation is strong, for all of us, to hold fast to the belief that even if we aren’t perfect, at least we’re better than someone else.

But in this parable today, Jesus offers us relief. We do not have to be perfect to be worthy of God’s love. We do not have to be better than anyone else. In fact, there’s nothing we need to do to be worthy of God’s love—we are already loved. And that’s not to say that we are off the hook. We aren’t perfect as we are. But it’s God’s love, not our constant comparisons, that enables us to grow and change. To begin the process of growth, we only need to admit that we need help to get there.

And God sets us free from trying to prove ourselves to God, and invites us to start accepting his mercy instead. God sets us free from trying to pretend that he doesn’t know the deepest secrets of our hearts, and reminds us that God loves us even in our darkest moments. God sets us free to be ourselves, as we are right now, and to admit to the people around us that we are still works in progress. And God promises that if we turn and ask for help, the Holy Spirit will complete God’s work in us; “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14)

Sermon — October 19, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

A long time ago, in a country far away, a young man tricked his father into writing his older brother out of his will. The brother was understandably upset. He started plotting his revenge, and their parents—desperate to avoid bloodshed and maybe a little unwilling to hold the man accountable for what he’d done—warned the young man about his brother’s plans and sent him away.

Time passed. The two brothers grew up. They married, and had children, and each one prospered in his own right, acquiring the herds of animals and families of followers that made you an influential man in those nomadic days.

One day, the young man decided to return to his hometown, and he sent a message to his brother, telling him that he’d like to reconnect. He waited long days for his messengers to return with an answer, and when they returned, they told the young man, “Your brother’s on the way right now, with four hundred other guys.” 

Now, these were more chaotic, violent times, so this was scary news. Four hundred men is an army, not a welcome party. So he divided his family and his flocks into two halves and sent them in opposite directions, thinking that if his brother came and attacked, maybe half of them would escape.

He prepared a gift to give his brother: hundreds of goats and sheep, dozens of cows and bulls, thirty camels ready to milk. And he hoped that would be enough to cool his brother’s anger.

And then he spent the night alone, restlessly struggling in prayer.

The next day, at dawn, the man looked up and saw his brother coming, with his 400 men, and he went out toward them, bowing his head in a sign of peace and submission as he passed through their ranks. And finally, he came to his brother himself and stood before him, readying himself for whatever was about to happen.

And his brother ran up, and throws his arms around his neck, and begins to kiss him. And together, they wept. And so it came to pass that the older brother, whose name was Esau, was finally reunited with the younger brother who’d betrayed him, whose name was Jacob.

This is the story of Jacob in Genesis chapter 32, from which we read a selection this morning. Our strange wrestling scene is just a snippet: it’s what happens overnight, when Jacob spends the night in prayer. “Jacob was left alone,” the Bible tells us, “and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.” (Gen. 32:24) And we have always understood this to be a metaphor, a story about what it means to “wrestle with God” in a spiritual sense. Because, while few of us have spent long hours wrestling with God in the flesh, many of us have spent long hours or weeks or months, at some point in our lives, wrestling with God in prayer; and more than a few have come away from those long hours walking with a limp.

I imagine that from time to time, some of you have felt this way. I imagine as well that many of you have sometimes felt like that persistent widow in the parable Jesus tells about the “need to pray always and not lose heart.” (Luke 18:1) She needs help, and she comes back again and again, begging for the judge to do something until finally he rolls his eyes and gives in: “because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” (Luke 18:5) We’re supposed to shake our heads, at this feckless judge, who decides his cases on the basis of which party is more irritating to him, rather than on the merits. Jesus isn’t saying that this this is what God is like. Jesus takes for granted that we know that God is not like this, and he asks us the question: if even this unjust judge, who “neither feared God nor had respect for people,” eventually gives in to the woman’s plea for help, won’t God come even more quickly to help those who turn to God in prayer?

That’s a wonderful message! Except… it doesn’t always feel so quick, for us. “Will he delay long in helping them?” Jesus asks. (Luke 18:7) And I know this is supposed to be a rhetorical question, but on the basis of my own observations of life, the answer appears to be… Yes? He will delay?

If you’ve ever spent time praying for someone who’s going through a hard time—just holding someone in your heart before God, and asking God for help—you’ve probably gotten the sense that God’s okay with delay. It doesn’t feel like God rushes to grant those prayers. When you’re somewhere in the middle of what St. John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul,” it can feel an awful lot like wrestling with God; and God’s refusal to cooperate can leave you walking with a spiritual limp. That’s the power of this strange story: not that it makes sense on its own, or solves a neat theological problem, but that it gives such a beautiful image for that real experience of wrestling with God.

Some of you have heard me preach a couple hundred sermons by now; you know that I could probably wrap things up with a neat little bow in the next ninety seconds or so. But I want to resist that urge. I think that would cheapen things, somehow. I think it would miss the point. The divine wrestler renames Jacob to Yisrael, “he strives with God,” and from that day on his descendants, the people of God, would become known as Israel. If you ever hear “Israel” in church, in the liturgy or the readings, it’s not referring to the modern State of Israel, but to that idea of Israel as the faithful people of God, whose very name comes from the observation that our life of faith is a life of wrestling, and not of tidy answers.

So here’s an observation, rather than an answer: the ending of the story is very different from the contents of Jacob’s prayer. As he awaits the arrival of Esau and his 400 men, Jacob cries out to God, “Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all.” (Gen. 32:11)

And then night falls, and Jacob wrestles with God, and God does not answer Jacob’s prayer. God doesn’t give in and give him what he wants, like the unjust judge would. God doesn’t give him the means to escape from his brother. In fact, God literally slows him down with a blow to the hip, so that he cannot escape, so that all he can do is to walk humbly, limping toward his fate. God does not deliver Jacob from the hands of Esau; God delivers him into the hands of Esau. But it turns out that God knew all along what Jacob did not. The hands of Esau are not hands of violence. They are hands of love. The arm of his brother is not raised for a blow, but for an embrace.

Jacob wrestles with God, and God does not grant Jacob what he asks. Because the outcome God has in mind is so much more than anything that Jacob even thought to pray for.

There are no easy answers to our prayers. We rarely get to wake up in the morning, like Jacob, and see all our problems solved. There’s a reason that the apostle Paul has to urge his readers, again and again, to be patient and persistent, reminding them always of the need to endure.

And yet even as we accept that God might not immediately answer our prayers—even as we prepare ourselves to endure the world as it is—we hold fast to the faith that Paul proclaimed, which is the faith that God is preparing for us things better than we can imagine. That “weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5)—however long that night may be. That on the other side of death lies not the abyss, but new life. That “The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; * it is he who shall keep you safe. The Lord shall watch over your going out and your coming in, * from this time forth for evermore.” (Psalm 121:7-8) Amen.

Sermon — October 12, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up and go on your way;
your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:19)

The term “wellness” has really taken off over the last few years. It’s common now to see “health and wellness” paired, where “health” means being in sound physical and mental condition, and “wellness” means something vaguer, but more holistic. So, for example, the “health center” at my alma mater, where you could go to the infirmary when you were too sick to stay in your dorm alone, or you could see a therapist on a regular basis or, now has a “wellness center” where you can go for acupuncture or massage. But wellness isn’t just a nice add-on. Wellness is a big business. People are spending more money than ever chasing after improvements to their health, sleep, nutrition, fitness, appearance, and even mindfulness. And I didn’t make up this list—these “six dimensions of wellness” came from a report published last year by the management-consulting firm McKinsey & Company about the booming growth of what’s now a $2 trillion wellness industry.

So there’s one kind of conversation about wellness, maybe more common in the world of healthcare, education, or spirituality, that’s about bringing a more holistic approach to discussions about health: How do you encourage practices that help people flourish, rather than just treating them when they’re sick? And there’s another kind of conversation about wellness, maybe more prevalent on TikTok and Instagram, that’s more about trying to find a product you can sell; and indeed the growth in the wellness industry has come from the promotion of “functional nutrition” and beauty products, “wellness experiences” and longevity techniques.

Our own Christian tradition has things to teach us about wellness. So I want start this morning in the Second Book of Kings, because today we’re going to talk about what you can learn from Naaman’s skincare routine.

Sorry, that wasn’t the real segue.There probably are people trying to sell you Jordan-River water as a way to clear the complexion. But that’s not where we’re going to start. Because in the Gospel today, Jesus restores ten men to health, but he only tells one of them that he’s been made well. So I thought we should back up a little, and ask: What is “wellness,” anyway?

Well, first we should clarify what leprosy is. When you see this term in the Bible, it’s not the horrible affliction also known as Hansen’s disease, which couldn’t be treated before the invention of modern medicine and led to the creation of isolated “leper colonies” and so on. In the Bible, “leprosy” is a more generic term for a bunch of different skin conditions, all of which were thought to convey some kind of ritual impurity. Someone with one of these skin conditions couldn’t participate in certain rituals until it had cleared; and when it did clear, they would go to the local priest, who would inspect the skin and then verify that they could return to normal life. (Over the millennia, we’ve dropped the more dermatological parts of the job description—thank God.)

So these ten lepers come out from the village and call out to Jesus. All of them have faith that he can perform a miracle cure. And what does Jesus do? Nothing impressive or flashy. He just tells them to go and show themselves to the priests as if they had recovered. And as they depart, just as they’re beginning to turn around, their skin clears. And nine go on their way, but one returns, praising God, and thanking Jesus. (And this one, by the way, is a Samaritan—a foreigner from an unfriendly country.) And Jesus says to him, “your faith has made you well.”

All ten lepers had enough faith to ask Jesus for mercy and healing. And ten of them were “made clean.” in other words, all ten of them were restored to the physical condition that the priests could inspect and declare ritually clean. But only one, when he notices that he’s been cured, offers a sign of gratitude for that healing. And it’s this one man to whom Jesus says, “your faith has made you well.”

In the eyes of the Gospel, you might say, wellness is health plus gratitude. And “gratitude” is not only a thought, or a feeling, it’s an act—there’s both an outward and visible sign and an inward and spiritual grace. The man actually comes and says thanks.

Compare this to the story of Naaman the Aramaean. Naaman is a powerful man, a conquering general who’s just defeated the people of Israel. But he, too, is in need of a cure. And eventually, after some amount of back and forth, he comes to the prophet Elisha to ask for help.

Now, wellness isn’t free, right? (It’s a $2 trillion industry.) And so Naaman comes prepared. The lectionary skipped a few verses again, today, but verses 4-6 tell us that he went, taking with him ten talents of silver (that’s 755 pounds), and six thousand shekels of gold (150 pounds)—that’s about $10 million of precious metals, unless my math has failed me. And he comes to Elisha’s door with chariots and horses and great pomp. And Elisha doesn’t even come outside, but sends a messenger to say, “Go wash in the Jordan River seven times, and you’ll be clean.” (2 Kings 5:9)

“Are you kidding me?” Naaman says. “I thought he would do something cool! I thought he would come out, and stand and call upon the name of the Lord, and wave his hands, and say a prayer! But a river? We have rivers! We have better rivers! I could wash in those!” But finally they calm him down, and he goes, and washes in the Jordan River seven times… and it works.

There’s nothing he needs to buy. There’s no work that needs to be done. He doesn’t even need to see the prophet face to face! As soon as he’s willing to admit that he needs help, and to accept the help he’s offered, he is cured.

And then, just like that one Samaritan leper who returns, Naaman the Syrian general comes, and praises God, and offers a gift of thanks.

So, I’m not a dermatologist. And I’m not a wellness influencer. (Not yet.) I have no advice to give you on your skincare routine, or your nutrition, or mindfulness, or sleep. (Although I do have some opinions I can give you free of charge.) But I am a priest. And I do see something about wellness for all of us.

And it’s this: ten former lepers were made healthy, but only one gave thanks, and that’s what it means to be well. The difference between the nine and the one is gratitude. And that’s really good news. Because we don’t have very much control over the world we live in or the circumstances of our own lives; there are things we can do to influence our health, but in the end many things are out of our control. But we can control how we respond.

We can choose to cultivate gratitude, and to practice giving thanks. In fact, we’re practicing it right here, right now.

I used a certain phrase, earlier. I said something like, “gratitude includes both an outward and visible sign and an inward and spiritual grace.” And if any of your ears perked up and thought that sounded familiar, that’s because it is; I didn’t make it up. That’s how we define a sacrament: “The sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace.” (BCP p. 857) And while the cleansing of Naaman in the river certain evokes the sacrament of baptism, I’m actually thinking of the sacrament we call the Holy Eucharist.

Eucharistia, in Greek, means “thanksgiving.” And that’s what we do when we come together on Sunday mornings. Our primary act of worship is the one in which we give thanks. We pause, for a while, to listen, and to pray, and then we thank God for the work of creation and salvation, at the cosmic level and at the level of our own lives.

Day after day, we cry out to God: “Jesus, Lord, have mercy on us!” (Sometimes we paraphrase.) And day after day God reaches out to us to offer healing grace in our lives. Most of the time, we don’t even notice the effects. We don’t think to turn around. But on Sunday mornings, we set aside this time to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God. There’s some ritual and some hand-waving involved, but at the heart of things, that’s at the heart of what we do: we give thanks to God. And then we “get up and go on [our] way,” trusting that God has made us and will make us well.

Sermon — October 5, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” (Luke 17:5)

The great Saint Francis of Assisi, whose memory we celebrated yesterday by blessing cats and dogs, was said to have possessed a faith so moving that he inspired the birds to sing in praise of God, a faith so strong that he eventually came to bear the marks of the cross in his own hands. In isolated churches in the small hill towns of Appalachia, certain preachers show their faith in God by handling poisonous vipers, trusting that God will protect them from harm. Many a Pentecostal preacher has displayed a pile of crutches or of walkers or of wheelchairs that their faithful followers no longer needed due to the power of their prayers.

But I’ve never once heard a story of a Christian whose faith so strong that she could uproot a mulberry tree and plant it in the sea.

So, maybe Jesus is wrong: although he predicted that the Holy Spirit would manifest itself in mulberry-tree replanting, it opted instead for the gifts of faith, hope, and love. Or maybe it’s just a very-specific kind of hyperbole: Jesus just means that people with faith will do extraordinary things.

Or maybe—just maybe—when Jesus says this to the apostles, he’s being a little sarcastic.

To understand his reply, I think, we have to understand their question. And to understand their question, we actually need to consider a few verses that the lectionary skipped in this chapter. Last week, we had the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16. And then we skipped over Luke 17:1-4, and went straight to verse 5, with the apostles’ demand: “Increase our faith!” When we start at verse 5, this sounds like it comes out of nowhere. But in verses 1–4, Jesus just told the disciples that if someone sins against them and then comes and apologizes, they must forgive—not just once or twice; not once a week, or every day; but seven times a day, they must be ready to forgive.

And the apostles—looking around, we might imagine, at the people around them, who can be a lot to handle, especially before they’ve had their coffee—“said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith.’” (Luke 17:5) You want us to forgive each other seven times a day? We’re going to need some help with that.

To which Jesus responds, “Oh yeah, if only you had enough faith, you’d be out there launching trees through the air with your minds like bearded Matildas!” Let me just increase your faith. I’m sure then you’ll start working miracles.

The disciples seem to think of faith as a substance, a kind of fuel for extraordinary things. I could forgive my friends and neighbors seven times a day, if only I had enough gas in the spiritual tank. So top me up, Jesus! Increase my faith.

And Jesus responds by saying that forgiveness doesn’t actually need extraordinary fuel. Forgiveness is an ordinary thing. This image of the slave serving at the table is a challenging one. It’s especially uncomfortable, I think, because Jesus doesn’t have anything to say about the institution of slavery itself, he simply takes it for granted as an illustration. He doesn’t challenge it. To be fair, he also doesn’t quite validate it—he makes observations about how “you,” the people around him, actually behave. In any case, the point he’s making is about duty—about whether you deserve extraordinary praise for doing what you’re supposed to do. And this connects back to the verses on forgiveness that we  skipped. Forgiveness, Jesus says, is not an extraordinary act that requires extra faith, a form of heroism for which we should be praised. Forgiveness is table stakes for Christian life.

Faith is different. Faith is for extraordinary things. Faith is for launching mulberry trees.

People sometimes think of faith in terms of belief, as the cognitive assent to certain ideas. To have more faith would mean to believe more deeply in what Christianity says about God and the world. Others suggest that faith is more about trust. To increase one’s faith doesn’t mean to believe even more strongly in the truth of even more lines of the Nicene Creed. To increase one’s faith means to trust ever more deeply in the God who loves you.

But there’s another kind of faith, as well. A faith that cannot be increased or decreased. A faith that’s simply the last desperate act that comes when you reach the end of your rope.

That idea of faith would look much more like the words of the prophet Habakkuk than the words of the apostles. The faith of Habakkuk is the faith that cries out to God, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?” (Hab. 1:1–2) That isn’t an statement of cognitive belief in the underlying philosophical truth of monotheism. It’s a question born of anger and frustration with God. “Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.” (Hab. 1:3) That isn’t a deep trust in the God who loves you, that’s an accusation—God, you’re supposed to be better than this. You’re supposed to do something! Helloooo! Wake up!

The faith of Habakkuk is a faith that wrestles and questions and yells—and then waits, standing at the watchpost, demanding a response. (Hab. 2:1)

And the answer, when it comes, is sometimes a frustrating one. “There is still a vision for the appointed time… if it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come.” (Hab 2:3) Okay. But could it come soon, please?

The faith of Habakkuk in this moment is like the faith of Job, who rages against God after suffering incredible loss. In chapter after chapter of elaborate verse, his so-called friends try to comfort him with pious platitudes, but Job accepts none of it. He rants and raves and waits for an answer from God, and when the answer comes, it’s actually not that satisfying; but it’s true. The faith of Habakkuk is like the faith of Jesus, who weeps in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest, praying that God would take this cup from him, but nevertheless goes to the Cross. The answer for him is that the appointed time when he’ll be vindicated will come, not before he dies, but on the other side of death.

The faith of Habakkuk is like the faith of every one of us, who has ever received news of a difficult diagnosis, and asked God, “How long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?” It’s the faith of every one of us who has picked up a newspaper or scrolled through whatever, and said, “Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble?” It’s the faith of every one of us who’s been treated unfairly, in a small way or a big one, and said, “So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.” It’s the faith of every one of us who has endured these things and asked these things and then—and this is the really important part—has stood at the watchpost and waited for an answer from God.

This faith is not belief, or even trust, per se. This faith is simply to stand there in the silence that comes when the world leaves us speechless, and we cannot even find the words to pray, and to wait.

This faith is to cry out, as Jesus did, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and sometimes to receive, after interminable silence, the frustrating response that Resurrection comes only after death; that the only way out of the situation is to go even deeper in.

This kind of faith is not a miracle fuel that enables us to do extraordinary things. But it may be the only way to endure extraordinary things. And in a world that’s full of suffering, in which our hunger for miracles is rarely satisfied, this kind of faith, at times, is all that we have: the chance to cry out to God, and to wait in the silence that comes next, not so much holding fast to as held fast by the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus, (2 Tim. 1:13) who sees and knows our deepest pain, and has opened for us a new life of joy and light.

Sermon — September 28, 2025
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings

“And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels
into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried.” (Luke 16:22 KJV)

That was the King James version of the verse. Have you heard the song that comes from it?

Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham,
Rock my soul, in the bosom of Abraham,
Rock my soul, in the bosom of Abraham,
Oh, rock my soul.

This song has been recorded by Peter, Paul & Mary, and by Elvis, and it’s been sung in children’s ministries around the world. The tune is simple. The lyrics consist of a single line. If your Children’s Choir can’t memorize this, they’re not going to be memorizing anything. It’s popular, it’s sweet, and it is, without a doubt, one of the most subversive songs in history. (And I mean that in the best possible way!)

Like many great American songs, it originates as a Black spiritual. It was first written down in the book Slave Songs of the United States, published in 1867, shortly after emancipation. And I suspect that its initial popularity came in part from its combination of sweetness and heat. The lyrics are unobjectionable on the surface. And yet, to those with ears to hear, it is the most pious way possible to tell the people oppressing you that they can go to hell.

And I’m not just swearing from the pulpit. I mean that as a theological proposition. “Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham” isn’t just a nice prayer that the singer go to heaven. It’s a claim that the singer is like Lazarus, specifically. “The bosom of Abraham” is not a common phrase for eternal life. In the whole Bible, that phrase is only used once, and it’s here, in this gospel story of Lazarus and the rich man. It evokes the whole story. To sing “rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham” is to claim that you are like Lazarus, who suffered evil in this life and was rewarded in the next—and also that the person who is doing evil to you is like the rich man, and he might want to think hard about the state of his soul.

(Not so sweet any more, huh?)

I want to offer three words to frame this fire-and-brimstone story. And those are: dignity, judgment, and knowledge.

First: this is a story about dignity. This story isn’t just about what we would call “economic inequality.” The rich man’s problem isn’t that he’s rich, per se. The details are important. Lazarus lies at his gate, suffering every day, and the rich man does nothing to help him. He “feasts sumptuously every day,” while Lazarus “longs” for just a few crumbs that have fallen from his table. (Luke 16:20) It’s not that the rich man doesn’t know that Lazarus is there. He does! He even knows his name. He recognizes him from a great distance; he says to Abraham, “Send Lazarus to help me!” (16:24) But what a difference a few words make: It’s not “Lazarus, have mercy and help me,” but “Abraham, have mercy—and send Lazarus” to dip his finger in water and cool my tongue. Oh, and “send him to my father’s house” to warn my family, too. (16:27) The rich man acts as though he’s entitled to power over Lazarus without having any responsibilities to Lazarus. He never helped him during his life. But he thinks he can command him after death. He doesn’t even offer Lazarus the respect of addressing him directly, once. And you can see why this story would make sense in a song written by a slave: to be enslaved, after all, is to be in the position of Lazarus, ordered around and treated as undeserving of basic human dignity by someone who mistreats and neglects you every day.

Second: this is a story about judgment. It subverts the all-too-common idea that we can look at the world around us and understand who is favored by God by looking at who is doing well in this world; that those who have wealth and power in this life have them because they deserve them, and those who suffer maybe deserve it, too. This is not a Christian idea. We can look at the world around us and see that good people do suffer and that wicked people do benefit. What goes around does not necessarily come around, in this life. There is a good and just God, but the timeline of God’s justice extends beyond this life—God is just and fair and rewards people for their deeds or misdeeds, but that process happens after death. The story of Lazarus and the rich man is an extreme case, a story of a world turned upside-down, in which our places in the kingdom of God can be very different from our places in the kingdoms of men. And so again, you can see why this would be popular with Christians who were enslaved: “rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham” is a theological claim: that the long-suffering but faithful Christian who received “evil things” in this life would be comforted in the next, and that those who did evil things to them might find themselves less comfortable in the world to come.

Finally: this is a story about knowledge and how it shapes what we do, or not. The rich man begs Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers to treat their neighbors well, or they might “also come into this place of torment.” (Luke 16:28) Abraham replies that they have the Law and the Prophets—they have what we call the Old Testament—they have been told what love and justice mean. But no no no! They ignored all that, the rich man says. But if Lazarus rises from the dead to tell them, they’ll listen to him. And Abraham replies, in that foreshadowing phrase, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” (Luke 16:31) Remember that it’s Jesus telling the story, Jesus saying these words. And Jesus did rise from the dead, and we have continued not to be convinced. We have continued leaving Lazarus at our gate—continued treating one another as servants to be commanded as we would. And this question of knowledge is at the heart of the song. There were faithful white Christian landowners in the South—and faithful white Christian shipbuilders and industrialists in the North—who built their fortunes on slavery. If they heard “rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham” and didn’t understand what it meant about them, it was because they were more ignorant Christians than the enslaved people they treated as less-than-human. And if they understood but didn’t care, then they were indeed among those who would not be convinced of the need to love their neighbors as themselves, even though Jesus had risen from the dead.

So maybe the rich man would’ve been better off if he’d had this letter from Paul to Timothy to remind him that “we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it,” (1 Tim. 6:6) to warn him against the temptations and the traps that await those who want to be rich, to tell him—in the famous but often-misquoted phrase—that “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” (6:10) Perhaps he’d be better off if Timothy had met him and “command[ed him] not to be haughty.” (6:17)

Maybe he would’ve been better off if he’d absorbed this message from Amos, this condemnation of those devote themselves to luxury—to ivory and couches, lamb and veal, harps and wine and perfume—“but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph”; in other words, not troubled by the distress and the suffering of the people around them.

But maybe not. Because, of course, that’s a part of the message of the story, too. Even though he had the prophet Amos, he acted this way. Even if Paul came to tell him to treat Lazarus well, even if Timothy came and commanded him not to be haughty, even if Jesus himself rose from the dead and told him personally to cut it out—he might not be willing to believe it. There is a chasm fixed between him and Lazarus, for sure—but he’s the one who wants to ensure that the chasm remains fixed where it is, that the distinction between him and Lazarus remains. He would rather be tormented by flames, than admit that Lazarus is his equal and ask him for help.

In a strange way, in the end, I think this is a story about stewardship. (Albeit maybe not a great theme for a stewardship campaign.) Not “stewardship” as the euphemism for “the church’s fall pledge drive,” but “stewardship” as in the question: what do we do with what we have? How are we good stewards of our possessions? Do we try to be “rich in good works, generous, and ready to share,” as Paul says? (1 Tim. 6:18) Do we use the things we have to help the people around us? Or do we let them puff us up into people who think like the rich man does: entitled to command Lazarus around, enjoying luxury while the people around us hunger for the scraps? Do we try to set that chasm between “us” and “them” in the world.

Or are we willing to admit that the kingdom of God is a world turned upside down—that God pays not attention to our hierarchies of worth—that we are all human beings, equally worthy of dignity and love, and that we will meet again in a world that’s not very much like this one at all?