The Day When Everything Changed

Surely each of us remembers a day in our lives where things changed forever. Before that day, our world was different. Afterwards, nothing was the same. We couldn’t look at the world in the same way. Our perspective on life changed. We became older, maybe wiser, but perhaps even more troubled.

I remember the day I came home from school to the news that the Challenger space shuttle had exploded. It may have been my first awareness of a national tragedy that affected everyone, an awareness that life could change in the blink of an eye. For some of you, maybe it was the day that President Kennedy was assassinated. Dallas, Texas, will forever have a pall cast over it. Or was it September 11, 2001? I will never forget watching, in horror, the smoking towers on my college dorm room TV. Who can look at the New York City skyline without lamenting its sparseness? Or maybe it was mid-March 2020, when this nation began to lock down for the COVID-19 pandemic. Will any of us ever hear a cough again without some measure of anxiety?

The day that changed things forever for the first disciples was a seemingly ordinary day on a lakeside in Galilee. It was business as usual at first. Simon and his brother Andrew were engaged in their usual occupation of casting nets and hoping for a decent catch. All was at it should have been until Jesus walked by and said a handful of words that would change their lives—and the world’s destiny—forever. Follow me. And without so much as a word or second thought, those two brothers followed him.

A little farther down the seashore, James and John and their father Zebedee were mending their nets, like they always did. It was just another day in Galilee until Jesus walked by and called them. And their response was as prompt and undeliberated as Simon’s and Andrew’s.

Jesus’s words, follow me, were both so simple and so profound. The lives of James, John, Simon, and Andrew would never be the same again. The world itself would never be the same again. And our own revisiting of the call of those first disciples is tinged with poignancy, even heartbreak, because we know how those disciples’ lives would change forever. We know that James would be the first to lose his life because he accepted that call. We know that Simon would be crucified, but upside down. We know that Andrew would also be nailed to a cross in the shape of an X. Neither Simon Peter nor Andrew felt worthy enough to be crucified in the same manner as their Lord. John alone of those first four disciples would die of old age, but I imagine he must have been haunted by that fact. Why me? How did I escape martyrdom, he must have asked?

We can, if we wish, get stuck on the tragic endings of those four disciples, just as we can get stuck on tragedies that have changed our own world. Those disciples’ lives changed forever because their decision to follow Jesus would upend their reality. But there is so much more. Their lives changed forever because the moment they dropped their nets and left their families to follow Christ, they had already died.

The abandoned nets on the seashore represent Simon’s and Andrew’s entire livelihood. They left their normal existence, the comfort of their ordinary lives, their means of earning a living to follow a man they had never met until then. James and John left their father because their love for a man who had just entered their lives was the primary love of their own lives.

And the world would never be the same again for them and for us because those men would be a part of that initial apostolic thrust into the far corners of the earth, witnessing to the visible signs of another kind of kingdom breaking in to right the wrongs of sinful earthly kingdoms. The sick were healed. Those enslaved by disease found freedom. Wrongs were righted even as the conveyors of wrong reacted in fury. The world would never be the same again because in a world full of bad news, good news came as a person. Good news came not just through words, but in actions.

Something about this person was different from any cultic figure or guru that had ever preceded him. This teacher and healer did not wait for his disciples to grovel before him obsequiously to establish his devoted following. This teacher and healer called them. He called them and chose them before they ever knew who he was. He called them and chose them not to bow before him or buoy his reputation. He called them and chose them to put themselves behind him, to attach themselves to himself in relationship so that they would learn just how wonderful the world could be. In following behind him, their world and our world would never be the same again.

Although the story of the call of those first disciples is poignant, there is perhaps a sadder story to my mind. Let me tell it to you. On the shores of countless lakes in our own day, people are busy. They are going about their ordinary business, laboring hard to earn their livings. Some are the recipients of a massive catch. They are making a great living for themselves. Life is good. Life is comfortable. They have their families. They have their routines. They have the comfort of financial security and a future of bliss.

And by the shores of these lakes, the Messiah still walks. With only a few words, he issues a call. Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people. It might be that he pauses for a time, to wait for a response. But in the end, he encounters cold silence. Those complacent folk along the lakesides, if they even bother to turn their heads, return to their work and their families and their amassed fortunes and their future comfort and go on with business as usual. They do not follow the one who has called them, and their worlds never change for the better.

On the shores of our lives, this one who lived, died, and was raised again still calls. Follow me. He calls us to a way that is more difficult than we would like, but he calls us so that we might die and rise to a new life, a better life, a life that is intended for our flourishing and that of the whole world. And still, we ignore him.

The sad truth of this story, the tragic reality that breaks my own heart, is that in our own day, far too many of us have found plenty of excuses not to follow the one who will change our world. We have found every reason not to give ourselves completely to him. We have thoroughly justified clinging to our material possessions and paychecks rather than liberally giving it all back to the Giver of all good things. We have been stingy with our time so that we give what benefits us and our comfort rather than the proclamation of a Gospel that the world sorely needs to hear. We have withdrawn from risking our lives to help those whose own lives are threatened by savage governments. We have smothered ourselves in our biological families without opening ourselves up to the human family that needs our care. This is a sad story precisely because we know that one has come and still comes and walks along the lakeshore of our lives to call us to something far more glorious. He calls us from our passive sitting in darkness to an active movement out of our comfort zone to follow him into a marvelous light.

What keeps you from following him? What prevents you from leaving everything behind to put yourself close to him? The call that will change your world forever, and for good, is awaiting your response. What stops you from letting go of your fear of putting yourself behind him, not just in word but also in deed?

More than anything else, this one who has chosen us before we were born and who calls us before we even know who he is, shows us exactly who God is. And God does not arrogantly wait for us to grovel in shame but instead walks before us and invites us to get up and follow. God walks like a Good Shepherd leading the sheep through danger into a place of safety and nourishment. God asks us to follow behind because God will protect us and lead us. God will show us the way to green pastures, where all will be fed and where righteousness reigns. God invites us to place ourselves behind the Son of God, because he is the one who calls us not servants or slaves but friends. And this Jesus calls us to follow behind him and to get close to him so that we may go where he goes. And although this call to follow means giving everything up for his sake, in doing so, we will find our true lives, because where he goes, we shall go, and wherever he goes, there will be the kingdom of heaven.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday after the Epiphany
January 25, 2026 

What Are You Looking For?

When I was in middle school, I loved a good word search. At first, the game looks like nonsense—a jumble of letters, line after line. That’s where the word key—where you’re told what words to look for—comes in handy. With the key, things start looking less messy. Maybe not all at once, maybe not right away: but once you have the key, line by line, within that mess, you start seeing words, you start making some sense of it. Now, the words have always been there; it’s not the key that makes the words. But with the key, you know what you’re looking for; and once you begin to know what you’re looking for, you start to see what you’re looking at: not just letters, but words.

         In today’s Gospel, we encounter people who have begun to know what they’re looking for, and who, as a result, have started to see what—or who— they’re looking at. We meet again with John the Baptist. Last week, we read an account of Jesus’s baptism by John. This week, the focus is less on who John baptized—we aren’t actually told here that John baptizes Jesus—but on why he baptized. John tells us that he baptized so that the Chosen One, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the One who ranked ahead of him because he was before him, “might be revealed to Israel.” John also tells us that, through the baptizing mission, Jesus is revealed to him, John, personally. At first, John tells us, he “did not know” who the man was who ranked ahead of him because He was before him. But then, John is told to look for “He on whom the Spirit descends and remains.” And knowing what he is to look for, and seeing it, John sees, truly sees, who he is looking at in Jesus; Jesus as the Chosen One, the one in whom and through whom heaven and earth are coming together.

We also meet in today’s Gospel with Andrew, Peter, and an unnamed disciple of John’s. These men, like John, have seemingly been on the lookout too; once they hear John say that Jesus is the “Lamb of God” they know what to do: Andrew and the other disciple begin following Jesus—literally, they begin walking after him—not wanting to lose sight of Him. And having started to know and see this Lamb of God, Andrew then goes and finds his brother, Peter, and brings him to Jesus. Peter too will come to know and see Jesus for who He really is—a fact that the Church will celebrate tomorrow, on the feast of the Confession of St. Peter. Through the Spirit working through John, and then through the disciples, Jesus is thus revealed to the disciples themselves and beyond. These men have begun to know what they are looking for, and so, seeing Jesus, they have started to see what they are looking at: not just a man like any other, but “the Messiah,” true God and true man.

Now sometimes, these disciples’ vision will get blurry; sometimes, these disciples will lose sight of Jesus—Peter, for example, will deny Jesus on His way to the cross, notwithstanding his having previously confessed Him as the Messiah. But, despite their shortcomings, having seen and known Jesus, these disciples will keep following Him, and they will help others to know, and see, and follow Him too.

Now, do we know what we are looking for? When we look around us, when we look at our own lives, the lives of our families and friends, and the life of the world, what do we think we are looking at? And what do we see? God? If, more often than not, we look around us—or inside of us—and see not God but a mess, nonsense, then this season of Epiphany is full of especially good news for us.

—because our God is not a God of nonsense: our God is a God of revelation. And that is why He has shown us the key, that is, Himself; that is why He Himself has shown Himself to us through Jesus His Son, the “Word made flesh:” so that our eyes may be opened to see the world for what it really is: God’s Kingdom.

In this season of Epiphany, we celebrate that revelation. The word “epiphany” means something like “manifestation.” And so though Epiphany is often associated with the Magi, and their being led by a star to the child born to be King, Epiphany is not just about Jesus being revealed to the Magi, but about God and His purposes being made manifest.

In Epiphany, we celebrate that God chose to reveal Himself to us, in time and space, through the person of Jesus. We celebrate that He did this in the past: being born, living, dying, and then rising again to defeat the powers of sin and death. But we also celebrate that He will reveal Himself to us in the future: as Paul tells us, all we “who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” are yet waiting for His revealing; we are waiting for Him, as we say in the Creed, “to come again in glory;” we are waiting for Him to make final sense of this often messy world.

And in the meantime, we are yet to celebrate that God also reveals Himself to us in the present—though it may not always look this way at first. In this present, this messy present, we, like John, and like the disciples, are called to know what, and who, we are to look for, so that even in the midst of the seeming mess, of what may look like nonsense, we may know and see God.

We are invited to get to know Jesus as He truly is, so that we may truly see Him, truly follow Him, and invite others to do likewise. We are to do this, as today’s Collect prays, “illumined by [God’s] Word and Sacraments,” so that, through us, Jesus “may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth.”

Many peddle counterfeit Christs and worship false Messiahs, following and inviting others to follow a Jesus-in-name-only who reflects their own sinfulness. We, however, are to get to know Jesus not by looking to these images—not, say, by to looking a Jesus who sanctions cruelty or rewards greed—but by looking to the image of Jesus as shown to us in Word and Sacrament, to the image of Jesus revealed to us in Scripture, and through the Church.

And who is this Jesus? He is a Jesus, as Paul tells us, of “grace” and “peace;” a Jesus who does not leave us in our sin, but who takes away the sin of the world; a Jesus who works through imperfect people, like Peter; a Jesus who, as Isaiah tells us, reaches His “salvation…to the end of the earth,” not reserving it for a particular people; a Jesus who offers His sanctification to all who seek to follow him, through the waters of baptism and the power of the Holy Spirit; a Jesus who is not just a teacher, but King of Kings and Lord of Lords; and, a Jesus who, thanks be to God, delights not in darkness, but in light, in seeing us, and being seen by us.

And, having come to know Jesus, that Jesus, we are then invited to find others and bring them to Him, that they too may “come and see” that in and through Jesus, God Himself is being revealed. AMEN.

Sermon by Mrs. Lorraine Mahoney, Postulant for Holy Orders
The Second Sunday after the Epiphany
January 18, 2026

By Mutual Consent

If I were a high school English teacher, I would have a bone to pick with some of St. Matthew’s writing. Of course, he was writing in a completely different language, so perhaps my pickiness is not entirely fair. It should be directed at the English language translators of Matthew’s Greek. But then again, they were simply trying to render Matthew’s Greek as carefully as possible in English.

The bone I want to pick with Matthew is that he sometimes uses vague pronoun references. Ambiguous antecedents run rampant. We must sometimes reread a particular passage to understand whom a pronoun refers to. There’s a particularly good example of this in today’s Gospel passage, although its ambiguity makes for an interesting theological discussion. It’s unlikely that St. Matthew deliberately intended this lack of clarity, but in both the English and the Greek, it is possible to read part of the passage in two different ways. Maybe Matthew’s unintended meaning is a gift of the Spirit inviting us deeper into the text.

Jesus comes to John the Baptist at the Jordan and asks John to baptize him. John objects, recognizing that he, John, is not the Messiah. Do you see how I had to clarify my own pronoun usage there lest you think I was saying something heretical about Jesus? John’s objection is that Jesus is the one who should baptize him. But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented.

Who consented? Matthew could have learned a lot from my high school English teachers. I admit that when I first read this passage, I thought that he referred to Jesus. After all, Jesus had just finished speaking, so the he that follows could logically be connected to Jesus as the subject. Jesus consented to be baptized.

But this is most assuredly not what Matthew intended to say. John consented to baptize Jesus. This makes more sense in the original Greek. But we are not reading and hearing Greek, so let’s play a bit more with this possibility of an ambiguous consenter. Who consents? Jesus or John? Or do they both consent? Is it mutual consent?

 In some sense, Jesus does consent to be baptized. He has no need of baptism. He is true God and true man. He is sinless, and he certainly doesn’t need a baptism for repentance, for he has nothing of which to repent. To be baptized, Jesus must consent to be baptized, and he insists on it. On the one hand, Jesus’s baptism is completely unnecessary, and on the other hand, it is absolutely necessary. Jesus makes salvation possible precisely because he assumes human finitude with all its temptations, sorrows, joys, and frustrations. By consenting to be baptized, Jesus says to the whole human race that he will not ask us to do anything he has not already done. He goes first where he is asking us to go.

But what if John had refused to baptize Jesus? We should consider this seriously for just a moment. For the Savior of the world to be baptized, one of the many persons whom he came to save must consent to do it. John must consent to do it. John’s consent is like Mary’s response to the angel at the annunciation: let it be with me according to thy word. And at the Jordan River, Jesus’s Let it be so now must be matched by John’s let it be so. This is the moment of mutual consent. And only after both parties have consented do the heavens open in a theophany, as the visible presence of the Holy Spirit is seen, and God’s voice is heard. Jesus is manifested to the world as God’s Beloved Son.

For ages, scholars have noted St. Matthew’s discomfort with the fact that Jesus was baptized by John. If this baptism had been a mere ritual cleansing it might have been one thing. But the fact that this baptism was a baptism with water for the repentance of sins is a wholly different matter. Matthew must have been concerned with defending Jesus’s sinlessness, and so he goes out of his way to explain how Jesus requested his own baptism. And then he portrays the moment of consent when John allows it to happen and when Jesus himself consents to take on the fullness of our humanity.

But what if we pressed Matthew’s discomfort a bit further? Doesn’t it make all of us a bit uncomfortable to know that our Lord and Savior was baptized by a sinner, however holy he may have been? Put yourself in John’s shoes. Would you have consented to baptize Jesus? Isn’t there some instinctual aversion to recognizing the full humanity of our Lord? Isn’t there some visceral desire on our part to protect him from the human condition, which seems beneath him, or to keep him domesticated in a bubble that is only fully divine?

There is a startling tension that we must recognize on this Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. Every year it recurs and challenges preachers and worshippers in the pews. Is the celebration of Jesus’s baptism about him or about us? For some, it seems blasphemous to recognize our own belovedness in God’s eyes because Jesus was recognized as beloved by his Father. It is, of course, true that only Jesus is the Beloved Son of God in that unique sense. But isn’t it also true that because Jesus went down into the Jordan River and because he identified so fully with our humanity we have the privilege of identifying with him?

This is a scandal of proximity. Jesus comes so close to us so that we might draw as close to him as possible. Jesus humbles himself so fully that we might dare to participate in the divine life. And this shocking possibility makes John the Baptist uneasy, as it may very well make us uneasy.

It's well worth exploring our own spiritual discomfort with Jesus’s baptism. In doing so, we might find that beneath our discomfort is a false humility. Our protests of allowing Christ to stoop so low among us may be more about protecting ourselves from what Jesus’s baptism, life, and death demand from us. If we are humble enough to allow Jesus to get frightfully close to us, then we will be challenged to be like Jesus. As John shows, it’s disconcerting to permit Jesus to be the one who goes into the waters of the Jordan for our sake, because we know that he will soon be thrust into the desert to be tempted by Satan for forty days and nights. We know that Jesus will come to his own people, and they will receive him not. We know that Jesus will eventually suffer and die, and even in his moment of death, he will forgive his enemies.

This is far too close for comfort. Jesus’s consent to come among us as one of us and still live without sin must be met by our own consent to follow him by forsaking sin and evil. And that is a tall order. Are we prepared for the pernicious testings by Satan, which are real and alive in our own world? Are we equipped to face rejection and persecution for following our Lord? Are we willing to love so completely that we would forgive even our most hated enemies? Can we give ourselves to Christ fully and unconditionally? Do we love him enough that we would die rather than forsake him?

On this feast, we rightly celebrate the unique status of Jesus as God’s only begotten Son. But we also must wrestle with our tendency to object to Jesus’s proximity to us. The question before us today is the question before John: will we allow it? Will we let it be? We must come face to face with all that keeps us from letting Jesus get too close to us. We must reckon with our pride, our false humility, our desire for comfort, and our pious adulation of Jesus’s divinity without also embracing his fully humanity. We must let Christ himself break down the defensive walls we build around ourselves and justify through sanctimonious language that excuses us from the mutual consent that is part of our salvation.

But once the walls come down, we will ultimately discover a gift. A door opens to a place of great freedom. We are invited to move into the place where Jesus has been so that we might take our own rightful standing there. Where Christ has interceded for the wholeness of the world, we move to pray for that same wholeness. Where Christ has groaned and sighed, we move and allow the Holy Spirit to pray within us with sighs too deep for words. Where Christ has been praying Abba to his heavenly Father, we dare to take our place as the beloved children of that same Abba. We do so with great humility but also with great joy. For the One who has called his Son Beloved, also looks on us as beloved children. This God invites us to call him Father, knowing that one day, where Christ has gone, we shall go, too. And we can only go there because he has gone there first.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ
January 11, 2026

Somewhere Between Jerusalem and Bethlehem

It was about this time ten years ago that I was walking the streets of Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Nazareth. We arrived in the Holy Land around the Baptism of Our Lord. Christmastide was officially over, but the streets and churches were bedecked with evergreens and lights. It was still Christmas in the land that Jesus had walked. In some sense, it’s always Christmas.

I couldn’t imagine a more mystical time to be there. Poetry was in the air. The whole land is poetic. I learned after only a handful of visits to sacred sites that the Holy Land is no place for literalists. And yet, ironically, the leader of our tour group was one such literalist. He had an uncanny ability to take the mystery out of almost every site we visited.

It’s true that some of the famous sites of pilgrimage in the Holy Land can’t be verified as the actual sites of the events they commemorate. But the historical veracity of those locations is hardly the point. What is certain is that all those places are deeply holy. They are full of God’s poetry, which transcends mere literalism.

The clash of factual accuracy and poetic mystery came to a head one day on the tour bus. Our guide had just finished a long lecture in which one more sacred site was demystified. I don’t remember what he said, but I will never forget how his words crushed the poetic world of a member of our group. Sitting across the bus aisle from me was the mother of a Presbyterian pastor traveling with my group. Suddenly, this woman burst into tears. Full of heartfelt faith, she had journeyed from her small town to accompany her daughter on the trip. Some may have called her faith a simple faith, but in the end, isn’t all faith simple? And in the tour guide’s quest for factual accuracy, the poetry of her theological world was shattered.

My own heart broke for her, but the irony of hindsight is not lost on me. I do believe that the mother of that Presbyterian pastor understood more truth about the Holy Land than any claim to historical accuracy could assert. After all, as a seminary professor of mine once said, all theology is poetry.[1]

And that may very well be the reason that St. Matthew brings the magi into this story of Jesus’s birth. I’m quite sure that the leader of our tour group ten years ago would have pointed out that we have no historical verification of the magi’s existence. Maybe the wild star was Halley’s comet or something of that order, as some have suggested in their grasping at historical straws. Science tells us that stars don’t behave like that star did.

Well, maybe they don’t, and maybe they do, we might retort. With God anything is possible, and I mean that with full sincerity. If we can’t think like poets, then we will never understand the story of the magi. It’s surely no coincidence that they came from the east with its mystical roots, and it’s surely appropriate that we don’t know the magi’s exact origins. They could have come from Persia, but who knows? I don’t think Matthew wants us to know.

And isn’t it telling that the magi only end up in Jerusalem because they happened to notice an errant star in the sky? What if they hadn’t noticed it? What if they had paid no attention to the epiphany that defies all rational explanation? What if the magi had rationalized a decision to stay put in the east? What would have happened then?

Who knows, because Matthew tells us that they get up and go west, mistaking Jerusalem for their destination. And when they arrive, there’s a significant clash between factual accuracy and poetic imagination. On the side of poetry are Gentile magi who practice astrology and are foreigners to the God of Israel, and on the side of factual accuracy are those who know the Scriptures inside and out. On the side of poetry are pagan star hunters who travel thousands of miles to visit a baby, and on the side of factual accuracy is a ruthless, insecure leader who is so scared of the baby that he cons the magi into diligently finding him.

On the side of poetic imagination are the magi who don’t yet know the king is insincere and who continue to follow a star that could be leading them on a wild goose chase. And on the side of factual accuracy is a paranoid pseudo-king who is so enraged by the birth of a baby that he would order the murder of innocent children.

But somewhere on the road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, poetic imagination takes over. The star stops over the place where the baby was born, and the astrologers from the East are completely consumed by the poetry that has brought them from so far away. And while Herod stews in fear and unhappiness, the poets from the east are so overtaken with joy that they drop to their knees in worship of a child. They worship a true King of which their own religion knows nothing, and they give him gifts of which he has no need.

The poetry of this moment runs over in excess. While Herod’s excess is his cruelty, paranoia, obsession, fear, and rage, the excess of the magi is the genuineness and joy of their worship and the holy uselessness of the gifts they bring to a newborn child. There’s nothing to calculate here. There’s no datum to verify. There’s only a child—and a king at that—to worship and adore.

Matthew has drawn us into a poetic world because this poetry is the language of God. And the poetry of his account of the magi is duly appropriate for this Feast of the Epiphany because it’s a feast that is all about poetry. We cannot speak of the manifestation of our Lord in the flesh to the entire world without speaking in poetry. This poetry shows us that the manifestation of our Lord to the world must first happen to pagan Gentiles who read signs in the stars and who are bold and generous enough to follow a random star to find a Jewish baby king. This poetry highlights the sad irony that although Jesus came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, the Gentiles were the first recipients of his manifestation. This poetry gently points out the sadness of an insecure man fearing a gentle child. This poetry demonstrates that those whose imagination is generous and open will find the Christ child first, whether in the extraordinariness of the ordinary or in the mystery of the stars above.

This poetry is true not because it can be quantified by data but because it opens us up to the mystery of God, whose truth transcends all ages. In our own day, tyrants still run in fear of the child whose mysterious reign will outlast them. In our own day, ruthless leaders still exact their vengeance with cold calculation. In our own day, some religious still read the Scriptures unpoetically to buttress the image of those whose favor they court. In our own day, worldly affairs are still conducted secretly while the Gospel is preached openly to the ends of the earth.

But in our own day, there are still stars that defy our human knowledge. There are still signs in the natural order from a God with whom anything is possible and whose words are true. There are still people of generous hearts from other lands and other faiths who help us see the mystery of our own faith. There is still a babe born in a manger whom we are called to worship and adore. There is still a God we worship and adore and who makes the impossible possible.

And to worship this God is why we have come here this evening, in the middle of a work week, in all its superfluousness. We have come to worship a King who needs nothing of our worship, who doesn’t need our gifts of money or time and who doesn’t even need our presence. And yet, we must continue to give him those gifts. What else can we do? Our presence here is the most acceptable gift of all, in all its poetry and excess. Our worship is poetic praise of the One before whom earthly rulers cower. Our praise is fitting for One who reigns forever while earthly rulers know their time is short. And following the example of the magi, we worship the King in the manger, and we lavishly offer him the gifts of our lives because in a world of fear and scarcity, we know that by opening our hearts to his poetic mystery, we will be filled to the brim.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Feast of the Epiphany
January 6, 2026

[1] I’m grateful to the Rev. Dr. James Farwell for this phrase.

The Christmas Story according to the Scriptures

Christmas pageants may do more harm than good. I recognize that this might be an unpopular opinion, but on this eleventh day of Christmas, let’s press the so-called Christmas story beyond the limits of a cute play presented each Christmas Eve to elicit our coos and ahhs.

The first problem with the Christmas pageant story as we know it is that is conflates two very different Gospel accounts of Jesus’s birth. The second problem is that I have yet to see a pageant that is brave enough to tackle the darkness of the Christmas story. A Christmas pageant that would dare to mention the massacre of the Holy Innocents would create a riot the likes of which no church has ever seen. In all fairness, not even today’s Gospel reading dares to mention that tragic event. In fact, it jumps right over that passage.

But having been a bit hard on Christmas pageants, I should mention that there may be some value in a pageant, if only we were to rewrite the script. By rewriting the script, we would do everyone a huge favor, if not by coddling their imaginations, at least by being honest. Sometimes the comfort and solace we need the most is found not in papering over uncomfortable stories but in diving deep within them. That’s where the gospel resides.

If we were to write a different, more honest Christmas pageant script for the ages, we could call it “The Christmas Story according to the Scriptures.” The real meat of this pageant script would draw heavily from Matthew’s Gospel. Now, this is slightly difficult because there’s no birth scene in Matthew’s Gospel. There’s just a simple line noting that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea during Herod’s reign. But already we are wading into troubled waters, and we have moved well beyond the cozy stable with its eclectic menagerie. Mentioning the name of Herod is to name the one who shall not be named.

Our pageant according to the Scriptures should start after the birth of Christ, when Herod is seeking the child to destroy him. It would be a bit hard to act out Joseph’s dreams, but they would be necessary, too. In Matthew’s narrative world, dreams are important, because people actually believe that God might speak to them in dreams.

And Joseph certainly believes that God speaks in dreams, which is why he takes Mary and Jesus and flees to Egypt. This is a journey taken in haste and with great urgency. All is not well in the year of Jesus’s birth. Joseph, Mary, and the infant Christ wait things out in Egypt, that land where their ancestors had suffered oppression under Pharaoh, the Herod of his own day. And in the hard-edged world of this Christmas story, the Holy Family isn’t free until the death of Herod. Someone’s death is someone else’s freedom. It’s a harsh, bitter world. Things are not as they should be, and Christmas pageant audiences across the country are asking for their money back.

But before Herod dies, he has flown into a maniacal rage, murdering all the boys who are two years of age and younger in and around Bethlehem. This is a world in which cruel tyrants lose their minds as they lose their power. This is a world where innocent children are slain because a grown man fears a little child. This is a world full of lies and cunning and deceitful manipulation. And still, after Herod is gone, Joseph is warned yet again about the threat of Herod’s son, who has succeeded him as ruler. Only then, after much wandering and fleeing do Mary, Joseph, and Jesus settle in Nazareth.

You can see that we have already stepped beyond the bounds of a Christmas story that is child appropriate. We are well beyond the confines of the manger. There are things in this pageant that we should want to shield our children from until the last possible moment. When they are old enough, they will learn that this is the Christmas story according to the Scriptures. They will learn all this when they finally realize that they live in a bitter world just as full of evil tyrants and savage despotism as the world in which our Lord was born.

In this Christmas story according to the Scriptures, the narrator would have to be an adult, and this adult would know all too well that life is still full of paranoid Herods and hideous atrocities that we can never fully explain. But our narrator would also know that even in a world full of Herods and searing injustice, God still reigns as King, and God is still working his purpose out. Because of this and throughout the pageant, our narrator would give voice to Matthew’s consistent refrain: This was to fulfill the words spoken through the prophets.

Only an adult who has known grief and read the news headlines and gaped in horror at the way humans treat one another could say Matthew’s words with any credibility. This was to fulfill the words spoken through the prophets. This, after all, is the pageant according to the Scriptures. And the narrator of this pageant would understand that Matthew isn’t cherry picking verses from the Old Testament to justify his story. Matthew is interpreting the story of our salvation through the lens of the cross. This is the Christmas story according to the Scriptures.

This pageant shows us that Jesus’s story is Israel’s story and our story, too. This is why the Holy Family goes into Egypt from which God delivered the Israelites of old. If the Savior of the world has come, he will deliver the whole world out of Egypt and into freedom. This pageant according to the Scriptures shows that all along, throughout the epic story of God’s people, God has been preparing something wondrous for the whole world, that it might be made whole again. This pageant holds both the realism of a sinful world with the mystery of dreams and surprises. This pageant traces the persistence of a family that will follow God through thick and thin, believing that God is with them the entire time.

This pageant according to the Scriptures demonstrates that God stays with humanity for the long haul. This is a God who has persisted with a stubborn people, who for a time believed God to be angry and fickle. God waited with them until they could see that God was never angry with them. God simply wanted to be in relationship with them. This God sent messages through the prophets, which were not heeded, but God never gave up on this chosen people. This God stuck with humanity all the way into Bethlehem. And this God went with them back into Egypt, and God brought the whole world back into the Promised Land once more. And this God is still with us as we, too, struggle through a world that is unwell. God is with us even when innocent children are massacred and as refugees wander homeless. God is with us all the time, for as evil threatens and misfortune prevails, those who follow God’s dream for the world will get up and go, time and again, just like the Holy Family on the move.

The Christmas story according to the Scriptures does not offer easy answers, nor will it attempt to explain suffering and evil, but it says quite clearly that God is with us in the valley of the shadow of death. As Matthew told us, This was to fulfill the words spoken through the prophets. The Christmas story according to the Scriptures refuses to settle for a simple, romanticized pageant, because ultimately such a plot is not good news at all. Such a plot is bad news for those who can’t summon happiness on a whim. It’s bad news for those who use temporary Christmas cheer to drown out their long-term sorrow. It’s bad news for all who are grieving and who must pretend as if they shouldn’t be sorrowful this time of year.

The good news according to the Scriptures is that God is truly with us in Jesus. God is with us so intensely that God is with us even unto death on the cross. God has been with us for the long haul, and Matthew shows us this. The pageant according to the Scriptures is about a Savior who humbled himself to share our humanity so that we might share in the divine life, and this is a mystery so profound that no ordinary Christmas pageant will suffice. For without a cross, there is no Savior who humbles himself to share our humanity because the cross is what happens when divinity reveals itself in human time.

There may be a time and a place for saccharine, ordinary Christmas pageants. But one day, when our children grow old and tired, they will yearn for a pageant according to the Scriptures. And they will rejoice with us that the story of our salvation has burst the bounds of a manger in Bethlehem. They will rejoice that the God who came to us in Jesus is with us for the long haul. And that is the good news according to the Scriptures.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday after Christmas Day
January 4, 2026

St. John's Prologue, Take Two

There is a poignancy in hearing the Prologue from John’s Gospel a second time so soon after Christmas Day. Although we are only on the fourth day of Christmas, the rest of the world seems to be moving on. Presents have been opened. Visiting loved ones have returned to their homes. Meals shared after the Christmas feast appear paltry and rather sad.

The rest of the world doesn’t seem to know how to move on. Some shops are still closed even as people take down their Christmas trees far too prematurely. The streets are quieter than they should be, and the mad rush of the secular Christmas season has faded, and those of us living in its afterglow may feel the sad denouement. It’s like a performer trying to make sense of the day after a major recital, having worked for months on a program, performed it, and then been forced to leave it behind and take up some new thing. If you are feeling a bit sad right now, you are not alone.

There is perhaps some wisdom, then, in returning to the opening words of John’s Gospel in this post-Christmas Day haze. We are better poised to hear the words afresh, even more realistically. It is meet and right that, on Christmas Day, we want to bask in the profundity of the eternal Word becoming flesh in Christ and dwelling among us. It is meet and right that we should rejoice that the God of all creation entered creation as a human, becoming like us so that we might become like God.

But today, we need to hear another side of this story. The Christmas story gives us one of the most wonderful stories imaginable, as well as one of the saddest ones. It’s very hard to hear the sorrow of the story on Christmas Eve and Day. But after the Christmas guests have gone, after the turkey has been eaten, and after the climax of weeks of preparation, we might be ready for—even needful of—spending some time with the sadness of this story.

On Christmas Eve, St. Luke portrayed something of the heartbreak in the details of Jesus’s birth because there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the inn. Jesus was born in a manger. Jesus was born to a homeless family on the move, and as we’ll find out next week, the Holy Family will travel on to Egypt before returning to Nazareth. All is not well in the local context of Jesus’s birth. But, of course, on Christmas Eve, our minds and hearts are rightly fixed on other things. We know that the baby is born, and the shepherds rejoice. And this is good news for us.

But in returning to John’s Prologue again today, our Christmas high has diminished. We have returned to the ordinariness of our lives, and we must face the heart-wrenching fact that from the beginning, the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head. At the height of secular Christmastide, as the eggnog was lavishly poured out and the family gathered for the feast, we easily excused ourselves for turning a blind eye to the one sleeping on the streets. We chose to forget the temporary tent encampments of opioid addicts on the streets of Kensington, just miles from our door. We couldn’t bear the thought of our solitary neighbor who had no family and was warming up a frozen dinner on Christmas Day while we were popping the cork on a bottle of champagne. But days after the feast, when some of the sadness of our own lives has returned and when we can no longer ignore this harsh reality, we may want to spend some more time with John’s Prologue. Today, of all days, we need to hear it.

And John gives it to us straight. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. These are words that should make us weep. This is far more than a family trying to find a place for a birth. This is homelessness on an epic scale. When we hear John’s version of the divine homelessness* in his Prologue, we know how the story will unfold, and that’s what makes it so sad. We know that a world that is full of lies will reject Truth himself. We know that our Savior will come among us in perfect love and will give and give and give everything he has until finally he gives his life on a cross. And yet, he doesn’t die with resentment or vowing vengeance. He dies with words of forgiveness on his lips, changing something in the energy of this world for all time.

Reflecting on John’s Prologue today, we read it with all those who have experienced rejection. We read it with those who have no homes and who have no families. We read it with those who spent Christmas alone, shivering in their cold homes, and even now are still alone. We read it with those in prison who received no visitors and with those who dread this secular season from its start just after Thanksgiving until sundown on Christmas Day. We read it with those who have lost loved ones around this time of year, and we read it with those who are depressed and on the brink of utter despair.

And suddenly, we find ourselves at the foot of the cross on Good Friday, suffering from a bit of chronological vertigo. We are looking at a man who gave everything and is now giving his life for an ungrateful people who preferred their own sin to his love. We hear him giving voice to the words he had prayed over the course of his life in the synagogue, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And we weep with him. It seems like there is an unfathomable gulf between the Father and the Son. Where is the Spirit binding them all in one?

We must stay there for a time as we recognize that this man, dying on the cross, came to his own home, and his own people, his kith and kin, received him not. He knocked on their doors, and they slammed them in his face. He still comes, knocking on the doors of the cold hearts of humankind, who prefer their own sinful comfort to the uncomfortable grace of his life-changing power.

This story is too much. It is too sad. The homelessness of the Son with nowhere to go and rest and with nowhere to lay his head is overwhelming. We are confronted with that chasm of anguish between the Son and his Father on the cross.

But today, although the words are the same ones we heard on Christmas Day, a new, surprising move is made. We are not hearing the same old story. There is some real wisdom in the choice of Scripture readings for Christmas Day and today. We hear this primal story in its fullness, with grace upon grace opening it up for us, because the story goes on. John assures us that the story does not end with a homeless Savior, wandering the earth with nowhere to rest. The story doesn’t end with the Son dying on the cross and leaving unalterable sadness behind. The story goes on because John tells us that the Son who was rejected by his own people now abides in the bosom of his Father. He always was in the bosom of the Father, and he always shall be.

This may be good news for the Son of God, but what about for us? We may be reassured that Christ has a home with the Father after all. We may be comforted that the perceived separation between Father and Son on the cross is no separation at all, because the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit were all there bound together in love in that moment of anguish.

But what about us? What about those who have no homes? What about the perpetually lonely? What about the persecuted and the poor and the starving? What about those of us in this church today who are grieving? Is there good news for us?

To find our good news, we would have to jump ahead to the Last Supper, which seems a bit odd on this day, but there we shall go. St. John himself is at the side of our Lord, resting his head close to the chest of Jesus in a moment of searing betrayal by Judas. And suddenly, we have found our good news. It has been worth waiting for. John the Beloved Disciple points the way for us. The Son of Man who had nowhere to lay his head has made the entire world his home, even the pockets of betrayal. And although the world rejected him and still rejects him, he persists in coming to us, like a shepherd going after the lost sheep. The slaughtered lamb becomes the Shepherd of the sheep. He invites us to recline next to him, to rest our head on his chest.

The story may be complete, but it is not yet over, for our Lord will continue to knock on the doors of our hearts, begging us to let him in. And when we do, all our weariness, sadness, loneliness, and forsakenness will be handed over to him because he will transform it. We will draw close to him as he has drawn close to us. We will hear his heartbeat, and in doing so, we will hear the heartbeat of God. And in that moment, we will have found our true home.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday after Christmas Day
December 28, 2025        

*Samuel Wells speaks of the “homelessness of God” in his book A Future That’s Bigger than the Past: Catalysing Kingdom Communities (Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, 2019), p. 114.

On and Off the Page

The late author and Episcopalian Madeleine L’Engle once explained how the characters in her novels came to life in a way that surprised her. In the process of writing, she found that the characters, which were figments of her own imagination, took on a life of their own. They were not simply marionettes held captive by the strings of her mind. Her imagination was actually prompted by the characters themselves as her writing unfolded. Characters started off as one thing and ended up as something wholly different.[1]

This may explain why some authors, when writing a series of novels, go on to write prequels. In the author’s chronological time, prequels are written later than the novels they precede in fictive time. The characters in a novel have expanded beyond the bounds of the author’s creative impulse, and so the prequels become necessary to flesh out these fictional characters who seem to have come alive and leapt off the page.

Something like this is happening on Christmas Day when we hear the Prologue from John’s Gospel, but in this case, the character is real, more real than our reality. Only last evening, we heard the birth narrative from Luke’s Gospel, which focuses on Jesus’s birth to Mary and Joseph in a stable in Bethlehem. We know that this mysterious birth happens in a historical moment in time.

But the morning after, St. John, writing after St. Luke, takes us back to the beginning. Indeed, John takes us back before the beginning. Before the beginning is eternity, when the Word was with the Father and the Spirit, before anything was. Eternity is life off the page, and it can hardly be expressed in writing. It’s as if John is compelled to give greater depth to this person called Jesus of Nazareth.

St. John takes us off the page, before there even was a page. Off the page, the eternal Word who would take on flesh in Jesus, existed in loving relationship with the Father and the Spirit. And John tells us that the Son wasn’t simply with the Father; he was towards the Father, positioned in love and relationship towards the One he would later, on the page, call Abba and who, by the power of the Spirit, we can call Abba, too.

John knows that only by understanding the Word off the page can we truly understand him on the page. On the page, we can so easily imagine the Word made flesh as a superhuman or mere ethical model for our own lives. On the page, Jesus can appear to be a mere pawn of the Father, masquerading as having true freedom but really designed to be protected from the temptations and finitude of true humanity. But John assures us that in Jesus, God’s pen hits the pages of this life as Jesus, the author of our salvation, enters human time. The mind of God plays itself out on the pages of human history. And then, John takes us off the page, because only off the page can we fully learn who Jesus is and who we are called to be.

Off the page, our true home is in the eternal heart of God. John reminds us that when there was nothing, all that exists came into being. God spoke a word, and there was light. From out of darkness, light came forth to illumine the world. Light doesn’t drown out the darkness. Light comes to us in the darkness. In the beginning, when all things came to exist from the creative heart of God, God called it good. No, God called it all very good. And for those of us who live on the pages of this world, where there often seems to be a gaping absence of this good, John reminds us of our origins. In the beginning it was good. It was very good.

But it might seem that John’s Gospel is encouraging us to jump off the page before our time. In the horrors of life on the page, it may very well be tempting to leap off the page into the goodness of eternity, to be done with this life on the page and to enter a better life off the page. But that is not John’s way. John tells us that when the eternal Word takes on human flesh, eternity hits the page. And when eternity hits the page, the perfectly creative life of God exists in human time. And when this happens, our flawed and sorrowful existence on the page is imbued with the possibility of another story, God’s story. Our story is not signed, sealed, and delivered. Our story is still being written in the mind of God.

And this changes our future forever. This makes the impossible possible, and heaven breaks into this life. When eternity hits the pages of this world, its dull edges begin to shine again, and goodness appears amid evil. When eternity hits the pages of this world, the limitations of our skeptical imaginations are shattered by the infinite possibilities of God. When eternity hits the pages of this world, our fatalistic pessimism is expanded into a hopeful story that is taking on a new, creative life of its own. In ages past, before the Word became flesh, God’s holy word came to humankind through the prophets and in the reading of the Scriptures. But when the eternal Word hit the pages of this life, our existence and our story were changed forever so that one day we could leap off the page into the eternal heart of God.

On this quiet, intimate Christmas morning, I wish all who are not here could see that their own stories are so much more than the unwrapping of presents and the fleeting comfort found in the giving and receiving of gifts. Their stories are far more than broken relationships, despair, and hopelessness. For those who cannot see the light this Christmas, there is a deeper message that St. John is offering them, too. Off the page, there is abundant life that is ours to receive, and in Jesus, that life has also touched the page. That life is here, now, available for the taking. It’s as if, in this life on the page, mere words have become eternally infused images and sounds, as if the characters and scenes are coming alive and made present in our reality. Off the page, in the mind of God there are still possibilities for our life that have not yet been realized. And on the page, those possibilities still remain for us to discover so that we may be fully alive.

The Son of God has leapt onto the pages of this life, bringing with him eternal life, and because Jesus has come to save us, because he has lived among us and died and risen for us, the story on this page is always being written. We are not victims of fate. We are carefully crafted pens in the hand of the creative author of our salvation, who enables us to find light and life in our own unfinished stories.

On this Christmas morn, rejoice with me that there is a prologue to the dreary frustration of life on the page, a prologue that shows us our origins and our destiny in goodness. Rejoice with me that even in the shadow of death on the page, true life is ready to burst forth in radiant light. Rejoice with me that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. His skin hit the skin of the pages of this earthly life. Rejoice with me that one day we, too, shall leap off the pages of this life and into the eternal arms of God, where our song will go on forever.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
December 25, 2025       

[1] In Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (New York: Bantam, 1980). This image is also taken up and developed in Seeds of Faith by Mark A. McIntosh and Frank T. Griswold (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022).

The Message that Can't Remain Hidden

It may be that this year during your Christmas shopping or on the radio, you heard a less familiar song ring out.

There’s a star in the East on Christmas morn;
Rise up, shepherd, and follow;
It will lead to the place where the Christ was born;
Rise up, shepherd, and follow.

Follow, follow; Rise up, shepherd, and follow.

Follow the Star of Bethlehem;

Rise up, shepherd, and follow.

It goes on:

Leave your sheep, and leave your lambs;

Rise up, shepherd, and follow;
Leave your ewes and leave your rams;

Rise up, shepherd, and follow.

And it concludes:

If you take good heed to the angel’s words;
Rise up, shepherd, and follow;
You’ll forget your flocks, you’ll forget your herds;
Rise up, shepherd, and follow.

On the surface, these words are a beloved African American spiritual, composed and sung by enslaved Africans as they longed for freedom. But below the surface, there’s something more. Below the surface, like many of these spirituals, there’s a coded language. Those on the outside didn’t know this code, but those on the inside knew exactly what it meant. They were sound theologians, too.

Enslaved persons understood the code because they never forgot that God had freed the Israelites from Egypt. They understood that bodies of water were associated with deliverance. They knew that although the Promised Land often seemed like a pipedream in the wilderness, God didn’t forsake the promise to bring the Israelites to their true home.

So, when the spiritual says, Rise up, shepherds, and follow, it could be that the real message was for enslaved persons to shake off the shackles of bondage and escape, following the star to freedom. It could be that leaving the sheep and the ewes and the rams meant leaving the labor of oppression to discover a new home of emancipation. That freedom was well worth forgetting the flocks and the herds.

The genius of such spirituals was that on the surface, the language was straightforward theology. But for those who knew Christ, for those who knew what God had done and could do, the language was so much more. It was both a practical summons to freedom and to believe that freedom was possible.

Because we’ve heard the Christmas story so often and because well-meaning but simplistic Christmas pageants have shaped our understanding of this story, we have become immune to its depth. We know the surface of it, but according to St. Luke, there is more than meets the eye. A careful reader of Luke’s birth narrative will soon realize that this is a story that is told in code.

It’s a different kind of code than that found in African American spirituals. But there is an implied message in Luke’s Gospel to the underdogs of the ancient Roman empire. There’s a proclamation to the poor and the meek and the lowly that a King has come who is far greater than any emperor. Rise up, shepherds, and follow. Follow the Star of Bethlehem.

Our first clue is that the story features characters who often fly below the radar. An unwed mother and her betrothed from a peasant village journey not to Jerusalem for a birth but to the hamlet of Bethlehem. This is the city of David, that fallible, unpredictable king of old. And besides all this, the Savior, the Messiah, will be adopted into his lineage of all kinds of surprising and questionable characters.

But it keeps going. The angels appear to shepherds, poor field laborers who are on the outskirts of the village. The glory of the Lord shines around them. Wouldn’t those poor Jewish shepherds, despite their lack of education, have known that God’s glory led the Israelites through the wilderness with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night? Wouldn’t they have remembered that God’s glory was always filling the Temple in ancient times? So, the message from the angels ensconced in a surrounding cloud of glory was no mere accident. And what about a child, a Savior, being born of a virgin? Didn’t the prophet Isaiah have something to say about this so many years before? There seem to be many clues in this story, a story that appears to be written in code. Rise up, shepherds, and follow. Follow the Star of Bethlehem.

With no offense to Christmas pageants and the Hallmark channel, if we scratch the Christmas story a bit more, we are neck deep in irony. God takes on human flesh under the auspices of an imperial edict but flying well below the radar of that census. The God who can’t be contained within human time or thought is part of a worldwide registration, and yet this God can’t be imprisoned within numbers and data.

It’s as if in this marvelous and familiar story, there’s a code for those with ears to hear. For the lowly and downtrodden, like the shepherds and the Holy Family, the code makes sense. They know that God has a rich history of rescuing the oppressed. God has a long, storied history of standing up for the underdog. And so, when the lowly shepherds hear the chorus of angels, they immediately head to Bethlehem to see the thing that has taken place. They believe it’s possible. They believe it has happened, and they want to behold this mystery. Rise up, shepherds, and follow. Follow the Star of Bethlehem.     

And when Mary hears what has happened to the shepherds, she, too, understands the code. God’s words announced to her by the angel Gabriel have come true. She has been pondering them in her heart. She continues to treasure these words, cogitating on them. The mystery will live on.

We might very well ask, though, why a God who comes in Christ to reveal himself would do so in code. Why would God come among us furtively and unpredictably? But maybe that’s the point. For enslaved people of the nineteenth century, a coded spiritual was both practically necessary for their own safety and theologically necessary for their hope. But for the meek of Jesus’s day, it may have been a bit different. They, too, were sound theologians. They knew what God could do because of what God had already done. They were expectant and ready for God to do a new thing. And this made them especially receptive to God’s good news proclaimed in this surprising birth of the Messiah. The lowly were the ones who could crack the code. Among what better persons could God come to dwell?

But this is not how the story ends, for if this were all there were to it, the story would be no more than a vindictive slap in the face of oppressive powers, and God’s revelation is never vengeful. It can never remain secret and hidden like a gnostic prophecy. God’s pronouncements and good news are always meant to be shared and proclaimed to the ends of the earth, to all people, oppressed and oppressors alike. And so, the shepherds run to Bethlehem to share their encounter with the angels. And then, having seen the Christ child face to face, they go forth yet again, glorifying and praising God. The message may come in code, but it never stays hidden. It cannot remain hidden. Rise up, shepherds, and follow. Follow the Star of Bethlehem.

Even in our own day, the code is waiting to be cracked. For those of us who know the whole story, the bands of cloth shrouding the infant Child are also his grave clothes. There's much more to this story than a historical account of our Savior’s birth. If we remember the history of our God’s many deeds of old, we can break the code in our own day.

When Christ appears to us, in the poor, in the suffering, in the oppressed, in the lonely, and in our own impoverished hearts, we must rise up and follow the Star of Bethlehem to make these things known to a world that is oblivious to the code. Although God’s good news may need a code to sneak in through the chokeholds of the ungodly powers of our own day, the good news can never survive only in cryptic prophecies. It must be shared to the ends of the earth.

Those who know the scriptures will know that this Savior really is the One long expected who still comes among us and who could only come among us as one who is poor, homeless, and meek. But those in imperial power, those with armies of military might, will miss who the Savior is precisely because of his gentleness, precisely because of his poverty, precisely because he came in such an unpredicted way. It remains for those of us who know the astounding possibilities of God to break the code and tell the good news.

Which is why we might take comfort in yet one more Christmas spiritual. Go, go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere; go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born! Down in a lowly manger the humble Christ was born, and God sent us salvation that blessed Christmas morn! Go and tell it, everywhere, that the humble Savior who came to us in code has been decoded by our joyful proclamation. And this Savior who has come, still comes among us, and he always comes to save!

 Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
December 24, 2025        

Impossibilities Made Possible

If you were told as a child not to turn around in church, for just a moment, be rebellious and break that rule of ecclesiastical etiquette. Turn around to look at the stained-glass window on the far back wall of the church. It’s on the same side as the pulpit. If you can’t see it, then look at it after Mass. I’ll describe it for you. It’s one of the most interesting windows in this church, and there are many spectacular windows here. But this window is particularly special not because of its style or inherent beauty, but because of what it says.

The scene is Joseph’s carpenter shop in Nazareth. Try, if you can, to ignore the unrealistic portrayal of Joseph, Jesus, and Mary as white, blond-headed individuals. As I said, this window is striking not in its realism or beauty but in its theological impact. Joseph is holding a wooden cross that is in the process of being constructed. It’s not yet finished. There’s wood everywhere: blocks of wood lying around and shavings on the floor. The cross leans against a wooden worktable, and Joseph holds a hammer.

Jesus himself uses one knee to hold down another piece of wood. He holds a saw in the other hand. The piece of wood that he saws is resting on a tree stump. There’s so much wood here! Is that stump an allusion to the root of Jesse? In a move that would give most parents a real scare, Jesus saws the piece of wood with one hand while not looking at it! Jesus is, instead, gazing upon the cross. He is also wearing a red tunic. That seems symbolic, too.

The Blessed Mother watches this whole scene. She is robed in blue, her standard color, as is Joseph. But Joseph looks at the cross. And Jesus seems to be staring at the cross, too, with a sense of awe and trepidation. Joseph’s much older face appears to take in the cross with a sense of poignancy and sadness.

To one who reads the Bible as if in a straight line, this window is preposterous. To one who writes scripts for Christmas pageants, the scene is an uncomfortable distraction from Hallmark card renderings of sheep, oxen, and a family cuddling in a stable. No one wants the cross in Jesus’s childhood. But this window is theologically real and true. It doesn’t sugarcoat theology, and it expresses something true that we have lost in our obsession with historical-critical readings of the Bible and in our imposition of human time onto God’s time. This window tells us that from the earliest stages of Jesus’s life, the cross was already there.

If we can begin to accept that Scripture is not only to be read forwards but also backwards, we might begin to understand what this window is telling us. And we might begin to comprehend something of St. Matthew’s birth narrative. If we are reading Matthew’s Gospel linearly, then we might be rather cynical of the way Matthew uses Scripture from the Old Testament. Matthew tells us that Jesus’s conception by the power of the Holy Spirit and without normal marital relations is the fulfillment of the words of the prophet Isaiah, who once said that a virgin would conceive and bear a son, who would be named Emmanuel.

“Of course he would say that,” the skeptic would say, rolling their eyes. Matthew is simply misusing words from Isaiah, who had no idea that Jesus would be the Messiah and be born of a virgin. But is it that simple? Are we really able to understand the mind of God that easily? And if the story doesn’t simply go from beginning to end as we are wont to read it, could it be that Matthew’s understanding of Isaiah’s words wasn’t a retroactive imposition of a foreign meaning onto Isaiah’s words? Maybe Matthew’s interpretation of Isaiah’s prophecy could be exactly true. Maybe, in God’s mysterious providence, Isaiah, without knowing about Jesus, was able to give voice to something that God would make possible many centuries later. Why is that so difficult to believe?

And while we’re at it, what about all those other wonderful but easily overlooked details in Matthew’s birth narrative? If we’re talking about a God who gives possibility where we only see impossibility, then anything is possible! The details of this story matter. That may very well be Matthew’s interpretation, but what if Matthew’s interpretation, guided by the Holy Spirit, is precisely what is real and true?

Matthew’s emphasis on Joseph in his birth narrative is telling, as opposed to Luke’s emphasis on Mary. Matthew shows that Jesus is from the lineage of David, and that’s important because David was Israel’s king who was promised an unconditional covenant with God. He was also a deeply flawed man, and that’s significant, too, although it’s a story for another day. And Joseph, of all things, is not so stubborn and skeptical as to wake up from a dream and truly believe that God had spoken to him through an angel. Joseph is so unconditionally open and trusting that he changes the whole course of his actions based on that one dream.

And the details keep on coming. Jesus’s name is given by God, but it requires Joseph’s obedience to name him. Jesus’s name recalls Joshua, who led God’s people into the Promised Land after their exile in Egypt and wilderness wanderings. Jesus’s name means “he saves.” “Of course,” the skeptic would say with a sarcastic tone. “We know that Jesus saves, so of course, that’s his name.” Another eye roll ensues. But what if God really intended that, as Matthew suggests? What if that crucial detail of Jesus’s name is necessary to connect Jesus’s story with the entirety of Israel’s story of salvation?

And what about the virgin birth? Think of all the women before Mary who gave birth as a surprise gift from God. Think of what this idea of a miraculous birth signals about God. With God, anything is possible! But for the many skeptics who continue to scoff at Jesus’s virgin birth, Jesus’s conception is just another rejection of modern science. Or is it?

And what about that name Emmanuel, which Isaiah foretold whose very meaning expresses the ultimate hope of the Christmas story? God is with us. Yes, God has always been with us. God has always been with his people, and so why wouldn’t God choose to save humanity in the most intimate and human way possible, by taking on human flesh?

It seems that the real issue here is understanding God’s providence in tandem with our own freedom. We struggle enough with the two natures of Christ, his full divinity and full humanity, mainly because we imagine divinity as being in competition with humanity. But this is not the way it works. If divinity is something surprising and mysterious and beyond our comprehension, then indeed with God, anything is possible, and that possibility comes to fruition in human time with our cooperation.

The rational skeptic dismisses the lovely details of Matthew’s birth narrative, the fulfillments of prophecy, the specially crafted names, the surprising virgin birth, and the whole connection to the lineage of David. If these are true, the rationalist says, then God has forced the divine story upon humanity’s story. But au contraire! we might say. If God has offered all the possibilities in this birth narrative that Matthew shows have come true, it doesn’t mean that God has stifled our freedom. It means that the characters in this story are so open to God’s will that they understand how God wishes things to be. God isn’t forcing his will on people. God is offering possibilities, and it’s up to the different characters to discern those possibilities. With God, anything is possible!

What if the virgin birth is necessary for us to preserve a sense of God’s possibilities in a world of impossibilities? Sinning is so ordinary for us fallible humans that something extraordinary is necessary to save us from them. Jesus is necessary, born of a virgin, of the lineage of David, and connected intrinsically to the hope of Israel as foretold by Isaiah. And that’s why Matthew’s birth narrative seems to make so much sense while also keeping us humble in our assessment of God’s limitless possibilities.

If we were to write a Christmas pageant script in this age of demystification, we would have to write one that could never be acted out. This script would be all about the surprising details that show God’s possibilities in an age of impossibilities. This script wouldn’t be afraid to show that our God is not too ashamed to come among us in the womb of an unwed mother. This script would acknowledge that our God could make use of perfectly chosen names that convey the perfection of hope for us. This script could be equally comfortable with a stained-glass window showing a cross in Joseph’s carpenter shop, as well as believing that maybe Isaiah was inadvertently onto something that would take place centuries later. Above all, this Christmas pageant script would show us that, in a world of logic and banal malaise, God’s possibilities always exceed what we think is impossible. But the ending of this Christmas story is left in our hands: we can take a leap of faith in believing in God’s possibility, or we can choose the path of cold reason. May we, like Joseph, be so open to the unpredictability of God that even a dream can reveal the astounding possibilities of God.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 21, 2025

Looking for Crocuses

There’s a phrase we use when we’re not sure about the outcome of something. We’ll see, we say. Would you like to join us for dinner this weekend? you ask a friend. We’ll see, they say. Read between the lines: I’m holding out for a better offer, and if that doesn’t work out, then maybe I’ll accept your invitation. We’ll see. It’s a frustrating response, which expresses neither hope for the future nor an unqualified no. It’s aggravating in its noncommittal status. Maybe that will happen, or maybe it won’t. We’ll see.

If any phrase can sum up the season of Advent, it’s we’ll see. Every year at this time, we’re told to wait. And I don’t mean waiting for Jesus to come at Christmas. We know that will happen, and we know when that will happen. I don’t mean the waiting for Christ’s Second Coming, either. We know that will happen even if we don’t know when. It’s the daily waiting that’s the most frustrating. We’ll see. We’ll see if that job is offered to us. We’ll see if the cancer will go into remission. We’ll see if the money holds out for another month. We’ll see if those nations will actually turn their swords into ploughshares. We’ll see.

The present is the most difficult time in which to live. And so, it often helps to look back. I recently had such an experience. I was waiting with impatience and frustration for the next move in my life. And the waiting was hard. It was hard for me to give up control. It was hard for me not to know what would happen in a few months’ time. In some sense, that experience felt like an exile, a time of loneliness and separation from the comfort of knowing. I was in a wilderness of insecurity and desperately longing for security. I was confronted with a large, exasperating we’ll see.

And then, amid the barren desert through which I traveled, I spied a crocus. If I understand crocuses correctly, their stems are largely underground, and the flowers grow close to the ground. So, when crocuses blossom, they’re a surprise. This is what it was like for me recently when in my wilderness wandering, searching for some sign of hope, a violet crocus sprang up before me in a monolithic wasteland devoid of color.

It wasn’t a literal crocus, of course. It was a word passed on to me by a loved one. “I had an overwhelming sense the other night,” she said, “that everything is going to be okay. God is going to take care of you. It’s hard to wait, but if you wait, you will not be disappointed.”

It’s not that I didn’t know this before those words were uttered. I knew this deep in my heart, but it was so difficult to trust my own heart. I needed a visible sign, a crocus in the desert, telling me, “Be strong, do not fear! God will come and save you.” Those encouraging words reassured me that my time of exile had a shelf life. At some point—and only God knows when—a straight, direct highway would be paved through the lonely desert, and I would return home.

Chapter 35 of the Book of Isaiah not only mentions that the desert shall rejoice and blossom like a crocus, as if on a whim and as a surprise. Isaiah 35 is a metaphorical crocus in this vast prophetic book. You don’t need to know that chapter 35 probably dates from the time of the Babylonian exile, but it helps to know this. A chapter from centuries later is plopped down into an earlier chapter to give hope. No sooner is chapter 35 finished than we’re told that the king of Assyria, in the eight century BC, came into the land of Judah to capture them. This is long before the Babylonian exile, but it’s a blow to God’s people. God’s people are about to move into a wild desert, with little comfort and with a lot of fear. Chapter 35 is a crocus in the desert, telling God’s people not to give up.

The author of chapter 35 knows something that the people in the eighth century BC didn’t know. The author is writing from a vantage point of exile, centuries later. But the author knows that the story is not over. Not we’ll see, but you’ll see, he says. God isn’t finished with you yet. God will not leave you in exile, fear, and distress. God will bring you home. You’ll see, not we’ll see. Just wait.

Isaiah 35 is like a crocus in the desert, reiterating the promise made throughout the generations to God’s people. You’ll see God’s loving hand. It’s the promise made to Noah and his family on the ark, a promise that God would never again destroy the beloved creatures made in his image. You’ll see. It’s the promise made to Abraham and Sarah, that they would indeed see the beginning of a long line of descendants who would be a blessing to the ends of the earth. You’ll see. It’s the promise made to the Israelites in Egypt, as they labored under Pharaoh’s cruel oppression. You’ll see. It’s the promise made to them in their wilderness wanderings as they journeyed to the Promised Land. When the food ran out, manna appeared, like crocuses in the vast desert. You’ll see. And finally, it’s the promise made to God’s people as they saw their Lord hanging on a cross. On the barren wood of that cross, a crocus would spring forth in new life, a new creation, as Jesus was raised from the dead. This isn’t we’ll see, but you’ll see. It’s a definite promise. We may not know the hour it will happen, but we know it will happen because God has always been faithful.

This crocus of hope springs up before John the Baptist in his imprisonment. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” he asks Jesus. In reply, Jesus urges him to look for the crocuses. See that the blind receive their sight, that the lame walk, that those with skin diseases are cleansed, that the deaf hear, that the dead are raised, and that the poor have good news brought to them. Look for the crocuses. Not we’ll see or even you’ll see but behold, now among you, the visible signs of the kingdom of heaven are springing up.

It’s only natural that amid the desert, we might long for things to be different. I have certainly asked myself, why God couldn’t let me know exactly what the plan is for my future. Surely, we continue to ask why the weapons of war haven’t been put down or the shootings don’t stop, or why refugees still wander the earth looking for safety, or why those with plenty don’t have more concern for those who constantly go without. We’ll see, seems to be the implicit answer, and it might very well anger us.

But unlike God’s people looking for crocuses in the desert of the eighth and sixth centuries BC, we know something that can change our perspective. We know that on a barren cross, new life sprang up in glory. We know that the anticipated Messiah has come, and that his coming was both unexpected and misunderstood. We know that our salvation didn’t come through military might or a heavy-handed transformation of deserts into places of rejoicing. We know that our Messiah, the One who has come, is coming, and will come again, appears in our lives in a different way, bringing hope.

We know that we can’t truly meet him except in the deserts of our lives. We must find him in the thirsty places and in the parched lands, for there we will find him in those who suffer. We must find Christ in our own loneliness and despair because Jesus knew those very places himself, and a disciple isn’t greater than the master. We must search for Christ among the homeless, for Christ was once homeless, too. We must be brave enough to go into the deep darkness, for Christ is the Light of the world that came intentionally into the world’s darkness.

God’s message is not we’ll see but you’ll see. It will happen. Christ will come again. Christ will meet us in our worst moments and loneliest exiles. The way of the cross is one of self-denial, discipline, and self-sacrifice. But God doesn’t leave us comfortless. For the Holy Spirit comes, daily, strewing crocuses along the way, signs of hope and reassurance that the story isn’t yet finished. Not only us, but all of creation will come alive when this King comes to reign. The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom. We shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. And so, on the way, through the desert, we go. But for now, we must be content to wait, trust, and always keep our eyes open, constantly looking for crocuses.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday of Advent
December 14, 2025

A Message Worth Hearing

The best teachers are those who know the most about their students. If a student is capable but lazy, the good teacher understands that it might be necessary to exert some pressure on the student to help him realize his full potential. A complacent student needs a wake-up call. And this might necessitate some direct, blunt—even harsh—words from the teacher, not harsh words said in anger, but honest words said in love.

Alternatively, there is the more sensitive and diligent student. This student is overscrupulous, always completing the work set before her, always attending class, never sleeping during lectures. This student can still benefit from some direction, but she is more prone to feeling ashamed or judged by overly critical words. A thoughtful teacher will adjust her words to reflect that student’s personality. Such is the mark of an excellent teacher.

St. Gregory the Great, living in the 6th century, applied this wisdom to the pastor of a congregation. A wise priest, he suggested, would be gentle with those who are gentle in spirit, urging them towards holiness through encouragement and mild exhortation. But for a recalcitrant, spiritually lazy parishioner, the same priest would be more direct and blunter. A good priest and pastor, St. Gregory believed, would be able to navigate many personalities and many spiritual dispositions. In our own age, which is easily offended by direct speech, it might be helpful to learn to hear messages in more ways than one.

I think that John the Baptist, with all his ruggedness and wild mannerisms understands the need to tailor the message of good news to different groups of people. Some of the people who come to him in the wilderness understand his message of repentance. On the surface, it’s not a condemnatory or offensive message. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. That’s actually remarkably good news. Can you imagine anything better? Those whose lives are changed by the invitation to repentance come to John at the Jordan River, and he baptizes them.

But then, John’s personality shifts on a dime. When he sees the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming to him, venom pours out of his mouth. You can almost see his pulsating neck veins and red face. You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? This group is full of the ultra-religious who like their religion neat and tidy. We, too, know this type, which transcends all religions. They are the inordinately dutiful who are good at adhering to the letter of the law but neglecting the spirit of it. They are the contemporary Christians who are complacent in their favored status and who judge non-conformers harshly.

One would suspect that such folks are the most adequate candidates for John’s baptism. But John smells a rat. Like a wise pastor, he knows that the Pharisees and Sadducees do not understand the heart of his baptism. His baptism is not based on privileged right of spiritual lineage or on being dutiful. His baptism is not an external rite that has no bearing our own inner lives. His baptism is a baptism for the repentance of sins. His baptism necessitates an about-face, a change of direction, a change of heart. To undergo John’s baptism, one must feel compunction and be cut to the heart.

John’s harsher words are directed to the spiritually complacent with a perfunctory view of salvation. Some of the most rigorously practiced religion can be the most spiritually lazy, practiced by those who hear what they want to hear but who need a wake-up call. And John gives it to them. Terrifying images of judgment spew forth from his lips, replete with sharp objects and fire. The last word we hear from his lips today is about an unquenchable fire.

So, which side of John do we need to hear today? We are not alike in this room. I know for a fact that we all bring different histories to this church. Some of us were brought up on a steady spiritual diet of fire and brimstone language. It doesn’t take us long to begin to feel on our skin the lick of flames from an eternal hell. It doesn’t take us long to feel terror at being chosen or being damned. It’s very difficult to hear John’s words and not feel repulsed, or at the very least, worried all over again, with unpleasant memories dredged up from Sunday School classrooms of the past.

But there are also some of us who grew up with no talk of sin. We heard a lot about God’s love—and thanks be to God for that, but it was considered unpopular, even uncouth, to mention sin or judgment. We have seen the fruits of that reticence in vapid proclamations from pulpits, empty pews, and careless lives. We know what it’s like when the Gospel message loses its meaty substance. And because of this spiritual coddling, we have become a bit spiritually lazy, picking and choosing what we want and rejecting what we don’t want from the buffet in front of us.

So, which side of John do we need to hear today? Truth be told, our dispositions might vary from day to day. On one day, we might be sensitive, fragile, and run the risk of being spiritually harmed if we listen too closely to John’s words to the Pharisees and Sadducees. But on another, when we have gotten lazy about our prayer and commitments to the Church, we would benefit from John’s wake-up call. At times, only the harshest of proclamations seems to get our attention. So, which is it that you need today? Fierce John or gentle John?

Only you can decide. But there is one thing that is clear beneath all John’s words, whether fierce or gentle. And that is nothing less than the heart of the Gospel. If John cared nothing for the Gospel, his words might have been much milder in tone to the Pharisees and Sadducees. But John cares, and we should care, too.

John’s cry in the wilderness was true in those ancient days, and it’s still true today. The kingdom of heaven has drawn near. We are not so much moving towards it as it is moving towards us. It’s nearer than we can imagine. As St. Augustine of Hippo said, God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.

Repentance convicts us when we are going in the wrong direction. We are bowing to our golden calves on our many hill altars, and we simply cannot see that the one, true, living God has drawn near to us. Christ is alive. He’s alive in you, and he’s alive in me. And because we are so often unaware of this reality or are spiritually lazy, someone must wake us up. On some days, it might be fierce John. On others, it’s simply a vivid reminder that when we are drawn into despair, the God who created us, sustains us, and has redeemed us is nearer to us than we are too ourselves. Repent! The kingdom of God has drawn near. Wake up! Jesus is alive within you.

Perhaps those who are complacent with their Christian stature need to hear John’s words in their brutal honesty, to prevent them from scaring other people into shame and exempting themselves from God’s judgment. And perhaps those of us who are traumatized by manipulative religion need to understand that not talking about sin and judgment isn’t the answer either, nor is avoiding difficult speech. No matter what our experience is, the kingdom of God has drawn near. God is already among us. God has already chosen us to bear fruit for the kingdom of God.

The ax is lying at the root of the tree, but lest we forget, remember that the tree has not yet been cut down. The chaff and the wheat are being separated as we speak, but the chaff has not yet been burned up. God’s fire is a purifying fire. It is unquenchable in its desire to refine us and try us as silver is tried, not for us to suffer and live in shame, but for us to live in God.

What words of John do you need to hear today? Only you will know. But whatever message you take away, know this: The kingdom of heaven has drawn near. God is closer to you than you can comprehend. And Jesus’s Gospel has come, is coming, and will come to bring good news to the poor, relief to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. However, you choose to hear it, above all, hear it well. For no matter how the message is delivered, this Gospel is something we need to hear.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday of Advent
December 7, 2025      

Left Behind

I suspect that many of us have a long list of questions that we want our Lord to answer when we meet him face to face. We could start with the Bible itself. Lord, tell us why God didn’t lead the people of Israel directly to the Promised Land. Why did they have to go the long way there? Tell us, Lord, why it was necessary for Joseph to be thrown into a pit by his brothers and then sold into slavery, all so that God’s people could eventually find a place of refuge in Egypt. Lord, tell us why the eyes of the disciples walking on the road to Emmaus were kept from recognizing Jesus.

Tell us, Lord, why we can’t know the day or the hour that the Son of Man will come again? Why is it that not even the Son himself claimed to know? And please tell us, Lord, which of the two women grinding meal and which of the two men working in the field were saved and which were condemned? Or do we already think we know the answer to that question?

Of course, many Christians do think they know the answer. In the rapture, those taken away are whisked off to a land of paradise, while the evil ones are left with the hell of this earth. But maybe this isn’t so clear after all. Do we really know the answer to that question? Are we really supposed to know?

It doesn’t seem that we are supposed to know. And sometimes, not knowing is precisely the point. Often, there is a supreme gift in not knowing. No one wants to know whether they will develop some horrible disease later in life. No one really wants to know how and when they will die. If we knew all those things, life would be one endless worry.

And some in the Church have banked precisely on this tactic of fear. If the ones left behind are the bad ones, then what better way to encourage good behavior than to stir up anxiety by coopting Jesus’s words. After all, if the owner of the house had known exactly when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. We must be ready, too, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

Such fear mongering should make us uneasy, though. According to Scripture, love is the opposite of fear. To obey God’s commandments and live virtuously simply out of fear is the height of spiritual immaturity. And centuries of wielding the stick instead of the carrot hasn’t done a lot of good for the Church. Frankly, it has done more harm than good. What is the answer, then? Are those left behind the good ones or the bad ones? Can we ever know? And if we can’t ever know, does it really matter? Is knowing the answer really the point?

Let’s try, if we can, to dispel all fear from our minds for just a moment. Let’s try to read the passage from Matthew’s Gospel without elevating our blood pressure. Let’s try to imagine how Jesus is offering us a lovely gift in telling us that we will not know when his Second Coming will be. Let’s try to find some good news in this confounding passage.

The truth is that, for now, we are all left behind. Our Lord has come, and he has gone to the right hand of the Father. We are all left behind, and that is not a bad thing. Jesus’s departure was never presented as a doomsday affair, although the disciples were certainly bereft in the immediate aftermath of his ascension. Indeed, John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus’s departure from earth was a gift, so that his followers would be given the power of his Spirit to enable them to do works even greater than he had done. Maybe being left behind and not knowing the future, for now, is a holy opportunity to live as if we are alive rather than asleep. And that is a good thing.

It seems no coincidence that all the passages surrounding today’s Gospel passage have to do with what we do in this life. They are about being spiritually proactive. They are about moving from words and ideas to deeds and actions. They are all about spiritual work and making the most of the present time. Jesus tells of a faithful and wise slave whom a master has put in charge of his household. That slave who is working when the master comes home is considered blessed. The one who takes advantage of the master’s delay in coming home and behaves badly is condemned.

Only five young women of the ten who took lamps to meet the bridegroom were considered wise, because they had the good sense to bring oil with them. The others were unprepared. The servant who hid the one talent given to him by his master was judged harshly because, out of fear, he hoarded the talent and didn’t invest it. And Jesus says that the ones who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the imprisoned do all those things to him. It seems that what we do in this life has everything to do with entering the kingdom of God. Maybe being left behind is not such a bad thing after all.

Those who want nothing more than to be raptured away from this world often care nothing about this world. But this is the world that Jesus came to save. This is the world into which he was born, upon whose soil he walked, whose people he healed and taught, and in which he suffered and died, all so that this world might be saved. Maybe being left behind isn’t such a bad thing after all, because loving and caring for this world and the people of this world is precisely the point. Perhaps this is why Jesus doesn’t want us to know the day or the hour when he will come again.

But right now, the world is asleep. It is a time of great malaise, even within the Church. People are walking around and breathing and going about their daily tasks, but they appear lifeless. Many simply want to escape the hell of this world. They want to be raptured. They are numb from the anxieties of this world. They are plain tired of putting their trust in gods that will never take care of them. They are repelled by centuries of the Church wielding the stick. But there is also great hope, and there is hunger, too. Many are hungry for love, and they are also hungry for a Church that expects something from them because that is good news for those of us left behind.

For those of us left behind, the good news is that Jesus will come again. He will bring God’s kingdom to earth. There will be judgment, and that will be a gift because it will mean that God’s kingship is the only kingship that matters. And in that kingdom, there will no longer be any thirsty or poor or oppressed or forsaken. Christ will be all in all.

But for now, those of us left behind must wake up from our sleep. We must open our eyes and do the work that Jesus has called us to do. Now is the moment for us to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.

Not knowing when Jesus will come again is what directs our attention to the world that Jesus came to save. It fixes our eyes on the stomachs that are empty and the lost who need to be found and the weeping who need to be comforted. It animates our very souls so that we are alive in Christ, radiating the joy of a Gospel that is the world’s healing balm. Those of us who are left behind for now are not condemned but chosen and called, called to resuscitate an apathetic and aimless generation that needs the healing power of Christ.

We are left behind, and we don’t know the day or the hour that the Son of Man will appear again in glory. We don’t know why this world has to be the way it is sometimes. We don’t know whether at the Second Coming those taken away or those left behind are the good or the bad ones. But truth be told, it doesn’t really matter. We’re not meant to know. But what we do know for sure is this: Christ will come again, and it will be the best thing this world has ever known. The only question is: will we be awake and ready?

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday of Advent
November 30, 2025

Down to the Studs

Have you ever tried to think about nothing? My first experience was in a high school English class when the teacher invited us to try, for one minute, to think about nothing. Hardly ten seconds had passed before my mind was wandering off in all kinds of directions. Distractions abounded.

It was some years later that I discovered the practice of contemplative prayer, in which the point is not so much to think about nothing but to pray without words. The pray-er sits in silence, and when the distracting thoughts come—and they always will—one does not engage or judge the thoughts. The pray-er returns to a prayer word, a holy word that can be uttered gently as an invitation into silence. This silence is God’s first language, according to St. John of the Cross. And it was John of the Cross, Teresa of Ávila, and other mystics of the Church who knew the rigors of contemplative prayer. Such prayer strips the pray-er down to the studs, so to speak, where nothing is left but a naked reliance on God alone. In that land of uncertainty, which can’t be controlled by our efforts, all that we have suppressed in our attempts to hide from God rises to the surface. Tears often well up, too. There is nowhere to hide, and in discovering that painful reality, the pray-er also discovers God in the depths of the heart.

It is to this deepest place of the heart that Jesus takes us in the apocalyptic passage towards the end of Luke’s Gospel. This is not, however, the usual way of reading the passage. But if we read it spiritually, we can imagine Jesus leading us through the practice of prayer, way down into the depths of our being, where God speaks and, where we can only listen to God after being reduced to silence.

The usual way of reading Jesus’s apocalyptic discourse is with anxiety and fear as an obsession with the end times. All the talk of wars and insurrections, of nations rising against nations, of earthquakes, persecutions, famines, and plagues is, frankly, terrifying. But even before such horrors, Jesus’s disciples will be arrested, persecuted, and thrown into prison. Those who love Jesus will be hated, even by their blood relatives. Hearing this passage provokes many distractions, like trying to think about nothing.

And this is why the typical way of reading the passage becomes a quest for certainty and specifics. It asks the same question that Jesus was asked when he predicted the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. When will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place? To this Jesus responds, “do not be led astray.” Jesus, it seems, is inviting us to navigate these very real, worldly distractions not with fear or anxiety, but with confident silence and a focused journey into the deepest regions of the heart.

The destruction of the Temple was indeed a real event. One can see the remains of that event even today in Jerusalem. But there is something more going on in Jesus’s dramatic discourse. The destruction of the Temple is also a spiritual image for us. In Christ, allegiances to places, things, and ways of being are reoriented around him. Jesus becomes the temple. Jesus becomes our focus. Jesus becomes our worship. And now, through the power of the Spirit, the temple can be found everywhere, especially in our hearts.

Beware that you are not led astray, Jesus says, for many will come in my name and say, I am. They will hijack the divine name for their illicit purposes. From the moment Jesus uttered those words even until the present day, many will lure us into idolatry claiming to be I am. Earthly rulers will come, saying, I am the one who will look out for you. But do not go after them, Jesus says. The allure of money will come saying, I am the security of your future and the certainty of your prosperity. But do not go after them, Jesus says. Anxiety will come saying, I am the one to worship because I will help you prepare for what lies ahead. But do not go after them, Jesus says. Succes and power will come saying, I am the way to fame and recognition that you have always longed for. But do not go after them, Jesus says. Many false idols will come, masquerading as angels of light, blasphemously laying claim to the divine name and urging us to worship them. But we should not go after them.

All these false idols and shallow promises are the root of so much of the evil that reigns in our own day. They are real, but they are distractions from our true calling. And Jesus invites us not to fall under their sway but to follow his summons into the depths of our hearts, into silence, where something else is to be found.

And if we make it far enough through this apocalyptic passage despite our fear and anxiety of what is to come, Jesus leads us to a place of great comfort. It is a place that is found in the very midst of troubles and distractions. In that place, suffering cannot be divorced from glory. Life cannot be separated from death. Sacrifice cannot be pulled apart from gain. And in that confounding truth, the pearl of the Gospel shines, even as the world is turned upside down.

In our perseverance through wars, unrest, natural disasters, and persecutions, we journey to the depths of the heart, to the place of silence. And from out of that place of silence and godly focus in the midst of chaos rises an opportunity to testify. For too long, we have assumed that prosperity and success are signs of God’s favor. But in the cross-shaped life of following our Lord, things are not quite so simple. In the places where all chaos is breaking loose, we have an opportunity to testify to the good news in Christ. Jesus calls us into that forbidden country, and we must be brave enough to go there.

But what shall we say? What can we say to a world hostile to the Gospel because it has lost trust in the Church? What can we say from ground zero of war, societal injustice, and biting division? How can we speak a Gospel whose very nature is humble suffering in the face of Christian triumphalism?

In the face of this gaping question, we are left with silence. We can only learn what we are to say when we are brought to the land of no words and have relinquished all our attempts to control what we say and do. It is there in that lonely, silent place that we are given the best news imaginable. It is there that Jesus himself will give us the words to say and a wisdom that none of our opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. It is there in that deep place of the heart, where all our idols have been razed to the ground and we are left with nothing but a pure, unrelenting love of God, that we can truly understand that not a hair of our heads will perish because by our endurance, we have gained our souls. We have gained true life, not by our own efforts but by letting God speak within us.

Today’s Gospel passage would not be the most obvious choice for Commitment Sunday. Thankfully, the passages have been chosen by the community of the Church. But nevertheless, we have been given an extraordinary gift from Luke’s Gospel. We are reminded of Jesus’s call not to follow the distractions and false idols of this age. We are invited to journey, with great endurance, through the tempting lures toward earthly success, fame, wealth, power, and security. In giving sacrificially of ourselves to God, we are letting God strip us down to the studs, where every false pretense, worry, anxiety, and unholy desire is refined in the purifying fire of the Holy Spirit so that nothing is left but a single-minded loyalty to the One who will give us true life.

Whether we like it or not, all the visible distractions of our own lives, all our human conceit, all our desire for control, and all the projects of our hubris will come crumbling down at some point. Not one stone of them will be left upon another. But in the silence of their destruction, a new sound is heard. It is the murmuring of God doing a new thing. And in the painful loss of all that we have worshipped and held dear, something new rises. From the tomb emerges a prayerful patience and a silent waiting for a word from God, who will equip us with the right words to speak in this age of desolation. In the place of all our fears, anxieties, and earthly hopes dashed to the ground will rise a total trust that each of our hairs are counted by God. And through such enduring trust, one day, we will find our souls.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
November 16, 2025        

Irrational Hope

I know someone who, from a young age, understood very clearly what his vocation was. God was calling him to serve as a church musician. As a child, he stated unequivocally to his family that his vocation was to serve God from the organ console and through directing choirs. Now, his grandfather, as a financial planner, was a practical man. That was not a bad thing in and of itself, for he instructed his family in the important habits of using money wisely, saving for retirement, and giving to the church. But as a practical man, he was a bit concerned about his grandson’s presumed vocation. And so, one day he pulled the child’s mother aside. He said to her, “I notice that your son likes the finer things in life, but he also wants to be a church musician. I’m concerned about how those two loves will work together.” Later, when the boy heard about his grandfather’s words of concern, his response was clear and simple. “Mama, don’t you think that if God wants me to serve him in the church, he’ll take care of me?” After that, no one dared to ask him another question.

After Jesus responds to the Sadducees in today’s Gospel, no one dared to ask him another question either. The Sadducees question the reality of the resurrection and hope to demonstrate that such belief is utterly foolish. But Jesus, looking to Scripture, says that to God, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still alive, for God is God not of the dead but of the living. And this response silences the scribes and presumably the Sadducees, too.

We may well rejoice in Jesus’s vindication of resurrection life in the face of rational skepticism. As usual, Jesus dispels the arguments of his opponents. But if we dig deeper, I suspect that in each of us there’s more of the skeptical Sadducee than we might like to admit. We may have found the story of the boy vigorously defending his vocation as a church musician to be charming, but in the same breath, we might also be inclined to write it off as youthful, naïve sensibility. Is there not some part of us that has a very real fear of handing our practical well-being and financial security over to God?

The questions and cynicism of the Sadducees reflect the concerns of their age, but those concerns manifest themselves in different ways in our own day. The practice of levirate marriage commanded by ancient law was a means of ensuring the security of biological lineage and the family name. It was a way of controlling something that we can’t always cddontrol. In such an arrangement the widow was no more than a piece of property used to secure that genealogical future. For those who didn’t believe in a resurrection from the dead, the only way to preserve one’s memory and legacy was through biological kin. Hence, the Sadducees grill Jesus with a preposterous question about which of the seven brothers will be the husband of the widow in the resurrection.

But Jesus counters stone cold reason with the irrational belief in a resurrection life. Jesus contrasts this rational age where humans must control their legacy and where death is the end of the story with an irrational age in which all are alive in God, where death is not the end of the story, and where we ultimately can’t control gifts from God.

Jesus asks for us to believe and live in a way that seems excessive to our logical, rational world. In such a world, it’s excessive to ask us to put our hope in a life that we can’t see or have certainty about. It’s excessive to live in this age as if we’re in the next age. It’s excessive not to reject this world but, instead, live in it with a transformed understanding of what God can do. It’s excessive to believe that death isn’t the end of the story. It’s excessive to put God at the center of our lives, when that means not being anxious about all the practical considerations of this age. It’s all simply too much according to the rationality of this age.

We inhabit an age of reason, which is a tiresome legacy of the Enlightenment period. And this legacy of rationalizing has become our excuse to quietly ignore the demands that Jesus makes on us. It’s too difficult, we say. Indeed, it does exceed anything we are prepared to do and believe. But that’s only because God always surpasses our expectations. God always loves more than we can imagine he would love. God always forgives people we ourselves are not prepared to forgive. God always provides for us even when we seem to lack basic necessities. God always makes things new that have grown old. And that’s too much for our finite brains to comprehend.

The questions of the Sadducees aren’t bad questions, nor are our own practical questions bad. They’re just simply the wrong questions to ask of God. They’re wrong because, thankfully, God doesn’t operate in our paradigm of finite resources and scarcity. They’re the wrong questions because God always transcends even our grandest hopes and does far more than we can ask or imagine.

Every week in the Nicene Creed, we profess belief in the resurrection of the dead, but then we sometimes proceed to live as if we don’t. To us, an innocent, childlike belief that God will take care of us if we follow his call seems like a nice idea but highly impractical. To us, it’s irrational to believe that our present day’s searing injustice isn’t actually evidence for God’s lack of concern for humanity. To us, to give of ourselves, our time, and our money to God and neighbor is an exorbitant ask when there are so many other competing demands. To our age of reason, to persist hopefully in the face of so much anxiety and fear is as foolish as imagining whose wife the widow will be in resurrection life.

But amid the very real atrocities of our cold, rational age and amid the convincing voices of scarcity that assail us every day, we can easily forget that Jesus came so that we might have life and have it abundantly. We can even become so obsessed with resurrection life that we forget how to live in this life. When Jesus says that God is God not of the dead but of the living, he means that to God all are alive, those who have physically died and those of us who still breathe on this earth. And if that’s the case, then resurrection life impinges even on this frail earthly existence. If Jesus came to give us abundant life, then we must live as if it were so. Even in this life, the Christian struggle is to embrace irrational hope in the face of rational despair.

Yes, Jesus asks for too much, because in this frail existence, all we try to give will fall short of what we’re capable of giving. And yet, we try. Jesus asks us to integrate our lives so that in all we do, sacred and secular, we’re alive to God. Jesus asks us to give of ourselves, our souls and bodies, not as if it’s excessive but as if it’s not enough. And in doing so, we begin to learn something of the God who gives perfectly of himself in love.

In days of old, Christians lived irrationally every day of their lives, facing literal death to follow Christ. In our own day, we may not face literal death to follow Jesus, but we face a challenge that might seem as insurmountable as martyrdom. If we live as if we’re truly and fully alive in God, then we will live deeply against the grain of this world. If we believe in resurrection life, then we will live and breathe an irrational hope that others will scorn with rational skepticism.

Jesus does ask a lot of us, for he asks us to be fully alive in a world that’s dead and lifeless. He asks us to trust that even when the tired, old enemies of fear and anxiety assault us, God is stronger than they are. Jesus asks us to have faith that when our resources seem too finite God is granting us infinite abundance. Jesus asks us to have the innocent, pure hope of a child who is convinced that if God is calling us to do something, he will always take care of us. Yes, in our rational world, Jesus is asking quite a lot of us. But in the irrationality of the age to come, whatever our hopes and dreams may be, God will always exceed them.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost
November 9, 2025

To Be One, Too

Some time ago, on a dreary gray morning, I was on my way to run an errand, and I was nervous and agitated. A few hours in my future, I would officiate at a liturgy in the presence of someone who felt like an enemy to me. I had never met the person. The person had never personally offended me. But I was deeply unsettled at the thought of being in the same room as this person.

As I headed to my destination, I was stewing about what to do. I realized that I couldn’t muster alone the courage to make it through the liturgy. I was also fearful and anxious, so I was praying for God to help me. As I passed a hospital, I recalled that it was where my former spiritual director had been born. He had died only a few months before, and I was bereft of his spiritual guidance and still mourning his death. Pray for me, I uttered in my heart, addressing my friend in Christ who was continuing on his spiritual journey in the next life. Pray for me.

I knew he would, and I knew that I could benefit from his prayers. He had been a leader in the Church himself, guiding God’s people during a painful and difficult time. He had faced death threats over his decisions, which were rooted in love, however unpopular to some they were. He had known the heart-wrenching pain of trying to hold a fractured Church together. But he had embodied kindness and gentleness in the face of persecution. What more appropriate person could I ask to pray for me? He had persisted in love in the face of his enemies. Surely, his prayers would come to my aid.

And they did. After the service that morning, the person I was so afraid of meeting spoke to me. And to my discomfort at the time, the person embraced me. In hindsight I wonder, was this a gift? Was God speaking to me through this person, urging me to rise above petty resentment? Perhaps this was precisely how my prayers that day were answered, however unsettling and surprising the answer may have been.

Look above you at the stained-glass windows on either side of the nave. From your position in the pews, it’s very hard to make out the faces of that motley cloud of witnesses, much less identify who they are. I have often thought of those stained-glass windows as a cloud of witnesses hovering above us, praying for and with us, even watching over us in love. But I also wish that they were on eye level. I wish they seemed as approachable to us as my former spiritual director did on that day some years ago. I wish the saints depicted in glass above us would stand on the level ground with us, as Jesus does in Luke’s Gospel. In Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, they are delivered on a level place, unlike Matthew’s Gospel, where they are preached on a mountain. And so, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus looks up at his disciples before pronouncing his blessings and woes. Standing on the level ground before them, he looks right into their eyes.

And accordingly, Luke’s Beatitudes speak of real, concrete situations. The poor are those who are literally struggling to survive. The hungry are literally those who wonder where their next meal will come from. The sorrowful are suffering right here and now. The persecuted are those who dare to speak a word of the gospel to a world positioned against the gospel. These are real people and real problems.

For this reason, I wish the saints above us were more approachable. Don’t you want to see their faces? Don’t you want to see what they’re wearing? Don’t you want to imagine what their faces are saying about the lives they lived, with all their tangible problems? It’s far too easy for us to spiritualize the saints, to place them on pedestals, to make them superhuman. But the truth is that these saints were human and sinful and imperfect, just like us. As the hymn tells us, “you can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea, for the saints of God are just folk like me.”[1] Do you mean to be one, too?

These saints are both like us and perhaps unlike us, which might inspire us to be more like them. These saints, revered by the Church, known and unknown, are ones who have lived against the grain of the world. They are ones who have embodied in their fallible human lives Jesus’s commands to go above and beyond the comfortable and the usual tit-for-tat behavior of this world.

The saints have exceeded an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The saints have not only loved those who love them. They have loved their enemies. They blessed those who cursed them and prayed for those who abused them. They gave not just an inch but went the extra mile in love, mercy, and compassion. In short, the saints have shown forth in human time something of the infinitely bountiful and perfect love of almighty God.

But we still live in the now of the Beatitudes, where the poor only get poorer and the comfortable ignore their plight, where hungry bellies are the consequence of too many well-sated people, where the tears have not yet been wiped away from the eyes of all people, where cruel words are returned for cruel words, where it's popular to hate our enemies, and where many go above and beyond in violence and hatred rather than in love. And even while we muddle through this now of the present, the lives of the saints rise above the surface of this unjust world like a topographical relief showing us another way. In the lives of the saints, we catch glimpses of an alternative reality that is the kingdom of God, our promised inheritance. Meanwhile, in this now of the present, we wait with hope and eager longing for this kingdom to be fully realized.

I do wish those saints hovering above us were one level down, on this level place among us, so we could see more visibly their humanity. I wish they could come alive from those fragments of colored glass to tell us their stories. I wish we could hear their voices saying, yes, you can be one, too. Like you, we were poor and watched the poor suffer. We knew searing hunger and wept over empty stomachs. And yet, we lived with eyes and hearts towards that other reality, towards the kingdom of God. We lived as if there were abundance and not scarcity, love and not hate, hope and not fear.

Perhaps those saints would show us that God’s justice is far more than a balancing of the scales. God’s justice is not simply putting a woe on one side of the scale to balance out a blessing. God’s justice is not afflicting the rich and contented and powerful just to even out the score. For then, it would not be mere justice but crude retribution. Perhaps the saints would tell us that God’s justice requires going above and beyond the normal call of duty. And this means that in heavenly terms, loss is gain and gain is loss.

I suspect the saints would tell us that when aspiring to holiness and saintliness seems superhuman, Jesus offers us good news. The holy ordinariness of Christian living shines forth in doing things, in training to be virtuous in action, so that one day, yes, we might be saints, too.

In a world that urges us to cancel those with whom we disagree and hate our enemies, Jesus and the saints call us to pray for those who hate us, to love them beyond subjective emotion by acting as if we loved them. Jesus and the saints call us to return every evil word or action or curse with a good, kind, holy response. In all that we do, we are seeking to be some small echo of that One who on the cross went above and beyond, giving his life for those who would hate him, forgiving those who persecuted him.

In just a few minutes, Sloane will go into the water of the font, the same water that saints have passed through in ages past. She will die to an old way of life and rise to a new one that goes above and beyond in love. And all of us will make a promise to go above and beyond in supporting her, a promise that we should endeavor to keep for the rest of our lives. It’s a seemingly impossible task, but today, of all days, we remember that we’re never alone in this journey. As I learned on that gray day some time ago, an entire cloud of witnesses who have known the trials and tribulations of this life are right next to us on this level place, supporting us, praying for us, some are named and some remain unnamed. “You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea, for the saints of God are just folk like me.” And blessedly, by the grace of God, you and I can be one, too.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Sunday in the Octave of All Saints’ Day
November 2, 2025

[1] “I sing a song of the saints of God” by Lesbia Scott, Hymn 293 in The Hymnal 1982

Change from the Inside Out

Last Sunday, two of our parishioners stood at the lectern and spoke movingly about their commitment to this parish. Then they explained their process for deciding how to make a sacrificial gift of money to support ministry at Good Shepherd. They told us that when they prayed about what pledge offering God was asking them to make for next year, they asked to be challenged. They didn’t determine what they could give after prioritizing other needs. They approached things the other way around. They asked for God to challenge them so that his will might be done.

Perhaps you were as touched by those words as I was. How often do we begin prayer by asking God to challenge us? The more tempting approach is to come to prayer with the intention of changing God. We want God to make us well or help us find that new job or redirect the hurricane so that it misses our hometown, which, of course, means that it will likely hit someone else’s hometown. It also means that if someone stays sick or the new job doesn’t pan out, then God is asleep at the switch. There’s an unspoken assumption that the answer to prayer usually involves some kind of change on God’s part.

Our forebears in the faith thought this way from time to time, just as we might be prone to do. They asked for God to spare them from their enemies, which frequently translated into the slaughter of those same enemies. They begged God to change his mind about the wrath they were sure he would swiftly inflict upon them because of their sin. But how many times can you recall anyone in the Bible asking for God to change them, much less challenge them?

I can’t think of many, but one is the tax collector in today’s parable. Let’s refrain from demonizing the Pharisee, though. He’s rightly doing what the law requires of him, and of course, he certainly should be doing those good things, like tithing and fasting. We should all be doing them. The Pharisee is simply a stock character that represents the most visibly religious, those of us who sometimes think that we have no need to change or that we have our spiritual lives sewn up nicely.

But the tax collector is the pariah of ancient times, who is in cahoots with the oppressive Roman government, skimming some for himself from the top of what the people owe to Rome. And yet, he is praying to be changed and challenged. Unlike the Pharisee, who is standing by himself, the tax collector is standing far off. Physically, by his posture in prayer, with eyes downcast and beating his breast, the tax collector pleads for God to change him. Only by calling upon God’s mercy will he be brought closer to God. And in standing far off and asking for mercy, the tax collector is implicitly standing not alone but with his neighbors. Visibly, this tax collector doesn’t seem to be close to God, but that’s only because he hopes he will be changed from the inside out.

The Pharisee, on the other hand, starts in the place of self-righteousness, telling God just how dutiful he is, which is hardly a prayer at all. Does he really want to change? Does he really want to be challenged? Does he have any need or concern for the neighbors who are “other” to him? If he considers them to be sinners, does his heart break over their sins? Does he long for their restoration to communion with God? He seems to scorn the visibly sinful, whom he readily names. But whether he wants it or not, he, too, will be changed, except unlike the tax collector, he will be changed from the outside in. After all, those who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.

The truth is that all of us will be changed by God in some way or other, and it will either be from the inside out or from the outside in. If we live oriented to the things of this world, we will need to be changed from the outside in. Everything about our culture tells us that we have little need to change ourselves unless it involves climbing to the top of a social ladder. And even that usually involves changing others.

We must convince others that we are worthy of the coveted job or of entering the ranks of the elite university. We must argue our academic theses by proving that we are right and convincing others to change their minds. If others disagree with our opinions and convictions, we must get them to agree with us. Even in the Church, we can easily imagine standing by ourselves, looking down on the visible sinners, those “others.” We can laud ourselves over our tithe or faithful attendance at Mass, but meanwhile, lurking within our hearts are the poisons of pride, envy, lust, and wrath, things that might not visibly express themselves but that turn us away from our neighbors and inwards on ourselves.

It all has to do with our starting place. If we stand far off like the tax collector, we’re able to be changed and challenged and to orient our lives around the fixed point of God’s unchanging mercy and compassion. The more we understand that God never changes in his love and mercy, the less we tend to feel judgmental and resentful of others.

This is no easy task, but the Church, in her gracious wisdom, has given us the spiritual practice of confession that can help us shape our prayer so that we may be changed from the inside out, rather than the outside in. The tax collector represents one making a good confession, because he’s not asking for God’s mind to change; he’s asking for God to change him. There’s an unspoken protective mechanism in our longing to change God’s mind in that we hope we won’t have to change ourselves. Amid our cries for justice when asking God to bring condemnation on the visibly guilty, we duplicitously shield ourselves from God’s invisible demands on us. We ask not to be challenged but to be vindicated, and as such, we long for immunity from forgiving and showing compassion to our neighbors.

But in the sacrament of reconciliation, in which we confess our sins to God in the presence of a priest, the Church invites us to start in the position of the tax collector. The starting place in confession is the same, regardless of whether you tithe or don’t tithe to the church. It’s the same whether you are a CEO or a plumber. The starting place means that all of us are sinners and need to be changed and challenged.

In a good confession, we don’t make excuses for our behavior, nor do we grovel before God in recounting our sins. And we certainly shouldn’t feel a perverse pride in shocking the confessor. We simply kneel before God and the Church, which is represented by the priest. We come to confession without anyone but the priest knowing about it. It’s a private affair that protects us from pride. We objectively name our sins, without justification for why we did it and without blaming anyone else.

This regular practice keeps us humble. But for the confessor, there’s an extra temptation to pride as one who pronounces God’s forgiveness for others. And that’s why regular confession is necessary for confessors, too. Indeed, to be a confessor is to be brought low, because one realizes the astounding honesty of others in their own confessions. The truth is that in confession, both priest and penitent start in the same place, as sinners in need of God’s mercy.

Perhaps our simple and objective prayers might be the truest. God, have mercy upon me a sinner! They make space for the Spirit to pray within us. Although sacramental confession is ostensibly the most private act of the Church, it also draws us closer to our neighbors. The deepest prayer comes from our own recognition of how lost we are. We must become poor to pray well.[1] In that poverty, we find communion with our neighbors, who are fallible and broken, just like we are.

The heart of prayer is not trying to get God to change his mind; it’s in asking for God to change our minds and our hearts, to challenge us. In confession, we orient our lives around the fixed reality of God’s immovable mercy and compassion. God has no need to change nor is he capable of change. But we need all the change we can get to grow more into the likeness of God.

To be changed from the inside out, we don’t seek to be justified; rather, we start from far off, kneeling, with head bowed, to hear gentle but powerful words of forgiveness so that God can draw us closer and make us whole again. When we begin our prayer in asking to be changed, we gaze upon Jesus, giving his life willingly upon the cross and forgiving his enemies at the same time. On the cross, everything gets turned upside down and inside out.[2] The unexpected glory of the cross means that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. When face to face with the glory of the cross, each of us will be changed. There’s no escaping that. The only question is this: will it be from the outside in or the inside out?

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
October 26, 2025

[1] See Mark A. McIntosh and Frank T. Griswold, Seeds of Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2022), 140.

[2] This is inspired by an image from the Godly Play Curriculum by Jerome Berryman.

Praying in the Gap

If you are watching this Mass via the livestream, you may be surprised to know that what you are seeing on your screen is about thirty seconds behind live time. Let me stop so you can catch up to those words. There is a discernible lag in time between what I am presently saying and what you are hearing.

I saw this in action a couple of years ago when I brought Communion to a parishioner who, because of health issues, was viewing the livestream next door in our retreat house while the rest of us worshipped in the church. An acolyte accompanied me with a candle as I brought the Blessed Sacrament across the Lady Chapel garden to the retreat house. Our beloved parishioner was praying in the parlor with the livestream on the television, and as I arrived to administer Communion to him, I saw myself on the television just leaving the altar!

It was an odd sensation, as if I had been whisked back in time. Our parishioner was praying as if it were thirty seconds prior to live time. But, despite that time lag, were his prayers any less valid or relevant to the worshippers in the church? Of course not. His prayers had joined with those in the church as I, the priest, offered on their behalf the sacrifice of the Mass.

We are so often caught up in our linear thinking that we struggle to imagine God’s time, what we often call kairos time. According to the chronos, linear time of our Mass livestream, the prayers of those in the church are slightly ahead of those viewing the livestream. But to God, is there really any lag? To suggest a lag could imply two disturbing things. It could intimate that God is always two steps—or thirty seconds—behind whatever our prayers are. And as a result, God is someone we must plead with to change his mind. And if we don’t plead or beg in the right way, then maybe God never catches up to our live time. This sends the message that our prayer is never quite enough.

On the other hand, to suggest a lag between our time and God’s time could foster a sense that our prayers are unnecessary. If we pray for things and we never see them, then God is not just thirty seconds behind us. He might not be listening at all. Or, if God already knows what is going to happen anyway, why even bother to pray? And all of this is to miss the point of prayer.

There seems to be a significant time lag between the widow and the unjust judge in today’s parable. The widow represents the most vulnerable of ancient society, one who has no husband, possibly no family, and therefore, no support network. She is a woman after all in a male-dominated world. If she is poor, she will only become poorer. And if we were to comb through the Old Testament, we would see numerous exhortations to care for the widow and poor. That’s not an option; it’s God’s command.

We must assume that the widow in Jesus’s parable is experiencing some kind of injustice brought on by an unspecified accuser. She has every right, according to Jewish tradition, to beg for justice from the judge. The judge, unfortunately, is a scoundrel—immoral or amoral, apathetic, and one who clearly ignores the Old Testament injunction to care for the vulnerable. He has delayed long in granting justice to the widow. The time lag between experiencing injustice and realizing justice is long, far more than thirty seconds—probably more like many years.

But the widow is persistent. And, as Jesus says, even a corrupt, careless judge will eventually acquiesce to the widow’s demands, not because he is just but because she has been relentlessly persistent. So, how much more, Jesus says, will God grant justice to his children?

And yet, what are we to do as we continue to live in a time lag in this present day? We may very well believe that God will grant justice, but what comfort is that to those who are out of work with no job prospects or to the hungry with no food in sight? What good news is there for the immigrant on the verge of deportation or the ailing person with no financial recourse to decent health care?

Indeed, we could broaden the sense of impatience to expand beyond justice and injustice. What do Jesus’s words mean to us when we send up prayer after prayer in the face of anxiety? What are we to when we ask but don’t receive, seek but don’t find, and knock on a perpetually closed door? What do we do with the time lag between our petitions and God’s response?

The obvious temptation is what we have earlier named. We can imagine that we are simply not praying enough or praying well enough for God to heed our request. We need to be more like the widow, tenacious and relentless in banging on the door to heaven. Or we can give up altogether, wondering what good prayer is at all.

But the point of Jesus’s parable seems to be neither of those things. The point appears to be that we shouldn’t worry so much about the time lag. And if God’s time is different from ours, that would make a great deal of sense. This parable doesn’t offer neat answers. There’s no attempt to explain the time lag between our dissatisfaction with the present state of reality and the advent of God’s justice. Nor does the parable explain the perceived gap between our fervent prayers and God’s clear answer. And the parable certainly doesn’t condone tolerating injustice. The parable only offers a rhetorical question with a kernel of good news for us. Will God delay long in helping his chosen ones? I tell you, Jesus says, God will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

The point, Jesus suggests, is to live in the gap. In our chronos time, injustice lingers, prayers appear to go unanswered, and we frequently seem to lack what we need to fulfill God’s vision for us. All we can do and all we are meant to do is pray. Showing up to pray in such times as these, in the gap and in the time lag, is the visible demonstration of our faith.

But there’s more. We live in an age where we are often told that we should dispense with thoughts and prayers and move to action. But is not this a straw man? Isn’t prayer faith in action? And aren’t all our works in the name of Christ rooted in prayer?

Somehow in the mystery of God, our present prayers are never far removed from the realization of God’s justice. There is no time lag between our prayers and God’s justice. This may be small comfort to those one step away from losing their homes or who are watching the interminable suffering of a loved one, but it’s no reason not to pray. It is, in fact, even more of a reason to pray, because if there’s no time lag in God’s kairos time, then our prayers have everything to do with the justice and healing that God will ultimately bring and indeed is already bringing into fruition. For God will quickly grant justice. The real question is, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

There may be no timelier parable for us in this parish right now than the one Jesus gives us today. We are living in a time lag right now, with transitions ahead of us. In this pledge season, we’re addressing a lag between the vision God has called us to and the financial reality needed to sustain that vision. The Christian life is never static, never complete, never completely realized. It’s always in via, in motion. We’re always on the way as followers of Christ, and that means that, in some sense, we always live in that lag between injustice and justice, between hope and glory, between doubt and trust, between vision and reality.

If we were living solely as citizens of the world outside the Church, we might very well throw up our hands in defeat. The lag is too great. The gap is too wide. But this can never be the case in the Christian life. And at the end of the day, this brings us back to prayer.

We have over two millennia of Christian witnesses behind us who have lived in the time lag between injustice and justice and nevertheless persevered in prayer. Christians in the face of war, famine, persecution, and hideous disaster have hunkered down in prayer. They have made prayer as natural to themselves as their very breath.

Right now, in the time lag, we are like the widow in Jesus’s parable, but our accuser is perhaps more specific than the stock character of a parable. In the time lag of the Christian life, our accuser is the one whom Scripture itself calls the accuser. He’s the one who will try to convince us that the time lag between injustice and justice is insurmountable. He will try to tell us that the gap between scarcity and abundance is too wide. He will make a case against God’s vision for us, citing evidence that we don’t have the stamina, people, gifts, or money to realize that vision.

We shouldn’t believe it, and we shouldn’t fight it either. There’s only one thing we can do, and it’s what our Lord commands us to do. Pray always. Do not lose heart. Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Of course, he will quickly grant justice. The real question is, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

The Whole Story

I wish I had thought of today’s Gospel reading ten years ago when I was sitting at the bedside of a very sick woman in a Washington, DC, hospital. I was in the middle of a summer internship after my first year of seminary, and each day, I would make the rounds in particular departments of the hospital providing pastoral care. A woman wanted to talk with someone, and so I visited her.

I could tell she was tormented inside. In my role as an intern, I had to thread a very careful needle with patients. They came from all religious backgrounds, and sometimes none at all, and this meant that I often encountered theological understandings that chafed against my own core beliefs. But I wasn’t supposed to fix or correct anything I perceived to be bad theology.

The woman in the bed before me was a perfect example of someone wrestling with such a punitive theology. She was suffering and seemed to think it was because her faith wasn’t strong enough. She was certain that her lingering illness was due to some deficiency on her part. Does this sound familiar? It’s what we saw in last week’s Gospel reading when Jesus’s disciples asked for more faith after considering the challenging obligations of discipleship.

As I sat at the bedside of this woman, I knew that she came from a religious tradition that probably encouraged her to think that her sickness was the result of something she had done wrong or, at the very least, due to inadequate faith in God. If only her faith were stronger, she wouldn’t be suffering. I myself had grown up with such an understanding, and maybe that’s why I wanted to comfort her so badly.

I could hardly stand it. I tried every trick in the book to get around the prohibition against correcting anyone’s theology in my pastoral work in the hospital. In hindsight, I wish I could have told her about the story of Jesus cleansing ten men with a skin disease. I could have told it simply as a Bible study and let her draw her own conclusions. I wish I could have shared this story—which she might have already known—and then explained that the point of this story is not so much that the ten men are cleansed and healed. The point is, rather, that only one of the healed men returns to Jesus with thanks. I wish I could have told her that Jesus’s words at the end of this story get misinterpreted in translation. I could have said to her that Jesus’s words to the one thankful man who was healed could be rendered “arise, go your way: your faith has made you whole.”[1]

I would have liked to talk to that woman about the real meaning of faith and its relation to salvation and wholeness. I would have told her that there is so much more than physical healing in this story and that healing and salvation are tied up because God’s wonderful works are oriented towards wholeness and being restored to relationship with God and one another.

I would have explained to that sick woman that this story of Jesus’s healing is complex and contextual. I could have told her that in this part of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is on the way to the cross, and that means that we, his disciples—all of us—are always on the way to the cross as we follow him. And this means that we all suffer, and we all get sick, and it’s not because we’ve sinned but because sickness and brokenness and discomfort are simply a part of life on this side of heaven.

I could have told that hospitalized woman that the real clincher in this story is that the one man who returns to thank Jesus is a Samaritan. A Samaritan! He’s the outsider—you fill in the blanks here—who, like the Good Samaritan back in chapter ten, demonstrates what it really means to follow Jesus. I could have gone on to say that the one man who gave thanks was considered unclean by Jewish ritual standards and therefore needed to keep his physical distance from Jesus and others. He wasn’t allowed in the Temple until a priest determined he was once again clean. And he was a foreigner, an outsider, an enemy of the Jewish people.

And so, I would have explained, when this man is healed and returns to Jesus and Jesus tells him that his faith has made him whole, God has restored him to the community. He is no longer an outcast. He is no longer anathema. And because he has the awareness to recognize what God has done for him and to give thanks for it, he is made whole. His faith is not the reason for his healing. His faith is demonstrated in first seeing that Jesus can heal him, in seeking Jesus’s mercy, in knowing that he has been healed, and then in closing the circle by returning to thank the Giver of the gift.

If I could go back in time to the bedside of that distraught woman, I would have liked to tell her all those things. I might have told her that in Jesus’s ministry, he frequently had to correct misunderstandings that we can see over the course of the Bible itself. That’s why Jesus obliterated a causal relationship between sin and suffering. I would have said that Jesus himself said that his mission was not to seek out the righteous but sinners. I would have told her that we are all sinners. I would have said that if she felt that she needed to keep her distance from Jesus because she felt unclean or unworthy, then all of us, as sinners and fallible human beings, should keep our distance, too.

But then, I would have said that Jesus can heal us over any physical distance, just as he healed those ten men without even laying hands on them. I would have said that what Jesus wants is for every one of us to come closer to him, not just to get something from him but to witness to our faith in thanksgiving for all that we trust he is doing for us. And sometimes—perhaps often—Jesus heals us in ways that we can’t understand. He heals us even when the sickness lingers and death comes. And our salvation is not about escape from torment or avoidance of hell but in being made whole, in being restored to God and one another. And to experience this salvation and wholeness, we must be prepared to return to God again and again in gratitude.

More than anything, if I could go back in time to that woman’s bedside, against the admonitions of my hospital supervisor, I would have wanted to tell her about the Eucharist. I could have explained how the Eucharist ritually acts out the pattern of that story of Jesus and the ten men with a skin disease. If we could have been there on that road between Samaria and Galilee and closed our eyes, we wouldn’t have necessarily known that the ten men had a skin disease. We would only have heard their cry for mercy. That’s all they ask for. And if we closed our eyes in this church, we would hear at the very beginning of the Mass a similar cry for mercy. Lord, have mercy, because we’re all sinners. We’re all broken. We’re all sick and lost in some way. But what we cry out for is mercy. That’s what we need so that God can tend to us and heal us in the mystery of his grace. Our faith, which we profess every week in the Nicene Creed, is nothing less than a corporate belief in a God who will make us whole again.

And if we had been on that road with Jesus and the ten sick men, with eyes still closed, we would have heard one lone voice, minutes after the healing, cry out in praise of almighty God. We do the same here in this church. After a cry of mercy, God calls us to come closer so that he can feed us with the Body and Blood of his Son to make us whole again. We cry out in thanksgiving, and then, we hear a command for all of us to go into the world to proclaim the wonderful works of God.

Just as I wish I could have told that sick woman that her illness was no sign of her estrangement from God, I would like to tell all those who stay far from the Eucharist because of their suffering, that whatever their situation, they are not separated from God, that in their anxiety, loneliness, inner torment, and even anger with the reality of their lives, they can always come closer to God. Indeed, in those times of deep pain and uncertainty, they need the Eucharist the most. They can and should come close to God in the Eucharist, crying for mercy, and then let God do the rest. But I could also tell them that even though, for whatever reason, they choose to remain far off like ten men with a skin disease, Jesus can still heal them.

In the Eucharist, we receive a foretaste of the kingdom of God, where there are no outsiders or foreigners or strangers or untouchables. As a demonstration of our faith and like that one Samaritan man who was healed, we return to the feet of our Lord. We prostrate ourselves before him, week after week, crying out in praise of God, and we give thanks for all that God has done for us, trusting that what God has done is far more than we can ever imagine. God takes the divisions, rancor, and brokenness expressed in our cries of mercy, and God heals us. And then we arise and go on our way, showing the entire world that the God we worship in faith has made us whole.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 12, 2025

[1] Variant of the King James Version translation

A Gift to be Received

Some years ago, when I first encountered the Episcopal Church and its Book of Common Prayer, I also discovered a prayer called A General Thanksgiving. This isn’t The General Thanksgiving we recite at Morning Prayer. It’s A General Thanksgiving, located at the end of the prayer book.

I was in my mid-20s at the time and would often thumb through the prayers and thanksgivings in the prayer book before I went to sleep at night. There was a line in A General Thanksgiving that stirred something deep within my heart. In this prayer of thanks, we offer gratitude to God for many things: “for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love,” among others. And then, we thank God “for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on [God] alone.”

That line was unspeakably beautiful to me. In my nightly prayers, I kept returning to this curious expression of thanks. The possibility of thanking God for disappointments and failures was a seismic shift in my own understanding of the nature of human beings. In my mid-20s, I was moving away from a religious understanding that often seemed to emphasize what was wrong with humanity before God. It could, at times, suggest an easy connection between our misfortune and God’s wrath. But in A General Thanksgiving, I sensed a more optimistic and hopeful perspective on humanity’s relationship with God. There was a mystery of goodness hiding beneath the experience of adversity.

Rather than a dour appraisal of disappointments and failures, this thanksgiving pressed for more meaning. Disappointments and failures, in the providence of God, are not the end of the story, and they are more than an indication of God’s condemnation of human sinfulness, as we often find in the Bible. In that unsettling theology, God’s people fall prey to their enemies because they have sinned—or at least that was the flawed understanding of God’s people as they wrestled with their own disappointments and failures.

This still persists among us today. Hurricane Katrina was God’s vengeance on a sinful city. My cancer is the result of my lack of faith. The Church’s decline is the punishment of God on a rejection of orthodoxy. We do not have to search very hard to find this theology very much alive.

When things aren’t going our way, it’s all too easy to blame God or ourselves. When something is wrong, then we must have done something wrong. Rather than viewing humanity as intrinsically good, even if it’s prone to sin, or creation as ordered towards flourishing even if it’s marred by abuse, we view everything as spiraling downwards into despair. Disappointments and failures, inadequacies and challenges are simply what they are and quite possibly the effects of God’s vengeance upon us. If so, then how could they ever be thankful for opportunities to recognize our dependence on God alone?

When Jesus’s apostles ask him to increase their faith, they are overwhelmed by their disappointments and failures. The ministry field has not been perfect bliss, and they don’t believe that they have enough faith to accomplish what they’ve been asked to do. It’s a bit difficult to determine this from today’s Gospel passage. With no context, the first thing we hear is a desperate request from the apostles. But immediately before their request, Jesus has told them that if any of them should cause another to sin, it would be better for a millstone to be hung around their necks and that they be cast into the sea. And if someone sins against them, even as much as seven times a day, and then repents seven times, they should forgive that person. Before these warnings, our Lord has made it abundantly clear that the cost of discipleship will be very steep. It all seems like a hopeless, impossible task.

No wonder the apostles ask for an increase of faith. They are feeling wholly inadequate and unfit for discipleship. Quite simply, something is missing in their lives. Something is wrong. Their feelings of unworthiness pitted against God’s demands must seem like a disappointment or failure on their part. And for them, that seems to be the end of the story.

What’s needed is a divine intervention. God must add something to what they perceive they don’t have. They don’t have enough, and without that increase of faith they won’t have enough to flourish as apostles. And now, the disappointments and failures of the apostles are prompting them to rely on God alone. So far, so good.

But I think there’s more. The apostles want Jesus to be at their beck and call. We’re in a crisis, they say. We’re ill-equipped for the task. So, now, Jesus, give us more faith. Only chapters before in Luke’s Gospel, when confronted with a ravenous crowd of 5,000 people, the disciples throw up their hands and ask Jesus to fix the situation. Jesus volleys their request back to them. You give them something to eat, he says.

  And yet, a moment of spiritual insecurity for the apostles must require more than relying on God simply so that God will fix the problem. As Jesus says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” And the apostles’ frustration can’t be neatly ascribed to a lack of faith. The answer is more complicated. The apostles already have what they need to do what God is asking them to do, Jesus seems to say. They just can’t see it.

No special reward is due because of their service. They don’t need some extraordinary booster shot of faith, nor do they need a divine intervention. Look around, Jesus urges them. Look within your hearts. See that God has already given you enough. God is always supplying you with sufficient grace to follow me.

In asking Jesus for more faith, the apostles hint that they don’t believe they have enough. It should remind us that a scarcity mindset has infected Jesus’s followers even before his resurrection from the dead. The danger, though, with such a mindset is that our perceived inadequacy becomes the occasion for us to make demands on God. If God would only do that for us, we could be better disciples. And before too long, we have become the master, and God has become our slave. Our relationship with God is now one of needy manipulation. If our success in life is tied to the strength of our faith, then our misfortune is tied to our lack of faith. Every illness becomes God’s punishment. Every challenge becomes some cruel test from God to see if we have the mettle to make it through.

But this is all wrong. When our disappointments and failures are occasions for thanksgiving, then they are gifts, not punishments, because in them, we learn to be fully human. We learn that God has called us not to superhuman strength or to be God, but rather to grow more into the likeness of God, to be exactly who God is calling us to be by his grace, which is fully human and fully alive. And in this mindset of abundance, we can recognize that God is always supporting us lavishly with grace. Our disappointments and failures simply invite us to see the magnanimity of God’s provision.

Perhaps the modern Church has received a profound gift in the humility of our present moment. Plenty of people are adept at judging the decline of the Church as a just comeuppance for watered-down morals and glaring heterodoxy, or alternatively, for ruthless exclusiveness and disgusting hypocrisy. But maybe this present moment of disappointments and failures, of emptier pews and leaner budgets, is a moment to rely solely on God. We turn to God not to fix our problems but for God to open our eyes to the abundance that is already before us. In this, we begin to see that in and of ourselves, we have no ability to control our moment of crisis. If we refuse to accept our present condition as God’s wrathful condemnation, then we must return to the small things.

Faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to work wonders. Faith is not something to be added to what we lack but a gift to be accepted because it has already been given by God. Only in our humility can we recognize that everything we need for Gospel ministry is right before our eyes. In relinquishing our desire for control, superhuman status, and eternal rewards, we as God’s servants bow humbly before our Master, who calls us not slaves but friends. And whatever our disappointments and failures may be, that is surely cause for thanksgiving.

Sermon by Father Kyle
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 5, 2025

Closing the Gap

There is a well-known trope present in feel-good movies. Small-town boy or girl graduates from high school and moves to the big city, usually New York City. They want to see the world and break the limits of their narrow childhood perspective.

And invariably, as the trope goes, the person who moves from small town to big city becomes a bit puffed up and snobbish. It’s what we Southerners call gettin’ above your raisin’. But as the movie trope continues, there is usually a moment of crisis that brings the small-town person up short. Often, it’s the illness or death of a family member, and so the big shot from the small town must either travel back home for a while or move there permanently. And, as you have probably guessed, the tension of the drama is resolved when the one who has gotten above their raisin’ usually falls in love with a childhood friend and decides to make the small town their home forever.

Of course, the point is that the main character has a moment of existential transformation. They realize that the big city isn’t necessarily better than the small town. The big city, for all its riches, has its negative side and poverty: anonymity, loneliness, lack of community, and little sense of being at home. In returning home, the characters of these rather trite stories rediscover their origins and finally see that the small town is richer than they initially thought.

It seems that aging keeps us connected to our origins. Aging is its own kind of poverty, of losing things we thought we would always have. Having moved from small town to big city myself, the older I get, the more I appreciate where I came from. When I remember my family’s heritage, I see more of myself in it, and I learn more about who I am. I remember the struggles of my hardworking ancestors and how they persevered. I remember where I came from.

But the rich man in today’s parable has forgotten his story. This isn’t something that is immediately apparent on the surface of the text. But the rich man has forgotten where he came from. And that convenient amnesia is the cause of his judgment in the next life.

The rich man’s story is much bigger than small town boy moves to big village and gets rich. We certainly don’t know if this is the case with the rich man, but his story goes back centuries. It starts when Abraham heeds God’s call to leave the security of his homeland to travel to the Promised Land. Abraham leaves everything, except for his family, and changes the course of his life. Abraham, in a spiritual sense, becomes poor.

And the rich man’s story continues when Abraham and his family temporarily flee to Egypt to escape a famine in the land of Canaan. Real suffering, genuine need, and poverty are all a part of the rich man’s story, although he doesn’t remember it.

The story that began with Abraham and Sarah is a long one, though. Well after the death of the first ancestors, the people of Israel escape yet another famine by going to Egypt, and they become slaves of a ruthless Pharaoh who doesn’t remember the favor shown to Joseph by the previous Pharaoh. The people of Israel are caught in a vicious cycle of amnesia, and forgetting is so often the root of evil.

That same group of people is brought into freedom by Moses, a former baby abandoned in a basket. And the story proceeds in the wilderness wanderings of God’s people on the other side of the Red Sea, when they hunger for food and thirst for water and are forced to rely upon God alone as they question whether they will ever reach the Promised Land. And then, on the cusp of that land, in the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses offers an extended sermon in which the main point is to remember. Remember, he says, what God has done for you. When you get to the big city of the Promised Land, amnesia will strike again. You will forget how poor you once were. You will forget that you were slaves. So, remember. Always remember.

And we all know that they did not remember. They became tribal and hostile to their enemies. They turned to other gods. They became greedy, forgetting to leave the edges of their harvested land for the needy. Another exile, this time in Babylon, humbled the people of God for a time, but they still forgot, despite the cries of the prophets calling them to justice and peace.

Finally, God became poor in Jesus, choosing a manger rather than a palace for birth, fleeing as a refugee to Egypt while running from a cruel tyrant leader, and giving himself up freely on the cross. And even those to whom Jesus preached the Gospel and came to save forgot their stories. They couldn’t see that the One who became poor for their sake was one of them. In Jesus, we see the perfect remembrance of the story of God’s people. And this story is our story, too.

But the rich man has conveniently forgotten his story, perhaps because it’s too painful and challenges his comfort. His exquisite apparel is merely a symbol of his amnesia. He has put many layers of fine clothing and decadent living between himself and the living God. We don’t even know if he deliberately refuses aid to Lazarus. The problem is that he just doesn’t see him because he has forgotten his story and what it means to be like the poor. He can’t see his own poverty.

But Lazarus, at the gate of the rich man’s abode, is an open, raw wound. He is laid bare before humanity and God there at the gate. In his gory wound is the story of all humanity, the rich man’s and ours. In that open wound are times of famine, times of homelessness, times of grief, and times of suffering. It’s all there in that wound, with no purple robes to cover it up.

This Eucharist is an open wound, too. Before five minutes have transpired in this Mass, we are reminded that we have come before the God unto whom all hearts are hope, all desires are known, and from whom no secrets are hid. No amount of fine clothing, pretension, education, and status can cover the wound of our lives. Nor should this wound be hastily dressed. In remembering our own story and our own woundedness and vulnerability before God, we move closer to seeing God face to face.

And this is why we, as the Church, are judged when we fail to go to the poor. As the physical gap between us and the poor narrows, so does the chasm narrow between us and the bosom of God the Father. But as the gap widens, we find ourselves thirsty for the living God, in agony because that same God seems so far beyond our reach. We would long for even one drop of water to cool the fiery pain of that separation from God.

But being close to the poor is a dangerous thing, too. The first step, of course, is to see them, really see them. Because the rich man could not see them, even in the next life, Lazarus is simply another thing to use for his own comfort. And we must be wary of this, too. Getting close to the poor is not intended to alleviate our feelings of guilt. It’s not an act of charity to be used to gain heaven. It’s not something we do to feel better about ourselves. In going to the poor and getting close to their gaping wounds, we remember our own story. We remember that, once, we were poor and, in some sense, we are still poor. And when we can recognize that we have always been poor, we also discover that we have always been loved, too. In this, we begin to see the face of Christ.

If we are not convinced by Jesus, the One who has already come close to us, then nothing will convince us. No warning from the dead will provoke our repentance. Jesus has already come as one of the poor to be among us, and if we move close to him, there will be no gaping chasm in the next life. If we can’t see Jesus now, in the poor and those the world dismisses as refuse, then we will not recognize Jesus in the next life.

The chasm in today’s parable is the chasm of judgment, which is, oddly enough, a gift to us. This chasm of judgment is the gaping, anguished hole that is revealed when our own human insensitivity, cruelty, and irresponsibility are pitted against God’s infinite love, mercy, and compassion for all of humanity. It’s the gap created when the amnesia of our own story of poverty is placed next to the eternal remembrance of God’s provision for humankind in their poverty and suffering. In the recognition of our spiritual amnesia, that gaping chasm will seem rigidly fixed, incapable of being traversed. But with God’s mercy, with our prayers for the dead, and their prayers for us, anything is possible.

In the open wound of the Christian story, we part with all those things that keep us from seeing the stranger at the gate as part of our own story, too. And this is why truly to live with Christ, we must die to self. This is why the first must be last and the last first. This is why the humble must be exalted and the exalted ones humbled. This is why in the poverty of the cross we are given the life that is really life. And through the One who showed us how to be poor and then rose from the dead, that life is available to the whole world.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 28, 2025