Independence Day (transferred)

Sermon by Father Alistair So-Schoos

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. AMEN.

On September 11, 2012, at a naturalization ceremony held at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Baltimore, I stood in a room with dozens of other immigrants from around the world. Family, friends, and parishioners had gathered to witness the occasion. After eighteen years of studying, working, building a life, and serving in ministry in this country, I raised my right hand and took the Oath of Allegiance. At that moment, I officially became a citizen of the United States of America.

For me, it was the fulfillment of a long journey that had begun years earlier in Hong Kong during the final years of British rule. Like many immigrants, I came here with hopes and dreams. Over time, America became not simply the place where I lived, but my home.

I still remember the emotions of that day. There was joy. There was gratitude. There was relief. There was also a profound sense of belonging. I was no longer merely a resident. I had become a citizen—one who shared not only in the rights and privileges of this nation, but also in its responsibilities.

The oath itself is remarkably solemn. In part it says:

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty… that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America… and that I take this obligation freely… so help me God.”

If you were born in this country, you have probably never had to say those words aloud. They were, in a sense, assumed. But for those of us who become citizens by choice, the oath reminds us that citizenship is not merely about possessing a passport. It is about accepting responsibilities. It is about pledging ourselves to the common good.

Now, on Independence Day weekend, it is worth remembering that citizenship carries duties as well as rights. Our nation depends not only on the freedoms guaranteed by its Constitution, but also on citizens who seek justice, obey the law, care for their neighbors, participate in civic life, and contribute to the welfare of society.

At this point, however, some Christians may wonder what any of this has to do with the Church.

It is a fair question.

The Episcopal Church does not subscribe to Christian nationalism. We do not confuse the Kingdom of God with the United States of America or with any earthly nation. We do not imagine that God has entered into a unique covenant with America comparable to the covenant he made with Israel in the Old Testament. Nor do we place the Cross beneath any national flag.

Yet neither do we imagine that our faith requires us to withdraw from civic life. Christians are not called to abandon society. We are called to serve within it.

As our Lord himself prayed, we are in the world, though not of the world.

The New Testament consistently teaches that Christians are to be faithful citizens. We pray for those in authority. We seek the welfare of our communities. We honor lawful government. We pursue justice, mercy, and peace. Good citizenship is one expression of our love for our neighbors.

But our earthly citizenship is never our highest identity.

The writer to the Hebrews reminds us this morning that Abraham “set out, not knowing where he was going.” He lived as “a stranger and foreigner on the earth.” Why? Because “he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”

Those words remind us that every Christian lives with dual citizenship.

We belong to our nation.

But we also belong to the Kingdom of Heaven.

One citizenship is temporary.

The other is eternal.

One began with our birth—or perhaps, as in my case, with an oath taken in a government office.

The other began at the font, when through Holy Baptism we were incorporated into Christ’s Body, the Church.

There, too, promises were made.

Perhaps that is one of the interesting parallels.

When I became an American citizen, I made solemn promises.

When we are baptized—or when sponsors make those promises on our behalf—we renounce evil. We renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness. We renounce sinful desires that draw us from the love of God. We turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as Lord and Savior.

Every time we renew the Baptismal Covenant, we reaffirm those promises. We promise to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers. We promise to persevere in resisting evil. We promise to proclaim Christ by word and example. We promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons and to strive for justice and peace while respecting the dignity of every human being.

Those are not casual promises.

They are the oath of Christian citizenship.

And unlike any earthly citizenship, this one embraces people from every nation, tribe, language, and people. Around this altar, national borders disappear. All who come forth in faith are brothers and sisters in Christ.

The Church is the one society where our deepest unity is not found in nationality but in baptism.

That truth also shapes how we hear today’s Gospel.

Jesus says,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Those are difficult words.

In every generation there are people with whom we profoundly disagree. Our public life often seems defined by division, suspicion, and hostility. Political opponents are treated as enemies. Social media rewards outrage. We increasingly assume the worst about those who think differently from ourselves.

Jesus calls us to something far more demanding.

He does not tell us to abandon our convictions.

He does not tell us that evil should be ignored or injustice tolerated.

But he insists that even those with whom we disagree remain persons made in the image of God.

To love one’s enemies does not mean approving of everything they do. It means refusing to let hatred govern our hearts. It means praying for them. It means seeking reconciliation where possible. It means remembering that Christ died for them as surely as he died for us.

Our Lord grounds this command in the very character of God himself.

“For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

God’s generosity extends even to those who reject him.

If we are to be children of our heavenly Father, then our lives must reflect that same generosity of spirit.

The lesson from Deuteronomy points in the same direction.

“The Lord your God… is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

They remind us that hospitality is not merely a social virtue; it is a divine command. God’s people are to remember what it means to be strangers and therefore to welcome the stranger among them. Whatever our views on public policy or immigration law—and faithful Christians may disagree about such matters—we are never permitted to forget the dignity of the human person.

The God who loves the stranger calls his people to do likewise.

Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts Christians can offer our nation.

Not simply louder opinions.

Not greater political victories.

But communities shaped by charity, humility, forgiveness, hospitality, and truth.

Communities where enemies are prayed for.

Communities where strangers are welcomed.

Communities where justice and mercy meet.

Communities that remind the world that our hope does not finally rest in governments, elections, economies, or military strength, important though all those things may be.

Our hope rests in Jesus Christ.

This weekend we rightly give thanks for the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. We pray for our nation. We give thanks for those who have sacrificed to preserve those freedoms. We pray for our elected leaders, for those who serve in our armed forces, for first responders, judges, teachers, and all who labor for the common good.

But we do so knowing that every earthly nation, however great, belongs to history.

The Kingdom of God alone endures forever.

As Christians, we are called to be faithful citizens of both realms: responsible citizens of our country and faithful citizens of heaven. The first calls us to serve our nation with integrity. The second teaches us how to do so—with humility, with charity, with justice, with mercy, and above all with the self-giving love revealed in Jesus Christ.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.

And may he make us worthy citizens of that better country, the heavenly one, whose architect and builder is God.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

July 5, 2026

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon by Father Alistair So-Schoos

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

How do we know whom to trust?

That is not merely a question for our own age. It is one of the oldest questions in Holy Scripture. Every generation must learn to distinguish between voices that simply tell us what we want to hear and the voice that truly speaks for God. Every age has its reassuring voices, promising peace without repentance, blessing without perseverance, glory without the Cross. Scripture bids us ask not simply whether a message is comforting, but whether it is true.

That is the dilemma in today’s lesson from Jeremiah.

The prophet Hananiah stands in the Temple and announces that the Babylonian exile will soon be over. The sacred vessels taken from the Temple will be returned, and the exiles will come home. It is exactly what everyone longs to hear.

Jeremiah’s response is gracious and revealing.

“Amen! May the Lord do so.”

He would rejoice if Hananiah’s words proved true. But Jeremiah does not declare that they will come to pass. Instead, he reminds the people that throughout Israel’s history the prophets had often spoken of war, famine, and judgment. The true test of a prophet is not whether his message is pleasing, but whether it is faithful to the word the Lord has actually spoken. If we read on beyond today’s appointed lesson, we discover that Hananiah’s prophecy was false. Jeremiah’s hope was genuine, but his confidence rested not in wishful thinking, but in the word God had entrusted to him.

Faithfulness is often more demanding than optimism.

The Church has always lived with that tension. It is tempting to proclaim a Gospel that asks very little of us—a Christianity without repentance, without sacrifice, without the Cross. Such a message is always attractive because it promises comfort without conversion.

Yet our Lord never offered such a Gospel.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is concluding his instructions to the Twelve before sending them into the world. They will not always be welcomed. Some will reject them, just as Jeremiah himself was rejected. Yet Jesus gives them an extraordinary promise:

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

Our Lord so identifies himself with his disciples that to receive one of them is to receive Christ himself. That is an astonishing claim. The risen Lord chooses to make himself present through those who bear his name. This is why the Church has always understood works of hospitality, mercy, and charity to be far more than simple acts of kindness. They become encounters with Christ himself.

Then Jesus concludes with one of the most beautiful and easily overlooked sayings in the Gospels:

“Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple… none of these will lose their reward.”

The Kingdom of God is often built not through spectacular achievements but through ordinary acts of faithfulness. God delights in taking ordinary things and making them bear extraordinary grace.

That brings us naturally to St. Paul’s Epistle.

Paul reminds the Christians in Rome that Baptism has changed the whole direction of their lives. They have passed through the waters into a new existence. Having died with Christ, they are now called to live for him.

“Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life.”

Christian life is not simply about avoiding certain sins. Nor is it merely about becoming respectable or religious.

It is about becoming holy.

That holiness is not something we manufacture for ourselves. It is God’s work within us. The grace first given in Baptism continues to shape us day by day into the likeness of Christ.

The ancient Church spoke of this not primarily as self-improvement but as participation in the divine life. We are drawn ever more deeply into the life of Christ. As branches abide in the vine, so we abide in him.

This is why the Church gathers week after week around Word and Sacrament.

Here we hear God’s voice above all the competing voices of the world.

Here we confess our sins and receive absolution.

Here Christ feeds us with his own Body and Blood.

Here grace is not merely spoken about; it is given.

The Christian life cannot be sustained on good intentions alone. We require continual nourishment. Just as Israel received manna in the wilderness, so the Church receives the Bread of Heaven for her pilgrimage through this world.

This is what St. Paul means when he speaks of becoming servants of righteousness. He is describing not a burden but a transformation. Little by little, our desires begin to change. What once held us captive begins to lose its grip. We discover that true freedom is found not in serving ourselves but in belonging to Christ.

That transformation rarely happens dramatically.

More often it unfolds quietly through ordinary faithfulness.

The prayer said faithfully each morning.

The Eucharist received week after week.

The visit to someone who is lonely.

The meal prepared for a neighbor.

The patient word instead of the angry one.

The hidden acts of mercy that no one else ever notices.

Except God notices.

Nothing offered in love is ever insignificant in his Kingdom.

Jeremiah probably did not appear successful by the world’s standards. Much of his ministry was marked by rejection. Yet his calling was never to be successful. His calling was to be faithful.

The same is true for us.

We live in an age preoccupied with results—with measurable outcomes, popularity, and influence.

God asks first for faithfulness.

That faithfulness is sustained not by our own strength but by grace.

Week by week we return to this altar not because we have completed the Christian life but because we cannot live it without Christ. We come empty-handed, bringing only ourselves, and he gives himself to us anew.

The Psalm appointed for today gives voice to the confidence that undergirds this whole life of discipleship:

“Happy are the people who know the festal shout! They walk, O Lord, in the light of your presence.”

Notice that the psalmist does not say, “Happy are those whose lives are free from trouble.” The people of God have known exile, persecution, loss, and sorrow. Rather, blessed are those who walk in the light of God’s presence. Our confidence rests not in changing circumstances but in the steadfast love of the Lord, whose faithfulness endures from generation to generation.

That is why the Church has always gathered around the altar. Here, heaven and earth meet. Here, Christ keeps his promise to be present with his people. We do not come merely to remember something that happened long ago. We come to participate afresh in the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. The same Lord who called Jeremiah to faithfulness, who strengthened the apostles for their mission, and who inspired St. Paul to proclaim the Gospel, now gives himself to us under the humble forms of bread and wine. Having received him, we are then sent into the world bearing his life within us, to become, in the words of St. Paul, “instruments of righteousness” for the glory of God.

The Gospel’s image of a cup of cold water reminds us that God delights in using humble things to accomplish his saving purposes. Water itself becomes the catalyst for new birth in Holy Baptism. Bread and wine become the sacramental means by which Christ feeds his people with his Body and Blood. Simple acts of hospitality become signs of the Kingdom. The ordinary becomes extraordinary because God chooses to work through created things, revealing that his grace is not opposed to the material world but comes to us through it.

It is here that we learn again whose voice to trust.

Not the voices that promise an easy road.

Not the voices that baptize whatever the world already desires.

But the voice of the Good Shepherd, who leads us by way of the Cross into the joy of the Resurrection.

At the end of the Epistle, St. Paul sets before us one of the great sentences of the New Testament:

“The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Notice that eternal life is not merely a future reward. It is God’s gift even now—a life already begun in Baptism, nourished at this altar, and brought to its perfection in the Kingdom to come. Every Eucharist is a foretaste of that heavenly banquet. Every Communion draws us more deeply into the life of the risen Christ, until the day when sacramental signs give way to the fullness of his unveiled presence.

And so, whether our offering seems as great as Jeremiah’s costly witness or as small as a cup of cold water placed into another’s hands, Christ receives it.

For every act of love, every work of mercy, every prayer whispered in faith, every Communion faithfully received draws us more deeply into his life.

May we continue steadfast in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers, until, by God’s abundant mercy, faith gives way to sight and we behold our Lord face to face in his everlasting kingdom.

Amen.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
June 28, 2026

Hierarchy of Love

Sermon by Father David Beresford

 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When I read the Bible, my brain sometimes links the passage I am reading to another Bible passage, or to another book or even to a piece of music. It happened when I was reading this morning’s gospel, which is about the right way of doing evangelism. Jesus says,

“What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.”

Here’s the link in my mind: “there's nothing you can do that can't be done.” And later, “no one you can save that can't be saved.” Those words are from the Beatles song “All You Need is Love.” So the connection to proclaiming the word of God from the housetops is the word “love.” That’s important, because without love you will find it impossible. Not because the message is complicated, but because those who proclaim it will face rejection.

Love may be all you need, but you will also need to know the kind of people God chose in the past for this kind of work. In our Old Testament reading there is a passage from the prophet Jeremiah, who says, “within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in.” Jeremiah is the voice of the Lord to those who have turned away from God. Despite being ill-treated, Jeremiah will have his say, whether his tormentors want to hear him or not.

Jeremiah is the model for the kind of evangelist Jesus has in mind: someone on fire with the love of God and the desire to share God’s word and truth. That sounds fine until we remember the context in which Jesus was sending out his followers. At that time there was no movement called “Christianity.” There were only a group of mainly Jews who happened to be followers of another Jew called Jesus. And these followers were about to tell everyone that Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah, the anointed one from the line of King David.

Now imagine how that message is going to go down in some of the orthodox homes and communities where these Jews come from. Do you see now why Jesus tells them, in the second half of the gospel reading, that he comes not to bring peace but a sword, and to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and so on? The gospel is a message that will be welcomed and opposed.

It’s great when it is welcomed. When someone turns up at church having heard about Jesus and then stays and keeps coming back. They have found at church a key that unlocks the meaning their own existence and which also connects them with other people who have also heard about Jesus. And if the church teaches the true word of God, and is faithful and devout in its worship and teaching, the Holy Spirit will make its home there and bless the people.

However, there are times when the gospel is opposed. You may have some personal experience of that. Or perhaps, more commonly, you are met with indifference. I’m sure that some of my own family and friends, perplexed by my strong Christian faith, believed that I was using religion as a prop to compensate for something psychologically missing in myself. I mean, why do you need it? You can be happy without it, surely? The answer is yes, you can live without religion, but now that I do have it, I can’t imagine life without it. Now I am speaking as a modern western convert in a context where religion is not a strong part of our identities.

However, if I belonged to a household whose identity was strongly religious, and told my mother and father that my existing religion was not sufficient to express my fullness of my faith, I should not be surprised to get some blowback. They might even tell me to leave and never come back.

Hence Jesus’ warning about how religion creates division in the closest of human relationships. I think this boils down to one of the central claims Jesus makes about himself, when he says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” If we believe him, it will bring us into conflict with those who disagree. It can even break up a family.

It would be tempting to ignore what Jesus is saying here, because it seems he is striking at the heart of our human society, which is built upon family relationships. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. What he is seeking to do is to establish the hierarchy of these relationships in the order in which God intended. In this hierarchy, faithfulness to God always comes before loyalty to one’s family members.

Jesus wants to create family groups that are not defined solely by blood ties. This church, and your being here today, is a good example of a family whose father is God in heaven and whose brothers and sisters are sitting alongside you in the pews.

And the sword that Jesus wields is not to kill, but to protect. It is the sword of truth which defends our souls from corruption, from conforming too closely to the world and all of its temptations. Jesus tells us, “do not be afraid.” When he touches our hearts, let us take courage and follow him. Let us be his voice in the world now, speaking the truth: the truth of who Jesus is, and that he comes to save us. If we do that, confidently and faithfully, without counting the cost to ourselves and our earthly relationships, he will acknowledge us before his Father in heaven.

God knows the difficulties we face - in an evil and corrupt world we can sometimes be a lone voice of protest. Yet all we need is love, and a commitment to be faithful to God in all the moments of our life.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
June 21, 2026

Mission of the Twelve

Sermon by Father David Beresford

+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It is an understatement to say that Jesus was less than impressed with the Pharisees and other religious leaders of his day. This is why, when building a team to take over after he had gone, Jesus chose not from the ranks of Pharisees but from the common folk. The Pharisees, Jesus said, laid heavy burdens on the backs of the people, while choosing what was good for themselves. The people deserved better.

It wasn’t always like this. Moses was a faithful leader who led the Israelites from slavery to freedom. God entrusted Moses with the unenviable task of keeping the people faithful to their covenant with God. Moses was a shepherd, and he was called by God to be the shepherd of his people. God reveals the solemn responsibility he places on the nation as a whole, by saying that they are to be “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation."

Another shepherd whom God chose for leadership was David. For all his faults, he was a fearless warrior and capable leader who united the nation and made Jerusalem its capital. David was also a musician and poet, and is believed to have written some of the psalms, including this morning’s Psalm 100, which includes these lines.

“Be ye sure that the Lord he is God:
It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves;
We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”

In the gospel of John, Jesus describes himself as the good shepherd, as one who knows his followers and calls them by name. They, in turn, listen to his voice and follow his commands. In one sense, we can say that God is like a shepherd and the world is God’s field and we are all his sheep. I like the contrast between the infinite universe and the more down to earth image of a herd of sheep. While we gaze at the stars, we are grounded and need to be guided toward the pastures of new life.

For the disciples, their shepherd on earth was Jesus. In today’s gospel he summons the Twelve and calls them to a special mission. He tells them, “Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In the gospel passage, each disciple is named: Simon, known as Peter, is the first, and then Andrew, his brother, and then James and John and so on and so on until we get to Judas Iscariot. Judas, as we know, made the mistake of thinking he knew better than Jesus.

Peter is the first—he will be the spokesman for the group. They will all be leaders of their people. But notice what has changed. The first four disciples called are not shepherds, which you would expect, but fishermen. This signifies a change in purpose. Whereas shepherds tend the flock, fishermen go out and bring back a haul of fish. They will become, as Jesus told them at the time of their first meeting, “fishers of men.”

Can you be both a shepherd and a fisherman? I suppose so—that is, effectively, what Jesus is calling them to be, a hybrid of the two, as those who catch fish and then turn them into sheep. That doesn’t quite sound right, does it? I think I need to step away from these metaphors in order to draw out the full meaning of God’s plan and purpose.

Let’s begin with authority. On whose authority do the disciples act? On the authority of Jesus Christ. That is the meaning of the word apostle - someone who is sent out under the authority of the sender. Without it, they will be tempted to act on their own authority and for their own benefit, rather than doing God’s will.

In those days there were no printing presses, newspapers, television or internet. The transmission of their message will depend upon their willingness to undertake journeys to foreign places. Generally speaking, this was how people received new philosophical and religious teachings, by gathering in a common area or forum to hear what a visiting preacher had to say.

How did the disciples do? They had a mixture of success and failure. However, their message stood out from the regular run of speakers for a particular reason. Not only did the gospel resonate in the hearts and minds of many people, but it was also received experientially. People were healed, demons were cast out and so forth. After all, Jesus had told them: “Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”

Cure. Raise. Cleanse. Cast out. The gospel is like a benign tornado sweeping across the landscape, clearing away the debris of human sin and suffering and restoring the world to resemble more closely the kingdom of heaven. The gospel is an action taking place in our lives, not purely an idea or a concept but a spiritual and physical revolution that restores broken lives to wholeness, turns sickness into health and raises the dead to life.

You and I would not be here today had not those first apostles been sent out under the authority of Jesus Christ. They went out as slaves effectively, having been told by Jesus to give freely of themselves without the thought of return. The message was true and good, and the Acts of the Apostles records many of the miracles done in Christ’s name.

And what of us, sitting here in our Pennsylvanian church, being inspired by the words of Scripture and uplifted by the heavenly music and prayerfulness of our communion? Aren’t we, too, called to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ? And, if so, where is your forum? Where is Jesus sending you? Is it the La Colombe coffee shop up the road? They are very busy on a Sunday, I discovered recently.

Or is your forum online? Maybe you could start a podcast? Podcasts can be a good thing, but Christianity operates most effectively as an embodied gathering, where people are in physical proximity to one another, whether it is in church or in Bible study or in an adult formation class or in a lunch taken together.

This is the challenge for you—to remain faithful in worship and fellowship but to seek out new followers. How do you do that, especially as society continues to atomize and people withdraw into their online cocoons? There are other challenges too. The other day I read about a man who went on a journey and took with him as a companion ChatGPT. AI can be so understanding, can’t it? And kind, and affirming, and at the same time so very unreal. One thing I am sure of is that real relationships, which sometimes get messy, are far better than virtual ones.

Don’t be discouraged. Every age has its challenges and in every age Christians have had the faith and ingenuity to surmount them. The word of God is eternal and for every generation. Listen to these words from the Bishop of Massachusetts, Charles Slattery, who died in 1930.

“Mission is the Church in love with the whole world.”

Be willing to go out into the world which is waiting to hear from you. Go out with love in your hearts. You cannot evangelize without love. You cannot see the world outside, as God sees it, without love. With love you will have the courage and confidence to give an honest witness of your faith. With love, you will be the people who cure, raise, cleanse and cast out. The love Jesus has for you is the same love he has for those who are outside. Listen to his call to you. He has prepared everything, but needs laborers for the harvest. In the coming weeks and months ahead, think about where Jesus is calling you to undertake this noble and sacred mission.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 14, 2026

The Feast of Corpus Christi

Sermon by Father David Beresford

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Many years ago I lived in England, in the southern seaside town of Brighton. I worshipped at the Anglo-Catholic church of St. Michael and All Angels, a church very similar in appearance and style to the Church of the Good Shepherd. The main difference was size—St. Michael’s was a grand church of gilt and marble, nicknamed the “cathedral of the back streets.” It was built during the Victorian era, when the Anglo-Catholic movement was gathering steam and English church architects were reimagining local churches in the Italian style.

The church is located in a residential neighborhood where the very wealthy rub shoulders with those who are less well off. One day, a group of squatters moved into an empty apartment a few doors up the road, in St Michael’s Place. As far as we could tell, none of them worked for a living; with their wild, unkempt appearance, it is unlikely that any employer would have taken them on. Despite being out of work, they had money and used it to buy drugs. They stayed in the apartment for several weeks, until something happened that brought their occupation to an end.

But first, we got to meet them, or at least, one of them: a man named Tex. You don’t need me to tell you that people in England named Tex are rare indeed. He was tall, in his twenties and with a mohican—he definitely stood out from the crowd. We never found out his last name. He came to church one day to see what we were up to and we invited him to stay for a Eucharist. When it came to receiving the sacrament he held out his hand. In those days, you needed to be confirmed before receiving holy communion. However, the time to ask that question was not then. I guess we were glad that he was there in the first place. So, Tex received the sacrament of our Lord’s body and blood.

Not long after his visit, we heard some awful news. Tex had died of an overdose. When our parish priest heard the news, he visited the squat and offered to celebrate a Requiem Funeral Mass for Tex. To our surprise, Tex’s friends readily agreed. When I asked my parish priest about it later, he quoted those words we heard in today’s gospel: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.” Because of that one visit to us, when Tex received the sacrament, he was entitled to the very best the church could offer. So he got the full works—a requiem Mass done in the best High Church style. After the funeral the squatters left and we never saw them again.

The memory of Tex came to me as I was reading today’s gospel. It is the reading for the feast of Corpus Christi, which we are celebrating today. Corpus, meaning body, and Christi, meaning Christ—today is about Christ’s Body.

At Easter we celebrated Christ’s resurrection, and then more recently his Ascension into heaven. At Corpus Christi we acknowledge that, although the human Christ has ascended into heaven, we continue to receive him sacramentally in the celebration of the Eucharist.

My parish priest’s generous offer to celebrate a requiem mass for Tex mirrors the generosity of God in providing the memorial of our Lord’s body and blood. It is one we receive in a spirit of repentance and supplication. Indeed, our preparation involves a confession and a request for mercy, as we ask God to forgive our sins. Suitably penitent, we come to the Eucharist simply because Jesus has commanded us to do so.

In the letter of St Paul to the Corinthians—among the earliest of all Christian writings—we hear Jesus’ words that were shared by the disciples and recorded by Paul. He says:

Jesus took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

The new covenant, or new testament, brings about a new and permanent change in our relationship with God. In the Old Testament, fealty and proximity to God came via the Law: by following the ordinances and commandments of God, we would walk the path of righteousness. And that is still true. However, Jesus draws us more deeply into that relationship - indeed, he makes it personal. He invites us into a new covenant, where the way to goodness and life is to follow him. But we are not merely walking in his footsteps; we are learning to see with his eyes and touch with his hands and speak in his Spirit.

In the celebration of the Mass we are entering another dimension of reality. We receive both material and spiritual nourishment in the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood. This is food for our journey, the meal that fortifies us and unites us to Christ. In this offering of bread and wine—now body and blood—we share in Christ’s presence and ourselves become transformed into Christ’s likeness.

How far you achieve that likeness depends on you. Being in relationship with Christ makes demands on you, as it should. It means taking responsibility for your life by adopting habits and practices that align more closely with God’s will for you. Here are some suggestions.

First, make attendance at Mass a regular discipline in your life. Second, accept a discipline of prayer—for the Church, for the world, for others and for yourself. Third, learn humility and practice it. Fourth, be the gospel to others in the way you live and in who you are - let others see the transforming and life-giving power of Christ in your own life.

Above all, be thankful. The original meaning of the word “Eucharist” is Thanksgiving. Today we come to share in the body and blood of Christ and become one in him and one another. He is our spiritual host, broken and offered to us that we may live.

The Feast of Corpus Chrsti
June 7, 2026

Trinity Sunday

Sermon by Father Alistair So-Schoos

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.+

Trinity Sunday has a reputation among preachers. It is often said that this is the Sunday when clergy are most tempted either to explain too much or to explain too little. We know that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity stands at the very heart of the Christian faith. We confess it every time we say the Creed. We invoke it every time we make the sign of the Cross. We baptize in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Yet the moment we try to explain exactly how God can be both Three and One, we quickly discover that we are standing before a mystery.

The Church has wrestled with this mystery from the very beginning. The great creeds of the Church, including the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, were written to safeguard the truth that Christians had received from the Apostles. They sought to confess faithfully what had been revealed in Holy Scripture: that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, yet there are not three Gods but one God.

The Athanasian Creed in particular is famous for its careful and detailed language. It insists that we worship “one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.” Its language can seem daunting to modern ears, but its purpose was not merely academic. It was written because the Church believed that it mattered who God is.

But perhaps today, instead of beginning with the creeds, we should begin where the Scriptures begin.

Our first lesson opens with some of the most familiar words in all the Bible: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.” Before there was light, before there was land or sea, before there were stars in the heavens or creatures upon the earth, there was God.The creation story does not present us with a fully developed doctrine of the Trinity. Nevertheless, Christians have always returned to these opening verses and found hints of the mystery later revealed in Christ. God creates by his Word. God speaks, and creation comes into being. The Spirit of God moves over the waters. As the early Church Fathers often taught, the Old Testament contains shadows and foreshadowings of truths that are revealed more clearly in the New Testament.

What we learn from Genesis is that God did not need the world in order to be God. Before there was light or land or sea, God already was. Before there were human beings to worship him, God already possessed all fullness and perfection within himself.

Looking back through the lens of the New Testament, we begin to understand something profound: creation was not born out of divine loneliness or necessity. God did not create because he lacked anything. Rather, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit already shared perfect communion. Creation is therefore not the filling of a void, but the overflowing generosity of God’s own life.

This brings us to our Gospel.

The risen Christ gathers his disciples on a mountain in Galilee and gives them what we know as the Great Commission. He tells them: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Notice that Jesus does not say “names,” plural. He says “name,” singular. One Name. One God. Yet within that one divine Name are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

This is one of the clearest Trinitarian passages in all of Scripture. Long before theologians debated terminology, long before councils gathered to formulate creeds, Christians were already baptizing in this threefold Name.

And this tells us something important. The doctrine of the Trinity was not invented by theologians. It arose from the Church’s encounter with the living God. The disciples knew the Father through Jesus Christ. They received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Their worship, their prayer, and their baptism all pointed them toward the mystery that the Church would eventually call the Trinity.

Yet even here we might ask the practical question: What difference does all of this make?

Why should ordinary Christians care about the Trinity?

The answer is that the Trinity tells us who God is and therefore who we are called to be.

If God were merely an isolated individual, then relationship would be secondary. Love would be optional. Community would be an afterthought.

But because God is Trinity, relationship lies at the very heart of reality itself. We are created by a God whose very life is communion. We are made in the image of a God whose life is self-giving love.

This is why Christians are called into fellowship with one another. This is why the Church is not merely a collection of individuals pursuing private spirituality. This is why forgiveness, reconciliation, and charity matter so deeply. We are called to reflect in our own lives something of the love that eternally exists within the life of God.

St. Paul points us in that direction in today’s Epistle. He concludes his letter with words that many of us know by heart:

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

What a beautiful summary of the Christian life. We are sustained by the grace of Christ. We live within the love of the Father. We share in the communion of the Holy Spirit.

That blessing is not simply a statement about God. It is a prayer for God’s people. Paul is asking that the very life of the Trinity may shape the life of the Church.

And indeed, the life of the Trinity is not merely something we study; it is something we experience.

Every Christian life begins in the Name of the Trinity. At Baptism, we are baptized into the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. We are adopted by the Father, united to Christ, and sealed by the Holy Spirit.

Every Christian prayer is Trinitarian. Whether we realize it or not, we pray to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. The pattern of Christian prayer reflects the very life of God.

Every celebration of the Holy Eucharist is Trinitarian. We offer our worship to the Father. We remember the saving sacrifice of the Son. We invoke the Holy Spirit upon the gifts and upon ourselves. Week by week, the faithful are drawn more deeply into the life of the Holy Trinity through Word and Sacrament.

Even our growth in holiness is Trinitarian. When we repent of our sins and return to God, it is the Father who welcomes us home. It is through the merits of Christ that we receive forgiveness. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that our hearts are renewed and transformed.

In times of suffering, we discover the same truth. The Father does not abandon his children. The Son has entered into our human suffering and knows our sorrows from within. The Holy Spirit strengthens us with gifts and consolations when our own strength fails.

In other words, the Trinity is not an abstract doctrine reserved for theologians. The Trinity is the very atmosphere of the Christian life. We are created by the Father, redeemed by the Son, and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. To grow in faith is to be drawn ever more deeply into the life and love of the Triune God.

We stand before a mystery greater than our understanding, but not beyond our experience. We know the Father because he has created us and adopted us as his children. We know the Son because he has redeemed us and feeds us with his Body and Blood. We know the Holy Spirit because he dwells within us and conforms us to the likeness of Christ.

The fullness of the Christian faith is nothing less than participation in the life of the Holy Trinity itself. Therefore, with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, let us worship the one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; to whom be all honor and glory, now and forever.

Amen.

Trinity Sunday
May 31, 2026

The Day of Pentecost

Sermon by Father Alistair So-Schoos

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What a joy it is to preach to you again on this Day of Pentecost! Happy Whitsunday as we commemorate the birthday of God’s one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I greet you in Christ’s name and bring good tidings on this feast—the celebration of the Holy Spirit’s coming upon the disciples and the Blessed Virgin Mary— the Theotokos—igniting them to continue Christ’s work and empowering the Church for mission.

The most iconic account of Pentecost in Acts chapter two tells of the Holy Spirit descending like tongues of fire. Fire imagery is woven through both Old and New Testaments and remains significant in our liturgical life—think of the Easter Vigil fire, which guides us to the empty tomb and the triumph of Christ’s resurrection. This image of fire is not just for pageantry; it expresses the passionate, powerful, transformative presence of God in our lives.

To describe the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire conveys the fervor and passion believers can feel when celebrating their faith. That was the zeal of the early Christians at Pentecost, and that is the same passion we need now to reenergize and revitalize the Church today. The question is: how do we kindle this same spirit in our busy, complex, modern world?

There’s much to learn from the early Church’s beginnings, as recorded by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles. Pentecost was the Big Bang of faith, launching a movement that has grown into two billion believers worldwide. These stories reveal the secret to a vibrant, growing Church.

First, it’s important to note how both diversity and unity were at the very heart of that first Pentecost. As we read in Acts: “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?... Parthians, Medes, Elamites…residents of Mesopotamia…Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

These names underscore the geographic diversity of that crowd—but there’s more.

There was also a divide of class and expectation. When the people note that the speakers are “Galileans,” we’re meant to be astonished. Galileans were considered uneducated country folk, hardly expected to speak their own language well, let alone the languages of others. Yet here they are, cosmopolitan and articulate, bridging cultures and classes. The Holy Spirit had dissolved those boundaries—geographical, social, and cultural.

Pentecost is, in a sense, the New Testament reversal of the confusion at the Tower of Babel. Where once God had scattered people through divided languages, now the Holy Spirit gathers all people, uniting them in shared understanding and mutual recognition. God provides, through the Spirit, an authentic path to salvation for all.

From this diverse gathering comes Peter’s powerful sermon, which, as Acts recounts, resulted in three thousand people being baptized that day. Radical welcome lay at the heart of his message. True flourishing comes when differences are not just tolerated but embraced—when each person’s unique gifts are welcomed as a blessing.

If diversity was the secret ingredient to the early Church’s thriving, then it is also the key for us today. The diversity Scripture describes goes deeper than demographics or language. It’s rooted in what Jesus says about the Holy Spirit:

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

Not just a trickle, but rivers—plural—of living water. Our ministry is meant to be life-giving, inclusive, and expansive. Our spiritual gifts are to be shared, helping each other grow into the full stature of Christ. Like the early church, we are called into a relationship of mutual understanding and support, always extending a welcome to those outside, celebrating and affirming diversity.

This call to be "rivers of living water" means having open hearts, ready for the surprising ways God may use us. It means looking for where the Spirit moves—even, and perhaps especially, in unexpected places.

Take, for example, the ways people are connecting and reaching across boundaries today. When the COVID-19 pandemic kept us apart physically, many churches quickly adopted livestreaming and online worship. When I do supply clergy work, attendees from afar have reached out and expressed their appreciation for having a spiritual community they can join, even if they are hundreds or thousands of miles away. Whether it’s a homebound person, someone traveling for work, or a family tuning in from another country, the Spirit has created new expressions of unity, worship, and belonging beyond any one parish church.

Consider also the work of community food pantries, refugee ministries, social outreach—places where people of varied backgrounds come together to serve others. And this also applies to assisting at liturgies as altar servers and choristers. Volunteers may not share the same language or culture, but they share a desire to help, and in working together, the boundaries between “us” and “them” begin to fall away. This is Pentecost in action—real people sharing God’s love in practical, transformative ways.

So I encourage you this week to notice the diversity in your own daily life—at school, at work, in the neighborhoods you drive through, or even online. Where do you see God at work through people who are different from you? How might the Spirit be calling you to broaden your own welcome or step out of your comfort zone?

If you still feel the Holy Spirit is mysterious, you’re not alone. The disciples themselves were in a vulnerable place at Pentecost: grieving Jesus’ death, stunned by his resurrection, and left again at the Ascension—with only the promise that they would not be left comfortless. Jesus sent them the Advocate, the Holy Spirit.

Without Jesus physically beside them, the disciples accomplished even more than before—spreading the Gospel from Jerusalem throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. Empowered by the Spirit, they began the ongoing work of Christ through His Church—a work of radical inclusion, reconciliation, and sacrificial love that continues to this day. We are inheritors of that same apostolic mission here in the 21st century.

The Holy Spirit is like fire—fueling our passion. The Spirit is also like water—nourishing, overflowing, and life-giving. The Spirit is God’s breath—the Ruach that gave Adam life. All these images speak to the Spirit’s power to touch each of us in different ways and at different times.

Today, the Holy Spirit still leads us into spaces of renewed faith and deeper connection. Are we willing to let our hearts be set ablaze, to speak words of hope across boundaries, to refresh others with kindness and understanding? Are we willing to forgive where there’s hurt, to reach out across lines of difference, to build up instead of divide?

Like those first Christians who received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we too are recipients of the same promised Advocate, Paraclete, and Comforter. If we bring the same zeal and openness as those first Christians to our ministries today, our parish and the Church as a whole will be transformed in ways we have yet to imagine.

As you go forth this week, I invite you to ask yourself: Where is the Spirit prompting me to break down walls or build new bridges? How can I be living water to someone in need? What gifts has God given me that I am called to share? May the Holy Spirit, who helps us proclaim Jesus as Lord, continue to guide and empower all of us in the life of Christ lived out in His Church. May the Spirit fill us with holy zeal, nourish us with living water, and breathe new life into us all.

Amen. Alleluia!

The Day of Pentecost
May 24, 2026

Good and Evil

Sermon by Father David Beresford

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In our Church Calendar we are experiencing a short hiatus—an in-between time—when Jesus has ascended to Heaven, and Pentecost, which celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit, is still seven days away. This is an appropriate time for looking back and looking forward, especially at Good Shepherd, where you have entered what the Church of England calls an “interregnum.”

While you are waiting for your new shepherd to arrive, I want to suggest to you an exercise which is sometimes referred to as Ignation Contemplation. I want you to imagine, if you can, what it must have been like to be a disciple during the time between Jesus’s departure and the coming of the Holy Spirit. I want you to put yourself in the place of the disciples and consider what was going through their minds.

Like you, for them it is a time of anticipation. I imagine it is also an emotional time. The disciples, having lost Jesus once at the crucifixion, have now lost him a second time. This is a bitter-sweet experience. Joy that Jesus was returning to his Father in heaven is mingled with sadness that their Lord was no longer among them.

Our reading from the Acts of the Apostles describes Jesus’ ascension. The disciples are asking questions right up to the end - “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of Israel?” It gives you an idea of what they were thinking, and how they expected Jesus to do this one last thing for them. In reply Jesus calls them witnesses, not only in Jerusalem, Judea and Galilee but to the end of the earth. Well, we could say to them, “why else was he training you all this time?” The disciples have been given their commission—God will ask them to continue the work of salvation, which is to restore the true kingdom of God on earth.

How did they prepare for this? They went back to basics and devoted themselves to prayer. (By the way, what a blessing it was to have Mary the mother of Jesus with them!) Remember that it is in prayer—when we take time to speak to God - that we are returning to the root of our Christian identity. Christians are not primarily people who do things; they are, in the first instance, people who pray. It is in prayer that we are being formed and made ready for the work God has reserved of us.

If we needed an example of how to pray, Jesus provides it in our gospel reading. He is praying to the Father out of love for his followers. Part of his prayer includes these extraordinary words, “All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them.” Jesus then asks the Father to protect them. As a parent, that is the kind of loving prayer I say for my own children and indeed, for anyone in danger. Father, protect them.

So, although Jesus has ascended into heaven, he remains close to his followers. This is a relationship of love, which is the founding principle of the kingdom of God. The disciples will need a lot of it over the coming days, weeks and months. The love which binds this group together—which may already includes Gentiles, or it will soon—is what holds them together. Remember when the disciples gathered together in the Upper Room following the crucifixion? They were in hiding, in fear of the Jewish authorities.

Following the resurrection, the walls came down, so to speak, and fear was replaced with love. It is love that will compel them to continue the work that Jesus began, even in the face of hostility and the threat of death.

And so we come to our second reading, from the first letter of Peter, which warns Christians that in their new role of evangelists they will face ordeals and will suffer for the sake of Christ. They will be tested and, as we know, the story of the early church is one of both rapid conversions and of martyrdom. The powers of the world will overwhelm the gentle preachers of love, and most of the disciples will be killed. At the same time, their brave and noble sacrifice will increase, rather than diminish, the spread of the gospel throughout the world.

I’d like to think that I would be as brave as they were. Standing up for what you believe is easier said than done. In other parts of there world today, such as Nigeria, South Sudan, Pakistan and Iran, being a Christian carries real dangers. Every day our Christian brothers and sisters are being threatened and killed. In my prayer, I ask God to protect them.

You never know when your faith might be tested. That is what the letter of Peter is about. It includes these words which those of you who say the Evening Office known as Compline will recognize. “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour.” It is an effective metaphor. A lion is strong and stealth—it sneaks up on its prey and pounces, often before the prey has time to react. The other thing about a lion is this: it has no pity. That is why it is a perfect metaphor for the evil one. Once the devil has his claws in you, he will show you no mercy.

In the first letter of Peter, the devil is a real and present danger. Jesus often cast out demons in a world where devils and demons were common. In our modern world there are some who believe that the devil is a figment of our imagination. To them I would relate what the French poet Charles Baudelaire says on this subject. “One of the greatest tricks of the devil is to convince you that he doesn’t exist.”

The advice contained in the letter is clear: “Resist him, firm in your faith.” In this world you will observe how some people succumb more readily to evil than others. Our Christian faith gives us an advantage in resisting evil, but only if we take it seriously. All of us are in danger of giving the devil room in our lives. After all, the devil only needs a small crack in our defenses to make trouble. What precautions, therefore, can we take to prevent him?

The first line of defense is prayer. When you pray to God, you are acknowledging your need for God. You are acknowledging your own inherent weakness—the source of sin—and so, as Peter’s letter reminds us, you humble yourself before God. Your humility is the greatest impediment to the devil. Some people make the mistake of thinking they are strong enough, or smart enough, to resist the devil. This is a symptom of the sin of pride, something that the devil thrives on.

The other mistake is to assume that you have control. You think, once you invite the devil in, that you can tell him when to leave. Again, this is a terrible mistake. When this happens, it is often only by using extreme measures, such as exorcism, that the devil can be removed.

Apart from pride, how else does the devil find a victim? One easy way is by inverting the commandments. Thou shalt not steal becomes thou shalt steal and so forth. That is why Jesus asks us to keep the commandments, for the sake of our souls. We may find that if we disobey one commandment, it becomes easy to disobey another, and then another. I am reminded of something that Sir Walter Scott said: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” Keep the commandments, avoid lying and you will be safe.

To be a Christian means that we are called to live to a higher standard than the world. St. Paul exhorts us, “Do not be conformed to this world.” (Romans 12:2) In the world we face dangers to our souls in various forms. Today we can locate many of them online, in the anonymous cruelty of social media, in pornography, in gambling, in becoming intolerant and dehumanized. All of this happens with our consent, whether we are active in our consent or passive. The point is to recognize it and do something to change it.

Like the disciples waiting for the Holy Spirit, we are in a time of preparation for the coming of Jesus. We are waiting expectantly for him and, when he comes, what will he find? We must use this time of waiting wisely. Following the example of the disciples, give priority to prayer in your life. Take time to sweep your house clean and make it ready. Be prepared to face criticism and even abuse for your actions. The sufferings we endure for the sake of our faith are as nothing compared to the joys we will experience in the hereafter.

In this time of waiting we are being blessed. We are being called to love God and one another. The ultimate power in the world is not a power for evil but a power for good. It is the power of love and of sacrifice. It is very humbling to think of all that Jesus did for us. Now, let us do something for him.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Seventh Sunday of Easter
May 17, 2026

Ascension Day

Sermon by Mother Meghan Mazur

Do you have a favorite artistic depiction of the Ascension of Jesus?

I am not sure that I do, exactly, but I confess that I am partial to any depiction in which the only part of Jesus we see is his feet. I am sure you have seen at least one of those images somewhere along the way: the disciples gathered below, looking upward, while Jesus disappears into the clouds, leaving behind only the soles of his feet and the hem of his robe.

There is something almost comical about it, this holy mystery represented by two feet vanishing into the sky. But what I enjoy most about these depictions is not really Jesus’ feet. It is the faces of the disciples below.

They are almost always gawking. They often stand there with their heads tilted back, mouths open, eyes lifted, trying to take in what has just happened. Jesus, their teacher and friend, the one who was crucified and raised, the one who had eaten with them and blessed them and breathed peace upon them, has now been taken from their sight. And there they are, standing in the strange silence after a miracle, staring at the place where he used to be.

This is where Ascension Day begins - in a strange place of waiting and sometimes gawking. On Sunday, we heard Jesus say that he was going away, but that he would not leave us orphaned. Today, we stand with the disciples in the strange space between that promise and its fulfillment. Jesus has gone from their sight, but the Spirit has not yet descended in wind and flame. The disciples have been given a mission, but they have not yet been given the power to carry it out. They have been told that something holy is coming, but they do not yet know exactly what it will look like.

Ready, set… wait.

That is not usually how we want the story to go. We are much more comfortable with, “Ready, set, go.” We understand momentum and action. We understand mission when it means strategy and movement and measurable progress. But instead we are told,

Wait in the city.

Wait for the promise of the Father.

Wait for power from on high.

This may be one of the hardest instructions Jesus ever gives. We are accustomed to hearing him say, “Follow me,” or “Love one another,” or “Take up your cross,” and all of those are hard enough. But “wait” may

test us in a particularly tender place, because waiting requires us to live without the control we would prefer. Waiting asks us to remain faithful when the next thing has not yet arrived. Waiting asks us to trust that God is still at work, even when the visible signs are not yet clear.

But then while the disciples were standing there, we are told that two men in white robes appear beside them and ask the obvious and necessary question: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

I don’t take this to be a criticism of their awe. There are moments in the life of faith when all we can do is stand still and gaze at the mystery; when wonder is the most faithful response we can offer. Remember when we pray for the gift of joy and wonder in God’s works for a newly Baptized person? Awe is important. But awe can become a hiding place if we remain there too long. The disciples cannot fulfill their calling by staring at the last visible place Jesus occupied. They cannot become witnesses by clinging to the sky.

At some point, they have to lower their eyes, return to the city and learn how to wait together.

And perhaps that is a word for this congregation in this particular season. You are waiting, too, for your priest-in-charge to begin ministry. You won’t have to wait too long in this case, but still, that waiting is real.

An interim season can feel like a strange kind of Ascension moment: someone familiar is no longer in the same place, someone new has not yet fully arrived, and the congregation is left asking, “What now? What do we do in the meantime? What does faithfulness look like here?”

The temptation, of course, is to treat the meantime as empty time. A holding pattern. A season to get through until ministry begins again in earnest.

But the Feast of the Ascension will not let us believe that. Christian waiting is never empty. The mission of your waiting is not to hold your breath until July. The mission of your waiting is to keep being the Church: to pray, to worship, to care for one another, to welcome the stranger, to tend the ministries already entrusted to you, to tell the truth about your hopes and your fears, and to listen for the Spirit who has never once stopped speaking to the people of God.

Your new priest-in-charge will bring gifts, energy, leadership, and vision. That will be a joy. But your priest-in-charge is not coming in July to turn the lights back on. The light of Christ is already here. The Spirit is already moving here. This waiting has a mission.

It is the mission of preparation, certainly, but even more deeply, it is the mission of attention. Waiting gives a congregation time to remember its own vocation apart from any one leader. Waiting makes room for questions that may need to be asked gently and honestly: Who are we now? What has God preserved among us? What is God pruning?

That kind of waiting is not passive. It is active, hopeful, and purposeful. It is the waiting of a field before harvest, the waiting of Advent, the waiting of a mother carrying life within her, the waiting of the disciples in the upper room, praying together before they even knew what Pentecost would be.

And that waiting is bound to witness.

Because Jesus did not say only, “Wait.” He also said, “You will be my witnesses.” Witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The waiting is real, but it is not the whole calling. The Spirit will come, and when the Spirit comes, the disciples will not be sent back to stare at the clouds. They will be sent into the world.

But it is hard to be a witness if we are still standing in place, straining to catch one last glimpse of Jesus’ feet.

Do not misunderstand me. There is good reason to return again and again to worship, to gather together at the feet of Jesus in prayer, in song, in Scripture, and in the sacraments. We need that presence. We need to come before God with our wonder and our bewilderment, our grief and our gratitude, our questions and our hope. Worship is not an escape from the world; it is where Christ gathers us, blesses us, feeds us, and reminds us who we are.

But worship is not the end of the journey. It is the beginning. The danger is letting our awe become inaction, forgetting that Jesus did not simply leave us with a memory to preserve. He entrusted us with a mission to embody.

So on this Ascension Day, perhaps instead of searching the skies for Jesus’ feet, we should be looking for his footprints.

Where has he walked? What paths did he leave behind for us to follow? Where do we see the shape of his life pressed into the earth? Among the poor. Among the sick. Among the lonely. Among the children. Among those pushed to the edge. At tables where sinners and saints are fed together. At gravesides where grief is met with tears and resurrection. On roads where confused disciples are accompanied until their hearts burn within them.

So take a good look at Jesus this Ascension Day. Stand in awe. Giggle at the paintings where only his feet remain. Give thanks for the mystery of a Lord who is no longer bound to one place, one hillside, one gathered group of disciples, but who fills all things and sends his Spirit upon the whole Church.

But do not linger too long, staring at the clouds.

There is waiting to be done, and there is witnessing to be done. There is a congregation here, in this in-between season, called not merely to wait for July, but to wait with purpose, with courage, and with open hands. Christ has ascended into glory, and now, by the power of the Spirit, he sends his people into the world.

Ascension Day
May 14, 2026

The Sixth Sunday of Easter

Sermon by Father David Beresford

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In your Christian journey, there are moments when you reach a kind of crossroads, when you ask yourself these questions: what difference does being a Christian make? If Christ is in my life, how does that change me? Who is Jesus Christ, and what is he saying to me at this moment?

To the question, “who is Jesus Christ?”, we can answer that Jesus is the Son of God and Son of Man, fully divine and fully human. In him we see our Creator, the God who made us in his image. However, this is not the same as looking in a mirror. When we look in a mirror, we see ourselves reflected back. When we see Jesus, we see God reflected back. If we wish to become the person God made us to be, then we should spend less time looking at ourselves and more time looking at God.

Another question we can ask ourselves is, how does Jesus change me? First, one must accept that, if Jesus wants you to change, it is for your own good. It is better and easier to embrace change and say, “I am willing to change,” than to be stubborn about it. Be aware, though, that the person God made you to be may be different from the person you were before. When we are born, we are subject to many influences—family, circumstances, culture, genes—that determine, to a greater or lesser extent, how we turn out. But they do not—or should not—define us or fix us in one way for the rest of our lives. Adult human beings have agency; they have the capacity and potential to change. We may be the product of our background and upbringing, but we are not necessarily bound to them for the rest of our lives.

That’s just as well. Inside every human being there is a spark—that is, a small agent of change within us. This spark can be activated by hearing the words and teachings of Jesus. This spark, which everyone possesses, is easy to describe but impossible to quantify—it is the spark of life that responds to the call of truth and love. The question for us as adults is, do we honor it or ignore it?

Years ago when I was at university, I had a conversation with someone who attended the same class as me. It was fifty years ago now but I vividly remember speaking with him on the side of a busy road. He told me what it was that helped him to live his life in the best way possible. He said, “you need to live by a code that you can trust and that will keep you on the right path.” At the time I didn’t take his advice to heart but, looking back, I think I understand better now what he meant.

In fact, I found the code to living by following Christ, but it took me half a lifetime to get there. I could say, “I eventually found Christ” but, in fact, Christ had already found me. I wish I had found Jesus at the time I had had that conversation years ago with my college acquaintance—it would have saved me a lot of time. I put it in the category of “I wish I knew then what I know now.” Although the road to here has been rocky at times, the main thing is that I did get here, and that my journey continues.

Today’s gospel reading is like a final year university course for Christians. This is among Jesus’ most profound and advanced teaching. We are used to Jesus teaching through parables, or by healing the sick, or by performing miracles such as the loaves and fish. Today, in the gospel of John, there are no parables or miracles, but a clear and direct teaching about the life Jesus wants us to live. What is this teaching? I said it was like a college-level class, but in other respects it is nothing like that at all.

Consider that when we go to school we learn mostly academic subjects. We learn to think in such a way that there is a separation between our brain and our heart. Sometimes there is an overlap, but often such overlaps are incidental. What is different about the teaching of Jesus is the unity of mind and heart—to fully absorb his teachings, you must engage both.

Let’s simplify this—in the head we have our rational selves; in the heart we have our emotional and loving selves. So when Jesus is teaching as he is today, he has dissolved the separation between head and heart and instead makes a claim on the whole of our being. He doesn’t want us to simply nod and say, “yes, what wonderful teaching” and leave it at that. And he doesn’t want us to turn off our rational mind and use that unhelpful phrase, “just have faith.”

To get the most out of Jesus’ teachings you have to concentrate on his words. What do you notice about them? They include words that are repeated, such as “you” and “I” and “him” and “love.” If we wanted to sum up Jesus’ teaching as it is recorded here, we could describe it as a love letter to his followers.

As such, to be fully understood, what Jesus says must be received with love. Did you ever write a love letter to your boyfriend or girlfriend? You would have used the same kind of language. In this teaching from Jesus, he talks about the Holy Spirit, who will be our Advocate. This is a gift from Jesus to us. Jesus explains that the Holy Spirit “is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him.”

Because the Holy Spirit will be “in us” Jesus is implying that the Spirit will enter our very being, if we give our permission. This will change your life. Having the Spirit of truth in you means living a life without illusion, or pretense, or malice. This can be a challenge in a world where there is much deception and falsehood. People who live in truth learn to speak the truth even if that causes offense.

There is another aspect of Jesus’ teaching that we need to consider today. Jesus, who loves us, asks us to promise something to him. He says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” As God gave the commandments to the Israelites as the rule for their flourishing, so Jesus reminds us that the commandments remain the code for our own health and happiness.

Not everyone finds this easy, because some have mistakenly assumed that Jesus came to sweep all of those bothersome rules away. In fact, the opposite is true. The law contains guidance to keep heart and mind on the straight road. If we want true freedom—the freedom to love and live as God intends—then the commandments are our guardrail. If the gift of the Holy Spirit was part of our invitation to live in freedom, the other part of that freedom is the gift of the commandments.

All of us here today come from different backgrounds—different families, upbringings, ethnicities, even different countries. Yet we all share some things in common. In our worship we become one body in Christ. Our ears are open to hear his words and our minds and hearts are willing to be changed by them. We share, I hope, a desire to live not by lies, but by adhering to the truth.

All of us carry within us that spark which compels us to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. Whether we know it or not, he found us years ago and has never let us go. We follow him because of love—his love for us and our love for him. Along the way we are being changed into his likeness by the grace of God and in the power of the Holy Spirit. He leads us into life in all its fullness—that is his promise to us.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Father David Beresford
May 10, 2026

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Sermon by Father Alistair So-Schoos

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today’s Gospel according to Saint John the Evangelist, our Lord speaks with unmistakable clarity: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” These are not poetic sentiments, nor are they general religious ideas meant to inspire. They are precise and demanding claims about who Christ is, and therefore about how we are to understand the whole of the Christian life.

Our Lord does not say that he will show us a way, as one teacher among many. He says that he is the way. He does not merely speak truth; he is the truth. He does not simply offer life; he is the life. And he concludes, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” In other words, the entire movement of salvation—from God to us and from us to God—is located in the person of Jesus Christ.

This is the heart of the Church’s teaching, and it is a point strongly emphasized within the tradition renewed by the Oxford Movement. The great Anglican divines such as John Henry Newman and Edward Bouverie Pusey insisted that Christianity cannot be reduced to moral instruction or private religious feeling. It is, fundamentally, the extension of the Incarnation through time.

That is to say: the same Christ who took flesh of the Virgin Mary continues to make himself known and present in his Body, the Church. The Incarnation is not an isolated event of the past; it is the pattern of how God continues to act. The invisible grace of God is made known through visible, tangible means.

This is why the sacraments are not secondary or optional. They are the ordinary means by which Christ gives himself to his people.

When we gather at the altar for the Holy Eucharist, we are not simply remembering a past event. We are brought into the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. We receive his Body and Blood. We are united to him and, in him, to one another. The Eucharist is the Church’s participation in the life of Christ—his self-offering, his obedience, his risen life.

And so when Christ says, “I am the way,” we must understand that this way is not abstract. It is a concrete participation in his life, given to us sacramentally.

Saint Peter makes this clear in today’s epistle. You are “living stones,” he says, “being built into a spiritual house.” This is not merely an image of encouragement; it is a statement about the nature of the Church. The Church is not a collection of individuals who happen to share beliefs. It is a structure—ordered, visible, sacramental—built upon Christ as the cornerstone.

Each of you, by baptism, has been incorporated into that structure. Each of you has a place within it. And together, you are formed into a dwelling place for God.

That brings us to this particular moment in the life of Good Shepherd.

You have called a new priest-in-charge. Congratulations! That is an important and significant development, but it must be understood properly within the theology of the Church.

The priest is not simply a leader in the secular sense. The priest’s role is to serve as a visible sign of Christ’s own ministry—especially in preaching the Word and administering the Sacraments. In the Eucharist, in absolution, in blessing, the priest acts in persona Christi, so that Christ’s own action is made present among his people.

At the same time, the priest does not stand apart from the Body. The priest serves within the Body, for the sake of the Body. As Saint Peter reminds us, the whole Church shares in Christ’s priesthood: “a royal priesthood, a holy nation.” The ordained ministry exists to build up and order that common life, not to replace it.

So this is not simply a transition in leadership. It is an opportunity for renewal in the shared life of grace.

And that renewal depends not on strategy or preference, but on fidelity to what has been given.

It depends, first, on your commitment to the worship of God. The Church is most fully itself when it gathers around the altar. The regular, reverent celebration of the Eucharist is not one activity among many; it is the center from which everything else flows.

It depends, second, on your attentiveness to Holy Scripture. In the Gospel, Christ speaks so that his disciples may know the Father. That same voice continues to speak in the Scriptures, read and proclaimed within the Church. To neglect that Word is to lose our orientation; to attend to it is to be formed in truth.

It depends, third, on the ordering of your life together in charity. The grace we receive in the sacraments must be reflected in the way we live with one another. Patience, forgiveness, humility, and mutual care—these are not optional virtues. They are the necessary signs that we are, in fact, living as members of Christ’s Body.

The witness of Saint Stephen in the Acts of the Apostles places all of this in its proper perspective. Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, bears witness to Christ even to the point of death. His vision of the risen Lord sustains him, and his final words echo those of Christ himself: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

This is what it means to belong to Christ—to be so united to him that his life becomes visible in ours, even under pressure, even in suffering.

That is the end toward which all our worship, all our doctrine, all our common life is directed: union with Christ.

And that union is not something we create. It is something we receive—again and again—in the life of the Church.

So as you move forward in this new season, the question is not simply what you will do or what direction you will take. The deeper question is whether you will remain rooted in Christ, who is already given to you.

Will you come faithfully to the altar?

Will you receive the sacraments with reverence and expectation?

Will you shape your life together according to the charity that flows from Christ’s own self-giving?

If you do, then the way will not be uncertain—because Christ himself will be your way.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

That is not only the Church’s teaching. It is the foundation of your life together, now and always.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 3, 2026

Good Shepherd Sunday

Sermon by Father Alistair So-Schoos

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In recent years, researchers who study religion and society have confirmed what many of us already sense in our bones. Religious life is not simply declining or reviving; it is being reshaped. In the United States today, nearly three in ten adults now describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, the highest proportion ever recorded. And yet, at the very same time, most of those people still say they believe in God or some form of higher power. Many still pray. Many are searching.

The pandemic did not create this reality, but it exposed it. When gathering became impossible, routines were broken, and assumptions were stripped away, people did not simply drift from church; they re‑evaluated whom they trusted, what voices they listened to, and where they believed life could truly be found. Even now, as some patterns have returned, communal religious life remains fragile, and uncertainty lingers about authority, commitment, and belonging.

We are living, then, in a world crowded with voices. Voices that promise meaning, identity, safety, fulfillment. Voices amplified by fear, outrage, certainty, and speed. Voices that do not ask to be tested, only followed. And many people—inside the Church as well as outside it—are listening carefully, because they know that not every voice leads toward life.

And into that kind of world, today’s readings do not whisper. They speak with remarkable clarity.

Today is also the Feast of Title for this parish: Good Shepherd Sunday. That matters. Because the Church does not merely use this image—it lives under it.

In the Gospel, Jesus reaches for one of the most familiar images in Scripture: sheep and shepherd. But this is not simply a calming pastoral scene. It is a word of discernment. Jesus speaks of thieves and bandits, of strangers whose voices the sheep do not recognize, of those who climb in by another way. And then he says something both simple and radical:

“I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture… I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

In a world of competing voices, Jesus is saying that not every voice deserves our trust. Some voices scatter. Some exploit. Some promise freedom and deliver anxiety instead. Some offer belonging but require fear as the price of admission. But the voice of the shepherd gathers. The gate that is Christ leads not to confinement but to life—life with room to breathe, space to grow, and pasture enough for all.

That image is deepened by the words of Psalm 23:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want… He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.”

This is not a psalm of ease; it is a psalm of trust. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, the shepherd is present. The promise is not escape from danger, but companionship through it.

But the readings today do not end with reassurance. They show us what life under the Good Shepherd actually looks like. And for that, we turn to the Book of Acts.

Acts gives us one of the clearest pictures we have of the earliest Christian community:

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers… All who believed were together and had all things in common… They ate with glad and generous hearts.”

This is what a flock gathered by the Good Shepherd looks like. Not a loose association of individuals who share opinions, but a community shaped by worship, teaching, generosity, and joy. They prayed together. They shared meals. They supported one another. They held their possessions lightly. And their shared life became a visible witness. Acts tells us that “day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

The Church grew not because it successfully competed with the noise of the world, but because it offered something different: a way of life marked by generosity instead of fear, fellowship instead of isolation, and hope instead of scarcity.

That speaks directly to our moment. Many people today are not rejecting God; they are unsure where to find God. They hear many voices. They encounter many claims. But when they see a community shaped by love, forgiveness, and generosity—when they see people living under the care of the Good Shepherd—they begin to recognize that voice.

The Epistle from 1 Peter deepens the picture. It reminds us that following the shepherd does not mean a life without suffering. “If you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval… Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.”

The Good Shepherd is not defined by control, but by sacrifice. Not by domination, but by self‑giving love. And Peter tells us that the flock is shaped by that same pattern: patience, humility, trust in God’s justice rather than our own retaliation.

“When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten.”

This is the voice the sheep learn to recognize.

And then Peter concludes:

“For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.”

That is the heart of today’s message—especially on this feast. We were scattered. We were wandering. We listened to many voices. But in Christ, we are gathered. We are given not only a shepherd, but a flock. Not only guidance, but a community.

And that community does not exist for itself. The Church grows when it lives as pasture instead of pressure. When it becomes a place where burdens are shared, forgiveness is practiced, and generosity becomes normal. A place where tired souls can rest and searching hearts can listen.

Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” That abundance is not merely personal; it is communal. It is experienced when we devote ourselves to teaching and fellowship, to breaking bread and prayers. It is experienced when we live with glad and generous hearts.

On this Feast of the Good Shepherd—this feast of your parish’s very name—we are reminded who we belong to, whose voice we follow, and what kind of community we are called to be.

The Good Shepherd calls us by name. He leads us. He protects us. He restores our souls. And when we listen for his voice and live as his flock, others will recognize that voice too.

And day by day, as in the early Church, the Lord will add to the number of those who are being saved.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Fourth Sunday of Easter (Feast of Title): Good Shepherd Sunday
April 26, 2026

The Road to Emmaus

Sermon by Father David Beresford

In 2013 I visited the Holy Land for the first time. It was an amazing experience. Having read the Bible stories for so long, it was a revelation to see the country itself, to smell the air, to notice the dust under my feet, to feel the sun on my face, to experience the strangeness of it all, and at the same time have the feeling that it was all somehow familiar.

I say familiar, but on the surface, many of the places we visited were unlike the vistas I had created in my imagination. There was one place in particular which turned out to be the complete opposite of how I had imagined it to be. That was the road to Emmaus. In my mind, before I visited the Holy Land, I saw a long, straight road in the desert. On this flat plain, the two disciples in our gospel story are walking when they are joined by the resurrected Jesus. In reality, the road to Emmaus, which is about seven miles from Jerusalem, is in a small valley, with lush vegetation on either side. The road itself is uneven and sloping.

It is an abiding mystery of the resurrection appearances of Jesus that he is so often, at first anyway, not recognized by those who were once closest to him. This is a question for us to ponder. Another question is, who were the two disciples? One of them, we know, is Cleopas. Who was the other? And how and why did Jesus vanish from their sight?

Let’s stop and think about what happened. We know that the Jesus who appears before the disciples is the same Jesus they knew before. Why, then, does he seem a stranger to them? In the gospel it says that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” That raises another question: why were their eyes kept from recognizing him? Happily, they eventually do recognize him, when he sits at table and breaks bread with them.

Let’s go back to the road to Emmaus. The paving stones are uneven, and you have to look down when you walk. Whenever you stop and look around, all you see are the sides of the valley. There is no horizon in view, but that is not important because of what happens next: Jesus is walking alongside you.

In their grief, Jesus’ words are strangely warming. Jesus lights a fire within the disciples’ hearts. He explains to them how the Messiah had to undergo suffering and enter into his glory. How all of this was foretold and pre-figured in the story of Moses and the Prophets. At one point Jesus berates them for being “foolish” and “slow of heart”. That’s an intriguing phrase for us to ponder - what does it mean to be “slow of heart”? I think it explains their failure to recognize Jesus - in their heart they had lost confidence in God, because the one whom they thought had come to redeem Israel was now dead. Reports of his sighting after death have left them confused.

It’s easy to lose confidence in God, especially when things are going wrong, or when you are called to bear heavy burdens or afflictions, or when you feel that God has forsaken you. The good news is that, even when you lose sight of Jesus, he never loses sight of you.

Along the road to Emmaus, Jesus gives the disciples a kind of divine history lesson. The events and actions and people which Jesus interprets are not random events in history, but chapters in God’s story, which also happens to be our story. You cannot see or recognize Jesus without first knowing where he came from. And the Old Testament is our best guide to understanding Jesus, and why he was the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.

As the three of them stop at a fork in the road, Jesus “walked ahead as if he were going on.” By the way, what about the question, who was the other disciple? We know that Cleopas was one. Tradition has it that the other disciple was St. James and, in the painting by Caravaggio in the National Gallery in London, it is St James who is at table. However, it is also possible to surmise that the other disciple is not male but female, since the two of them invite Jesus to a meal, which would suggest they were married. If Cleopas is the same as Clopas in John’s gospel, then his wife Mary had been one of the women at the cross.

In any case, the important thing is that they are not dumb when the stranger begins to go a different way. They call out to him, “stay with us.” Thank God they did! I wonder how many people, by saying or doing nothing, have let an opportunity to welcome Jesus pass by. The disciples make a direct and personal appeal: “stay with us”. The turning in the road has become a kind of turning point for the disciples. Soon the identity of the stranger will be revealed.

The gospel continues: “When he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then were their eyes opened, and they recognized him.” Jesus is revealed in the breaking of the bread. This returns us to the Upper Room, to the Last Supper, where Jesus instituted the Holy Eucharist. Jesus is finally recognized in the taking, and blessing, and breaking, and offering of the bread. It is, for the disciples, the final teaching in their divine history lesson.

We are learning too. Jesus is present today sacramentally in the elements of bread and wine. In this sacrament he is recognized as one who shares himself with all, who feeds and nourishes his faithful people, and unites them in the one act of worship.

One theologian described the Eucharist as the living process through which, time and again, the Church becomes the Church. I wonder if the two disciples realized that? Their reaction serves as a model for churchgoers everywhere. The gospel records “That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem.” Note this well: the disciples don’t wait until morning, but at that hour get up to tell their friends in Jerusalem all that has happened. It is the urgency of their evangelism which is impressive. Like Mary Magdalen before them, they hasten to spread the good news. How exciting it must have been for them to return along that same road where, only hours before, the risen Lord had walked alongside them.

Each of you will have walked your own Emmaus Road, and will have had your own experience of sadness, of feeling bereft and without direction. At such times, remember the words of the disciples: “stay with us.” Imagine Jesus drawing near to you, so that your heart is warmed and the knowledge of God is kindled inside you. You may still be walking; today the road leads to the altar where we, like the disciples, will soon share in the bread of heaven.

This is our health and our hope, to be united to Christ, in one body. This is our life, to proclaim, with all urgency, that Jesus is our Lord and Savior. This is our joy, to share in his resurrection life, as we walk together in faith and love as his holy Church.

The Third Sunday of Easter
April 19, 2026

Beyond Closed Doors

I have long been inclined to defend two people who are bullied and unfairly maligned. One is St. Paul. We might not agree with everything Paul said or wrote, and we might take issue with some of his views. But let’s face it: Paul was a brilliant theologian. He was faithful, and our understanding of Christ would be impoverished without his voice. So, can we cut him a little slack?

The other person I’m quick to defend is Thomas, poor old “doubting Thomas.” Let’s get one thing straight. The original Greek of today’s Gospel reading never says that Thomas doubts. Thomas may want to see proof of Jesus’s risen body, but having doubts is not at odds with choosing to believe. Let’s cut Thomas a bit of slack, too.

The truth is that Thomas is more accurately a prototype of all of us at some stage or another in our spiritual lives. Each of us is a Thomas at some point, because each of us will doubt, and yet, like Thomas, we will hopefully choose to believe. We should be wary of those who assure us that they have no doubts and have everything wrapped up nicely and tied with a bow.

If Thomas is a prototype of one who needs to see something before believing, then I can honestly say that I was a Thomas six years ago. Six years ago, the doors of this church were shut, just like the doors of that upper room in Jerusalem so many years ago. The doors of this building were closed by mandate because there was a pandemic. But there were a handful of people inside this church who knew the wounds of their history. If they had not witnessed firsthand the conflict, the demonizing, and the fractious spirit during the parish’s most tumultuous years, they had at least laid eyes on the aftereffects of it. The wounds on the risen body of Christ were still present.

I, on the other hand, was not on the inside. I was serving in another parish and flirting with the idea of coming to Good Shepherd, but I didn’t know whether I could yet believe that life persisted on the other side of these church doors. In my most skeptical moments, I was like many others who were fixated on the parish’s troubled past. I was more skeptical than Thomas because I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to enter the locked-up room to see the wounds. I was told by scoffers that I should stay away from this parish. I was told that I would only be entering a morass of trouble. And in my weaker moments, I wondered whether God could do anything new here. I questioned whether life was possible, especially when there seemed to be so much death.

But there were a faithful few on the inside who testified that they had seen the risen Christ, even despite the wounds. The scars were still visible on the body, but the body was alive. The body had a future. Unbeknownst to many, God had breathed upon the dry bones so that they could live. Like Thomas, I needed to see it to believe it. I decided to come into the sealed room to see for myself. And I’m so glad that I did.

It didn’t take long after I came into this upper room to see that the naysayers were all wrong. They had all forgotten a non-negotiable tenet of the Gospel. The risen Christ can’t be shut out by sealed doors. The risen Christ, alive and glorified, appears despite those closed doors. The risen Christ is always present in our midst, and his first words to us are words of peace. No amount of fear or demonizing of other groups can keep the risen Christ out. He will get in. He will always get in.

Christ was already here, alive and well, active among a faithful remnant. He had, of course, already breathed his Spirit upon the body gathered in this place, and once the body began to recognize that they had already received this Spirit, anything was possible. With this life-giving Spirit, old grudges and resentments could be released and forgiven. Old wounds could be healed, even if the scars remained. This is the heart of the Easter message. The risen Christ is alive even though the wounds persist. Our past histories can’t be erased, nor should they. And yet, they shouldn’t define our future either. In resurrection light, the future is always being written by God, with whom anything is possible.

Most of us in this room today are Thomases. We were not here when the risen Christ first manifested himself, wounds and all, to announce his peace. But we came anyway. We came to see for ourselves. Maybe our first thoughts were like Thomas. Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe. And yet, we showed up, and we stayed. We made a choice to believe.

When we arrived, the risen Christ was already in our midst. He would not let any doors keep him out. He, unlike us, is never afraid of past histories and of difficult situations. And when we came here to see for ourselves, the risen Christ offered us his peace and then said something startling. Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Remember the wounds of past hurt but see that the body is risen, is still alive and flourishing. Remember the past divisions but see the current unity and fellowship. Remember the past anger but see the present love. Remember the past conflict but see the present unified spirit. Know of the past exclusion but see the present inclusion. Do not be faithless about what God can do, but be faithful, trusting that with God, anything is possible!

If we had doubts before coming to the upper room, we should not berate ourselves, just as we shouldn’t berate poor Thomas. If we needed to see before believing, we shouldn’t be ashamed either. Thomas knew something the other disciples may not have known. He knew that the wounds of Jesus’s body were the real proof of his resurrected presence. The wounds testify to a body that survived death, a body that remained alive even though death has done its worst. We can only announce the truth of the resurrection after we see the evidence of a body that still carries its scars and yet lives.

Being a Thomas is far different from being a modern-day skeptic. There are many in our own day, even in the Church, who view the wounds as a sign of decay and death because they have succumbed to the fateful despair of a secular age. They don’t believe that dying parishes should have a second chance. They can’t see that the wounds of declining membership and myriad challenges are not the mark of an inevitable fate but rather opportunities for a body to be raised by God and live again.

Because Christ was raised from the dead and still lives despite the wounds, the Gospel is full of non-negotiables. It’s non-negotiable that Jesus will show up even when the doors are shut. It’s non-negotiable that a body gathered in Christ’s name should testify to peace and unity, not violence and division. It’s non-negotiable that if we profess to be Christian, then we must believe that sins are forgiven and new life is always possible. In just a few minutes, when Charlie goes into the waters of the font, he will rise to new life in this hope. His future is not consigned to fate. His future will be given by God in all its newness, and he will be embraced by a new family defined by a fullness of life that persists despite the lingering wounds.

But there is still more to the story of this parish. The close of chapter 20 of John’s Gospel is open-ended. It was written for all of us, who were not there when the risen Christ showed up within the shut doors of that upper room. Because of John’s invitation, we have come to believe. We have chosen to show up even with our doubts to see the evidence of the wounded but risen body for ourselves. And we have chosen to believe.

But there are still others who are part of the ongoing story of this parish. They are not yet here, but God knows about them. The Holy Spirit will implant a desire in their hearts, a nudge to walk through the doors to see for themselves. For those of you who have seen for yourselves, you must issue the invitation. Come and see the body that still bears its wounds and yet is alive. Come and see that love is stronger than death. Come and see that the accusing voices of despair and hopelessness in the world and in the Church are not the end of the story. Come and see that no closed doors can inhibit the risen Christ. And because his wounded body has been raised from the dead, he will always find his way in.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday of Easter
April 12, 2026

A Change of Colors

There’s an iconic scene in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. The movie begins in black and white on the plains of Kansas. After the opening drama, the main character, Dorothy, and her dog, Toto, are whisked away by a tornado while in their house. Once the dust settles from the storm, and all is quiet, Dorothy tentatively approaches the door, opens it, and suddenly, the film shifts into vivid color. She’s in a magical land, Munchkinland. She’s in a different world.

 In a time when most movies were filmed in black and white, this brilliant stroke of cinematography captivated film audiences for its technological marvel and its symbolic depth. The black and white of Dorothy’s humdrum past on the Kansas plains shifts into a world of vibrant color in a land of shining newness.

Dorothy, of course, eventually returns home after her adventures along the Yellow Brick Road and confrontation with the Wicked Witch of the West. She clicks her heels three times, saying, “There’s no place like home.” When Dorothy returns home, the black and white of the film returns, but Dorothy is not the same. She will never be the same. She can no longer see home in the same way either. Although the movie ends in black and white, the dazzling color of Munchkinland has transformed Dorothy’s perception of life back in Kansas forever.

On this first day of the week, it’s as if we have opened a door onto a world shining with dazzling color. And if we were to portray St. John’s Gospel in film, we could use that same innovative technique mastered by The Wizard of Oz. In his Gospel, John plays with light and darkness with ingenious theological and literary depth. In its opening lines, light emerges from darkness, just as God created all that exists out of chaotic nothingness in the beginning of time, and just as light was created out of darkness. For St. John, Jesus is the true light coming into the world, creative, colorful light in a world that is black and white.

In some sense, the radiant, eclectic colors of creation as first seen in the Garden of Eden were dulled into black and white with Adam and Eve’s act of defiance in the garden. They were banished from that same garden, and though the rest of salvation story had plenty of moments of color, humanity seemed stuck in dullness, a dullness that could not or refused to see the kaleidoscopic goodness of God’s hand and saving works.

And so, in John’s Gospel, true, perfect light emerges in full color from the shadows of a world mired in sin, decay, and waywardness. The Son of God’s bright light reveals healing where there is illness, truth where there are lies, goodness where there is evil, hope where there is despair. In Jesus’s earthly life, it’s as if the movie shifts from dull black and white into full color.

But on Good Friday, we saw the darkness creep back into the picture in an overwhelming way. According to St. John, Jesus’s moment of glory is on the cross. But to the bystanders like the Blessed Mother, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene, it must have been hard to see the glory from the cross. Their world must have been cast into shadows. As Jesus breathed his last on the cross, to them, the film must have shifted abruptly into black and white again.

And this is where we pick up the story today. It’s early in the morning. We’re in a garden, just like we were at the beginning of creation. It’s still dark. The movie is still in black and white, and Mary comes to the tomb to discover that it’s empty. There’s a dim haze of confusion about the events of the past few days. Even though Mary sees two angels where Jesus’s body had been, she doesn’t know what has happened. She can only attribute Jesus’s absence to theft.

When Jesus first appears to Mary, the movie is still in black and white. He calls her “Woman,” and she thinks he is the gardener. She doesn’t yet recognize him. But then, like Dorothy emerging from the house into Munchkinland, the film morphs into full color. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, calls one of his sheep by name. Mary! And now she knows who he is. He is her Lord. He is risen. The one she has been seeking is still alive. Everything has changed!

Mary runs from the tomb a different person. Her world is in color. Jesus tells her not to touch him or cling to him because that will simply turn the film back into black and white. Jesus can no longer be enshrined in the same way he was while walking the earth. He will, in fact, ascend to his Father in heaven, so that his body will become Mary and the other disciples, the Church, us.

In an ironic way, although Mary mistakenly thinks Jesus is a gardener, he is a gardener of sorts. He is the one tilling the soil of a new creation, preparing it to bear much fruit. When Mary runs from the garden on Easter morning, the color has been recovered from a film that had regressed into black and white. It’s not that the color of the world and its inherent goodness went away after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the beginning of time. It’s that humanity had simply forgotten creation’s radiant color through ingratitude, sin, and stubbornness.

When Jesus utters Mary’s name in the garden, he speaks into existence a truth that she must begin to realize in a new way. God’s raising of Jesus from the dead is the visible sign in our finite world that any dullness we perceive in creation is not the final word. With God, anything is possible. With God, all things are made new. In resurrection truth and light, the color in God’s world is ready to shine in all times and places.

As a child, I remember asking my mother why some movies were in black and white. It was one of fifty million nagging questions I asked as a little boy, curious as a cat. My mother said it was because those films were old. But I mistakenly thought that those movies, languishing in some dusty, dark room, had simply lost an original color. They once were in color, but that color faded over time with age. The truth, of course, was that those movies lacked the technology to show the color that was really there.

But suppose for a minute, as in my naïve childhood assessment, that our world has let its natural, innate vibrancy become dulled. Because it has become worn, tired, and old, it has lost its color. If you are weary and exhausted by these disturbing, trying times, on this day, the first day of the week, the beginning of a new creation, there’s another story to tell.

This past week, we have waited and waited and waited with Christ through suffering, despair, and death. And because we have waited, we are able to celebrate on this day that the black and white of our existence has never been purged of its natural color and goodness. And it never will be.

The world’s natural color can’t be stamped out by any forces of darkness or even by a Church that allies itself with secular forces of brutality. The world’s natural color can only shine as it did from the tragedy of the cross, showing that earthly violence couldn’t quench the radiant power of love, a love that gave itself willing to death and forgave in spite of sin and death.

Because the tomb was empty on the third day, because God raised Jesus from the dead, because Jesus has ascended to his Father and breathed his Spirit upon us, we can never return to a black and white world. We are perpetually in the Oz of a new creation, not a magic land but a land full of possible impossibles. As Jesus said to Mary, so he says to us. Do not touch me. Do not cling to me. Release your fears, anxieties, and despair, and run from the empty tomb in hope. We’re not in Kansas anymore. We are the inhabitants of a new creation. And this new creation is sparkling with color that will never fade away.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Easter Day
April 5, 2026

To See the Tomb

I will never forget Easter Eve in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, I was serving in another parish, and because of pandemic, the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter were closed to the public. Thankfully, my parish had multiple clergy on staff, as well as some young adults living in community so that at least we could gather for the Holy Week and Easter liturgies in person. They were all livestreamed to Facebook, broadcast from a locked up church, sealed like a tomb.

Things could not take place as usual that year. There was no congregation, and so we decided to observe only the first part of the Great Vigil of Easter without celebrating Mass at the end. That needed to wait for Easter Day. In the isolation and fear of the pandemic, it just didn’t seem right for us to celebrate Communion that night. Before we shared in the Lord’s Body and Blood on Easter Day, we needed to wait. We needed to spend some time in our sorrow, sitting in the darkness, in sympathy with a hurting world.

We were gathered in the shadows at the back of the large nave, near the font. It felt as if we were in a tomb. We were in a tomb, to some extent. We had all come to see the tomb. Jesus had been resting in the grave for two days, and we, like the two Mary’s in Matthew’s Gospel, had come to the tomb to see it. That year, with hospitals inundated with the sick and dying, it was spiritually necessary to look at the tomb.

Gathering around the font—its own kind of tomb—that night was filled with uncertainty. All around us people were perishing. We didn’t know how long the pandemic would last. Even the handful of us who were there in person were not immune from risk. We didn’t all share the same house. What if one of us was carrying the virus? There was a deep tinge of suffering that night as we gathered around the tomb of the font. Even after the new fire was kindled, we sat and waited in the darkness, longing for the next day’s Easter Communion, knowing that that year, Easter glory couldn’t be separated from suffering and death. It never can be.

This is the night when we have come to see the tomb like Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. We have no other purpose for being here than to see the tomb. Unlike some of the other Gospels, in Matthew’s account, the two Mary’s didn’t go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’s body. They simply went to see it. Something within them must have felt compelled to sit with death. These women had stuck with Jesus through his excruciating journey to the cross. They stayed there, watching him take his last breaths on the cross. We have done the same this week. We have waited with Jesus, trying to stay with him, just as he—Emmanuel, God with us—always stays with us.

The Easter Vigil is an exercise in patient waiting, of fumbling around in the dark, of trying to see a leaflet, of not knowing who is next to you in the pew. It’s a long marking of time, hearing, as we do each year, the story of God’s saving purposes in the history of the people of Israel. It’s our story, too. The light of the Paschal candle keeps our hope alive, but this night, we come face to face with the overwhelming reality of darkness. We ignore this darkness at our peril.

Because all around us, people are stumbling their way through the night. Light is absent for those cowering in fallout shelters as bombs scream in the air, for those innocents caught in the power games of world leaders, and for those fearing deportation and the loss of their families. Evil continually insinuates itself within our daily lives, often unnoticed but always destructive. Some of us, surely, have our own sorrows and troubles—the darkness within—that we have brought to the tomb this night. The honest path spends some time with that, not relishing it but acknowledging its existence. Like that small group of people gathered around the font during a pandemic six years ago, we can’t yet rush to Easter so quickly.

One among us this night, who is newly baptized, has waited for six months through preparation and spiritual discipline to go into the waters of the tomb of the font, to be buried with Christ in his death and to rise again with him in his resurrection. Tonight, all of us do the same. We die to self and rise to new life in Christ. Each year at this time, we experience a spiritual rebirth. It can only happen by going to the tomb to see it, to sit with it, and then to behold what happens next.

And what happens next—what has already happened this night—is something spectacular. For the two Mary’s at Jesus’s tomb, the boldness to go and confront the cold emptiness of death prompted an earthquake. An angel of the Lord descends from heaven, rolls back the stone, and announces the Easter proclamation. Do not be afraid of what you see. He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come see the place where he lay.

Without the patient, sorrowful waiting of the two Mary’s, the earthquake would simply be a cheap trick. It would turn Easter into a grand spectacle rather than a miraculous entry into present time of a completely new order. Because the women have waited through the final agony of Jesus, seen the bloody execution, gone to see the tomb, and found it empty, they genuinely announce the Easter proclamation. The earthquake is not a theatrical event intended to prove the resurrection to them. These women know of their own accord what has happened by God’s mighty hand. They saw death, but now, they see life. The earthquake is simply the visible sign of a glorious parting of the veil between this world and the next.

As if to emphasize just how marvelous this seismic shift is, the story doesn’t end at the tomb. There’s no emotional letdown after the joy of Easter. This story is only beginning. It’s gaining momentum like it never has before, because these women must run from the tomb—run, not walk—and tell the other disciples what they have seen.

What they have seen over the past week is cruelty, lies, violence, torture, and death. They have seen humanity at its worst. They have seen two kingdoms in conflict. This is the night when we, too, see two kingdoms in conflict. But now, because the two Mary’s have seen the empty tomb, they know what kingdom truly reigns. And this is the night that we know what kingdom still reigns. The two Mary’s know that a love that dies without retributive violence is true love, perfect love, and this love never dies. Indeed, this man who loved them so, although he has died, yet still lives. And this must be told to the entire world. This story will go on to Galilee, for there, the women and the disciples will see Jesus again. Even though death has occurred, he, Emmanuel, is still with them. And he is with us, too.

This is the night. The light has come. Easter is here. But that doesn’t mean that the darkness has vanished. In this life, it will, in fact, never perish. And yet, although we will inevitably fumble through the darkness as long as we live, the one whom God raised from the dead will forever go before us. He is always many steps before us, preparing a new future for us, calling us to become little Christs to the world. This is the night when his message is the same for us as it was for the two Mary’s. Do not be afraid. Go and tell all you meet to go out into the world, into its darkness bearing the light of Christ. He has already gone before us. And if we run from the tomb with joyful fear, there, we will see him. Alleluia!

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Great Vigil and First Mass of Easter
Sunday, April 4, 2026 

Beginning at the End

It was the great poet T.S. Eliot who said, “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”[1] Good Friday is ostensibly the end. It is the end of the long, torturous walk to the cross. It is the end of a Lenten journey. It is the end of Jesus’s earthly life.

But today is also the beginning. Eliot understood the circularity of liturgical time, the non-linear trajectory of God’s time. Our sense of time was utterly confused on Palm Sunday after we acclaimed Jesus as king and then called for him to be crucified. We waited through the long, painful hours of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, a bit ashamed, perhaps, to find Christ washing our feet last night on Maundy Thursday. Despite our fickleness and penchant for betrayal, Christ nevertheless washed our feet and fed us with his Body and Blood, and he commanded us to love as he loves. Which is why we have come to this day.

Today is the end, but it is also the beginning. As Eliot said, “to make an end is to make a beginning.” For some, Good Friday is just an end. It was an end for the soldiers and religious authorities who consigned Jesus to a brutal state execution. Today is only an end for contemporary purveyors of violence in authoritarian governments and modern-day religious figures who claim a monopoly on truth. It is an end for them because in controlling regimes, violence is how order is maintained. Violence is how truth is suppressed. Violence is how power is wielded. A mandated execution is an easy way to make the problem go away. Death is the end.

This strand of brutal violence has been consistently threaded throughout this Holy Week, looming underneath every act of love, lurking in every dark corner, away from the light. But for those of us with eyes to see and ears to hear, the end—today—is also the beginning. As Eliot said, “to make an end is to make a beginning.” And that’s precisely what happens on Good Friday.

This is why St. John’s account of Jesus’s Passion is essential for this day. John tells a story that is artistically subtle, literarily complex, and theologically profound. John knows that the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. John also knows that only those who are seeking truth and are open to Jesus as Truth itself will understand this.

Do we understand it? After waiting with Jesus in his trial and passion this week, can we finally see on this day how God in Christ has waited patiently and lovingly with us all these many years? Through betrayals and spiritual amnesia and ungratefulness, God has always been with us, never forsaking us, never taking away God’s eternal love.

In case we missed it, John reminds us. After praying a long prayer to God the Father on behalf of his disciples, Jesus the Great High Priest goes to his death. And across the Kidron valley from the holy city of Jerusalem, in a garden, Jesus starts his final journey to the cross. As Eliot said, “to make an end is to make a beginning.” God in Christ returns to the garden, that place of primordial betrayal when Adam and Eve refused to accept the limitations of their humanity and went their own way. For those who can only speak the language of violence, the garden is a place of doom. It is the end. But for those of us who have waited with Christ and learned something of God’s patience, the garden is the appropriate place for the end to make a beginning.

Christ continues to show us that his end is the beginning of something new. He refuses to return violence for violence. He doesn’t shirk his fate. He goes willingly to his death, carrying his own cross, completely in control of his destiny as it accords with the will of the Father. His trial is a sham because it’s based on deception and falsehood. But Love incarnate goes steadily and confidently to the cross to show that “to make an end is to make a beginning.”

Even in that last searing moment of human sin and evil, as Jesus is mocked as a king, even as the religious authorities and Pilate argue back and forth about Jesus’s fate, even as soldiers at the foot of the cross divide up Jesus’s seamless garment, God speaks truth plainly, quietly, and boldly, if we have ears to hear.

Throughout the many centuries leading up to this point, God’s saving acts have been evident but so often interpreted through the lens of human constructs of violence and retribution. But now, in Christ, God shows the perfect image of truth and love. Before he breathes his last, and as pure chaos happens at the foot of the cross among those who have crucified him, Jesus reverses it all and makes a beginning from an ending. From out of chaos, a new creation is born.

To the Blessed Mother, Jesus entrusts John the Beloved Disciple. To the Beloved Disciple, Jesus entrusts his dear mother. As an earthly life nears its end, eternal life continues. As Jesus is handed over to death, Jesus hands over his mission and his Spirit to the Church, formed there at the foot of the cross. And only after this has been done is Jesus able to announce the consummation of God’s saving work. It is finished. It is complete. It is perfected. The ending has become a beginning.

Just as when God began to create the heavens and the earth from out of pure chaos, God in Christ unleashes a new creation as the cross shines forth in glory. What is divided becomes united in the beginning of the Church, and death becomes the means to new life. A breath taken away by death becomes a life-giving Spirit to animate the Church to be Christ for the world.

And that is where we stand right now. We are at the foot of the cross. Christ has given us his Spirit. Christ has given us a command last night as he washed our feet, and perhaps we can begin to understand something of what this means. We must go and wash the feet of all—the dispossessed, the lonely the suffering, the forsaken. We must love them all, even our enemies, just as Christ loved us.

But before we can do that, there is something we must do. Christ has taught us how. Just as he, the Great High Priest, interceded for the salvation and wholeness of the world, we, too, must now move into the place he has prepared for us, as we pray, first, selflessly, for the whole world and its inhabitants whom Christ came to love and save. And only then do we pray for ourselves, “for the grace of a holy life,” that “we may be accounted worthy to enter into the fullness of the joy of our Lord.”[2]

Even on this somber day, we can now begin to taste the joy of our Lord. T.S. Eliot said it so well: “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” And today is when we start.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Good Friday
April 3, 2026

[1] From “Little Gidding’ in Four Quartets

[2] Book of Common Prayer, p. 280

Past the Point of No Return

If you have ever taken a transatlantic voyage by ship, you will know that there comes a point, about two days into the trip, when you tip over into the land of no return. For the first couple of days, the ship is close enough to land so that in the event of a medical emergency, a helicopter can reach the ship to transport an ill passenger to a hospital. But after passing the point of no return, all bets are off. For the passenger on the ship, moving past the point of no return is disconcerting, even frightening. Having stuck with the voyage this long, passengers are now in it for the long haul.

Tonight, we will tip over into the land of no return. Each year during Holy Week, we must come back to these sacred, saving rituals and relive the discomfort and the glory. We begin on Palm Sunday with excruciating moments of betrayal, where we are the crowds acclaiming Jesus as King in one moment and then yelling “crucify him!” in the next. Palm Sunday reminds us that words are cheap. And ever since Palm Sunday, through the first part of this Holy Week, we have been waiting, waiting uncomfortably with the knowledge that there is a palpable dissonance between what we say and how we live.

Our rather superficial culture has two approaches to words. Words are either taken so literally or seriously that one can never be offered forgiveness for an instance of ill-chosen words. Or on the other hand, words are bandied about flippantly with little meaning whatsoever. We profess our undying love for something but do little to put that love into action. We say how much God and the Church mean to us, but we are unwilling to live as if it is so. We say “Amen” to Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, and then we live on the other side of the church doors as if the gift we have received has no bearing on our lives, as if Christ isn’t present in the stranger and in the enemy.

But we are fast approaching the point of no return. We are fast approaching a highly uncomfortable moment in both the Gospel story and in our shared ritual life together. St. John tells us that on the night before Jesus’s passion and death, he gathers with his disciples, having stuck with them through their fickleness and inability to understand who he truly is. Jesus loves them to the end, completely, fully, perfectly. He loves them so even as Judas goes out to betray him. He loves them so even as Peter refuses his gift, knowing that Peter will also betray him. The disciples, to their credit have waited with Christ, up to this point of no return. But more importantly, Jesus has waited with them, not moving on to do his own thing but loving them past the point of no return.

Jesus will stoop to ground level and wash their feet. He, their Master, Teacher, and Lord, will do something that is incomprehensible. But in doing so, he will invite the disciples past the point of no return. Having washed their feet and bidden them to do the same to one another, even to their enemies, there will be no going back for the disciples. This is a dangerous place into which Christ has called them. No longer can they avoid suffering and death. No longer can they flee hastily from their enemies as God’s people did when leaving Egypt in the Exodus. Now, past the point of no return, words are cheap. Words say very little about love. Past the point of no return, the disciples must move from words to action.

And so must we. As our feet are washed this evening, we will all move past the point of no return. This footwashing is far more than an embarrassing moment of exposing our calloused and worn feet. It’s a moment that pulls us firmly into the land of no return. This is the land where words mean little and actions say everything. It’s the land where we can’t profess Christ as our Savior without following him in deed, too. It’s the land where we can’t refuse to forgive our enemies. We must love them, and we must wash their feet, too.

As Jesus invites us to let him wash our feet, he also invites us to step into the place where he has been. As he has loved us and washed our feet, we must do the same. There is no going back. And we know what following Jesus demands, because we know where he will go after he washes the disciples’ feet. And there, we must go as well, to the cross. We must wait with him in his suffering, just as he waits with us in ours. We must love and not demonize those who hate us and persecute us and treat us horribly, because Jesus himself loved those who nailed him to a cross and mocked him. Once we are past the point of no return, we must love like we’ve never loved before.

And yet, despite waiting this long, despite letting Jesus wash our feet and love us, we, like Peter, do not yet understand what he has done for us. We must continue to wait for that. We must wait through this night’s celebration of the Eucharist, when we will no longer be the same people who last celebrated the Eucharist together. Tonight, that celebration is marred by the knowledge of deceit, of our own easy betrayals of Jesus, and of our cheap and careless words. And yet, we are taking one step closer to be like Christ, to become Christ for the world. We are moving past the point of no return.

We can’t yet go where Jesus has gone because it is not yet our hour. One day later in this voyage that moment will come. Past the point of no return, we are not only in a dangerous place, we are in a hopeful place, because our Lord tells us that one day, we will go to the place where he has gone, the place he has eternally prepared for us.

But for now, we must simply wait. We must wait up to and past the point of no return. We must wait with our doubts, despair, suffering, and discomfort knowing that on the other side of the point of no return, words are cheap. And because words are cheap, we have no choice as we move forward. As Jesus has commanded us, now, this night and forward, we must love like we’ve never loved before.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
Maundy Thursday
April 2, 2026

A Truth Worth Waiting For

We know much about how early Christians in the Holy Land commemorated the final days of Jesus’s earthly life from the fourth-century pilgrim Egeria. She wrote movingly about her experience there. And from her, we also get a glimpse of the patience and stamina of early Christians, who only recently could practice their religion openly and who had not yet lost the rigor of spiritual discipline.

Egeria tells us that over the course of Holy Week, they fasted and prayed, traveling to various sites that were associated with Jesus’s last days. Children and adults journeyed together, along with the bishop. They walked up and down hills. They waited and listened to readings from Scripture. And by Maundy Thursday, as Egeria recounts, the crowd was exhausted from keeping vigil and weak from fasting each day. They went “very slowly with hymns to Gethsemane,” and when the passage about Jesus’s arrest in the garden was read, there was “such groaning and moaning from all the people, with weeping, that the lamentation of all the people [was] heard about as far away as the city.”[1] The crowd was not yet finished. They would continue to fast and pray and walk until Easter Day.

This must seem like a strange thing to us who live in an age of immediacy, who are unwilling to wait for answers, who are uncomfortable waiting with those who suffer, who would prefer to avoid any talk of death. It must seem strange to those of us who would prefer not to wait through Palm Sunday and certainly not through the rest of Holy Week, who would rather skip ahead to the egg hunt and festivities of Easter Day.

I have recently been reminded of the impatience of our culture as I grieved the death of my mother. Well-meaning people have been quick to assure me that my mom is in a better place. I do believe that is true, but some people have also been unable to wait with me in my grief and suffering. On the other side of her death, some people treated me differently but were at the same time uncomfortable acknowledging my mother’s death. Nevertheless, a week that I will never forget because of its difficulty and many blessings was the week between my mother’s death and her funeral. I waited with my father, sharing in the joys of remembering my mother’s beautiful smile but also mourning her death far too young and sitting with the painful realization of her suffering before her death. My dad and I waited together, knowing that we could not rush to her funeral, and that at the end of the week, we would come face to face with the real loss that death brings.

On this first day of Holy Week, we are forced to wait. We wait through the charade of the Palm procession, knowing that the acclamations will soon morph into jeers. We wait through the long chanting of the Passion Gospel. We end the liturgy knowing that we will need to wait through the pain, silence, and discomfort of this week before Easter arrives.

Perhaps because of my own impatience, I had never noticed a detail in Matthew’s account of Jesus’s passion. After Judas has betrayed Jesus and after Jesus has been condemned, Judas is apparently cut to the heart. He repents and returns the thirty pieces of silver with which he had betrayed his Lord to the chief priests and elders. He acknowledges his sin. Somehow, I hadn’t paid much attention to Judas’s repentance. But even though he repents, something utterly tragic happens. He hangs himself. He gives up. He is too ashamed to wait through Jesus’s passion and death to see how forgiveness emerges from the grave.

Judas like us, is the product of an impatient and unforgiving society. This impatience plays out vividly on the pages of the Passion Gospel. The disciples can’t stay awake with Jesus in the garden because they are too bored to pray. Those who put Jesus on trial are impatient, too, impatient with Jesus’s challenges to the political and religious systems of his day. Peter is impatient with the discomfort of being associated with Jesus and denies him three times. Those who confront Jesus as he is tried want quick and easy answers to their questions. But Jesus remains silent, refusing to stoop to their superficial requests and demanding patience from those who are willing to learn what his kingship really means. Even those cruel words as Jesus hangs on the cross are impatient. If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. They want Jesus to prove his divinity in that moment. But the perfectly patient one will not do so. He will linger patiently until death, uttering the words of suffering and abandonment from Psalm 22.

The whole trial is a charade, just like our Palm procession is. The people who supposedly want justice, but only want it on their own terms, put Jesus through a sham trial. The release of Barabbas is no real act of mercy but simply a way to ensure that Jesus dies. And surely this impatience resonates with us as we see hasty entries into violence and war, of superficial gestures at justice, at an intolerance with mercy and forgiveness.

Maybe I never noticed that Judas repented because it is an amazingly easy detail to ignore. Do any of us really want to accept that Judas was genuinely sorry for what he had done? Would we prefer quick retribution by knowing that he ended his life, deprived of God’s mercy? But is that really true? What if we sat with the painful tragedy of Judas’s despair and of waiting for a final answer from God?

If we take anything away from this day, it’s the undeniable tension of two stubborn strands in the Passion story: the violence of humanity and the mercy of God. On Palm Sunday, it appears that the violence of humanity wins out, the vengefulness of humanity wins out, the despair of humanity wins out. But patience defies that simple conclusion. Even today, as we enter into a week that demands our patience, we already see hints of that other strand, which can’t be separated from the sinfulness of humanity. Humanity’s stubbornness is matched by God’s merciful stubbornness. At the conclusion of Matthew’s passion, the graves are opened and the dead are raised, a foreshadowing of what is to come. Judas repents without waiting long enough to understand that God will forgive him. But patience proves that the stubbornness of God’s mercy really means something because God doesn’t flippantly forgive from afar but forgives even after enduring the depths of hell.

And it is so with those who keep watch with Jesus on the cross through his agony and who at the bitter end see what God is doing. After Jesus has given up his spirit, the earth shakes and the rocks are split and the tombs are opened and the dead are raised. It’s the patient centurion and those with him who understand just what is taking place, who see a vivid glimpse of God’s love and mercy. Truly this man was the Son of God. This is no mockery or charade. This is the stone-cold truth, a truth that could only come by waiting.

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
March 29, 2026

[1] Anne McGowan and Paul F. Bradshaw, The Pilgrimage of Egeria, (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018), p. 174.

Worthy of Exclamation

In one of my favorite episodes of the television show Seinfeld, the character Elaine decides to break up with her boyfriend because he fails to use an exclamation point in a written note to her. One of Elaine’s friends had called while Elaine was out to say that she had her baby, and Elaine’s boyfriend jotted down a note, along with other things he needed to relate to her. With typical, quirky Seinfeld humor, Elaine obsesses with this failure of her boyfriend to see an exclamation point in a piece of good news. Elaine is an editor after all, and in her opinion, someone having a baby is more than worthy of an exclamation point. Now, whether it’s worth ending a relationship is another matter altogether, but that’s for you to decide.

If you think about it, an exclamation point is a curious punctuation mark. We can tell a lot about a person’s character or emotional state by how many exclamation points they use when communicating. An ordinary, dry sentence can be enlivened by just one exclamation point. Someone who uses far too many of them might be seen as hyperactive or overly dramatic. Or maybe they just seem like they care.

Exclamation points are not rampant within the pages of holy Scripture, but they are there. And every single one of them is editorial. They don’t exist in the ancient Biblical languages. You may have noticed that one exclamation point sneaks its way into tonight’s Gospel reading, at least in the translation we heard. The angel Gabriel’s words to Mary are exclamation-point-worthy in the eyes of the translator. That is fair enough. But after reviewing some other translations, I found that not all the translations include an exclamation point after Gabriel’s words. And yet, there is one translation that has a grand total of four exclamation points. Not only is Gabriel’s initial address to Mary considered worthy of heightened emotion. So, too, is his later announcement that Mary’s cousin Elizabeth has conceived a son in her old age. This must be so surprising that it warrants an exclamation point.

Gabriel’s astounding words to Mary encapsulate the astonishing theme of this entire story, and they are worthy of an exclamation point as well. “For nothing will be impossible with God!” How can we not say those words with enthusiasm and excitement of voice? How can those words not deserve an exclamation point, even if one is editorial? How can those words not take our breath away?

The Blessed Virgin Mary’s response to the unexpected visit of Gabriel carries no exclamation point in any translation I encountered. But we could certainly imagine one there, too. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word!”

It’s understated, but of all the characters in Scripture, Mary undoubtedly understands the power of Gabriel’s words. Nothing is impossible with God! Mary certainly must be shocked, confused, even mildly afraid, but her incredible words and actions from thenceforth reveal that she knows the power of an exclamation point. Her question to Gabriel, “how can this be, since I am a virgin?” is a question of awe. It, too, is worthy of an editorial exclamation point.

How, indeed, can an unmarried virgin conceive a son? Why, indeed, is she, an extremely young peasant girl, chosen to be the Mother of God? How, indeed, can God be so humble as to be born as a human being, nurtured and nourished within a human womb?

Over the years, the Church has struggled to make sense of the exclamation point of the virgin birth. Rightly, the Church has insisted on believing in Mary’s virginity because it truly shows that God can do what is impossible to mere mortals. And that is the point; that is the exclamation point, we might say. But in some ways, the Church has undermined the spectacular response of Mary by making her virginity a purity test or a sign of extraordinary holiness. Mary is holy, but she is holy because of how she responds when visited by the angel Gabriel. Mary responds with humble, self-emptying, stunning words, demonstrating that she knows that Gabriel’s words are worthy of an exclamation point. She knows and trusts that God can do the impossible. Her job is not to understand, but to believe and then to live as if it’s true.

The truth is that God’s people in the centuries preceding Mary’s life frequently lived as if the impossible was not possible. They lived in a world of anxious exclamation points, of cries for help, but with amnesia of all the exclamation points of God’s saving involvement in their lives. True, they may have been delivered from Egypt into freedom, but the exclamation point of this even lost its fervor as soon as hunger and thirst appeared in the wilderness. True, misfortune happened to the people of Israel—assaults from neighboring enemies and exile into a lonely land—but, nevertheless, there was always an exclamation point of God’s care and provision. God consistently stuck with the people of Israel, to provide and nourish and bring them back ultimately into the Promised Land. In the throes of despair and forsakenness, mustn’t this have been an exclamation point?

And with Mary’s unconditional yes to God’s involvement in her own life, the seemingly impossible promise of God never to abandon the ancestors of David and to love them and care for them unconditionally is realized and fulfilled. Mary’s yes is an exclamation point of hope and of firm belief that with God, nothing is impossible. Nothing.

In our own day of social media emojis and superficial words, exclamation points have perhaps become meaningless. Or exclamation points are used only to heighten anxiety. Every news headline is an exclamation point that can make us despair over the state of the world or, at least, make us lose any hope that goodness can prevail.

But in times of spiritual malaise, when the Church needs to be restored in her faith in God’s possibilities, Mary’s yes to God, in her full humanity and full humility, is a resounding gesture of hope. With God, anything is possible. Anything! The God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will always raise us to new life. This God constantly creates out of nothing and remakes the world to be a surprising exclamation point of goodness and wholeness. This God brings forth fruit out of barrenness and life out of death. And because Mary knew this, we should know it, too. May her witness be an inspiration to us as we navigate apathy and anxiety. May her words become ours, too, with an exclamation point of unwavering belief that we, like Mary, can be the servants of the Lord. Let it be to us according to the word of the one, true living God, for whom there is no end to possibilities. And that is worthy of an exclamation point!

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Feast of the Annunciation
March 25, 2026