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