St. Dolly of Appalachia

Sermon for Aug. 30, 2026
Romans 12:9-21

Like probably 80 or 90 percent of the rest of American preachers this morning, I want to reflect a little on the passing of Dolly Parton.  Now, I am only a marginal Dolly Parton fan; for years, I’ve admired and respected her artistic and philanthropic work, but I couldn’t name more than a handful of her songs.  But, like many of the rest of us, I did stop in my tracks on Tuesday as a staff member called out from his desk that Dolly had died.

          What’s really struck me this week has been the response to her passing.  It hasn’t been so much a surprise as a holy reassurance.  Across social media, we’ve seen post after post praising Dolly’s giftedness, her heart, and her faith.  People lauded her stunning artistic achievements, in quality and quantity – I can’t imagine writing more than 3,000 songs.  People praised her literacy initiative, the Imagination Library, which puts books in the hands of 3 million children each month.¹  People thanked her for giving away millions of dollars in other ways, too, including funding COVID research, AIDS research and awareness, and recovery efforts after Hurricane Helene – as well as supporting individuals who lost their homes in Tennessee wildfires.  People also witnessed to her unshakable faith and her commitment to living it out.  One post quoted Dolly saying, “We’re supposed to love one another and love our neighbors as ourselves. It doesn’t take much to be kind.”  Several posts named her as St. Dolly of Appalachia, complete with icons.  A post from the satirical Babylon Bee captured the moment nicely:  It read, “Apocalypse Draws Near as Last Remaining Universally Beloved Human Being Passes Away.”²

Of course, despite the way people have come together around Dolly’s passing, our world is still on fire, in a hundred ways.  Or, more precisely this week, it’s under water.  One day after Dolly Parton’s death came news of astonishing flooding and landslides in Tibet and Nepal.  The video takes your breath away as water, mud, and rocks roll over Himalayan villages, and people scatter like ants before the wave.  Initially, reports said an earthquake had triggered a melting glacier to give way.  Later, the U.S. government confirmed that, instead, the rush of water, mud, and rocks was so powerful as to mimic a 4.4-magnitude earthquake.³  As of this morning, about 800 are confirmed dead and 3,000 still are missing – mostly residents of the villages, as well as pilgrims and hikers from around the world.⁴  It’s devastation on a scale I can barely comprehend.

This isn’t really a why-bad-things-happen-to-good-people sermon, but I do think it’s worth saying this much:  The theological term that applies in situations like this is “theodicy.”  Interestingly, that word doesn’t mean, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”  It means a defense of God, in a legal sense.  It’s less “why?” and more “how could you allow that?”  So, taking the presumptuous position of rising as God’s defense attorney, I’d just say this:  It wasn’t God who melted that glacier enough to collapse.

Of course, the world is burning in many other ways, too.  And we could burn a lot of time debating who’s to blame for this or that particular dumpster fire.  I think it’s more productive, and more holy, to turn instead toward how we might put them out.  

But solutions can’t come without first having the right orientation, the right relationship.  To put out the fires raging around us, we first have to turn and face them together.  And that tremendous change of orientation begins with an even bigger change of heart – deciding to see ourselves, first and foremost, as children of God called to love the other children of God around us … whether we like them or not.

The apostle Paul lays it out for us in today’s reading from Romans.  Now, remember, Paul is the guy who first committed his life to judging those who disagreed with him, literally locking them up, even stoning them.  Paul was the original true believer in the worst possible sense, the kind of person you want to stay as far away from as you can.  But in this soaring statement of just how far his heart had turned, Paul says to the believers in Rome:  Put Love first, and let it guide everything.

Of course that’s true about relating to other followers of Jesus.  “Let love be genuine,” Paul says to the Roman Christians.  “[L]ove one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor” (12:10).  Cool; we can get behind that.  It’s even true about those beyond the boundary of your faith:  “[E]xtend hospitality to strangers,” Paul adds (12:13).  OK, that’s fine.

But then comes the crazy talk.  “Bless those who persecute you” (12:14).  Wait, what?  No, really, Paul says; “Do not repay anyone evil for evil….  Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God.” (12:17,19)  Want to see your enemies suffer?  Here’s how, Paul says:  “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing that you will heap burning coals on their heads” (12:20).  Paul’s point is this:  Don’t follow the world’s model by trying to destroy those who oppose you.  Instead, fight back with the strongest weapon there is, the weapon of Love.  “[O]vercome evil with good,” Paul says (12:21).

One of the things I really admire about Dolly Parton is the way she embodied this countercultural ethic St. Paul lays out.  Now, most of us don’t have $500 million to donate to the work of Love in the world, so how it looks for us to overcome evil with good probably won’t bring us internet sainthood when we die.  But we can each take inspiration from St. Dolly of Appalachia, as well as St. Paul of Tarsus, and look for ways to overcome evil with good in our own lives.

Maybe that’s through gifts of time.  Maybe it’s through gifts of talent.  Maybe it’s through gifts of treasure.  Or maybe it’s through another “T”: telling the truth.  And I don’t mean that in the sense of using your truth to bludgeon others.  I mean following the model of the Old Testament prophets: telling truth that points people toward a divine reality.  That’s the prophet’s calling, after all – to be the one to speak for God, the one with the guts to say, “Look, this path we’re on is leading to our destruction.  Let’s turn back.  Let’s go another way – God’s way.”

That’s what I hear St. Paul saying in today’s reading from Romans, too.  I imagine him grilling a witness for the world’s model of destroying those who oppose you, the old us-versus-them:  St. Paul asks, how’s retribution working out for you?  How effectively is vengeance solving your problems?  Just maybe there’s a better road.  How about this? “Live in harmony with one another; … do not claim to be wiser than you are….  [S]o far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” (Romans 12:16,18)  And, for St. Paul, “all” incudes even them – whoever qualifies as “them” to you.  

It’s not just in Scripture that we find God’s prophets.  We find one in our saint of the week, Blessed Dolly of Appalachia.  Dolly Parton didn’t just have a great voice; she had a divine voice.  She refused to get drawn into us-versus-them debates; instead, she insisted on speaking and acting in love.  Doing that, St. Dolly spoke for God, the One who made her and redeemed her and sustained her.  That didn’t mean being a sweet Southern girl.  It meant shining light into the darkness we create for ourselves.

So, I want to give St. Dolly the last word this morning.  Now, I’d like to play a song for you; but last time I did that, the gods of the internet shut off our livestream.  So, I’ll just leave you with prophetic words from St. Dolly’s 2023 song, “World on Fire”:

Liar, liar, the world’s on fire,
Whatcha gonna do when it all burns down?
Fire, fire burning higher,
Still got time to turn it all around. 

I ain’t one for speaking out much,
But that don’t mean I don’t stay in touch.
Everybody’s tripping over this or that –
What we gonna do when we all fall flat? …

Don’t get me started on politics.
How are we to live in a world like this?
Greedy politicians present and past –
They wouldn't know the truth if it bit ’em in the ass.

What is truth?  Have we all lost sight
Of common decency, of wrong and right?
How do we heal this great divide?
Do we care enough to try? …

Can we rise up? Can we show some love?
Do we just give up – or make a change?
We know all too well we’ve all been through hell.
Time to break the spell, in heaven’s name.⁵ 

1.        “The World’s Largest Study of Shared Book Reading Reaffirms: Early Literacy Begins at Birth.” Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Available at: https://imaginationlibrary.com/international-research/. Accessed Aug. 29, 2026.

2.        “Apocalypse Draws Near As Last Remaining Universally Beloved Human Being Passes Away.” The Babylon Bee. Available at: https://babylonbee.com/news/apocalypse-draws-near-as-last-remaining-universally-beloved-human-being-passes-away?fbclid=IwZnRzaAT9MEpwZG9mBWZkaWQWUNR_GGBjmd2CrthRFmLC72QcPVWDFmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkCjY2Mjg1NjgzNzkAAR7RIhOLk0U-IDY-8Zc-GdNO3RqW9S6H4YCZ4Qs2JMV4WireZy7NoOLzqBY2EA_aem_eRq-LBTHrbE-2ZcfGIwUtA. Accessed Aug. 29, 2026.

3.        “Nearly 1,400 missing, mostly tourists, after Nepal-Tibet flash flood kills at least 356.” The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/27/what-caused-nepal-flash-flood-glacial-collapse-tibet-border. Accessed Aug. 29, 2026.

4.        “Nepal flood death toll reaches 800, with more than 3,000 missing, as poor weather hampers rescues.” CBS News. Available at: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nepal-flash-flood-death-missing-americans-rescue/. Accessed Aug. 30, 2026.

5.        Parton, Dolly. “World on Fire.” Available at: https://tasteofcountry.com/dolly-parton-world-on-fire-lyrics/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral. Accessed Aug. 29, 2026.

 

Bearing Heaven

Sermon for the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, transferred
Luke 1:46-55
Aug. 16, 2026

This morning, as we’re celebrating the feast of St. Mary the Virgin, which was yesterday, it seems like a good time to ask:  What does Mary have to do with me?   

Maybe, if you’re of a certain age, you might identify with Mary from the Beatles’ classic “Let It Be,” speaking words of wisdom in times of trouble.  For many Episcopalians, especially with Roman Catholic roots, we might know Mary as our intercessor, the one who understands our suffering and brings our needs before the throne of grace. 

For the past 2,000 years, the Church has been trying to figure out how to understand Mary – who she was, what happened to her when she died, and how to see her now.  In the 400s, early Christian theologians settled on calling her the theotokos, “the one who gave birth to God”¹ – a poetic way to capture the real point, which is that is that her son, Jesus, is both human and divine.  But giving Mary that title of God-bearer led the theologians to wonder about Mary’s role beyond Jesus’ life.  In the Roman Catholic tradition, there’s the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary, the belief that she didn’t die but was taken physically into heavenly glory, like Elijah in the Old Testament.²  In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, there’s the doctrine of the Dormition of Mary, the belief that she did die but without human suffering, like falling asleep, and that she rose physically into heavenly glory after three days, like Jesus.³  And in heaven, however she got there, the Catholic and Orthodox traditions would say Mary is now ruling with her son, the queen mother of the sovereign Lord Christ. 

For us Episcopalians, this morning’s feast day isn’t named for the Assumption of Mary, or the Dormition of Mary; it’s just about Mary.  We don’t worry so much about the details of how she got to heaven or what she’s doing there,⁴ focusing more on her earthly story and what that says about us.

In Luke’s Gospel, we meet Mary as a teenaged peasant whose life is about to hit the wall.  She’s minding her own business in Nazareth one day when the angel Gabriel appears and says she’s been chosen to bear God’s Son, the one who will “be great” and rule over Israel, and “of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32-33).  Mary, engaged to a nice older carpenter, has now just lost out on that engagement for having become pregnant – and she’s lost any hope for her future, since she’ll be an outcast in a society with no place for single mothers.  Yet, from the start, Mary shows herself to be anything but the meek and mild young woman in the nativity paintings.  Instead, she asks Gabriel some pointed questions about how she’ll come to be pregnant, and then she accepts God’s assignment:  “Here I am,” she says, “the servant of the Lord.  Let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38)

Despite the debates across the centuries, pretty much all Christian theology agrees on what that word theotokos tries to capture: that Mary gave birth to the One who is both fully God and fully one of us.  So, what does that have to do with you and me today?

Well, of course, our situation is not at all the same as Mary’s, but I would say this:  We, too, are graced with the chance to bear the reality of heaven in our own lives.

Because God has a great sense of timing, on my early-morning walk this week, I was listening to the podcast Turning to the Mystics, featuring writer and teacher James Finley.  He was talking about Teresa of Avila, the 16^th-century Spanish mystic and author of The Interior Castle, among other things.  Teresa compares the spiritual journey to moving from room to room in God’s heavenly mansion.  Now, when I say, “heavenly mansion,” many of us probably imagine it being “up there” somewhere, the Father’s dwelling where Jesus promises to “prepare a place” for each of us (John 14:3).  Of course, we know “up there” is a metaphor when we talk about heaven, reflecting an ancient cosmology of a three-tiered universe.  Given that we’re on a ball spinning through space, “up” doesn’t really mean much once you’ve left the spinning ball.  But the point is that we usually think of heaven as being far removed from us – the distant land to which we travel, God willing, once this chapter of eternal life is done.

But Teresa of Avila, and probably all the mystics, and certainly Jim Finley, would encourage us to see heaven differently; and you hear that in the title of Teresa’s book: The Interior Castle.  The idea flows from Jesus, in the Gospels, telling his followers that “the kingdom of heaven is within you” (Luke 17:21).  The journey toward union with God is not about going somewhere beyond the world and the self we know; it’s about imagining our true self, the soul, to be “vast, spacious, and plentiful,” as Jim Finley puts it.⁵  The dwelling place of the divine, the place Jesus is preparing for us – it’s here and now as well as later, within each one of us in this frame of life, if we choose to seek it.

That has profound implications for us as we seek to live in the fullness of God’s love.  As Finley says, “We think of ‘heaven’ as a word we use [for] where God lives,” right?  Well, “if heaven is where God lives, and if God is living inside of your soul, your soul is God’s heaven.  So, your soul is heaven in miniature.”⁵

But wait, Finley says, there’s more. If it’s true that our souls are heaven in miniature – that our steps toward union with God take us through our own interior castle – then, Finley says, “this earthly embodiment of God’s heaven, which is my own soul, is vast, beyond what I can compare.”⁵  So, this process of growing in relationship with the Love that gives us life – it’s a journey we take now, day by day, seeking always to know just that much more vividly the heavenly Love that’s never farther from us than our own hearts.

Pretty good stuff, right?

So, what does all that have to do with Mary, the mother of God?  We don’t know anything about Mary’s spiritual life, neither as a Jewish teenager under Roman occupation nor as the mother of the One whom God sent to save us.  But we do know that, tapped into the Love that fueled her life, Mary wrote the poem we’re each still learning, the theme song of the true self that is our soul.

We hear Mary’s song, the Magnificat, in our Gospel reading today; but first, we need some more backstory.  This very young woman has done nothing special, nothing to earn God’s favor, other than simply being whom God created her to be.  I imagine she must have been a deeply authentic person, someone who knew herself well enough to stand before an angel and ask just how this divine pregnancy was going to work, anyway.  Her heart must have been open enough to imagine not just God’s saving love for humans in general but God’s deep love for her – this particular teenager in this particular backwater of the Roman Empire.

And that gift of knowing her own belovedness is too stunning to keep to herself.  So, Mary heads out to visit her aging, childless relative Elizabeth – whom, it turns out, God had also given a unique role in salvation history, being pregnant with the child who’d become John the Baptist.  Mary greets Elizabeth; and in their shared wonder and delight that Love has come to dwell in their own bodies, Mary sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” – not just because God cares for the people of Israel in the abstract but because God “has looked with favor” on her.  God has “done great things for” her, and “shown strength” through her, and “lifted up the lowly” through her.  This teenaged nobody carries heaven itself.  And, empowered by God’s Love welling up inside her, she receives a foretaste of how Love lifts all the lowly, and fills the hungry, and sends the dominating powers packing.

The stunning thing is that God wants to give us that foretaste of heavenly Love, too.  This song of the true self, this song of the soul, is not just Mary’s but ours to claim, as well.  Pregnant with Jesus, Mary literally bears God within her.  But pregnant with Love, so do we.  Go back to the words of the writer Jim Finley:  Your soul is heaven in miniature, one of the millions of mansions in which God is pleased to dwell.  That’s what we’re made for – not just to be productive, not even just to be good, but to be vessels of heaven on earth.  In Jesus, God’s Love “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14); and that pattern continues in you and me.  Who am I to host heaven, you might ask?  Who am I to bear the Son of God, Mary definitely asked.  And God says, “You are worthy because I made you.  You are worthy because I love you.  You are worthy because I want nothing so much as for you to love me back.  The more you explore heaven within,” God says, “the more you’ll find my home is yours, as well.” 

Incarnation was no one-and-done magic trick.  God still comes seeking a dwelling place deep within the beloved.  The shock is, that beloved is you.  Your soul exists to hold heaven itself.  It just might be worth opening the door to that interior castle and spending some time going room to room.

1.       “Theotokos.” Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3^rd edition. London: Oxford University Press, 1997. 1607.

2.       Armentrout, Don S., and Robert Boak Slocum, eds. “Assumption of Mary.” An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church. Available at: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/assumption-of-mary/. Accessed Aug. 15, 2026.

3.       “Dormition of the Mother of God.” Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormition_of_the_Mother_of_God. Accessed Aug. 15, 2026.

4.       Armentrout, Don S., and Robert Boak Slocum, eds. “Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Saint.” An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church. Available at: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/mary-the-virgin-mother-of-our-lord-jesus-christ-saint/. Accessed Aug. 15, 2026.

5.       Finley, James, and Kirsten Oates. “Dialogue: The Second Mansion.” Season 2, episode 5 of Turning to the Mystics from the Center for Action and Contemplation. Available at https://cac.org/podcast/turning-to-the-mystics/. Accessed Aug. 15, 2026.

 

Parables: A Kingdom Collage

Sermon for July 26, 2026
Matthew 13:31-33,44-52

This morning, I’d like to take you to my dining room – specifically, to one wall in my dining room.  On this wall hang 11 frames.  Because I have such little artistic imagination, those frames hang in greater symmetry than I really intended, reflecting a need for balance I can’t seem to shake.

But here’s what you see.  There’s a frame of three group shots of my wife, Ann; our kids; and either Ann’s mom or me.  There’s a photo from the last dinner we all shared, when the kids and their spouses were in town a couple of weeks before Ann’s last illness.  There’s a print of Rembrandt’s painting The Return of the Prodigal Son.  There’s a shot of Ann holding Kathryn the day after Kathryn was born.  There’s a frame of nine snapshots taken over 20 years or so, images of Ann and me, or Ann and the kids, in special places we’d visited.  There’s a frame with three shots of the kids, Ann, and Ann’s mother, marking that multigenerational bond across the years.  There’s a snapshot at the beach when Kathryn and Dan were 6 and 4, grinning and running in step to escape the wave behind them.  There’s a shot of Ann looking back over her shoulder, caught in beautiful surprise.  There’s an impromptu portrait of Ann in a botanical garden, with flowers all around her.  There’s a painting by a parishioner imagining a heavenly garden.  And there’s a calligraphed verse of Scripture, from John’s Gospel:  “My peace I give unto you; therefore, let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” 

Each of these images has a story and tells a story.  Any one of them would stand on its own that way.  But taken together, despite the overbearing symmetry, these images say something more.  They’re a collage – a collage of love.  Now, this collage doesn’t pretend to define love or capture its fullness.  But it certainly reveals love as my family knew it.

OK – why am I telling you this?  Because I think our Gospel reading today offers something very much like these images on my dining-room wall.  This reading is a collage of the kingdom of God.

You know, we throw around that term a lot – the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven.  But God’s authority, God’s rule over all creation, isn’t like an earthly ruler lording it over his subjects.  In fact, God’s authority turns our expectations upside down … which, I think, is why Jesus doesn’t just give us one straightforward analogy to help us see the kingdom but, instead, one parable after another.  “The kingdom of heaven is like this” or “the kingdom of heaven is like that” – but no single one of them is enough to capture the reign and rule of God on its own.

So, following the two parables we heard over the last two Sundays, first about the sower and then about the weeds and the wheat, Jesus today gives us five rapid-fire parables, five more glimpses of the bigger picture.  Or, if you imagine yourself standing in an art gallery, it’s five more pieces on the kingdom’s wide canvas, five more fragments of the heavenly collage.

First is the parable of the mustard seed, which begins as “the smallest of all the seeds” but grows to offer safe haven where the birds can build their nests (Matthew 13:32).  Then comes the parable of the yeast: that the authority of God is like “yeast that a woman took and mixed in with [50 pounds] of flour until all of it was leavened” (Matthew 13:33).  In these two snapshots, the images are surprising.  God’s authority seems small and insignificant, like a tiny seed or a few pinches of yeast – not like the power kings usually wield.  But with time, the effect of God’s authority grows substantial.  Like the mustard seed, it gives us shelter from all that bears down on us.  Like a few pinches of yeast mixed into 50 pounds of flour, it changes everything, transforming life from run-of-the-mill to rich and remarkable. 

So, here’s what we know about God’s authority so far:  It starts out small; it surprises us with what it becomes; and it changes everything around it.

Then, we get two more parables.  First, Jesus says God’s reign and rule is like a “treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and then hid; then, in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44).  Then Jesus says a person in God’s kingdom is like “a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matthew 13:45). 

So, Jesus says, God’s authority is a treasure, something to be deeply desired.  Well, that seems odd.  I mean, our desires usually run along the lines of what we see on TV commercials – the freedom to sit on the beach with a cold beer in our hands or the power to whip out our Visa cards and buy whatever we want.  But Jesus says God’s authority is the real treasure.  And, he says, if we understood what a treasure it is, we’d risk everything to live under it.  Maybe that sounds crazy.  But remember the picture Jesus paints of God’s kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount – when the poor are fed, when the merciful are blessed, when the peacemakers win, when enemies reconcile, when people hear God’s word and live by it (Matthew 5:1-12).  Deep down, I think that is what we desire.  We want to live in relationship with God and each other; we want to be agents of reconciliation in the world; we want to see God’s righteousness become our way of life.  If that’s not treasure, I don’t know what is.

Then, finally, Jesus gives us the parable of the fishing net: that the rule of God is like “a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets and threw out the bad.  So it will be at the end of the age.” (Matthew 13:47-48)  This piece of the collage shows how God’s authority works on us – in a way that’s so subtle we may not even realize it’s there until it’s already gathered us in.  Now, I’ve never been a fish, so I don’t know; but I imagine a fish doesn’t have much of a sense of what’s happening to it until the net closes and it’s already caught.  I think being under God’s authority is like that:  It’s true regardless of whether we realize it.  Of course, for some people, a blinding light does knock them off their horses and make them change their lives.  But I think, for most of us, God sort of creeps up and draws us in before we really know what’s happening.  So that’s the final thing we learn from these five glimpses of the kingdom:  God’s reign and rule is subtle, catching us before we realize we’ve been caught.

OK, now imagine you’re an artist, and you’re making your own collage of the heavenly kingdom.  You’ve chosen images that speak to you about the mustard tree, the leavened loaf, the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great price, and the great catch of fish.  Now your task is to arrange them, to form them into a collage that says more than the sum of its parts.  How might you put the pieces together?  What arrangement might you choose?  There’s always the shape of the cross – can’t go wrong there.  But maybe you make a circle.  Maybe you evoke a sunrise.  Maybe you float the images on the water of life.  Maybe there’s an open doorway, with these five images inviting you to step in and find what’s been calling your name forever.

Or, if you’re like me and you kind of stink at visual art, maybe you’d rather have another parable – a parable to make sense of the parables.  How about this:  The kingdom of God is like being in love.  Now, you can picture that in any context that works for you.  Maybe you’re in love with your partner; maybe with your child; maybe with your family; maybe with a soul friend.  But that love can help you picture the kingdom of heaven.  Like the mustard seed, love starts small; but it grows into something steady and solid, something that shelters and sustains us.  Like the yeast, love starts off almost unnoticed; but with time, it has its way with us and changes us into so much more than we were before.  Like the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price, love is the greatest prize we could ever hope for, despite the fact it’ll never make us rich or powerful.  Like the fishing net, love sneaks up on us and draws us in, binding our life to the life of our beloved before we even know we’re caught. 

And, like love, the reign and rule of God is something we ultimately have to choose.  Despite God’s awesome power and ultimate authority, God doesn’t lord it over us the way we’d expect a king to do.  Even at the end of the age, when the fishing net is finally hauled in, God doesn’t insist that we live under heaven’s authority.  We can always choose to live apart from God, following the world’s authority instead.  As St. Paul said, the kingdom of love “does not insist on its own way” (1 Corinthians 13:5).

But given the chance to dwell in heaven, would you really choose anything else?

Christian Americans: Do What's Hard

Sermon for Independence Day (transferred), July 5, 2026
Deuteronomy 10:17-21; Psalm 145:1-9; Hebrews 11:8-16; Matthew 5:43-48

Happy late Fourth of July, the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  I talked about the preamble to that amazing document in the sermon two weeks ago, for Juneteenth – specifically the national vision statement the Declaration gives us: that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”¹  I believe we’re tremendously blessed to have our national creed stated so clearly.

But, of course, a creed is there to be lived out.  In our Baptismal Covenant, we begin by stating the Apostles’ Creed – what we believe about the nature of God – and we flesh it out with five promises about how we’ll live our belief.  Well, we needed a guide for living out our national creed, too; and that’s the Constitution.  It’s far from a perfect document, as its 27 amendments make clear.  But it begins with words that will never be amended, our nation’s purpose statement – the Constitution’s preamble.  If, like me, you’re of a certain age, and you were blessed to watch Schoolhouse Rock along with your Saturday-morning cartoons, you might even carry our national purpose statement in your head, set to music.  I will resist the temptation to lead us in singing it, but here it is:  “We the People of the United States of America, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”²

Now, as we hear that national purpose statement, there’s one important detail that doesn’t come through, one that mattered to the people who wrote it.  That detail is the look of the words on the page.  I imagine you can see it in your mind’s eye.  When you picture the preamble of the Constitution, what stands out, of course, are the first three words: We the People, written five times bigger than the rest of the text.

Now, those three words didn’t come down on tablets from Mt. Sinai.  They were a choice, and they reasonably might have been different.  The Constitution could have begun, “We the delegates to this Constitutional Convention” or “We the States now United” or “We the victors of the late Revolution.”  But, instead, the Constitution begins, in giant letters, “We the People.”

And, it turns out, there’s a story behind that, something I learned from a newspaper column last week.  The column is about “The Founder … We Don’t Remember,” a man named James Wilson.³  James Wilson was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787; and, it turns out, he was one of the primary editors of that great document, so he has a place close to my heart.  He was on the five-person Committee of Detail, and he wrote the first draft, which compiled all the previously adopted resolutions and proposals.  And that first draft, in Wilson’s handwriting, began with, “We the People….”⁴

Like all of us, Mr. Wilson had a backstory, and his backstory makes those first three words all the more poignant.  In 1779, three years after Independence, Wilson was living in Philadelphia, a wealthy lawyer with one of the city’s finest homes.  Four years into a brutal revolution, with the economy a shambles, the regular folks of Philadelphia were not exactly impressed.  Wilson and his family were living in opulence when most people couldn’t afford what little food there was.  People also questioned Wilson’s allegiance because he had opposed the highly democratic state constitution proposed for Pennsylvania, and he’d defended loyalists being tried for treason.  So, one night in 1779, a drunken mob set out for Wilson’s beautiful home, looking to even the score.  The mob attacked.  In the firefight, seven people were killed and another 17 wounded.

Wilson escaped, but I can’t imagine how traumatized he must have been.  You could see how he might have broken with the movement at that point and hightailed it off to Canada.  Instead, Wilson remained because he could understand why the mob was so upset and looking for someone to blame.  Wilson had grown up poor in Scotland before his family emigrated to the colonies.  He knew what it was to be hungry and under the English thumb.

So, instead of nursing resentment toward the people who’d attacked, Wilson doubled down on democracy.  There in the Constitutional Convention, he pulled a copy of the Declaration of Independence from his coat pocket and read from it to the other delegates, reminding them that the people of the colonies had bound themselves together to advance their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  His point was that “the people are … ‘the legitimate source of all authority’”⁵ – despite the fact some of them had stormed his house and tried to kill him.  So, the first three words from Wilson’s Constitutional drafting committee are the ones that ring down to us today: “We the People … ordain and establish this Constitution.”

We find ourselves in a day when focusing on the well-being of those who aren’t part of your own tribe might seem naïve.  I imagine it seemed naïve back in the day, too.  Even more so than now, the Revolutionary period was a time of extremes.  You had leading citizens renouncing their national identities.  You had brother fighting against brother, our Civil War, Part One.  You had poor people literally rioting in the streets, shooting cannonballs into the homes of wealthy lawyers.  Common purpose must have seemed like a pipe dream.  Maybe it still does.

I think James Wilson might have said that what unifies us is choosing to be us.  We may not get it right in any given moment – in fact, you can read our history as one example after another of not getting it right.  But you can also read our history as call and response: the call to remember whom we aspire to be and the response of taking one more step to expand the boundaries of “We the People” balancing liberty and justice for all.

So, as we celebrate this feast of Independence Day, I hear our readings as a call to notice how the Good News and our national aspirations intersect, and then a call to remember whom we aspire to be, in both our spiritual and secular lives.  Maybe most fundamentally, I think the Good News and our national aspirations intersect by calling us to pursue not what is easy but what is hard – the “narrow door” through which Jesus calls us to step into God’s kingdom (Luke 13:24).

First, from Deuteronomy, we heard Moses, on the doorstep of the Promised Land, reminding his people to default toward humility despite being God’s chosen.  Yes, Moses says, God has blessed and is blessing you beyond measure.  But remember why: to live out the heart of the One who formed you.  “The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who 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,” Moses says to these people about to occupy other people’s lands, “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (10:17-19)  Once you’re in charge, Moses says, it’ll be easy to think you did this all on your own and then to serve your own interests.  But you’ve been chosen to show God’s ways and purposes to others.  So, follow God’s lead, Moses says, and do what’s hard instead.

Then, from the Psalms, the writer praises God’s “unsearchable” greatness (145:3), awesome majesty, and “wondrous works” (145:5).  And what do those wondrous works look like?  How does the creator and sovereign of the universe wield ultimate power?  “The Lord is gracious and merciful,” the psalmist says, “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  The Lord is good to all and has compassion over all that he has made.” (145:8-9)  All … not just the blessed, not just the chosen, not just the familiar, but all.  Loving the good and the faithful would be easy.  But God does what’s hard instead.

Then, in the epistle, the writer reminds these Jewish followers of Jesus that their founding father, Abraham, was someone with no capacity for great things on his own.  Instead, what Abraham had was an immense capacity to trust that, even in what seems like endings, God is always working something new.  Abraham and Sarah stepped into their journey with God not in fear but in hope.  Their focus was the homeland not where they were but where they were going – “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (11:16).  Getting stuck in present fear and failure is easy.  But God calls us to do what’s hard, to help build what’s coming, instead.

And finally, in Matthew, Jesus tells his followers absolutely the last thing they want to hear.  In the Sermon on the Mount, the Torah version 2.0, Jesus says over and over not to ask, “What’s enough?” but to ask, “What is God’s heart?”  Don’t just not murder each other; reconcile with each other.  Don’t just not commit adultery; respect each other as equals, not objects.  Don’t just follow the rules in punishing evildoers; kill them with kindness to change their hearts.  Don’t just love the neighbors who love you back; love even your enemies and pray for your persecutors.  Following the law and reveling in self-righteousness – that’s easy.  But God calls us to do what’s hard, to expand the circle, instead.

Our nation’s 250^th birthday is certainly a time to celebrate, but it’s also a time to remember – to remember the deep complexity of what it means to live as a faithful follower of Jesus among “we the people” in 2026.  The easy way is Christian nationalism – to wrap the baby Jesus in the American flag and decide, in advance, that if the United States does something, it must be God’s will.  The more challenging path is to be not a Christian nationalist but a Christian American.  That means patterning my life on the vision and purpose of the Baptismal Covenant.  It means patterning my civic engagement on the vision and purpose of our nation’s founding documents.  And it means, every day, whether in the pew or in the public square, to choose to be part of “we the people” called by God to do what is hard.

1.       “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription.” National Archives. Available at: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript. Accessed July 3, 2026.

2.       “The Preamble.” Constitution Annotated: Analysis and Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Available at: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/preamble/. Accessed July 3, 2026.

3.       Wegman, Jesse. “The Founder We Need Is the One We Don’t Remember.” New York Times, June 26, 2026. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/opinion/declaration-independence-constitution-james-wilson.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share. Wilson’s story, as told here, comes from this article. See also Wegman’s book The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution.

4.       “Manuscript of the Committee of Detail Report, August, 3, 1787.” American Treasures: Documenting the Nation’s Founding. Available at: https://constitutioncenter.org/american-treasures/manuscript-of-the-committee-of-detail-report/kiosk. Accessed July 3, 2026.

5.       Quoted by Wegman and found in Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. Rev. ed. 4 vols. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1937. Volume 1, Chapter 13, Document 18. Available at: https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s18.html. Accessed July 3, 2026.

Calling Balls and Strikes

Sermon for June 21, 2026, celebrating Juneteenth
Amos 5:18-24; Psalm 137:1-8; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 4:14-21

In addition to praying for fathers on this Father’s Day, we’re marking the Juneteenth holiday this morning.  As you probably know, it’s the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when the news of freedom finally came to enslaved people in Texas, the last formerly Confederate state to receive that good news.  I think there’s symbolic resonance in the fact that Juneteenth and Independence Day fall just 16 days apart.  To me, they seem like two acts of an unfolding drama, with Juneteenth being America’s second Independence Day.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of preparing for our nation’s birthday, I decided to watch the recent Ken Burns series on the Revolutionary War.  I’ve been a Ken Burns fan for a long time; and, of course, the production is fabulous.  But here’s what I especially appreciate about Ken Burns:  He works hard to capture the deep complexities and paradoxes of American history.  He told an interviewer that, on the wall in his editing room, there’s a neon sign that reads, “It’s complicated.  It means that, no matter how good that scene is,” Burns said, “if you learn new, complicating, destabilizing information, you are obligated to change [that scene].”  Ken Burns sees his role not as a historical judge but as one who tries to tell the whole story.  As he puts it, he strives to “call the balls and strikes for everyone involved.”¹

As we look toward our 250^th celebration of independence, we will rightly remember the nobility, even the holiness, of the modern world’s first experiment in self-governance.  As Abraham Lincoln famously framed it in his day, our founders brought forth “a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”²

I think Ken Burns would say the key word in Lincoln’s reflection is this: “proposition” – the proposition that all people are created equal.  The American Revolution wasn’t fought to make everyone in the colonies politically equal.  Just ask a woman, or a Native person, or a Black person, or a poor person back in the day.  But the American Revolution rested on the proposition that all people should be politically equal.  It was the beginning of “a process story,” Ken Burns says.  “We are in pursuit of happiness.  We are for a more perfect union.”³ 

And his series on the Revolution recognizes this stunning disconnect: that our founders couched their arguments for liberty explicitly in contrast to slavery – in the sense that they refused to be England’s slaves.  On one hand, it’s deeply hypocritical for people who own other people to argue against the evils of being enslaved.  And, at the same time, as Ken Burns says, “that hypocrisy is the place in which we are, strangely enough, able to grow.”⁴  Here’s why:  Once the slaveholding founders could “articulate and distill a century of Enlightenment thinking into one remarkable [phrase], … that all men are created equal – it’s done,” Burns says.  “Slavery’s done.”⁵  Maybe so, but that ending takes two wars and 89 more years to come about.  The Juneteenth holiday reminds us that committing ourselves to a holy aspiration isn’t the same as accomplishing it.  The work keeps going – for our nation as a whole, for its individual citizens, and particularly for us – we Americans who strive to follow Jesus’ way of love.  As we try to walk that path faithfully, we benefit from the clear eyes of someone like Ken Burns – an umpire who calls the balls and strikes as fairly as he can.

I think our readings today do that, too – God’s Word calling balls and strikes on our work of faithful living.  We started with that reading from Amos – a spiritual wake-up call.  “So,” the prophet says to the leaders of Israel, “you think you want to see the Day of the Lord?  Really?  It might bring a message you don’t want to hear.  It might be like running from a lion only to find a bear waiting for you.”  The prophet says Yahweh isn’t looking for the kind of righteousness we usually offer – neither perfect church services nor national prayer meetings – if those observances don’t reflect our hearts and our lives.  “Don’t just sing me pretty songs,” Yahweh says.  “‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’” (Amos 5:24).  We can take that two ways, and both would be right.  Let the waters of justice and righteousness flow through you, Amos says, so that the way you live channels God’s Love.  And, Amos warns, if you don’t, then may the waters of justice and righteousness roll down on you in judgment.  As the divine umpire, Amos is calling a lot of balls here in a time when those who held power ignored the folks on the sidelines.  And, just as Israel failed to find the strike zone, so have we in our history, as our path toward liberty has wound through enslavement and lynchings and differential standards of justice … and the profound forgetting of those things.

Our psalm today, too, reminds us how God’s Word takes to task those who are unconcerned with the well-being of others.  The writer is reflecting on the Jewish people’s exile in Babylon – how they were carted off as spoils of war by the Babylonians and held in a foreign land, expected to sing happy songs for people who’d shipped them in as cheap labor.  The psalm asks God to remember this and to right the scales of justice.  And the psalm asks us to do the same now – to remember our history and live differently because of it.

Then we have the reading from Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  It’s the source of a Gospel claim that reminds me of the fundamental claim in our Declaration of Independence.  In Galatians, Paul says that Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension have changed the game spiritually, rewriting the rules.  If you’ve been baptized, you’ve put on Christ as your identity, Paul says.  You’re no longer allied with the tribe you allied with before.  In this Christian way of living, no one ranks higher than anyone else.  “There is no longer Jew or Greek,” Paul says, “there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (3:28).  It’s a truth Paul holds to be self-evident – that all followers of Jesus are re-created equal.  If we let that sink in, it undoes every claim we want to make about our superiority, our especially beloved status in God’s eyes – for ourselves and for our nation.  There is no room for “God loves my tribe best” in the new world order Christ has begun.  And by naming it so clearly, Paul narrows the strike zone, making us work hard to land our pitches if we want to get the umpire’s call.

And then we have the reading from Luke – Jesus’ inaugural address for the reign and rule of God, his agenda for a heavenly country (Hebrews 11:16) in process.  In his hometown synagogue, alongside friends and neighbors who’d known him as a kid, Jesus unrolls the book of the prophet Isaiah and declares his Kingdom’s founding principles:  “‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’” (4:18-19)  Then Jesus rolls up the scroll, takes his seat, looks around, and brings those ancient words into people’s lived experience:  “Today,” he says, “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:21).  A new birth of freedom has come, he says.  Now, these words of the prophet aren’t new.  The Jewish leaders would have heard them and said, “Yeah, that’s how God sees us.  And because we’re specially blessed, God will restore us to the greatness we once knew.”  “Well, no,” Jesus says.  “You are people God loves, absolutely – and that means all of you, not just the folks at the top of the heap.  And when you love people the way God does, you want to lift up especially those who have the farthest to rise.  So, join me,” Jesus says.  “Don’t rest in your power.  Take Love on the road, blessing those who most need to be freed from all that holds them back.”  It’s inspiring … unless it cuts too close to the bone.  Just seven verses later, the hometown crowd is trying to throw Jesus off a cliff, literally.  They heard the umpire calling balls and strikes the way he saw them, and they wanted that umpire gone.

Our personal histories and our nation’s history are parallel paths.  As individual children of God and as the first nation founded on equality, we are beloved – but we aren’t complete.  There are times we glimpse the heart of God, and there are times we look away.  There are times we claim God’s Word as our own, and there are times we slander others as “less than.”  There are times we see that all people are created equal and that God wants us to help those at the bottom to rise – and there are times we see our blessing as a sign that, somehow, we deserve it more than “they” do.  Juneteenth is America’s other Independence Day because it helps us remember that true North isn’t where we are but where we’re going, the place we aspire to be.  We, and our nation, are works in process.  And we have to hold, in living memory, the complexity of that process – both the times we live God’s love and the times we try to throw Jesus off the cliff.  Neither the story of our nation nor the story of our salvation is an ESPN highlight reel.  We’ve got to call the balls and the strikes as they come if we want to leave the field with a win. 

1.      Tomasky, Michael. “‘A Story We Think We Know’: Ken Burns on The American Revolution.” The New Republic, Nov. 11, 2025. Available at: https://newrepublic.com/article/201497/ken-burns-american-revolution-documentary. Accessed June 19, 2026.

2.      Lincoln, Abraham. “Gettysburg address delivered at Gettysburg Pa. Nov. 19th, 1863.” Available at: https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.24404500/?st=text. Accessed June 19, 2026.

3.      Tomasky, op. cit.

4.      Gross, Terry. “Ken Burns’ ‘American Revolution’ series includes voices the founders overlooked.” Fresh Air, Oct. 20, 2025. Available at: https://www.npr.org/2025/10/20/nx-s1-5580245/ken-burns-american-revolution-series-includes-voices-the-founders-overlooked. Accessed June 19, 2026.

5.      Tomasky, op. cit.

How We Live Matters More

Sermon for June 7, 2026
Hosea 5:15-6:6; Psalm 50:7-15; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13,18-26

As I said in the column this weekend, we’re beginning several Sundays when our worship will mark events and holidays that aren’t part of the Church’s calendar.  Today, in addition to observing the second Sunday after Pentecost, our diocese and St. Andrew’s are marking Wear Orange Sunday, which raises awareness of gun violence and encourages us to help prevent it.

Wear Orange Sunday comes on the heels of yesterday’s participation in Kansas City’s Pridefest.  Our diocese, and members of our congregation, took part to affirm that all people are beloved by God and welcome to participate fully in the Church’s life and work.  Then, on June 21, in addition to marking Father’s Day, we’ll honor the national Juneteenth holiday, which celebrates the end of enslavement in the United States and asks us to keep working toward justice for all.  And finally, on July 5, we’ll honor our nation’s 250^th birthday by observing Independence Day, an official feast on the Episcopal Church calendar that we celebrate here each year.

Now, some of us will take exception to one or more of these observances.  And that can come from either direction – from those who will think we’re overdoing it or from those who will think we’re underdoing it.

Take today’s observance of Wear Orange Sunday.  As I said, the focus is preventing gun violence, and we’ll intercede about that in the Prayers of the People, along with our regular remembrance of those who’ve died in violent acts.  I imagine some of you see Wear Orange as a political statement, a critique of Second Amendment rights.  Others of you would want more – maybe lighting the church in orange floodlights this weekend.

Then there’s our participation in Pridefest.  We were there yesterday to support the legal rights of LGBTQ people and their full inclusion in the life of the Church because, historically, they’ve been denied those things.  Some of you would take exception to us participating in Pride, seeing it as a political statement.  Others of you would want more – maybe a Pride flag flying on our lawn.

Then there’s our observance of Juneteenth in two weeks, when our readings and music will honor the national holiday.  As I said, Juneteenth celebrates the end of enslavement in the United States, our centuries-long original sin.  Of course, by itself, ending slavery didn’t redeem America’s racial history or heal its future.  But I’d say ending slavery is certainly something worth celebrating, part of our nation’s movement toward justice.  Some of you would take exception to that, seeing a Juneteenth celebration as a political statement.  Others of you would want more – maybe us sponsoring a community Juneteenth event.

And our suspicion of civic observances isn’t limited to those that people might see as progressive.  On July 5, we’ll celebrate our nation’s 250^th Independence Day, a feast with its own appointed prayers and readings, as I said; and we’ll sing national hymns like “God of our fathers,” “God bless our native land,” and “Eternal Father, strong to save.”  Some of you would see marking Independence Day in church as a political statement – an act that cozies up to Christian nationalism, the movement that twists the Good News to claim that God likes America best.  Others of you would want more – maybe a 21-gun salute after worship.

So … why do we do this?  Why do we mark these civic moments in church?  Wouldn’t it be easier just to put on blinders, and follow the prayer book, and let the world spin outside?

Yes.  It certainly would.  We could just offer the appointed sacrifices, so to speak.  But I think Jesus and the prophets might have something to say about seeking righteousness that way.

In the Old Testament reading, from Hosea, God says, “Listen:  Good intentions aren’t sufficient.  When the crunch comes,” God says, “my people turn back to me and offer their obligatory worship – but is that enough?  No,” God says. “‘I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings’” (6:6).  Your prayers and worship matter, but how you live matters more.

The psalm today makes the same point with a little more divine snark.  God says, “Look, your worship is fine; ‘your offerings are always before me.’  But do you think that’s most important?  ‘Do you think I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?  Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and make good your vows to the Most High.’” (Psalm 50:7-14 BCP).  Yes, prayers and worship matter.  But how you live matters more.

The apostle Paul picks up a similar theme in today’s reading from Romans.  Gettin’ right with God doesn’t come by keeping the Law but by following Abraham’s example of faith, Paul says.  It has to be that way so that God’s promise may rest on grace, not obligation or scorekeeping.  Abraham’s story shows the kind of trust that God’s looking for.  With a straight face, God promised a couple of childless centenarians that they would have many descendants.  And what God heard from them was, “OK.  We trust that you’ll keep your word, so we’ll follow your lead.”  That kind of trust is what lets us experience grace, God’s love freely given.  It’s not about being rewarded because we got our prayers or worship right.  Trusting and living faithfully – that’s what puts us into right relationship with God.  Your prayers and worship matter.  But how you live matters more.

Then we have Jesus in today’s Gospel reading.  As the religious experts watch his every move, Jesus calls the worst person in the world as one of his disciples – Matthew, the tax collector.  Everybody holds Matthew in contempt.  The Romans see him as a dirty peasant so weak he’s willing to collude with them as a parasite to his neighbors.  The Jews see him as a traitor and collaborator with the Empire who gets rich off them in the process.  Matthew is the last guy anyone would call righteous.  And yet Jesus calls him.  And Matthew – for the first time basking in God’s Love rather than everyone’s contempt – Matthew leaves his tax booth, follows Jesus, and invites him to dinner with other misfits and losers.  Of course, Jesus goes; and, of course, the religious leaders are scandalized.  Quoting what we heard from Hosea earlier, Jesus looks at them and says, “Don’t you get it yet?  ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” (Matt 9:13)  The point works in two directions:  To Matthew, and to all of us who serve the wrong gods and take advantage of each other, Jesus says:  Straighten up.  And – to the religious authorities, and to all of us who are sure God’s on our side, Jesus says:  “Practice mercy.  Yes, your prayers and worship matter.  But how you live matters more.”

And then, for good measure, Jesus follows up his teaching by showing us what life can look like when we practice righteousness by the choices we make, not by the tribe we choose.  A leader of the local synagogue risks his credibility with the Pharisees by putting his trust in the Love he sees standing there before him.  The synagogue leader says to Jesus, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live” (Matt 9:18).  And, in a beautiful turn, Jesus – who’s just called Matthew to follow him – gets up and follows this local pastor to his house.  Meanwhile, a woman in the crowd sees the same Love standing before her, and she takes a huge risk, for herself and for Jesus, by coming up and touching his cloak.  That act exposes her to even more rejection by the community.  She’s already a perpetual outsider because her bleeding makes her ritually unclean; now, she’s in trouble because this unclean woman has touched a man, and a rabbi at that, thereby making him ritually unclean.  Jesus knows this, but he doesn’t care.  When he turns and looks at her, he sees her deep trust in the power of Love to heal us.  So, he simply says, “Your faith has made you well” (9:22).  Then he arrives at the house of the trusting local pastor and quietly brings his daughter back to life.

Yes, these are miracle stories, but they’re more than that.  These are glimpses of what life looks like when we align our hearts and our hands with the God who is Love – when we trust in Love to heal us and our world and then follow Love’s way with each next step.  Gettin’ right with God isn’t about being on the right side or meeting the right obligations.  Gettin’ right with God is about letting Love flow through us.  Our prayers and worship matter.  But how we live matters more.

So … back to the civic observances in our worship over the next few weeks:  Ultimately, they aren’t the point – but they do matter because worship forms us, for good or for ill.  To me, the reason we’d honor the full inclusion of LGBTQ folks, or pray against gun violence, or celebrate the end of enslaving people is because doing those things reminds us that some of God’s beloved children have been, or currently are, at risk of harm.  We’d include them and their lives in worship because doing that helps us remember that God wants all of us children to live in the fullness of divine Love.  And then, about celebrating Independence Day – why would we do that?  We’d offer our nation to God through our worship because doing so reminds us of what is holy in our national DNA and inspires us to live that out.  We engage civic life in our worship because it’s a way we can remember forward – a way to remember both who we are – God’s beloved – and how God calls us to be instruments of Love today, and tomorrow, and the next day.

Now, where all this gets complicated is in the practicalities.  Today, some of us are wearing orange to remember victims and survivors of gun violence.  That’s great.  And … when do we get to the Sundays when we’ll wear special colors to remember people who are hungry, or children who lack educational opportunity, or families who can’t afford a decent place to live, or people who are persecuted for their faith?  The list could go on and on – I’m sure we could find 52 of them, one for each week.  How do we decide which aspects of civic life should be included in worship?  I just think we have to be careful about the temptation to devote a Sunday to everything – which, of course, would leave us with the paradox that when everything is special, nothing is special.

But, again, I think Jesus and the prophets would ask us to remember why we honor what we choose to honor.  The point is not virtue-signaling.  The point is not aligning a congregation with a cultural tribe.  The point is not meeting religious obligations.  The point is to remind us of the reign and rule of God – the way Love, and only Love, can upend injustice, and heal what’s broken, and make us and our society whole.  The point is that, although our prayers and worship matter, how we live matters more.