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.

The Unknown Apostle

Sermon for May 24, 2026, Pentecost and Memorial Day Weekend
Acts 2:1-21

This morning, I want to tell you about someone about whom we know virtually nothing.  So, as you might guess, that makes for a pretty short story – and, it turns out, a short sermon.  You can thank me later.

This man’s story, such as we have it, comes in the Acts of the Apostles just before the reading we heard today about the Holy Spirit empowering the dazed and confused followers of Jesus.  As you might remember from Bishop Amy’s sermon last week, the disciples had been hanging on for 10 days by this point, more than anxious to learn what was coming next and when to expect it.  The last thing they saw of Jesus were the soles of his feet as he ascended into heaven, after promising them that the Holy Spirit would be coming their way “not many days from now” (Acts 1:5).  That’s all well and good, if you’re the one who’s making the promise.  If you’re the one hearing it, as you watch your resurrected Lord floating off into the clouds, it might leave you feeling a bit at loose ends.

So, just after Jesus made his exit, as the disciples found themselves waiting for what would come next, Peter got the idea that they should raise up a little more talent.  The followers of Jesus, about 120 people at that point, were short one lieutenant after Judas had turned traitor and ended up dead.  So Peter said they should name someone to take his place, one of Jesus’ other friends who’d been there from the start of his preaching and teaching.  They nominated two men – Joseph called Barsabbas and Matthias.  Scripture tells us nothing about either of them, but presumably they were the two most qualified of the guys who didn’t make the first cut, the best of the B team.  So, the community prayed, asking God to reveal which of these two minor leaguers should be called up, and they drew lots to learn which one God wanted.  The winner was Matthias, so he joined the ranks of the top 12, the leaders who would represent the 12 tribes of a new Israel and carry the good news “to the ends of the earth.”

And then?  Then Matthias drops out of the story, never to be heard from again.

That doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten him exactly.  Like the other 11 apostles, Matthias has his own feast day, though different denominations mark it on different dates.  After Matthias received the gifts of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the tradition says different things about him.  He may have brought the good news to Cappadocia (in modern Turkey) or to Georgia, in the Caucasus south of Russia.  Another tradition says he was martyred by both Jewish and Roman authorities, the Jewish leaders stoning him for a while before a Roman soldier cut off his head.  But, honestly, we don’t know.  We can only guess what happened to Matthias, the second-string apostle who got his 30 seconds of fame and then disappeared.  You may be interested to know that, now, Matthias is the patron saint of carpenters, tailors, alcoholics, smallpox, hope, perseverance, and Billings, Montana – about as random a list of patronage as it gets.

Despite the uncertainty, I kind of love the character of Matthias.  Matthias is a placeholder.  He’s the living embodiment of, “Who’s next?”  His story teaches a vital lesson about this new Christian movement:  It’s precisely that – a movement.  There will always be the next person to promote.  There will always be someone waiting in the wings.  As the Holy Spirit showed so powerfully on that day of Pentecost, as Jews from all over the Roman Empire heard the good news of Jesus in their own languages, this is a bottom-up movement.  And the right person with the right gifts is just waiting to step up.

I see Matthias as the spiritual equivalent of the unknown soldier.  This is Memorial Day weekend as well as Pentecost.  Many of us have friends or family members who’ve served; many of you have served yourselves.  Just check out the page in the bulletin listing 105 names.  And those are just the ones we know about; I’m sure there are 105 more.

When I visited Washington years ago, I got a little teary at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  It wasn’t my father in there, but it could have been.  At the end of the Second World War, my father came of age and enlisted.  Thankfully, his deployment was to San Diego not Saipan, where he served as a Navy corpsman, a medic, helping to heal the wounded coming home.  By the time he served, more than 400,000 Americans had died to defeat authoritarians in Germany and Japan, and it’s only because of the atom bomb that my father didn’t take part in invading Japan.  I have tremendous respect for those who went the distance, for the thousands now unknown to history who answered the call in the Pacific and in Europe, who gave themselves to bring light to vanquish the darkness.

Well, back to Matthias, the virtually unknown apostle:  We don’t know where he was sent, but sent he was.  That’s what it is to be an apostle.  The word itself means one who is sent – a representative of a higher authority who delivers the message the authority wants to share.  Whether it was in Turkey or Georgia or somewhere else, Matthias took the words of his ruler on the road.  In an empire that prospered by draining resources from the people it oppressed, Matthias shared a different story – a story of a divine king who was Love in the flesh and who’d sent a Spirit of Love to bring to the nobodies power beyond anything Caesar could muster.

And, of course, Matthias was only the first among millions and millions of unknown saints – regular folks who said their prayers, and loved the people around them, and offered a word of hope when the opportunity presented itself.  Those millions cascaded down history, ballooning into billions. Those unknown saints include the two new Christians we’ll baptize this morning, as well as the normal people sitting to your left and your right, as well as the extra normal person you saw when you looked in the mirror this morning.  Matthias shows up in Scripture, for his grand total of three verses, because Matthias is you.  You are the unknown apostle.  And this morning, I salute you.

Doorway Moments

Sermon for May 10, 2026 (Easter 6, Mother's Day, and Graduating Senior Recognition)
John 14:15-21

(The sermon began with remembrances from seniors Evan Murray and John Kirmer.)

Evan and John, thank you so much for sharing those memories of your time here at St. Andrew’s.  This is a bittersweet day in a bittersweet season for our graduating seniors, a time of celebration and farewell.  It’s hard to hold those realities together – it’s confusing how we’re supposed to feel in times like these, these liminal spaces of our lives.

Evan and John, and all our graduating seniors – that’s where you’re standing right now, a place where we’ve all been and where we all will be – in a liminal space.  That’s a five-dollar word for a transitional time.  That transition may be a moment, or it may be a longer phase.  But in any case, it’s a time when we look both backward and forward, simultaneously remembering and anticipating.  That word liminal comes from a Latin word for a doorway, and I think that applies pretty well to us, with all the rich realities we’re bringing before God this morning.  This is a day and a season for standing in the doorway.

Our seniors and their families certainly know the mixed feelings of liminal space.  The grad parties, the honors, the sense of relief – all that is very real.  And right there alongside it is your very real grief about impending goodbyes and uncertainty about what’s next.  In our transitions, we look backward into the room where we’ve been, and we look forward to the room we’re entering … and we just want to stand in the doorway a while, reveling in what we’ve accomplished and steadying ourselves for what we can’t quite yet see.

That’s where Jesus and his friends are in today’s Gospel reading, too – the liminal space of the Last Supper.  As John tells the story of that night, Jesus talks nonstop, for four chapters, trying to help his friends remember what they’ve shared over the past three years and prepare for what’s going to happen.  He’s just told them he’s about to leave and that his going will be very hard – for him and for them.  It’s the last thing his friends want to hear, and they don’t understand it anyway.  He’s told them he’ll prepare a place for them where he’s going.  “Don’t worry,” Jesus says; “you know the way.”  But his friends can’t begin to see it.  “We don’t know where you’re going,” Thomas complains; “how can we know the way?” (14:5).  For any of us who’ve been in a real doorway moment, we’re right there with Thomas.

When we stand in that liminal space, Jesus gives us two assurances.  First, he tells his friends that, actually, they don’t have to know precisely where they’re going.  We always hear that life is less about the destination and more about the journey, right?  Well, by the same token, success in God’s eyes isn’t about mapping the right destination; it’s about following the right person as you head toward whatever comes next.  “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus tells his friends (14:6).  “Trust in that, and follow me.”

Here’s the other assurance Jesus gives his friends as they stand in that liminal space – what we heard in the Gospel reading today: that they won’t be going it alone.  Even though Jesus will be gone, he’ll “ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate,” Jesus says – “the Spirit of truth” who will “be with you forever” (14:16-17).  Now, Jesus does have expectations of his friends as they move into the next room of their lives:  “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” he says (14:15).  As we learn in every room through which we pass, we’re accountable for the choices we make.  But, as we poke our heads through the doorway, and crane our necks, and try to see what lies ahead, we won’t be doing it on our own.  “I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus says (14:18).  With the Holy Spirit guiding our steps, we’ll abide in nothing less than divine Love itself.  “Those who love me will be loved by my Father,” Jesus says, “and I will love them and will reveal myself to them” (14:21).

In these doorway moments, sometimes we can’t wait to step into what’s next; and sometimes we’d give anything just to stay a little longer where we’ve been.  No matter what this liminal space is like for you, just know that you aren’t alone in it.  And know that the Spirit of Love will be guiding and equipping you for the work that awaits you in that next room.

As we celebrate this Mother’s Day, I want to leave you with something my mother gave to my sisters and me.  Every time she saw us getting ready to walk out the door into whatever lay ahead for us that day, she had a mantra she’d repeat.  It was her blessing, really – her way of reminding us how to follow the Way and thrive in whatever lay ahead, even if we couldn’t see it.  As we opened the door to step outside, my mother would say, “Learn something, love somebody, and have a good time.”

Learn something, love somebody, and have a good time.  Whether you’re stepping through the doorway in trepidation or in joy, those are good words to help you find the Way.