Sermon — May 25, 2025

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them,
and we will come to them and make our home with them.” (John 14:23)

Bilbo Baggins travels far to the east to find himself; to live the life of adventure he’d always secretly craved, he must first leave behind the homely comforts of cozy Hobbiton. Harry Potter takes a train, departing from a mysterious platform at King’s Cross Station for a castle in parts unknown; to learn about the magic he was born with, he has to go to a place he’s never been. Elizabeth Gilbert processes the end of a marriage that has come apart by traveling the world on a voyage of self-discovery in which her adventures fall neatly into three chronological sections, which just so happen to correspond with the title of the memoir that she writes: in order become who she was meant to be she must journey around the world, learning to Eat, to Pray, and to Love.

These stories share a common structure that’s sometimes called “the hero’s journey.” Time and time again, we human beings tell tales of a hero who leaves ordinary life behind and, with the assistance of a mentor or two, embarks on a road of trials and testing, only to return back home, bearing the gifts and the wisdom they have earned. We can’t help ourselves from writing the same story, over and over again, of a Frodo-Harry-Luke who leaves the Shire-Dursleys-Tatooine, and, with the help of Gandalf-Dumbledore-Obi Wan—spoiler alert—destroys the Death Star-Horcruxes-Ring. If you’re not careful, 4000 years of stories can begin to blend together into one story of what the scholar Joseph Campbell called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Look too closely, and you can get jaded about how easily we replicate the trope. Wait a minute—are you telling me the mentor dies, leaving our hero to undertake the final stage of the journey alone? NO WAY! What a twist.

I love these stories, in their ancient and modern forms. But I often think about a comment I read years ago by the author Orson Scott Card, best known for the science-fiction series Ender’s Game. He observed that most stories like this, including his most famous ones, are about adolescents, literal or metaphorical. After all, “Who but the adolescent,” he asks, “is free to have the adventures that most of us are looking for when we turn to storytellers to satisfy our hunger?” Even the characters who are grown adults are basically teenagers still. Bilbo Baggins and James Bond share with Harry and Luke a kind of freedom to adventure that comes only when you haven’t yet settled down.

 Now, some of you today do have adventures ahead of you in life. But all of our adventuring days will one day fade into the past. Maybe because of kids or pets at home, who can’t be left alone while we go off to find ourselves. Maybe because of our own health or mobility. Maybe we’re already overwhelmed by the things we have to do right here, and can’t afford the time or the money it would take to undertake a quest.

And that’s the tension of this literary form. The hero must go on a journey to be transformed. But the reader’s life mostly stays in place. And that same tension between “home” and “away” appears in all our readings today.

For example: Paul has a vision. A man from Macedonia pleads for help. And so he goes, to spread the good news. The Book of Acts is careful to note the itinerary, so that you can follow along—from Troas to Samothrace, and then you kind of bear left to Neapolis, and just up the road to Philippi. If you’re not looking at a map, let me just say that this is one small step for Paul, one giant leap for Christianity. It’s a relatively quick sail across the waters separating what’s now Turkey from Greece, but it symbolizes the spread of this new Christian religious movement from east to west, from Asia into Europe for the first time. Paul has left the continent he calls home to share the good news. But the women whom Paul meets haven’t traveled very far. They’re right there by the river, as they often are, where there is a place of prayer. And they’re intrigued. When Lydia hears what he has to say, she invites him in: “Come and stay at my home.” (Acts 16:15) And they do. But soon enough, Paul and his companions continue on their journey around the Mediterranean; and Lydia and her companions remain, right where they are, at home, and continue to live their ordinary lives.

Jesus, for his part, lives out the hero’s quest more than once: in the stories of his birth, in his temptation in the wilderness, in his travels from Galilee to Jerusalem, and in the bigger theological story of his voyage from heaven to earth and back, Jesus’ life is journey after journey. Jesus comes from the Father, and goes back to the Father. (14:29) He goes away to die, and returns to live again. (14:28) He ascends to the Father, then he sends the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to teach us everything, and remind us of what he’s said. (14:26) As he sums it up: “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” (John 14:28) But for all this back and forth there’s a sense that the journey does have an end. And it’s a surprising one: “Those who love me,” Jesus says, “will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” (14:23) Jesus doesn’t say that if we love him, we will make our home with him; that if we are good in this life, we will go to heaven. He says that they will come—the Father and the Son and the Spirit will come—and make their home with us.

It’s that same journey that we find in the closing chapters of the Revelation to John. John is taken up to a great, high mountain for a better view. But he isn’t brought to see people going up to heaven. No. He sees the holy city, the new Jerusalem, “coming down out of heaven from God.” (Rev. 21:10) Because the story of the Bible doesn’t end with all of us leaving earth behind to go live somewhere else. It culminates in God coming down again to live with us, in a renewed and restored creation, right here.

We are Lydia and the other women, gathering time and again to hear the good news, and then returning to our homes. We are the disciples, gathered around the table with Jesus. We are John, sometimes catching a glimpse of heaven as it breaks through onto the earth. And there is a journey happening in these texts, but it’s not our journey; we stay in place, and all the motion is God’s.

Many people talk about their own spiritual journeys, and I don’t want to discount or discourage that. I think it’s a really helpful way for many people to reflect on their relationship with God.

But I think we’re used to thinking that way. And I think it can create a sense of a lack, of something we’re missing out on. I look at some people and I think, “Wow, what an incredible spiritual journey they’ve been on, while I’ve been spending my time trying to figure out what to cook for dinner.” But there’s a journey that’s taking place even when we feel like we’re treading water. There is an ongoing quest, even when we feel too overwhelmed to pray, let alone to go off and find ourselves. But we are not the heroes of that quest.

Are you ready for me to push the premise of this sermon past its breaking point? Okay. What would it mean if, in the story of your life, you were not the Frodo/Harry/Luke Skywalker of it all? What if you were Merry-Pippin/Ron/Chewbacca? What if Jesus were the protagonist, and you were one of those supporting characters who turns out to be the best of all, because they are ordinary, decent people inspired to do extraordinary things by the hero’s quest, even after Frodo-Harry has ascended into heaven. Sorry, I mean sailed West to the Undying Lands/mysterious heavenly train station.

For the most part, our role story is the part of Jesus, or even Paul. It’s more like Lydia or John. It’s not the struggle to ascend the great, high mountain up to God, but to see God’s holy city is coming down to us, and to walk in its light, exactly where we are. That’s the least exciting job. It doesn’t feel like a fun adventure of self-discovery. But God has come and made God’s home with us. God is already here. God’s light already shines, here in this world. And we can look for and walk in that light.

Sermon — May 20, 2025

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there are some parts of the Bible that are easier to understand than others. People sometimes make a distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament, but that isn’t quite it. Jesus or Paul sometimes say incomprehensible things, and often the Old Testament is straightforward. But there is a distinction in vibes between some of the more obscure ritual intricacies of the Bible, and some of the clearer stories and ethical teachings. And you see it in our readings today.

There’s a qualitative difference, in other words, between “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another,” and, “God, no! I would never eat a lizard.”

But here’s the thing: We need both halves, the clear and the obscure. And in fact, each one helps us understand the other. Because if you want to understand what Peter’s saying about unclean foods, it helps to understand what we mean when we talk about God’s love; but if you really want to understand what love means, you also need to know why Peter won’t eat an iguana.

Our Gospel reading today was short, and sweet, and seemingly simple. It comes from the Last Supper, just after Judas goes out to betray Jesus, and Jesus says, “Little children, I am with you only a little longer.” (John 13:33) Soon enough, he’ll be dead. “You’ll look for me,” he says, “but where I’m going, you cannot come.” (13:33) Heaven, we assume. And then he gives them “a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (13:34) This is the classic “easy” kind of verse. This is the God we know and love. The one who sends Jesus to teach us to love one another. This is something we can understand, because we know what it means to love.

Our reading from Revelation is straightforward enough, as well. The Book of Revelation can be weird, sometimes. But we understand what it means to say that there is some future world, where “[God] will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes.” Where “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” (Rev. 21:4) We often read this at funerals, because it’s comforting. It’s good news. And while we might have questions about how exactly this all works, we get what it means, because this experience of grief and death is part of human life.

And then there’s our story from Acts. Some of the other disciples criticize Peter and ask him why he was eating with Gentiles, with men who were not Jewish. “I was praying,” Peter says, “and in a trance, I saw a vision.” (Acts 11:5) Okay, fair enough. There was a bedsheet full of reptiles coming down from the sky. And a voice said, “Kill and eat!” (11:7) And Peter said, No way! “Nothing unclean has ever entered my mouth!” (11:8) This happened three more times, and the sheet went back up to heaven, and Peter knew exactly what to do.

… Sorry, what?

I’m guessing this passage doesn’t make much sense to most of us. What does eating reptiles have to do with eating with Gentiles? What does any of it have to do with Jesus? These seem like prime examples of the two halves of the Bible: the familiar and the strange.

But these stories aren’t as different as they might seem. They’re all part of one big story of God’s love for the world. And so we have to understand this first reading in order to understand what our gospel really means.

Now, if you like to show off, you should consider a graduate degree in Biblical studies. Let me tell you why. At the reception after the Easter Vigil, George Born said he had a question for me. A linguistic question. He’d noticed that one of the psalms during Holy Week used the word “loving-kindness” to describe God’s relationship to us, and he was wondering about the origins of that translation.

I spent years training for this. So I told him: “Loving-kindness” is usually the English translation of the Hebrew word chesed. It means “love.” But a particular kind of love. It’s not romantic love. It’s the loyalty and faithfulness of mutual obligation. And then I said: if you really want to know what chesed means, you have to go back to the Hittite and Assyrian suzerainty treaties of the first millennium BCE. (Six semesters well spent?)

But here’s the thing: These ancient treaties between the rulers of these great empires and their vassals use the word “love” in a way that sounds absurd to us. A new king rises to the throne, worried that his vassals will rebel. And he circulates a treaty to them all: “You shall love Assurbanipal… son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, your lord, like yourselves.” (Ring a bell?)

This isn’t a love letter. It’s a treaty. A covenant. A two-sided agreement, where both parties make promises. The king fulfills the covenant by establishing just laws, and leading the people well. The people fulfill the covenant when they follow the laws the king makes, and don’t rebel against his authority. In this covenantal worldview, following the law is an act of love. It’s the manifestation of this chesed, this loving-kindness that binds the sovereign and the people together.

And this kind of covenant is the model for the Biblical law, given by God to the ancient Israelites. This covenant includes many things. It has both criminal and civil law: regulations for how many witnesses are needed to convict someone of murder, and for how much money you owe if your ox gores someone else’s ox. But it also contains plenty of what we might call religious law. It tells the people which rituals to do with their sons on the eighth day after their birth. It tells them which foods they should and should not eat, and what sacrifices to offer on which holy days. It reminds them, again and again, to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

These laws were the people’s half of the covenant with God. This is what it meant for them to love God: to follow the covenant, to keep the commandments. But in the five hundred years or so leading up to Jesus’ day, the Jewish people rarely had their own state. They lived under foreign rule, or as strangers in strange lands. And so, the distinguishing marks of Jewish identity became not the civil or criminal laws, things that had to be enforced by the state, but the ritual laws. Circumcision, and food laws, and the Sabbath became the primary markers of what it meant to remain loyal to the covenant, to love God, as God loves us.

And that’s what Peter’s vision is about. Will he eat animals that his religion forbids him to eat? No way! He loves God. He’s a faithful man. He follows the Law, and that means he doesn’t eat lizards. That’s part of the covenant given by God. That’s what it means to return God’s love in kind.

But God, it seems, is up to something new. That’s what the Holy Spirit has to say. God has written a new covenant, not only with the Jewish people, but with the world: “God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” (Acts 11:18)

And God has given a new law, as well. “I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says. “That you love one another.” (John 13:34) Nothing more and nothing less. This is the covenant the Christian makes with God. The chesed, the loving-kindness, the covenant loyalty that united the Israelites to God, must now extends to unite all human beings to one another.

That new commandment of love may be easy to understand. But it’s very hard to do. “Just as I have loved you,” Jesus says, “you also should love one another.” (13:34) Just as I have loved you, he says, as he prepares to lay down his life for them, you also should love one another.

We’re not invited to be friendly with our fellow parishioners. We’re not called to care for the people of this nation. We are commanded to love “one another,” a “one another” that’s so large that it comes to include all the peoples of the world. We’re commanded to love one another just as Jesus loved us, so that Christians should be known throughout the world by our self-giving love.

That’s the standard, anyway. That’s the goal. That’s the new commandment, a law which none of us, as individuals or as a church, can ever quite fulfill. We can aspire to live out that love. We won’t manage to do it.

But God changed the covenant in another way, as well: God made it unconditional. Because in Jesus, God fulfilled both sides of the covenant, the human and divine. God lived out that perfect law of love that’s too great for us to bear, and commanded us to do the same. But when we fail, we do not face the fearsome judgment of some heavenly Assurbanipal, crushing our rebellion with force; we meet instead the love of Christ, who lay down his own life for us, and who is leading us forward to that world where death shall be no more.  

Sermon — May 11, 2025

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

Miracles are not particularly hard.

Or rather, they don’t seem all that difficult to do. Maybe it is my own hubris speaking, but we witness lots of folks in scripture doing miracles. Not only that, we witness people doing miracles with and without the help of God. And so, I am led to believe they aren’t all that hard. 

For example, in the Exodus story, we get Moses and his brother Aaron performing a number of miracles to try and convince Pharaoh to let God’s people go. These miracles include turning Aaron’s staff into a snake, and turning the Nile into blood. However, and the reason I don’t think miracles seem that hard, Pharoah’s people are able to do the exact same things: they too can turn staffs into snakes, and the Nile into blood. It is striking that people outside the purview of God are able, in the story, to perform the exact miracles that God’s people are able to perform.

We get another example in the New Testament, with a man named Simon Magus. His specific works and miracles are not disclosed in the narrative, but we know that he did such impressive miracles that the people were hailing him as some kind of god-like figure. He eventually does convert to Christianity, and some other weird stuff happens in his story. But importantly, his business with miracles was entirely outside the purview of God, and were apparently impressive enough to compete–as it were–with the miracles of the followers of Christ. And so, I am led to believe that miracles are somewhere in the realm of “difficult and rare, but not all that hard”. 

We see yet another miracle in our readings for today. Peter raises up Tabitha, a disciple of Christ, from the dead. Part of what makes this miracle different from the ones that Simon Magus and Pharoah’s people do, and similar to the miracles that Moses does, is that Simon Peter is a disciple of God, and acting in that capacity. Another thing about this miracle that makes it different from Pharoah’s people and Simon Magus is the reason that Simon Peter brings back Tabitha from the dead. It is quite easy to miss in today’s reading, but the reason is in there: Tabitha being raised up from the dead became known throughout her hometown, and many people came to believe because they had heard all about it. It is the business of causing people to believe that underpins miracles associated with God.

And we see this reflected today in our Gospel when Jesus says that the works he does in His Father’s name testify to him. The “works” Jesus does are the miracles he does, and are also called “signs”. In the context of today’s reading, this means that all the miracles that Jesus has done so far testify to the fact that he is the Messiah. And Jesus has done quite a few miracles, the Gospel of John, from which today’s gospel lesson comes, is brimming with miracles, including such famous ones as Jesus turning water into wine, and Jesus bringing his friend Lazarus back from the dead. In fact, it contains so many miracles or signs that the entire first half of the Gospel of John is often nicknamed “the Book of Signs”. 

It is these miracles (or signs)–turning water into wine, feeding the multitudes, raising Lazarus and Tabitha–that call out to people in Jesus’s time and that engender a feeling of belief in Christ.

They are not miracles for the sake of miracles. After all, miracles are not that hard, and we have examples of miracles that are not God’s will. Rather, these miracles associated with Christ are actual signs that hold a deeper meaning. All of Jesus’s healing miracles, each of the feats Moses and Aaron do, and Simon Peter raising Tabitha, are all signs that point to the reality of Christ: that Jesus is the Son of God who defeats death, that Jesus calls us into fellowship with him, and Jesus is our shepherd.

To me, this way of understanding the miracles we read about in scripture also answers another kind of question. If Peter could do that for Tabitha, why wasn’t he going around and doing that for so many other people? It seems somewhat sad and unfair that for every Tabitha gets a miracle when so many others do not.  

And we’ve seen this answered in our reading today. As I’ve said, the miracles are not just simply miracles for their own sake. In scripture we see with Pharoah’s people and Simon Magus that there were other people able to do miracles, and so miracles for their own sake seem kind of lackluster. The miracles we read about in God’s name are are all signs that point people to a much deeper reality of our faith. This reality is reflected very clearly in our readings today from Psalm 23 and Revelation. 

Psalm 23 is probably one of the most famous scriptural passages, and so I suspect it needs to further introduction. It is doesn’t hold back  in its description of God’s love for us. Psalm 23 depicts God as our shepherd who leads us to still waters and restores our souls, and it’s a profound expression of this deeper reality that miracles point to. 

Our reading from Revelation is a bit weirder, and steeped in symbolism that can be hard for a modern reader to understand. However, just like Psalm 23, it also points to this reality. Just as God is our shepherd who leads us beside still waters; God’s kingdom is one where the sun shall not strike us by day, and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. 

The reality that these readings point to is expressed well by the fact that they are some of the recommended, and most common, readings that we read at funerals. In our most deep and profound moments of loss, this Psalm and this reading from Revelation provide a solace and a reminder that the tragedy that exists in our lives is not the end; that there is a deeper reality beyond death and loss. The deeper reality reflected by God who is calling out to us, who is leading us, and who is shepherding us constantly. 

We read these now, today, even though it is not a funeral, because it is Easter season. Its a time where we get to fully acknowledge and live into one of the central parts of our faith: that Jesus has defeated the powers of sin and death in the resurrection. In the Easter season, we read these readings to point to this fact: that Christ remains our good shepherd, that God will wipe away every tear from every eye, that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives. At our core, our faith rejects the powers sin and death, and the miraculous works of God are signs that point to this defeat.

So sure, we don’t really get miracles in the same way today that they were getting in Acts. That’s not to say that God is not working in strange and mysterious ways in our own time, I believe that God is still acting in the world. What I mean is that we are not (to my knowledge) raising people back from the dead and doing other such kinds of miracles. And that is okay. Our faith is not a faith based in how many miracles God is doing for us or through us. Our faith is deeper than any particular miracle. 

And even if we don’t get miracles as signs like the community in Acts did–we don’t get to witness Tabitha being raised from the dead. I suspect that the people in this room are getting by “okay” in their faith without miracles. By that, I don’t mean that I think the life of faith of any person here is easy all the time–its still incredibly difficult throughout our lives when we face death, tragedy, and other forms of hardship. And even outside of particularly difficult times like those, we can still experience more everyday moments of doubt that are still difficult. 

What I mean when I say that I suspect that the people in this room are getting by okay is that each one of you (and me, and Greg) decided that coming to church to feel close to God, to experience communion with God and one another, was the most valuable way to spend your time this morning. Even if you are not feeling particularly great, particularly faithful, particularly pious, you showed up because you feel something. [And that matters, and that counts]

So even if, generally speaking, we don’t have very visible miracles around us that we get to witness, we still feel this call. We still show up. In the Gospel today Jesus has this in mind when he says “my sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me”. We are all sheep to Jesus, responding to His voice and His call to follow him. We all keep making this choice, rooted in our faith, to keep showing up here. We make this choice to keep following Jesus as best as we can day by day, week by week, and season by season. It’s not always easy, and at times it can feel quite hard, and at times it would feel like a very obvious miracle would be reassuring, but all the same, we continue to try and respond to the loving call of our Shepherd in Christ. Who revives our souls, and leads us besides still waters, and will wipe away every tear from our eyes. In the name of the One who first loved us. 

Sermon — May 4, 2025

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Have you ever had a friend who always has to be the most of everything? When you’re on a roller coaster, they scream the loudest. When someone tells a joke, they laugh the loudest. When your high-school sweetheart dumped you, they started crying. A friend who you love, but who sometimes seems to suck all the oxygen in the room into the inferno of their own emotions.

I sometimes feel that way with Peter and with Paul.

Now, these guys are great, in many ways. Two real pillars of the church, two people without whose leadership we wouldn’t be here today. They’re the only two people other than Jesus and Mary who appear twice on our calendar of saints, because the events in their lives were so momentous that they deserve double recognition. But sometimes—and don’t tell them I said this, when we’re all hanging out in heaven—sometimes they’re just a little much.

Here’s Paul this morning, for example, back when he still went by Saul, displaying his full emotional range. When the story begins, he’s persecuting the disciples of Jesus for their beliefs. But this is Paul. He can’t just oppress them quietly; no, he’s “breathing threats and murder!” (Acts 9:1) He is madder than anyone else about this whole Jesus thing, and he wants everyone to know it. But as he’s on his way to Damascus to start arresting people “belonging to the Way,” something strange happens. He sees a flash of light. And he doesn’t just shut his eyes. No! It’s Paul. He tumbles to the ground. And he hears a voice “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul gets up, but he still can’t see. And his friends help him find his way into the city, where Ananias comes to help restore his sight. And immediately! something like scales falls from his eyes, and he regains his sight. And then this man who started out toward Damascus breathing threats and murder opens his mouth, and not only does he decide to stop arresting Christians, he goes to the very synagogues where he was going to hunt them down and starts proclaiming, “He is the Son of God!” (9:20) The primary persecutor of the church becomes its foremost theologian, and Paul’s “Damascus Moment” becomes the proverbial example of a dramatic turn-around.

That’s Paul, for you, but Peter can be pretty dramatic too, and today he goes overboard.

You may remember the last two times we heard from Peter. It was Peter who said to Jesus, “Lord… I will lay down my life for you!” (John 13:37) “Will you?” Jesus asks. “Before the cock crows, you’ll deny me three times.” (13:38) And he does! The same Peter who promises to die for Jesus denies that he’s even one of the disciples. His betrayal is as deep as his devotion was high. Then the women come on Easter morning to share with him the good news of the Resurrection, and what does Peter do? Does he walk back over with them to the tomb to see? No—he runs! Because it’s Peter. Of course he does.

He’s equally enthused today. Peter and Thomas and Nathanael and their crew are on a boat, out in the Sea of Galilee. They’ve gone back to their lives of fishing on the lake, how they spent their days before Jesus came to them. And just after daybreak, a man calls to them from the shore. They don’t know who it is. “You boys catch any fish yet?” “No.” “Try over there, I think you’ll find some.” And they do. In fact, they catch so many fish they can’t pull the net in.

John, the Beloved Disciple, realizes what’s going on. “It’s the Lord!” he says.

And Peter goes nuts.

He’s stripped naked to stay cool while he’s working in the sun, but now he puts back on his clothes and then leaps into the sea and starts splashing toward the shore. They’re close enough that they could talk to Jesus. A hundred yards or so. The other disciples are still back there, on the boat, looking at Peter, thinking, “That was weird.” But they eventually arrive, and there’s Peter’s, soaking wet, and Jesus, grilling fish. And Jesus breaks bread, and gives it to them, while Peter drips onto the sand.

I’m teasing Peter and Paul a bit, but that’s not really fair. Sometimes our lives are like theirs, too. Sometimes we experience these dramatic swings, from anger to joy, disdain to sincerity, faithfulness to betrayal. Sometimes we feel as though there’s a voice speaking to us from the heavens. Sometimes we throw ourselves into the sea and swim straight for the shore, because we just can’t wait to get where we’re going.

But most of us spend most of our lives like the other disciples in the boat. Just sailing along, day by day, dragging a heavy load, and hoping that what we’ve heard is true. Hoping that the faint smudge we see on the beach is Jesus. Hoping that we really are headed toward God.

This spring, a group of four of our teenage members have been meeting once a month with Michael and me to prepare for confirmation. When they were baptized as infants, their parents and godparents made promises to support and care for them in their life of faith, promises that they made, in part, on their children’s behalf, taking on responsibility for their spiritual lives. Confirmation offers the chance for these young people to take that spiritual responsibility on for themselves, to become adults in the eyes of the church. At confirmation, you kneel before the Bishop, who lays her hands on you and offers a blessing, praying for the Holy Spirit to strengthen you in your faith, empower you for God’s service, and sustain you all the days of your life.

You might notice that the Bishop isn’t here. You can tell because there’s nobody wearing a pointy hat. The formal service of confirmation will take place the next time the Bishop visits St. John’s, or in a joint service with other churches at the Cathedral, something like that. But we thought it was important this morning to recognize these four students here, as they complete their preparation. And so I want to say a word about what this time in their lives means as part of the longer life of faith.

Tommy, Caroline, Maggie, Paul: Sometimes you might have the big spiritual experiences of a Peter or a Paul. Sometimes you might feel your life turn in a direction you’d never imagined, as Paul did on that Damascus Road. Sometimes you might feel torn between loving and denying God. Sometimes you might throw yourself into the waters of life and start swimming toward the shore.

But most of life is sitting in the boat, wishing the wind were blowing a little harder, wishing your arms weren’t so sore from dragging the net, and wondering, “Is that really Jesus over there?” You may not always feel particularly connected to God. Even for the most faithful people, it often feels like the biggest questions of life—the kind of questions I’ve heard you all ask—don’t have very satisfying answers.

And that’s okay. To be a faithful person you don’t need to have the big spiritual and emotional energy of Peter or Paul. Sometimes, you just need to stay in the boat and trust that the wind is taking you where you need to go.

I want everyone to look up at the ceiling of this room. In church architecture, this space—the big central part of the church where the congregation sits—is called the nave. This is “nave” as in “navy,” as in “naval”—in Latin navis, a “ship.” If you picture that ceiling turned upside down, you might see that it’s built a bit like the hull of a boat. And there’s a good engineering reason for that: the physics of keeping a ceiling up against the force of gravity are more or less the same as the physics of keeping the ocean out against the force of water pressure.

But there’s a good symbolic reason, too. For centuries, Christians have thought about the Church as a kind of ship: the vessel within which we sail from one end of life to the other, from the beginning of God’s story for us to the end, sailing across the sea of the world, carried along by the Holy Spirit, the wind from God.

The journey that we on the way to meet Jesus on that other shore is rarely straightforward, because our path is determined by the breeze. And so, sometimes it feels like we’re sailing straight ahead toward our goal. But sometimes we’re ahead away. On occasion, this is because we’ve taken a wrong turn. But sometimes it’s because we needed to tack away in order to come back. Sometimes there’s just no wind in our sails, and we sit and drift along.

But wherever the voyage of this life takes us, we’re sailing together, not alone. So, Paul, Maggie, Tommy, Caroline, welcome to the crew of the ship of faith. You may have a dramatic life. It may be smooth sailing ahead. But wherever you go, you can always find a community and a home in the Church.

Sermon — April 27, 2025

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

The wonders of the lectionary have it so that this gospel reading appears every single year the Sunday after Easter. And this particular Sunday has gotten an affectionate nickname after the most memorable character in the gospel reading. This Sunday is nicknamed “Thomas Sunday” after our disciple who features so prominently in the story. Thomas, who gets his name attached to this day, also gets his own–rather unfortunate–nickname. If you know it say it with me…doubting Thomas. 

But I think this nickname is a bit unfair–we don’t make nicknames in the same way for any other disciple. We don’t call Peter, “Denying Peter” or “Fell-in-the-Lake” Peter, or “Cut-Off-Someone’s-Ear Peter, or “Get-Behind-Me-Satan” Peter. And! Thomas is not the only one who doubts. In fact, the other disciples also have a moment of doubt and unbelief–in the story we read from Luke on Easter Day just last week the disciples do not believe Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James when they tell the disciples that two angels told them that Jesus had risen. The disciples do not believe them–they have doubt. 

In all of this, I don’t mean to be very “gotcha”. Rather, I think doubt–whether from Thomas or from any of the other disciples, is a very human thing. I think each of them experiences a deeply human thing when they cannot believe that Jesus actually resurrected. Humans like proof; and I am well aware of how many scientists and lawyers are in the room right now when I say that. We like proof in the face of things that are almost unbelievable, and I will [try] to really drive it home with an example. Mathemathicians in the room, if I flounder, and you know it, help me out. 

So the Monty Hall Problem is a kind of probability brain teaser that takes its name from the original host of the gameshow “Let’s Make a Deal”–Monty Hall. The Problem became most famous when it was answered by Marilyn vos Savant in the “Ask Marilyn” column of Parade Magazine in 1990. The problem is as follows, “Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. [By the way, the problem assumes that you would rather win a car than a goat]. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens a different door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, “Do you want to pick door No. 2?” Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?” Now, most people who answer the problem would say that switching your choice is neither advantageous or disadvantageous. Remember, there are still just two closed doors, and so, logically, most would say there is a 50% chance that the car is behind one of them. Thus, it does not matter if you switch your choice or not. That is what the vast majority of people believe to be the correct answer to the problem. 

Savant’s response, published in the magazine, was that the contestant should switch to the other door. By the standard assumptions, the switching strategy has a ⁠2/3 probability of winning the car, while the strategy of keeping the initial choice has only a ⁠1/3 probability. 

So the readers of the magazine were in an uproar. Though in this room it still seems relatively calm. I can assure you it is 100% true, and verifiable. If you set up the conditions of the gameshow, and you follow vos Savant’s advice, you will win the car ⅔ of the time if you switch your choice. I can even give you a website where you can play through the scenario yourself an infinite amount of times. Unless every single one of you is a statistical genius (and I’ll admit, I was banking on a few in here), I imagine you are having a moment of disbelief at this absurd statement, despite my own assurances that it is true. I might even wager that you might be experiencing some doubt of this verifiable fact. 

I hope that I have garnered some sympathy for Thomas and our other disciples with this thought experiment. The lack of verifiable physical proof is a difficult thing to deal with, both with the Monty Hall Problem and with the resurrection. It was difficult for Thomas to have faith and live into the reality of the resurrection based on nothing but someone else’s account. So difficult, in fact, that Jesus made a specific appearance for Thomas’ benefit so that Thomas would believe. 

As it was with Thomas, so it is with us today. Easter reminds us of the fact that our faith is fundamentally about Christ who died and rose again, and is still alive and ascended into heaven. It is a strange reality to live with–that Jesus is in fact risen, that Jesus defeated the powers of sin and death, and that the story of the resurrection is still underway. We do not believe in a God who ascended into heaven, pulled the ladder up behind Him, and left us to our own devices. The work of Christ continues, and the resurrection is a reality we live in right now. 

Still, it is hard to really believe this when we are separated by the events of the resurrection and the physical body of Jesus by so many years. But, Jesus and the gospel have this in mind today. We, as people who are living so long after the events in the Bible, actually get mentioned in the Gospel reading today. We “are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” We are the ones on whose account that these things are written down, so that we might have some help in believing. 

As much as I love the Bible, I think I would like an encounter with the risen, physical body of Christ a bit more. Of course, we get moments of encounter with Christ in our own lives. Greg mentioned, very aptly, in his Easter sermon just last week that we can encounter Christ in every act of love we witness in the world. Still, we bear a heavy resemblance to Thomas, and it is hard to live into the full picture of the resurrection even with the signs that we get.

However, the good news is that we are not doing this alone. And I don’t necessarily mean that we have a wonderful church community to lean on when faith becomes hard–even though that statement is very valuable, and very true. 

What I mean is that, in a moment, we will be baptizing our friend Nick. Baptism is a moment of a full and deep initiation into the Body of Christ; and involves a series of promises. Nick will answer some questions and make some promises about living his faith on his own. Afterwards, we all will make some promises–we will renew our baptismal vows. The first three promises are the Apostle’s Creed adapted into a question and answer form, and are about what we believe. The last five are more specifically about what it means to be Christian, and are about what we will do because we are Christian. For all five of these questions the answers are the exact same. “I will, with God’s help”. 

That, to me, is the key. As we affirm the promises of our baptismal vows, we get an indication of how we are to live into these vows. As we respond to these questions, we state how we are going to try and live into the full reality of the resurrection. We say how it is we will deal with our moments of doubt. 

Because “with God’s help” can mean many wonderful things. In one way, it means that whenever we are moved to belief, or moved to do something nice for others, there is some mystical presence of God that is encouraging us and moving us. We will try and do so many wonderful things: proclaim by word and example the Good News of Christ, seek and serve Christ in all persons, continue in the breaking of bread, and so on. Whenever we do this, God is there with us, helping us, pushing us on.

“With God’s help” also recognizes the fact that when we are baptized, we become part of the Body of Christ, and are suffused from that moment on with the grace of God. In all that we do, God is present with us. We see this most clearly when we are gathered together as the Body of Christ, the church, in a visible and tangible way. In all that we do, we are suffused with the grace of God, and benefit from God’s help. 

“With God’s help” also means that when we fall short of the promises of our baptism: when we struggle to show love to our neighbors, when we do not come to church for a while, when we have our doubts, or struggle to pray: God will be there to help us. It is a difficult claim to make, but one that I sincerely believe. In moments when we struggle to be “good Christians” God is still working with us, just like Jesus worked with Thomas. Jesus did not leave Thomas to his own devices when he experienced doubt, and God does not abandon us when we have our own shortcomings. 

Today, as I’ve said, we continue to live in the reality and mystery of the resurrection. After Easter, we are reminded of this dimension of our faith so pointedly. Having a baptism in our community the Sunday after Easter gives this an extra depth and special kind of meaning. 

And, in all the wonderful mystery, the story of Thomas shows us that, in our lives of faith there is room for doubt–a very natural human response to something as great and unbelievable as the resurrection. Doubt is not the end of faith, and we are never far from the help of God. In the name of the One who first loved us.