Vineyards of Generosity: A Sermon for Proper 20A, September 20, 2026

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I want you to picture in your mind a vineyard. Do you evoke memories of visits to vineyards in France or Italy, or maybe Napa Valley? Can you see the rolling hills, the vines, the ripe grapes, perhaps even workers harvesting. Perhaps it’s a memory of one of those movies that have been popular in recent years, appealing to nostalgia, or authenticity—the scene of an extended family sitting at a table groaning with food; and bottles of wine. Corrie and I recently watched Eva Longoria’s series on French cuisine that featured many such scenes in Burgundy, Alsace, and elsewhere.

In the biblical tradition, the vineyard is a symbol of God’s bounty and goodness. The bounty of the vineyard becomes wine that gladdens the heart. And God is the one who tends the vines and presides over the bountiful feast.

But such images of joyous celebration and bucolic relaxation belie the backbreaking labor that is required to tend the vines and harvest the grapes and the narrow margins with which most vineyards operate. Earlier this summer, I read a story in the New York Times about Napa Valley vineyard owners who are burning their vines because of the glut on the market, caused in some part by our current trade wars.

In the Palestine of Jesus’ day, there was also an economic transformation taking place, as small landholders were losing their land to the consolidation of agricultural production of vineyards, wheat, and olive groves. It’s likely that among the day laborers mentioned in today’s parable were just such people who had lost their land and livelihood and were forced to seek work everyday.

The parable we just heard is often interpreted allegorically—with the landowner standing in for God. On this view, the laborers who were hired at the beginning of the day are usually understood to be Jews, and those who come into the vineyard in the course of the day are the Gentiles who receive the gift of God’s grace. That the earliest workers grumble when they find out they are paid the same amount as those who worked only an hour, feeds into traditional anti-semitic tropes. 

As I’ve often said, parables are meant to unsettle us, to challenge us to see the world in a new way, from a new perspective. This one is no different. In these little stories, we should look for strange behavior, for actions that don’t make sense and explore how those actions and behaviors might challenge our assumptions about the world and God.

There’s plenty of strange behavior in this story. The landowner, for example. He begins the day just the way that landowners and farmers have begun the day for thousands of years, contracting with workers to see that the harvest is brought in. We might assume that he hired all the help he needed the first time he went into the market square. And when he hired them, he and the workers bargained on the pay they would receive. Presumably all were satisfied.

It’s now the landowner begins to act strangely. He comes back into the marketplace throughout the day (One might think that he would want to stay back and oversee the harvest). And throughout the day, he continues to hire workers. What’s his motive for this? Does he really need the additional help or is this his way of helping men who lost out on the opportunity for a full day’s wage? But as the story progresses, something else rather interesting happens. While he clearly stated to the first groups that he would pay them a day’s wage, when it came to the last ones, the ones who worked for just an hour, there was no mention of the pay they would receive. It’s almost as if he ordered them to go, and that they had no idea, no reason to know what pay they might expect. In this situation they lacked power and rights.

The odd behavior continues at the end of the day when the landowner passes out the laborers’ pay. Instead of settling up with those who had been working all day, he starts with the ones who came last. And he pays them a full day’s wage! We can all imagine the surprise and joy we would feel if we were treated that way. We can also imagine the anger and frustration we would feel if we were the ones who worked all day and received the agreed-upon wage, rather than much more. If they received a day’s wage for one hour’s work, it’s only fair that we receive nine times that amount for our nine hours of work.

There’s another way the landowner’s behavior is strange and inexplicable. This is no rational way for an employer to operate. He had better hope they finished the harvest that day, because if he goes out the next morning to hire workers to finish up, do you think anyone would agree to work for him? No, they would all wait, hang out all day, then show up in the market place at the last minute, in hopes of getting a day’s wage for an hour’s work. And all of the other landowners would be angry as well, because they could expect similar behavior from the pool of day laborers.

So, lots of questions… But the fundamental one is this: how does this parable explain or shed light on the reign of God? Matthew introduces this story with Jesus saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like …” That intro prompts us to allegorize it as a story about God offering grace and salvation. But how might have Jesus’ listeners heard this story? We can assume that many of them knew all too well the rigors and challenges of life as a day laborer? How would they have judged the landowner’s behavior? Would they have commiserated with those who were jealous at the latecomers? Would they remember days they had spent in the hot sun, working themselves to the bone, all for a meager sum that was enough for one person to live on, but not enough to provide for a whole family? 

In negotiating with and paying the first set of laborers a denarius, the landowner was acting justly—he paid the agreed-upon wage. In paying those who came later the same amount, he was acting with generosity. 

I find the different settings of the parable instructive. On the one hand, there’s the marketplace where the landowner conducts his business, hires his workers. On the other hand there is the vineyard, where the abundance of God’s grace is on display. The grapes that are being harvested will be turned into wine, a symbol of God’s love and extravagance. 

In the parable, we see the values of the market place being subverted by the values of God’s vineyard. As the day progresses, best practices in business give way to something else, as the landowner orders the laborers into the vineyard without first establishing their pay. When he does pay, everyone is treated equally, it’s not equal pay for equal work; it’s equal pay for each person.

It’s a bit like the story from the Hebrew Bible we heard—God’s gift of manna in the wilderness. God provided food for the Israelites, just enough for each person per day. There was abundance, but no hoarding because the manna would spoil.

We hear a great deal about economic anxiety today, about people worrying about whether they will have a secure future or whether their children will live as comfortably as they do. Along with that, there is a sense that some people receive benefits they don’t deserve, that they haven’t earned. We’re locked in competition with others, and so often our own status, our own sense of self is tied up in how much we make, what we own. It’s a dog eat dog world, and we want to come out on top. 

This parable points to a very different reality. In the vineyard, it doesn’t matter how hard you worked, when you started, where you came from. There’s enough to go around. It’s a world of abundance and generosity, not a world of scarcity and competition. Can we imagine such a world where greed and competition, and ambition are replaced by generosity? Can we imagine a world where the losers and the outcast, those discarded by society, are of great value to God, worthy to live each day with dignity? Can we imagine a world, can we help to bring into being a world where God’s generosity is greeted with gratitude and not jealousy? 

A Sermon for Proper 19A, September 13, 2026

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The irony struck me as I began work on my sermon for today. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the things I do each week as I began thinking about my sermon is to go back through my files and read other sermons I have preached on these propers. Looming over each of the five sermons I’ve preached on these texts over the years is the memory of September 11, 2001, the twenty-fifth anniversary of which we commemorated two days ago. 

The events of that day and the days, weeks, and months that followed brought out the best and the worst in human nature and American culture. There was solidarity and compassion but there was also anger, hatred, and violent retribution. The war on terror brought with it an erosion of civil liberties, islamophobia, torture, and countless lives lost. Like so many other eras in American history, we have not had an honest reckoning with the past nor are we able, apparently, to learn from those errors. 

To hear Jesus speaking about forgiveness on this occasion is challenging indeed. But before we get to the gospel, the story from Exodus offers another perspective on the response to trauma and violence.

Our reading from Exodus has brought us to the Red Sea. The Israelites are fleeing Egypt and are caught between the army chasing them and the sea in front of them. A miracle brings them across the sea and destroys their enemy. In verses not included in today’s reading, we’re told that as they watch the destruction, the Israelites sing praises to their God:

“Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, horse and rider has he thrown in to the sea.”

                                                                                                           Sentiment like this may be difficult to express, to rejoice in the destruction of one’s enemies; it is also a natural, human response to such an event. Yet, we sense that responses like this, no matter how natural, do not seem appropriate for Christians. An old rabbinic story, going back nearly two thousand years, offers another perspective on the Israelites’ celebration at the destruction of the Egyptian army. It goes like this:

“Having reached safety on the other side, and seeing the Egyptians perishing in the sea, the Israelites began to sing and dance.

“In heaven, the angels saw the Israelites singing and dancing, and they too began to sing and dance. But God rebuked them: ‘Those Egyptians perishing in the sea are my people also, and you want to sing and dance?'”

To celebrate a victory is one thing, whether that victory is on the battlefield or the playing field; to ask for, or offer forgiveness to someone who has harmed us, or whom we have harmed is quite another.

The parable we read in today’s gospel challenges us to think about forgiveness. It is set in the context of Peter’s question to Jesus, How often should I forgive someone who has wronged me? Jesus’ answer to Peter is over-the-top. Jesus says, “As many as 7  times 70—490 times. 

In its own way, this saying has also caused harm and trauma. It is one thing to ask forgiveness of someone I’ve wronged; it’s quite another to demand that an injured party forgive the perpetrator when there has been no repentance. I wonder how many times victims of sexual abuse or violence have been expected to forgive their abuser based on these verses. 

And then there’s what used to be the public ritual of the public figure caught in some wrongdoing who makes a grand show of confessing their sin and expecting to be reinstated to the public’s good graces. Today, in our coarsened society, such empty rituals are no longer common. It seems like public figures, be they celebrities, politicians, or athletes, can do what they want with impunity.

Still, we expect or desire offers of forgiveness in our personal relationships, when we have hurt a loved one with our words or actions, or when we have been hurt by someone. So Jesus’ words stand as a challenge to us: how often should we forgive one who’s behavior has harmed us once, or repeatedly? What might Jesus mean by these words?

Perhaps the parable is meant to make Jesus’ meaning clear, I don’t think it does. We are given the story of a rich man who takes pity on someone who owes him 1000 talents. The slave goes off and demands the repayment of 100 talent debt from someone else; when the debt isn’t repaid, he has him thrown in prison. Learning of that action, the king, denounces and imprisons the first slave.

The math: a talent was roughly 130 lb a measure used of gold and silver; one estimate is that it equaled about 15 yrs of wages for the typical worker; so the king, being owed 10000 talents, is owed 150,000 years of wages. A denarius was a coin worth about a day’s wages; the slave is owed 100 denarii, so that’s quite a bit of money as well.

The parable leaves us with questions, even though its meaning is quite clear. We should forgive those who owe us, just as God forgives us. But the questions—why does the king not forgive the slave a second time? After all, Jesus has told Peter to forgive not seven but seventy seven times. The parable invites us to think of forgiveness as a calculus—there exists, somewhere a finite number of times, beyond which it is not necessary to forgive. But that’s precisely the wrong way of thinking about things.

To think about forgiveness as a debt suggests that we understand it in terms we comprehend—mathematics or economics, and given all the talk of debt in our culture, we are sorely tempted to go down that route. That’s overlooking something that is crucial in understanding Peter’s question: “How often should I forgive my brother? For that question implies there is relationship between the one forgiving and the one owed. Including that in the equation changes everything. 

We ask God to forgive us and we experience God’s forgiveness, rich, unbounded, unmerited. It is that relationship and that experience that should shape our own forgiveness. That is the point both of Jesus’ answer to Peter and the parable itself.

I have lived long enough and served as a pastor long enough to know that pain and anger from hurt can last a very long time. We process things quite differently; in different ways and at different speeds. Even the same hurt inflicted on two different people can linger in very different ways in those who have been affected. Forgiving others may be difficult, even, at times, impossible. Yet our God, who has forgiven us so deeply and so completely, invites us, not only to be forgiven, but to forgive in the same way, richly, unboundedly, and totally. Thanks be to God!

Trauma, Memory, and God’s Grace: A Sermon for Proper18A, September 6, 2026

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Christians are a people of memory. We are a community called together by memory; called to remember. Our central act of worship is a memorial and a re-enactment; but more than that we enter into the story itself as we remember God’s saving acts and participate in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But as we all know, memory is a fickle thing. In our own lives, there are stories we’ve told ourselves, stories about us others have told us that might not bear up to close scrutiny and as we age, some of those stories fade into mist or even oblivion. On a personal level, we may repress memories of embarrassing moments or traumas we’ve experienced, but especially in the case of trauma, it can continue to shape us subconsciously, and even, as we are learning, for generations to come.

We see that same dynamic played out in scripture, as the authors and editors tell the story they want preserved. At the same time, they often reveal alternative or counter-stories that raise questions about their perspective. Nowhere is this more true than in the story from Hebrew Scripture we just heard; God’s instructions to Moses and the Hebrews on how to prepare for Passover. This event may be the key story in all of Hebrew Scripture—It describes God’s nature as the Hebrews and then Jews experienced God. It also defines the Hebrews and then the Jews as God’s people.

The story of Passover describes God’s liberation of the Hebrew people from bondage. It’s the story that Jews continue to tell and re-enact each year both because it celebrates God’s salvation of God’s chosen people and because it identifies contemporaries Jews as part of that larger story, part of God’s salvation history.

Passover is a celebration of Israel’s liberation by God; but it is set in the context of a larger story. We’ve heard parts of that story over the last few weeks—of Moses’ birth and rescue by Pharaoh’s daughter, the burning bush and God’s call to him. Between that event and today’s readings unfold the familiar story of the plagues. The instructions for the Passover come in the midst of the tenth plague—Yahweh’s killing of the first-born of Egypt, horrendous suffering. 

One might expect that the mood of Passover is joyous, but in the verses that were read, there is a stress on Yahweh’s judgment as well as on liberation. The joy of liberation is tempered by the reality that liberation came at a horrific price. We haven’t heard these weeks the stories of all the other plagues. But this last one, the killing of the firstborn of all Egyptian families, and their livestock, was the culmination of unimaginable violence and suffering. That violence would continue throughout the story—the destruction of the Egyptian army at the Red Sea, and later during the conquest of Canaan, as God demanded that the Hebrews kill everyone whom they encountered. But that will come later.

Back to the story of the Passover. There’s another important element, here. Liberation too is not self-evident. The command to eat while dressed for a journey and to eat hurriedly gives yet another note of urgency. The Hebrews may be free, but their enemies were pursuing them. 

The raw emotion and violence of the Passover narrative might tempt us to try to smooth its rough edges, to re-interpret it so as to better fit our world view. That would be a mistake. The Passover is the central ritual event in Judaism; its message and its re-enactment have played the leading role in how Jews understand themselves. The instructions to eat hurriedly, dressed as for a journey, put contemporary Jews back into the story of the flight from Egypt. Today’s Jews become Hebrews fleeing Pharaoh as they eat their lamb, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread.

Indeed, Passover is so important in the life of Judaism that early Christians had to reinterpret Passover as they developed their own rituals and theology. Thus, in the Gospel of John, Jesus is crucified as the Passover lamb; in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the last supper Jesus shared with his disciples was the Passover meal, and thus our own Eucharist and our Christology borrow heavily from Passover imagery.

But there is a deep problem here. One the one hand, we have the image of a God, who hears the suffering of God’s people, and intervenes on their behalf. God frees them from their slavery in Egypt and promises that they will possess a fertile land. On the other hand, in the course of gaining their freedom, God wreaks vengeance on the Egyptians. 

The story of the plagues, read carefully raises profound questions about the nature of God and God’s willingness to destroy human and animal life. Indeed, it is not at clear in the story that either Pharaoh or the Egyptians have any power to avoid the horrible fates that awaited them. They certainly were not given a choice to avoid the final plague. At one point, God told Moses that he was bringing this last plague, the killing of the first-born on Egypt so that “my wonders may be multiplied.” 

There’s even today’s psalm which praises God’s vengeance against Israel’s enemies and concludes that all of it is “glory for God’s chosen people.”

It is an image of God with which we should be uncomfortable—hearing this lesson with its promise of the destruction of all the first-born of Egypt, not just humans mind you, but even cattle, that language should make us squirm in our pews. 

We might be tempted, many of us have been, to put that language and imagery down to the Angry God of the Old Testament, and contrast it with the loving God of the new. That is one of the oldest heresies on the books, and it’s flat out misinterpreting both the Old Testament and the New. There’s plenty of wrath and judgment in the New Testament’s depiction of God, and plenty of love and mercy in the Old Testament’s—we see that in today’s reading from Romans, in which Paul says twice that “love is the fulfilling of the law.” 

We look at such events and seek explanations. The size of the hurricanes and fires may in part be attributed to climate change, but the reality of natural disasters, earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires cause great damage and cost lives. We want to know why. And sometimes, we want to attribute such events to divine agency; that they are God’s judgment on us, or on the inhabitants of those places where they are occurring. But such attempts are misguided—as Jesus says in Matthew, “the rain falls on the just and the unjust.” 

Instead, we should remember another important lesson from our reading of Exodus—God hears and responds to the cries of those who suffer. In the Christian tradition, we see God in Jesus Christ, walking with us, suffering, and dying on the cross. It’s a symbol of God’s presence in the midst of all of the evil and suffering in the world. We should look for signs of God’s presence, God’s love and grace, wherever people suffer, in floods and hurricanes, in the rubble of bombed cities.

As God’s people, we are also called to hear the cries of those who suffer—from hurricanes and earthquakes, yes, but also the cries of the hungry and homeless, the fearful and the hurting. More than that, we are called to respond to those cries, to work to end their pain, to bring justice and liberation to the oppressed, the enslaved, the incarcerated. 

And to bring us full circle, we are called by God, as a people and community of memory, to tell honest stories, about ourselves and about God. Yes, we should celebrate the liberation we have experienced; we should remember and give thanks for the blessings God has given us, but we should also remember and mourn the price that was paid for that liberation and those blessings—the people who suffered because of them, the people who still suffer, and we should, when necessary, repent.

Wildflowers and Burning Bushes: A Sermon for Proper 17A, August 30, 2026/

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A few weeks ago, I was out on a bike ride on the Capital City Trail, between Dunn’s Marsh and Lake Farm Park. It’s a beautiful stretch of the trail, rolling terrain, some wooded areas and a lot of prairie. I love riding through the prairies in the summer—the scenery is a riot of color with purple coneflower, wild sunflowers, and rudbechia dominating the landscape. As I was riding along, I saw from the corner of my eye a flower I didn’t recognize, but it took me a second to process it and by then I was a few yards further down the trail and reluctant to turn back. 

Later, as I made my way back home the same way, I kept my eyes peeled for the same flower and when I saw it, I stopped took a photo, and identified it with my camera. It was prairie blazing star, a purple-spiked flower. There was just a small cluster of them in one spot just a few feet from the trail. I have biked the same trail several times since then, and I haven’t seen that flower again. Perhaps I haven’t looked for it, or I was too focused on other things, deep in thought, to notice it. 

The story of Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush is one of the foundational stories of biblical tradition—the story of God’s self-revelation to Moses and God’s call to Moses. But it starts in such an ordinary, mundane way. Moses was going about his business, tending his father-in-law’s sheep.

A lot has happened since we encountered Moses as a little baby, rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter. He grew up at court, with all the privileges entailed, and when he was a young man out and about, he encountered a slave driver whipping a Hebrew worker, got angry and killed him. So he had to flee, and ended up here, in Midian, where he encountered Jethro and married his daughter.

I can imagine him there with a flock of sheep, no one to talk to, lost in his thoughts. He might have been wondering how he had gotten here, after living at Pharaoh’s court; he might have been wondering how his life might have turned out if he hadn’t done that one bad thing. He might have been wondering how his life would turn out now. He might have been feeling just a little bit sorry for himself. One boring day after another, watching a flock of sheep as they grazed.

And as he’s going about his business, on a day like any other day, he has an encounter with God. He sees a burning bush; it’s strange because the fire doesn’t seem to destroy the bush but it keeps burning. So he goes to investigate. On one level, this encounter with the divine is a straightforward theophany, the scholarly term used for such experiences of the holy. There’s a strange event—the burning bush; the divine address to a human, and the human’s response of fear and humility. Moses took off his sandals and hid his face. There’s also the divine self-revelation. I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Hebrew scripture, such theophanies often include a call or commission, as this one does: God tells Moses to go back to Egypt and lead God’s people out, to this place, to worship God.

But Moses isn’t having it. As I’ve said before, these stories from Genesis and Exodus depict many of the leading characters in complex ways. They aren’t all good. That’s certainly the case with Moses, even from what little we know so far. After all, he did kill that Egyptian, so at the very least, he’s probably hotheaded, rash. But now we see another side of him. He’s not going to accept the task God has set out for him without some discussion or debate. He pushes back, saying to God, “That’s all well and good, God, but who should I tell them has sent me?”

Now, in Hebrew scripture, names are incredibly important. They aren’t random but reveal something essential about the person’s identity. Jacob, which was said to mean “heel” for example, was called that because he was grasping the heel of his brother when they came out of the womb. Later, he would be renamed Israel after wrestling with the angel, which was said to mean “he strives with God.” 

So when Moses asks for God’s name, he is asking to know who God is, but knowing names also gave one some power over the one named. But God’s answer eludes Moses’ trap, and eludes our efforts to understand and control God as well. On one level, God’s response, “I am who I am” is the perfect comeback. It could mean, “Moses, don’t try to control me.” But the Hebrew could be translated in other ways, most significantly, in the future tense—“I will be who I will be.” 

It doesn’t just prevent Moses from defining or confining God into categories he’s comfortable with. It’s declaring to Moses that if he wants to know who God is, he will have to spend time with God; he will have to experience God, walk with God. And over the course of his long life, Moses would do just that. 

But it wasn’t just Moses. The same was true of other biblical figures—Abraham who God called out from his home. It was true of Jacob, who after wrestling with God was renamed Israel. 

And it is true of people in the New Testament, not least the disciples, who Jesus called to follow him. We see that with Peter, who made his great confession of faith, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And yet a few verses later, when he hears Jesus speaking about what will happen to him in Jerusalem, Peter rebukes him, refuses to believe that Jesus might suffer and die—and in response, Jesus calls him Satan. He, and the other disciples would learn what Jesus meant by his prediction only by following him. They would learn, only by following him, who Jesus was and what it meant to follow him, to take up their crosses.

We often think we need to figure everything out, to know what we believe, know who God is. But as I’ve said before, sometimes, the questions we ask are more important, more revealing of ourselves and of God. Scholars have pondered for centuries just what God’s answer to Moses means. Those few words have opened up infinite speculation and questions that would have remained unspoken if Moses hadn’t asked his question.

Moses asked God a question. Do you have questions about God? Any questions about or for God that you dare to ask? 

Asking these questions, actually saying them out loud, opens us up to the possibility of deeper relationship with God. The God we encounter as we ask the questions is a more expansive, more exciting, more challenging God.

In addition to God’s answer to Moses, we learn something else about God in this reading. It’s something very important but often overlooked. God hears the cries of those who suffer. God responds to the oppressed. 

In addition to Moses’ question, there’s another question that emerges from today’s readings. God called Moses to lead God’s people out of bondage. Jesus called his disciples to take up their crosses and follow him. Relationship with God, relationship with Jesus Christ is not just about being or knowing, it is also about being called. And so the second question we are posed today is, “Where is God calling us?” Our inclination may be, given what Moses did next, given what the disciples ended up doing, that being called by God means big things—becoming a prophet, a saint, a hero of the faith. But close reading of scripture reveals something else, that God uses ordinary people, like you and me, and that God often calls us in very small, ordinary ways. So where is God calling you? Sometimes, that call from God may come in a spectacular event, like a burning bush; but sometimes it may be so small and quiet that we might be prone to miss it if we aren’t paying attention—like not seeing a prairie blazing star as we’re riding by.

Finally, remember that “God will be who God will be.” Among all the other things this means is that our deeper knowing of God, our deeper relationship with God, lies in the future, with all of its possibility and uncertainty. God is calling us all to new things, new adventures, and as we go, we will learn more deeply who God is and experience more deeply God’s love and grace. 

Who do you say that he is? A Sermon for Proper 16A, August 23, 2026

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August 23, 2026

When I read today’s first lesson earlier this week, I couldn’t help but think how my reading of it was affected by our current context. A capricious, ruthless, fearful ruler commanding the separation of families. The suffering it must have caused, not just the slave labor, but then the demand that male children be killed. And the resistance. The different ways in which powerless women refused to submit to the yoke of oppression—with lies and obfuscation, by hiding and concealing. Another interesting fact, the only characters named in the story were the midwives: Shiphrah and Puah; and then, at the end of the story, Moses. No one else is given a name, not his mother or sister; not Pharaoh or Pharaoh’s daughter, but only the two midwives and the baby saved from murder. 

Empire looms over the gospel story as it does over the Exodus story. I’ve mentioned before that geography is important to the gospel writers. Each of them use geographical details in slightly different ways, but paying attention to where events are said to take place, paying attention to Jesus’ itinerary, helps elucidate larger themes in the gospels’ portrayal of Jesus.

In today’s gospel reading we are in the region of Caesarea Philippi. He’s been traveling a great deal in these chapters. A couple of weeks ago, he was in Galilee, and as we saw, he and his disciples crossed over the Sea of Galilee. Then, last week, in the reading from chapter 15, Jesus went from there far to the northwest, to the region of Tyre and Sidon, along the Mediterranean coast. After that, Matthew tells us, he returned to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. 

Now, he and his disciples are in or near Caesarea Philippi. That’s far to the north on the border of the province of Syria, in a region controlled by Philipp, Herod the Great’s son. Caesarea was a city that Augustus had given to Herod and Herod had rebuilt. Herod had built a marble temple dedicated to Augustus. When Philipp succeeded his father, he continued the building spree and renamed the city Caesarea Philippi, in honor of his imperial patron and himself. Like all such cities in the Roman Empire, it was a projection of Roman power and culture. It was both symbol of that power and a central node of power.

It was here that Jesus asked these two questions—“Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am? Those of us who are familiar with the story, familiar with the Christian tradition, know a little bit of how this story has been interpreted in the history of Christianity. It is a founding text for notions of papal supremacy, and the power of the institutional church. “On this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” As you probably know, one of the most common symbols of the papacy are the papal tiara above two crossed keys. 

But I’m not interested in that tradition of interpretation. Rather, I want to focus on the power and significance of those two questions, and I want to imagine, if you can, Jesus asking those questions today, on Madison’s Capitol Square, , or in the halls of the US Capitol, or the White House. Jesus asked his questions in the shadow of empire, with the presence of Roman military and cultural power dominating the landscape and no doubt the minds and lives of the residents.

Who do people say that I am? 

That’s the easy question to answer. The disciples had no problem offering answers—John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. What answers would you give to that question today?

“Who do you say that I am?”

That’s the hard one and I can imagine the disciples looking away, looking down at their sandals, trying to avoid Jesus’ searching gaze. Awkward silence, until Peter blurted his response,, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And I can see the other disciples rolling their eyes as Peter responded, thinking to themselves, “There he goes again. Why doesn’t he just shut up?”

But Peter’s answer was not because he had studied harder than the other disciples, that he had memorized everything Jesus had said. Peter’s answer came not from himself but from God. And even he didn’t know what his answer meant. A few verses later, after protesting in response to Jesus’ prediction of his arrest, execution, and resurrection, Jesus would call Peter, “Satan.” And as we know, Peter would deny Jesus at the moment it mattered most. 

Still, now, he made the confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

We live in perilous times for Christianity. It’s not just the rise in the numbers of those who claim no religious affiliation. There’s the close identification of evangelical Christianity with right-wing political views, the conflation of American Christianity with American nationalism and of course, white supremacy and racism. 

We might think that the questions Jesus asks here are primarily doctrinal—about his nature and identity with God. You might have thought, as I gave you silence a few minutes, “Now what does the Nicene Creed say?” 

You might think that Jesus wants an answer full of doctrinal statements. But I don’t think that’s the case. Jesus asked the question of his closest friends and companions, people who had walked with him across Galilee, to the Mediterranean, and now to the far north. They had listened to him, even when they didn’t always understand what he meant; they had seen him heal the sick, cast out demons, feed thousands. They had stuck with him even after they heard of John the Baptist’s death, and begun to imagine that a similar fate might await their leader as well.

They might not have been able to say the words—even Peter needed God’s help to say them, but deep inside, I think they probably were sensing something of who Jesus was, because they were getting to know him. 

I don’t think the point is that we get the answer right. After all, Peter didn’t really understand what the words he was saying meant. I think the point is the conversation—hearing Jesus’ questions, taking them seriously, wrestling with them, and in that response, opening ourselves to him and to his love. 

Our American culture, American Christianity, have named Jesus but I don’t think those of us who experience and know Jesus in ways different than that, who see in him someone who welcomes the stranger, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, loves his enemy, can simply argue for an alternative definition, blurt out a different response to the question. We have to show in our lives, and in our community who Jesus is.

When Jesus asks us, “Who do you say that I am?” he does not want an answer in word or doctrine. He is asking us to speak from our hearts; he is asking to see us put our answer into action, not words. 

Who do you say that I am? That may be the most urgent question facing us today in the midst of all of our political turmoil. Can we confess, and express a Jesus who offers hope to those in despair, who breaks down the barriers that divide us, who loves everyone, without exception, and whose love casts out our fear?

Fearing the chaotic abyss: A sermon for Proper 14A, August 9, 2027

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It was the summer after my junior year of college and I was doing what I had done every summer since I hit my teens—I’d given up my books and schoolwork for a hammer and nail apron and took my place on the jobsite where my dad was building or remodeling houses. This summer, the first job was to frame a two-story house and I found myself walking around on the second floor joists as we began hanging rafters for the roof. All of a sudden, I looked down and realized where I was, twenty feet or more above the ground. My legs began to tremble and I had to get down on my hands and knees to stabilize myself. It had been nine months since I had found myself in a similar position, and even though my body remembered it, my mind was playing tricks on me. I was scared, and it would take a couple of days of working up there before I got comfortable again.

I wonder if Peter had a similar experience, walking out on the water, suddenly realizing where he was, and freaking out about it. There’s actually a backstory about my fear—I had to overcome fear of heights to work with my dad. I remember as a younger boy, maybe ten years old, climbing around on a half-framed house and falling. I didn’t hurt myself. But years later, when I started working for my dad, I had to overcome that memory before I could function fully on a ladder or a roof.

This morning’s thunderstorm put me in mind of another incident from that same summer. We were finishing the metal roof on a large pole barn, 40 or 50 feet above ground, when a thunderstorm suddenly popped up. I’ll spare you the details. It was quite possibly the scariest experience I’ve ever had.

So many of us are fearful right now. The old certainties on which we relied seem to have fallen away; the safety net is being dismantled; our very sense of who we are as a nation, a people dissolving in front of our eyes. It often seems like we are hovering over an abyss of chaos.

I know that many of us come to church in search of reassurance and hope, to hear words of inspiration and comfort in these troubled times. Today’s gospel lesson speaks directly to fear. It’s the familiar story of Jesus walking on the water. And no doubt, those of you have attended church all your lives, going all the way back to Sunday school as kids, could tell me about this story—that it’s about Peter’s impulsiveness, his lack of faith, and of Jesus saving him in spite of himself; a lesson that we can transfer to ourselves. And so it is, but it is also, or could be, about so much else.

First, a note about context. This story is set immediately after the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. But there’s another event that may offer additional perspective. Chapter 14 begins with the account of Herod’s execution of John the Baptist. After receiving word of this from John’s disciples, Matthew reports that he “withdrew to a deserted place.” But time and space for grief and reflection were not to be. The crowds followed him, Jesus had compassion on them, and healed their sick. It was that evening that Jesus took five loaves and two fishes, and from them fed the crowd.

Our story picks up immediately after that event. Again, Jesus withdraws after sending the disciples ahead. He needs time to grieve, to recharge and reflect on what John’s death might mean for his own ministry. The disciples begin their journey across the Sea of Galilee. They were sailors, at least four of them were, and the Sea of Galilee was their home. They apparently spent the night on the lake, their boat was battered by wind and waves—the Greek is literally, “tortured” so we’re meant to imagine the disciples had to struggle mightily against the great danger they faced. What I find surprising in this brief account is that Matthew doesn’t say anything about the disciples’ emotions until the moment they catch sight of Jesus walking on the water. They may have struggled in the storm throughout the night, but Matthew tells us that they became afraid only when they saw Jesus, thinking he was a ghost.

Similarly, when Peter takes out after Jesus, he is fine until he notices the wind. Then he becomes frightened begins to sink, and calls out to Jesus, “Save me.”

There are other dimensions to this story. One of the most significant is the sea itself. Throughout biblical literature, the sea is a symbol of chaos. It is the primordial stuff, present at the beginning of creation, out of which God creates order. For Jesus to walk on water is another proof of his power over evil and chaos, demonstrated as well by the fact that the storm ended when he entered the boat. And the disciples responded appropriately, worshipping him and confessing him to be the Son of God. 

To make another connection with ancient understandings, walking on water certainly symbolized divine power, but when humans attempted it or claimed the ability, it was seen as hubris, arrogance, and tyranny. The Emperor Caligula, for example, who reigned from 37-41, had a temporary bridge built across the bay of Naples so he could cross on foot, as befitting a God, and not cramped in a boat. So this event, coming after Herod’s execution of John the Baptist, after Jesus fed the five thousand, is another example of God’s reign breaking in, to provide food, to bring order out of chaos, to initiate God’s justice and peace.

And the disciples respond accordingly. It’s worth pointing out that in Mark’s version of the story, which doesn’t include Peter’s attempt to walk on the water, ends with this description of the disciples: 

“And they were utterly astounded,for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.”

By contrast, Matthew’s story ends very differently. The concluding verse reads: “Those in the boat worshiped him, saying ‘Truly, you are the Son of God’.” Two things here. First of all, the use of the word “worshiped.” When we hear that word, we think of what we do on Sunday morning: sing hymns, read scripture, pray, all of that. It’s all quite respectable, rather staid. But the word translated as “worshiped” literally means “prostrated”—to get down, not just one’s knees but to lie prone before the one being worshiped. It’s the sort of bodily gesture that would have been expected when approaching the throne or person of the emperor. You might well wonder how the disciples could have done that in a boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee.

The second thing is the confession—Truly you are the son of God—the one able to feed five thousand, to calm the seas, to demand the kind obeisance normally demanded by the Emperor: an alternative ruler, an alternative kingdom.

In so many ways the world in which we live is chaos. We may feel like we are the disciples in the boat struggling against a mighty storm. We may feel like Peter, sinking as we notice ourselves suspended amid chaotic forces. We are afraid. I am afraid. I am afraid for our planet, for the human race, for this nation, our city. I fear for American Christianity that has been complacent and complicit in the sins of white supremacy, racism, and the violence of war. 

But if, like the disciples, we truly confess Jesus to be the Son of God, then our allegiance to him supersedes all other allegiances, including that of our nation. If we confess Jesus to be the Son of God, we need to name and fight the sins and evils that surround us. We need to call out and confront all those who conflate flag and cross; we need to confess our sins and complicity in the racism of our nation and out city. We need to call out and condemn the hatred and evil that that we’ve seen in too many other places across America over the last couple of years.

As followers of Jesus, as his disciples, we are at a moment of decision. We can confess him to be the Son of God, we can take up our crosses and follow him into the chaos that surrounds us. We can share his message of love, proclaim the justice of God’s coming reign, or we can turn away, look away, in disbelief and silence, and allow those forces of chaos to overwhelm us a church, a city, and a nation.

Jesus is reaching out his hand to us. Do we have the strength, the courage, the faith, the moral clarity to grasp it? For in that hand lies our salvation.

My statement on the Killing of Corey Ruiz

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July 25, 2026

The Feast of St. James the Apostle

My siblings in Christ:

We are grieving, heartbroken, angered by the shooting death of Corey Ruiz this week. His death is mourned by all of us, but especially his family and friends. For many of us, his death reminds us of other such incidents, like the killing of Tony Robinson. The videos are horrifying. The questions raised by this incident are all too familiar. Why was deadly force used? Why are African Americans victims of police violence in disproportionate numbers to the percentage of their population in Madison? Why did officers fail to de-escalate? What can we do to prevent such incidents in the future? 

Answers to some of these questions may come from the investigations currently underway but the deeper issues around racism and state violence will persist. As faithful Christians we are called to lament the suffering and injustice that occur and to commit ourselves as a congregation and as individuals to build a more just and equitable future. At Grace, our Racial Justice Committee (formerly “Creating More Just Community”) has been working since its founding in 2015 to educate and advocate around issues of racial justice and equity. We have sponsored speakers, led programs on understanding racism, and through our participation in MOSES, have advocated for reform of the criminal justice system. We have also supported vulnerable populations through our food pantry, our hosting of the men’s homeless shelter for nearly 40 years, and now through our partnership with Catalyst for Change.

 All of this is commendable but it is not enough. Even as we grieve and continue to process the events of the last week, engaging in a clear-eyed assessment about what those events reveal about our community, we must redouble our efforts to construct a society in which all its members can thrive and flourish. 

We may be grieving, angry, and dispirited; our hope for a better future crushed under the weight of all the evils in the world. Yet God continues to work in the world; the Risen Christ proof of God’s power. And as St. Paul writes in the Epistle reading for Sunday: 

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:39-40).

Grace’s Racial Justice Committee meets on the second Tuesday of each month at 5:00 pm via zoom. We welcome new members. Catalyst for Change will be giving us an update on their work after the 10:00 service on Sunday July 26. The statement issued by MOSES is available here.

A Sermon for Proper 9A, July 25, 2026

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I wonder how many of you were like me on Tuesday morning, watching your news feed with dread as we waited for the latest Supreme Court decisions. That dread deepened with the announcement of the first decision; the constitutionality of states’ bans on trans athletes. Then another decision gutting campaign finance regulations, and finally, surprisingly upholding of birthright citizenship. 

This weekend as our nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its declaration of independence, the vision of a fully democratic, wildly diverse, union of people seems more distant than ever. Our hope of being a beacon of democracy and inclusion, a nation made stronger by the diversity of its people, is hanging on by a thread, only another Supreme Court decision, or arbitrary action by the president from being severed.

I mention this because I know it’s on all of our minds. Many of you may be wondering why there are no patriotic hymns in our order of service; after all, it’s the 4th of July, our 250th celebration, and many of us want to celebrate that. 

But just what would we be celebrating, and why would it be expected, or even appropriate, to acknowledge our nation’s founding in a service of Christian worship? Each year on the 4th of July, I read Frederick Douglass’s brilliant speech: “What to the slave is the 4th of July?” Today I wonder, “What to the refugee or immigrant is the 4th of July?” What to the people languishing in ICE detention centers is the 4th of July” “What to the LGBTQ+ community is the 4th of July? And finally, what to the faithful follower of Jesus is the 4th of July?

We’ve been hearing a lot about “Christian Nationalism” in recent years, and it’s important to note that there are many extreme versions of it—from the State of Texas requiring the reading of biblical texts in schools; the posting of the Ten Commandments in other states; or more extremely, claims that the US is a Christian nation, founded on Christian principles; and that those who aren’t Christian aren’t really American.  

In fact, Christian nationalism is embedded in almost all forms of American Christianity. Did you know that Independence Day is an official “holy day” in the Episcopal liturgical calendar? Technically, I’m obligated to hold a public service of worship on that day; although I’ve never done it, and none of the churches with which I’ve been associated have, either. Then there’s the “National Cathedral” official seat of the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, but also site of inauguration day prayer services, funerals of presidents and other prominent politicians, and other rituals of American Civil Religion. To what extent is the project of American empire supported, consciously and subconsciously by Christian imagery and Christian institutions, including, perhaps especially, the Episcopal Church, with its red, white, and blue shield? 

There’s a difference between the Christian Nationalism that has succumbed to the sin of idolatry and a true patriotism which honors our nation but is clear-eyed about both our failures as well as our successes; our weaknesses as well as our strengths, and calls us to strive for greater equality and justice.

Our gospel reading directs our attention elsewhere, to Jesus and to those who follow him. The last three Sundays we’ve read from chapter 10 which contains what scholars refer to as the second of Jesus’ five discourses in that gospel—lengthy compilations of Jesus’ teaching uninterrupted by questions or narrative episodes. The first discourse is the sermon on the mount. One of the key themes in Matthew is the presentation of Jesus as the new Moses and scholars see a parallel between Matthew’s five discourses and the five books of Moses.

The second discourse is called the missionary discourse. Jesus sends his disciples out to extend his ministry—to preach the Good News of the coming of God’s reign, and to heal the sick, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons. He gives them instructions on what to wear and what to take with them, what to do if they are rejected, and the like. 

Now in chapter 11, the emphasis shifts. The chapter begins with John the Baptist in prison, and sending some of his disciples to Jesus to ask him if Jesus is the one for whom they were waiting. That’s the background for the first section of today’s gospel reading. In it, Jesus criticizes the crowd for the way they responded to both John and himself. John was something of a dropout—he preached in the wilderness, dressed strangely and had an odd diet. Onlookers thought he might have been possessed by a demon. In the twenty-first century, he would probably be diagnosed as mentally ill. In the case of Jesus, because he spent time with tax collectors and sinners, he was regarded as a drunkard and glutton.

Jesus’ question, “What did you come out into the wilderness to see?” is as pertinent today as it was in the first century. We have our expectations, assumptions about how God acts in the world, and what God’s will is. Those expectations can lead us to ignore or overlook the ways God is working in the world and in our lives, and who God is using as God’s messengers. And in our polarized society, in all the noise of that polarization, we need to be reminded that God may be speaking and working in ways that we don’t immediately recognize or want to acknowledge. 

Among the assumptions that burden us is the assumption that following Jesus is difficult. There are good reasons for such an assumption, sayings like, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” 

But today we hear something very different. The last verses we heard are words of invitation and consolation. I repeat them almost every Sunday at the early service. They are among the so-called “comfortable words” sentences of scripture read or recited after the confession of sin and before moving into the Eucharist. In the liturgical context, they are intended to remind us of God’s love, mercy, and grace. And that’s a lovely use of them.

In their scriptural context, they show another dimension of discipleship. Yes, following Jesus can be difficult. It has consequences. But at its heart, discipleship is about relationship. The word we translate as discipleship has at its root the Greek word for to learn. In the gospels as in other religious traditions, to learn from a religious teacher, to follow a religious teacher, is first and foremost about relationship, about being together. When Jesus called his disciples, he told them, “Come, I will make you fishers of people.” Now he tells them, “Come, all you that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

That’s an invitation we need, a reminder we desperately need in our busy lives and noisy world. We are overwhelmed by so many things. We may be anxious, fearful, angry. Jesus invites us to come to him with all of that, with our worries and concerns, our burdens. He invites us to find rest in him.

Let’s not immediately think about the “rest” Jesus offers as a day off from work or a vacation. Rather, “rest” is a loaded theological term, it draws us back to creation, to God’s final act of creation, when God rested, created the Sabbath day and blessed it. 

Above all, in this context, there is a connection between “rest” and the relationship of disciple and teacher—disciple and Jesus. At the very end of Matthew, Jesus promises his continued presence with his disciples, “And lo, I will be with you always.” Here, Jesus explicates the meaning of that presence. It’s not just “being with” him. It is opening ourselves to the transformative power of that presence, to find in Jesus’ ongoing presence with us rest for our souls. 

It is also to make that same invitation to others. In Matthew 9, Jesus looked on the crowd and “he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” The world we live in, the city we live in is full of people in desperate need. Can we speak Jesus’ words to them, “Come unto him, all you that are weary and heavy-laden, and he will give you rest?”

Walking on Together: A Sermon for Proper 8A, 2026

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June 21, 2026

We’ve been reading the story of Abraham these past few weeks, and today we hear the most dramatic episode in his story. Indeed, this may be one of the most dramatic stories in all of scripture. It confronts us with a horrific dilemma and its implications concerning God’s nature and the nature of the relationship between human beings and God, the nature of faith, are deeply unsettling.

“And Yahweh tested Abraham.” 

This story, called the sacrifice of Isaac in the Christian tradition of interpretation, may be familiar, at least in its outlines, but I hoped as you listened, you were attuned to its horrific implications. What kind of a God could demand human sacrifice? We quail at that question and recoil—it can’t be about human sacrifice. It is about human sacrifice. A man is asked by his God to sacrifice his only, beloved son. We know from other texts, both in the Hebrew Bible and from parallels in other texts from the Ancient Near East, that while human sacrifice was not particularly common, it did happen, both in Israel and among Israel’s neighbors.

We can’t imagine the mindset of someone who would sacrifice their son; and if someone told us today, or tomorrow, that God was demanding it of them, we would think they were mentally ill. What sort of a human being, whether in the ancient world or in the twenty-first century, could conceive of such a thing? 

We might be inclined to write this story off as one of those stories from the Hebrew Bible that have no connection with our lives, or even with our God, but doing so would fail to take note of the important way this story has functioned in Christianity—for when one hears of God demanding the sacrifice of a son, when one hears in a story a son referred to as beloved, when one imagines an altar, and blood, and sacrifice, and a son, we are inclined to think of Jesus, God’s only, beloved son, who in the Christian tradition has been seen as sacrificing himself for us. The story of the sacrifice of Isaac is very often, perhaps inevitably interpreted in light of the story of Jesus Christ, and the story of Jesus Christ is very often, and perhaps inevitably, interpreted in light of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac.

But that doesn’t make this story any more palatable. For many Christians, the notion that God might demand or require the sacrifice of God’s son is deeply troubling. 

Our attention quite naturally is focused on the horrible dilemma faced by Abraham, and the horrific demand made by Abraham’s God. But we would do well to attend to the other character in the drama, to Isaac himself. The tradition of Jewish interpretation points us in the direction of Isaac. The story is known in Judaism not as the sacrifice of Isaac but as the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, which suggests his agency in the events. 

For one thing, we are compelled to wonder how old Isaac is at the time of the story. We know that Abraham is quite old, well over 100 years, and we know also, from the previous chapter, that Isaac is at least a young boy. We can infer from our reading that Isaac is old enough and big enough, to carry a substantial load of wood, and that he is mature and thoughtful enough to wonder why they are going up the mountain to make a sacrifice, but they have no animal which to sacrifice. 

Given this, it is not difficult to imagine that Isaac was complicit in the act, in this potential sacrifice, that he knew what was going to happen, and that he agreed to it. Still, considering this possibility does nothing to lessen the text’s terror. We are left contemplating a capricious and demanding God, a God who has promised blessing to Abraham and now demands his son. We are left contemplating a man and his son, so faithful to their God that they consider this horrific act.

So we are left with questions, hard questions about the nature of God and the nature of faith. But of course it is not just this story that forces such questions upon us—it is life itself that confronts us with questions like these, the meaning of suffering, the presence of God in the midst of pain, the possibility of faith in a world that seems cruel and meaningless at times. We might want to answer as Abraham did when his son asked about the lamb, “God will provide.” But even those words ring hollow in the midst of tragedy.

Is it even possible to wrestle meaning out of events like the death of a child? We could go further and ask about the tragedy of tornados or tsunamis, or the Holocaust. But I’m sure by now you get my point. 

This story challenges us with these questions and leaves us little to grasp for. But it does leave us with something. There is a little sentence that appears twice in the narrative as the drama and tension build.

When Abraham tells the slaves to remain behind, loads Isaac with the wood and takes the fire and knife, the text reads “So they walked on together.” And again, after Isaac asks Abraham where the ram is for the sacrifice, and Abraham responds, “God will provide,” the text reads, “So they walked on together.” 

There is something about terrible evil or suffering that can rob us of our humanity, strip away all convention and morality, all hope, and faith. In this story, facing unimagined horror, father and son walked on together, united by their love, and by their faith. 

We see that love expressed, the relationship defined in another repeated phrase. At the beginning of the story, God calls Abraham, and Abraham replies, “Here I am.” Later on, Isaac calls to Abraham, “Father,” and Abraham replies, “Here I am, my son.” As we have seen before, Abraham responds to God’s call. Abraham hears God. Now, we see him responding to his son, hearing his son. And they walk on together.

We are hearing stories these days of families torn apart by violence, of families torn apart by changing regulations concerning refugees and immigrants. We know of families, of parents who face gut-wrenching decisions concerning medical care for their children. How many of us are facing dilemmas of one sort or another—demands that seem to heavy to bear. How many of us are facing decisions we dread to make, and wondering whether God will provide?

This story is about the love of a father and son. It is also a story about faith. Just as we can’t imagine God asking us to sacrifice a child, , we may struggle with the notion that God may demand our total loyalty, our whole being. 

This story presents us with that very possibility, that when we say “Here I am, God,” God may take us seriously. Abraham heard God’s call, following God into an uncertain future, into a foreign country. Abraham responded when God called him, and considered sacrificing his son to a God who demanded everything of him. 

But he wasn’t alone. The two of them, father and son, walked on together. They faced the horrible abyss together. So, too, we. When God calls us, when God seems to demand the unthinkable, the impossible of us, we are not alone. We walk on together, as God’s people, united in faith, in love, strengthening, supporting, each other. 

Hagar’s Tears: A Sermon for Proper7A, 2026

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June 21, 2026

“When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept.” Genesis 21: 15-16

These verses, from Genesis 21, our reading from the Hebrew Bible this morning, are terrifying and heartbreaking. They tell the story of a mother at wit’s end, facing the death of her beloved child, and her own death. She is hopeless and in despair. And in her situation, she is like so many others in our world, victims of violence and oppression abandoned by their families, their society, their fellow humans. 

Hagar is an unhoused mother, fleeing sexual violence, trying to protect herself and her child. Hagar is a refugee, fleeing oppression and war, forced from the only home she knew. Hagar is the asylum seeker, huddling with her child, hiding from ICE agents, terrified of being detained.

But it’s worse than that because Hagar’s story is not just about being cast out from her home. She was a slave and like slave women throughout history, she was at the mercy of her master and mistress. It wasn’t just that she lacked freedom. It was that they could do with her what they wanted. On this weekend when we observed Juneteenth, she is like all of the enslaved women who suffered for three centuries under the yoke of slavery in this nation.

When Abraham and Sarah still lacked an heir after years of marriage and years of God’s unfulfilled promises, they conspired to get an heir by violence and coercion. Ishmael was Abraham’s son, and as soon as Hagar became pregnant, Sarah’s resentment boiled over. She had Abraham cast her out into the desert. But God heard Hagar’s cries, rescued her, and sent her back where she gave birth to Ishmael.

Sarah’s resentment and jealousy persisted even after she gave birth to Isaac. She couldn’t stand that the two boys were friends, so she had Abraham cast Hagar and Ishmael out again. And so we have that scene of Hagar in despair in the desert, waiting for certain death.

As we read the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs with all of their rich themes, it’s important to recognize the underside of those stories and other themes:  challenging God, of what it means not to be chosen by God, disobedience, and faithlessness. There are stories of horrific violence. Often, the lectionary chooses not to include those latter stories in our weekly readings, but today, we hear one such horrific story. 

It’s one of the stories that Phyllis Trible called “texts of terror” in her now classic work of biblical scholarship. It’s a story of sexual violence, slavery and oppression, hatred and revenge. Sarah is depicted in negative terms throughout. She is conniving, petty, and manipulative. Abraham doesn’t come off much better. He seems to submit to Sarah’s will, even when he doesn’t want to and against his better judgment.

By contrast, Hagar is shown to be both victim, vindictive and agent. The slave of Sarah, she has been taken from her homeland of Egypt and subject to foreigners—Abraham and Sarah. We don’t know her feelings when Sarah compels her to submit to Abraham’s desires but we can imagine that when she learns she is the mother of his heir, she has some hope that their treatment of her will improve and that her child will have a better life than she had. And also, being pregnant with Abraham’s heir emboldens her to hold that over Sarah. But her hopes are dashed when Sarah responds by forcing her into the wilderness the first time. A pregnant mother, she seeks refuge by a water spring, where she has an encounter with God.

God seeks Hagar out, asks her why she has fled, and where she is going. When she responds, God instructs her to return to Abraham and Sarah and tells her to name her son Ishmael which means “God hears.” In response, Hagar gives God a name—El Roi, which likely means, the God who sees, for as Hagar added, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”

In today’s reading, Hagar and Ishmael are again forced into the desert, where they have an encounter with God, are miraculously rescued, and Ishmael is promised that he will be the father of a great nation.

As I’m sure you know, in the Islamic tradition the stories of Isaac and Ishmael are turned upside-down, so that Ishmael is the favored son, chosen by God. Indeed during the hajj, the drama of Hagar seeking water in the desert is reenacted ritually by the pilgrims as they run seven times between two hills near Mecca.

There are so many levels to this story. In one sense, Hagar’s story is the story of Israel. Like the Israelites in Egypt, Hagar was a slave. Like the Israelites, she wandered in the wilderness where she encountered God and experienced a miraculous gift of water. Like the Israelites, she was forced out a second time, into exile, like the Babylonian captivity. But unlike the Israelites who returned home to Jerusalem and received new promises from God, Hagar’s life ends in exile.

The story is also the story of Arab and Jew. In Genesis, Ishmael is understood to be the father of the Arabs, and of course, he is a great patriarch for the Muslims.

This is a complex story with layer upon layer of meaning. It’s a story in which none of the characters come off very well. Sarah, for example, has followed Abraham on his foolhardy journey in response to God’s call. She’s had to leave the comforts of family and home behind, and after all these years she has nothing to show for it. Her lack of a child makes her worthless in the eyes of her culture. But then she takes matters into her own hand and whatever sympathies we might have had for her vanish. Abraham is depicted as weak-willed. God doesn’t come off very well, either. God is arbitrary and even though God rescues Hagar, God forces her back into a difficult situation and tells her that she and her son are not favored. And Hagar herself. We see her in today’s reading as victim, but in the earlier story, when she discovers she is pregnant, she does humiliate Sarah.

It’s a complex, difficult story and in that way it is a story about life, a story about us. Human beings are not one-sided, all good or all bad. We are complicated; our stories are complicated. Hagar isn’t perfect. She’s a victim but she’s also vindictive. And yet, she is the first woman in scripture to be visited by God, the only woman in scripture to give God a name. She’s the only woman who receives the promise that she will have many descendants. She’s the first woman in scripture to weep over a dying child.

That very complexity may be why her story is in scripture. For it is a story that reminds us about the complexity of human beings, the complexity, the complexity of salvation. We like to think it’s all very simple. That God called Abraham, that God blessed Abraham, that Abraham prospered. We want to identify with that story.

But then there’s Hagar whose story reminds us that Abraham isn’t quite so simple or exemplary as we want him to be. There’s Hagar, who’s a victim and vindictive, who encounters God, is rescued by God, and who still has to live with the knowledge that in the end, God preferred Sarah and Abraham.

In the end, we may need to remember that Hagar is the story of salvation, the story of Jesus. She wasn’t an angel. She wasn’t perfect. But Jesus didn’t come only to the worthy, only to those who suffer their oppression silently and submissively. Jesus comes to all those who struggle in oppression, in poverty and need. God hears those who cry out in the midst of their suffering, in the midst of their oppression.

Hagar’s story is our story. How many of us are with her in the desert, feeling hopeless, in despair. How many of us feel crushed by the weight of our lives, crushed by the weight of the world, the oppressive structures from which there is no escape. How many of us regret decisions we have made, ways we have hurt our loved ones or ourselves, that have brought us to this place. How many of us are seeking Jesus, wondering whether we deserve his grace, deserve his love?

Jesus comes to us, and to those we have cast out, and is with us, in our pain, suffering, and need. Jesus comes to us, and offers us the water of life. Jesus comes to those we’ve cast out. He reminds us that they too are our mothers, our sisters, our children, that whatever sins they’ve committed do not excuse our oppression or disdain or coldness of heart. Jesus calls us to reconcile with them and offer them water, food, shelter, and hope.