Meeting Jesus in the Storm

Here’s a riddle for you: Why did the disciples cross the lake? To get to the other side!

In Jesus’ day, the Sea of Galilee was a stormy place to sail anyway. It is actually a lot like sailing across the Great Lakes of North America. Water behaves differently on big inland fresh water lakes than they do on open oceans. The least bit of wind can create quite a tempest.  So, when the disciples were going across the water it was very rough going very quickly and they were stuck in the middle all night long, trying to make headway against a storm with an itty-bitty sail and oars.

The early church remembered Jesus’ miracle because they could identify with it immediately. Not because they were sailors or fishermen, but because the new, young church was like, to quote the prayer of St. Brendanthe Navigator, being in a very small boat on a big sea in the middle of a storm.  So, in the Gospel of Matthew (as in Mark, whose outline Matthew follows) going across the water means “going to the other side” from a safe familiar place to a new, foreign or unknown place of mission—by definition a risky and stormy trip.

Matthew is telling the story of what Jesus because the young church knew that they were sailing through a storm.

Around here, we know about storms. Not far from my house, there’s a sign on the road to the airport that is on a pole 15 feet high. It says that the storm surge from the bay will reach or cover that sign.

Many of us in these parts listen closely to the weather in hurricane season, put together a storm box in case the power goes out, know our flood zone by heart, and keep “go bags” at the ready in case we are told to bug out.  Mostly, we deal with them as best we can. We try to keep the water out and, if necessary, try to stay afloat, even if we don’t always make headway.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus walks across the water and through a storm to meet the disciples. Some paintings I have seen of this shows a serene Jesus walking across the water as peacefully as a stroll down a lane on a summer day. But I think that when Jesus walked across the water, he got very wet, and he probably looked like three miles of bad road when he finally did climb into the boat. The storm was all around him and the wind was still wailing. The powers of the storm and the wind and sea tried to overwhelm him but could not. He walked through the storm, not immune from its effects and fully immersed in its reality. The miracle is that he was not overpowered by it.

He would do that again on the cross. He would face everything evil and sin has to offer, including death. He would die a true and real death on the cross, just as he faced a true and real storm on the sea that day, and he would rise from the dead. In walking across the lake in the storm, he demonstrates not only his power but he also that the storm is real. The storm does not deter or stop him.

As he comes to the boat, the disciples see him and are afraid because they don’t know what to make of what they are seeing. But Jesus says to them the same thing he said on that third day in the upper room on that very first Easter: “Do not be afraid!”

Jesus comes and he brings peace, but the storm doesn’t stop. Not right away.  Which leads us to the rest of the story:

Oh, Peter. Poor old Peter!

We tend to give Peter short shrift because Jesus’ words to him after he is rescued sound to our ears like a rebuke: “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” We hear the words “little faith” and think “no faith.” We humans are very binary, very “1” or “0” about almost everything. We expect ourselves to either have the kind of faith to move mountains and accomplish the impossible, or to have no faith at all. The truth is that we are all somewhere in between. We are all people of “little faith.”  Martin Luther said that we are simultaneously saints and sinners.  Which is why we identify so much with Peter, because he is a lot like us: a lion of the faith with a heart of gold who is at the very same dense, afraid, and reactive.

The disciples are not spiritual klutzes who can’t shoot straight. They are faithful people on a difficult journey, and Jesus meets them in the midst of storms.

We forget that Peter did in fact do what Jesus did. He walked on the water! Until, well, he didn't. Still, I'll bet he walked farther than I would have, that's for sure!

St. Brendan the Navigator

Being a Christian is all about imitating Christ, and Peter wants to be like Jesus and do what Jesus does. He asks Jesus to call him and he answers the call. Only the storm is real, and as Peter moves into the storm, he says “uh-oh!” But even as he is sinking, even as he feels overwhelmed, Peter still calls out to Jesus. And Jesus helps Peter and brings him back to the boat. Safely aboard the boat, still beset by the storm, Jesus stills the storm. 

How many of us have done exactly the same thing? Who among us has never bitten off more than that we can chew spiritually?

Every summer for about thirty years, I go to Icon Camp, where I gather with other artists, most of us amateurs to paint an icon—an ancient Eastern Christian form of religious art found in Russian and Greek churches. We take a week to gather at a monastery where we paint, pray, eat, kibbitz, and then paint some more. 

One year, we worked on an icon based on today’s Gospel. Part of the work that week was to do a study of Jesus’ hand grasping Peter’s wrist in the midst of a maelstrom. That study is the heart and focus of the larger icon. That study was not just a lesson on artistic technique but also a reminder of the three miracles described in today’s Gospel: Jesus walks on the water. Peter walks on the water. Jesus stills the storm.  But first, before all that everyone (Peter and Jesus included) gets wet.

And no matter what, Jesus calls us, watches us, and rescues us.

Every Christian will experience storms. Baptism does not make us waterproof! We will all get wet! In fact, to do the ministries we are called to do, we will be sent into some pretty thick weather! But Jesus comes to us and is with us in the storm. We cannot still the storm or walk on water alone. But Jesus has power over the storm. The storm will not defeat Jesus. And we people of little faith, we are at once saints and sinners, need only reach out to Jesus and say “Lord, save me!” and he is there in the midst of the storm to rescue us. 

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost: August 9, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 10 Pentecost (Proper 14A) Sunday, August 9, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Jesus' manna moment

So, I have a question: was Jesus a foodie? Or did he just like dinner parties and big bashes?

I ask this because so much of Jesus’ teaching and even some of his miracles happen while there’s food around. Think about it: after the opening poem in John’s Gospel, the first thing we see is Jesus at a party turning water into wine. During another dinner with a bunch of religious leaders and lay people, a women crashed the party and washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair? Remember how, during his sojourn in the desert, Jesus is tempted by Satan to turn stones into bread—but, as hungry as he was, he doesn’t do it? On the other hand, when Jesus had dinner with Matthew and his tax collector friends, some of the local clerics and lay leaders grumbled about his gluttony? And, of course, there’s the last supper in the upper room where he washed his disciples’ feet and then celebrated a Passover meal with them! Remember how the risen Jesus appeared after the resurrection to the disciples as a group, around that very same dinner table, and how another time, the Risen Jesus cooks his fisherman-followers breakfast over a campfire?  After walking along the Emmaus road with a pair of sad, grief-stricken followers of Jesus, they didn’t recognize his risen self until he breaks bread with them in their own upper room.

So many encounters over so many meals! I guess we shouldn’t be all that surprised that Jesus would choose to feed a big crowd of people who came to hear him with baskets and baskets of food that he blessed and multiplied out of a kid’s bag lunch.

The miraculous feeding with the loaves and fishes must have on made an impression on Jesus’ followers, because it shows up six times in all four Gospels. Six! All the Gospels have at least one account of this, but Matthew and Mark have two… when Jesus fed 5000 of mainly Jewish listeners, and 4000 mostly Gentile folks in a place called the Decapolis. 

This repetition is a very big deal!

The people in the four early church communities that gave us the Gospels remembered these miracles not just because they were spectacular, but precisely because they were repeated. My hunch is that miraculously feeding lots of people from a small grocery bag was a regular, or at least not infrequent, part of Jesus’ preaching and proclamation. It sits right up there with the various healings and his way of teaching.  Jesus demonstrates the abundance of God’s love, grace, and care for all of us in that is once practical and spectacular: by feeding hungry people.

There feedings were Jesus’ manna moments. Not just once, as with the miracle of the manna in the wilderness in Exodus, but time and time again. And just like Moses’ miracle in the desert, Jesus feeds the people both freely and abundantly every single time.

Today, we associate the Eucharist with the very stylized but spare meal that we do in church every week. But in the early church, the line between a festive dinner, often called an Agape meal, and the Eucharist was almost indistinguishable. Sometimes early Christians got so carried away with the festivity, that the parties could get out of hand. At one point, the Apostle Paul had to remind the Christians in Corinth not only to settle down, but also that the folks who could afford catered meals had to look out for (and share with) people who could only bring a small casserole or loaf of bread.

Eventually, the Eucharist got separated from the banquets, so that today we celebrate, in a very ritualized way, the infinite grace imparted using only a tiny piece of blessed wafer and a sip of sacramental wine. After that, we proceed to the parish hall for coffee, iced tea, and yummy treats, or sometimes to a wonderful meal.

I will never forget how my first parish had a community meal (aka, a soup kitchen) six days a week, and that every week a Eucharist preceded it every Wednesdays at noon. That simple celebration was often attended by the same people who both served the food and those who shared the meal. For a lot of these folks, that meal was their only meal of the day, and that service was their only church. And for them, the two meals, both the one in church and the one in the dining room, were deeply linked. They couldn’t have one without the other.

Today’s Gospel reminds us that the grace imparted in the Eucharistic meal and the grace seen in the feeding of the five thousand are both practical expressions of God's never-ending, generous love.

But more than that, Matthew’s church remembered how Jesus fed the 5000 and put in their Gospel story an act of practical reminiscence. Because when Jesus took this small offering of food, blessed and broke the bread, and gave it to his disciples to hand out, he demonstrated what all of Jesus’ images of small seeds growing into big shrubs, yeast rising into loaves, someone finding treasure hidden in a field and buying it, a woman turning her house upside down to find a lost coin was really all about. The feeding of the five thousand was for them, and us, a living demonstration of those little kingdom parables.  Jesus showed us that the kingdom of God is all around us all the time, and that God's grace abounds not only in sanctuaries but in fields, on hill tops, and in the homes, farms, and shops of ordinary people. The reign of God is found in lunch boxes as well as in temples. Jesus shows us we are all called to love, care for, and feed one another, and that in God’s economy the smallest acts of kindness and compassion makes all the difference in the world.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost: August 2, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 10 Pentecost (Proper 13A) Sunday, August 2 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

So, what now?

So, what now?

The weekend isn’t over yet, but we’ve had the fireworks, the parades, the speeches, and while we might have a cookout or two left, the 250^th Independence Day of the United States is in the books. So, now what? Where do we go from here?

Or, as my favorite TV president, Jed Bartlett, would say, “What’s next?”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve sensed a strange ambivalence about this year’s celebration. It’s been fifty years, but I remember the exuberance of the bicentennial in 1976 and the run-up to it. Yeah, it was the seventies—big hair, big cars, disco, and punk rock—but the buildup for the party was well underway when I finished high school in 1975 and all through my freshman year, until the big do the following summer. Yeah, I know about hindsight and all that, but as I was working a summer job cutting grass, moving chairs, and mopping floors at my home parish, all around that inner-city church there was celebration. (And hype! Don’t forget all the bicentennial themed marketing!) Today? Sure, there have been some America 250 or Freedom 250 banners (indicating the two competing committees running the show), but last night’s fireworks were more or less on the same schedule as last year’s… and I just can’t shake the feeling that there just wasn’t as much energy around this as before. As a Washington native, I am astounded at how few people showed up for the what ought to have been the party of the decade. There have, of course, been at least two exceptions (three, if you count Tayor Swift’s wedding to Travis Kelce on Friday): we’ve been watching the world cup taking place around the US which, as I said last week, has been great fun and I’ve really enjoyed seeing the geeky and enthusiastic crowds that showed up trackside or at train yards to watch the Union Pacific 4014 Big Boy steam locomotive as it made its way across the country from California to Philadelphia.

Maybe “250” doesn’t have the same panache as “200.” But I wonder, do we really know what we’re celebrating? It could be that in ’76 we were, in addition to celebrating our nation birthday, we were also blowing off steam after a really difficult period of war, political upheaval, civil unrest, and scandal. It seems to me that, as a nation, we are experiencing today the same kind of spiritual mindset that caused Paul to write to the Christians in Rome two millennia ago.

Paul wrote to Christians in Rome with breath-taking honesty, about his spiritual life. “I do not understand my own actions,” he says. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” It’s a basic human truth, built into all of us.

I’m not speaking individually, as Paul did, but about us as a nation. We know that we need to come together, to bridge our differences, build on our variety and our capacity for good; but inevitably, we divide into camps, zero in disagreements, and anxiously blame other people for our problems. We can’t talk honestly about our history, because too often when we do, we either ignore what makes us uncomfortable, re-write what went wrong, so that instead of learning from our past  we anxiously takes sides and pick fights. As Paul said, we want the best, but we lean into the worst.

It is hard to follow Jesus faithfully amidst all the noise and bickering. So how does God respond? Well, for one thing we are given a gospel that calls us to hear, listen and rest.

Think about how noisy today’s Gospel is. It’s full of kids playing in the street with little or no supervision, calling out to each other, quarreling, pretending, singing songs, and playing toy flutes.

Jesus says that this is exactly how we are. “…To what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’” (Matthew 11:16-17).

Near my house is a lovely playground in a beautiful, forested county park. And when school is out, it is wild. Kids from the very small to middle schoolers are running, jumping, climbing, and generally making a racket. And, if any of you have ever worked with or raised children, you know that sometimes that exuberance can also lead to chaos, even conflict.

In the Gospel, Jesus talks about children in the town market who call out “let’s play wedding!” or “let’s play funeral” to companions who will not join them. We’ve seen this, when one kid comes to another and asks, “wanna play?” and the other kid says “Nah!” and runs away.  Jesus said the generation that rejected both John and Jesus were the same way.

We don’t know how to ‘play nice.’ People said John the Baptist’s way was too hard, but they also said Jesus’ way seemed too easy. (Matthew 11:18-19). But both John and Jesus announced the Reign of God, but is it a wedding or a funeral? Should we feast or fast? Do we rejoice or repent? Should we follow John’s way or Jesus’? Well, the answer to that question is “yes!” Both! We have been invited in our faith and baptism to come play. We have been set free from what holds us back.

So, what now? How do we use the freedom that God has given us?

For the last 250 years, we Americans have debated what freedom means. I remember growing up, my elementary school has framed prints of four Norman Rockwell paintings called “The Four Freedoms,” based on Franklin Roosevelt’s January 1941, State of the Union message: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.

The Scripture readings appointed for today suggest that there is a still deeper question. Not simply, “Are we free?” but “What are we doing with our freedom?”

Political freedom and spiritual freedom are not the same thing. The Apostle Paul understood that. In his letter to the Romans, Paul says something startling: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” I suspect most of us know exactly what he means!

We know the experience of wanting to do one thing and finding ourselves doing another. We want to be patient, but we lose our temper. We want to be generous, but we cling tightly to what we have. We want to forgive, but we carry old grievances. We want to love our neighbors, but fear and prejudice get in the way.

And what is true of individuals can also become true of nations. We can proclaim liberty while tolerating (or even propagating) injustice. We can celebrate equality while excluding some of our neighbors. We can speak of human dignity while turning away from those who are suffering or most vulnerable. We can honor freedom while failing to ask whether everyone truly has the opportunity to flourish.

The founders of this country understood that free societies require “virtuous” citizens. That’s why the government stays out of religion by giving belief space to breathe. It’s also why we have public education and libraries. Paul goes even deeper, though. The problem is not simply that people sometimes make bad decisions. The problem is that there are forces within us that distort us from becoming the people God created us to be.

The Christian faith has never allowed us to imagine that freedom alone is enough. Freedom is not an end in itself. The question before us is always: freedom for what?

That’s when Jesus enters the conversation when he says in today’s Gospel, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not promise victory, nor power, nor wealth. He doesn’t preach national greatness or that our side will win. He promises rest.

I’ve always been intrigued that in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson lists the things people pursue, as God-given, inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the “pursuit of happiness.” I suspect that Jesus’ notion of “rest” and Jefferson’s idea of “happiness” might be related.  Look at Jesus’s vision of a healthy society. Instead of wealth, power, military strength, economic growth, influence, Jesus asks: Are the weary finding rest? Are burdens being lifted? Are people being treated with gentleness? And then Jesus invites us to “Learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart.” What’s fascinating to me that when Jefferson, a Unitarian-leaning Anglican, took scissors to the Bible, cutting out all the miracles and stuff he thought unscientific, the part of Jesus’ teaching that we read today is one of the things he left in! Jefferson apparently like Jesus’ ethics more his healings.

Miracles or not, Jesus’ vision of God’s reign presents a different vision of life than our competitive dog-eat-dog, go-go-go way of living that we think of is normal. And it is a very startling vision by comparison. We don’t typically celebrate gentleness and humility in public life. We admire strength. We admire confidence. We admire winning. But Jesus, who said that the truth will set us free, points us toward humility, not coercion; carrying burdens, instead of crushing enemies, in short, Jesus teaches an ethic of love.

That, I believe, is what Christian freedom ultimately means: not merely freedom from something, but freedom for something: freedom for love, freedom for compassion, freedom for justice, freedom for mercy, freedom for building communities where every person knows they belong, freedom for participating in God’s work of healing the world.

So, on day 1 of America’s 251^st year, where do we go from here? What shall we do with this hard won, still unfolding, freedom.

Shall we use it only for ourselves? Or shall we use it to build a society where burdens are lighter, where the weary find rest, where the vulnerable are protected, where strangers are welcomed, where the hungry are fed, the imprisoned visited, and the homeless are sheltered? Shall we exercise power with humility, and live so that love of neighbor is more than a slogan?

The Gospel never asks us to reject our love of country, but it does ask us to measure every nation—including our own— and the actions of our citizens and leaders against the character of Jesus Christ.

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe wrote this for year's Independence Day,

Churches like ours, protected by the First Amendment and practiced in galvanizing people of goodwill, may be some of the last institutions capable of resisting this administration’s overreach and recklessness. To do so faithfully, we must see beyond the limitations of our tradition and respond not in partisan terms, but as Christians who seek to practice our faith fully in a free and fair democracy. 

We did not seek this predicament, but God calls us to place the most vulnerable and marginalized at the center of our common life, and we must follow that command regardless of the dictates of any political party or earthly power. We are now being faced with a series of choices between the demands of the federal government and the teachings of Jesus, and that is no choice at all. 

This is not the same kind of patriotism that has guided our church since its founding in 1785, but this July Fourth, it may be the most faithful service we can render — both to the country we love and the God we serve.

Jesus tells us that real, lasting power comes through service and that greatness is found in our mercy. We are invited to learn from Jesus; who is “gentle and humble in heart.” And having begun to learn from Jesus, while doing his work of love, and praying every day that God will give us the wisdom to use our freedom well, we may, with God’s help, become more and more the kind of people, and the kind of nation, that more closely reflects the gentle and humble heart of Christ himself.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9A), July 5, 2026, at St. John's Church, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (9A).

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Hospitality is the Heart

“Welcome!”

Everywhere we go, someone or some place is welcoming us. We put out welcome mats. Some stores have greeters whose only job is to say "welcome" to customers as they enter. Go into a restaurant and you might hear, "Good evening and welcome! Table for two?" Just up the road here on Belcher Road one sign welcomes us to Largo if you’re going south, and across the street another sign welcomes us to Clearwater as we drive north. The ring master at the circus starts the show wearing his top-hat and tails, saying "Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and girls! Welcome to the greatest show on earth!"

Welcome is a lovely word with a long history, compounding two familiar words, "well" and "come," though with slightly different meanings than what we use today. The root of "well" could mean something like "wellness" or "well-being," or can be a kind of blessing to “be well.”  "Come" is from an Old English word for one who arrives—no surprises there. So, in its earliest sense, "welcome" is an invitation and a blessing to be received into the goodness of this new place, where one has just arrived.t

Making one feel welcome is not as simple as offering a word. Preparing to welcome someone is an art that takes thought, intention, and discipline. Some practitioners of hospitality are always ready with the accoutrements of welcome: an appropriate beverage, the right food at the right time, a comfortable chair, a few thoughtful and respectful questions of the guest. An effective welcome courteously wipes away the strangeness or awkwardness of a new setting and makes one feel at home.

And during the past few weeks we've seen the power of welcome in cities all over the US have welcomed soccer, er... football!... teams from all over the globe to the world cup. I've loved the images of Japanese players enjoying barbeque in Kansas City, the Scottish Tartan Army in Boston, and we can thank the Dutch in Houston for planting in us that joyous earworm as we dance to the left and to the right. It was such a good time, that the Scots even wrote a public thank you note to the people of Boston (after drinking all their beer)!  

For Jews and Christians, hospitality has always been at the heart of who we are. The call to welcome the stranger is anchored in the Torah and was a part of the measure of the Hebrew community's faithfulness to God. Jesus both received hospitality and taught his followers to be hospitable.

Welcome is built into the geography and culture of the Holy Land. We are used to our planes, trains, and automobiles, but for most of human history people travelled at a walking pace. And if you were going from Europe or Asia Minor to Persia, the Nile Delta or Africa, or back, it meant that one went on foot… or maybe by horse or camel… through a narrow strip of land with the Mediterranean Sea to the west and the desert or mountains to the east. One of the reasons that Israel and Palestine is “holy land” is that it exists on a vital land bridge between three continents. Geography is one reason that so many ancient empires coveted that territory so much. And because the whole world seemed to walk through, hospitality was baked into Hebrew culture from the start.

Of course, travelers on this land bridge were rarely family. These were folks unknown to the community. They were aliens and foreigners, people who ate different foods, wore different clothes, spoke different languages, worshipped different gods. Opening one's home could be risky but survival depended upon hospitality. Today we'd describe such a thing as out and out foolishness. So, while our homes might have welcome mats, we also have locks, doorbells, peep holes, and even cameras that broadcast to our phones when a person is at the door. It’s been true since the dawn of time, that’s why there were also walled cities in ancient times. We humans might need hospitality, but we also fear the stranger.

In biblical times, hospitality was central to Hebrew identity. Remember the story of Jesus born in a manger? Or Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan? The risk did not define the people; their hospitality did, because hospitality is central to the character of God.

Early Christian communities were also welcoming and hospitable. Paul reminded the Romans to offer hospitality to the alien, and in the Letter to the Hebrews we are reminded to show hospitality to everyone because, you never know, you might be entertaining angels in disguise. In Acts, the early deacons practiced hospitality throughout the community, bringing welcome to those in need. And in Matthew's community, hospitality is a measure of the faithfulness of the people. Welcoming prophets, righteous ones, and disciples (whom Matthew’s Gospel called "little ones") was a disciplined practice of the young churches.

In her book Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris tells the story of a nun who, although she had Alzheimer's, still asks to be rolled in her wheelchair to the door of her nursing home so she can greet every guest. Said one nun of her sister in ministry, "She is no longer certain what she is welcoming people to...but hospitality is so deeply ingrained in her that it has become her whole life.” Norris writes that "in monastic spirituality…, only people who are basically at home, and at home in themselves, can offer hospitality...hospitality has a way of breaking through our insularity.”

Welcome as a practice of hospitality doesn't just happen. It must be taught. But such lessons don't come easily in our society. Some years ago, when I was serving as a hospital chaplain, I used to go around filling in for small churches. In nearly every case, the congregations were warm and welcoming… and also set in their ways. And occasionally, as sometimes happens when you see the same folks week after week, a congregation might get a little rusty in the art of welcome.

I remember going to one church for the first time and had no idea how they did things. I chatted with the organist and a lector, but after I put on my vestments, I found myself all alone in the sacristy with no idea how to find the sanctuary or where to procession formed. I opened a door, thinking it led into the church, and found myself outside and before I could turn around, the door closed. Locked. So, I went to the front of the church, thinking at least I could go in the front door, and, wouldn’t you know, the big red doors facing the busy main street under an “Episcopal Church Welcomes You” sign, was also locked. I could hear the opening hymn start up, and the tower bell rang over my head, but I couldn’t get in! It looked like it was going to be a very short service that Sunday! I knocked as loudly as I could… pounded on the door, actually. Finally, a fellow in choir robes opened the door, looked at me as if I had grown two heads, and asked, “What are you doing there? We never use this door!”

Hospitality isn’t just about being nice, and it’s more than putting out a welcome mat. It's a matter of attention: attention to those barriers, impediments, biases, and obstacles that we construct through habit and tradition, that can be barriers to the good news, a deterrent to participation in the church, and a distraction from abundant life in Jesus Christ.

The Greek word for stranger—xenos – is also the word for guest and host. In this age of contemporary tribal warfare, of Balkanization and gated communities, most of us are aware of the term "xenophobia," or fear of the stranger. This fear leads to nationalism, racism, and even genocide.

But, on the other hand, Jesus' call to welcome another is a call to “xenophilia,” or love of stranger. With xenophilia, the stranger is also the guest, and in the Gospel of Luke, welcoming the stranger is how the risen Christ is made known after that long walk on the Emmaus road, becoming both the guest and the host.

Hospitality is a skill that is taught. It all begins with practice, by simply doing hospitable things. The best hosts simply bring who we are, what we have, where we are, as graciously as we are able. Sure, that might mean putting out the best china, silver, and linens; at other times it may simply be a cup of coffee in a disposable cup and a cookie. In every case, it is the gesture itself, the practice, that shapes the character of the encounter, and the participants, into a story of grace that is the essence of the moment.

Often, we learn such lessons by experiencing just how involved hospitality can be. A coarse blurt of honest feelings might let off some steam in the moment, but it rarely serves the target of our discharge, or ourselves for that matter. But a gracious welcome can transform not only a moment but a life. A thoughtful pause, a quiet nod, an encouraging, courteous word of welcome can make Christ's presence known and perhaps even help one hear God's call.

I learned this a long time ago when I was a brand-new deacon and priest. I served a church in a small city that had seen it’s mills and factory close and leave town, the parish ran a six-day a week noonday meal that was free to everyone, as well as a food pantry, a fund for emergency fuel-oil, and hosted several twelve-step groups. The parish also served a small group of special needs adults who used to be housed in big institutions, but who now lived in nearby apartments or group homes.

One of those folks was a guy named Billy, who was always the first one to arrive at church, waiting for whoever would unlock the doors on Sunday mornings. Billy had no filters and no ‘off’ switch. The previous Rector taught him to light and put out the candles for the early Sunday Eucharist, and to serve the altar, which he did very faithfully. But this also meant that every Sunday the early service was a kind of liturgical improv because one never knew exactly when an item would come next, or what it might be. Remember that lack of an “off” switch? From the moment he came to the time he went home, he talked, hummed, sang, or would parrot whatever car or motorcycle drove past the church during the service. It was simply how Billy was wired.

And I have to say, it drove me bananas! Raised, as I was, in a household where church meant a certain decorum, I was not prepared for this! But my supervisor, a retired Cathedral Canon (whom Billy called ‘Kenny’), never seemed to mind. He took every curve ball in stride.

One day, after a particularly wild Sunday that severely tested my stamina, I went to my mentor and asked him how he did it. How could he handle Billy so calmly and graciously, while I was so wired from not knowing what would come next.

After a moment’s thought, the Canon said, “Well, Andrew, he’s Jesus.” At first, I felt about two inches tall, but that wisdom changed everything for me. It was from there that I began to develop what has become a regular prayer for me:

“Grant us the grace, O God, to see the face of Jesus in the people you bring to us; and also give us grace to be the face of Jesus to those who seek Him.”

Welcoming another requires attention to the other. The welcome Jesus invites us to share is an act of grace, vulnerability, and love because we must set aside our discomfort around difference or strangeness and choose instead to accept the grace of meeting another of God’s children as they are. And in that meeting, we are reminded what Jesus taught us: that in giving even a cup of cold water to one of Jesus’ little ones is also caring for Jesus himself.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8A), June 28, 2026, at St. John's Church, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (8A).

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Starting at the edges

Nothing really winds me up like buzzwords. People throw around jargon like candy attempting to sound smart without saying very much. Then these words end up in popular usage in places like television, in commercials, in seminars, and in speeches… and it really gets me going… people saying things without really much meaning. It happens in business, in church, and in politics. And when I hear buzzwords, I just want to sigh.

One of today’s most popular buzzwords is “disruption.” They tell us that their product, widget, or process is “disrupting the widget industry… and you should go out and buy it!” Well, friends, disruption is not all it’s cracked up to be… and usually when people are saying it, they don’t really mean it. They say “disruption,” but they mean “more of the same… but all shiny and looking new!” Like a brand-new car body resting on a chassis designed in the 1930’s.

The fact is that real disruption, real innovation, real invention is usually pretty upsetting. That’s why people resist it so much. Not long ago, the idea of flight was reserved for birds, bugs, and balloonists. The funny thing is that after two centuries of invention and innovation, with all the great gadgets we take for granted, very little has changed about how people are. Humans are very inventive in applying all our new gadgets into the ways we’ve always done things.

Change, real change, is hard! It requires a shift in perspective, in habit, in our thinking, and attitude. That’s why it requires not just discipline but grace, vision of what we want to be and the humility to start over… and hearts that listens for God.

Jesus’ first century image for “disruption” was what happens when one tries to put new wine into old wineskins. You know what you get? You end up with a thirsty person standing in a puddle of wine holding a broken, leaky wine sack. No, Jesus said, if you are going to do something new, it needs to be all new!

God is doing something new, Jesus says, and it will neither look, feel, nor operate the same way as how things have operated before. In todays’ Gospel we have three examples: Jesus calls Matthew the tax-collector to follow him; he heals a woman who has experienced a constant hemorrhage her years, and along the way he raises a dead little girl back to life. 

The Gospel puts these three stories together to answer a simple question: what will following the call of God be like? What is God doing in Jesus? In Christ, God is bringing healing, wholeness, and reconciliation to all God’s people.

But God does it differently that how we expect. Our old habits, our old ways of seeing, our notions of good order and how things “have to be” are going to turned upside down. This new wine will not fit in the old containers. The containers can’t take it!

Watch what Jesus is doing and see how he is at once making new wine and creating new wine containers in the lives of the people he meets.

When he walks up to Matthew in his tax-collecting booth, he is meeting a man who, contrary to popular perception, was probably not terribly well-off nor prosperous, but neither was he well-loved nor respected by anyone, including the employer who hired him. You see, in Jesus’ day, the Roman government hired locals to collect the taxes. The contractors would then hire the 1^st century equivalent of day laborers to do the actual collecting. They’d keep a shekel or too, the contractor would keep his cut and pass along the rest to the local Roman official, who probably kept his cut, and so on and so on.

Jesus found Matthew in a booth, where he probably collected tolls or levies from the merchants and travelers using the Roman road. There was no Sun Pass, there was Matthew.

Matthew was probably pushed around by his boss who had the contract, who wanted him to gather as much as possible. The people paying the levy were probably not so nice to him. And when he went home, his Jewish neighbors probably wanted nothing to do with him. Which is why we find Matthew hanging out other folks who, like himself, made their living on the wrong side of the tracks: thieves, extortionists, prostitutes, and other Jews in the employ of Rome, not to mention those people who made their living doing often important but unsavory work that respectable people didn’t talk about.

So when Jesus calls Matthew, he calls one of the most unlikely, least respected persons imaginable to be one of his followers. And he doesn’t even tell him to clean up his act first! No lecture, no harangue, just an invitation to follow.

What a strange thing to do! Why does Jesus risk his own good name and the reputation of a fledgling ministry on the likes of this reprobate … this quisling… Matthew? Jesus is about to show us why in the two healings that follow.

While Jesus is eating and drinking with Matthew and his notorious friends, word comes that a little girl, the daughter of a leader in the local synagogue, has died. He begs Jesus to lay his hand on the girl so that she may live.

Let’s stop here for a minute: notice that the person who approaches Jesus is a leader of the local synagogue. In other words, the Senior Warden! Probably a member of the first century equivalent of local Rotary club and business roundtable. He must have loved his daughter very much and he must have been very scared, because this very respectable person just cross to the wrong side of town to find Jesus in this literal den of thieves! And notice that he approached Jesus while other local religious leaders—maybe his friends and colleagues—are standing outside tut-tutting and shaking their heads.  The passage doesn’t say so, but the implication is that his faith must have been very strong!

Jesus goes with the dad to care for his girl, with Matthew presumably following Jesus for the first time, which leads to another unexpected healing encounter.

Hidden in the crowd of the curious, a woman who has suffered her whole life from some kind of hemorrhage… most likely a disorder that affected her since puberty… was watching Jesus walk by.  The person was not only ill, but she was excluded from ordinary company, including other women, certainly she was never going to marry, and was probably also practically separated from her family. Because by the custom of the day, anyone she touched would be ritually unclean and therefore she risked not only condemnation but also fear-driven violence on a daily basis. But when she touches Jesus’ cloak as he passes, she is healed. Notice that Jesus doesn’t recoil in horror. He is not worried that he might catch her ritual cooties. Instead, he meets her gaze, commends her faith, and then blesses her saying “your faith has made you well.”

When Jesus finally arrives at the official’s house, it’s too late. The girl has died, and the mourning rites have begun. He assures them that all is well, but instead of saying “Watch this guys…!” or “hold my bier!” he observes that she is only sleeping. They all laugh... except apparently the desperate parents and family and a few followers who are holding their breath. After shooing away the professional mourners and after all the hub-bub has calmed down, he takes her by the hand and gently bids her to wake up. And she lives!

If you want to know why it is that we friends, followers, and apprentices of Jesus care about the poor, the sick, and those society would consider strange, weird, or different—if you have ever wondered why we find ourselves hosting recovering addicts in our buildings who might never walk into our worship spaces, or feed or clothe folks in need through our various ministries, or why we speak of love and compassion when the world revels in hatred, fear, and division, this is why: it is what Jesus did. He comes to us in the midst of our complicated lives and sits, chats, and eats with us. He touches us where we experience the most pain. He meets us at the point of our greatest need. He comes into our lives and homes and our hearts and brings life. He sees faith in us when others might only see fault and invites us to follow him.

In all three instances in today’s Gospel, people who lived on the fringes, separated by custom, choice, or circumstance from their communities, were reconciled and brought back into the lives of their families, communities, and daily lives in the company of Jesus.

What does it mean that Jesus called a hated tax-collector and quisling to follow him? It is so that he can live, and work and walk with dignity, respect, and wholeness as a person of God in community.

What does it mean to be made whole and healed and no longer living at the edges of society subject to the alternating vagaries of human pity and condemnation, as the woman was? It is to discover that one’s faith makes us whole and returns us to the family of God! 

What does it mean to experience new life? It is like Jesus coming into your home, and against all expectation, taking you by the hand, and inviting you to get up and live.

Following Jesus changes us. Jesus takes what we have always thought to be true and normal and expected and turning it upside down, inside out and giving it new life. It's not disruption, it's reconciliation! Grace, faith, baptism, sacramental living, and Christian community together all give us a new container—a new wine skin! — to live as Christ’s own forever. We are all called, welcomed, healed, and given new life because with Christ, our faith heals, reconciles, and makes us well.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Second Sunday after Pentecost (Prober 5A), June 7, 2026, at St. Mary's, Dade City, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for The Second Sunday after Pentecost (5A).

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

The bigness and the closeness of God

Way back in 2008, Fr. Jose Gabriel Funes, a Jesuit priest, who was at that time the director of the Vatican Observatory, said that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

Inconceivable! Whenever I mention this to folks, the first response I get is “Wait! The Vatican has an observatory?”

This seems more than a little ironic given that little falling out between the Inquisition and the astronomer Galileo 500+ years ago.  Actually, the Church—Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and Protestant—has supplied the scientific community with physicists, astronomers, engineers, inventors, and all kinds of researchers for long time, many of them ordained, since the beginning of what we now call “modern” science. In fact, there’s even an Anglican religious order called the Society of Ordained Scientists. But that’s not the point.

Basically, this Jesuit priest said that it is okay for Roman Catholics (and the rest of us) to believe in aliens. As Admiral Pike will someday say to Captain Kirk, “I am relieved!”

This is not just esoteric speculation. Since science is all the time showing us how vastly big and how vastly small the universe is, is God really bigger than all that?

I am no scientist, and I don’t play one on television, but knowing that we have the technology to see to the very edges of the universe and, at the very same time, we can also measure the smallest of particles, including one so small and so basic that it was unofficially named after God, what Fr. Funes said begins to make sense. God is greater than all of everything and the more we see the vastness of the universe, the more we see the majesty and power of God.

Okay. So, God is very, very big. Doesn’t that also make God incomprehensible?

Well, except for God’s grace and for the fact that we humans are wired to inquire, that would be “yes.”

God has always been incomprehensible by any ordinary standard. Justin Martyr, that seeker for the truth who died in the year 167, said that anyone who thinks God even can be named and understood in conventional ways is “hopelessly insane.”  And yet we still seek. 

And we aren’t the first. Would it surprise you to hear that in the 14^th Century there was a solitary English nun who once contemplated both the very small and the very big?

Dame Julian of Norwich was an anchoress, a nun not attached to a convent, who lived in a private monastic cell attached to the Cathedral in Norwich, England, when she had visions, or “showings,” of God. One of those “showings” came as she contemplated the inside a walnut. She saw all of God and God’s creation contained inside that little shell. To see the vastness of God in something so small ought to appeal to us who know the wonder of DNA and marvel at pictures sent back to earth from a spacecraft now travelling outside our solar system.

And what did Blessed Julian see in her walnut sized looking glass into the cosmos? She found love. Rather than be overwhelmed by God’s sheer size, Blessed Julian found love. Toward the end of her life, she penned this short but profound exchange: “Would you know your Lord's meaning?” she asks. “Know it well, love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love.”

We can seek and ponder and reason…because we are wired to inquire… and in the end we find that God is always shown best in relationship.  This is where our evangelical friends, have it right, along with sacramentalists like us: what really changes us is our relationship to God, who comes to us where we are as we are and meets us at the point of our deepest need.

Many years ago, a good friend and golfing buddy, a Unitarian minister, invited me to come and preach at his church… on Trinity Sunday (the stinker)! A more intellectually and theologically inquisitive group I’ve never seen! So, I decided to lean into the wave: I said that during the first Church councils that were hammering out Christian doctrines that the majority of the Church could sign onto, the first trinitarians were in fact the most fervent unitarians and that they won the day. What I meant was that they affirmed the fullness and oneness of God in three persons in specific contrast to the super-market of divine beings that made up the Greek and Roman way of thinking for centuries. The Christians who gave us the Nicaean Creed were all about the Oneness of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Alas, preachers have been taking the veg-o-matic to Nicaea, ever since, but that’s for another day!)

There are people, some of whom are of a scientific mind, and even some religious folk, who proudly wear the badge “skeptic”, who tell me that the Trinity is incomprehensible. To which I say “yeah…and…?” 

To which I might reply, “… tell me again about the multiverse….?” You know, the idea that there are multiple universes that exist at the very same time? Besides the fact that it makes for some good (and some really awful!) science fiction, it reminds us that we Christians aren’t the only ones in the cosmological marketplace where apparently contradictory truths can co-exist at the very same time.

And how about the mathematics that underpin modern physics, chemistry, astronomy, and make all your favorite gadgets work…what is the basis for that? About a decade ago, Scientific American spent a whole issue debating the assumptions—and the implicit acts of faith—behind the high-level mathematics that undergird the advances we take for granted. The wonderful thing about physics is that the more you drill down the more our perceptions change, and that’s when the line between fact and faith becomes blurry. The more we unravel the mystery, the more mystery there is.

And to a person of faith that, as the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams once said in an Oxford debate with the late Dr. Richard Dawkins, is a beautiful thing.

The Trinity, the Christian doctrine that says that the oneness of God is expressed in a trinity of persons and a unity of being, tells us some things several things about the very nature of God:

First, God is complex to the point unknowing.

Second, God is by definition relational and that means interactive; and

Three, God is by grace knowable.

Christians believe that the God of the whole vast universe, the One who made heavens and earth, is also the One who walked the earth in the person of Jesus Christ. The God whose Spirit moved at the beginning of the universe and brought it forth, either by word or by big bang, is also the Holy Spirit who animates our hearts. And as vast as creation is, God is this close.

The Pop Atheists do have a point, even though they often frame the question so that only their answer makes sense (as human beings love to do!). They often claim there is no God because of all the awful things people do in the name of God. Of course, the problem with that argument is that it says nothing about God, but a lot about us. And people will cite science (or something they claim to be science) when they do awful things all the time. The big wars of the last century, not to mention the calamities of pandemic, war, and dislocation in our own time, all show us that. Besides, theirs is not a new observation. The Hebrew prophets made those same observations and in more detail.

Similarly, the folks who call themselves “spiritual but not religious” take the truth that we are all spiritual and have the capacity to inquire and to know God and assume, therefore, that there is nothing that the community of faith, ancient liturgy, or scripture can teach us (except for perhaps some nice poetry and cool music).

But we can’t do all this inquiry—scientific or spiritual—alone. We can’t see the farthest galaxy or the smallest particle without teams of people, curiosity, the right tools, and the confidence that there is something to see. Inventors, explorers, and researchers are often held up as individual heroes, and they may be; but without the research, experimentation, and observation of those who went before (even if their conclusions were different) their work would not be possible. If good science is subject to rigorous peer review, then how can we think that we can learn about the source of the universe, and the meaning of our place within it all by our lonesomes?

In all this, the common element is the human one. What really worries—and turns off people—is not God nor science, but the messiness of human relationships. The politics, the cruelty, the unpredictability, the irrationality, the selfishness —the sin— of humankind, these are what really gets in our way. Blame it on God, if you like, but the problem is us.

The Trinity that we celebrate today tells us that our complex God is at once relational, knowable, and intimate.

The second half of our church’s year begins today, and from here until Advent, we’ll learn about the nuts and bolts of everyday Christian living. Learning and doing the teachings of Jesus begins by contemplating and celebrating the wonder, complexity, and simplicity of the Holy Trinity. All of things we do as faithful followers of Jesus, our prayer, worship, learning, and service; our community here and our acts of care in the community we live in; all of it begins here—looking with wonder and awe at our place in this wonderful cosmos and our living connection to a loving God who loved us first.

Now if you’re thinking “I’m not ready to take on that task. I don’t know anything… not even where to start, it’s okay. We don’t have to know it all. God knows that we can only know so much. We can’t get away from the fact that the universe is vast while our brains can only fit under a baseball cap. The Trinity shows us the remarkable truth that God is not so distracted and entranced by the bigness of creation to forget about us. God comes to us in ways we can understand, know, and touch; in beautiful things both small and vast; in redeeming relationships; in prayer and silence, in music and art, in science and meditation; in broken bread and poured out wine; in companionship and service to others; in the incarnation and person of Jesus.

The Trinity reminds that the very bigness of God is as close to us as our hearts.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday, May 31, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for Trinity Sunday, Sunday, May 31, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Spiritual energy put to work

A Sermon on the Second Anniversary of the Partnership between St. John's Episcopal Church and St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Clearwater, Florida

My first encounter with these machines happened on the highway. One day about twenty years ago, I was motoring up the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the Pocono Mountains, when I passed a convoy of extra-long trucks escorted by vehicles with flags and flashing lights. Each flatbed truck had a huge white piece of equipment on it, gleaming like a modern sculpture. What these trucks were carrying was the finished parts for a huge wind-turbine…high-tech windmills. Today, if you drive south out of Wilkes-Barre, PA, through a town called Bear Creek, you will catch a glimpse of a few rows of these huge white propellers on tall towers sitting on top of a mountain ridge slowly turning as they produce electricity. Amazing, isn’t it? That we can take the energy of the wind and turn it into electricity!

Equally amazing are the number of homes and businesses around here that have solar panels on their roofs turning the energy of the sun into electricity or hot water or both. In fact, recently, driving across Florida on Route 60, I saw rows of solar panels sitting on top of one of those mountains of trash where the big green trucks empty their dumpsters! These panels were not only providing electricity, but they were powering the process that was turning the methane from all that trash we throw away into fuel that goes back to homes, schools, hospitals, and other places, powering generators making even more energy.

Everyone is talking about energy…where to get it and how to use it. Whenever I fill up my car with the gas made from the fossils of ancient plants and animals, I am made aware that the cost of energy has gone up. But something else occurs to me. 

Just as cats always find the sunniest spot in the room to warm themselves and plants always lean towards the sun, humans are pretty good at harnessing energy. One of our human ancestors took the potential energy in wood and either with help from a random lightning strike or from learning to bang together two pieces of flint, made a campfire for cooking. Someone first harnessed the energy of the wind to sail a ship or used a rushing river to turn a wheel to grind grain into wheat or drive a loom for cloth.  We’ve unlocked energy from gas and coal to make things go. Now we’ve come full circle, with these great wind turbines that use the wind to make electricity.

Energy is all around us.  But how do we put it to work?

Our lessons today give us three pictures of energy put to work. In one, we see potential spiritual energy. In another we see spiritual energy put to work. And in another we hear about the spiritual engine that makes it all go “vroom!”

In the Gospel of John, the disciples are in the upper room on that very first Easter evening, when the Risen Jesus gives them the breath of the Holy Spirit and the authority to use it. That’s the first picture.

In Acts, we see the second image. The disciples along with other people from throughout the world were gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish festival of Pentecost when “Fiery tongues appeared on them, and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit." The Spirit ignited a new movement and a new people. The energy of the spirit was released and suddenly these people had power to reverse the curse of the Tower of Babel to overcome the languages of division and competition with a new language of God's love and Spirit. The potential energy of the spirit was released and the church was born!

In the third image, the Apostle Paul reminds us that everyone of us, no matter how different, no matter our differing skills, experiences, and gifts, are brought together of the Holy Spirit for God’s work where we live, work, study, and pray. And when we’re in tune, this spiritual energy really goes “vroom!”

One of the most ancient hymns of the church goes like this, "Come, Holy Spirit, our souls inspire...and lighten with celestial fire." It’s too bad that we generally reserve this hymn to ordinations, because it is a prayer that the energy released on that first Pentecost day might continue to burn within the whole church. It is a prayer that God's spirit will continue in each of us and in the whole Body of Christ, so that we might live our faith with zest and commitment and do the work of mission boldly and imaginatively.

The promise of Pentecost is the potential spiritual energy that every person of faith carries is ignited by the Spirit into a deeper, more powerful, more effective Christian living.

One of my favorite stories of potential spiritual energy turned to the actual work of God is of John Wesley, a priest of the Church of England in the 18th century. (You’ll pardon me if on a day we celebrate this partnership between Lutherans and Episcopalians, if I talk about the founder of the Methodist movement?) Anyway, Wesley was a faithful but cautious minister. He studied. He prayed. He wrote. He was thoughtful and earnest. He went to Georgia to minister to English colonists in that rough and wild colony. And you what else he was? Boring! Not to mention stiff and judgmental. The folks in Georgia were so impressed with his earnest, serious preaching that they took an offering... and bought him a one-way ticket back to England!

On the ship, a dejected Wesley, sad and perplexed that his sober, thoughtful, and very earnest ministry had been such a flop, he remembered meeting another group on the way to Georgia when he was coming to America. They were Moravians, and he remembered their energy and fervor. So, on returning to London, he sought them out. And he found them in prayer and song in a little storefront in London, on Aldersgate Street, when something happened. As Wesley recalled, He felt his heart "…strangely warmed...," set afire in a new way with the very Spirit of God. His faith and imagination for the Gospel were ignited for a new beginning of ministry, a ministry of teaching and preaching to ordinary people in the places where they lived and worked, proclaiming a Gospel of renewal and service that extended throughout England and abroad. This new energy brought a new reformation and awakening throughout the cities, mill towns, and mines that had sprung up during the industrial revolution and was changing England.

I suspect that it was the same energy that caused Martin Luther to post his 95 theses on the cathedral door in Wittenburg, or Thomas Cranmer (inspired by Luther!) to turn the ancient prayers of the Church into language that ordinary folk could use and understand. That same spiritual energy inspired revolutionaries and reformers from Katharina von Bora (Martin Luther's spouse and a sharp theological mind in her own right) to Frances Perkins (The Episcopal lay woman who was FDR's secretary of Labor through the Depression and WW2, and the architect of the New Deal and Social Security) to the Rev. Dr. Sister Helena Barrett (first openly LGBT person to be ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church) and the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray (first black woman-- and probably the first trans person-- ordained to the priesthood, an attorney, and a founder of the National Organization of Women) —women whose names don’t usually appear in confirmation catechisms or seminary textbooks—to shake up the church and move us forward into new Godly territory.

I don’t know if you realize this, but we are experiencing that, too. Right now. Besides showing us that the Holy Spirit can speak both Lutheran and Episcopalian, you along with Christians all over the globe, are turning potential spiritual energy into amazing acts of courage, hope, and compassion that makes a real difference in the lives of people and communities.

You might accuse me of hyperbole. I mean what difference can a hundred or so Christians sitting on the border between two Florida cities possibly make in the mission of the whole Church, let alone in our cities? Well, for starters, all of us can take the wind and fire of the Spirit that was ignited in our faith and baptisms, which is fed and banked as we practice the sacramental life, and put it to work. The same Creating Spirit that brooded over creation, spoke through the prophets, and lit up the Church still guides, inspires, nudges, directs, renews, and advocates, re-making us into the people God meant us to be, bringing mercy and compassion and hope to the people we encounter every day.

And that brings us to today’s third image of Pentecost in Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Christians. Here we learn what makes the whole thing go “vroom!” What makes the potential energy of John’s Gospel become the spiritual work of that first Pentecost in Acts is this turbine called the Body of Christ? “There are varieties of gifts,” Paul teaches, “but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.” We are the ones God uses to turn spiritual energy into holy work, and we are the ones whom God uses to make the lights go on in people’s lives.

Look at what happened when two different faith communities confronted by different yet daunting issues with their buildings, not to mention working through visions for ministry that would inevitably lead them outside the boundaries of conventional denominational wisdom, decided to come together to experiment with something different. Needless to say, we had to work past some skeptical side-eyes from the folks in both our judicatory’s home offices who each proposed more, shall we say, “time-tested” solutions.

But along the way, you’ve demonstrated that what Paul told the Christians in Corinth is true: we have a variety of gifts, activated by the same Holy Spirit, that builds up the whole body of Christ. Every day the Gospel is communicated to a hurting world in creative and new ways by two communities who are choosing to live out Christ’s love experimentally, inquisitively, and faithfully. In a world that thrives on division and is motivated by self-interest and the interest of our chosen in-group, this is a very big deal! The coming together of St. John's and St. Paul's in partnership demonstrates how the power of the Holy Spirit is unlocked and becomes new vision, new energy, and new hope.

For a long time, the task of uniting churches was mainly about bringing people in the same traditions together that for a variety of reasons has gone their separate ways. In America, traditions split over slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, or which had different ethnic or national roots even if they shared the same theological tradition, needed to be brought back together. The ELCA itself is a product of that… bringing together the descendants of a variety of nationalities, all Lutheran, into a new American church. Even so, not all Lutherans signed up for the project.

The Episcopal Church, along with Anglicans around the world, had other fish to fry. Was the church going to high or low? Urban, suburban, rural or frontier? Privileged, middle, or working class? Catholic or Evangelical? And we, like many of sister and brother traditions, needed to work out that ordained leadership did not, after all, have to be exclusively straight, white, or male. 

And we weren't alone. There were other uniting projects over the last century, among them Presbyterians, Methodists, and the United Church of Christ, to name a few.

But more recently, we’ve discovered a different path: instead of building a new super-church; we've discovered the power of creating partnerships and practicing mutual recognition. We are learning that different churches from different traditions don’t have to chuck their heritages or even their denominations… the important thing is that we work together, pray together, share communion together, but to do that, we need to stop arguing about whether “our” sacraments, rituals, and ministers are more “real” than "yours." 

Lutherans, in my opinion, led the way, choosing to celebrate 500 years of Reformation by entering into communion relationships with as many traditions as possible. Episcopalians have joined in and now count full communion relationships with not only Lutherans, but Moravians, and (God willing) Methodists, and are in conversations with other groups, and such as Presbyterians and other Reformed traditions. Recently, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally went to Rome to meet and pray with Pope Leo XIII. We've got a way to go, because it's long hard work to knit together a fabric that has been torn for centuries, but for the sake of mission it's work worth doing.

Along the way we are finding that instead of needing to be one big blanket church, we are like a quilt lovingly stitched together out of a variety of cloths.

The truth is that none of us can go it alone, either as individuals, congregations, or traditions. We still pray the ancient prayer of Pentecost, "Come Holy Spirit, our souls inspire and lighten with celestial fire...." We all have in us the energy, the power, of the Holy Spirit. The Risen Jesus breathed on the disciples on that first Easter and gave them and us the Holy Spirit as well as the authority and mandate to go into the world and get to work. That same spirit is given to each of us and is sealed in us at baptism. 

No matter the path that brought us here, our prayer is that this spiritual energy will be unleashed. We yearn for God’s power to be let loose and light up our hearts and all creation to make a real difference in the world. It turns out that God has a turbine, an engine, to make that work real and alive, and that is us! We, the body of Christ no matter our flavor or tradition, are the ones whom God uses to let loose God’s energy and make it all go “vroom!”

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This is the Bulletin for Pentecost Sunday, May 24, 2026 at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida and St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Clearwater, Florida

Here are the Scripture Lessons for Pentecost Sunday, Sunday, May 24, 2026.

Learn more about the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Learn more about the Florida-Bahamas Synod of the ELCA here.