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.

Knowing which way is "up!"

There is an old story that comes from the heady days of the space race between the USA and the former Soviet Union sixty-five years ago. The story goes that when Yuri Gagarin, the first person to orbit the earth, made his voyage in 1961, that he looked out the window and observed that he did not see God.

It gets weirder. 

It turns out that Gagarin never said anything one way or the other about seeing God out the window of Vostok 1! But we do know this: in the days before his rocket lifted off from Star City on the Wednesday after Orthodox Easter, Gagarin took his daughter, Yelena, to be baptized that Easter Sunday.

The infamous comment was actually made by Nikita Khrushchev about a month or so after the flight. And he didn’t quote Gagarin but rather, in an attempt to mock religion, he said what he thought Gagarin didn’t see. The Western press, perhaps spotting an opportunity for propaganda (and probably also unable to understand Russian) immediately attributed the words to Gagarin. 

Never missing an opportunity to have fun, the speech did inspire a 1963 film called Heavens Above!, a screwball British comedy starring Peter Sellers who plays a naïve but well-meaning vicar who is accidently appointed to small parish basically run by the wealthy lord of the nearby manor. The new vicar started doing exactly what Jesus taught: he gave away food to poor, sold all his (and his parish’s) possessions, and welcomed the poor into his church, becoming such an annoyance that the folks complain to the bishop. But he has generated such publicity that they can't really remove him, so instead he is appointed as the new Bishop of Outer Space, stuffed into a Mercury-like capsule, and shot into space. From there, as he orbited the earth, he read the psalms over the radio from his space capsule. 

A more famous (and lasting) response to the Gagarin mis-quote came from three real American astronauts, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman as they orbited the moon in Apollo 8 seven years after Gagarin's flight on Christmas Eve, 1968. The three astronauts took turns reading Genesis 1:1-10, the creation story, on the same flight that gave us the iconic image of the earth rising over the horizon of the moon.

Which just goes to show that the geography of holiness is a tricky and dangerous thing!

The Feast of the Ascension, which comes forty days after Easter, describes and celebrates the return of the living, crucified, and resurrected Jesus to heaven. Many people, especially today, when we can peer into deep space at other galaxies, get hung up on what is meant by “up.”

Which raises a question: which way is "up?" 

What is described in both the Book of Acts and in the Gospel of Luke is not a mere disapparation. Jesus doesn’t just disappear into the ether, but instead physically rises up into the sky, leaving the disciples staring into the heavens, mouths agape, until an angel comes and tells them to “snap out of it!” and come back to earth.

As sophisticated as we are, no matter how many airline flights we take, and no matter how many space shots we’ve witnessed, we still tend to think of heaven as “up” and hell as “down”, with us living somewhere in the middle. But as interesting as this cosmological hot-hero sandwich might be, the real significance of the Ascension is not geography but relationship!

Our catechism in The Book of Common Prayer reminds us that “the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” (p. 854)

In both the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts, before he returns to heaven, Jesus tells his friends and apprentices to stay put in the city and await the gift that God will send them.

He also teaches them one last time how everything they have seen and heard fits together as God intended. We discover that the disciples, in this period between resurrection and Pentecost, were not powerless, alone, nor afraid but spent their time together in what must have seemed like a transformed community: they prayed and sang and worshipped. They were not hiding but lived out in the open going between their home(s) and the Temple through the streets of Jerusalem for all to see!

What changed was the geography of holiness. Their place, their city, once a place of foreboding and death, is now a place of wonder and worship. They saw the world and their place in it with new eyes, and this even before the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, would arrive on Pentecost!

You see, the Ascension didn’t just take Jesus back into heaven, into God’s realm in the cosmos, the Ascension revealed how the friends and apprentices of Jesus were now living in a new relationship with God and each other through Christ because heaven had come to earth!  And this changed them! Their relationships with God each other and even with the world around them was transformed because they were restored and renewed. 

Finally, the Ascension shows us the sneakiness of God. Its importance is exactly backwards from what we expect. We think it is about going “up,” when in fact it is God coming “down,” to meet us and all humanity and creation right where we are, tuning our hearts and our senses towards Christ! Giving us the gifts, the power, and the skill, to see humanity and creation more and more through God’s eyes. The Ascension shows us that that prayer we pray every day us, the one that Jesus taught us, that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven is in fact happening—all around us!

So which way is “up?”

The Ascension shows us that as we are drawn to Christ, to each other, and to the world, we are being drawn to God. That way is “up!”

The Ascension reminds us, as Orthodox bishop Metropolitan Anthony Bloom once said, “that the realm of God is dangerous. You must enter into it and not just seek information about it.” Look at what happens in Luke and Acts. Jesus draws to heaven and invites us to work in The City—in the places and in the relationships where God has placed you. And the only place where we can receive “power from on high” is in “the city,” where we, his people, live, pray, work, and worship.

This is the geography of the holy. We don’t need to go elsewhere to find God because God is right here, right now!

It is said by some who knew him, that Yuri Gagarin carried in his pocket a small icon, right up until he died in a plane crash in 1968. I don’t know. But I do know this: we here in this city, in this place, in our witness, worship, and in our holy work, we baptized people are icons of the holy. What God is doing on earth with us now is what happens in heaven, just as Jesus said when he taught us to pray.

The Ascension invites to look up and see heaven and, at the same time, look around into the city because right here, right now, we baptized people inhabit the geography of the holy.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 17, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Sunday, May 17, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Leaving Our Bubble

Maybe Paul should have just stayed home.

We read in Acts today that Paul has gone to Athens, the center of intellectual and religious life in Greece, and, for that matter, in the whole Roman world. And he has gone to a place called the Areopagus. The Areopagus is not Big Bird’s imaginary friend. It was the place where Greeks both worshipped their pantheon…their line-up of gods. Both the Romans and the Greeks had a deity for every purpose…rain, war, fertility, you name it. To hedge their bets, they set up a temple to the god they had not yet discovered, the one that covered some reality that had not yet occurred to them. So, this temple was dedicated to the unknown god.

But even though Mars Hill was a kind of open-air religious market, Paul may as well have come from another planet!  Paul was a Jew—a Hellenized, cosmopolitan Jew, trained in both Greek philosophy and Hebrew tradition, so all in all he was a pretty sophisticated guy by their way of thinking, but he was still a Jew, so he was not quite one of them, either. To them, Paul pretty weird because he followed one and only one God. Not his favorite god. The One God. And like all Jews he and did not pray to any of the others, calling them idols. They also avoided meat sacrificed to those idols.

The average Greek or Roman would have considered Paul at best strange and at worst a crazed zealot who has come in from the hinterlands. For them, believing in only one God was both foolhardy and sacrilegious. To make matters worse, Paul, like all Jewish males, was circumcised which was considered both gross and barbaric. He only ate certain foods which also revealed a strange narrow-mindedness. 

On top of that, Paul was one of those people called Christians who believed that God not only became human but that he died and rose again. He believed that everyone would experience resurrection someday. When they accused Paul of practicing a strange religion, they meant it!

Now Paul had some choices about how he was going to react to this strange environment. He could have gone into Idol Central and start trashing the place. Tearing down false idols might have seemed like a good idea, it certainly would have attracted attention!  But he didn’t go there. 

He could have just gone along to get along...taken up the ways and attitudes of the Greeks and Romans. Some of the folks back home in Jerusalem accused him of doing just that, especially because he did not require male Greek and Roman (ie Gentile) converts to Christianity to be circumcised if they didn’t want to, and he had a “to each his own” attitude towards whether Christians could eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols before going to market.

Another choice would have been to just hang out with people who agree with you, or worship like you. Which happened a lot: in many cities right up to our own day, people who think and worship alike often end up living in the same neighborhoods, or hang around the same pubs, or only ‘friend’ each other on social media.

Instead, Paul chose to leave his bubble and respectfully engage folks who were different. He decided to tell them about Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah who lived and died and rose again. He talked about how God was at work through Christ and wanted a relationship with everyone.

We can learn something from Paul’s decision to leave his bubble.

First, all of us—each and every one of us—communicates the Gospel. Like it or not, once someone figures out that you are a Christian and that you take your religion even a little bit seriously, then you are communicating the Gospel. You don’t have to wear a white shirt and a black tie and ring doorbells. And you don’t need to wear a clerical collar. Every day we all communicate the Gospel.

But that’s okay, because as Paul noticed about the Athenians, everyone is on a search for God. Know it or not, every one of us seeks meaning and purpose for their living. And when we do that, we are also seeking to fill that God-shaped hole in our hearts. And since that search is not always conscious, it affects our choices and behavior.  So, our quest for intimacy is a quest to be known and loved. Our quest for more stuff is yearning to have our hearts filled. Our quest for recognition reflects a longing to be understood and valued. I could go on, but you get the idea. Just as Paul looked around and saw in all the idols and temples a religious people, we can also look around and see that there a lot of spiritually hungry people.

Today the Areopagus isn’t just on Mars Hill, it’s everywhere. Surveys say that only 17% of Americans go to church, yet 90+% of Americans think of themselves as spiritual. 78% say they pray and three quarters of Americans say they believe in God. So, just as we always communicate the Gospel, there are people all around us who are searching to fill a god-shaped hole in their lives. But unlike Paul, we have lots of tools to reach out to people: radio, tv, print media, the internet, books, events, music and art…the list is long. Marketing is important but what really tells the story, what fills the God-shaped hole is when a person meets another person who is also on a journey of faith. That’s because Jesus shows us that Godself is best shown in relationship.

So, if you find yourself on Mars Hill—which basically happens every day-- remember what made you Christian in the first place. Do you remember what first drew you into the spiritual life? Can you recall what or who first piqued your interest or what first set your heart towards God? Can you name what works and what doesn’t work for you? What animates you? What gives you a sense of spark? What makes us know that we are loved and want to share some of that love? Without a story, we live in a bubble. And if we only huddle with each other in our own little bubbles, we will never grow as a people of faith. And we can’t thrive as God’s people until we learn to leave our bubble.

For Paul to leave his bubble, he also had to listen and look. He started to appreciate what he and the Greeks shared. Paul started from where they were—not from he where he thought they should be-- because he listened. Paul saw that God was present in the world outside his bubble.

It takes courage to step out of the bubble. No one would have blamed Paul if he hung back, or just hung out at the local synagogue. Everyone would have understood. But he chose to engage the people God gave him… and he chose to seek out people to engage.

When you step outside your bubble you will get a variety of responses. Maybe it will be a strange look or a hostile glare. But you might encounter a thank you from a person you’ve cared for, or driven to the hospital, or brought a meal to. You might find that you have helped fill a God-shaped hole because you listened to a person when they were sad, or comforted them when they were alone. Maybe you have communicated the Gospel as you have been present to a person in trouble or as you have taught a child. Maybe they’ve asked you why you did that small act of kindness, and maybe you told them in some small way about God who animates and fills that space in all our hearts. I don’t know. But what I do know is this: we all have the power to be messengers of good news to real people living in God’s hurting world. Whether they ask you why you’re doing it or not, it will help you be the Gospel and live the Gospel when you know the story of how God is continually filling your own God-shaped hole.

And how does God fill that space? God does that by taking you out of your bubble and going with you into the world God loves.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 10, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Sunday, May 10, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Living and doing miraculous good in difficult times

Every week, we say together that line in the creed “We believe that he will come again….” We’ll say it again in just a few minutes. So, what exactly do we mean by that?

In the Gospel of John today, Jesus tells us he is going to prepare to a place for us and that God’s house is made up of many rooms. And before that, in Acts, we heard that Stephen, the first Deacon of the Church and its first martyr, who was being confronted by his angry neighbors, describes a vision of Jesus coming to earth from his throne in heaven to come get him. Saying that vision out loud was the last straw for the otherwise respectable religious folks who seized him and picked up stones to kill him.

The Book of Acts tells us that the Church was growing in leaps and bounds. Stephen got into trouble for doing "wonders and signs." He is hauled into court for telling people about Jesus. You can read his testimony in Acts chapter 7. But before he launches on his re-telling of the history of God and Israel and the unflattering account of the people’s response to God, we hear that before he speaks, "his face was like the face of an angel."

But an angelic countenance did not save Stephen from trouble. In those days, when someone said something outrageous, they did not drag him before John Stewart and the internet for ridicule. Nope, in those days when someone said something like “God requires us to change,” or “In Christ, there is no nationality or gender or race” and so on, they did not make jokes or post snarky memes on social media. They took him out and killed him in the most up close and personal way possible.

Notice that Stephen’s message of salvation through Jesus Christ was intimately tied to mercy. He helped the Church give to widows and orphans--people who were tossed aside to fend for themselves with no family, no identity and no hope. His vision of Christ coming in glory was also a vision of God ready to forgive everyone, even those who were about to kill him.

There is another vision of heaven in today's lessons. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is talking to his disciples, in particular Thomas and Philip, about where Jesus is going. But he’s not talking about GPS coordinates but the way we make the journey...and what God has in mind for us when we make it. Jesus says something outrageous: that when we see Christ, we see God. If we want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.

But if you want to see what Jesus is like, look at the people who follow him. Now, if that doesn’t leave a lump in your throat, it should. Because, well, I don’t know about you, I’m not terribly good at this imitation of Christ thing. It’s stumble, get up, stumble again, get up again, stumble some more and getting up once again, all the way for me. As Saint Benedict says, “Always, we begin again.”

So it’s okay that we aren’t there yet. We are “on the way.” That’s what some people called early Christians… people “of the (or on the) way!”  Not there yet. On the way. And where are we going? To the place God is preparing for us. We are going to a home inside of God's home. When Jesus says "in my father's house there are many rooms" he is saying there is room for all of us. 

Our lessons today give two startling visions of God; and in both, it is Jesus who comes to us, not we to him. Jesus tells us that God is making room for us. Stephen saw that God is ready to forgive. In both lessons we learn that God is present to us even when things are going wrong. God is bringing heaven to earth.

For a long time, there was (and still is) a whole industry dedicated to telling us not only that Jesus is coming again, but that we should get our reservations in for one of those rooms in the Big Jesus Mansion in the sky. Too often, the image is that place Jesus is preparing for us is a fancy, gilded country club in heaven, where we’ll be waited on hand and foot by angels while Jesus will go back to earth to knock heads and take the names of everyone outside the club. And who are they? Well, that’s easy: it's everyone who looks different from ""us, or loves differently, or lives in the wrong country or neighborhood, or who doesn’t do religion "our" way! The list of who’s not in “our” Jesus Club is long -- if we choose to go there. All we have to do is focus on our grievances and deficits to write our own little book of judgement. Of course, this kind of pop theology fixes nothing but instead blesses our worst tendencies all while missing the whole point of why Jesus comes to us in the first place, which was to bring God down to earth…to be God is with us.

Retired Bishop and New Testament school, Bishop Tom Wright, described heaven this way:

… in the Bible ‘heaven’ isn’t ‘the place where people go when [we] die.’ In the Bible heaven is God’s space while earth (or, if you like, the ‘cosmos’ or ‘creation’) is our space. And the Bible makes it clear that the two overlap and interlock. For the ancient Jews, the place where this happened was the temple; for the Christians, the place where this happened was Jesus himself, and then, astonishingly, [in] the persons of Christians because they, too, [are] ‘temples’ of God’s own spirit.

In Christ, heaven comes to earth. God’s space and our space meet. And as Christians, as God’s people, we are the ones who show off God’s presence in the world. As people who are baptized into Christ’s body, we are ones who discover and communicate God’s transforming love.

We think of judgement kind of like a celestial wrecking ball and power shovel, knocking down creation on piling it in a dumpster. But God is not out to destroy an irretrievable creation and replace it with a new, improved model. And creation isn’t buffering while we wait for the new creation to download. No, God—who called the cosmos ‘good’ at creation—is right now restoring humanity and creation to what God made it to be. Instead, I think that Jesus’ preparation of a place for us looks more like an episode of “This Old House.” Taking something ramshackle and making into something both beautiful and useful.

As we meet Christ in the sacramental life, as we yearn to know God more and more, as we look for Christ in the face of the people we meet, we develop a different kind of vision of heaven; vision that knows that in Christ God is with us, and as we see Christ at work in us and in the world we live in, that vision that changes us and makes a real difference in a world desperately in need of healing.

Instead of waiting to be snatched up to heaven in a second, most believers do great things and often unnoticed things that show us how heaven and earth intersect every day.

Look at what Jesus did and what we do: Jesus taught; we teach. He healed, we heal. He fed, we feed. He transformed, we are being transformed. He challenged, we challenge. He reached out to people beyond his own cultural, ethnic, and religious circle, we reach out. He made faith real to people who were lost by showing them the way, and we make faith real to people who are lost as we learn to live and walk the way, a step at a time.

Every week, we witness a miracle—if we choose to look. Every we see Good Neighbors make sure hungry people all over Tampa Bay are fed through feeding programs and food banks by gathering up food other people might throw away. It’s just as amazing as if we took two fishes and five barely loaves and fed a multitude. In our case, it’s sometimes cans of tomato sauce and lots of pasta.

Every week, we witness another miracle—if we choose to look. Addicted people walk into our building and support each other in the AA/NA meetings here as they reach and maintain their sobriety and look to their Higher Power in the process.

We witness a miracle—if we choose to look, in the ways you assist your partner school,Belcher Elementary in providing a safe, nurturing school and, with every lunch partner and story read out loud, show kids that people care for them as they are..

Every week, in great and small ways, there are people who give themselves to prayer, service, who visit the sick and care for the homebound, who care for the environment, work for justice, who study and listen for God and support each other as they transcend life’s everyday challenges and discover the transforming love of God.

Are you an ethical and just employer? You’re doing a great thing! Do you do your work with integrity and faith? You are doing a great thing! Do you make the hard choices to raise your children well? You are doing a great thing! Do you care for your neighbor, or your sick friend, or give of your substance to forward God’s kingdom? You are doing a great thing! Do you find ways to help people, young or old, express themselves musically or artistically? You are doing a great thing! When you see an injustice, even as small as a person being treated badly because of their race, gender, ethnicity, their place in society, or how they dress or who they love? Your voice has done a great thing! Of course, all these things seem small. Conventional wisdom says that they are insignificant in the Grand Scheme of Things. But you know what? I think that these acts, however small, are the grand scheme of things! And taken together they become a mighty force for good that repairs the breach, transforms creation, and shows that Christ is alive and well and living in our community today.

The temptation is to sit on our thumbs until Jesus returns. The implication is that we are helpless until Jesus can ride down on a cloud and straighten things out. The challenge for we people of faith is to trust God enough to put aside the distractions and get past our hesitations so that what we all do, both great and small, demonstrates the transforming power of God in the everyday lives of people like us. We won’t always get it right, but even when we mess up, when we tell the truth, take responsibility, and start again, we demonstrate how God’s transforming power works.

In the Gospel today, we discover that Jesus’ promise is kept. We followers of Jesus are also his friends and apprentices—every one of us—and in reality, we do greater things than even he did because we are doing what Jesus does. Jesus is telling us that we are all the useful, living signs of God’s love and power right here, right now. If people want to know what Jesus is up to—look at the many ways that his followers are learning and doing the work of Jesus every day.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for 5 Easter, Year A, Sunday, May 3, 2026 at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida. Here is the Sermon on Vimeo. Here is the Liturgy on YouTube.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 5 Easter Sunday, May 3, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Learn more about Good Neighbors here.

It’s all about the shepherd!

My mother used to tell me that it was one thing to be ignorant, it’s something else to open your mouth and prove it. I think this applies to Good Shepherd Sunday…where all over the Christian world, preachers like me will open their mouths and tell you with great authority what they don’t know about sheep.

And I am not exempt from this. I mean, to tell you the truth, everything I know about sheep and shepherding I’ve learned from old Warner Brothers cartoons involving Wile E. Coyote and a sheepdog named Ralph.

The funny thing is that we preachers get so distracted by the nature of sheep and their behavior that we forget that the passages that show up every Fourth Sunday of Easter—traditionally Good Shepherd Sunday—are not really about the sheep. They are all about the shepherd.

It’s a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees, or the not seeing the sheep for the flock…. Oops! There I go again!

It’s all about the shepherd!

Jesus describes himself as a shepherd. As the good shepherd…as distinct from all those bad shepherds out there…and thieves and wolves and things that are generally bad for gatherings of sheep.

He says in today’s Gospel that the good shepherd can enter the sheepfold. What’s a sheepfold? Okay, I had to look this up. A sheepfold is kind of pen, or corral, used to gather up the sheep at night. And the sheepfold is guarded by a gatekeeper who checks to be sure that only shepherds enter the gate. And I guess in those days, sheep only heard and responded to the voices (and research shows, to the faces!) of their own shepherd, so instead of branding them they’d…. Oops. Sorry. My bad! I forgot. Old habits, you know.

It’s all about the shepherd.

In getting to the heart of this passage, it does not help that not only have modern, urban, preachers been misunderstanding sheep and shepherding, there is also a tendency to make the passage into an allegory that neither Jesus nor the Gospel of John intended.

So, what did John mean when he says “sheepfold?” The sheepfold in this passage represents… (wait for it) … a place to keep sheep at night. That’s right. It is not heaven and it’s not really the church. This passage is not about those who try to get into heaven by jumping the turnstiles or entering the theater without a ticket. If it were, he’d be talking about sheep sneaking over the gate after curfew. No, this passage is not about heaven. It is about the Church. This passage is a riff on Christian leadership, and this riff is not directed at the bosses (although they need to listen, straighten up, and fly right!) but is actually directed at the congregations… the ordinary followers of Jesus… so that they will be able to suss out genuine, competent, accountable leaders, from the hucksters, charlatans, and the kind leaders who think that leadership is all about them.

So, yeah, it’s all about the shepherd. But here's the thing: the shepherd is all about the sheep!

One of my favorite teachers about leadership is a guy named Simon Sinek, and one of his maxims (which is also the title of a book and a TED talk) is that “Leaders Eat Last.” His thesis is that the first job of a leader is the care and safety of the group being led. Good officers wait for the soldiers, sailors, and marines who do the actual work to eat first, even if all they get are the leftovers, if any food at all. That's because a good leader puts the safety and welfare of the group ahead of his or her own status, safety, or privilege. For me, an effective leader not only sees to the safety of the group but is also a person who brings out the very best in those around them. People will follow, will work towards the goal or mission of the group, as long as they know that their leaders are caring for them and giving them the tools to succeed.

John’s gospel reminds us that Jesus, our savior, puts the sheep— that’s us— first.

Jesus taught using illustrations that were familiar to his hearers. They knew about shepherds…at least the ones who lived in the country did...and he was talking about the nature of his ministry and the relationship between God and God’s people.  John’s Gospel, which comes along quite a bit later, remembered Jesus’ teaching but began to think about both the nature of who Jesus is, and the nature of Christian community and Christian leadership.

How are we, as community, supposed to live as followers of Jesus in this period between resurrection and return?

John’s Gospel teaches us that Jesus is the Good Shepherd—and so he is speaking about the nature of Christian community. We who are members of the flock, herd, household, body (pick your image of the church) need to be wary of all the things that can distract us by the temptation to follow the wrong voice. Embedded in this Gospel is the warning that some people will pretend to be doing good when they are really looking out only for themselves.

Boy! It sure is a good thing that this was only a first-century problem, right?  I mean, there is no one out there today competing for our attention, right? No one out there wants to sway us into doing something harmful, right? It’s a good thing that people in power or influence, always keep our focus on the main things, right? And, certainly, all our leaders never, ever, appeal to the worst that is in us or our deepest fears or set us against one another in order to build themselves up! Not in our modern, enlightened 21^st Century world!

Nathan Dungan, founder of Share, Save, Spend—a ministry that teaches everyday Christians about money and meaning— reminds us that every day the typical American is exposed to over 5000 advertising exposures. That’s not 5000 products, 5000 exposures. From the car logo on your steering wheel to the brand name on your jeans to an ad on tv or on the side of the bus…we are exposed to over 5000 advertising messages every single day. And what’s their goal? To make you feel that the only way your heart will be satisfied will be to open your wallet and buy this or that gadget, thingee, or food item. And that you want their thingee or service more than all the others vying for your attention.

Anybody raising a kid these days knows that they will know what the different fast-food logos are and what they are for before they can even read…before they can even form complete sentences! 

In our world, the bad shepherds may not be climbing over the fence, but they have surrounded the sheepfold with billboards and flat screen televisions. They dominate the airwaves and want to always be the lead story, even if the headline is unkind. The news may be fake, they say but they sure love the attention! 

Only we have a choice. Think about going to a ball park…  We can read all the ads plastered all over the outfield wall and scoreboard, or we can watch the game and root for our team. I don’t know about you, but when I go to the ballpark, I go for the game.not for the signs. The fire works after the game and singing Sweet Caroline is great, but it's the ball game I'm watching. And when it’s on tv, the ads are a good time to… do other things.

But it’s not just the secular world that does this. You may have heard some radio or TV preacher who will, at one time or another, tell everyone who will listen that the rapture is coming any moment now! According to Google, we may have already missed it… apparently the last date-time prediction for  the big 'The End' was for September 23, 2025. So, either the predictors were wrong (again) or maybe it actually happened, and if it did we’ll just have to go on doing what we do—imitating Christ by learning and doing the work of Jesus—you know by caring for the poor, the sick, welcoming the outcast, and proclaiming Good News—until that bus arrives again.

As I said, we live in a world of loud, persistent voices vying for our attention… trying to distract us from the main thing. So, what do we do?

Remember…it’s all about the Shepherd.

The Gospel today reminds a few things about who Jesus is and about what good Christian communities do to stay together.

First, Jesus teaches with authority. In the Episcopal Church we hold out a balance of scripture, tradition, and reason as the basis for what we teach and believe as a community. The Good Shepherd…and good Christian leaders…use their authority for the good of the community, based on what the church has learned and known over time and in community.

Second, the good shepherd knows us and meets us where we are. The voice of the Shepherd… Jesus… brings peace. And also, the shepherd guides us as we move around in the proverbial pasture that is the world.

The good shepherd is not found in the distractions and intrusions of the world. The shepherd is found in Christian community. Do you experience too many voices, too many distractions in the world? What do you do? Instead of bouncing from one thing to another, go to the place where the Good Shepherd is found. Go to the place where the community of the faithful is gathered and in that community, you’ll find the Shepherd…Jesus, who leads us and cares for us wherever we go.

The third thing we can do is to begin to intentionally live the sacramental life—a life grounded in scripture, in Eucharistic sharing, in prayer—both alone and in groups, as well as in worship—a life focused on the shepherd and also remembering that the Christian life is not meant to be lived alone but in community is the way to sort through all the competing voices in the world. There are some good places to start, like either picking up a Forward Day by Day either in print or online, which will take as us through the daily readings the Church set out for us, and give us a meditation connected to today’s readings. A group Bible study, or prayer group, or even one of the places where the Daily Office is prayed on-line are great tools, too.

Over the years, I have found a pattern modeled on the one set out by a monastic, Benedict of Nursia, to very helpful and also grounds me in our Anglican tradition. That pattern is regular holy eucharist, the daily prayer of the church, and personal devotion. I also like to pray the morning resolve that is found in every Forward Day by Day. The great thing is that there are many tools out there that help us along the way.

Which is a good thing because, as we've said, the world is a very noisy place. Full of distractions. It’s hard to deal with those distractions alone. But as baptized members of the community of Christ’s people, we are not alone. We are gathered into a community of people who are also on the way. And the larger community of the church, all over the world today, and in every place since the beginning, has given us the tools to succeed. Most of all, we are all known, cared for and led all along the way by a faithful shepherd, Jesus Christ.

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for 4 Easter, Year A, Sunday, April 26, 2026 at Church of the Good Samaritan, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 4 Easter Sunday, April 26, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

No Short Cuts

Have you ever wished for a short-cut? You know, you’re driving someplace and wish you could just fly over the cars ahead of you like a magic carpet. Sometimes I’m driving and hear myself pray “Oh, God! Give me a sign.” Even a big green one will do!

In the fifty days of Easter, we hear all about Jesus’ resurrection appearances. And, you know what? Jesus never takes a short-cut. People’s eyes are opened, sure; and, yeah, people see the Risen Jesus. He speaks to them. He eats with them. But he never jumps in front of them arms wide saying “ta-da!” He doesn’t resort to cosmic card tricks or spiritual gimmicks. While some of us (like me!) would love that, and, sure, Jesus wants us to see and know that he is risen but look at how he goes about it. In the Gospels, the risen Christ accompanies folks and that changes the way they see.  And I don’t know about you, but looking back, I find that Jesus has been walking me my whole journey long, it’s just that I didn’t see it at the time. I’ll bet that that is true for you, too.

In today’s Gospel from Luke, look at what happens on the road to Emmaus. Two people, Cleopas and a friend, are headed home after a very hard day, actually a very hard week. It’s late afternoon on the very first Easter Day, the actual day of Jesus’ resurrection. But they don’t know that yet. All they know is that they have experienced some very disturbing things. Just a week before, they saw Jesus ride into Jerusalem in triumph. They saw him in the Temple. But they also saw Jesus get arrested, publicly tried, humiliated and then executed. What started out as a week filled with hope became a very sad and sour Passover celebration because they really hoped that Jesus would be the one to liberate the people from the very people who killed him.

But that’s not all: there’s news that two women saw that Jesus’ tomb is empty, and that they saw angels who told them that he is risen; two of Jesus closest followers checked it out and found the tomb empty; and now the grapevine is alive with rumors that Jesus had predicted that he would rise from the dead!

I suspect that for Cleopas and his companion it was all just too much…a real emotional roller coaster…and so many questions…it was, I suspect, too painful and too strange. Who can blame them for wanting to go home to someplace familiar, someplace quiet. But home is about seven miles outside of Jerusalem, so they have a long afternoon walk ahead of them.

As they head home, Jesus joins them and walks with them. And even though they don’t recognize him, he doesn’t jump up and say “Hey, guys! It’s me!”  Instead, he listens to their story. He listens to the news…and he listens to their hearts.

Even when he begins to open the scriptures to them, he does not tell them who he is. He explains what God has been doing through the whole history of the people of Israel. Most of all he shows them how scripture ultimately points to and is understood best through Jesus.

When they get to their house, Jesus does this little maneuver like he is still going on to the next town or tavern…when they invite him in to stay with them. Even now, Jesus doesn’t impose…he waits for them to invite him in.

Then, and only then, does he take the initiative, picking up the bread set before him and says the ancient Jewish blessing, then he breaks the bread and as he shares the bread, now—now! —they understand!

Notice how Luke’s Gospel bookends the passion with a meal at both ends of the passion. First, there is Jesus’ last supper in the upper room, where he says “This is my body” and now, after the resurrection, in Emmaus it is sealed with a meal. It is only after encountering the Risen Jesus that the Last Supper – and the Holy Eucharist that grew out of it – makes any sense at all. Instead of a testimonial to the dear departed founder, it is a living sign of the living, risen Christ.

Jesus does so much on the road with these two people but look also at what he does not do. He could have reassured them…instead he walked with them through their pain.  When he teaches them from the scriptures, he could have imposed himself on them…instead, he lets the word marinate—they remember it as “[burning] in their hearts.” When he picks up the bread, he doesn’t say “Hey, guys! Watch this!” No, instead he simply blesses it and gives it. Jesus never short-circuits the process but allows the encounter to unfold at its own pace until at last…they see!

There are no short cuts on the road to Emmaus. And thank God for it because in letting their encounter with the Risen Christ bubble up, these two followers of Jesus see for themselves that he is alive not by intimidation or magic or manipulation but by participation. They are participating in their own encounter with the Risen Jesus.

This is a lesson that we need to learn over and over again. We live in an age where so much communication is “directed,” tested, and designed to illicit a particular response. It’s hard to even go buy a loaf of bread and a carton of milk without feeling like we are some kind of Pavlovian dog, enticed and steered towards a particular thing or outcome. We are so media-addicted that we even have a president who came up in sales, hosted a game show, and communicates by social media. It hard in this world of relentless information to imagine what it is like to simply be accompanied by Jesus, who respects our dignity enough to allow each of us respond to the Spirit in our own way.

I suspect that when the eyes of Cleopas and friend were opened, it was like a flash of light. A moment of insight when everything suddenly made sense! It felt new and exciting. A great and marvelous “A-ha!” And that is wonderful! Ask any teacher who sees student light up with recognition when they get it. They will also tell you that these eye-opening moments come after long, sometimes painful, cultivation.

That “A-ha!” comes at the dinner table, when Jesus takes up bread and offers a blessing.  I wonder if Cleopas and his friend had any idea when their journey began that their unexpected dinner guest would become their host.

In remembering this encounter, the Gospel of Luke invites us to connect the Eucharist we do in our communities, whether a simple meal around a table or a High Mass, with what Jesus did not only on the road, but also in the upper room, the cross, and resurrection as we walk with Christ on our journey of faith.

Early Christians were sometimes called people “of the way.” I like that because we are all on the road, and that road takes us to the cross and from there to an on-going, always new encounter with the Risen Jesus. All of us are walking home. We may wish for a shorter route and we might be disappointed that it’s not always a mountaintop experience, because in fact most of our journey is rather, but wonderfully, ordinary. A saying attributed to St. Benedict of Nursia goes “Always we begin again.” But however we journey, we never walk alone. Jesus walks with us…even if we don’t know it…and we travel in Christian community. Luke’s Gospel shows us that the way Jesus walked with the two on the road is exactly the way he walks with us on our journeys.

Look at us! Here we are, gathered from all kinds of places--our homes, our families, our work and our school--and we all have a story. We have stories of poignancy and possibility, stories of victory and setbacks. We bring all of that when we gather as the people of God around a table… yeah, a little fancier, and we are arranged a little differently than our meals at home… but gathered around a table just the same.

A few years ago, my wife and I joined a group of Episcopalians and other people of faith, in walking the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James, from east to west across northern Spain. In following this ancient pilgrim path, every one of us were invited in our way to both seek and walk with Christ. Our hosts for this pilgrimage were folks from The United Thank Offering (you know, the blue boxes!) and the Iglesia Española Reformada Episcopal, the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church. Their goal was to establish a chapel in Santiago, Spain, so that pilgrims who’ve walked the Way of St. James might be able to receive Communion… the traditional end of a pilgrimage… but who might have felt excluded in the Catholic Basilica at the end of the pilgrim way. The Anglican Pilgrim Center exists today just a few steps away from the traditional end of the route.

Every pilgrim on the Camino keeps a “passport” that is stamped along the way and is given a shell signifying their journey. As I walked the pilgrim way, I found myself singing the South African liberation song “We Are Marching in the Light of God.” On the first part of the journey, I imagined being Cleopas and his friend walking with Jesus. For the rest of the journey, my meditation turned to imagining Cleopas and friend racing back along the way they just came to tell Jesus’ friends and apprentices “We have seen the Lord!”

In our sacramental living, we are tuned to see God at work all around us. Our eyes are opened.  We see the risen Christ. More important we know the Risen Christ and show the Risen Christ.

So now we go back into the world, renewed, reconciled, recreated…exactly as we were and yet totally new, and we will tell our friends “We have seen the Lord!” … that he is known to us in the breaking of the bread. It’s true: there are no short-cuts on the road to Emmaus but that’s okay because all along the way, the Risen Jesus is walking right beside us. 

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for 3 Easter, Year A, Sunday, April 19, 2026 at Church of the Good Samaritan, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 3 Easter Sunday, April 19, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Learn more about the Anglican Pilgrim Center here.