"Faithful one! Come out!"

“Faithful one! Come out!” That is what “Lazarus” means, “faithful one,” and so when Jesus calls into the tomb of his dead friend, he is saying, “Faithful one! Come out!”

Lazarus had been dead four days…Jesus got word of his illness but stayed where he was for two days. Before Jesus could get to his house, Lazarus died. When confronted with his grieving, weeping friends, Jesus goes to the grave of his friend, and after a time a grieving himself, he has the stone removed from the tomb and he calls his dead friend back to life. 

“Faithful one! Come out!”

All through Lent, we have been listening to Jesus in the Gospel of John telling the people Jesus’ meets and us what it is like to be a person who believes and follows Jesus Christ. What is like to be a person who meets God in the person of Jesus Christ? What is it like to have our life changed by God?

Well, let’s check the list the Gospel has set out for us:

It is like being born again, Jesus tells Nicodemus.

He also tells Nicodemus that it is like feeling the wind and knowing that it is moving but we don’t know from where it comes from.

Jesus tells the woman at the well that it is like drinking from a well of water that never runs dry. 

John tells us that believing and following Jesus is like coming out of blindness and into both sight and light.

Today, we find out that believing and following Jesus is like being dead and now being alive.

When Jesus calls out to his friend, “Faithful one! Come out!” the Word of God, is calling to the faithful of God to wake from death, as from sleep, and come out. And Jesus shows us what we have to wake up from.

Raising Lazarus from the dead is Jesus’ Ezekiel moment. In our lesson from Hebrew Scripture this morning, Ezekiel dreams that God will knit together “dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones” into a living, restored people of God who hear and live the word of the Lord. Jesus calls us out of darkness and death into life. When Jesus stands outside the grave of his friend, he is giving his last and greatest sign that he is here to animate, breathe life into, humanity.

What Jesus told Nicodemus in the dead of night comes to pass at the grave of Lazarus, who is not only raised from death but also experiences a kind of re-birth.

This is not just theory nor a metaphor to Jesus. It’s personal. Jesus’ friends, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus are all real people from a real family who are experiencing real grief, real anguish, and…real death. So the idea, the concept, of God bringing life to God’s people comes to life when he meets the tears of the two women and the reality of Lazarus’ death.

It’s personal, and the people all around Jesus are handling Lazarus’ illness and death in their own way. They are all over the map. The disciples don’t get it—some think that Lazarus is asleep, and when they learn he is dead, in a fit of fatalism they shrug their shoulders and say “then let’s all die together!” Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary, are grief-stricken and maybe just a little angry and perplexed. Listen to how they both confront Jesus when he finally shows up: “If only you were here, our brother would not be dead!” Yeah, they get the theology. Martha knows that they’ll see Lazarus at the final resurrection, but Mary is not there, not really. In this moment, she only knows her loss.

And there were a variety of responses from the crowd of mourners, as well. Some were grieving the death of a friend and hurting for his sisters. Others were disappointed that they didn’t get to see Jesus heal Lazarus. And, in the ‘No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Department,’ some would be angry when Jesus does revive Lazarus from death. There’s a part of the passage in the Gospel of John that we didn’t hear this morning where Jesus’ enemies begin to plot against both Jesus and Lazarus as a result of this miracle.  So, yeah, Lazarus’ resuscitation leads directly to the cross for Jesus.

Looking at all those responses, it strikes me that Lazarus’ resuscitation is a kind of spiritual Rorschach Test for us. We all look at the same splotch, the same story, but what we take away from Jesus and Lazarus may tell us something about our own faith journey.

Jesus has waded into the stew of life, and while he raises Lazarus, it will be Jesus’ own death and his own resurrection that will allow us to come out of our own tombs and know life. Jesus cries to all of us “Faithful one! Come out!”

Notice that when Lazarus comes out of the cave, he is a dead man walking. He is bound up in the bandages and coverings they put around the dead. He was dressed for death. He needed to be unbound and released to rejoin the community, and he could not do that alone.  We need each other to remove the shell, the bandages, the clothing of death. It turns out that to be born anew we need help. We require Christian community.

How we live together, how we pray together, lift each other up, welcome one another, challenge one another, allow others to experiment, and support each other all help us crack the old shell, remove the bandages, so that we can live a little more as the people God made us to be.

Jesus—who has himself experienced life and endured the grave--stands at the foot of our cave; Jesus opens our tomb and says to all of us, together and alone, “Faithful one! Come out!” And when we come out, we find ourselves among people who with prayer, support, sharing their faith stories, and who encourage us when times are hard, who unwrap us and dress us for living.

What started for us in our baptisms continues every day. Sometimes we find that we have re-entered our tombs, our dark places, our hidey-holes and have to be called out. 

Here is a glimpse of what the resurrected life we share in Christ through baptism is like. It is like having dry bones knit together into new life. It is like coming back to life. It is like having bandages removed from one’s body and one’s eyes. It is like being set free. 

All of us have been called out of death. Now, faithful ones, come out!

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Here are the Scripture readings for 5 Lent A, March 22, 2026

Here is the website for St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida 

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

There is sight, and then there is sight

There is blindness and then there is blindness. There is sight and then there is sight.

Today we hear of a man who was born blind…healed by Jesus he gains both sight and vision.

The man born blind did nothing to deserve Jesus’ attention. He did nothing to earn the free gift of Jesus’ healing. But his healing revealed that there is sight…and then there is sight. And along the way, the gift of sight is passed along to us and other followers of Jesus.

Let’s see what happens!

Jesus meets a man blind from birth both begging for a few shekels for food. He heals the man and tells him to go and wash in a pool that was supposed to be a place where the sick could be healed. Jesus makes a paste or a salve of mud and spit and says go wash. And when he does what he is told, he is healed. And everyone is excited! But not everyone believes it.

The religious leaders are skeptical about Jesus. They’ve seen it all before: snake oil salesmen and religious hucksters were a dime a dozen in Jesus’ day. People claiming to be prophets who were in fact only attributing their own strange ideas to God. Others offering quick fixes for one low, low price. And I am sure that they have seen all kinds of, ahem, interesting people who want to, uhm, share their stories. Sound familiar? Me, too. The truth is, I’m kind of sympathetic to their skepticism.

The problem is that their skepticism doesn’t allow them to look at the evidence right before their eyes. Skepticism means you look at the evidence, not laugh it off just because it looks weird! And you don't write someone off because you've been burned in the past. But listening and investigation requires attention and work, and these folks didn’t want to give this formerly blind beggar the time of day. They try to say that he is not the same man, or that he only pretended to be blind. And when those explanations fail, they essentially stick their fingers in their ears while saying “la la la! I can’t hear you!” by saying that the was born entirely in sin and kicking him to the curb.

As I said, there is blindness and then there is blindness.

Jesus meets the man again. It’s a good thing for Jesus that he did not ask the man how he received his sight, because after the grilling he just came away from, he might have hauled off and popped Jesus one right in the kisser!

Instead, Jesus asks the man if he believes in the Son of Man.  The man says “show me, and I will believe.” Of course, he is being shown because Jesus is standing right there. And the man does believe.

The most religious and righteous people in the land see Jesus and do not believe. But this man, who was blind sees Jesus for who he is, and believes.

There is sight, and then there is sight.

Blindness can come from seeing too much. It can come from thinking we know how the world works and ought to work. It can come from thinking we have everything under control. It can come from thinking that we can get God on our side if we are good enough, smart enough, clever enough. Blindness can come from thinking that we have in ourselves everything we need, and that we don’t need anyone else—and that we above the need for spiritual help.  Often, when we think we see the most, this is when we are the most blind.

But sight can also come when we can see the least. Have you ever wished you could see around life’s corners? Have you ever believed that what you thought you saw turned into something else? Have you ever been let down by what you thought you saw clearly? Have you ever been blind to the world around you—it’s gifts, it’s beauty, it’s possibility? Have you ever turned a blind eye to the people most in need of care, compassion and a taste of hope?

These are the people that Jesus touches. The ones who knew they had no sight, no hope, no direction, only dependence and fear and limitation and dead ends. These are the people Jesus touches and the one to whom he brings sight.

The man born blind did not just get up and dance around the room. There were skeptics. He did not see clearly. He knew that he had been healed, and he knew that his healing was a gift; but it took time from his sight to become vision. His vision grew and grew until he saw and recognized Jesus. He knew the change in him came from God through Jesus and then it all clicked.

Vision is like that. The spiritual life starts with a dim awareness of grace.  And if we follow it, that awareness grows and grows. We know that God is doing something. We know that we are being changed. Those around us may not understand it, they may even discount it. But it is real.

But as our sight grows, as our awareness of God grows, we find that Christ is there. He was the one who touched us. He is the one making us whole.  He is the one who lifted our blindness and allows to see the world for the first time—as if it were through God’s eyes.

There is blindness and then there is blindness. There is the blindness that comes from not being able to see. And there is the blindness that comes from choosing not to see what God has put before us.

And there is sight and then there is sight. There is the sight that comes from resting in our own knowledge, our own power, and our own keen sense of the world as it is. We may think we are being realistic in our skepticism, but we may simply be locking the door on grace. There is another sight, a sight that brings vision. That is beginning to see ourselves and creation as loved, cherished and worthy of being renewed.

There is sight that sees God at work in simple acts of kindness. There is vision to see God at work in the care for the poor, the outcast and the lonely. There is light that comes from encountering the face of Christ in every person that God brings to us.

The world sees Jesus as a long-ago figure of history and myth. The realists in the world see our faith as a desperate allegiance to a good man who failed miserably on an executioner’s cross. The skeptics see us as sadly deluded. All of them can see for themselves.

But we who have been touched by Jesus, and washed in the waters of baptism, and who have seen the Christ in faith, in sacrament, in community, in the faces of our neighbors… we have a different vision. And for all that we have seen and heard, we have only caught a glimpse of what God sees: a people capable of love, of faithfulness, and compassion, and a creation full of wonder and possibility. We don’t claim to see everything, but we know that in Christ, God removes our blindness to gives us hope and the ability to see the world bit by bit and more and more as God does.

So there was only seeing, but now there is sight!

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Here are the Scripture readings for 4 Lent A, March 15, 2026

Here is the website for St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida 

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Dog tired and bone dry

Have you ever been tired and thirsty? I mean dog tired and bone dry. And I don’t mean just physically thirsty or tired. Have you ever been so inwardly tired and soul thirsty that no matter how much sleep you get or how much you have to drink or eat, nothing seems to refresh us or fill us? That’s what we have in today’s Gospel: Two thirsty people who meet at the well one day. One gets a drink of water and the other gets a drink of life.

One comes up to get a jug of water…but is thirsty inside. The other is tired and thirsty and needs a drink…and is also the well of life.  The woman at the well has water but is thirsty. Jesus who is thirsty, knows the woman’s thirst and quenches it where it really counts…down deep in her spirit.

This is one of those Gospel stories where there’s a whole lot going on.  It’s a lot like the encounter Jesus between Jesus and Nicodemus that we heard last week. In the Gospel of John, we are being taught that to know Jesus is to know God; and to believe in Jesus—to trust him, to understand him, to listen to him—is to be changed from the inside out. So he puts together two stories of two different people to get this across.

The first one, in John chapter 3 is with Nicodemus. The second one is with the woman at the well in Chapter 4.

Here is a piece of (probably useless) trivia for you: There are only three times that Samaritans appear in the Gospels: twice in Luke and once in the Gospel of John.  But those Samaritans, they sure do get around! Whenever you hear about a Samaritan in the Gospels, a little light should go off and a sign should blink, “Difference Ahead!”

So, last week we heard the famous encounter between Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus. He came to Jesus, and he learned that if he was to really understand what God was up to, he would need a new identity, a new way of being, a new way of seeing and knowing both God and the world. This new identity, if he took it on, would feel like being born from above. It would feel like the breath of God.

Today, Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and, once again, we hear the same thing: if she is to really know how to worship God in Spirit and truth, then she will have to put on a new identity…one grounded in God. This would feel like drinking new, fresh, cold water from a well that never ends. It would be refreshing and clean and new… all the time!

In Nicodemus, we saw a man who was a reformer seeking the heart of Judaism, a leader of the Jewish temple council, but who already knew that being Jewish was more than a building. Still, he was looking for more. The woman at the well is a person that Jesus should not even have been talking to.

Nicodemus speaks to Jesus at night. Jesus speaks to the woman at noon.

Nicodemus begins the conversation. Jesus initiates the conversation with the woman at the well.

Nicodemus has deep a theological conversation with Jesus. Okay... they are both rabbis and they are peers. Today, here is Jesus having an intense theological conversation with a woman— and, what’s more, a foreign woman, far from the center of Jewish life and tradition!

We don’t know right away where Nicodemus goes after his talk with Jesus but wherever it is, it is far away—back into the night, I guess-- but the woman goes and brings a whole town to Jesus. She becomes the first, or one of the first evangelists and apostles. She tells what she has seen and heard.

Here's another tidbit for your trivia file. The Gospel doesn't name the woman, but tradition does. In Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic circles, she is known as St. Photini, and because she told Jesus' story to others, she is considered an evangelist and even, in some   quarters, an apostle. 

Tradition has assumed that the woman at the well is of questionable character. I don't buy it, and I think tradition, even the ones that elevate her to sainthood, does her dirt. Sure, her story is complicated, as we can guess from her conversation with Jesus, but what tradition has done to her story is both complicated and scandalous. 

Photini has outlived or, perhaps, been abandoned by, five husbands in a world where women could neither own property nor support themselves, except under very exceptional situations.  She is ethnically an outsider and by cultural standards of the day living on the edges, dependent on others-- a husband, a father, a son, a brother, another male relative or perhaps a servant or slave -- to survive. Just to get by she must be associated with some man somewhere. 

But too often, both preachers and tradition lays the blame on her for her situation. Whenever we short-handing her story to harlotry or some kind of disreputable occupation, we make her into a sinner in need of repentance, instead of woman who dignity has been denied her by the patriarchal norms of her day. Our persistence in that reading says much more about us and our inattention and prejudice that it says about her. This is a person whose thirst existed on every level: emotional, social, practical, and spiritual. And until she runs into Jesus at the well, Photini has not met anyone who will meet her as she is and quench that thirst.

In John chapter 3, we hear Jesus talk about the spirit blowing where it will and for the need for people to be born from above.  Today, in John chapter 4, we hear of the spirit welling up inside of us and quenching our deepest spiritual thirst. That spiritual well also waters every part of our lives including our need for identity, place and home. 

Both Photini and Nicodemus understood that Jesus is a prophet. They both understood that he has a special insight and a connection to God.  Nicodemus knew that…he read the papers or heard the stories…he was expecting God to send a Messiah or at least a prophet. But for Photini, this was brand new information. She needed a little help. Let’s see what happens here.

Tired from his journey to Samaria, Jesus sits down at Jacob’s well, but he has no cup or bucket with which to draw water. The disciples have gone off to town to buy some food and has left him alone.

Enter Photini, carrying a bucket—actually both a bucket and a water jar.  She is about to carry between 5 and 10 gallons of water and then carry it back to her village in the middle of the day. That is five pounds per gallon plus the weight of the big clay jar. Without even a mule to share the load. In the first century, as in much of the world today, hauling water is woman’s work. In most of the world today, people—mainly women—have to walk one, two or more miles two or three times a day to get safe, useable water. There is nothing particularly special about Jesus asking her for water. He is a man asking a woman for water. Because getting water is woman’s work.

But she and Jesus get into a discussion as deep that well and as important as his conversation with Nicodemus. They talk about their different backgrounds, their different religious traditions. And while she can give Jesus some water, he is offering to quench a much deeper thirst. He meets her at the point of her greatest need…and he breaks down a few barriers in the process.

Jesus knows her story…he knows her heart…and he is meeting Photini as an equal!  No matter how matter how complicated her past is….it doesn’t matter. She can drink from living water. No matter what mountain she thinks God is to be worshipped on, she can worship in spirit and truth.

Photini may be the opposite of Nicodemus in every way, but they are alike in only one way that matters: they are both in need of life deep down inside. They both need birth from above and to drink living water.

And as different as these two people are, there is one difference that counts: she not only gets who Jesus is, she is the one who does something about it. She is the one who tells people.

To this day, Photini the Samaritan woman is honored in many cultures. In southern Mexico, La Samaritana is remembered on the fourth Friday in Lent, when water flavored with local fruit and spice and is given to commemorate her gift of water to Jesus. As I said, the Orthodox know her as St. Photini. In Russian orthodoxy, she is Svetlana, which means "equal to the apostles," and she is honored as apostle and martyr on the Feast of the Samaritan Woman.

She is remembered because when she recognizes the Christ her identity changes. She leaves her water jar behind and goes and finds her friends and neighbors to tell what she has seen and heard.

Jesus breaks down the barriers of gender and nationality and the woman is bold enough to both remind Jesus of what separates them -- he a Jew and she a Samaritan -- and of what connects them -- their ancestor Jacob. Photini is audacious and spars verbally with Jesus and in the process she experiences him as prophet and, more than that, the Messiah. And she takes that news to her village, her family, her people. Both in the encounter and in the telling, she is changed from the inside out.  Two people at the well meet each other’s thirsts.

On another day, also about noon, Jesus will face death and again confess his thirst. On that day, only vinegar will be offered -- in mockery. The gift of his living water will not be apparent to the one holding that sour sponge. But today, when Jesus and the Samaritan woman meet, they conspire to bring life out of death. The water they offer each other, water that quenches the thirst of body and soul, holds the gift of life for all.

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Scripture for the Third Sunday in Lent, Year A, March 8, 2026

Here is the bulletin for St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida for March 8, 2026

Here is the website for St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida 

Here is video of the worship service and the sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, March 8, 2026

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Learn more about International Women's Day, 2026 which is March 8th, 2026

Location matters

Location matters.

A long time ago, I was a young priest seeking a new cure, and I dutifully sent my resume and profile to wherever the church’s computer said that I might be a decent match. One of those churches was in Virginia. They called me up for an interview. Now they were polite, but they were not really interested in a newbie priest from Connecticut, no matter how nice I was. 

That is, until I mentioned that I was born in Virginia and was baptized at an old, historic parish there. My, did their tone shift! It did not matter that for all practical purposes I had not set foot in the Old Dominion since I was two, my pedigree had clearly improved.

On the other hand, I only grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut, which never made me a true New Englander. I once asked a parishioner of my first parish in Northeast Connecticut (a woman who could trace her ancestors back to the first Puritans in New England) about this and she said “Well, if a cat has kittens in an oven, does that make them biscuits?”

Now, I’ve lived in Southwest Florida for five years and all I know is that because I live here year round and don't make the annual trek up and down either I-75 or I-95, I am no longer a “snowbird,” but does that make me a Floridian? Who knows? Whatever the case, where we are raised has an effect on us. Location matters.

Jesus was not born in his hometown, either. In today’s Gospel he talks about something far more serious and he talked to Nicodemus about how our spiritual birth is far more important than our physical birth. Nicodemus came to Jesus with a sort of hesitant curiosity. Nicodemus was a leader of the Pharisees and he had questions.

Now, this may come as a surprise to you, but despite what you may have heard, the Pharisees were actually the good guys of Jesus’ day. Think of them as sort of first-century Episcopalians. Today, we think of Pharisees as legalistic, 'my way or the highway' kind of folks, maybe even fundamentalist. But of all the different movements and styles of Judaism in the first and second centuries, Pharisaism was probably the closest to what Jesus taught and what  Christianity became.

One of the great errors that many Christians make today is to assume that to be a good Jew meant (and means) following all these arcane rules and rituals strictly and by the book. It is one of the great slanders that Christians perpetrate on our Jewish sisters and brothers (and by extension our Muslim siblings): that their faith is all about rules and our faith is all about grace! You hear it all the time from pulpits and Christian radio, "They are all about "law," but we are all grace all the time!" And nothing ends an argument among Christians more quickly than when one side evokes a kind of theological Godwin’s Law by accusing their opponent of being “pharisaical.”

Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish scholar who teaches New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University wrote about the bad rap that Pharisees get from many preachers and New Testament scholars and sums it up this way: "After two millennia, surely the time has come to stop bearing false witness against Pharisees and their Jewish descendants. Christianity does not need to bear false witness against Judaism in order to proclaim its good news." 

Okay, then, so just who were these guys, anyway? The fact is that the Pharisees sought to modernize things—to revise Jewish consciousness about faith and geography--to get Judaism out of the Temple in Jerusalem and into the places were Jews actually lived, all across the ancient world. They represented the working and merchant classes of 1st century Jewish culture, especially in the diaspora. 

Before the Pharisees, many (but not all) Jews whether they lived in Galilee or Alexandria or Rome or Ethiopia, may not have felt complete until they went to the Temple in Jerusalem at least once in their lives. The Pharisees, on the other hand, said that being Jewish is a matter of knowing who you are and about loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind and our neighbors as ourselves. They wanted the Jews of their day to live their faith from their hearts, and their ethics to grow out of that faith. Pharisees taught that the local synagogue—their local community—was the center of Jewish life, not the Temple. 

Jesus was deeply influenced by Pharisaism from a young age. I'll bet that the rabbis who taught him as a youngster were Pharisees (Luke 2:41-52). Pharisees set the stage for Judaism to survive the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD and their exile and dispersion outside of Palestine and into Europe, Africa and Asia Minor. In short, modern Judaism in all its forms (and Christianity, for that matter!) is a direct descendant of Pharisaism!

So Jesus and Nicodemus have a lot in common! Both wanted to relocate the heart of Judaism from a place to a people… not just of ancestry but of faithfulness. Both teachers agreed that our morals and ethics grow out of the heart of our faith… to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves... that what we do shows who and whose we are. But while both Jesus and Nicodemus understand that the Spirit is not confined to a building, no matter how local, or even a nation, for that matter, Jesus takes it a step further when he says, "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

I am sure that you’ve heard the phrase before. It’s usually translated as being “born again.” It could mean that, or "You must be born anew." But, basically, the word means "from above." When Jesus tells Nicodemus that one must be born from above, he is talking about a kind of spiritual awakening that is initiated and animated by God which enlivens and re-defines us.

Archbishop William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury during World War II, was once asked if he was born again. He said, “I’ve been born again, I am being born again, and I hope to be born again tomorrow.” He was not talking about salvation, but about sanctification. He was talking about the life of holiness. All of us have the chance to change, to grow, to deepen our life in Christ, as Jesus reminds us in John 3:8 that "The wind blows where it chooses."

Listening for that wind is one of the great disciplines of the Christian life. Awaiting the chance to be born again and again is one of the great disciplines of the Christian life. And a good place to start is in our Lenten discipline today.

The wind of re-birth is the wind of freedom and love, and it is far stronger than where we typically imagine where we find stability in life. It is stronger than the place where we were born, stronger than our ancestry, stronger than what Jesus calls the flesh. So, even though it may blow us to new places, we are – in the Spirit – more stable than ever!

One of things I’ve discovered since moving to Southwest Florida is that everybody here is from someplace. But, as Christians, we are natives of that place which Jesus calls the kingdom of God, which is a kingdom which we enter by faith and baptism. Life in God’s reign is the life of walking with Jesus and letting our identities be shaped and re-shaped by this marvelous wind, this breath of the living God.

The location that matters the most is our heart. In living our life in Christ, we have a choice: we can think of it as a punch-list of tasks we have to accomplish; or we can see the movement from baptism and Eucharist, of daily prayer and sacraments, as the places where we discover again and again our identity in Christ.

Lent is our time to discover again that no matter where we are or where we are from, God is always present to us and that our identity is found with Christ. As baptized people, we are always at home with Christ.

You have been born. By faith and baptism you have been born from above. And as you grow and mature in Christ, in your prayer, your encounter with Scripture, in your Sacramental living you are being born again and again and again. Every time we allow ourselves to follow the wind of God, the Spirit of God, we find ourselves located in the heart of God and that our identity is located in and consists of grace and power.

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Here are the Scripture readings for 2 Lent A, March 1, 2026

Here is the website for St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida 

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Learning to Live Lent Everyday

Sometime ago, on the day after Ash Wednesday, a dear friend from high school posted on Facebook the following announcement: “I am giving up caviar for Lent.”

After appropriately droll congratulations, several other friends jumped in with their own pronouncements:

“I am not going to smoke cigars,” said one woman.

“I will not eat liver and onions,” said someone else.

“I will refrain from driving a Ferrari,” I offered.

“My husband will not dust this Lent,” said another woman.

Of course, all this electronic silliness had a point. My friend was underscoring how we can use Lent to avoid something that we’d never do anyway while sounding all righteous at the same time. Or how we can trivialize spiritual discipline into a kind of reverse-new years resolutions (with equally deep and last results).

I was thinking about that as I re-read Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. I mean I can honestly say that I can safely resist the temptation to turn a rock into raisin bread, I wouldn’t even dream of troubling an angel to act as a parachute, and I certainly know that I can easily turn aside the temptation to run the universe my way.

Well… mostly!

Both the silliness on Facebook and the Gospel lesson tells us two things about the Christian life that become very clear if you make even a partial stab at a Lenten discipline.

First, it is tempting to turn Lenten disciplines into a show of piety designed to impress our friends and, maybe lull ourselves into thinking that we really don’t need to change anything substantial about ourselves.

Second, we forget that the real spiritual damage comes not from doing something radically out of character but from when we do the things that come very easy to us—only at a time and a place and in way that distorts us.

Look at the temptations that Jesus faced:

He is tempted to turn stone into bread. Well, Jesus fed a crowd of 5000 and another of 4000… couldn’t he do this in a heartbeat? And certainly Jesus ate all the time… in fact, some of the super-religious in his day chided him for eating too much and with the “wrong” people (in their estimation), to boot! The temptation was not that he was being asked to do something Jesus couldn’t do, but rather to do it at the wrong time and for the wrong reason.

The devil tempts Jesus to throw himself off the temple roof so that angels could rescue him and then bear him up for all to see. But instead, he waits to slowly walk among everyday people in his ministry, healing and teaching, to walk the road to Calvary and die on the cross—where he would finally defeat death. The temptation was to cut that short and avoid the cross altogether.

Jesus is also tempted to take on earthly power, again avoiding the cross, when instead, in God’s time, he will assume his place as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Notice that all of these temptations have the effect of eliminating the cross and resurrection. Not taking away the need but bypassing it altogether. So while these temptations might have served Jesus in the short-term, but it also would have stopped God’s redeeming work dead in its tracks.

Something else stands out in the temptations: they are not merely personal. Jesus engages the powers of this world--the underbelly of human existence, that in the Gospel is the devil. Bishop Neil Alexander, former Bishop of Atlanta and Dean Emeritus of the School of Theology of the University of the South, once said that “the powers of this world are the great resistant forces, largely uncontrollable, that hold people hostage, captive to the institutions and systems that carry us along, the forces that drive the spirit of the age promising life but leading to death. The powers of this world seek to render us powerless, before the immensity of the world's problems.”

These are the powers that say, "No one really wants war, but the bodies keep piling up” and "No one really wants homelessness, but we can't seem to do anything about it” and "No child needs to die of hunger anywhere, but especially in the wealthiest nation on earth, and yet they do." In short, these are the powers of fatalism and cynicism that say, "What can you do, you can’t fight city hall!"

At the same time, the powers of this world love domination and violence. The principalities and powers of this world see cruelty as the tool and power as the point and relentlessly seek to have their own way regardless of the costs, even to the point of death. It is these powers that Jesus confronts and resists in the wilderness. The evil one and his servants do everything they can to distract Jesus—and us! —from his, and our, mission and purpose. And the struggle won’t end there! These are the powers that will eventually hunt him down, arrest him, flog him, publicly humiliate and then crucify him.

But before all that, let’s look more closely at the temptations that Jesus faced.

It’s true. These divine-sized temptations may never come our way, but what does come our way are the same temptations that on a smaller scale. Every time we are tempted to use our gifts, our abilities, and our opportunities frivolously, impulsively, and selfishly to instead fritter them away in the service of self rather than for God’s glory, is to distract ourselves from learning and doing the work of Jesus.

The temptation to cut short what God cultivates in us will always come at a time and in a form that appears to be most convenient, and most attractive to us. It might even appear to be the shrewd, powerful thing to do. How many people aspire to power and wealth and fame, even if that circle ends up being rather small, at the cost of true friendship, healthy relationships, and collaborative service?

I wish that holiness of life was something we could just do. You know, I wish we could just snap our fingers, buy a packaged system, or just re-boot ourselves. It would be great if we all came with a big red reset button. But reorienting ourselves takes a lifetime and that’s okay because God wastes nothing. There are tried and true processes and tools, but none of it is magic. The amazing thing is God uses all the temptations we’ve turned aside and the ones we’ve given into, all the prayers we’ve said and the prayers we’ve neglected, all the opportunities to serve we’ve taken and the times we’ve run away, as the raw material to shape us into the people God made us to be.

On another Facebook discussion about Lent, a more serious question came up: “what are you giving up and what are you taking on this Lent?”

I remember hearing a Benedictine monk from the Episcopal Holy Cross Monastery talk about this. He said that he neither gave up nor took on anything during Lent. He used Lent to try to do what he was supposed to be doing all along. He said that he had come to see that Lent is about spiritual self-correction and challenged us to do one exceptional deed each day during the season and tell no one about it.

Now there’s a radical idea: Using Lent as the time to do what we are supposed to be doing all the time! Instead of taking away something we might not miss all that much anyway, how about using the time we’ve set aside in Lent—this 40-day tithe of our year—to do a just little more of what we are supposed to be doing anyway!

So you see, this season is so much more than giving up candy bars or making resolutions. Lent is a time to discover that all of life is a process of re-orienting ourselves towards faithfulness. The season reminds us that the baptismal living that we are renewing come Easter, is an everyday process of honest self-appraisal, of turning around, and living new life in Christ grounded in sacramental community. So taking a month or so to focus on better health, or being a bit more intentional in our prayer, or to decide to do something useful for the community, or to attend worship a little more often are human-sized, everyday ways to cooperate with Jesus in making us into the people God made us to be.

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Here are the Scripture readings for 1 Lent A, February 22, 2026

Here is the website for St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida 

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Encountering the Fullness of God

Sometimes crisis has a way of revealing our true character. When things are moving so quickly that all we can do is react, our true selves sometimes come to light. While sometimes we are shocked and disappointed by what we see, there are other moments when we discover depths of strength and character that we never knew we had.

The purpose of the Epiphany season is to remind us, beginning with the arrival of the Magi after Jesus’ birth right up to the Transfiguration on the Mountaintop, of who Jesus is, what God is up to in the Incarnation, and how people recognize the fullness of God in the person of Jesus.

Of course, encounters with God aren’t new. Moses went up to the Mountain and received the law from God. His encounter with God literally left him aglow with the holiness of God.

The amazing thing is that these encounters go both ways. God reveals Jesus. And Jesus reveals to us the true nature of humanity—what God intends for us to be. Notice how in the Gospel today, how on the mountaintop both Moses and Elijah, who represent the fullness of the Law and the Prophets, come to Jesus.

Then in today’s Epistle, we hear Peter, one of the first apostles, talk about how his experience of meeting, knowing, and following Jesus changed him.

Sometimes, when we have these encounters, instead understanding them as the springboard they are, we want to hang on to the moment and to the feelings that come with it. I remember hearing about a man, a devout Christian, who every Sunday night for over forty years, would stand up at his Baptist Church and recount his salvation moment and quote the same passage, John 3:16. It is good to be saved, and good to give testimony, and I am convinced that God wants us to remember his saving love and grace. God also wants to grow and mature in our faith.

Jesus’ disciples also wanted to freeze their mountaintop moment in time by building booths, a kind of religious shelter, to commemorate both the moment and the spot where heaven and earth, law and prophet, God’s time and our time, came together. But just as they are ready to head to Home Depot and buy a do-it-yourself booth kit, a voice from heaven interrupts them and tells them that the way to understand and remember the moment is to listen to and follow Jesus, God’s beloved Son.

The transfiguration reveals Jesus’ true nature, that he is at once fully God and fully human, and also showed us God’s purpose to bring heaven to earth. But, camping out in a building or a shrine, Jesus’ true self is shown as he teaches, heals, and empowers ordinary people to take part in God’s work of reconciling humanity to each other, creation and to God.

In both Moses’ and Jesus’ encounters, our need for God and our need for reconciliation is put square in our faces.

As I said, crisis often reveals character, and we are seeing it again. On this celebration of the Transfiguration, I am mindful of the many people who, in the moment of decision, chose against all odds to do the right thing, for the right reason, in the right way.

One of those people was a man named Allan McDonald. You may not have heard of him, but he was an aerospace engineer for the company that built the solid rocket boosters for the space shuttle, back in the 1980s. Forty years ago, he got into trouble because he refused to certify the launch of the shuttle Challenger slated for January 27, 1986, because he knew that the unusually cold temperatures on the Space Coast that year would make the “o-rings” on the solid rocket boosters brittle and liable to fail. His bosses over-ruled him, and the launch proceeded where, as we all know, the shuttle exploded about 78 seconds into its flight killing the crew. During the investigation, McDonald did not keep silence, and was promptly demoted. It was only after members of Congress threatened to strip the company of all future space and military contracts, that they changed their mind and McDonald was put in charge of rocket engine safety protocols and engineering, and the changes he led allowed the shuttle program to resume.

In an interview after his retirement, McDonald said something which has become something of a mantra for me. He said, “always do the right thing for the right reason in the right way at the right time with the right people and you will never have regrets in your life.” He was a person whose character was revealed in a transfiguring moment.

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died four years ago at 90 years old, told the story of his own transfiguring moment. It happened when Tutu was 9 years old, while he and his mother were walking down the street at the height of the Apartheid era of his native South Africa. They were approached by tall white man dressed in a black suit. In those days in that place, when a black person and a white person met while walking on a footpath, the black person was expected to step aside, even into the gutter, to allow the white person to pass — and to bow his or her head as a gesture of respect. But that day, before unbelieving eyes of a young Tutu and his mother, it was this white man who stepped off the sidewalk. And as they passed, he tipped his hat in a gesture of respect to her!

The white man was the Rev. Trevor Huddleston, an Anglican priest (later a Bishop) who was bitterly opposed to apartheid. And that tip of the hat changed Tutu’s life. When his mother told him that Trevor Huddleston had stepped off the sidewalk because he was a “man of God,” Tutu found his calling.

“When she told me that he was an Anglican priest I decided there and then that I wanted to be an Anglican priest too,” he said. “And what is more, I wanted to be a man of God.”

Huddleston later became a mentor to Tutu; and he later said that encounter was his ‘transfiguration’ that led to the transformation of a people and eventually a nation.

In his review of Philip Yancey’s book, Rumors of Another World, Keith Parkins talks about the spirit of mercy that pervaded South Africa after Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

“As apartheid drew to an end and Nelson Mandela was released from Robben Island, Mandela could have called upon the blacks to rise up and seek vengeance on the whites,” Parkins wrote. “He did not; he showed grace and appointed Desmond Tutu to head the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There was an understandable desire for [revenge and] retribution; instead, the path of forgiveness and reconciliation was chosen.”

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a transfiguring moment for both that nation and the world. The rules were simple — the perpetrators needed to tell the truth, the whole truth; and their victims were given the opportunity to tell the truth of their experience as well. The victims would also be given the opportunity, but not be forced, to forgive. Many of the atrocities were truly horrific. A policeman called van de Broek told of how he and his fellow officers shot an 18-year-old youth, then burnt the body. Eight years later they went back, took the father and forced his wife to watch as he was executed then incinerated in front of her. Many years later, she was in a courtroom and the Commission to hear van de Broek confess. After he was finished, the judge turned to the woman and was asked by the judge what she wanted. 

She said she wanted van de Broek to go to the place where they burned her husband’s body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial; van de Broek agreed. She then added a further request.

“Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give,” she said. “Twice a month I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him.

“And I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.”

Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began singing “Amazing Grace” as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand. But van de Broek didn’t hear the hymn; he had fainted, overwhelmed. It was a transfiguring moment, where the true character of these persons was revealed. (Read more here.)

It is in moments like these, we see God’s transforming, transfiguring, transcendent love at work infusing our lives, and healing our relationships. In these moments, we see the character of God’s people as they make room for God’s restorative justice to flourish.  

The transfiguration shows us Jesus’ true nature. Here we see the lengths that God will go to reconcile humanity to Godself and to make us the people God meant us to be. He we see Jesus—100% God and 100% humanity, in the same person, undiluted-- on that mountain top. And it here that we see God’s true intention: to restore all people to unity with God and each other and creation, which is the Mission of the Church… our mission. [Look it up! It’s in our catechism (p. 855).] Over and over again, we discover that we can daily cooperate with God’s reconciling work whether it’s a small act of kindness, or a righteous stand for reconciliation, or a bold proclamation of the Gospel. And when we do, we, God’s people the church, shine with Christ’s radiance! And we show our true nature as baptized people whenever we go into the world living practical, useful, transforming acts of justice and love.

This is how we communicate the Gospel and reveal the breadth and depth of God’s love for us and all humanity. Our encounters with the Risen Jesus, on the mountaintop or in everyday life, shows that we have met God’s beloved Son, that we are listening to him, and displays the radiance of Christ for all to see.

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Scripture for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A, February 15, 2026

Here is the bulletin for Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida for February 15, 2026

Here is the website for Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida 

Here are the videos of the worship services (8 am here at about 17:05 & 10 am here at about 29:28) at Holy Trinity, Clearwater, February 15, 2026

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Light that pierces the darkness

Have you ever been outdoors in a totally dark place?  

When I was a kid, we lived on what was once a farm that was also just far enough away from the expanding suburbs and any streetlights that we could go out into the field behind our house, lie down on the grass and see not only all the stars but the Milky Way itself stretched across the night sky like a head band. It was here that I earned my astronomy merit badge with an old refracting telescope and the star chart that was published every week in the local newspaper. It was a amazing to think about how far a little dot of light travelled to reach our eyes and then from there to our imaginations. Every now and then, on a clear night, you can still look up in the sky and see the stars, especially if you shield your eyes from all the light that our streetlamps, headlights, and buildings generate every night.

We hardly think about it, but for us light is pretty cheap and readily available. We walk into a room and flip a switch. You don’t even have to do that much in many modern cars because when it gets dark enough, the lights just turn themselves on! But once upon a time, in fact for most of human history, lighting your way at night was pretty basic: a flaming torch, a campfire, a candle, or maybe a kerosene lantern. Moonlight was great when it was the right phase of the moon and if the weather was clear enough to allow farmers to get an extra few hours of planting or harvesting done.

The need for some kind of artificial light meant harnessing fire. This meant that from Biblical times right up through the advent of electricity, a basic skill that most women and girls learned, in addition to cooking, raising the children, sewing, milking the cows and all the rest, was how to dip a string (that they probably wove themselves) into a vat of hot wax that they made on stove, over and over again to make candles, as well as how to build and manage fire for cooking and heating water for washing.

Over time there were refinements: things like glass lenses, hurricane lamps, the kerosene lanterns, and so on, but in Jesus’ day the clay lantern that looked like a tea kettle with a wick stuck through the spout into a kind of paraffin was as fancy as you got. And if you didn’t make your own fuel from butchering animals for meat or maybe distilling some grain, you had to buy it. It wasn’t that long ago that ships sailed around the world hunting whales and harvesting the blubber all so that we could light our homes at night.

Getting light at night was a lot of work, which is why the invention of the light bulb and finding a way to reliably deliver electricity was such a big deal.

And then there was darkness.  We mostly think of darkness as an inconvenience at worst, but great for setting the mood for romantic dinners, or for watching movies. Mostly, though, darkness is something we sleep through. But there was a time that darkness was well… dark!

How dark was it? It was so dark that a little light could go a long way! Even a candle in a window could be seen for miles. Early lighthouses were nothing more than bonfires built on hills or towers. Towns had nothing but candles in windows and fires in fireplaces, but taken together, they could be seen from miles away because they stood out in cover of night.

So when Jesus said to his followers that “you are the light of the world,” people knew what he was talking about. He told them to “let their light so shine before others, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” A little light pierces the darkness even over a great distance. Well, how exactly do we do that? I’m not talking about flashlights or candles… but in how we live every day, can we create light and where shall we shine? How will we focus our light?

The way we think about light makes a difference as to how we think about learning and doing the work of Jesus today. And when Jesus said that we are light, he didn’t mean that we could just flip on and off the discipleship light switch. He meant that we are the lamp… and even with all the work it takes to shine, our task is to bring light to dark places.

Jesus told his friends and apprentices, “You are the light of the world” he does not describe a light in isolation, but rather a light that exists for and within the world. He says, “Let your light shine before others,” not so that they may admire you, but “so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” The light that comes from Jesus’s love is not meant to be hidden or hoarded. Light directs. Light reveals. Light shines so that others can see.

As baptized people you are a disciple, a friend and apprentice of Jesus Christ, and Jesus reminds us that we do this in community, not alone. Being a follower of Jesus connects us to God, creation, and each other. The early church theologian Tertullian said “that one Christian is no Christian.”

Which is a very good thing, because learning and doing the work of Jesus can sometimes feel heavy. It is impossible to do alone. Sure, we can turn the Word of Life into a shopping list, a mere spiritual to-do list. We may feel the weight of responsibility and effort pressing down on us. Actually, that’s pretty normal. We humans have a deeply ingrained impulse toward shame and secrecy that can make Christian living feel like we’re constantly failing a test, as if we are unworthy of grace and love because we haven’t done enough, or done well enough. And that feels tiring, lonely, and isolating. 

But our Collect today gives a hopeful antidote: “Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ….” Our prayer today speaks not of burden, but of freedom, liberty and abundance. 

Even within that tightrope walk of relationship and responsibility, there is freedom. The prophet Isaiah lays right into it. He calls out religious leaders who have leaned too far into obligation and legalism but forgotten the abundant spaciousness that comes from God. He calls out the timidity and caution of his peers who go along to get along with the oppression of his day. He names the fasting, self-inflicted oppression, and penitence that serve only one’s own self and reputation. He shows us that the spiritual disciplines of fasting, penitence, and daily prayer and reading scripture are the most healthy, meaningful, and life-giving onlywhen they point us to God, and the welfare of God’s people and creation.

The prophet Isaiah and Jesus both remind us not to perform righteousness for show. Don’t worry if people can see your good works, but pray that they see the good that happens, they give glory to God. Let your actions loosen the bonds of injustice. Let them feed the hungry, shelter the oppressed, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and companion the lonely, shut-in, or jailed.

The freedom we seek as Christians, as followers of Christ, is bigger than ourselves, and our own self-righteousness. The goal of our life isn’t to be free in the sense of being able to do whatever we want, without consequence. The freedom we seek—through our spiritual practices and prayers and worship and teaching and learning—is freedom from oppression for all.

What good is fasting if we ignore the hungry? What good is penitence if we ignore those who are tortured? What good is religious devotion if we turn away from the poor, the lonely, the sick, the forgotten?

The freedom we desire is that all people may know they are loved, safe, protected, and nourished—spiritually, yes, but also physically, emotionally, and mentally. Instead of living as a collection of loners all seeking to be king of the hill, we in fact live in a spiritual ecosystem even in—especially in! —this broken and hurting world, so one person oppressed affects each and every one of us. 

Jesus gives us the image of a city on a hill whose light guides us home and whose walls offer sanctuary. But just because we are salt and light, does not mean that God’s freedom is a free-for-all. Jesus reframes the Law and the Prophets of the Hebrew scriptures to remind us that our freedom, as well as our adherence to the traditions must always point to God, which is why Jesus says, “I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” 

When times are filled with darkness and things feel very challenging, I am reminded of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s observation “that darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

So we follow the commandments and we live the sacramental life. We say our prayers and read our devotionals not to make us look good but because they matter.

The funny thing is that when we do this stuff, people will notice but not in the way we think. What people will see is peacefulness, gentleness of heart, acceptance of people’s variety, our appreciation for the earth and all God’s creation. What they will see is genuine leadership that seeks the well-being of the people being served rather than being handed a gold-plated plaque. As we live the life of Christ, what folks will see emanates naturally as we grow in Christ and abide in Christ’s love and do Christ’s work serving Christ’s people with justice, peaceably and generously.

We live in a world where darkness happens. Sometimes it just happens. Sometime we bring it on ourselves. 

As Christ’s followers, we are people of light. Our task is to bring Christ’s light to even the darkest places even in the darkest of times. In all we do, the way of Jesus invites us to see the face of Jesus in everyone we meet, and we are invited to illumine the way of Jesus to the people God gives us, lighting the way to a life of grace and peace, and so that in all things, glory is given to God our creator, sustainer, and redeemer.

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Scripture for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A, February 8, 2026

Here is the bulletin for St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida for February 8, 2026

Here is the website for St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida 

Here is video of the worship service and the sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, February 8, 2026

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here