So, what now?

So, what now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Hospitality is the Heart

“Welcome!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

The bigness and the closeness of God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First, God is complex to the point unknowing.

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

Three, God is by grace knowable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

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.

Easter Lilies in the Morgue

Do you have an Easter story? You know, a story of how you’ve encountered the Risen Christ, or at least seen mercy, hope, and compassion in a surprising way, something that reminds you of or points you to Jesus? I’ll bet you do! Time and again, I have heard people share with me their Gospel stories! Allow me to tell you a favorite Easter story of my own.

A long time ago in a hospital far, far away, I was a chaplain where the Sisters who ran it were very intentional about communicating their Catholic mission and identity. Which meant, among other things, that my colleagues in the pastoral care department did many activities throughout the hospital during Lent.  And it was the job of the On-Call Chaplain over Easter weekend to come in on the evening of Holy Saturday to lead in the transformation of the hospital lobby, other public spaces, and chapel from the austerity of Lent and Holy Week to the festivity of Easter.

The first time I had to do this, I came back to the hospital on Easter Eve, after attending a local parish’s Easter Vigil. The job included gathering up various Lenten displays and putting up the white hangings in the Chapel, changing the veils on various crosses around the building to white (and there were a lot!), and putting out Easter lilies and tulips and spring flowers in the main lobby, the chapel. and some other places around the building. That meant that we ordered lots and lots …and lots!... of flowers!

I commandeered a handcart and, along with other chaplains and some volunteers, we started our rounds.

Only a day or so before, we Chaplains along with many folks from the hospital community had walked through these very same halls in a special way. At that hospital, we did The Stations of the Cross on Good Friday. But instead of staying in a chapel, these Stations were scattered throughout the building—we went to places where people met suffering, pain, hope, fear, loneliness, death and new life. These stations were in the places where people ministered to human frailty, sometimes with awesome technology and just as often with compassion and simple touch. These were the places where divine healing met human need in everyday ways so often that, if you weren’t careful, they would become mundane.

These were the places Jesus walked. The cross stands at the intersection of brokenness and hope. And just two days before, on Good Friday, we walked with Jesus to places where suffering and compassion could not be plainer. At the hospital, we did what a lot of parish church do on Good Friday, placing a plain, rude wooden cross in the sight of all and, in venerating that cross, we confronted all the ways we separate ourselves from God, each other, and creation.

Anyway, back at that hospital all those years ago, when it came time to get those Easter flowers, and they were gone! They were not in loading dock, no one moved them to the chapel, or our offices. They were not tucked away in some corner. Where could they be? I mean how could you lose a half dozen pallets of flowers?  After much searching, I called security.

The guard was expecting my call. He said, “I’ll show you.”

We met and took the elevator to the basement, to a dark hall in the oldest wing of the hospital, a hallway that few people walked. We came to an unmarked door. The guard sorted through his wad of keys and opened the door and we entered the morgue.

Just before he turned the knob, he said to me “Don’t worry, Chaplain, there had been a body in here tonight, but now it’s gone.”

He was right. When he opened the door, there was no dead body. But there was an explosion of flowers! Everywhere there were lilies, daisies, tulips, and spring flowers. They covered the examination table, the counters and overflowed and even the drawers meant to hold bodies, like the ones you see on shows like NCIS, had flowers on them.

A place of sterility was filled with color! The medicinal “laboratory” smell was overcome with the perfume of blooming flowers.  A place of death had become a nursery.

It turns out that the housekeepers had brought the flowers to the morgue because they arrived a day early and they thought they’d keep longer in the coolness of the morgue. “I hope you don’t mind,” the guard said.

So that’s my Easter story, or at least one of them. Easter lilies in the morgue. What’s yours? The thing about these stories is that they don't have to be specifically religious or even mention Jesus by name. But what happens points you in a Godward direction and may even spark a change inside of you. So, where have you encountered the risen Christ or seen signs of resurrected life?

Remember, that as we hear the Easter story, we are not celebrating an empty tomb, much less a morgue. Seeing an empty tomb does not bring life. An empty tomb does not change anything. The Easter story centers on women who came expecting to find a body and instead the found an empty tomb, a vision of angels, and then encountered in person the real, live Risen Jesus. That encounter, theirs and ours, is what we celebrate today.

All the Gospels agree that Mary of Magdala was among the first to meet the Risen Jesus, which, if you think about it, is a very strange choice as the first messenger of Good News because they say she was once possessed by demons. Not the best of credentials. But she was in very good company. Mary of Magdala fits right in the parade of people we’ve seen as we’ve read the Gospel of John all through Lent. The people who met the Christ were changed: such as Nicodemus, the inquisitive but fearful rabbi; or the outcast and troubled woman at the well; or the beggar blind from birth. And then there was Lazarus, the dead man who was brought back to life!

All these people encountered Jesus at the point of their deepest need… and they were all changed!

In Matthew’s Gospel, we hear how Mary came to the tomb to grieve and to care for the dead body of her dead friend, teacher, and healer.

What she encounters is an earthquake, and an angel descending from heaven… it reminds me a little bit of Jacob’s ladder, as if a doorway has opened between heaven and earth… who is dressed in lightning and heavenly glory, who comes down, moves aside the rock door and takes a seat. The angel invites them to go inside and look at the empty tomb and then instructs them to go to Galilee where they will meet up with the Risen Jesus.

In John’s Gospel, something similar happens but first they run to tell the disciples of the empty tomb. Mary runs to the disciples, and Peter and the Beloved Disciple both race each other back to the tomb. They find it just as she said—empty, vacant. Bandages on one side, and the face-cloth neatly folded on the other side. But that is all. The two disciples leave, perplexed. Mary stays behind at the empty tomb, weeping even more.

It is Jesus who comes to her and ministers to her, only she doesn’t recognize him at first. She supposes him to be a groundskeeper who might know something. She is looking for her friend. It is only when he utters her name that she understands.

“Mary” he says. She knows that voice. She knows that person who reached out and touched her heart and cast away whatever was eating away at her life. Her fear is at once replaced with relief, healing and courage.

I love these Easter morning journeys. Can you see your journey reflected in hers?

I don’t know about you, but I see so much of my own spiritual journey in Mary’s zig-zag journey to meet the Risen Christ. So often I come to this space, these sacraments, these liturgies and want only to dwell on the empty spaces in my soul; along with my fears, disappointments, and sense of endless busy-ness. I expect, I demand, that they be filled! But too often I try to do that on my terms, in my way.

The way that works for me is that I tell God what I want God to do for me. I tell God how it is. Sure, I may bring my expectations, my pride, and my pain, but I can’t let go of them. Because I really need them to define who I am. So I tell God to either bless them or fix them. And it’s a pretty safe bet that if nothing happens, I will either blame God or maybe chalk it up as “another blankity-blank learning experience.” Either way, my fears are reinforced, my prejudices stiffen, my attitudes harden.

It's like coming to an empty tomb. Or to a morgue filled to the brim with flowers. I may or may not see Christ in all that. It depends on how I look at it.

So let me tell you where I have met the Risen Christ. I have met the Risen Christ in the person of a grown man who spent his whole life in a state institution for the developmentally disabled but was then moved into a group home and then an apartment—who taught me that Jesus comes to us like a child, even when they are not.

I have met the Risen Jesus in the face of young girl who had brain cancer and literally had half her brain removed, who told me in clear, cheerful words “After the rain comes the rainbow.”

I met the Risen Christ in a quiet man, a man who knew how to listen with his whole heart who asked me once what I was running away from and what I really believed. 

I have seen the Risen Christ in a room full of people who’ve regularly meet in parish halls and classrooms to share their stories and support each other in their recovery from addiction one step at a time.

The Risen Christ has met me in people who have not been intimidated by my anxieties and busy-ness and have prayed me through difficult times.

And who knows? You, an ordinary person, an everyday Christian, may not only have seen the Risen Christ when you have least expected it... you might have encountered a moment of healing, or peace, or acceptance even at the moment when it did not seem remotely possible. The Risen Christ, in my experience, has this habit of showing up when we need God's love and power the most, but when we expect the least. And you might also be the face of the Risen Christ to someone who needs it … and you might not even know what a miracle you are to that person!

The Risen Jesus is made is known in baptismal waters, broken bread and poured out wine--and in the faces of the people God gives to us. The Risen Jesus is made known by people just like us, who hear him call us each by name, and allows us weep with the joy being known and who helps leave our empty places in an empty tomb. Because he is not there. He is risen!

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

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

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here. The Easter message by Bishop Douglas Scharf of SW Florida is here.

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe's Easter message is here.

This sermon is based on ones that were previously given on April 9, 2023 at St. John's in Clearwater, FL and on February 22, 2018 at Trinity, Easton, PA.