Reconciliation is the Main Thing (Part One)

Today’s Gospel is different. There’s more—and less—than meets the eye. Let’s dive in. 

The Gospel passage I just read only shows up in Matthew—and we hear Jesus say a word that won’t show up in the Bible until Acts or the epistles. Jesus says “church.” I see you shrug… so? Isn’t church all about Jesus, and shouldn’t Jesus be all about “church?” Well, yeah, except why would Jesus be talking about church discipline when the church hasn’t been invented yet? 

I mean, the gathering of believers won’t become “the church” until after Pentecost, and by then Jesus has already been resurrected and ascended. So why is he talking about a person in “the church who might sin against us,” when there isn’t yet a church?

The Gospels that we have in the Bible were gathered up by at least four different gatherings of Christians way after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. It did not take long for those first Christians to start gathering their memories and re-telling what Jesus taught and did, and then some folks wrote it down. The Gospels record Jesus’s actions, values and teachings, and they guided early Christian communities in how to live and minister together, in this case the community that brought us Matthew’s Gospel.

So, knowing that, let’s listen again.

Jesus said: If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matt. 18.15-17)

Some people and churches use this passage as a procedure guide for how to throw someone out of their congregation. I don't think that's what's going on here. It's about keeping people in community, not exiling folks from it.

What we have here is guidance for when folks in one of these new Christian communities get mad at each other. It’s what to do when members have a beef. And, trust me, whenever two or three are gathered together, someone is going to have a beef, or get their nose bent out of joint, or get offended or offend someone. As long as the church is filled with humans, it’s going to happen. So here is some guidance as to what to do when that comes up.

But though this passage is speaking to a post-resurrection community, I’m pretty certain its roots go back to the fact that in his earthly ministry, Jesus had to deal with followers who didn’t agree or didn’t get along or who did dumb things or who were just plain wrong. So, I am thinking that when they were organizing Matthew’s church and this stuff came up, they asked themselves, “what would Jesus do?” Or, at least, “what would Jesus say?”

It may come as a shock to you, but these problems haven’t gone away. You may not know it but there is fine print in the Book of Common Prayer, where the Episcopal Church lays out a procedure for excommunication. It’s on page 409. And since the BCP is a constitutional document, that’s a pretty big deal.  But there is also rites for reconciliation, commonly called confession, that are equally good places to start.

Now in my 44 years of ministry, I’ve never ever used the “disciplinary rubric.” But I have dealt with a pinch or two in community. I have found that it’s pretty common for people to get into conflict over little stuff. It might be over something operational, like service times, or the style of the service, how we spend our money, or over who does what in the parish, or who gets to decide this or that. Maybe it’s about who wants to get married, or if we should host a 12-step group…I could go on. I don’t know, but I’ll bet you know what I mean.

But before we get caught up in the weeds the procedure, notice what Jesus doesn’t say. First, he doesn’t say, “If someone sins against you, you should sulk, pout, moan, make everyone else miserable, cut your pledge, call your lawyer and swear before God and anybody else around that you’ll have nothing to do with that no-good so-and-so until he or she crawls up to you begging your totally undeserved forgiveness.” It doesn’t grant us permission to abuse the other person, call them names, or turn them into a punching bag. It doesn’t say you should flood social media with accusations, light up the phone lines, send out a flock of e-mails, tweets, and Facebook posts, use AI to create cruel memes, whisper vile things about the offender, move to another church, or write a nastygram to the bishop. Neither Jesus nor Matthew say to do any of that.

Instead, we are taught that if you are wronged, if you are the one hurt, then you are the one who needs to take the initiative for forgiveness and reconciliation. Even if, maybe especially if, it isn’t even your fault. That’s what the Gospel says. The first step in your search for forgiveness and reconciliation comes from you—even if that doesn’t seem fair.

And it isn’t just the offended party who has to make the first move. Remember the Prodigal Son over in Luke (15:11-32)? The dad didn’t send out a search party, but when the son came to his senses and decided to come home and ask forgiveness, before the repentant son even gets to blurt out his prepared speech, the father meets him. And the father also meets the faithful son as he sulks in his room. Reconciliation is found in the act of meeting.

Reconciliation may not happen when the two parties totally agree. It may start when both sides simply decide to stop fighting about it. Not sweep it under the rug, just not allow it to define our relationship.

Sometimes we need help. Maybe the first step is to talk to a priest, maybe for counsel, maybe for confession, as a first step towards healing the breach. The twelve steps of AA talk about this: Steps 5 through 10 are all about reconciliation in dealing with our recovery and taking responsibility for the harm our addictive behavior may have caused.

Jesus’s teachings on forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoring relationships never seem fair. At least not at first. He always asks us to do more than we know we should. In fact, it is in the very next verse after today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells Peter to forgive, not 7 times but 7 times 70 times, which is Bible-speak for “always.” (Matthew 18:22).

I wish today’s passage was a magic bullet. I wish I could tell you following it will mean everything will end with a sentimental moment like at the end of a Lifetime movie. Doing this, or something like it, won’t necessarily make the other person either act better or repent. They might not even like us and they might even choose to hang on to their hurt or never change their hurtful behavior. And while we might choose to steer clear of each other for a while for our own sense of safety, none of this is why Jesus teaches us these lessons. Jesus tells us to act this way because this is how God acts toward us, and he is teaching us to imitate God every day.

When things get rough, we are invited—urged, commanded, even!—to make the first move toward reconciliation, no matter whose fault it is, no matter what we think is the fair thing to do. As with some other things Jesus says, we don’t have to like it, but we do have to do it. Or, at the very least, we need to take what Jesus says very, very seriously.

Notice that in this passage is that accountability is not a one-way road. In taking it to the church, or I must add, maybe to a therapist or a mediator instead, we might discover that the one who needs to get off his high horse… is me! Or maybe we both need to settle down. Or maybe to relax and not try to make other people behave the way we want. The community, in whatever form, may have wisdom that hasn’t occurred to the injured parties. However it happens, it requires an open heart, trust in the process, patience, and a sense of safety for everyone involved. Whatever the process, reconciliation is the goal.

In these days of “my way or the highway,” the Gospel insists that the common good—the overall health and quality of the community, the family, the group—has a strong positive claim on us. Seeking such common good takes priority over our own satisfaction, our anger, or our sense of what we deserve.

[I will never forget once watching a mother deal with two squabbling siblings. Both of them brought their case to their parent, with all the drama that kids can bring. The mother listened to both and realized that both kids were right, and that they were both wrong. So, she sat them down and said, “Listen: you have only one brother and you have only one sister. I love you both. Please work it out. Then tell me what you decide.” I was impressed. Because I might have blown the whistle and sent both kiddos to the penalty box or arbitrarily taken a side just to make the problem go away. But the family, the relationships, were more important, and putting the problem where it belonged was a good first step.]

A few weeks ago, I got called into jury duty over a civil dispute rooted in an event that took place more than seven years ago. I was the alternate juror, so I got sent home before deliberations began, but while I was listening to the evidence presented by both sides, this passage was rattling around my head.

When somebody sins against us—when there is trouble and conflict—it’s not just the two (or more) people most directly involved whose welfare is at stake. The whole community’s welfare is at stake in how things are handled.

We tend not to think this way these days. But this passage, along with the other ways Jesus dealt with his followers, suggests otherwise. He suggests that “we” comes before “me.” What an odd thought. It’s worth pondering a bit.

The passage talks about church discipline, but it is really about living in relationship and in community, whatever community that may be. And the good of the whole community is at the center of our interactions, even when—especially when—we’re in a pinch.

So, what do we do about that last part of the passage? The part about when someone refuses to listen? It says, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” It does not mean that the other person is a pariah, or that we must be estranged. No, it is a reminder that the Church’s ministry of love, reconciliation, and hope is for everyone. Even for—especially for—the people who drive us the most crazy, or the ones we have a beef with. Remember how Jesus ate and hung out with Gentiles and tax collectors? He didn’t say, “but only if you straighten up and fly right, first!” He sat down and ate. Some people didn’t get that, but the ones who up until then were on the outside looking in sure got it.

Which may be why Matthew included this bit of teaching. Tradition says Matthew was himself a tax collector. Maybe that’s why he stuck this passage in, and not the other three gospel writers? Whatever the case, reconciliation is for everyone. Especially for the people who drive us the most bonkers.

How we work out our pinches is important because they can point us toward the way of Jesus, reminds us of how we have been reconciled to God, and teaches us to become bit by bit, by the grace of God, reconcilers in a divided world.

(Stay tuned for Part Two next week! - atg+)

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This is the Bulletin for Worship for The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost: September 6, 2026 at St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 15 Pentecost (Proper 18A) Sunday, September 6, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Meeting Jesus in the Storm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, Peter. Poor old Peter!

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

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

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

St. Brendan the Navigator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Jesus' manna moment

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

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

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

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

This repetition is a very big deal!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

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.

Grace over bondage

It’s probably safe to say that the typical Christian in today's world doesn't read an entire book of the Bible in a day. And even safer to say this usually doesn't happen before lunch.

Well, I want to congratulate our lectors this morning, because that’s exactly what they did! Yes, you, too, can go home astound your friends and family by telling them “I read a whole book of the Bible today!”  Or, you can flop down in the living room chair and exclaim “Whew! Today I sat in church long enough for them to have read a whole book of the Bible today!” That’s got to be worth something! Yessiree! Our lector read a whole of Paul's Letter to Philemon, (well, except for four verses that the lectionary people cut out for some strange reason, but that’s close enough.)

Okay, okay, Philemon isn't a long theological treatise like Romans or Galatians. It’s not a double-barreled letter like 1^st and 2^nd Corinthians. By comparison, it’s kind of a bookmark. Or more precisely a bookplate. But it gives Paul and a few other early Christians a very human face because it sheds light on a culture that is so very different from ours and a glimpse of how real, live early Christians actually lived their lives.

Here's the story: Onesimus was a slave, and he was a Christian. Philemon was a Christian, too. But Philemon owned Onesimus. Apparently, Onesimus ran away or else did something against Philemon's wishes. And after Onesimus ran away he somehow ended up working with the apostle Paul.

Paul is schmoozing Philemon, laying it on thick, because he wants Philemon to let Onesimus go so that he would have the freedom to travel with Paul. Was sending Onesimus home to be freed and reconciled or would he face the music instead?

Notice that Paul is not above a little Christian arm-twisting, because even though the letter is written to one man, you know that the entire congregation or cluster of congregations around Ephesus, where Philemon lived, was watching to see what he would do. Would he welcome Onesimus home as a brother in Christ or take him back as a runaway slave and punish him? Of course, Philemon could have split the difference: welcome Onesimus home as a Christian slave with little or no punishment. But that’s not what Paul was asking…he wanted Onesimus to come back to Paul a free man.

Okay. That’s nice. So what? This letter is so short that it’s practically a bookmark in the New Testament. The average Christian doesn’t even know it’s there. And, besides, the letter’s context is so totally and completely different than ours that it might seem totally irrelevant to us. (By the way, in the ante-bellum South, slave owners hated this letter and either twisted it justify themselves or wished it was cut out of the Bible entirely!)

But look again. Here are three people (Paul, Onesimus and Philemon) struggling to live out their faith while being challenged by it over and over again. There’s an awful lot packed into a couple dozen Bible verses!

I don’t know about you, but what Jesus says in today’s Gospel makes me pretty uncomfortable, too. He says that when we follow him, we are to hate—hate! —family, kinship, possessions, and everything we hold dear. What Jesus means is that it will take work, discipline—and practice! — to put Christ at the forefront of our living and following Jesus will challenge our priorities and change our decision-making. If you don’t believe me, ask Philemon.

Paul is asking Philemon to put aside his pride and treat Onesimus as a brother in Christ. It doesn’t matter if Philemon is right and has custom (and the law!) on his side. Paul in fact sets that all aside when he to writes Philemon these words, “I am sending him back to you, no longer as a slave, but as a beloved brother.” Look at what Paul is doing. He does not appeal to Philemon on the basis of law, but on the basis of love, in verse eight, he says: “Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love.”

Paul is asking Philemon as a true Christian to accept Onesimus back as a brother in Christ, and not as a slave under the law! Paul is asking Philemon the slave-owner to receive Onesimus, as a Christian brother. Paul is asking Philemon to choose grace.

The brilliance of this move is that Paul neither breaks the law of the land nor the law of the gospel. He says, “Yes, go back to your former home, but as new people in Christ.”

I love this little letter because it shows us what faith looks when the rubber meets the road. And it also shines a harsh light on the goings on in today’s world. I mean, what issues and relationships try our faith today? If someone were to appeal to us on the basis of faith to change something in our lives, what would it be? And what would be the effect of that change? In a world where people get wound up over everything from migration to wealth and poverty, to how we might deal with school shootings and who go mildly berserk over how we memorialize the victims of night-club massacres-- I mean, painting over cross walks at 3 a.m. Really?-- what Paul is asking of Philemon cuts to the quick. 

And just in case you think that I or someone in the Episcopal Church chose this passage just to needle us, remember that this letter was written two millennia ago and was added to the lectionary fifty years ago. After all that time, the promise of this little letter shows us that the deeper we go in our Christian living, and the more we conform our lives to Christ, the bigger the change we will see, the greater the challenges we’ll feel, the more lives we will touch with grace and hope.

So, how did it turn out? What did Philemon do? What happened to Onesimus? We don’t precisely know but we have some clues. 

There's some evidence in the early Christian church that there was a "Bishop Onesimus" in the city of Ephesus in Greece, a church founded by Paul. The story goes that this Bishop was so grateful for the witness and Christian love of St. Paul that he preserved many of his epistles. And to prove his bona fides to collect Paul's epistles, he included this little letter showing how he was freed from one life and set on course for something new.

Today we’ve had a taste of what first century Christianity was like in the first decades after Jesus’ resurrection.  And guess what? It doesn’t look all that different from what people like you and me must deal with every day!

Imagine what would happen if Christians today approached each other and our tough choices with the same sense of prayer, compassion, risk, and hope that Paul, Onesimus and Philemon exercised together! What would life be like if following Christ was more important in our everyday living than kinship, politics, country and custom? Would it be easy? Probably not! Ask Philemon! Would it be life-changing? You bet! Ask Onesimus! Would it make a difference? Look around! Because right here, right now, is what faith looks like where the rubber meets the road.

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Scripture for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18, Year C, September 7, 2025

Website for St. Chad's Episcopal Church, Tampa, Florida

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Here is the bulletin for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, September 7, 2025, St Chad's Episcopal Church, Tampa, Florida.