SERMONS

Morgan Reed 10/11/26 Morgan Reed 10/11/26

Proper 23: Preparing for the Banquet of God

Readings for October 11

Intro

Good morning friends. It is wonderful to be here with you this morning. Jesus tells us a parable in the Gospel reading today which encourages us to cultivate an awareness of our need for God’s grace and then to live into it once we encounter it. It is also a warning against those who, in their pride, presume on God’s grace.

Kids sermon

I want to invite the kids up to join me. Good morning everyone. How many of you have PE in school? What do you like about it? I want to tell you a story I’m not really proud of, but one that illustrates a point. When I was in Middle School, either age 13, or 14, I was in PE and I did something that was not good.

We were playing a super fun game in my PE class. My teacher had taken a giant wooden broom handle and duct taped it to an empty giant Alhambra or Culligan refillable water bottle. We were using this as a baseball bat and using a tennis ball as the ball. If you hit that ball just right it would go flying! I was up to bat, and I struck out. Now, for any of you who play baseball, you know it’s really common to strike out. What do your coaches teach you about striking out? Yes, my coaches taught me that too, but because I was in PE, I wanted to show off my baseball skills (pride) and when I didn’t do well I got upset.

Instead of having good sportsmanship, I angrily yelled a really bad curse word. Everyone on the field froze, and looked at my PE teacher. She looked at me and said “How dare you talk like that on this field. Go sit on the bench!” I don’t remember if I had to write home about that or not, but here we are, 28 years later, and I still remember watching the game from the bench completely red in the face with embarrassment.

I did not act with good conduct or good sportsmanship and because of that I missed the opportunity to have a ton of fun. If I had just done what was right, worked through the disappointment with a bit of humility, and had good sportsmanship, I would have had so much fun that day. My decisions had the consequences that I missed out on a really fun baseball game.

Today Jesus tells us a parable about a fun party. It is a wedding party. He tells us some of the things people should do to prepare for the party and who has not prepared well. His ultimate concern is that we come to know the goodness of life in God’s kingdom where Jesus is king and he is making all things new. And to do this, we need to prepare ourselves to enjoy life with Jesus. Would you please pray with me... “Thank you Jesus...for inviting us...to your table...help us love...what you ask us to do...so that we become...more like you...thank you...that you love us...amen.”

I. God invites us to come broken — vv 1-10 ; Isaiah 25:1-9

In this parable, a king is throwing a wedding banquet for his son and he invites an initial set of guests to be a part of it. He has prepared dinner and everything is ready. He sends his servants out to go and remind those who have been invited to come and eat. In the ideal scenario, those who were invited would go “oh! That’s right. I forgot to put that on my calendar. I’ll head over now.” But something unimaginable happens: Some make light of the wedding banquet and go back to their places of work. Others go a step further, and mistreat the slaves. The absurdity is meant to highlight the absurdity of Israel’s perpetual rejection of their covenant with the Lord. The Pharisees themselves are at risk of being part of those who were invited that reject God’s messengers, up to and including John the Baptist.

In the parable the king becomes enraged, sends troops, destroys those who mistreated his servants, and burns the city. St. Matthew is showing us that Jesus is the true Israel and those invited into the work of the kingdom are those being transformed by the grace of God with integrity, and not merely those who seem to have it all put together in public.

I think one of the helpful points in Jesus’ parable is the permission to admit we are a mess. It is an exhortation to avoid an over confident, overly triumphalistic, smug, curated life.

Politicians, Christian leaders, and Christian influencers all give well curated tales of success. You cannot judge a book by its cover, nor someone’s character through an Instagram Reel. I was just listening to a podcast where someone was sharing their story of being a content creator while in the background her husband was abusive and her marriage was falling apart. Eventually she had to announce her divorce in a reel and people were understandably shocked. If we take a step back though, we all know that content creation is curated, because real life is complex and not meant for public consumption. Perhaps if Jesus’ scenario was today, the Pharisees would have been on TikTok making funny Halakhah-style teaching videos about how many steps one can take on the Sabbath, or how to properly wash dishes, but then when the camera is off they’re committing acts of deep injustice against God’s image bearers.

I hope we are always a church where you can feel undone and safe with one another. We are not a church of curated portraits of perfection. Life is too messy for that. And if we are honest about the mess, then we become more aware of our need for God’s help. When we know our need for grace, we are more apt to begin healing, more ready to extend and receive forgiveness, and more prepared for the banquet.

II. God invites universally, but not unconditionally — vv 11-14 — Pride moves us to stagnation, and away from the kingdom where we risk exclusion and replacement. look at Moab (Isaiah 25:10-12)

Another point that comes from this parable is that the call to God’s kingdom is universal but it is not without conditions. The meal on the mountain of God from Isaiah 25, which we read through today, is a place of shared joy for what God has done, a place to vulnerably share stories of the work of God among the people of God. This is the image that gets carried all the way through Scripture and even into the book of Revelation where the angel says, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb”

We want this invitation, which is universally available, to be effectual for everyone, but the hard reality in both Isaiah and in Jesus’ parable is that it is not going to come about for everyone. In Isaiah 25, we didn’t read verses 10-12 in our reading, but the prophecy, which sounds universal, then singles out Moab. It says that Moab will be trodden down like straw in a pile of dung. They will reach out for help but they won’t be heard because their pride speaks louder than their cries for help. Similarly, one person among the new group of guests who is invited is found not to have the right clothes for a wedding. Then there is an extreme reaction from the king in the parable who tells them to bind up the man and cast him into the outer darkness because “Many are called, but few are chosen.” It isn’t just that the man chose the wrong wardrobe. The idea is that he heard the invitation, but didn’t prepare in any meaningful way for the banquet; he came in whatever he had on. This is the pride, a presumption on God’s grace, that is incongruent with someone who has been transformed by the grace of God.

We want this parable, and Isaiah 25 to be more inclusive and comforting, but how we live does have consequences. God invites us to come however we are, but we cannot stay in that place. In repenting he will meet us by his grace. And his grace is transformative, it is meant to bear the fruits of the kingdom in us — the virtues, the reconciliation, the joy, the peace. If someone presumes on God’s grace, shows nothing but a life of injustice, ingratitude, hypocrisy, and vice, their faith is not the kind of faith that can deliver them from the kingdom of darkness. The clothes that we need to wear to prepare for the wedding are God’s own love, justice, truth, mercy and holiness. These are the character attributes of God that reign fully in his kingdom and which we see as we grow in our relationship to him. The person who refuses to put them on is the who by their deeds is communicating that they don’t want to be at the party.

One theologian says this in a way I really appreciated: “But there was a difference between this wide-open invitation and the message so many want to hear today. We want to hear that everyone is all right exactly as they are; that God loves us as we are and doesn’t want us to change. People often say this when they want to justify particular types of behaviour, but the argument doesn’t work. When the blind and lame came to Jesus, he didn’t say, ‘You’re all right as you are’. He healed them. They wouldn’t have been satisfied with anything less. When the prostitutes and extortioners came to Jesus (or, for that matter, to John the Baptist), he didn’t say, ‘You’re all right as you are’. His love reached them where they were, but his love refused to let them stay as they were. Love wants the best for the beloved. Their lives were transformed, healed, changed.”

Conclusion

Jesus teaches us two very important truths in our Gospel passage today. First, God invites to come to him broken and aware of our need for grace. And second, God invites us to be transformed by his grace. Jesus puts this in stark terms because the religious leaders, who were the most prone to self-deception, and needed such a stark exhortation to cut through the thick smokescreen of self-righteous deception. The good news in this for the average person is there is an invitation to everyone here to come into God’s kingdom. Those invited are called to become aware of their need for the grace of God. Some people, who have faced deep brokenness are more aware of it than those who are well-put together and have curated their lives for others. These are those who will experience Jesus in the Psalm 23 way as their good shepherd. As people come to God’s party, they are invited to prepare for it, to live into the virtue and character of God in community, to let faith and trust in Christ have their intended effect on a life that is being restored, renewed, and prepared for the party. Come to Jesus, be a part of his kingdom in this community, and be changed.

Let us pray:

O God, our refuge and strength, true source of all godliness: Graciously hear the devout prayers of your Church, and grant that those things which we ask faithfully, we may obtain effectually; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Ivory Casten 9/27/26 Ivory Casten 9/27/26

Proper 21 (Fall Retreat): Creating After God's Own Heart

Readings for September 27

Introduction

Good morning dear friends. What a wonderful weekend it’s been together. I have loved the opportunity to engage our imaginations together over the course of the last few days as we work with our hands, share meals, do activities, and find time to rest together. Today’s passages teach us a lot about the nature of words and their relationship to our actions, and they present us with an invitation to the grace of God found in repentance and confession. Jesus is inviting us to rid ourselves of false piety and discipleship in words only, in order to take personal responsibility, confess, repent, and live in a world transformed by the grace of God. Living as an authentic follower of Christ moves us from being passive recipients of the brokenness of the world happening to us, to becoming generative agents who reimagine the world newly created in Christ.

Kids sermon: I want to invite the kids up for our kids sermon today. Kids, I want you to look at this picture. What is this? One of you said that this is a pipe. Well done...except for the French at the bottom: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” That means “This is not a pipe.” Why in the world did the artist say it is not a pipe when it is clearly a pipe? This famous picture, trying to highlight a contradiction between words and images because we think we see a pipe, but actually what we see is a painting.[1]

And it is sort of funny because it reminds me of kids flash cards. As you flip through a child might say, “This is A. A is for apple. This is an apple.” The painting looks a bit like the kind of image you’d point out to a child and say “this is a pipe” except that the text says “This is not a pipe.” Sometimes the thing we see doesn’t match the reality of what it is and this is the case for the story Jesus will tell us today. He is going to get into a debate with some people in Jerusalem that look like they are the religious experts. Jesus is going to challenge the religious experts on the nature of what following God’s law means. There are those who say “Yes, yes, I know what I’m supposed to do to please God,” but then their actions don’t match their words. Jesus is inviting them and us to ask what it might look like to notice the ways that things are broken and because of which we can become broken, and then to ask for his help. This is called confession and repentance — naming and turning. This opens us up to the gift of mercy that God wants to give to his children and it invites us to look at the world in the way that God does.

As we look at the Gospel together, would you pray with me, “Dear God...You are good...and you give good gifts...to your children...Thank you...for making us your children... in Jesus. Amen.”

A) False piety and an imaginary world

In the story today Jesus is in Jerusalem in conversation with the religious leaders. He begins to tell some parables about how much the religious leaders have missed it with regards to obedience to God.

Today he tells a parable of two sons. A father asks the first son to go and work in the vineyard. The son says sure, but the does not do it. The second son he asks to work in the vineyard, the son says no, but then eventually has a change of heart and does it anyway. This parable follows on the heels of a question about John the Baptist. John had invited people to turn from their sins and to come back to covenant faithfulness with God. The two groups represented by the two sons are two ways to receive the ministry of John the Baptist. The religious leaders are meant to be represented by the first son. Their “yes” to the Lord is how they keep up structures and theology. But their lives don’t live up to the words they say.[2]

I had listened to a podcast last week where someone asked the question “what good is your theology if you’re mean?” Her point was a good one she was asking questions about the telos of theology, or to what end we explore theology. Kids, if someone says they’re your friend, but they are constantly unkind to you and make fun of you in front of others, are they really your friend? No!

The point of “good theology” is to draw ourselves and the world around us into the life and love of the Trinity. This immediately rehumanizes our neighbor and it fosters a vision in us for God’s compassion both for us and for others. Good theology draws us into God’s love. Anything less than that aim, like culture war Christianity for example which seeks for power more than love, runs the risk of making us like the son who says “yes, I’ll do it” but then we don’t.

The second son says no, but does it anyways. This represents those who had lived their lives in contradiction to the law. They hear the preaching of John the Baptist and want a fresh start to renew their commitment to God and his commandments. They are aware of their brokenness and need for God’s help.

We need examples to follow who are like the second son; we need saints who are marked with gratitude and mellowed souls, who have weathered all kinds of storms with Jesus at their side, and who have never lost a deep sense of their need for God’s help and have spent a lifetime cultivating a childlike wonder at the kingdom of God in their midst.

Like those saints, we have to name brokenness honestly and hold it before God. This is confession. Where we see this brokenness in us we ask for God’s help to restore us. This is repentance. This opens us up to a world transformed by the grace of God where we start to see the kingdom of God and a world restored.

B) Personal responsibility and re-imaging the world.

Substantive discipleship involves reimagining the world. This is part of Ezekiel’s point today to the exiles in Ezekiel 18. The exiles find themselves in all kinds of hardships. Rather than doing the hard work of asking what is going on inside them, they shift the blame to God and others with a proverb about parents eating sour grapes and the children’s teeth being set on edge.[3] The good news in Ezekiel is that God does not desire the death of the wicked and because of this, if someone takes the personal responsibility to repent, God will meet them with grace.

Creativity after God’s own heart is an antidote to a broken world. God is creator and those who join the work of new creation see the world in abundance; they will take difficult circumstances, reflect on them, grieve appropriately, and look for opportunity. This person will take personal responsibility for their contributions to negative situations with others because they long for reconciliation and for Jesus’s resurrection to bring new goodness out of the ashes. Someone who has lost their ability to create sees the world in scarcity, anxiety, and simple cause and effect. They fixate on what cannot be done because of a lack of resources and see themselves as passive: any negative circumstances are things that happen to them. Life is constant anxiety and reaction to the next problem they’ll encounter. The hard work of confession and repentance, and taking personal responsibility, brings us to a place where we move into God’s redemptive new creation work.

A number of years ago I was translating Syriac texts for publication, which is my artistic labor. I remember wrestling with just the right words to translate a couple of lines. In my personal life I was wrestling with some really heavy issues that I could not fix. When I cannot fix something, I can spiral. I have learned to let myself feel sad when I cannot fix it. The sadness is necessary for me to begin to rebuild. Poetry has been a salve for me. I remember crying when I finally came to these lines:

“Come here, mind, see the Messiah standing amidst the assemblies, resembling the Gihon River, full of compassion, coursing and overflowing with all manner of healing for the afflicted, and the land of Judah is flooded by it and its remedies. Abounding mercy flows from it like a deluge and its floods — destroying diseases and pains. By it the blind saw, the deaf heard, the dead lived, and by it the whole land of darkness was illumined.”[4]

I needed that poetry. I wrestled for hours with how to bring those lines from Syriac into English and by the time I was done, I sat back and read them for myself. It was like God gave me permission to cry and be honest. He was listening. It was creative work after God’s own heart.

This is one of the values of art. Art is a necessary gift that helps us become better truth tellers as we cultivate an imagination for a redeemed world. It might be an opportunity to pen poetry or prose. It might be painting, gardening, wood carving, or scrapbooking. It is a space where we take back agency and reflect rather than react in anxiety because we are learning to create like the God who creates and see the world restored. It gets us in touch with what it means to be a restored image bearer of God.

Conclusion:

As we close our time out this weekend, let’s remember Jesus’ question of which son in this parable has done what pleases his father. It is a call to follow Jesus with integrity and not just to be seen as someone who is following Jesus, or worse, to be seen as someone who has all their doctrine just right. Jesus invites us to ask what gets in the way of following him with integrity. We have to be those who have our need for God’s help at the forefront of our imaginations. We need to keep rhythms of identifying what is broken, telling God about it, and asking for his help to change. This opens us up to the redemptive work of co-creating with God and reimagining the world in the light of the kingdom of God. Take what you’ve learned this weekend together and make some space to reflect on it this week. My prayer is that in being together and doing life together as a community this weekend that God is giving us glimmers of hope that He is at work for our good and for his glory. Please pray with me:

“O merciful Lord, grant to your faithful people pardon and peace, that we may be cleansed from all our sins and serve you with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

[1] René Magritt, “The Treachery of Images”, 1929.

[2] Matthew 23:2-3.

[3] Ezek. 18:2.

[4] Jacob of Sarug, Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Lord’s Prayer, trans. Morgan Reed, Piscataway: Gorgias Press. Lines 57-64.

Ivory Casten 9/13/26 Ivory Casten 9/13/26

Proper 19: Do I Have to Forgive Others?

Readings for September 13

Introduction

Good morning friends. It is great to be with you. I’m Fr. Morgan Reed, the Vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church. Today is our Fall Kickoff Day, which we do each year in early September to mark a welcome back after a long summer. There are a lot of great ways to plug into the life of the church in this season.

If your calendar is anything like mine, it is also a very full season. As the calendars get full, we have more commitments, more responsibilities, more deadlines, and more stress. And when there is stress, there are more disagreements: with coworkers, young children, teenagers, siblings, spouses, coaches, and teachers. When arguments are more frequent we also have more opportunity to pay attention to what is going in inside of us and our stories. Conflict has a way of shining light on the dark places we’d rather keep hidden. Our painful moments are profound moments that have the potential for two different outcomes: they might draw us into the deep and harmful waters of bitterness and resentment or they may draw us into a deeper knowledge of God’s grace and forgiveness. Today’s passage calls us to the latter, where forgiveness is a necessary mark of the community of the followers of Jesus.

Let me pray for us. “In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock, and our redeemer. Amen.”

The forgiveness God grants — vv 21-27

Last week we began a discussion about forgiveness from St. Matthew, chapter 18. Jesus had told the disciples as they follow him and form Messianic communities that pursue the life of the kingdom together, they are to confront one another when sin occurs. This was for the sake of reconciliation and restoring someone fully to their life with God and life with one another. People are more deeply connected when there is conflict, assertion, ownership, forgiveness, and repair — or reconciliation. St. Peter asks a question that logically follows Jesus’ exhortation. “Lord if someone sins against me, how often should I forgive him?” He believes he is being more than generous by saying perhaps he should forgive 7 times.

Jesus goes from generous to ridiculous as he says, “not seven times, but seventy times seven”. Some translations have seventy-seven whereas some have seventy times seven. That is not important. The point is you cannot keep a tally of how often you are to be open to the possibility of forgiveness. The other important point is that the phrase Jesus uses here has been used in one other important place in the Old Testament. When you read Genesis 4 in the LXX, Lamech, who is in the line of Cain, brags to his two wives poetically saying that he killed a man for wounding him. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech, using the same phrase, is avenged “seventy-sevenfold.” It is the same Greek words and construction as what Jesus says here and his point is this. Inasmuch as Lamech was bloodthirsty for power, control, violence and vengeance, so should the follower of Jesus equally be eager to forgive. The desire for vengeance made Lamech less human, but to forgive is to become fully human, free of the hatred and resentment we were not designed to carry.

This is a very bold statement that I’m sure raised a ton of objections and “whataboutisms” from the disciples. Jesus offers a parable to illustrate his point. There is a king who has slaves that are indebted to him for various amounts of money. The slave we are introduced to owes the king ten thousand talents. A talent would have likely been one person’s lifetime worth of wages and the point is that this slave owes more than anyone could possibly pay back even if they had multiple lifetimes. Despite his promise, this slave could never pay this back. The king knows this.

The point was to bring the servant to the place where he is utterly dependent on the king’s mercy, knowing full well that he has debt, and except for the king’s compassion, he will continue in enslavement to pay it off. The parable highlights our deep need for God’s compassion to rescue us. The king forgives him so that he is free to become fully who he is meant to be in his vocation and relationships. He is freed to learn the nature of compassion and bring it to others.

Anecdotally, I remember having a beer with someone after a hard season of conflict with someone else. And I remember saying to them “I know this is bad, but I really desire that this person fail.” This was my desire for vengeance over the way I’d been mistreated. Over time I had to work through how that person hurt me. It took several years, but I did relinquish my desire for vengeance and I could genuinely rejoice when that person succeeded because their life was no longer really bound up with mine. It was time, separation, and a lot of personal work that led me to the place where I could truly forgive and hand God my desire for vengeance. Forgive and forget isn’t a thing. I’ll never forget the harm and disappointment, but I can hate what happened while blessing God for his grace and presence in the midst of it or for what it taught me. We learn to forgive so that we can begin to heal.

The forgiveness we should extend — vv 28-35

The parable doesn’t end there. After having been forgiven, the freed slave goes to his colleague, another slave. This slave owes him a hundred denarii. It isn’t a small amount, perhaps about 3-4 months wages. Unlike the first slave, this is something that can be paid off. He asks for patience. This is a very reasonable amount of money to pay off. But completely ignoring the compassion shown to him, the freed slave puts him into debtor’s prison. Yes, this was legal to do, but not everything legal is ethical and just. This was, in fact, unjust and cruel, despite being legal. Having done this, the king who had originally forgiven the freed slave, now becomes angry, and orders that the freed slave be seized and not only taken in custody, but tortured. Jesus gives his purpose for sharing this extreme parable when he says, “So my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

This is a hard saying, and it is not meant to give us any 1:1 correspondence to the theology of eternal punishment or reward. It is meant to impress on us the gravity of forgiveness as the defining characteristic of the people of God. No one who follows Jesus is exempt from the obligation to forgive, not for others’ sake, but for our own. It sounds simple enough, but we need nuance with what constitutes forgiveness because my fear is that people will say “you have to forgive” when what they actually mean is “Forget it and just get over it.” This is not real forgiveness, and it robs us of the opportunity to grow. I would encourage you to journal and work backwards. Not everything can be traced to a particular person or part of our story, but when we take note with the wise guidance of others then we begin to notice patterns. Perhaps it is a priest, therapist, spiritual director, or all three!

As patterns begin to emerge, we have to begin accepting grace and holding space for healing to take time. Someone once said that in your twenties you had the nagging sense that your parents preferred your sibling to you, but then in your 30s and 40s you discover they really did. The family systems, friendship experiences, church experiences, and other impactful relationships will shape your current relationships in ways that take time to unearth. Go slow. We cannot be rushed into forgiving someone if we haven’t fully named the impacts of harm. Certainly we can forgive along the way for what we have come to understand, but depending on the level of harm, it may take longer to bring the details out and forgiveness will come in stages.

In a group this large, I do not want to gloss over and bypass the real stories of hurt, trauma, abuse, neglect, and wounding. Please don’t hear me say that forgiving is as easy as flipping some mental switch or that you should forget parts of your story. Forgiveness does not mean that we allow abusive people back into our lives without them doing the deep and long work of repentance and amendment of life. Forgiveness does not mean that we refuse to speak ill of the dead. I had a relative that I loved who died, but lived their whole life through the lens of being a victim and it unfairly put me in the place of rescuer when I was a teenager. I had to process the ways that came out sideways in relationships in my 20s and 30s. We aren’t shaming those who harmed us, but we have to name what didn’t go right in order to heal. If forgiveness is our relinquishing the desire for vengeance, then we can delineate that from reconciliation, and restoration. They are different things with different processes and different lengths of time.

Forgiveness heals us because we are releasing the desire for harm and vengeance on others that we are not meant to hold. This is the mechanism by which our deep wounds become scars integrated into the story of grace in our lives that God continues to unfold. God’s forgiveness opened up the possibility of our reconciliation and restoration to life as God intended it to be. It’s up to us to grab hold of it. Similarly, forgiveness is the first step toward reconciliation, but it is not a guarantee. If the offender has a pattern of gaslighting, succumbing to their own unresolved trauma and maladaptive coping strategies, an inability to own what they’ve done wrong, etc., then reconciliation may not be possible. Reconciliation is beautiful, but false reconciliation is destructive, so go very slow and do not push reconciliation before the offender has honestly and deeply repented with authenticity. You might even think of that as causing an infection where otherwise there might have been healing.

This is why it is so important that the church become a community marked by truth-telling, forgiveness, and the blessing of scars. We forgive those who hurt us. We forgive ourselves for what we wished had turned out differently. We need relinquish our resentments for a life we feel is unfair. And although God is big enough to hold onto our rage, which is what the category of lament teaches us, we also need to begin relinquish our resentments against God for what we have come to resent about ourselves, our bodies, our lives, and our world.

Conclusion

God is bringing us into healing and new creation and it is often the profoundly difficult seasons that we point back to that have shaped us. One writer says this, “...We need to forgive those who have hurt us, forgive ourselves for our own failings, forgive life for not being fully fair, and forgive God for seemingly being so indifferent to our wounds. We need to do that before we die because ultimately there is only one moral imperative: not to die an angry, bitter person, but to die with a warm heart.”[1] May our church be a community which receives and lives out forgiveness and where the love of Christ is known and made known. This keeps us tender to one another as we grow in our gratitude for the great gift of mercy that we ourselves have received.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles, “Peace I give to you; my own peace I leave with you”: Regard not our sins, but the faith of your Church, and give to us the peace and unity of that heavenly city, where with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, now and for ever. Amen.

[1] Ronald Rollheiser, Sacred Fire: A Vision For A Deeper Human and Christian Maturity, 259.

Ivory Casten 9/6/26 Ivory Casten 9/6/26

Proper 18: Why Forgiveness is Hard

Readings for September 6

Introduction:

Good morning friends. I’m Fr. Morgan Reed, the Vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church. This morning’s Gospel reading teaches us something very important about how God draws us into life with him. It is a passage that is quite easy to understand, but incredibly difficult to put into practice. It teaches that if we press into productive conflict in Christian community rather than run from it, reconciliation might occur and would become for us a grace in which God delivers us from our worldly attachments and brings us to a fuller maturity in the work of his kingdom.

Kids Sermon:

Kids, I’d love for you to join me up here. How many of you know what these are? These are some of the flowers from our meadow again. I have cut them so they won’t go to seed. What purpose do they serve now?

The longer I hold these flowers in the vase the less valuable they’ll become. If I don’t change the water, but I leave them in here for at least a month, what will happen? That’s right, the water will change colors, the flowers will wilt and the pedals will fall off. It will start to stink. Eventually, not only is it ugly, its smell will begin to permeate the whole room unless I get rid of it.

This isn’t a perfect analogy, but as you grow up, people will make you angry, you will do something to someone that you know you shouldn’t have done and it will make you feel guilty. These emotions are really useful. Anger tunes us in to something that should have gone differently. Guilt can tune us in to what is not safe. Sadness tunes us in to what is really important to us. But when it comes to relationships, when we are hurt, angry, and sad, we can hold the emotion too long so that it becomes resentment or a desire for someone else’s hurt. The longer we hold them, the less helpful the negative emotion becomes. Eventually it starts to permeate other areas of our life if we aren’t careful. Did you know that sometimes if your parents overreact and get really angry at you, it is often telling you about something that they are still angry about that has nothing to do with you? Parents, can I get an ‘Amen’?

Forgiveness happens when we refuse to hold onto our resentments and desire for someone else’s harm any longer. We allow God to hold us and to hold the ways we have felt hurt and sad and angry. God loves to take these things from us and redeem them. Today, Jesus is going to teach his followers how this community of the church is supposed to be a community marked by forgiveness. It is simple to say, but really hard to do. He gives us his help to do it. He forgives us the things we have done wrong when we ask for his help so that we can do the same for others.

Can you please pray with me? “Dear God...thank you ....for a fresh start....when we ask for your help...Help us ...to love others...like you love us...Amen.”

Love by desiring the best for one another (Matt 18)

We see God’s heart of love in the Old Testament today. God does not desire the death of sinners, but that they would turn and live.[1] Our Gospel and New Testament passages continue this theme today by exhorting us to pursue what is best for one another in love. In today’s passage, Jesus gives his disciples a method for thinking about restoration to communal life when someone has sinned against another and the community. The goal is never to ostracize, isolate, and condemn someone. The goal is someone’s healing and restoration. This is why in the very next passage, which we did not read today, Peter asks how many times we need to forgive someone. Certainly 7 should be good enough! But Jesus says, 70x7, in a hyperbolic way of saying that actually the extension of forgiveness from a person who has been forgiven much is actually a hallmark of following our Lord. We should not count the number of times we have forgiven someone. That is far too transactional and limiting.

When Jesus talks about the assembly of faith, it is not like large churches we think about today. In Jesus’ day, a synagogue, or assembly, was often small. The picture here is a cohort of Jesus followers probably no bigger than most of our Formation Groups. When someone in that group has caused an egregious offense, it is hard to hide it. And if someone in that group egregiously sins against another, it is hard to avoid the tension now present in this group. Everyone knows that something is wrong.

He tells them to go directly to the person who caused the offense. Notice how hard that is even though it is simple. It is easier to complain in a veiled way on facebook and create a group of people who will support me against this injustice. It is easer to talk to someone in the group and share my frustrations under the guise of desiring empathy or calling it a prayer request; but actually all I’m doing is indirectly communicating and triangulating. It is costly to have to face someone directly and tell them our experience of harm. This requires us to take stock of what happened in us so that we can name that accurately and name what someone else did that harmed us. If this falls on deaf ears, we are encouraged to bring someone else from the community. The ideal person is not just someone who will agree with us, but someone who will shoot straight and tell both of us hard truth equally. Finally he says to bring the whole community into this if the person who has caused harm refuses to change. The ideal scenario, according to God’s heart, as we have come to understand it, is that this person is drawn back to repentance and following the Lord. When this happens, the bonds of relationship grow deeper. In psychology they call it rupture and repair. Cycles of rupture and repair build stronger relationships. What keeps us from doing this though is how much it costs us. We risk losing a dear friend. I have had to do this and I have lost dear friends, and it is costly. If we have named the harm accurately, and begun to forgive them by relinquishing our resentment, we can approach them with God’s heart for healing. It’s the very way we hope to be approached.

A community marked by this deep authenticity and devotion is still filled with flawed people who will do harm to one another. The question is whether they will stay tender and compassionate. I realize that talking about forgiveness might feel tangential to the passage, but if we cannot forgive, then we run the risk of driving people away from community with our unexamined, harbored, resentments. And right now, as a culture, resentment and hatred are the currency of our social capital. We monetize it, politicize it, weaponize it even sometimes in the name of God. Heaven help us.

Jesus tells us to forgive one another as God forgives us.[2] This is something that characterizes the community of Jesus. Forgiveness opens us up to this amazing possibility that wrath, vengeance, and resentment are not ours to hold. In other words, forgiveness is mostly for our good.

Forgiveness, though, needs some nuance so that it is not weaponized to alleviate the conscience of offenders by papering over real problems. If we ignore real harm, the offender has no possibility of real reconciliation. Forgiveness is difficult because to do it well we have to name harm for what it is. Because of abuse, power differential, or other factors, it may not be wise or safe to confront the person who caused harm. Forgiveness does not mean re-platforming famous preachers or politicians who have caused egregious scandal, and it does not mean trusting an abusive family member again. Trust, responsibility, and forgiveness are not the same.

Jesus’ scenario is not speaking with that kind of nuance. His scenario here is about a two good-willed, Jesus-following people in a community who have a dispute. For example, maybe during the after service prayer time someone shares something with a prayer minister about something deeply personal. Then the prayer minister says something to the person needing prayer that isn’t appropriate. Perhaps they begin to give a bunch of advice rather than actually pray. The person coming for prayer will feel appropriate feelings of shame and anger, perhaps even betrayal. Rather than sit with that resentment, Jesus is giving us permission to say to that person, “what you said felt very out of bounds and I felt deeply hurt.” In an ideal scenario this prayer minister would humbly receive that, be able to speak back the ways this caused harm, and apologize. The person naming the harm has given this person a gift of grace in their boldness and honesty. The person receiving it needs to die to themselves, ask for the Lord’s grace, process it, and then apologize. I’m not exempt. I hurt people too, and in many ways, I am called to exemplify receiving critique, processing it and asking where the Lord is healing me. I remember in another church a long time ago I told someone they couldn’t host a small group because they lived so far away. They were deeply hurt and I didn’t know how deep the offense was that I caused. As a result, I went to their house and sat in their living room with them for two hours, listened to why this was so deeply hurtful, acknowledged how deep the pain was that I’d caused, and genuinely apologized. We were reconciled over time as they learned that I was for their good, but it did take time.

Conclusion:

Our passages today show us a beautiful truth about God’s heart for humanity. He does not long for our destruction, but for our repentance, renewal, and perfect communion. As we live into the grace and forgiveness we have in Christ, we are invited into a courageous and bold witness to the fact that Jesus has good things not only for us, but for others as well. We want what is ultimately good for our brothers and sisters. We are here to bless others and call them into the beauty that Jesus has for them. We grow when we learn to apologize well for the wrongs we’ve done, make restitution, and amend our lives. To long for the good of others we need to learn and practice forgiveness and get good and paying attention to anger, sorrow, and guilt, while at the same time learning to relinquish our resentments and desire for vengeance. This will give us eyes to begin to see ourselves, others, and the world around us as God does.

Let us pray:

O Lord God, grant your people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow you, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

[1] Ezekiel 33:11

[2] Matthew 6:12

Ivory Casten 8/30/26 Ivory Casten 8/30/26

Proper 17: How To Avoid Becoming the Voice of Satan

Readings for August 30

Introduction

Good morning friends. It is wonderful to see you this morning. Last week we heard about St. Peter’s confession. Today the pendulum swings and he gets called Satan by Jesus. What an emotional rollercoaster! It happens because Jesus teaches something that upsets Peter’s deeply held convictions and expectations and this reveals a misalignment in Peter about his will and God’s will; ultimately this becomes an invitation into a deeper relationship with his Lord. I want to invite the kids down now to talk more about it.

Kids sermon

How many of you have worked with clay before? What have you made? As you’re working with the clay, you might have an image in your mind of how something should look, but then as you begin to work with it, it’s not looking like the image in your head. What do you do?

These seeming imperfections are an opportunity to ask what we want it to look like and what we need to do to get it there. Once we get it as we would like it to be, then you have to let it air dry before painting it. After you paint it, then you can fire it in the kiln. Whatever you’ve done with the wet clay will become permanent once it’s fired in the kiln.

Today St. Peter is being reminded that his ideas about Jesus have not yet been fired in the kiln. He himself, and his ideas about who the Messiah should be, are like moldable clay being pressed on, worked, and reshaped. It is easy as you grow older to become crusty old clay, but St. Peter reminds us to stay moldable. He is going to get a stern rebuke from Jesus, but this isn’t meant to shame or isolate him; it is meant to invite him into deeper formation and life with God. You kids are very moldable. I love seeing you wonder at God’s world. We adults have a lot to learn from you about staying moldable. Today’s passage encourages us to take in the lessons that Jesus is teaching us, to be honest with God about our expectations and where they might not be met, and then look for the ways that Jesus wants to help us grow in a deeper vision for who he is.

Would you please pray with me: “Dear God...thank you...for loving us...when things don’t go our way...we trust you...make us more like Jesus...amen.”

1. The move from triumph to unmet expectations (vv 21-22)

Last week we looked at the Gospel passage just before this where St. Peter and the disciples are up in Caesarea Philippi with Jesus. He asks them who they say he is and St. Peter, on behalf of the disciples declares that Jesus is Messiah. Jesus declares Peter to be the rock on which he’ll build his community, the church. That confession is a pivotal point in St. Matthew’s Gospel because it is here we begin the journey to Jerusalem. “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great sufferings at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”[1] You and I are very familiar with the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, but this would not have been familiar to them.

The disciples have seen him proclaim the kingdom and heal people. They expect a king to rule, and reign, to bring God’s justice. They don’t expect the deep paradox that the way to glory is through death on a cross. Passages like Psalms 22 and 66 do hint that the coming Messiah will suffer, but people have not systematically put together how this is possible. The Judaism of Jesus’ day was reconciling if there would be one messiah who would accomplish the suffering for the people and the conquering, or if there might even be two Messiahs: משׁיח בן יושׂפ who would suffer and משׁיח בן דוד who would reign.[2] To the disciples, it is incomprehensible still that Jesus’ reign would come to this.

Because Peter was representing the mind of the other apostles earlier, I think it is likely he is here too. As the spokesman he got all the encouragement earlier, but that is risky because now he will be taking the fall for others’ thoughts. He pulls Jesus aside to talk with him in private. He says to Jesus “God forbid it Lord, this should never happen to you.”[3] Now it is understandable why he says this, but that doesn’t make it right. He has too small of a vision for what Jesus is going to do and the challenging of his assumptions is going to expand his imagination not just for a greater vision of who Jesus is, but what following him looks like.

2. Misalignment: When the foundation becomes a stumbling block (vv. 23) — Bring in Jeremiah

Because Peter is acting as a spokesman for the disciples, Jesus rebuffs him publicly in front of the disciples, despite Peter’s attempt to pull him aside. Jesus says to him, “Get behind me Satan!” This reminds us of Jesus’ third test in the wilderness where Satan offered him the glories of the earthly kingdoms if he would skip over the suffering involved. Peter’s voice became the voice of Satan, not because he worshiped Satan, but because he allowed his mind and heart to be caught up in human and earthly affairs rather than keeping heaven’s perspective.

Jesus calls him a stumbling block and the irony should not be lost on us that the rock is now a rock of stumbling. This is a good warning to us of why we need St. Paul’s reminder in Romans 12 this morning not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we might discern what the will of God is. It doesn’t say that the will of God is easy to imagine or comprehend, the path of least resistance, or even logically deduced; it does, however, say that God’s will is good, acceptable, and perfect.

We don’t become the voice of Satan to one another because we long to disobey God or follow something evil. We become the voice of Satan often because we’re spiritually negligent, held down by unhealthy patterns of trauma and family systems that go unexamined, have a tight grip and high control grid for how our world should be and how others should exist be in our world; we try to keep ourselves safe, but actually we are perceiving God’s world incorrectly, and often times this results in self-condemnation, unwittingly cursing others, immaturity, and not seeing the world as God does. This happens in friendship, in marriage, at work, in relationships within the church. It is endemic to humanity because we have an enemy who seeks to keep us from becoming fully human by following our Lord. The good news for Peter and for us is that stones of stumbling can get picked up again and by the grace of God put back into the walls of the temple of the people of God.

I’ll give an example. I’m actually motivated to achieve when people tell me I cannot do something. My attitude is “forget you...I’ll show you” because I do not like to fail and I refuse to look incompetent. That has a good side and shadow side. Sometimes, without being aware of it I take on other’s failures to achieve as my own, because if they achieve, then I look competent. It is under the surface whether I’m leading a staff team or coaching baseball. When someone isn’t doing well I am dysregulated and as a result I will likely overreact to someone’s failures and rob them of the opportunity to learn. I have had to work on the phrase “tell me what you learned” as a way to regulate myself so that I can bless them with the voice of God rather than curse them with the voice of Satan and try to control outcomes so that I make myself feel better. We all have things like this we need to work on. Where do we curse because we are trying to control our world? This is an opportunity for repentance and the renewing of our minds.

Suffering and crises do not mean that we are outside of God’s will. In fact these might just be the pivotal points of growth where God will shape our imagination for His kingdom. We do often miss the kingdom because of our story, proclivities, or negligence. God’s grace is available to deepen us in relationship with him. Glory will come, but it is through the suffering of the cross. The community that Jesus was building on the rock is one that is marked by bearing the cross.

There is something communal and cooperative to our salvation, especially in Romans 12. As you understand your gifts and proclivities, do the hard work of repentance and transformation, you are uniquely equipped to build up others in love. This involves considering others to be a part of your life, belonging one to another, when it is inconvenient and hard. And yet we need one another. This is what bearing our cross means in the kind of community that St. Paul envisions in Romans 12.

Conclusion:

Our moments of suffering and pain are the pivotal moments that invite us to deeper growth. Peter could have walked away angry and learned nothing, but grown deeper in bitterness. Instead he received Jesus’ grace and learned more about the kingdom. I heard an interview once where someone asked why people get more bitter when they get older and the speaker said “I don’t understand. People don’t get bitter when they get older. People get bitter, then they just get older.” In other words, age amplifies our current formation. Are we renewing our minds through repentance and receiving grace?

The community that Jesus began continued through the work of the apostles. It is a community marked by grace, forgiveness, and restoration. We are called to the daily renewal of our minds, to attune our thinking to the will of God. And we know that we will fail at times, so we when do, we need to accept God’s grace for ourselves, and relinquish our resentments to prefer forgiveness as we name things accurately and trust Jesus to heal the wounds. It is through the pivotal moments of suffering in faithfulness that we will come to a deeper knowledge of Jesus and his kingdom.

Let us pray:

O Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow after us, that we may continually be given to good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

[1] Matt 16:21

[2] Cf. 4Q372, Talmud Sanhedrin 98a-99a.

[3] v 22.

Ivory Casten 8/23/26 Ivory Casten 8/23/26

Proper 16: The Church, Stewards of Paradise

Readings for August 23

Introduction

Good morning dear friends. It is great to be with you all on this final day of summer vacation. Many of you will be entering new rhythms and a new reality tomorrow. You will learn new things, some things will be really fun and some will be really challenging, but in it all, Jesus goes with you. The disciples in our Gospel passage today were being taught something very important that would carry them through the rest of Jesus’ ministry, even when things did not go as they thought they would. The disciples will confess Jesus as the Messiah and learn about what he is building. They’ll also discover that their call is to so know heaven’s reality, that they steward its resources for building up the community where heaven is supposed to be experienced, the church. This is our call as well, which we’ll look at together. And now I want to invite the kids up...

Kids sermon

Good morning friends. Can anyone tell me what a key is for? Can I just shove any key in any lock? What happens? Who wants to guess what all these keys are for?

What do keys represent? For example, my keys can get me into the church office which provides me a place to prepare sermons, gather supplies for cookouts, hear confessions, etc. A key can open the prayer box, where I read someone’s prayer request and follow up with them to see how they’re doing. My key opens my house, where I sleep, cook, eat, workout, and have family time. Keys unlock opportunities for heaven’s realities. Have any of you been part of a house blessing? What do we do for those?

A house blessing reminds us that the miraculous, transformative work of the kingdom of heaven most often happens in the very mundane. We just need to attune our imagination to it. In Jesus, you and I have been given keys to see God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. When we follow Jesus and trust him, we are invited to see God’s work happen in our ordinary days, but we need to be looking for it. We can do this by asking him for help and for giving him thanks for the good gifts he gives us. And as we see Jesus at work, we can share that gift with others. That is our responsibility because we hold the keys. Would you please pray with me?

“Dear God...thank you...for your work...in our lives...through Jesus... You are with us...and you love us...Help us...as we start new rhythms this week...amen.”

13-15 Jesus sets them up with what they need for what’s coming up

The story we get to today is a pivotal one in the story of Matthew. Jesus has had a lot of public ministry in the north, in Galilee. Today’s passage takes him and the disciples away from the crowds, away from the noise, because Jesus has a very important thing he wants to share with them. Jesus, in St. Matthew’s Gospel, never comes out and says publicly, “hi everyone, it’s me...The Messiah”. A self-declaration would make him public enemy number one of the secular and religious authorities.

And yet, after this story, in St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus begins the journey toward Jerusalem. The disciples will need to know who Jesus is when things don’t turn out as they expected. Jesus knows this, and he is preparing them with what they need for what is to come.

Jesus and his disciples get to a mountain up in Caesarea Philippi and Jesus asks them, “Who do people say that I am?” Some thought he was a prophet: John the Baptist, Elijah, or Jeremiah. But Jesus’ ministry was more than prophetic. Jesus will expect his disciples to have a better answer, even though they may not know the full implication of their answer.

Pay attention to the moments where we are faced with the question of who Jesus is. These are often moments of preparation. People have all kinds of expectations on Jesus. Here are some examples: “if we do things the right way, then he won’t let us fail.” “Jesus is a warrior” “Jesus said not to make any judgments on people”. Jesus will be no one’s political prop or a puppet for one’s own internal authority. The reality is much more nuanced. Jesus is Lord and creator and good. We cannot make good policy without centering the image of God in all people. We have to make judgments about just and unjust, good and harmful. As men and women are both made equally in God’s image we cannot honor manhood without equally honoring womanhood. Jesus will frustrate all of our incomplete and culturally constructed images of him. This is why we must read with the whole of tradition across time and geography. The disciples of Jesus have to have a better and more nuanced answer than the crowds. We must have a higher view of Jesus than any subculture’s caricature.

16-17 Peter’s confession is the confession of the church

Peter’s confession should be ours as well. He is a spokesman for the disciples, and when asked who they think he is, he says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of God.” This is what Jesus wants them to understand while they’re on the mountain because they are about to see some things that will shake all of their expectations for what the Messiah will be. This brings together the language of 2 Samuel 7:14 with the anointing of David as king with the enthronement language of Psalm 2:7. This is language of adoption and sonship, which was very commonly used with divine enthronement. Caesar, Herod, and the temple authorities better watch their backs.

It is a bold declaration and Jesus tells Peter that this truth would not have been revealed to him without the work of God. Heaven is beginning to break into the life of the disciples. Isaiah 51 is what we read for the Old Testament today and it was written to the exiles in Babylon. God says that he will console Zion in this time where his people have been wrecked because of sin and idolatry, taken into what feels like the undoing of creation in chaos once again. What seems like wastelands will become again like the garden of Eden. The arid valleys that are dusty and unproductive will become once again like the garden of the Lord.[1] Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ means that God’s people look forward to paradise where they are abundantly supplied, where creation is ordered for their well-being, and where communion with God is unobstructed. The whole earth will become for them a temple, a thin place where heaven and earth meet.

18-20 Peter leads the way for the church to bring heaven to earth

Jesus is not going to build an actual temple or literal city, but a community whose allegiance is to Jesus the Messiah, a community that becomes the place where heaven is brought to bear upon earth. Peter says that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus functionally says to Peter, “Yes, I am Messiah, and you, my friend are the rock; the rock on which I will build this community.” This historically is played out in the history of the church. St. Peter is the leader among the disciples and when we read the book of Acts. He is there to ratify the movements of the Holy Spirit in building the church, including the Samaritans and the Gentiles. He has a prominent place in the church of Jerusalem until James eventually leads.

The gates of Hades would not prevail against this community. This is a poetic way of referring to death itself, which is how it’s used in Isa 38:10. Death will not prevail or stop God’s work through the Messiah or through his disciples. And Peter, in this context is said to bind and loose. The imagery is not of Peter standing at the gates of heaven and unlocking it for people, contrary to popular imagination. The imagery is one of stewardship, as though St. Peter is like a a chief administrator who unlocks granaries and storehouses and locks them based on the need of those who come. This continues to be the church’s task after St. Peter. We give to others the healing we ourselves have received. This is the logic of the confession liturgy. The priest is merely an imperfect agent of the church.

I will say that hearing confessions is one of my favorite parts of ministry. As I sit with someone and we ask questions together about what the Lord is doing and why certain things have come to light as particular roadblocks and places of stumbling, it is the beautiful time where the church helps someone dig deeper into their stories and proclivities, help shape someone’s faith through wise counsel and historic rhythms, and proclaim the absolution that Jesus offers. It is an earthly moment of heavenly reality.

Conclusion:

We all carry with us the apostolic call to become the kind of community that reflects the heavenly reality of the church. This means that we live in allegiance to Christ and seek Christ’s peace and welfare for others. The confession made at Caesarea Philippi is the confession of the church, the agent of God’s re-creating the world; the people of God are becoming the place where heaven is restoring earth. You and I get to be part of the process of bringing paradise and refreshment, and the unrestrained communion with God that creation is groaning for. Consider the week ahead, the new people you’ll meet, the new rhythms that will be part of your calendar, and let’s just take a moment in silence to ask the Lord this question: Lord, where do I need your help this week and who do I know that needs your help too?” I’ll close our silence with a prayer in just a moment.

Let us pray:

Gracious Father, we pray for your holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ your Son our Savior. Amen.

[1] Isaiah 51:1-3.

Ivory Casten 8/16/26 Ivory Casten 8/16/26

Proper 15: Derailments and the Path to Grace

Readings for August 16

Introduction

Good morning friends. It is wonderful to be with you. I’m Fr. Morgan Reed, the Vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church. In our passage today, Jesus has an encounter with a Gentile woman. The way Jesus talks to this woman sounds potentially rude, possibly even racist, but it is neither. His intent was not to exclude the Canaanite woman, but to draw her into deeper life in the kingdom of God.

Kids sermon

I want to invite the kids up with me for our kids sermon.

Anyone here ever heard of grafting? What is it?

I happen to have everything we are going to need for it here. [Show them how to do it]. It doesn’t work with every tree, but it will work with trees of the same family, like stone fruits: cherries, apricots, plums, etc...anything with a pit. Someone actually created a tree of 40 fruits in New York to preserve some older and more rare varietals of stone fruit that had been grown in North America before we depended on supermarkets so much.[1]

When you graft things in, nutrients are taken from the roots of the original tree, come up through the original stump, and then produce new fruit. St. Paul talks about this today in our Romans passage. God’s people had by and large been rejecting Jesus as the Messiah and the result of this was that God was cutting off the original branches in order to graft in new branches, nourished by the same root system. We get to hear about that today in our gospel passage. The good news for us is that God saved Israel in order to save all the nations and you and I are a part of that work. Through faith in Jesus, we are grafted in and given life to live out God’s love for the good of the world around us. You and I are a part of what God is doing and he loves you.

Please pray with me: “Dear God...thank you...for loving us...and for Jesus...who died and rose again...to give us new life...thank you...for making us...into a new people...amen.”

• Jesus is interrupted during his retreat — Interruptions are the ministry (21-23)

Our passage begins with Jesus leaving the place where he was to go to the district of Tyre and Sidon. The Gentile regions were not on his calendar for preaching. He is going away to be with his disciples: away from the crowds and away from the opposition. The time of rest comes to an end when a distraught woman comes to him and his disciples.

The text says she is a Canaanite. Canaanite is not an ethnic term in Jesus’ day. Canaanite is an historic and theological identity as an enemy of God’s people. And yet, this woman, when something deeply troubling happens in her life, has the internal sense that she can come to this Jewish Messiah.

Her daughter is tormented by a demon, she is beside herself with fear, and she knows enough about Judaism to recognize Jesus could help. She calls out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David...” She seems to have come to understood that if this Judean Messiah comes, then his deliverance means mercy for the nations. A Canaanite woman receiving the mercy of God would present a compelling case that God’s kingdom for his people would be for the good of all people. It would be a kingdom entered into by faith and not merely family lineage.

But the strange thing is, in this case, her pleas are met with silence from Jesus and annoyance by the disciples. He doesn’t answer her at all. I see the silence of Jesus here not rejection, but an invitation to clarify her longing. The Canaanite woman reminds me not to pass too quickly over what I might perceive as difficult distractions, inconveniences, and annoyances. The disciples may have perceived her as derailing them from God’s real work, but she and her daughter were God’s work. The things that might feel like a distraction from the work, if we would pay attention to God’s work in them, will invite us to a deeper vision of the kingdom of God.

• Israel’s salvation was meant to be for the good of the world (24-28)

Jesus is silent and the disciples are annoyed. They believe he can heal, but they don’t believe this person is worth their time. This will become an opportunity for a mercy that would stretch their imaginations for what the kingdom of God would be. Israel’s salvation was supposed to mean the salvation of the nations around them. This was the vision of the Old Testament as well. Isaiah 56, which we read today, speaks of foreigners, “And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer...”[2]

St. Paul in our passage in Romans 11 talks about a tree that natural branches were broken off of and wild olives were grafted in. St. Paul’s warning to the Romans is that the natural branches, the Jewish people, had seemingly rejected the Messiah; not all of them of course, but its not like a majority were following Jesus. And God is then said to have broken off the natural branches to graft in the Gentiles who would now be nourished by the same trunk and root system: one tree, one people, to carry on the call to Israel in this new covenant. The Old Covenant must be held in honor as something that nourishes and flows into the New Covenant, it is not a dismantling of the old covenant for a new gentile religion.

Jesus knows that salvation will come to the Gentiles from his Scriptures, and I think he is drawing this reality out of the situation with some pointed statements for the woman. He says “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” His statement ratchets up the intensity and she kneels before him and says “Lord, help me.” He says, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” This is not at all flattering, in fact it feels quite cruel, but the point isn’t to insult or shame her, it is to test her grasp of what her ask really involves.

It kind of reminds me of a coach who might say “Do you want to win today?” And the team says “yes”. Then he says “I don’t believe you.” So they yell “yes” even louder. Then the coach might say “Go run a mile, get back here and do 20 push ups and show me how much you want to win.” So the team does it. He isn’t disbelieving them or discouraging them, he is teasing out the intensity of their longing — Do they know what they are asking for and what it will take to get there? The test proves to the suppliant how much they want what they’re asking for.

The woman cleverly turns Jesus’ statement on its head and says that even the dogs eat crumbs that fall from the master’s table.[3] She understands the implication that the Jews are the children of God and that the Gentiles are not. And yet, she has the humility to say that she too needs nourished by the hand of the God of the Jews. She articulates the fact that the deliverance of Israel was meant for the deliverance of all. This woman has come with a good desire, faith, and the resolve to wrestle with God. And the result is that Jesus says, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done as you wish.” And the daughter was healed instantly.[4] The qualifier of great faith is said of no one else by Jesus except this woman. Perhaps this is why one writer in the church’s history calls her the mother of the Gentiles.[5]

Good desire, faith, and a resolve to wrestle with God over his promises and your reality is great faith. I’m grateful that this was included for us as a prayer in our Eucharist liturgy: “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table, but you are the same Lord whose character is always to have mercy.” One person told me once that they hated this part and they refused to say it because it sounded like groveling; however, remember the context of the woman’s words. What she confesses is that she is in need of God’s merciful help and wrestles with God in dialogue because the things he promised and the things she’s experiencing are not aligned. We too come to God with the desire for goodness, faith in God’s work, and the disposition to wrestle with God’s promises and our current realities. The prayer draws out the intensity of our longing rather than making us cower in groveling shame. As a community, we need to continue to welcome one another into our lives, showing hospitality and love to the end that we grow by wrestling with God with one another. Who feels outside to you this morning? And what would it look like to open our lives to those who feel other and discover the mystery of the kingdom? Jesus’ disposition is invitation, even if on the surface today it felt like rejection.

Conclusion:

Today’s passages remind us that God is saving a people for the good of others. The things that might feel like frustrating distractions and bumps on the path might just be the very things that God uses to bring about his kingdom work if we are attentive to them. This passage reminds us that as we pay attention to the kingdom, we come like this mother of the Gentiles with a faith that produces good for others, a great faith that is persistent and wrestles, and a faith that humbly sees our need for God’s help.

Let us pray:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

[1] https://www.samvanaken.com/tree-of-40-fruit-2

[2] Isa 56:6-7.

[3] Matthew 15:27

[4] Matthew 15:28

[5] Epiphanius the Latin: Manlio Simonetti, ed., Matthew 14-28 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture; Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2002), 27.

Ivory Casten 8/9/26 Ivory Casten 8/9/26

Proper 14: God Sits Enthroned Over the Chaos

Readings for August 9

Intro:

Good morning friends. It is so great to be back with you. It was good to have a time to rest up and recuperate. I’m so glad that you got to meet my friends, Fr. David Griffin, two weeks ago, and Fr. TJ Ono, last week. Thank you for welcoming them. They really enjoyed being with you. This week I wanted to look at our Psalm passage together. Psalm 29, which we prayed together today, presents God’s kingship as terrifying thunderstorm and beautiful comfort. God will not let his work and fame be challenged by any lesser idea, god, or person who promises salvation. He will ultimately subdue chaos, and give his people the strength and peace they need for transform and to see His Kingdom come. As we look at Psalm 29, I want to invite the kids to come up.

Kids sermon:

How many of you have drink coasters in your home? Why do you have them?

When Ashley and I were first married we lived in Chicago in a little apartment. As a housewarming gift we received some coffee coasters from a local Christian bookstore. They had this black, glossy finish, with words like “faith”, “hope”, “love”, etc. The funny thing is, the more we put hot cups on them, the more scratched up they got. The damage continued as the plastic coating on the top began to start peeling. I scraped at one of them a bit more and realized that the veneer of faith, hope, and love, was only held on there with the plastic seal. I scraped it off to reveal a beautiful painted chicken underneath. Ha! Once this seal came off it never got scratched up again. Someone had taken a perfectly good coffee coaster and cheaply pasted a christian veneer on the outside. The hot cup’s heat would not be outdone by the plastic coating.

Today’s Psalm portrays God as a thunderstorm, destroying all kinds of things that people are tempted to worship or the things their false gods needed to use to survive: cheap finishes thrown onto what we really need. God’s voice shows up in this poem 7 times like peals of thunder and the idea is that God is never ultimately unresponsive. He will make his voice known and his plan will be accomplished. Sometimes we get off track and go down the wrong path because we love the wrong things too much, or someone tells us lies about ourselves or the world around us and we believe it. And because of these things we find ourselves overwhelmed by the chaos of bad outcomes even with all our good intentions, the weight of lies we have to keep up and keep track of, and the discouragement we might feel when we try to become good and virtuous when unhealthy people around us might call it ignorant, uncool, or shameful. But despite the chaos, God shows up and reminds us that he loves us, and the pain of getting rid of the wrong things will give way to God producing good things in us. Ultimately, he is conquering the chaos of sin and death in this world and in our lives. My constant hot cups of coffee would burn away the veneer of “nice Christian sayings” to reveal something more stable, good, and lasting. God too will show up, and when he does, what is ultimately good and beautiful will be made known. Would you please pray with me:

“Dear God...when we are scared...we can trust in you...take away the things...we trust in...that are not...worthy of you...and make us more like Jesus...Thank you...for your love for us...Amen.”

1. God will be over all and in all (1-9)

In Psalm 28, the Psalmist demanded that God not remain silent. Psalm 29 answers back with the voice of YHWH showing up 7 times. [Psalm 28:1]. The BCP and other english versions tone down what’s happening by translating the addressees as “the mighty” or “mighty ones”; however, these are deities, literally sons of the gods! This phrase shows up in Scripture in a number of places to refer to deities, dead heroes, and other things that are supernatural. [This comes from the language of the divine council of YHWH. See Gen 6:2,4; Job 1:6; 2:2; Job 38:7; Ps 89:7; Deut 32:8.] Israel would eventually come to be truly monotheistic, but at least in this point in its history, the people are at best, henotheistic, believing that YHWH is the supreme God, but that other gods like Amun, Hadad, and Baal still exist. This is precisely why the prophets rise up all the time to tell them to put away their idols!

The themes of this Psalm are set against the backdrop the theology of the Baal myths in popular Ugaritic, or Canaanite, theology: Baal was the Canaanite storm god who rides on the clouds, who clutches lightning. It is Baal that is worshiped in order to bring rain and given thanks when the rain comes for the flourishing of the harvest. In Psalm 29, Baal is just another worshiper in YHWH’s heavenly worship, “Ascribe to YHWH, you sons of gods, ascribe to YHWH glory and strength. Ascribe to YHWH the glory that is due his name. Bow down to YHWH in holy splendor.” This Psalm invites us into the both the beauty and the holiness of YHWH as king. The world that God made has been filled with sin and destruction, but God will restore it and God’s people would do well to pay attention to God’s ongoing work of re-creation both in worship and in the phenomena of nature.

God was victorious over the floodwaters of primeval chaos in the creation of the world and Psalm 29 invites us to reimagine this victory through the imagery of a thunderstorm. The thunderstorm sweeps in from the Mediterranean over northern Canaan. God will not remain silent. His voice is referred to seven times in this poem, like thunder-peals showing God’s absolute power and presence as an answer to the supposed silence. The voice breaks the cedars of Lebanon. These trees were needed by the gods to build the houses in which they dwell. YHWH is unconcerned about this. The lightning scares off the animals and makes the mountains quake. The storm moves from northern Canaan south into the wilderness. God’s power rules even over the vast wastelands where demons dwell, lands which long ago forgot humanity and humanity long ago left it behind. In the places long forgotten where demons seem to dwell and retain power, God is at work to subdue the chaos, if we would listen for his voice.

This passage challenges us to pay attention to the work of God in worship and in creation. What gets in the way of discovering the kingdom is often our own busyness, the false narratives we hold to in order to sustain that busyness, and the gods of money and power that we often unwittingly worship. One time I was on a hike with Cole and it was the time of Spring where the Virginia peepers were croaking incessantly. We heard them, but as we kept moving, the sound went away. They were still there, but they were hiding. Eventually we stopped walking and just listened. There they were again. We stopped and paid attention and their loud peeps reminded us that they were still alive and strong. God is the one who subdues the anti-creation forces that war against us. Jesus did it in his death and resurrection, and has given the Spirit to continue the kingdom work which destroys our false pretenses, wayward affections, and the gods we’ve created. His glorious thundering presence isn’t one ultimately of destruction, but a life-giving force of goodness, subduing that which is set against our healing. The Spirit is at work, we don’t have to manifest it or create it, we just have to pay attention to it.

2. God is kind and his goal is to grant strength and peace to his people.

The final thunder-peal of verse 9 moves us back to God’s throne-room where all cry “Glory”! God’s kingship has a goal, which is that his strength and peace are present and put on display in his people.

A good question to sit with is this “Today, or in this season of our life, what causes us the most emotional and spiritual turbulence?” Is this the anxiety about a new grade or new school in a few weeks? Is this the death of a loved one or a chronic health issue? Is this an unresolvable conflict in a relationship or the painful disappointment or realizing our life is half over and we wished we’d accomplished more? Is this the worrying dehumanization we see in political discourse or the current affairs we are reading in the news? There are many so-called solutions and false gods we might be tempted to run to for help, but what we will discover in them is actually chaos; they are anti-creation, and something that makes us less human as image-bearers of the divine king.

The Gospel passage today gives us an incarnate picture of this God. Peter walks out onto the water at the command of Jesus in a storm. [Matt 14:22-23]. Jesus is unaffected by the turbulence and chaos and Peter joins him. Peter takes his sight off Jesus for a moment and starts to sink. Jesus is undeterred by the storm on the sea or by the storm inside Peter. Instead, he reaches down in compassion and lifts him up out of the chaos. He reminds Peter of his lack of faith and asks why he doubted, but this does not deter him from rescue. Peter is lifted out of the chaos and when they get into the boat, the storm ceases. Jesus is YHWH who subdues the chaos: the chaos out there and the chaos in here.

Conclusion

The God at work in creation, who orders the chaos, is the God who provides the strength and peace his people need. He is also the God who looks at us with compassion, and reminds us that despite our times of inner chaos and doubt, our desire to be rescued is enough and he will reach out his hand and calm the storm outside and within. We, of all people, should be the most calm, unaffected, and differentiated because we pay attention to and worship the thunderous and mighty God whose voice breaks the cedars and stills the waters of chaos. When your senses get dull, take up Psalm 29 and let it be your prayer to help you see, feel, hear, know, and sense the God who subdues chaos, rules over all, and in whom all things will be made new.

Let us pray:

“Almighty God, our strong tower of defense in time of trouble: We offer you praise and heartfelt thanks for our deliverance from the dangers which lately surrounded us and for your gracious gift of peace. We confess that your goodness alone has preserved us; and we ask you still to continue your mercies toward us, that we may always know and acknowledge you as our Savior and mighty Deliverer; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Ivory Casten 7/19/26 Ivory Casten 7/19/26

Proper 11: Patience for the Good Work of God

Readings for July 19

Introduction

Good morning friends. It is great to see you this morning. This morning’s passage from the Gospel is another agricultural metaphor, but with quite a different purpose than the parable of the soils, which was the Gospel passage last week. This week highlights God’s kindness, mercy, and his patience as he invites people into life in the kingdom of God. The way to discover a good spiritual harvest in this passage is through patience to look for what is ultimately good and beautiful versus what is ultimately harmful. I want to invite the kids down now for our kids sermon.

1) Kids Sermon

Hey everyone. I know that we have talked a lot about plants lately. I have one more to consider today and then I’ll move off of plants when I get back from vacation.

I want you to look up at the screen with me. Does anyone know what seedlings we might be looking at here? [Let them answer] On the left, the one with the finger, this is a common carrot. Once it is fully grown, you can pull it out of the ground, wash it, and eat it. The one in the middle is wild carrot, or Queen Anne’s Lace. It is mildly toxic. But the one on the right is called Hog Weed, or poison hemlock. It looks deceptively like a carrot, and it’s related to it, but every part of that plant is poisonous. Can you imagine being a farmer who sells their carrots to the market to make a living, and have someone mess with your crop? Imagine that in the middle of the night someone came in and took seeds from poison hemlock and queen anne’s lace after you had just finished sowing your carrot seeds and then the queen anne’s lace and hemlock both grew in with your carrots. That would be absolutely devastating!

What if, after about a month, the farmer notices that not all the plants are the same? What is the risk if they start pulling things at that point? That’s right! They might pull out the actual carrots with the other things. This means the farmer will lose money. If the farmer would wait, they will be able to figure it out. Queen Anne’s lace will flower after about 2-3 months. Poison hemlock and carrots both take over a year to go to flower. But in that time, the poison hemlock stems will start to turn purple and the leaves will become big and broad. The farmer’s patience will pay off. If they can wait 6 months to a year, they can eradicate the wrong plants so that their harvest can still be plentiful.

We often want things to go our way right now. But it is through patience, in waiting, that God is at work. Sometimes we go through really difficult things and we just wish God would make them better already. Jesus’ disciples felt that way too. Would the kingdom just come already!?! Jesus is reminding them, and us, of God’s kindness and our need for patience. God is at work even when we don’t understand it in ways we may never fully be aware of. What we perceive as slowness is God’s kindness at work, drawing people to himself. And because God is at work, we need to trust Him even when things didn’t go how we thought they would. The disciples of Jesus were to look to Jesus in their waiting and keep growing in their relationship with him. This is the same call for each one of us as well. Please pray with me: “Dear God...thank you...for your mercy...you give good gifts...and when we don’t understand...all that is happening...we know you are working...for our good...thank you...that you are with us...and that you love us. Amen.”

2) God’s Patience is Merciful (cf. OT and Psalm) (vv 24-30 and the other parables afterward)

In today’s parable about the kingdom of God, Jesus tells us about someone who sows good seed in a field, but then when everyone is sleeping, an enemy comes and sows weeds. These are not just any weeds, but they are likely darnel, which looks exactly like wheat until the heads of the grain form. If darnel gets mixed in with the wheat, it will ruin someone’s crop. Even though it looks like wheat, darnel is actually toxic and can make you quite sick.

The slaves of the household, understandably, want to pluck it, but the problem is that in trying to get rid of the darnel they risk losing some of the wheat crop as well. Instead, the master says to let the two grow up together. Essentially, once they mature, they will see exactly which is which. Then the reapers will be called and will separate the wheat from the darnel and store the pile of wheat in the barn. They will take the pile of darnel to be burned.

The slaves’ question is helpful in understanding why Jesus tells the parable. They say “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where then, did these weeds come from?”[1] It gets to deeper human questions: “Why did you put this cruel person in my life?” Or “Why do tyrants still rule over people?” Or, “Why do good, hard working people, get exploited?” Or “How could you allow me to go through that awful situation in which I was so harmed?” Or even, “Why can’t I be healed?” These are good questions that God is big enough to hold for us.

Jesus isn’t providing answers for the “why”, but acknowledges the real and spiritual reality that the Lord, which he laters refers to as the Son of Man as a way to refer to himself, has planted good things. God gives good gifts and makes things good. When creation is described in Genesis it is described as good. In the Syriac translation of the Old Testament they translated it with a word that has semantic overlap between good and beautiful. I like thinking about what God does for us and in us as ultimately good and beautiful.

But that beauty is always growing up next to things cruel and destructive. The enemy of humanity sows counterfeit and toxic weeds next to good wheat. That which is most subtly wrong, what might even appear beautiful at first, is the most diabolically wrong because it is the enemy of what is truly beautiful. These weeds can be people who look like they’ve got it all together, but to try to imitate them is to bring about death. The weeds might be that we should defy our aging and changing bodies to pursue vain beauty. They might be messages about how we should be doing more, or that we should be better off by this point. These might be subtle messages that promise the kingdom and salvation, but don’t ultimately produce the freedom promised. We can see this on a grand scale with leaders who lie and make up problems that don’t exist so that they alone can fix them in order to stoke fear and anger and garner support.

We can see it in good desires gone awry — which is also diabolically subtle. For example, it is a good desire to have children; it would be harmful to desire children in order to fight a culture war or have someone to take care of your needs. It is good to desire a relationship with others, but not at the price of cutting off part of yourself to please them. Good desires misapplied fall short of what is truly good and beautiful. It is a good desire to see God’s kingdom, but the subtly diabolical lie is that it must happen right now in my time and by my power. This is fear and power that circumvents the patience necessary to see God at work.

This passage speaks directly to fear. The disciples may wonder if this is the time to take up arms and fight for the kingdom. There were certainly militaristic groups of Jews at the ready for it! If we take up arms at every injustice we will live in constant fear and exhaustion, and miss the opportunity to see what God does in his patience. There are several times in the Old Testament where God is called the one who is long-suffering and patient, showing mercy and compassion, etc. His character functions like a creed that forms the foundation for the covenant he made with his people. His compassion, mercy, and patience are the guiding principle of his working. He ultimately wants renewal through repentance, and not destruction and separation.

3) God’s glory will be revealed in renewed humanity (cf. Romans 8) (vv 34-43)

While the central theme of this parable is patience, the other part is that there is hope for the renewal of mankind. What God plants is truly good and beautiful. When Jesus explains the parable he says that the one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, an allusion to God’s restorative work in Daniel 12. Patience is necessary to hang on long enough to see God’s mercy at work. God won’t ultimately let evil win, nor will his work be rushed by us. I do often wish that God would work on my schedule, but transformation is often slow, happening at the speed of restored relationships. God leads with mercy. He is a kind parent. NT Wright says this beautifully: “God is not a sadistic monster who would happily consign most of his beloved, image-bearing creatures to eternal fire. But there are equal and opposite caricatures we should also beware of. God is not an indulgent grandparent determined to spoil the youngsters rotten by letting them do whatever they like and still giving them sweets at the end of the day. We must refuse the second just as firmly as the first.”[2] We can come to our patient God who longs to meet us with his mercy and transformation. He sows good things and his nature is to love his good creation.

Conclusion

Today’s passage is an encouragement for us to discern God’s beautiful and good work with patience. Sometimes things or people spring up who are opposed to what is ultimately good and beautiful. Rather than being immediately reactive, we need to be prayerfully responsive. This requires patience and trust to see what the Lord will do. At the same time, be aware of subtly diabolical work in this world that is set on destroying the good work of God. The best way to expose what is good and beautiful versus what is subtly destructive is stay prayerfully aware of the work of Jesus. In the hard work of patiently enduring and looking for Jesus, God is slowly transforming us into a people who gloriously bear his image.

Let us pray:

O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

[1] Matt 13:27

[2] Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-15 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 173.

Ivory Casten 7/12/26 Ivory Casten 7/12/26

Proper 10: The Heritage of the Suffering Servant

Readings for July 12

Introduction

Good morning friends. Today we read a beautiful passage from the book of Isaiah which I’d like to unpack for us today. You’ve probably heard parts of it quoted in the New Testament, but I want to see it in its context. The passage raises questions we often ask, like “Is working this hard and not seeing any outcome really God’s will?” Or “Why do I feel so spiritually dry and the Lord feels so far away?” The passage is all about the goodness of life promised by God sitting juxtaposed with the reality of the muck we’re in at the moment. I want to invite the kids up for our kids sermon.

1) Kid’s sermon

How many of you have heard that song “I’ve got peace like a river”? Can you sing it with me? [sing] Have you ever thought about what that means? Why are rivers peaceful?

On the one hand, it is a peaceful thing for us to sit next to something beautiful we cannot control. If we are talking about our passage though, rivers do much more than just create beauty. They provide what is necessary to make things grow. Can anything grow in this dirt? Why not? [Hold up dry dirt and let a child pour water into it.] How about now? What will happen if the dirt gets too dry again? What would happen if we continued to consistently water it? There is so much about God and rivers in the Bible. In our Psalm passage we heard the phrase “the river of God is full of water, to provide the people with grain”. They counted on healthy rivers and streams for life. Our passage in Isaiah 55 today starts with this verse: “Look! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.” We need God’s wisdom for our lives like the thirsty ground needs water.

Over time if we try to do things on our own, our hearts can grow hard, but God has planted the seeds of the kingdom of God, of new creation, in our hearts. When we come and seek Jesus, ask him for help, ask him to know his love for us, it is like pouring water on the dry soil of our hearts. God makes good things grow. We are invited to come to the one who says “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

Would you please pray with me? “Dear God...thank you...for sending Jesus...who died for us...and rose again from the dead...we come to you Lord...because we need you...when things are good...and when things are hard...thank you for loving us. Amen.” Thank you for listening. Go ahead and head back to your seats.

2) vv 1-5 Wisdom for the heritage of the suffering servant

Before jumping into Isaiah 55, let me give a bit of intro. The book of Isaiah from chapters 1 through 35 are inviting the people of Judah to come back to covenant faithfulness to God through cycles of oracles of judgment and salvation. Chapters 36-39 are narrative and tell the story of King Hezekiah’s run-ins with king Sennacherib of Assyria. While Assyria does’t take the southern kingdom, by chapter 39, King Hezekiah does something foolish. He welcomes the Babylonian envoys of king Merodach-baladan, the king of Babylon and shows them all the treasures of Judah. This set us up to anticipate the exile where Babylon would come and conquer the southern kingdom of Judah, destroy the temple, take all their riches, and relocate most of their people across the Tigris and Euphrates, into Babylon.

In chapter 40 we encounter Judah already in exile, people who have been ripped away from everything they know, who long for the good things God said he would do. Chapters 40-55, sometimes called deutero-Isaiah, traces the story of God’s deliverance from exile and healing from their years of unfaithfulness.

In this section there are four songs that are called Servant Songs and they mention how God would restore his people through his servant. This servant would bring justice to the nations and would be a light for the nations.[1] Then in a surprising twist, the servant would endure all kinds of suffering while trusting in the Lord, and he would suffer for the people to bring them healing.[2] If you’re reading or hearing this text before Jesus, it is a unclear about whom this servant language is referring. God promises redemption to those who join in the heritage of this servant.[3] This brings us to chapter 55 where those who are part of the heritage of the suffering servant are invited to God’s renewal and restoration.

God has promised a new and everlasting covenant with the those who join the heritage of the suffering servant. The servant has made redemption possible and those who will join him will find life. Judah had wandered, like a lost hiker who veers off to the right for a long time into they do full circle, Judah had become lost and some may have wondered if they were to far gone to be found.

This is a problem we are all prone to. Like Judah, we need this invitational reminder to come and find what we need in Jesus, who is the ultimate heritage of the suffering servant. God’s posture is kind and invitational, eager to show mercy to those who return. It is not one of waiting to see where we will fall in order to say “look where you are at now...I told you so.” There are hundreds of micro-decisions we make in a day and we need this invitation. I want to encourage us to ask this question right now: “How do I seek the Lord’s wisdom in my...[you fill in the blank]?” Reflect as you consider a typical day, times of vacation coming up, anxieties that sit below the surface about big things in the near future. As we consider the week ahead, what meetings we will have and the people we will encounter, where do you need the Lord’s wisdom? If we can make a habit of asking that question, we will keep the ground soft and wet for the seeds of the kingdom to grow because we are seeking Jesus.

3) vv 6-13 Invitation to trust the Lord for what we don’t yet understand

In verses 6-13, those who follow the suffering servant are invited to seek the Lord whose thoughts and ways are not our own. We are invited to entrust ourselves to the one whose ways are mysterious as we put away evil, and return to the God who shows mercy. In the context of deutero-Isaiah, this meant trusting that the exile was not permanent, that God’s plan was not done, and that someone they couldn’t see would suffer for them and deliver them. The prophet says, “Seek the LORD while he can still be found; call for him while he is still near.” The Lord hasn’t left. The encouragement is that it’s not too late, but also don’t wait. Everyone has stuff to work through that impacts their relationship with God and relationship with others. If you don’t start processing those things in your 20s, you will in your 30s. If you haven’t done the work in your 30s, you’ll probably have to do even more work in your 40s because now there’s an extra decade of baggage and the load just gets heavier and heavier. Often the times we are most disoriented is where the Lord is most at work as he brings us into a place of reorientation.[4]

Sometimes doing the hard work of figuring out the real problem can be scary because it takes us to unknown places. Whether it’s a staff meeting, hearing confession, or spiritual direction, I’m always struck by the fact that the problem as presented is often not the real problem. Someone might say “I spend to much time on this social media app.” If that’s the real problem, then the solution is just simple behavior modification. A better questions might be, “When do I look at this app, and what happened prior to going on it?” “What did the content of this app provide for me?” “Does that same longing and desire show up any place else? And I wonder why I have this desire in the first place?” This could be used for overworking, over-exercising, avoidant behaviors, or overreactions. Once we have asked better questions, then come to the God who is near and waiting for us, this will be a much more profound opportunity for healing as we learn the Lord’s will for us and our good desires misapplied.

Our places of instability and disorientation might just be the soil of new creation. This passage reminds us that God’s ways and thoughts are not ours. In fact, they are about as different as heaven and earth. The good news is that in Jesus, heaven breaks in to renew the earth. And so it is that in the vulnerable places of faithfully opening ourselves up to God’s healing as we obey him, the promise is that He will restore and renew what has been broken and torn down by sin and shame. This is precisely what it means for the writer to say that God’s word shall not return empty. Isn’t it interesting to have this promise bookend this part of Isaiah both in chapters 40 and 55.

Conclusion:

In the experience of feeling uprooted, untethered, and away from home and familiarity, God is present to refine, renew, and restore. God hadn’t finished his story with his people, but it certainly took unanticipated turns from their perspective. These moments of disorientation were the very seasons that God used to dislodge His people from her brokenness, idols they trusted in, sinful desires for autonomy, and their false hopes that their neighbors would keep them safe through political alliances. More importantly, he took these image-bearers and highlighted where cracks had occurred so that as they come to him, he can restore what was broken.

This new-creation work comes through Jesus, who is the suffering servant in whom the new covenant begins and in whom the people of God are restored. For those who claim allegiance to the heritage of Jesus as the suffering servant, and seek him as their savior, his word will not return void. Today’s passage is an encouragement to trust him, to depend on his wisdom in the face of what is unknown, and to ask better questions of ourselves so we can call to him for healing. Dependence, good questions, and vulnerability soften the soil of our hearts to the kingdom work that the Holy Spirit is doing in and among God’s people.

Let us pray:

O Almighty God, you pour out on all who desire it the spirit of grace and of supplication: Deliver us, when we draw near to you, from coldness of heart and wanderings of mind, that with steadfast thoughts and kindled affections we may worship you in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[1] Isaiah 42:1-4; 49:1-6.

[2] Isaiah 50:4-11; 52:13-53:12.

[3] Isaiah 54:17.

[4] Cf. This comes from the orientation — disorientation — reorientation from Walter Brueggemann’s commentary on the Psalms.

SERMONS

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