“New life starts in the dark,” writes the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor.

“Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb,

it starts in the dark.”

It’s really unclear why Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb that morning.

The broken body of her lord and teacher and friend

has been prepared for burial:

Mary and the others have lovingly washed and anointed Jesus’s body with spices

and placed him in Joseph of Arimathea’s unused tomb.

Pilate’s soldiers have rolled a huge stone in front of the tomb,

sealing Jesus’s lifeless body inside the cave.

There was no rational reason for Mary to leave her bed

and make her way through the streets of the city

and out to the garden where Jesus had been buried.

There was no rational reason for it,

but, as I think we all know, grief is rarely rational.

Mary arrives in the darkness and finds that the stone has been rolled away.

Even though she has been Jesus’s faithful follower and friend,

her first instinct is not that he has been resurrected as he promised,

but that the soldiers or the religious leaders have taken him away.

Her first experience with the resurrected Christ is not faith, but loss.

The trauma of her teacher’s body being removed

compounding the trauma of her teacher being killed in the first place.

Mary runs back to wherever it was that Jesus’s disciples were staying

and she wakes Peter and John,

Jesus’s closest followers and friends,

the one upon whom Jesus built his Church

and the other to whom he entrusted his Mother.

Mary wakes Peter and John and they all three sprint toward the tomb.

John arrives first

—as the writer of John’s gospel is quick to point out—

but he doesn’t enter the tomb.

He hesitates at the threshold,

perhaps overwhelmed or frightened or simply confused.

And Peter, well, Peter does what Peter does best:

he barrels in,

like a bull in a porcelain cabinet,

and stares in disbelief at the strips of cloth laying in a heap on the ground,

strips of cloth which he and the others had so carefully draped and wrapped.

John finally screws up the courage to enter into the tomb

and takes in the full scene as well:

the ledge where the body of their teacher and friend

had, just a few days ago, by lying limp and lifeless.

The Gospel says that John believed,

but it’s unclear what he believed.

As you can imagine, there is not actually a ton of precedence

for dead bodies getting up and walking out of their own tombs.

Peter and John come in the dark and the leave in the dark,

perhaps to rouse the other disciples,

perhaps to ask their learned friend Nicodemus what’s going on,

perhaps simply out of fear and trembling.

But Mary…stays.

She pushes past her fear and hesitantly enters the tomb.

She sees the same things that the boys saw:

the empty ledge,

the crumpled linen shroud,

the full and unwieldy weight of absence.

But she also sees something else,

something that John and Peter either missed or perhaps weren’t privy to:

three being in dazzling white,

two seated on the ledge

and the other standing in the doorway.

She figures that this one dwelling at the threshold must be the gardener

she pleads with him to return the body.

Lovingly, tenderly, this gardener calls out her name

and only then does Mary realize that she has encountered not a gardener,

but her dearest friend,

no longer dead, but alive.

Not merely alive, but positively bursting forth with life.

In that moment—in that encounter—everything changes.

Not because Mary all of a sudden understood the metaphysics of resurrection.

Not because she had made a verbal confession of a creed

or assented intellectually to a particular doctrine.

But because she had been seen, known, called by name.

The late Pope Francis cited his predecessor in saying

“Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea,

but the encounter with an event, a person,

which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”

The trouble this morning is, of course, that none of us were there in the Garden.

We were not standing next to Mary that morning.

We did not hear our names spoken aloud

from the recently dead and yet somehow now alive again

mouth of our teacher and friend.

We inherit this story through the distance of millenia

and are asked to somehow make sense of it.

And maybe that’s why every year, right around Easter,

there are all kinds of essays and interviews online

and in the newspaper

quietly or even loudly admitting a lack of belief in the Resurrection of Jesus.

It’s jarring—and, I suspect, lucrative for the media—

to hear respected theologians

and seminary presidents

and parish pastors

admit that they don’t think Mary’s encounter with Jesus could have happened.

After all they say, it is hard to believe that the dead do not stay dead.

Maybe you’ve felt that way too.

Maybe you feel that way currently.

Maybe you came here this morning with hope…but also hesitation,

with longing…but also doubt.

It’s true, of course, that the world in which we live

does not make resurrection easy to believe.

The world in which we live is one where violence continues to happen,

where traumas pile up and cause grief to linger,

where families are torn apart and communities are stretched to breaking points,

where division and despair and desolation are daily occurrences.

Mary knows that world.
Mary lives in that world.

And still—she stays.

And it is precisely in that world

—surrounded by doubt and despair and desolation,

confusion and uncertainty and fear —

it’s right in the midst of all of it that Mary hears her name,

not in an idealized place of perfect serenity and bliss,

but in the midst of the funk of life.

New life does not begin in certainty.

It begins with someone who cannot yet believe, but who refuses to walk away.

Someone who is honest about death, but open

—just barely—

to being surprised.

And that’s enough. That’s enough.

Because that’s where Jesus meets us,

week in and week out,

day after day after day.

Not only in ancient gardens,

but right here,

in this place,

at this table.

We are given the opportunity for encounter every time we approach the altar

and kneel or stand at the Communion rail.

We do not need to reconstruct the empty tomb

or reason our way past lingering doubt,

or achieve some sense of final certainty.

All we have to do is show up.

To bring all of ourselves

—our grief and confusion and fear and apprehension and doubt and despair—

and receive the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity

of our risen Lord, teacher, and friend.

The conviction of the Church

—the hope of Easter—

is that Christ is really and truly present here:

not as an idea,

not as a memory,

but as a living presence

—a living Person—

who meets us again and again

in the breaking of bread.

So come.

Come as Mary the Apostle to the Apostles and Peter the Rock and John the Beloved.

Come as saints have come for centuries.

Come as your parents and their parents came.

Come as your children, God willing, will come.

If you come this morning full of faith, come.

If you come this morning, full of doubt, come.

If you come clinging to hope by the thinnest of threads, come.

Come and hear your name.

Come and dine at the supper of the Lamb.

Come and receive what you cannot prove.

Come and receive the life that does not stay buried.

Come and taste the joy that death cannot hold.

Come and be sent again in the world

to tell the world that you, too, have seen the Lord.

Amen.

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Stella Adler taught her students

—Marlon Brandon, Robert De Nero, and Martin Sheen among them—

that theatre came from the Greek word theatron (THAY-ah-trohn)

which means ‘the place of seeing.’

In her masterful commentary on the great American playwrights, she wrote:

[the theatre] is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation. The theatre is a spiritual and social x-ray of its time. The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.”1

In today’s succession of readings, we have a drama in three acts

—spread over the course of hundreds of years—

unfolding before us.

We don’t exactly see the first two acts, but they are palpably present

and without them, we would not have the third act

which is, of course, Jesus’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem.

The first act

which preceded and caused for the second and third act

was the exodus of God’s people from Egypt.

We know the story, of course,

and will hear it rehearsed again throughout this week which the Church calls Holy.

God sent Moses to free God’s people from their bondage under Pharoah.

The king’s heart hardened time and time again

until his first-born son—his heir—was slain,

which caused him to bitterly dismiss the Hebrews from Egypt.

Regret being as powerful as it is, however,

caused the Pharaoh to change his mind

and send his finest officers and chariots in pursuit,

only to be swallowed up by the Red Sea,

“the depths [having] covered them,” the book of Exodus says,

“they sank there like a stone.”

This first act—the passover of liberation—is played out year after year

in the hearts and minds and homes of God’s faithful people.

This story was not merely history.

It was theatre.

It was embodied.

It was the story of God’s people

—the story of the freedom of God’s people,

the liberation of God’s people from the bondage of kings—

and they acted out their parts year after year.

So powerful was this first act

—this reminder of God’s love for God’s people,

this reminder that God deals harshly with those who oppress God’s people,

this reminder that not even the might of kings can prevail against God—

so powerful—and dangerous—was this first passover act

that kings and princes and emperors throughout history

have quivered and fretted in response.

Which leads us to the second act.

On the other side of the city of Jerusalem

—at the city’s western gate—

another triumphant entry is taking place.

Pontius Pilate

—the Roman governor whose treachery we remember every Sunday in the Creed—

comes every year from his seat in Caesarea-by-the-Sea to Jerusalem

to remind the Jews that it is Caesar the emperor

—and not their God or their scribes and pharisees or their religion—

which was in charge,

to remind them that they were a people living under occupation,

a people tolerated but not celebrated,

to remind them that Rome allowed them to pray however they wanted

but that they better not let their religious remembrance get out of hand.

To drive home this point,

the governor would enter into the Jewish holy city

with all the pomp and circumstance of empire:

An armored governor riding a great war horse

accompanied by a military escort of the finest soldiers.

As Professors Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan describe it:

A visual panoply of imperial power: cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, sun glinting on metal and gold. Sounds: the marching of feet, the creaking of leather, the clinking of bridles, the beating of drums. The swirling of dust. The eyes of the silent onlookers, some curious, some awed, some resentful.2

The governor’s entrance into Jerusalem that day

was intended both to impress the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to the holy city

and to remind them that no matter what story they told themselves

it was Rome, not Jerusalem, which possessed all of the power.

And the third act

—the act we actually see,

the act which we, ourselves, have embodied in our palm procession.

Jesus enters the city through the eastern gate,

the gate closest to the city of Bethany

where Jesus has just raised a man from the dead,

a deed so remarkable as to upset both temple and state,

a deed which, no doubt, placed a large target on Jesus’s forehead.

Jesus enters into the city without any military escort.

He is not riding a great warhorse or a speedy charger.

There are no drums and nobody is singing the grand and glorious war-hymns.

He is atop a donkey trailed by her nursing colt.

He is riding a beast of burden,

a beast not known for it’s intelligence or beauty

as much as for its stubbornness.

He is accompanied

—not by soldiers or the city’s elite,

or even the religious leaders—

but by the people,

the common ordinary people,

the people with no power or privilege,

the people who were preparing to rehearse again

the story of their ancestors at Passover,

their story of liberation.

He is not accompanied by royal fanfare

or patriotic salutes,

but with pleas for help.

Shouts of ‘Hey -sanna, hosanna, -sanna sanna so” sound triumphant in the movies,

but hosanna means ‘Save us!’

Save us, Son of David!

Save us!

Though this entrance should have been pitiful

—everybody should have been at the west gate to welcome the governor,

nobody should have been at the east gate

to greet an itinerant preacher riding a nursing donkey

and surrounded by fisherfolk and radicals—

though this entrance should have been pitiful,

Jesus was hailed as a king,

not only a king,

but as the king,

as King David’s worthy successor,

as the king who comes in the name of the Lord,

as the king who comes to save.

Palm branches

—signs of victory—

were waved before this comical savior-king atop a donkey,

a living and breathing parody

—a dangerous parody,

a fatal parody—

of Rome’s occupation of Judea

and the Roman governor’s presumption of authority.

If Professor Adler is right

and theatre is meant as a spiritual and social x-ray,

what is being shown by these three acts-in-procession?

Right up there on the light board in the doctor’s office

are the results of the Gospel’s x-ray examination:

a clash of kingdoms.

One a kingdom of might and power,

the other of justice and mercy.

One leads to peace by conquest,

the other leads to peace by reconciliation.

The choice that this ancient drama leaves us with is this:

will we choose the peace of Rome or the peace of Christ?

Will the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus or in Caesar Augustus?

Will we arm ourselves for safety,

puff ourselves up for security?

Or will we allow ourselves to be humbled,

to diminish ourselves sacrificially,

to allow ourselves to decrease in order for others to increase?

Will we lose our lives in order to find them?

Will we bear our own cross?

Will we tell of Christ who emptied himself to the point of death on a cross?

Will we make that story

—that story of liberation,

that story of salvation—

will we make that story our own?

Will we tell that story to our children and their children?

Will our cry be ‘Hail to the chief’ or ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’

Time will tell, my friends. Time will tell.

Amen.

This sermon was offered by Fr. Cody Maynus at All Saints Church, Northfield, Minn. on 29 March, 2026.

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By the time that Jesus arrived at Bethany, it was just too late.

Lazarus was as dead as a doornail.

Absent any clergymen or clerks or undertakers,

Mary and Martha were the chief mourners

and they had seen with their own eyes their brother prepared for burial:

his lifeless body stiff with death

cleansed and anointed,

wrapped in burial clothes,

sealed in a stone tomb to await the resurrection of the dead,

whatever and whenever that would happen.

There was no longer any hope that Lazarus might just be sleeping

or in some kind of quasi-dead-but-not-really-dead state.

No, four days after the fact,

and biology being a reality

Lazarus was really and truly dead.

Jesus had arrived too late to do anything,

too late to loose the shackles of illness

and restore their brother to full life

as he had done to so many others

in the three years since John had pointed to him

and said ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!'

Behold him who takes away the sins of the world!’

‘Lord, you are too late,’ Martha says

‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died.’

But it is too late.

Lazarus is dead

and the only thing left for Jesus to do

is perhaps the last thing one might expect the Son of God to do: he weeps.

He weeps for his friend,

for this person whom he loves but sees no more.

Jesus stares at the stone, cold tomb

which has ensconced the lifeless body of his dear friend

and he weeps.

He, who is the Resurrection and the Life,

He, who was at the creation of the worlds,

He, who would soon himself be dead and then alive again,

He, who is true God from true God,

begotten not made,

of one being with the Father,

he, himself, sees death and he weeps.

God in the flesh weeps.

And, as we heard in the first reading today,

this is not the first time that God has shown up in a place of sorrow.

In the first reading, the prophet Ezekiel dreams of a valley full of bones,

a place of death and destruction,

of carnage and trauma,

a battlefield where Ezekiel’s ancestors

are not washed and anointed,

shrouded and buried,

but rather left strewn about and scattered,

exposed and abandoned,

left to be cleaned only by the hunger of scavengers

and the blanching of the sun.

“Mortal, can these bones live?” the Most High God seems to taunt the prophet.

No, of course not!

These bones are dry

—very dry—

and there is not even a minute trace of life in them.

Ezekiel’s ancestors are as dead as a doornail

and any hope of miraculous intervention has long since passed.

We know these places, don’t we?

These places of death and devastation;

these places where the hope of the Resurrection on the last day

feels like a cruel fantasy or a childish fairytale;

these places where grief consumes

and loss overwhelms;

these places where anger sits on the one hand and doubt upon the other.

We know these places in our own lives,

places where relationships have withered and died,

where despair has really and truly won out,

where the future feels sealed behind a tomb

which we cannot possibly move.

And we know them right here in our own backyard:

places where families have been torn apart

and communities shaken;

where neighbors hide in fear

and food shelves run as dry as the valley’s bones;

where armed agents of the state lob chemical weapons into crowds

of parents and pastors,

teachers and children,

into crowds of people like you and like me.

Our communities perhaps feel like that valley of dry bones these days.

The bulk of the battle is over (at least for now)

and there is so much destruction to undo,

so many tears to dry,

so many messes to clean up,

so many bandages to unbind,

so much life to discover.

After Jesus has wept

—and the word used in Greek doesn’t mean a nice, gentle, dignified cry;

he is distraught—sobbing, perhaps—and bellering,

completely undone by his grief—

after he has wept,

he does what we have been expecting him to do

since the beginning of the chapter:

he works his miracle and does the impossible.

‘Lazarus,’ he shouts into the tomb, slightly crazed,

tears no doubt still staining his face.

‘Lazarus!’ he roars into the dark maw of death.

‘Lazarus, come out!’

and somehow… he does.

And, as he does, death itself begins to quiver

at the power of God,

at the power of love,

at the power of life.

This is among the strangest and most stubborn claims of our faith:

that God does not avoid the places of grief and sorrow,

but rather seeks them out.

God does not avoid the valley of dry bones

or stand a safe distance from Iranian schools

or Palestinian hospitals

or synagogues in Michigander

or the intersection of Portland and 34th in Minneapolis.

God does not shy away from any tomb anywhere,

but every single time, enters into them,

walks into the midst of the ruination of war,

strolls into the absolutely vicious vicinity of death,

and says from within

—from smack dab in the heart of death,

from a place of utter and absolute finality—

God-in-Christ stands in that place and calls forth life.

And at the sound of his voice,

at the demand of life,

the tomb exhales

and the earth gives back what it has taken.

The tomb cracks open

and the valley stitches itself together.

That which was sealed begins to loosen.

Linen unwinds from stiffened limbs,

fingers twitch, lungs regain their function.

Grave clothes slacken

and bones remember their names.

At the sound of God’s voice,

the dead begin to turn toward life.

In the sermon at his investiture, our Presiding Bishop said that

Lazarus came out of the tomb

“because even in death he had access to the voice of life.”

We, too, have access to the same voice of life,

although we, as a people, often live as if we do not.

Especially in this country at this time,

we live as if death has the final say,

as if death

—and all the things of death:

war, poverty, destruction,

homophobia, isolation, discrimination, and so on—

we live as if death is the ultimate power in this world and not life.

We live as if we cannot forgive

because the wound is too deep;

as if we cannot begin again

because too much has already been lost;

as if we cannot hope

because disappointment has taught us better;

as if we cannot love

because we have been hurt before;

as if we cannot change

because this is just who we are.

We live as if we cannot have justice

because it is too hard;

as if we cannot take care of widows and orphans

because it is too expensive;

as if we cannot take care of the poor

because they need a ‘hand up not a handout’;

as if we cannot wage peace

because violence is just inevitable;

as if we cannot embrace the stranger in our midst

because, gosh, what would the neighbors think?

We are living as if everything is too late,

as if Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days and that’s that,

as if death, not life, has the final word.

But not Jesus.

Jesus does not accept that death has any power of veto.

Jesus is disturbed by love,

moved by love,

unsettled by love

shaken up by love.

And he proves that it is not too late,

or too difficult,

or too improbable,

or too impossible

for love to have the final say,

for life to be victorious over death.

Dear people of God, our work in these last days of Lent—

these days before Jesus enters triumphantly into Jerusalem,

enters into the holy city and into his own death and resurrection—

the work before us right now is to hear the voice of life

even though we be surrounded by death;

to hear that voice and to respond to it;

to let our bones and muscles and sinews be reconnected;

to let whatever shrouds us fall insensate on the ground;

to help unbind others

and to accept their help in our own unbinding;

to live as if love is, in fact, victorious,

to live as if life has, in fact, conquered death,

to live as if new life is possible,

not only possible, but inevitable.

inevitable, not in the future, but right now;

inevitable, not somewhere else, but right here,

at this Table,

at this place where the voice of life

beckons us to receive the Bread of life

and to live.

Lazarus…come out.

By God’s own grace, may it be so. Amen.

This sermon was offered by Fr. Cody Maynus at All Saints Church, Northfield, Minn. on 22 March, 2026, the Fifth Sunday in Lent.

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I recently read a fascinating autobiography called And There was Light by Jacques Lusseyran. He was born in Paris in 1924, and at the age of 7, he was blinded permanently in an accident at school. His parents resisted all the advice to have Jacques placed into an institution. His parents had advanced degrees in the sciences and were determined to ensure that he would not be hindered by his blindness but, instead thrive and live into his full potential. Almost immediately, his mother learned braille and they bought a Braille typewriter. They then badgered the school into getting a larger desk for Jacques to accommodate his typewriter and all of his other needs. Their love and nurture of Jacques shaped his life forever.

Shortly after the accident when the pain subsided something remarkable happened to Jacques. Though he knew that he had no physical sight whatsoever he experienced a light growing within himself, a light which filled him with peace, joy and confidence. That light would eventually become his hope and sustenance in ways that his seven year old self could not have imagined.

At the age of 17, Jacques joined the French resistance in the Second World War. In 1943 he was captured by the Germans and taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. Initially he was subject to fear and rage in the deplorable conditions in the concentration camp. He suffered from dysentery and felt that he would die, and the light within him diminished. But when he felt that he was about to die he then experienced the return of that light in a profound and mystical way. But more on that in a bit.

His book concludes with his being liberated from the camp by the US army in the waning days of the war. In his epilogue he impressed upon the reader two truths that remained with him the rest of his life. He writes, “the first of these is that joy does not come from outside, for whatever happens to us is within. The second truth is that light does not come to us from without. Light is in us even if we have no eyes.”

The contrast of Jacques Lusseyran’s experience of blindness with that of the man born blind in today’s gospel text could not be more different. The most striking difference to me, at least, is the reaction of those around him when this man is given sight by Jesus. He was met with skepticism and doubt that he was actually the same person and even fear in his parents. I found such reactions to be troubling.

The prevailing attitude about blindness and light itself in the ancient world might help us understand a little bit more about the odd reactions to this most powerful moment. First, light was understood to be a substance which emanated from the eyes and gave light to the world. That light was fed by a fire that was said to burn in each person. But in the case of blindness it was believed that the fire had gone out in that person and that only darkness emanated from the eyes. Blindness therefore was perceived as a source of darkness, sin and evil in the world.

This dramatic scene in today’s gospel text is often referred to as a miracle. But John’s gospel does not use the word miracle. The Greek word for miracle is dunamis, an act of power focusing on the work itself. But John uses the word semion from which we get the word sign. As we know a sign points to something beyond itself. For example, when we see a red octagon on the street we know we are to stop.

In this Gospel, the act of giving sight to the man born blind points to and refutes the commonly held presumption that blindness is a result of sin and evil. In that context the skeptical, even fearful reaction of the people around him becomes more understandable. That sign of Jesus fundamentally calls into question what they thought that they knew about how the way the world worked. If sin was not the cause of blindness, then what?? Instead of being overjoyed for him, everyone around him perhaps began to think, “Wait, you mean it could happen to anybody like me for no reason at all??” A scary thought! Prior to this encounter with Jesus, they saw the blind man as the beggar who got what he deserved and who was essentially untouchable in polite society.

In other words, thinking back to Paul Johnson’s sermon on the first Sunday in Lent, they did not see the blind man as a fully human, deeply loved child of God, made in the image and likeness of God.

Thus when Jesus gives sight to this man, the man’s parents and neighbors did not, would not, could not see that Jesus was the light of God’s love come into the world.

One would think, at the very least, that the Pharisees would have grasped that. Now there is a real trap in condemning the Pharisees as those wicked people who persecuted and hated Jesus. This deeply wrong and dangerous antisemitic interpretation has had tragic consequences for Jews throughout history, and it persists to this day. Jesus was a Jew and the Pharisees were well meaning, learned men of faith who at times disagreed with Jesus about matters of interpretation. In this case their vision was fallible, and who could blame them in a way? It was a very human reaction given the cultural norms of their time.

And yet, Jesus alludes to their sin because they refuse to back down from their place of skepticism and their condemnation of Jesus as a sinner. And since the text brings up sin, I’d like to add my own thoughts on that subject which I hope will shed light, so to speak. The theologian Sallie McFague defined sin as a refusal of love – namely the refusal of the Creator’s love, and, more tellingly, the refusal to love the beloved of the Creator.

Anatomy tells us that we each have a blind spot in our vision. That is the place in the back of our eye where the optic nerve attaches to the retina. Then why don’t we walk around with a hole in our vision? It’s quite simple. The brain learns to fill in the missing part in our vision.

Could it be that each of us – myself included! – has a blind spot (or spots) in our spiritual vision that causes us to sin by refusing to see the beloved of the Creator in the eyes of everyone we meet? Admittedly, some people - and here you can name any example of this where we are blind to the beloved child of God who is, in [our seminarian] Paul’s words, doing monstrous things!

Perhaps it takes a special kind of light for this way of seeing one that is not to be found on the electromagnetic spectrum. Jacques Lusseyran’s light comes to mind. In his book he often speaks of seeing people and the world around him illuminated by that light of love, joy and peace which he also says is to be found in each and every one of us. And that made me wonder. He also spoke of being a person of faith who believed in God. Here I am connecting the dots in a way that he might not have meant. But when he spoke of such a light, my mind went to the Holy Spirit whom we know already dwells in each of us always. It makes me wonder how else could he have known such light suffusing his life and the lives of those whom he met with joy and peace in the horrors of a concentration camp?

How did he summon the light of the Holy Spirit? It’s not like learning something like a summoning charm in Harry Potter. There is no magical formula. I suggest you that when he was most despairing and literally at the point of death, Jacques let go of his anger and his despair and in so doing, made room in himself for the light – the power of God’s healing and reconciling love to come flooding back into himself in the light of the Holy Spirit.

Here, I let Jacque’s own words speak as he felt that he was on the point of death in Buchenwald:

Life had become a substance within me…It came toward me like a shimmering wave, like the caress of light…and filled me to overflowing.

I was unable to help myself…Bit there was one thing left which I could do: not refuse God’s help, the breath He was blowing on me…and not let my body be taken by fear. For fear kills and joy maintains life.

I still had eleven months ahead of me in the camp. But today I have not a single evil memory of those three hundred and thirty days of wretchedness. I knew I was free now to helps others. I could try to show other people how to go about holding on to life. I could turn towards them the flow of light and joy which had grown so abundant in me.

We know full well how deeply our world is beset by polarizing words and events leading to a kind of failure of spiritual vision because of our sin of refusal of love. It is so very easy to succumb to blaming, scapegoating and labeling and holding onto those grudges instead of letting go of them to make room for the light of the Holy Spirit to dwell in each of our hearts.

Perhaps now is the time for a checkup for our spiritual vision as Holy Week is now on the horizon. A time for letting go of the presumptions that cause us to say like the Pharisees, “Surely we are not blind are we?”

In the words of the 9th century hymn (#504 in our Hymnal), let us pray:

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire and lighten with celestial fire;
Enable with perpetual light, the dullness of our blinded sight.

In the name of the One who is Light and Life, Amen.

This sermon was written by the Rev. James Young, Priest Associate, and was preached in abstentia by Mark Heiman on 15 March, 2026 at All Saints Church, Northfield, Minnesota.

We heard in the Gospel last Sunday
that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

We heard in the Gospel last Sunday
that God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world
but in order that the world might be saved through him.

What we hear in the Gospel today
is the consequence of that world-saving, eternal life-granting love.

For God so loved the world that God went to Samaria.

For God so loved the world that he sat a well during the heat of the day,
at a time when respectable people were tucked away at home
and avoiding the scorching heat of the noonday sun,
at a time when the only people out at the well
were those avoiding the judgmental gaze of their community.

For God so loved the world that he dared to speak to a woman,
not only to speak to a woman,
but to speak to her in public,
a woman who was not his wife or his daughter or his mother,
a woman with no standing to recommend her
or reputation to protect her.

For God so loved the world that he spoke not only with a woman,
but a Samaritan woman,
a woman whose ancestors had been on the other side of history,
the wrong side of history,
a woman whose people worshipped not at the temple,
but on the mountain,
a woman whose traditions had been judged and dismissed
by those who believed themselves more faithful,
a woman whose very identity carried in it generations of suspicion and enmity,
old arguments, old rivalries, old wounds.

For God so loved the world that he sat at the well with a Samaritan woman
who, shall we say, knew a thing or two about a thing or two,
who had been married several times in her life,
whose current man was not her husband,
who had learned by hard-fought experience
how people looked at her as she passed by,
how conversations stopped when she walked up.

For God so loved the world that he allowed himself to be vulnerable,
to admit thirst and ask a strange woman for a favor,
to borrow her bucket for a drink of water
without preamble or prelude,
without a lecture or a correction,
he put put himself, however briefly, in the debt of a human,
of a woman,
of a Samaritan woman,
to rely on the kindness of someone whom he ought to have avoided.

For God so loved the world that he offered water of his own to the Samaritan woman,
not water which quenches thirst for a few moments or hours,
not water which satiates for a day or a week,
but the kind of water which lasts forever,
a spring of water which gushes up to eternal life.

For God so loved the world—
for God so loves the world—
that he offers this same water to us,
this torrent of grace and mercy,
this tidal wave of forgiveness and new life,
this wellspring which does not,
this wellspring which cannot run dry
no matter how often we come back to it.

For God so loves the world,
that God offers us life-giving water,
saving water which flows cool and clear and abundant for all,
for anyone who is thirsty,
water which bursts forth from the side of a rock in the desert,
saving water from an impossible place,
saving water from the womb which birthed the entire cosmos,
saving water spurting forth with blood from the pierced wounds of an innocent one,
saving water mingled with blood red wine,
blessed and shared among friends,
the cup of salvation,
the cup set before us again and again
so that thirsty people like us
might drink deeply of the mercy of God.

For God so loved the world that God offers himself to us,
wholly and without reserve,
from the depths of his own being,
from the most tender and intimate parts of himself,
body broken and blood shed,
freely for all.

For God so loved the world that God seeks us out,
not to condemn us, but to save us;
not to judge us, but to liberate us;
not to cast us aside, but to give us life;
to give us the drink which satisfies every thirst
and the food which leaves none hungry,
the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation.

For God so loved the world that God meets us in the ordinary places of our lives,
at wells and kitchen tables,
in long afternoons and quiet conversations,
in moments of fear or sorrow or anxiety,
when we’re simply trying to make it through another day,
in joy and in celebration,
in the throes of division and chaos,
in the trenches of war,
in the halls of power,
in the shadows of life,
and there, in those very places,
God offers us living water.

For God so loved the world that,
in the encounter,
God calls us to be all that we can be,
insists that we be all that we are,
not some shell of ourselves,
not some idealized version of ourselves,
not some mask of a person
playing a role on a stage,
but to be us,
to be you and me and all of us,
wholly and completely,
without dismissal or retribution,
with blame or shame or guilt.

For God so loved the world that God heals us and sets us free.
For God so loved the world that God calls us to do the same:
to heal the world and to set the world free,
to cross the boundaries of propriety,
to speak to people and situations others have decided not to see,
to sit besides the many wells of this world
—the places where the lonely and the weary,
the judged and the oppressed,
come in the heat of the day—
and to share the living water we ourselves have received,
to say in word and in deed,
to neighbors and strangers and even those we were taught to avoid:

Come and see!
Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done
and loved me nevertheless.
Come and see the One who is the love of God,
the One whose love is ever flowing,
the One who seeks the thirsty,
the One who saves the world.
Come and see the Messiah who is the Christ.
Come and see the Word Made Flesh.
Come, whomever you are.
Come.
May God give us grace so to see. Amen.

This sermon was offered by Fr. Cody Maynus at All Saints Church, Northfield, Minn. on 8 March, 2026, the Third Sunday in Lent (Year A.)

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Of all the dozens and dozens of short stories that Ernest Hemingway wrote,

his own personal favorite was ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’

which he published first in Scribner’s in 1933,

and then included in Winner Takes Nothing, one of his six collections of short stories.

Writing with the almost brutalist economy of words for which he was well known,

Hemingway told the story of two waiters in a Spanish cafe

and a frustrating patron of theirs,

an old man who sits alone in the cafe night after night,

drinking his brandy until he’s drunk.

One of the waiters is young and impatient,

wanting to be home in bed with his wife.

Many times throughout the story,

he says that he wishes the old man would die

or, at the very least, go and drink in a bar or a bodega

rather than their respectable cafe.

“I wouldn’t want to be that old,” he says disdainfully.

“An old man is a nasty thing.”

Eventually the younger waiter cuts the old man off,

refusing him another brandy and making him pay up for his many drinks.

The two waiters watch him leave the cafe,

“a very old man walking unsteadily but with dignity.”

The older waiter chides his younger colleague

for being in a hurry and overconfident.

‘Come on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up.’

‘I am of those who like to stay late the cafe,’ the older waiter said. ‘With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.’

‘I want to go home and into bed.’

‘We are of two different kinds,’ the older waiter said. He was not dressed to go home. ‘It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the cafe.’

In the Gospel this morning,

we see that Nicodemus is clearly one who does not want to go to bed,

who cannot go to bed,

who needs a light for the night,

who needs this clean, well-lighted Spanish cafe.

Nicodemus comes at night to Jesus with questions too heavy for day,

with questions which feel too complicated to ask

during the normal discourse of daytime.

Nicodemus is the epitome of power among his people:

a learned scholar of the faith;

an adherent of the Pharisee party,

a strict sect emphasizing literal and rigorous adherence to the Torah;

one of 72 members of the Sanhedrin,

which was the Congress and the Courts tied into one assembly.

If anybody should have had all the answers, it was Nicodemus.

And yet clearly he doesn’t.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night wanting clarity,

wanting to understand how this itinerant rabbi from the backwater country of Judea

could possibly be performing the wonders which Jesus has been doing,

wanting to know how he, too, could experience God in this way,

how he could be saved.

Nicodemus comes for clarity,

but Jesus does not offer clarity.

All he offers Nicodemus is rebirth.

In order to experience the fullness and the totality of God,

in order to go about performing miracles and signs and wonders,

you have to be born again.

A simple tweak here or there won’t do it.

A moral adjustment or an improvement plan won’t cut it.

You must be born again.

As the Rev Dr Martin Luther King once preached on this text:

Jesus didn’t get bogged down on the kind of isolated approach of what you shouldn’t do. Jesus didn’t say, ‘Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying.’ He didn’t say, ‘Nicodemus, now you must not commit adultery.’ He didn’t say, ‘Now Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that.’ He didn’t say, ‘Nicodemus, you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively.’ He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic: that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down on one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, ‘Nicodemus, you must be born again.’ In other words, ‘Your whole structure must be changed.’1

Not a cosmetic improvement or a naughty little vice here or there toned down.

But a rebirth.

A complete restructuring of one’s being,

down even to the molecular level.

Being a Pharisee, Nicodemus took Jesus literally

and pushed back on this teaching.

“How possibly can a grown person reenter their mother’s womb.”

Or, as the American preacher and theologian Frederick Beuchner

put Nicodemus’s confusion:

Just how was he supposed to pull a thing like that off…when you are pushing sixty-five and it was a challenge just to get out of bed in the morning? Could a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb when it was all he could do to enter a taxi without the drivers coming around to give him a shove from behind?2

Of course Nicodemus takes Jesus’s insistence on being born again literally.

Literal questions are often much easier than spiritual ones.

It is often easier to ask ‘How can this be?’ than ‘What will this cost me?’

It is often easier to puzzle over biology than to surrender control.

It is often easier to debate mechanics than to dismantle an identity.

Nicodemus wants information,

but Jesus offers transformation.

Nicodemus wants to know how Jesus is doing what he’s doing

—how he’s tapping into the power and the presence of the Most High God—

and Jesus tells him that the only way to do so is to be radically changed.

I hope this isn’t a surprise to any of you,

but change is hard.

Sometimes change is even terrifying.

The Reverend William Sloane Coffin,

Chaplain to Yale during the 60s and 70s

and later pastor of the famous Riverside Church in New York,

preached in a sermon in the late eighties:

…all of us are like Nicodemus most of the time. When we find ourselves in distress, and when we seek guidance, we think we want to change. In fact, we want to remain the same, but to feel better about it. In psychological terms, we want to be more effective neurotics. We prefer the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.”3

Nicodemus has status.

He has worked hard

and studied hard.

His family is of an influential lineage.

John describes him as a ‘ruler of Israel,’

competent to interpret the Law which God gave to Moses

and which Moses gave to the people,

empowered to render judgment on God’s people,

to pronounce both benedictions on God’s people.

And Jesus says to him,

says to Nicodemus in all of his power and wisdom and learning and knowledge:

none of that matters,

none of those accolades

—not even taken together in sum—

is worth all that much in God’s economy.

If you want to experience the fullness and totality of God,

if you want to be a child of God,

an heir of God’s kingdom,

a citizen with the saints above,

you must be born again.

Not as an infant from your mother’s womb,

but as an infant from God’s womb,

an infant born of water and Spirit,

born into a life which cannot be easily engineered or predicted,

which cannot be managed by religion or pedigree,

but by total surrender,

by helplessness and vulnerability.

The error that Nicodemus makes here,

—which is the error that we tend to make as well—

is to think that we can somehow earn God’s love.

We tend to think that if we just manage to do enough, God will love us.

If we say the right prayers and perform the right rituals, then surely God will love us.

If we give enough money to our church, then God will love us.

If we vote the right way and support the right politicians, then God will love us.

If we read enough and pray enough and study enough, then God will love us.

If we have the right kind of house and drive the right kind of car, then God will love us.

If we say the right thing and do the right thing, then God will love us.

The scandal of the Gospel is that God loves us.

Period. Full stop. No conditions.

For God so loved the whole world that God gave God’s son.

God loves us is the scandal of the Gospel.

A baby has done basically nothing to deserve love

and yet a baby receives love in abundance.

A baby cannot pluck or preen,

a baby has no extensive resume or list of bonafides.

A baby does not think or do the right things.

And yet we love babies.

Barring extreme sociopathy,

even the most cold hearted, craven old grouch loves a baby.

If Nicodemus wants to truly experience God’s love

—if we truly want to experience God’s love—

then we have to accept the vulnerability and powerlessness of a baby.

We have to accept that we cannot possibly do anything to earn God’s favor.

Because, guess what, God’s favor rests with us already.

We can change!

We have to change!

We have to turn from our sins.

We have to be faithful to the Gospel.

Not in order to receive God’s love,

but as a response to God’s love.

We turn from our sins because God loves us.

We odn’t turn to God because we have no sin.

St. Augustine says “God loves each one of us as if there were only one of us to love.”

The Creator of the Universe—

the One who gives life to the dead,

who puts things into existence which do not exist—

loves you,

loves you individually and singularly.

Loves you as if there was not another person on this planet.

God loves us.

God loves our neighbors.

God loves our enemies.

God loves every single American.

And…God loves every single Iranian.

God somehow loves President Trump

and God somehow loves the Ayatollah Khamenei.

God wants both of those wicked men to turn from their sinfulness,

but, at the end of the day,

God loves them just as much as God loves you and me.

This is the scandal of the Gospel

and it’s nigh on impossible to understand.

This is far too complicated for Nicodemus to understand.

The only way that Nicodemus,

the only way that we can understand this,

is to experience it,

to give into it,

to surrender totally to the Holy Spirit,

which, like the wind,

blows whither she will.

Ani DiFranco sang it best:

Buildings and bridges are no match for the air, my friend.

What doesn’t bend, breaks.

My friends, we must be willing to be bent by the Holy Spirit,

to be transformed,

to be shaped,

to be molded,

to be stretched and pulled

almost to the point of breaking

but not quite.

And if we don’t

—if we cling to our positions and privileges,

to our policies and prejudices—

we will break.

The great and mighty wind of the Holy Spirit

will break us of our pride and our vanity,

our spiritual shortsightedness and our defensiveness,

our stubborn compulsion to get it right,

our unyielding desire to be in control.

But God will not leave us broken.

For as the Gospel put it,

“God did not come into the world to condemn the world,

but to save it.”

God did not come to condemn you. God came to save you.

To change you, yes,

to shape you and mold you,

but first and foremost to love you

and help you love others as God loves them.

As Frederick Buechner prayed:

Your Spirit, like the wind, blows where it will. So keep us awake and alert and brave enough to be stirred and transformed by that Spirit. Startle us with love big enough, strong enough, gentle enough to make us into new people, reborn lovers and followers of Jesus.

By God’s own grace, may it be so. Amen.

This sermon was offered by Fr. Cody Maynus at All Saints Church, Northfield, MN on 1 March, 2026.

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From all blindness of heart… from envy, hatred, and malice; and from all want of charity. Good Lord, deliver us.

Our entrance into the season of Lent this week comes with The Great Litany, which we said in procession this morning. If you were paying attention, and if the litany was doing its job, you may have come across things you wouldn’t have thought to pray on your own. I don’t know about you, but I don’t wake up every morning asking that God would deliver me from “false doctrine, heresy, and schism,” for example. (BCP 149) Lent gives us an opportunity to take a look at ourselves in a way that we might not do on our own. Take a look for what we need God’s help to heal, or to change, or to grow, that we would be prepared for the new resurrected life of Easter. But for healing to happen, sometimes a close examination is necessary.

St. James, in his letter in the New Testament, describes God’s Law as a mirror. It helps us see ourselves as we really are, not just how we’d like to picture ourselves in our own imaginations. It’s a foolish person who looks in the mirror and sees their hair askew, or dirt on their face, or a bit of lettuce in their teeth and decides to walk away without fixing any of those issues. Just so God’s commandments or a litany, can act as such a mirror. And, as James puts it, there’s a freedom in this process. It’s freeing to admit what we actually look like, knowing that we don’t have to hide anything from God’s mercy.

My freshman dorm room on the 9th floor of Mohn Hall [ed. at St. Olaf College] had a full length mirror on the backside of the door. Are there still mirrors on the doors of Mohn and Larson? As sometimes happens, my freshman roommate was… unusual. He had unusual hobbies, which included randomly grilling then selling large amounts of meat, and setting his mittens and hat on fire before diving into a snowbank. He also enjoyed making silly and grotesque faces. He would practice making faces in that mirror on the backside of our dorm room. Which meant that sometimes I would come home, open the door, and he’d be RIGHT THERE! It scared the crap out of me! When coming back to my dorm room I would expect to find a regular human roommate, but for a split second all I could see was a monster staring me in the face.

I want to share with you this morning something I’ve been seeing in the mirror lately that isn’t so flattering–something in my spiritual state that isn’t so good. Maybe you can relate, and maybe you can’t, but I think it’s a particular temptation of our time and it’s a tricky one. Similar to my experience of opening up my dorm room door and finding the face of a monster instead of a human being, I realize that for several months I’ve been opening up the news or the feed on my phone and being confronted with what should be human beings, but I perceive only as monsters. Monsters shoving people to the ground. Monsters breaking windows and dragging people out of their cars. Monsters beating people. Monsters with covered faces and weapons. Monsters killing people. Other Monsters lying to defend those killings. When I open those images, my reaction is not to see human beings. I only see monsters. And that’s a problem.

The early chapters of Genesis reveal two important and seemingly contradictory truths about humanity. We are wonderfully made in the image of God–lovingly made with inestimable worth. And at the same time we are fallen: something has gone horribly wrong both individually and collectively so that humanity is not what God meant it to be. Both of these things are true at the same time, and we let go of either one of these truths to our peril. Normally, the temptation is to look at ourselves and see our created goodness and downplay our own fallenness. Lent is useful as a remedy for that tendency to ignore what has gone wrong in us.

But in times like these it’s easy to be tempted to the opposite: to be overwhelmed by the fallenness all around us, by all that we see has gone wrong with humanity. To look at human beings–humans who are doing very fallen and evil things–and not be able to accept that they are also lovingly created by God. It’s tempting to look at humans behaving monstrously and only be able to see them as monsters, and in doing so we lose something of our own humanity.

Honestly, seeing those committing evil acts as monsters is easy. It’s easier to see monsters than to admit that those doing monstrous things are human beings. To admit that they’re human carries the scary possibility that I might have something in common with them. It admits the possibility that, had I lived a different life and made different choices I might also act monstrously. It’s hard to admit that they could ever be forgiven if I would rather not forgive them. It’s hard to imagine treating them the way Jesus would–the way Jesus did.

Jesus, though innocent of any crime, was wrongfully arrested. He was insulted. He was spit upon. He was brutally killed. And, in the midst of his execution prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:24) And if we’re tempted to think that only Jesus was capable of this lofty attitude, Stephen the very first Christian martyr knelt and prayed as people were hurling rocks towards his body, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Somehow, Jesus and Stephen were able to look at those committing monstrous acts and see that they were still lovingly created by God. How? How is that possible? How could I look at people with that clarity?

And just to be clear: acknowledging the humanity of the wrongdoer doesn’t mean ignoring or papering-over the evils that they have committed. Even after Jesus was raised from the dead, he still bore the scars of what was done to him. There was no pretending that the wrong didn’t happen. And it doesn’t mean that those who commit wrong escape justice. But it also doesn’t mean that we succumb to the temptation to deny another’s humanity, even if they commit inhumane acts. If we deny the humanity of others we risk damage to our own souls. When I deny the humanity of another I actually become more like those committing monstrosity. If I look around and see those in authority treating the vulnerable as less than human, my response cannot be to dehumanize the perpetrators in response. How can I resist such a temptation?

When the tempter presented Jesus with a lie in the Gospel, even in the form of scripture taken out of context, Jesus would reply with “It is written.” The truth dispels lies, and paying attention to God’s Word helps us to not go astray. While Jesus only quoted Deuteronomy, we also have Our Lord’s own words in the New Testament to help us. And while it says that angels aided Jesus, we have the help of those who have gone before us in the faith and have faced similar and more extreme circumstances.

When we are tempted to look in the face (or the mask) of someone committing evil and see only a monster, we have the words of Jesus to remind us that God’s love extends far–perhaps farther than we’re comfortable with. Jesus said, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matt 5:44) I’m guessing that many of us are not used to having enemies. This saying of Jesus is, like many, so much easier in the abstract. It’s easier to imagine loving enemies when no one is trying to harm you or those you care about. But Jesus spoke these words to a people who were living under the iron rule of Rome. Having enemies was not abstract to them.

It was also not abstract to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. He knew what it was like to have real enemies–those who wanted to do him physical harm. Here’s some of what he had to say about Jesus’ command to love enemies:

“The person who hates you most has some good in him... And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls “the image of God,” you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does, you see God’s image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never slough off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude… When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him because you know God loves him. And he might be the worst person you’ve ever seen.”

Thus spoke Dr. King.

Friends, I want to rise to that level of love. I don’t want to get dragged down into the temptation to look at a fellow human being and see only a monster. I don’t want to deny the humanity of someone created in God’s image. I don’t want to despise someone for whom Christ died. I don’t want to dismiss the possibility that any person could repent.

Do I still long for justice? Yes. Do I want the harm of the innocent to stop? Absolutely. Do I want accountability for those who treat others inhumanely? Of course! But I cannot risk losing my humanity by denying the humanity of another human being, no matter how far they’ve fallen.

May God grant me–grant us–the grace to see reflected in every other person the image of God.

“That it may please thee to forgive our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers, and to turn their hearts, We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.”

This sermon was offered by Paul W. Johnson on 22 February, 2026 at All Saints Church, Northfield, Minnesota. Paul is the seminarian intern at All Saints, is a candidate for the Master of Divinity at Nashotah House Theological Seminary, and is a postulant for holy orders in the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota.

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Whenever I hear a confession here at church or elsewhere

and the penitent traces the shape and contours of their sinfulness,

whenever I sit across the table from somebody

who feels as if they’ve made a mess of their life,

whenever I sit at the bedside of somebody staring eternity in the face

but is still holding onto doubts or grudges or the memories of failings,

the first, the last, the only thing

I want them to hear is this:

God loves you.

Admittedly, this is not always what people expect to hear.

Usually they expect advice or correction or strategy.

How can I strengthen my frailty?

How can I overcome my sin?

How can I bypass my humanity?

But before any of that

—before solutions or next steps—

there is this:

you are loved.

There isn’t a single thing

—not even the thing you’re thinking about right this minute—

which puts you outside of God’s love.

Not a single, blessed thing.

Did you hear the Collect at the beginning of mass this evening?

“Almighty and everlasting God,

you hate nothing you have made

and forgive the sins of all who are penitent.”

The basic promise of Ash Wednesday,

of the whole season of Lent,

and—truth be told—the whole of the Christian life,

is this: God loves us.

God loves you.

God loves me.

God loves us.

God might not always love our behavior.

God might not always love the ways

that we look to other things that aren’t God to satisfy and to soothe.

God might not always love the ways that we forget our humanity

and the humanity of others and act a proper fool.

God might not always love the times when we are cruel to others or to ourselves.

God might not always love how quickly we forget

our commitments and promises and vows.

But us?

Us as people?

Us as people who have been made in God’s image and bear God’s likeness?

God will always love us.

God will want us to knock it off sometimes

and turn from our own sins and selfishness.

But God will never stop loving us through it all.

In moments of doubt and despair,

in moments when sin and frailty feel extraordinarily close at hand,

it is natural to expect that God

—who is true Goodness and Justice and Beauty and Love—

might want to walk away from us,

might want to gain some sort of distance from us,

might be so upset at our brokenness and sin

that God simply can’t stand to be around us.

And yet the most disarming thing about God

is that God’s property is always to have mercy.

God will always always always move toward us,

not away from us.

We live in a world that feels very aware of its fragility these days.

Here in Minnesota, we are acutely aware of our humanity.

We are sharply aware of the devastation

that human sin can wreak on individuals, families, and communities.

Streets we thought we knew to be safe

have been filled with armored vehicles.

Neighbors and friends have been detained.

Families have been stymied by a draconic legal system.

Citizens have been battered and beaten

by agents of their own government.

The blood of innocents has been shed.

We do not need much reminding that we are mortal.

We do not need much reminding that human beings are capable of harm.

But what we need right now is a reminder of our belovedness.

We need to be reminded that God does not hate what God has made.

We need to be reminded that no matter what we have done

—or what has been done in our midst—

God’s love is everlasting.

We need to be reminded that God has promised

—not suggested, not implied,

but promised—

to choose us.

In a world that is quick to label people disposable

—illegal, expendable, collateral—

we need to hear something different.

Years ago, on Sesame Street,

the Rev. Jesse Jackson,

who has himself this week returned to dust,

looked into a television camera and said, “I am somebody.”

And he invited the children gathered around him to join him in a call and response:

I am

somebody

I may be poor but I am somebody.

I may be young but I am somebody.

I may be on welfare but I amsomebody.

I may be small but I am somebody.

I may have made mistakes but I am somebody.

My clothes are different

My face is different

My hair is different but I am somebody.

I am Black, brown, white.

I speak a different language,

but I must be respected.

protected,

never rejected.

I am God’s child!

I am somebody.

The ashes traced on your forehead tonight say as much:

You are somebody.

You are dust, yes,

and you will certainly return to dust,

but, in the incarnation,

God became dust.

God entered into the human experience.

So committed was God to drawing toward humanity

that God entered into humanity.

God set aside incorruptibility

and became human.

And because you are human,

because you are made of dust and breath,

you are somebody.

Not because the government says so.

Not because the market says so.

Not because you have status or power or privilege.

Not because you have everything so perfectly worked out.

But because God says so.

As a somebody, God chooses you.

God chose you in baptism

and claimed you as God’s own.

God chooses you in the Eucharist.

God chooses you in the doubt and the pain of your broken heart.

God chooses you on your best days and your worst days.

God chooses you when your faith feels strong and when it feels ever so thin.

God chooses you in your strength and in your weakness.

And it is precisely that weakness

—that fragility, that humanity, that vulnerability—

that becomes, in God’s hands, our strength.

Ash Wednesday is an invitation to remember that we are chosen.

To remember that we are loved.

And then, slowly, to begin living like it,

to live as if we are made in the image and likeness of God.

To live in such a way that when the world treats us as though we are nobody,

we quietly, stubbornly insist

—in word and in deed—

that no, in fact, we are somebody.

We are God’s child.

It’s possible

—especially this year—

that we don’t need an ashen reminder of our sinfulness.

But perhaps we do we need an ashen reminder of our belovedness.

We need something tangible to contradict the voices

which whisper that we are not enough,

that we are not strong enough,

or faithful enough.

Perhaps we need a cross traced in ashes

by another woefully imperfect human being

to remind us that God loves us.

As you receive your ashes tonight, dear people of God, remember just that.

You are loved.

You are chosen.

You are somebody.

May God give us the grace and the courage to live into that truth. Amen.

This homily was offered by the Rev. Cody Maynus at All Saints Church, Northfield on 18 February, 2026.

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The summer after I graduated from college remains the best summer of my entire life.

There I was, with everything

—the whole world, the rest of my life—

sitting right in front of me.

It was really and truly glorious.

It felt as if I could do basically anything I wanted.

Sure, I had a job working at the coffee shop in my home town

and was preparing to leave for the Episcopal Service Corps in New Haven,

but even those commitments felt light and somehow provisional.

They hadn’t registered as especially important.

Nothing had yet closed me in.

The future still felt as wide and wind-swept as the prairie

which surrounded my hometown.

Every conversation I had that summer felt like pure possibility.

Every late-night drive felt like the first page of a story.

I had the intoxicating sense that life was about to unfold

and that somehow

—mysteriously, graciously—

I could enter into it.

One of the most absolutely glorious things I did that summer

was take a road trip with my friend Amanda to Sioux Falls, South Dakota

to surprise our friends Julia and Becs for the weekend.

We didn’t even have the semblance of a plan

when we pulled out of the driveway at my dad’s house

—my little Honda minivan loaded with our backpacks

and rhubarb custard pie I made for Becs’s mom—

and set out west across the prairies and farmland

between Montevideo and Sioux Falls.

And the lack of a plan as perhaps the most glorious part of the weekend.

When we got to Sioux Falls, we were able to surprise both of our friends

and then spent the rest of the weekend reveling in our shared sense of freedom.

We took silly photographs;

we walked all around downtown Sioux Falls;

I dragged everybody to the midday mass at the Episcopal Cathedral

(Some of us, ahem, thought that was more glorious than others.)

That evening, we laid out on the floor of Becs’s parents’ basement

listening to Bon Iver records in the dark.

After the records had run their course,

we stayed there sprawled out on the floor talking to one another.

We shared our deepest hopes and dreams and visions.

We shared war stories about significant others and loves turned sour.

We shared our anxieties about the future, our holdups from the past.

And, in so doing, we each felt seen,

like we were really and truly known by the others

in a way that left us changed.

Something holy happened that night.

No bright light. No voice from heaven.

But there was a kind of transfiguration all the same.

Because what we were doing

—without really knowing the word for it,

despite the fact that three of us were English majors—

was contemplation.

It was prayer.

We weren’t fixing anything.

We weren’t solving problems.

We weren’t strategizing about the future.

We were simply paying attention to one another.

Attending to one another,

listening deep beneath the surface,

letting silence stretch long enough

for what was true and good and beautiful to rise up.

All of a sudden, these people whom I thought I knew became luminous to me:

their fears tender and brave at the same time,

their hopes larger than I had imagined,

their stories threaded with grace I hadn’t noticed before.

It was as if, just for a moment,

the veil slipped back

and we saw one another not just as we were

but as we were becoming.

That’s what contemplation,

that’s what prayer looks like:

a slowing down long enough

for the light that is already there to become visible.

And once you’ve seen somebody like that—

radiant in their vulnerability,

honest without pretense,

beloved without earning it—

you can’t quite go back to seeing them any other way.

I understand why St Peter wanted to build tents in this morning’s Gospel.

I understand the desire, the impulse, the instinct

to want to preserve something which feels

—and, in fact, is—

glorious.

I would have loved nothing more than to prolong that weekend trip to Sioux Falls,

to preserve it in amber,

to hold onto it forever.

But that’s not how glory works.

Glory cannot be captured and preserved.

It has to be experienced.

It has to be received.

And it then has to be given.

If my three friends and I had moved to Sioux Falls,

if we had purchased every Bon Iver record in the world,

if we had spent the rest of our days wandering bookstores and coffee shops,

it wouldn’t be the same as that magical, transformative weekend.

The theologian John Shea writes that

“the point of spiritual experiences and of times of great awakening

is not to hold onto these special experiences,

but to listen to them.”1

On the mountain, Peter and James and John are not preaching or teaching.

They are not healing or casting out demons.

They are not defying Roman authority.

They are not upsetting the religious establishment.

They are beholding Jesus in all his blinding glory.

They are, if even for a brief moment,

caught up in wonder, love, and praise.

For one brief and fleeting moment,

they see Jesus as he really and truly is.

Of course they want to preserve this moment forever,

to hold onto it,

to build some kind of structure around it,

to experience this dazzling glory forever.

The experience of glory is not, however, the end goal.

The experience of glory is meant to buoy us,

to lift us out of the narrow confines of our mundane vision

and reorient us toward what is true and good and beautiful.

Contemplation is not meant to be a permanent shelter.

It is meant to clarify and to call,

to strengthen and to send.

The mountain is not the destination.

Rather it is the formation for what is to come.

This transfiguring experience on the mountain clarifies who Jesus truly is.

Surrounded by Moses

—the great Liberator who faced down Pharoah,

who led God’s people and gave them the Law—

and Elijah

—the great Prophet who stood before kings

and cut down false prophets and pieties—

the voice of God speaks from the cloud and says

“This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

What does listening to Jesus lead to?

If we survey Jesus in all his glittering glory

and really and truly listen to him,

where will we be led?

It leads Peter, James, and John back down the mountain.

Down into their everyday lives.

Down into a world which needs them to heal and teach,

to preach and prophesy.

Down to Jerusalem.

Down to the Cross.

Down to death.

And down to life.

Down to the destruction of death.

Down to life everlasting.

Contemplation and prayer

—mountaintop experiences of divine glory and presence—

are never an escape from the world.

Contemplation and prayer must be moments of preparation

for deeper entry into the world.

Prayer which does not lead to deep solidarity with the world around us

is little more than self-soothing sophistry.

Contemplation that does not make us braver

is little more than sentimentality.

We come to church on Sundays

and say our prayers every day

and study Scripture from time-to-time

in order to be formed.

We engage in contemplation

—we pray, we dwell in Scripture, we sing in praise,

we kneel in awe, we gaze in reverence—

in order to be formed into people who can recognize Christ,

not only in glory,

but also in suffering.

We come to the mountain top and are transformed,

—we are transfigured—

into people who can see the world as it really and truly is:

broken and busted, yes,

but also beautiful and blessed at the very same time.

We are made into people who see,

people whose sight is made possible by the gleaming reality of God’s love.

And then we go back down again.

Down into a world of confusion and suffering.

Down into a world which is aching and broken and in need of mending.

Down into a world where families are terrified to answer the door.

Down into neighborhoods where trust feels thin.

Down into a state where God’s people are hunted by agents of their government.

Down into a world where families are separated by legal vagaries

and fear stalks the vulnerable.

We go down, not as tourists of tragedy,

but as people who have seen a great light.

We go down as those who have knelt at God’s Table

and tasted the banquet of different, better, and more just kingdom,

as those who have been washed in living streams of mercy,

as those who have been sealed by God’s Creating, Redeeming, and Sustaining Spirit

and marked as Christ’s own forever,

as those who know that death does not have the final world,

as those who know that every king and president must one day bend the knee

to Christ who is God’s beloved son,

to Christ who sits at the right hand of God

and reigns forever in glory.

We cannot stay on the mountain top forever, my friends.

The great light we have seen

—the dazzling and blinding beauty of Jesus—

must be shared:

in classrooms and corridors,

on the streets and in the courts,

in text messages with frightened neighbors,

in the quiet and sometimes costly work of solidarity and mutual aid.

As we will pray in a few weeks’ time

during the Great Vigil of Easter:

May the light of Christ who rises in glory

scatter the darkness of our hearts and minds.

By God’s own grace, may it be so. Amen.

This sermon was offered by the Rev. Cody Maynus at All Saints Church, Northfield, Minnesota.

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You can watch the whole chapel service by clicking here.

A reading from the gospel according to Luke, the 13th chapter, beginning at the 31st verse:

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work… Jerusalem, Jerusalem…How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing!’

Imagine, if you will, that you are the leader of a fledgling movement.

You’re doing the deal.

You’re locked in.

The stakes are high and the obstacles to overcome are many,

but turning back is no longer an option.

You’ve built a team.

You’ve trained them and given them what they need to know.

But they’re nervous and even afraid.

As the leader of the movement, you know that you have to inspire them.

You have to calm their anxiety and quell their fear.

What image do you use to project that everything is okay

and they shouldn’t be afraid?

A warrior on a big, tall horse with a sword? Reasonable.

A superhero standing tall, cape flapping nobly behind her? Solid choice.

A raging lion, like, say, a St. Olaf lion,

standing on its hind legs and holding an axe? 10/10. No notes.

A big, fluffy mother hen with her little chicks tucked under her wings?

Um…probably not.

And yet that’s the image that Jesus uses to describe himself,

the image he offers when fear is rising and danger is real.

In this part of Luke’s gospel,

Jesus and his disciples are making their way to Jerusalem,

And all along the way, Jesus is engaging in relationships

with the lost and the lonely,

the poor and the marginalized.

He heals the sick, he raises the dead,

he proclaims release and liberty and salvation and wholeness.

And when Jesus is warned about the thread of King Herod,

he does not respond as perhaps you or I would respond.

He doesn’t say ‘Praise the Lord! Thanks for the warning!

I better be safe and avoid the scheming tyrant

who just recently killed my cousin John the Baptist

and whose father tried to kill me when I was a baby.”

No, no no, that would be too reasonable for Jesus!

His answer is dripping with the kind of sass that only the Son of God can offer:

‘You tell that fox that I’m too busy doing my thing to worry about him!’

Too busy casting out demons.

Too busy healing.

Too busy proclaiming and building the Kingdom of God, here as it is in heaven.

And then knowing exactly how the story ends,

knowing that Herod and Rome and all the machinery of empire are already closing in,

Jesus calls himself a mother hen.

Faced with the threat of the fox,

Jesus doesn’t claim the strength of a lion

or the burliness of a bear

or the majesty of an eagle.

He claims the tenderness and tenacity of a mother hen.

As priest and theologian Barbara Brown Taylor writes,

the hen stands

between her chicks and those who mean to do them harm.

She has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles.

All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body.

If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.”1

The mother hen would rather die herself than let any harm befall her chicks.

This is how it is with Jesus.

This is how it always is with him.

This is not power as the world defines it.

There is no domination in Jesus.

It is not strike before stricken.

It is love without reservation.

This is the protection of the vulnerable at great personal risk.

This is the resistance of evil

—not with force—

but with self-giving love.

Because love is the perfect,

love is the only antidote to fear.

The lay minister and theologian Debie Thomas puts it this way:

What Jesus the mother hens offers is not the absence of danger, but the fullness of his unguarded, open-hearted, wholly vulnerable self in the face of all that threatens and scares us. What he gives us is his own body, his own life. Wings spread open, heart exposed, shade and warmth and shelter at the ready. What he promises—at great risk to himself—is the making of his very being into a place of refuge and return for his children.2

A place of refuge and return for his children.

That’s the part I don’t want you to miss, people of God,

especially if you’re tired and afraid of the foxes of this world:

Before Jesus ever asks anyone to protect another,

he protects them first.

Before he calls anyone to stand in the gap,

he stands there first.

Before he sends anyone out into danger,

he gathers them close.

This is the invitation he makes to his disciples

and to us:

Come in from the cold,

step out of the line of fire, if only for a moment.

Let yourself be held, shielded, and covered

by a love that does not flinch when foxes are near.

Because the foxes are real and they’re here right now.

Here in Northfield, people are afraid to leave their homes.

Families are living with the constant calculation of risk.

Folks are risking their lives to document the atrocities of the current moment.

Mutual aid networks and rapid response groups are organizing their communities.

Nurses are trying their best to bandage the wounds of the world.

Citizens are calling their congresspeople night and day and demanding change.

Young people—maybe some of you, maybe some of your friends—

are engaging in non-violent direct action,

playing instruments and singing songs to wake folks up,

if not literally wake them up,

then to wake up the conscience of the community.

People marching in sub-zero weather,

taking care of each other and those most vulnerable.

Some of you are carrying fear for your families, your friends, your teachers.

Jesus does not minimize that danger and neither should we.

He does not pretend that none of this is happening and neither should we.

But he does say to us,

he does say to you and to me and to the whole world:

come closer, little chick.

Come where fear does not get the final word.

Come where your worth is not measured by your productivity or your bravery.

Come where love—not force—is the first, last, and only line of defense.

I’ll leave you with this beautiful and strange prayer

written about a thousand years ago by St Anselm of Canterbury,

an English monk, theologian, and bishop

who knew the exhaustion, fear, and cost of faithfulness in contending with foxes:

Christ, my mother,

you gather your chickens under your wings;

this dead chicken of yours puts himself under those wings.

For by your gentleness the badly frightened are comforted,

by your sweet smell the despairing are revived,

your warmth gives life to the dead,

your touch justifies sinners.

Mother, know again your dead son,

both by the sign of your cross and the voice of his confession.

Warm your chicken, give life to your dead [one], justify your sinner.

Let your terrified one be consoled by you;

despairing of [themselves], let [them] be comforted by you.

and in your whole and unceasing grace

let [them] be refashioned by you.

For from you flows consolation for sinners;

to you the blessing for ages and ages. Amen.3

At this point in Jesus’ life, things aren’t necessarily going great.

His cousin, John the Baptist, has been arrested by King Herod Antipas

and the movement of repentance which John started is in grave peril.

The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke

suggest that John was thrown into jail

because he openly criticized King Herod

for divorcing his first wife Phasaelis

—who was the daughter of Aretas IV Philopatris, a neighboring king—

and for marrying Herodias,

the divorced wife and also half-niece of his half-brother Herod Philip II.

(You do the math there.)

The first century historian Josephus

also indicates that John was arrested

lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion, (for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise.) (A.J. 18.5.2 )1

John is in jail and Jesus withdraws rather suddenly to Galilee,

not just temporarily, but seemingly permanently.

Matthew says that Jesus ‘made his home in Capernaum by the sea,’

a forty or so mile walk from his home in Nazareth.

The details of Jesus’s situation are unclear

except that his cousin, friend, and perhaps sole disciple, John,

is in danger.

He is a stranger in a new land,

far away from his home and his people,

far away from Joseph’s wood shop

and from Mary’s embrace.

John is in jail.

The empire is looking to squash sedition.

Jesus has no base of support and no institutional protection.

This is not really the time for Jesus to start something new.

But that’s exactly what he does.

He does not wait for conditions to improve.

He does not wait for permission.

He does not wait for a plan.

He walks right up to the shoreline,

finds the least likely disciples a person could imagine,

and says to them, in essence:

“Come on! Let’s go!

Drop your nets.

Leave your boats.

Turn away from everything you know to be true,

abandon every comfort you have.

Follow me.

And the message which Jesus proclaims,

the teaching which this itinerant preacher

invites these fisherfolk to join him in is this:

Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

Jesus is not some angry preacher speaking on behalf of an angry God,

saying “Repent, you miserable sinners!”

No, no, no, he is a gentle encourager, a visionary.

The word he uses for repent is metanoia,

(meta - beyond or change, noia - mind)

He says to Peter and Andrew, to James and to John:

Change your mind about your quiet life as fisherfolk.

Change your mind about the comforts of your family life.

Change your mind about the little things, yes,

but change your mind also about the big things.

Change your mind about King Herod.

Change your mind about the Roman generals and governors and armies

who occupy the land of your birth,

the land of your ancestors.

Change your mind about the authority you give them.

Turn from their reign of power and might and domination.

Shift your entire outlook in a fundamental way.

And why?

Why change your mind?

Why desert your way of living?

Why submit yourself to a radical transformation of heart, mind, and spirit?

Why abandon old patterns for a new and frankly dangerous purpose?

Because… the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

The great theologian Frederick Beuchner wrote:

If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand,

we would know that the Kingdom of God

in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty

is as close as breathing

and is crying out to be born both within ourselves and within the world;

we would know that the Kingdom of God

is what we all of us hunger for above all other things

even when we don’t know its name

or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for.

The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from

and our truest prayers.

We glimpse it at those moments

when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know.

We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis

a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength.

The Kingdom of God is where we belong.

It is home, and whether we realize it or not,

I think we are all of us homesick for it.2

Repent.

Turn.

Cast aside.

Change.

Revolve.

Because the kingdom of God is at hand,

because the kingdom of God is so close that we can almost touch it.

So close and yet so far away.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

preaching from an equally difficult place in human history

says that we shall know the kingdom of heaven is here

“[w]hen we see social relationships controlled everywhere

by the principles which Jesus illustrated in life

– trust, love, mercy, and altruism…”3

Repent.

Turn.

Change.

Revolve.

Because the trust, love, mercy, and altruism of Jesus is at hand.

Repent.

Turn.

Change.

Revolve.

Because life as it is now is not sustainable or just.

Because life under occupation is not what God intends for God’s children,

not Roman occupation

and not American occupation.

Repent.

Turn.

Change.

Revolve.

Because the world needs Jesus.

The world needs followers of Jesus

who are committed to modeling their lives after his,

who are committed to the way of trust, love, mercy, and altruism,

who are committed to nonviolence,

who are committed to throwing a spoke into the wheel of injustice,

who are committed to speaking up for the vulnerable and the damaged,

who are committed to seeing the image of God in everybody.

In other words there is no time to stand still.

The French theologian Jacques Ellul once put it this way:

Christians were never meant to be normal.

We’ve always been holy troublemakers,

we’ve always been creators of uncertainty,

agents of dimension that’s incompatible with the status quo;

we do not accept the world as it is,

but we insist on the world becoming the way that God wants it to be.

And the Kingdom of God is different from the patterns of this world.4

The church has always known this call to be different.

And that difference is not theoretical for us this week,

because the status quo in Minnesota has shifted.

This week, Minnesota remains under what is essentially a military occupation.

Tens of thousands of Americans marched in -20 degree weather

because they have recognized that life as it is in Minnesota is unsustainable.

This week the rectors of St. John the Evangelist, Epiphany, and St. David’s,

a priest associate at St. Matthew’s,

the rector and deacon of St. Clement’s,

Pastor Inger and Pastor Pam here in Northfield,

and about a hundred other priests, pastors, rabbis, and seminarians

were arrested while kneeling in prayer.

Yesterday in Minneapolis, a nurse named Alex Pretti

—a nurse who was taught by one of the nurses of this parish—

was murdered by federal agents.

Yesterday Carleton College was placed on lockdown

because ICE was violating the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution

and was illegally staging in the college parking lot.

Yesterday a neighbor was abducted on 2nd and Division,

just three blocks from this church.

Yesterday this church was on lockdown

because Laura Geissler’s violin studio was holding its winter workshop

and unmarked cars driven by clearly uniformed border patrol agents

were circling the block repeatedly.

Parents of violin students were posted by the doors,

making sure that nobody who was dangerous came in

and that nobody walked out to their cars alone.

Yesterday almost 250 people packed into the pews of this church

in order to light candles and sing songs and hear words of hope and encouragement

from the pastors and priests and deacons and imams of our town.

This is the air we’re breathing.

This is the fear in our streets.

So when Jesus says ‘Repent, the kingdom of heaven has come near,’

he is not offering escape.

He is offering an orientation.

He is saying:

Do not let this violence define for you what is normal.

Do not let fear tell you what is inevitable.

Do not let empire tell you what is possible.

Do not let them steal your hope.

The kingdom of God is near:

near enough to stand in doorways and guard children,

near enough to pass out hand warmers to strangers marching on the street,

near enough to stand on street corners and bear witness,

near enough to see in the eyes of a neighbor,

near enough to feel in the embrace of a friend,

near enough to reach out and hold,

near enough to refuse to look away,

near enough to say unequivocally:

this is not who we are here

and it is not who we will ever be.

And so the invitation Jesus issued to his first disciples on the shoreline

is the same invitation he issues to us this morning,

in the words of a well known hymn:

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?

Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known,

will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?

Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?

Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?

Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?

Will you love the “you” you hide if I but call your name?

Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?

Will you use the faith you’ve found to reshape the world around,

through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?5

May God give us courage to yes ‘yes’ and to follow. Amen.

This sermon was preached by the Rev. Cody Maynus at All Saints Church, Northfield, Minnesota on June 25, 2026.

the great conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein responded:

The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm—that’s a problem; and if we have no second fiddle, we have no harmony.

The first violin is the one who most often plays the melody of the piece,

the highest line of the string section,

the bit that soars and shines.

The second violin, on the other hand,

plays the supportive role harmonically and rhythmically.

Their line is often quite low and difficult,

but without them, the beauty of the first violin’s notes are not fully heard.

In the gospel this morning, we are given another depiction of the Baptism of Jesus.

We don’t see the actual baptism itself here,

this gospel does not give us a cinematic portrayal as the synoptic gospels do.

What we get, however, is John the Baptist’s testimony:

I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.

Some theologians have insisted that in this gospel,

John is not the Baptist, but is rather the Testifer.

John the Witness.

John the Pointer.

John the Second Violin.

By this point in his life, John has earned for himself a reputation.

He has amassed followers and disciples.

Elsewhere we see both the civic and secular authorities questioning him.

Some people think he is the messiah, the promised saviour of his people.

Others think that he must be Elijah come back to lead Israel to its glory days.

Herod eventually detains John in prison for his influence over the people

and finally delivers John’s head on a silver platter to Herod’s stepdaughter Salome.

The Jewish historian Josephus says that Herod had John executed

lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion, (for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise), [so Herod] thought it best [to put] him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause (A.J. 18.5.2 )1

If John wanted to be the first violin in the Lord’s orchestra,

the people would have surely given it to him.

Instead, he takes the second chair.

He points to Jesus

—his cousin, of course,

but otherwise basically unknown to anybody else—

and says “Behold, this is your first violinist.”

Behold, this is the Lamb of God.

This is the Son of God.

John’s place in salvation history is not as a teacher or an explainer.

He is not a pastor or a priest.

He does not call down God’s power in deeds of awesome power.

He points always to God and to God’s saving acts.

He points to what God is doing in the plain sight of God’s people.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

We are, you and I, heirs of the western theological tradition,

a tradition which has tended to identify ‘sin’ with moral failure.

Sins are naughty things we do even though we know we’re not supposed to do them.

Mistakes we make,

transgressions we commit,

things we have done wrong.

But for the Fourth Gospel, sin is not primarily an action,

a thing that one does.

Sin is a state of being

a condition of separation,

a way of living cut off from God and from God’s creation.2

When John says that Jesus takes away the sins of the world,

he is not saying that Jesus wipes clean your individual transgressions.

John is saying that Jesus’s work and calling is to reverse a fundamental state of affairs,

a condition which affects the whole human race.

Folks have postulated over the years about humanity’s fundamental or original sin.

What was it that first caused creation to go haywire?

Was it lust that first snagged Adam and Eve in the Garden?

Pride? Disobedience? Greed? Vainglory?

The theory that I find most compelling is fear.

As the great Johannine scholar Sr. Sandra Schneiders, IHM says it:

Our existential terror stems from our realization that—even though we are made in God’s image and likeness—we, unlike God, are not the source of our own existence. The serpent, the liar from the beginning, insinuates into the idyllic context of the ‘original’ couple, endowed by a loving God with all the good humans could desire, the suspicion that they are not really safe, that they are vulnerable to the whims of a capricious and untrustworthy, but all-powerful deity.3

We fear because we are mortal.

We experience fear because there is so much outside of our control.

Humanity is made in God’s image and likeness.

We are endowed with “reason, memory, and skill” (BCP Eucharistic Prayer C.)

We are made a little lower than the angels (Heb. 2:7).

And yet we do not

—and will not ever—

be fully in control of our own existence.

And that is frightening.

That is absolutely and utterly terrifying.

It is frightening to know that our whole life

—our happiness, our freedom—

depends on the existence of others.

And this fear that comes from knowing

how little control we actually have over our lives

is not a theoretical fear.

It is not something which remains in the realm of feelings,

but which shows up every day in real places,

in real bodies.

Fear has been close at hand these days, hasn’t it?

In recent weeks and months, fear has been ramping up

—both locally and nationally,

internationally, really—

with no immediate end in sight.

Federal immigration raids have unsettled neighborhoods and broken up families.

Masked agents of the state with little training are carrying assault rifles in the streets.

Here in Northfield, military-grade drones are flying above Viking Terrace.

People yell profanity while driving by school children

exercising their First Amendment rights to protest.

Facebook comments from neighbors and strangers call one another clowns

and suggest all kinds of malicious and nefarious intents.

Real people

—people whom we know—

are wondering every morning

if it’s safe to go to work,

if it’s safe to send the kids to school,

if it’s safe to pick up food from the food shelf.

Other real people

—people whom we also know—

are afraid that their entire way of life is crumbling.

They are afraid that the world they understand is slipping out of their hands.

They are afraid that systems they have always trusted no longer protect them.

They are afraid that rampant fraud is happening,

that the rules no longer matter,

that someone else is getting something they themselves have lost.

They are afraid that people who do not look like them

or talk like them

or pray like them

are going to cause them harm,

are going to treat them as they have treated others.

Now, of course, these two groups do not experience fear in the same way

and the stakes are decidedly not the same.

But what fear does to the human heart

—to every human heart

on every side of every divide—

is devastatingly similar.

Fear isolates and narrows.

Fear teaches us to see another as an enemy to be conquered,

not as a neighbor to be embraced.

Fear suggests that safety against one another is superior to safety with one another.

This is the sin of the world which Jesus the Lamb of God takes away.

Not naughty little actions,

not moral failures,

but rather the conditions of our separation,

the state of being which keeps us separate from God and from one another.

Sin…separation…is what happens when fear persuades us

that we are finally and utterly alone,

that no one will come for us,

that no one will save us,

and that we therefore must protect ourselves no matter the cost.

Fear is what stalks the halls of power,

what motivates our politicians on both sides of the aisle,

in the White House,

in the Congress,

and in the Supreme Court.

Fear is what hardens hearts

and narrows our moral vision.

Fear is what convinces those who bear the authority of government

that safety can be purchased with cruelty,

that order can be enforced without justice,

that peace can be achieved by might alone.

Fear is what emboldens federal agents

to meet unarmed citizens with chemical weapons and riot gear.

Fear is what tightens a finger on a trigger

and fires through the window of a fleeing car,

ending the life of another child of God.

Fear is what creeps into our living rooms at night

through the glowing screens of our televisions and our cellphones.

Fear is what teaches us to look at our neighbors and see enemies instead of kin.

Fear is what causes us to watch the news and to hate fellow human beings,

to see the harm and evil they are committing

—in the name of our Republic and often in God’s own name—

and wish upon them more harm and evil.

Fear is what causes us that most deadly of logic which demands

an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth

such that the whole world is left blind and broken.

Fear is what causes us to invent stories of difference and superiority.

Fear is what christens nationalism as faith

and violence as virtue.

Fear is what teaches us to arm ourselves against one another—

with weapons,

with laws,

with lies and partial truths.

Fear is what fractures the human family.

Fear is what keeps us separate.

Behold the Lamb of God.

Behold the one who takes away the sins of the world.

Behold the one who does not choose sides out of fear,

but crosses every line which fear draws.

Behold the one who stands in the space

between those who are afraid to lose

and those who are afraid to disappear.

Behold the one who enters into the human condition

in the most vulnerable way possible,

not armed,

not insulated,

not in control,

and, in so doing, exposes the lie that separation can save us.

Behold the Lamb of God,

behold the one who does not remove sin by force,

but by communion.

After all of John’s naming and pointing,

the first thing that Jesus does is invite.

“Come and see.”

Not “come and do not fear”

Not “come, but make sure you’ve got it all figured out first.”

Not “hang in there until the danger has passed and then come.”

Come, now.

Come, as you are.

Come, with your heart thumping and your hands trembling.

Jesus does not ask us to fix the world,

to single-handedly end isolation and domination and oppression.

Jesus does not ask us to do anything other than follow and abide,

to stay close enough to discover that God is already here,

that there is no divide so great that God cannot close it up,

no wound so large that God cannot mend it.

In a world marked with separation,

to follow anything or anybody,

—to hew closely to another—

takes great courage

and it is courage which we,

in our city and our state and our country,

need most right now,

because courage is the antidote to fear.

Early on his ministry, Dr. King, whom we celebrate tomorrow, preached:

Courage, the determination not to be overwhelmed by any object, however frightful, enables us to stand up to any fear. Many of our fears are not mere snakes under the carpet. Trouble is a reality in this strange medley of life, dangers lurk within the circumference of every action, accidents do occur, bad health is an ever-threatening possibility, and death is a stark, grim and inevitable fact of human experience.

Courage is an inner resolution to go forward in spite of obstacles and frightening situations; cowardice is a submissive surrender to circumstance. Courageous [people] never lose the zest for living even though their life is zestless; cowardly [people], overwhelmed by the uncertainties of life, lose the will to live. We must constantly build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.4

And so, dear friends, set aside your need to have all of the answers.

Set aside your need to control that which cannot be controlled.

Set aside your fears and your anxieties

and bear witness to what is already true:

that the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,

that the One who takes away our sin and separation,

that the One who comes to us in Word and in Sacrament,

is standing in our midst,

is standing right there in front of us,

and bidding us come and see.

By God’s own grace, may we have the courage to follow. Amen.

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After St John dunks Jesus below the waters of the River Jordan, 

after the Spirit of God descends like a dove,

after God proclaims Jesus as God’s beloved son in whom God is well pleased, 

after all of that and during the post-service locust and honey-hour, 

Jesus says to St John: 

“Thank you for baptizing me, John. I really appreciate it. 

But don’t you think you could have, y’know, sprinkled the water on my forehead 

instead of plunging me under all that cold water?” 

And St. John replies 

“All due respect, Lord, I’m John the Baptist not John the Episcopalian.” 

It’s true that Episcopalians do sometimes baptize by full immersion. 

We did it most recently a couple years ago at the Great Vigil of Easter

when Jai and Ally were baptized

and then confirmed by the bishop. 

When we baptize

—however we baptize—

something very really happens to the baptized. 

Baptism is not an elaborate welcome ceremony for an exclusive club

and neither is it only an occasion for the extended family to get together 

and bring out the little white gown that great-great-grandma made. 

It is a transformation, 

it is the claiming of a life, 

it is a fundamental identity being named. 

In baptism, we are received into the household of God

and joined indelibly to Christ,

to his life and his death and his resurrection. 

In baptism, we are marked forever as God’s own beloved. 

The water of baptism is not decorative or incidental.

It is the means by which we ritually enact that transformation. 

We are immersed into the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. 

Surrounded on all sides 

by the reality that our life cannot ever be the same as it once was. 

Although there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the way we usually baptize

we do lose something of the power of the ritual act 

when we sprinkle or pour water on the forehead 

rather than plunge the candidate fully into the sanctified water. 

The Greek word used here for baptism in Matthew 

—and elsewhere throughout the New Testament—

means to dip or submerge

or, more evocatively, to overwhelm.

To be covered or engulfed or even buried

by the water pouring over you and all around you. 

Anybody who has done a cannonball off the diving board

knows that there’s a certain kind of fear in being overwhelmed by water

of being submerged and engulfed and bombarded and flooded and inundated. 

There’s a certain kind of fear there,

but there’s also a kind of release, 

a kind of exhilaration and freedom. 

In the Incarnation, God jumps off the highest diving board you can imagine

and plunges full on into the depths of the human experience. 

God does not watch humanity from afar, 

God is baptized into humanity. 

God is dipped and submerged into humanity.

By taking on human flesh in the person of Jesus, 

God is engulfed in our humanity,

overwhelmed with our humanity. 

In Jesus, God goes down into the depths of the human experience

—into the confusion, 

into the suffering,

into the vulnerability—

so that humanity can be restored to right relationship with God,

not without the human experience

but within in. 

Although baptism saves us and anoints us and proclaims our belovedness,

it does not magically make us bright and shiny people,

people without doubt and despair and anger and chaos.

It makes us people who are not afraid to name those feelings

because we know that Jesus has felt them first, 

because we know that Jesus stands in solidarity with those feelings. 

That is what we see in the baptism of Jesus in today’s gospel. 

Jesus is, as Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says,  

“immersed both into the world of deathly powers,

but also into the affirming love and calling of God.”1

We see that St John is flabbergasted why Jesus would come to him for baptism, 

since John’s baptism was a ritual cleansing of sin. 

Jesus does not need repentance

—he has no sins to forgive—

but he nevertheless chooses solidarity with the people. 

He stands alongside the people

and goes into the water alongside the people. 

He is submerged alongside the people

and overwhelmed alongside the people. 

He enters fully into the chaos of the human experience

and shows us what solidarity looks like. 

In Jesus’s baptism, the Incarnation is brought to its full completion. 

The Word took on flesh and dwelt among us. 

Or as one translator2 puts it: 

“The Word took on flesh and moved into the neighborhood.” 

This proximity to the human condition 

draws Jesus fully into the depth of our experience,

into the places of fear and confusion and bewilderment. 

It draws him into the places where human dignity is imperiled.

And we who have been baptized into his death and resurrection 

are called to those same places as well. 

As Archbishop Williams wrote:

If we ask the question, ‘Where might you expect to find the baptized?’ one answer is, ‘in the neighborhood of chaos.’ It means you might expect to find Christian people near to those places where humanity is most at risk, where humanity is most disordered, disfigured, and needy. Christians will be found in the neighborhood of Jesus—but Jesus is found in the neighborhood of human confusion and suffering, defencelessly alongside those in need. 

One of those places

—one of those places of chaos,

one of those places where human dignity is imperiled—

one of those places is quite near to us right now. 

Exactly 41.8 miles away by car

—or 34.14 miles as the crow flies—

a woman was shot and killed this week 

while observing immigration and customs enforcement agents.  

By God’s grace, neither I nor the president nor the Secretary of Homeland Security 

are judge or jury,

but I will tell you what I saw 

when I stood alongside a couple hundred other priests, pastors, rabbis, and imams

at the site of the murder the day after it happened. 

I saw a neighborhood torn apart.

I saw a community overwhelmed with grief. 

I saw a widow describe her wife as good and kind,

“a Christian who knew…

[that] we are here to love each other, 

care for each other, 

and keep each other safe and whole.”3 

I saw a school on lockdown, 

teachers and children afraid. 

I saw fear and confusion and bewilderment. 

But I also saw water. 

With the Prophet Amos, I saw justice rolling down like waters

and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24). 

With St John the Divine, I saw the river of the water of life, 

bright as crystal, 

flowing from the throne of God

with the tree of life standing on either side of the river,

that tree whose leaves are the healing of the nations

and that place where there will be no more night (Revelation 22:1-2).

With St. John the Baptist, I saw the Lord. 

I saw Jesus enter into the waters of the River Jordan.

I saw the sky open up and the Spirit of God descend

with the proclamation of belovedness. 

And I saw us. 

I saw you all and I saw myself. 

I saw Renee Good. 

I saw the children at Annunciation Catholic School.

I saw George Floyd. 

I saw Philando Castile. 

I saw Jamar Clark. 

I saw every person who has been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

I saw all of the saints who have walked this road before us. 

I saw them standing there,

huddled together for warmth on a bitterly cold January day. 

I saw them and I saw us

because this is where our baptism places us,

not in the Lord’s club house,

not in an ivory tower of purity and perfection, 

not in some heaven lightyears away, 

but wherever there is suffering,

wherever there is injustice,

wherever human life is violated,

wherever human dignity is jeopardized.

That is where our baptism calls us to be

and it is where our baptism places us. 

Maybe not physically there at 34th and Portland,

but there nevertheless,

there by God’s grace, 

there in our hearts,

there in the depths. 

I was there and I was overwhelmed. 

I wanted to get back into my car and cry. 

But, you know? 

That’s okay. 

It’s okay that I was overwhelmed. 

It’s okay that my heart was moved to sorrow. 

Because I, like you, made a promise

—or rather, a promise was made on my part

which I later confirmed

and regularly renew—

I promised to renounce:

Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness which rebel against God;

the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God;

all sinful desires that draw me from the love of God. 

I promised to turn to Jesus, 

to put my whole trust in his grace and love,

to follow and obey him as my Lord. 

I promised to continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship. 

I promised to persevere in resisting evil and to repent when I’ve sinned. 

I promised to proclaim by word and deed the Good News of God in Christ. 

I promised to seek and serve Christ in all persons and to love my neighbor as myself. 

I promise to strive for justice and peace among all people 

and to respect the dignity of every human being. 

To be baptized is to be overwhelmed,

not only with water,

but with responsibility. 

To be overwhelmed by a calling which leads to deep places 

and which requires us to do difficult things. 

To be drawn into the depths of the human experience 

and to refuse to turn away,

to refuse to look away from what is happening right in front of us,

to refuse silence and inaction. 

Because, my dearest friends, 

deeper than the chaos of the world,

deeper than the chaos within us,

is the depth of God’s love, 

a love which shows no partiality,

a love which, like rain,  falls on the just and the unjust, 

a love which alone has the power to transform the world, 

to mend the fractured edges of the world, 

to heal all that which is broken in the world and in us. 

Having been baptized into Christ, my dear friends, 

we belong to a love deeper than any chaos or division, 

a love which was in place before this or any country was formed 

and which will be in place long after we are but a footnote in history. 

In a moment we will renew the solemn promises which we once made

or which were made for us at our baptism.

These promises were not made for perfect people. 

They were made for us.

These promises were not made for calmer times. 

They were made for times such as these. 

By God’s own grace, may we have the courage to keep them. 

Amen. 

This sermon was preached by Fr. Cody Maynus at All Saints Church, Northfield, MN on 11 January, 2026.

If you look closely at the nativity scene in front of the altar,

you may notice something is missing.

Of course we have the little baby Jesus in his bed of straw.

And Mary and Joseph, looking on in awe and wonder.

And there are the shepherds—one old and one young—

with their cow and their donkey

(either they were bad shepherds with only one animal apiece

or maybe the makers of the creche

decided that two critters was enough to paint the picture without crowding it. )

And, of course, we have the traditional three wisemen, right?

Ahhh we don’t.

We only have two wisemen.

Nearly every year while we’re greening the church before Christmas Eve,

somebody asks about the conspicuous absence of the third wiseman.

Nobody remembers exactly what happened to him.

Did somebody drop him

while taking him down from the shelf where he lives 11 months out of the year?

Was he lost in a move from one storage space to another?

Did somebody decide that finding three wise men was beyond the scope of belief?

Nobody knows at this point

and that’s perfectly okay!

Because Matthew’s gospel never actually tells us how many wisemen there were!

There were three gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—

so of course there must have been three wisemen, right?

Maybe! Maybe not!

That doesn’t seem to be Matthew’s point in telling the story.

Matthew’s story is not concerned so much about the guest list

as about God showing up in the most unlikely of places,

about God communicating salvation

through supposedly forbidden and decidedly unorthodox means.

about imperial power plays and duplicitous rulers,

about genocide and forced migration,

about danger and fear and making difficult decisions in impossible times,

Matthew’s story feels particularly close to home these days, doesn’t it?

We are living in a moment of human history

where it’s genuinely hard to know what’s going on.

Information, it seems, is partial.

Rumors move faster than truth.

Assumptions abound.

Fear and division shape our common life.

Our leaders speak the language of law and order

and families are broken apart.

People disappear into nameless and hopeless systems.

Violence seems to be right around every corner,

just waiting to pounce.

Not only in national or international politics,

but even right here locally,

in our city streets and in our neighboring communities.

In times like this, our faith

—our celebration of this season of Christmas,

our beautiful hymns and our well crafted liturgies,

our vestry meetings and our coffee hours—

in times like this, our faith can feel abstract,

like a fairy tale told in a children’s book.

But, as the 19th century novelist G. K. Chesterton is said to have written:

Fairy tales are more than true:

not because they tell us that dragons exist,

but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.1

So, if you’ll permit, I’ll offer you a fairy tale of our own,

about the third wiseman and why he’s notably absent from in front of the altar.

I stop the fairytale here because the Gospel stops here:

before the state’s violence,

before the mothers’ grief,

before the cost becomes undeniable.

We are living in a moment when fear is the natural and even reasonable response.

When it feels perhaps responsible to delay our decisions and seek more information.

When compliance with power in its many guises could be seen as prudent.

The Gospel does not ask us to be prudent or reasonable, however.

The Gospel asks us to be faithful.

Not to attempt to predict the future,

but to look for the signs all around us,

to see in the night sky of our own lives a Star leading us

to the very place where God is made manifest.

To find ourselves here and now

—with these two wisemen,

with the shepherds and their flocks,

with the angel choirs—

and to decide what we will do now,

what we will do now while the house is still standing,

while multiple roads lie open before us.

We do not know what will come in our own time.

Not only politically, but personally.

We don’t know what the shape of this new year will be.

We don’t know the blessings and the challenges waiting around the corner for us.

We don’t know the ways that we will be called upon to shift and to grow.

We don’t know what gifts we will give or receive.

We don’t know how much of what we hear in the news or read online will become real.

The uncertainty is real and it’s unsettling.

But the Gospel does give us some amount of certainty:

God does not wait until danger is obvious to act.

God moves early and often.

And God always protects the vulnerable.

The wisemen go home by another road before Herod’s violence begins.

The Holy Family flees before Herod’s soldiers arrive.

Now that the Light of the World has appeared,

now that the Brightest and Best of Stars of the Morning is set in the sky,

now that Word has taken on flesh and is dwelling among us,

now that Christ has been made known to us,

what road will we take?

May God give us eyes to see the Light,

courage to follow it,

and the wisdom to choose the right way home.

By God’s own grace, may it be so. Amen.

This sermon was preached by Fr. Cody Maynus, n/OGS at All Saints Church, Northfield, Minnesota on 4 January, 2026.

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When it comes to coffee snobbery,

I like to think I’m fairly middle of the road.

Unless it is an emergency, I try not to drink Folgers

—or the store-brand that comes in a tub with a plastic lid—

but I’m usually not too picky about how the coffee I drink is brewed.

I know that some folks will only drink their coffee

if it’s brewed in an Aeropress or a French press or a pour-over

or if it’s measured just so and the water is exactly the right temperature.

And some folks will only drink the fanciest roast of coffee.

Not me.

Give me whatever the big bag of beans from Costco is

and a regular, old drip coffee pot.

But a while ago,

in the rush of a morning where I couldn’t leisurely drink a whole pot of coffee,

I pulled out my little pour-over and set to work making one cup.

One cup of hot coffee, ready in as long as it takes to boil water

and pour it over the ground coffee.

Quick and easy.

It had been a hot minute since I’d used my pour-over,

and I’d forgotten the recommended ratio of ground coffee to water.

When I looked for directions online while the water was boiling,

a little phrase caught my attention:

“Avoid the light spots; go toward the dark.”

It was, of course, describing how to pour the water

so the coffee grounds are evenly saturated,

but it also struck me that this is God’s experience with humanity.

God did not enter the world surrounded by glory and power and prestige,

but rather in weakness, in humility, in vulnerability.

The sign which the angel announced to the shepherds was not

that they would find the savior of the world

in a learned priest offering sacrifices in a glorious temple

or a wise judge presiding over a high and lofty hall

or an impressive warrior riding into battle at the head of an impressive army.

The sign that the angels offered was this:

you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger;

that they would find the Savior of the World, the King, the Redeemer, the Messiah

wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

The good news of great joy is not that God has come in power

to kick butt and take names,

but that God has taken on human flesh

in a poor, defenseless baby born on the fringes of civilization,

born to frightened and exhausted parents,

surrounded by smelly animals,

and worshipped by scruffy shepherds.

Walk down the Christmas card aisle at Target and you won’t see that sign anywhere.

You’ll see the cheerful, sanitized version of it:

a perfectly coiffed Virgin Mary,

a noble, calm Joseph,

clean and respectable shepherds,

an angelic looking cow.

It’s all clean and brightly-lit and utterly devoid

of the raw reality of human life,

which, as you and I know all too well, is rarely neat or tidy.

But, my friends, that’s exactly where God is most likely to be found:

in the messy, the hidden, and the overlooked.

God goes where the world often refuses to look.

God does not avoid the darkness.

God is drawn to the darkness.

TheChristmas does not begin in the light, does it?

It begins in darkness.

The darkness of a womb.

The darkness of a night so deep that shepherds are still awake,

guarding their flocks because robbers and bandits have not gone to sleep.

The darkness of a country under military occupation.

The darkness of uncertainty, displacement, and borrowed space.

“The people who dwelt in darkness have seen a great light,” says the Prophet Isaiah

not the people who have somehow managed to avoid the dark,

not the people who are so smart and holy that they have transcended the dark,

but people who live in the darkness,

people who dwell in the darkness,

people who call the darkness home.

God does not wait for the darkness to lift before entering it.

God goes toward the dark.

It is in darkness that seeds take root.

It is in darkness that human life is knit together.

It is in darkness that stars dare to shine.

Just as the natural world depends on darkness to bring forth life and light,

so too does our encounter with God.

And so tonight

—when the church is dim,

when candles do their small but defiant work—

we remember that we meet God not by pretending the darkness isn’t there,

but by trusting that God is already in it

and transforming it into life and light.

We tend to prefer quick fixes, don’t we?

We naturally want to gravitate toward the light spots.

Even Christmas can become another way of avoiding what is hard, painful, unresolved.

But the Gospel insists otherwise.

The Child whom we adore tonight

is born into a world that will not ever fully understand him.

Into a family who will have to flee the brutal dictate of a genocidal king.

Into a story that already bends toward the cross.

This is the darkness where God dwells:

the darkness where love takes flesh.

the darkness where hope begins its long, patient work.

So whatever darkness you have brought with you tonight—

grief that seemingly has no ending,

fear you cannot quite name,

loneliness that feels sharper and sharper these days,

doubt you’ve learned to hide beneath the surface of competence,

exhaustion which feels like an oppressive blanket pressing down—

know that you do not have to banish this darkness to make room for Christ.

It is in there,

in that darkness—

in the womb,

in the night,

in the doubt,

in the despair,

in the waiting—

that the Light of the world is born anew

this holy night and forever more.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness—

on them,

on you,

on us—

light has shined. Amen.

This homily was offered by the Rev. Cody Maynus at All Saints Church, Northfield, Minnesota.

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—this time of year with all of its

Christmas pageants,

all of the manger scenes set up with care,

the songs with annoying little drummer boys

and Christological heresies such as ‘away in a manger/ no crying he makes,’—

one of the real dangers this time of year

is that people who have no business preaching about childbirth do just that.

It’s easy for medieval mystics like Meister Eckhart to wax poetically

about how we’re ‘all called to be mothers of God’

when he’s not very likely himself to be the biological mother of anybody.

And, while I suppose it’s technically true that all things are possible with God,

it is, perhaps, more unlikely for several reasons that I would be anybody’s mother.

Even though somebody as monkish as I am

really has no business preaching about childbirth, here we go!

It’s easy and good and right and natural for us to focus primarily

on the role of Mary in the Nativity scene.

As the ancient councils unequivocally affirm, Mary is the Mother of God

not only the Mother of the Christ

but the Mother of God,

the Theotokos, the God-bearer.

Her place in history and in every bathrobe Christmas pageant is patently secure.

Without taking away from Mary’s unique role in the Nativity,

—in the Incarnation of God in the flesh—

we see in this morning’s Gospel a different emphasis.

Mary is not Matthew’s primary concern; Joseph is.

It is Joseph who receives the angelic annunciation in this morning’s Gospel.

It is Joseph who receives the Word of the Lord,

Joseph who acts righteously,

Joseph who stands silently by and acquiesces to God’s will in history,

not attempting to unduly insert himself

or to recast the story with him as the main character.

No, Joseph clearly knows that his role in the narrative of salvation’s history is as a helper.

Although Dr Spock’s What to Expect When You’re Expecting

is still probably the #1 go-to book on pregnancy,

Penny Simkin’s The Birth Partner: A Complete Guide to Childbirth for Dads, Doulas, and All Other Labor Companions

has been constantly in print since it was first published in 1989.

In it, Simkin bypasses the birthing mother and speaks directly to everybody else,

to whomever the birthing mother has invited into the sacred act of childbirth

as well as its lead up and follow up.

Some of Simkin’s advice is very practical

—you should have this, this, and this in the home prior to giving birth,

you should do this, this, and this during a home birth, and so forth—

but the vast majority of her advice goes beyond the simple ‘how to do’

and into the all important ‘how to be.’

For example, she writes:

Try not to take it personally if the mother criticizes you or tells you to stop doing something that you expected to be helpful. Just say, “Sorry,” and stop doing it. Don’t try to explain why you did it or express frustration with her. She is really saying that labor is so difficult right now that nothing helps. You are the safest person for her to lash out at.

And elsewhere in the book, she writes:

The birth partner’s role is not just to ‘catch’ the baby,
but to catch the birthing woman in her moments of doubt, fear, and vulnerability.

This is Joseph’s role par excellence in the Nativity story.

When he discovers that Mary is carrying a child who is not his child,

he decides to divorce her quietly.

Joseph knows that the Law would have afforded him the right to a public trial,

where Mary would be forced publicly to say who the father of the child was

and to receive censure for adultery.

But Joseph doesn’t do that.

For whatever reason

—perhaps because he loved Mary,

perhaps because he knew that Mary was a good person

and whatever happened to cause a baby wasn’t done out of malice—

for whatever reason, Joseph is concerned about Mary’s reputation

and resolves to divorce her quietly.

He decides that he will forgo the public trial which is his right

and will break the marriage contract without any further comment.

Before he can do that, however, an Angel of the Lord appears to him in dream

and fills him in on the Most High’s plans to take on human flesh and dwell among us.

Again, Joseph could have chosen another path.

He could have chosen to ignore the dream

and continue on with his plan to quietly divorce Mary

and move on with his life.

But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t take the path of lease resistance.

He doesn’t take the reasonable path.

He takes the righteous path.

He not only continues his marital arrangement with Mary,

but he takes this child

—this child who does not share his DNA

or the DNA of any man—

and he gives him a name and adopts him into his household,

and, by doing so, ensures that ancient prophecy would be fulfilled

and that the promised Messiah would be born of King David’s lineage.

Joseph isn’t the central figure of Jesus’s Nativity.

He is not the central figure in the story of salvation’s history.

He is not the main character in any Christmas pageant.

He’s not the main character, but the story doesn’t happen without him.

Without Joseph’s quiet involvement, the story doesn’t happen.

If Joseph were to go through with his original plan to quietly divorce Mary,

the story would fracture and the genealogy would break.

The threads of human connection

which God had been weaving since the creation of the world

would be sundered.

Joseph isn’t the main character—

but his willingness to stay

—to trust, to partner with what God was doing in Mary—

changes everything.

As Simkin advised, the birth partner’s role is not to control anything,

not to fix anything,

not even to anticipate outcomes or to problem-solve.

The birth partner’s task is simply to be present,

to stand near someone in a moment of extraordinary vulnerability,

somebody who is doing impossible, holy, painful work

and to honor that work without becoming the star of it.

That is the spiritual center of Joseph’s calling.

He does not speak.

He doesn’t try to take charge of the situation.

He doesn’t offer good ideas or helpful suggestions.

He simply stands with Mary and with God.

He provides his name, his household, his trust, his courage,

but not his control.

And that is what makes him indispensable.

I wonder what it might look like for us to be birth partners in our own communities?

I don’t mean literally

—although I have seen enough episodes of ‘Call the Midwife’

and would probably be a pretty good companion—

but I do wonder what it might look like for us to be practitioners of holy accompaniment

in our lives and the lives of our neighbors?

How do we show up in another person’s labor

—the labor of healing, or grief, or recovery,

the labor of coming out, the labor of parenting,

the labor of aging or dying,

the labor of living in an unpredictable and polarizing political climate—

how do we show up in those birthing rooms,

not as fixers or problem-solvers, but as companions and partners?

It is so tempting to treat one another

—our co-workers, our friends, our kids, our parents—

as projects.

When we see somebody in pain or some kind of suffering or discomfort,

of course we want to fix things.

Of course we want to intervene and diagnose and advise.

But what if we didn’t?

What if instead of talking, we listened?

What if instead of intervening, we waited?

What if instead of rushing in with our own plans,

we trusted another’s vision for their life?

Joseph shows us this way.

A way which looks less like mastery and more like presence,

less like certainty and more like trust,

less like control and more like love.

Joseph is not only a model for fathers or husbands,

but for the whole Church of God.

Joseph shows us what it looks like to accompany the work God is doing in others,

what it looks like to protect the dignity of those who bear God’s life into the world,

what it looks like simply to be rather than to do.

In these last few days of Advent,

when the temperature of expectation seems ratched all the way up,

when our houses are filled with nostalgia and nerves,

perhaps our work is to be like dear and blessed Joseph:

a companion to the things God is bringing forth all around us:

to stand beside and let things unfold as they will,

to be the steward of God’s presence among us,

to be a guardian of God’s Incarnate word,

to admit that more information does not always mean better understanding,

to set aside our impulse to manage and control and fix,

to trust that God is at work in ways we cannot name or predict,

and to remember that the story will not be ours alone,

but ours together.

As the old hymn goes:

Joseph dearest, Joseph mine/

help me cradle the child divine;

God reward thee and all that’s thine

in paradise,

so prays the mother Mary

God reward thee and all that’s thine in paradise.

By God’s own grace, may it be so. Amen.

This homily was offered by the Rev. Cody Maynus at All Saints Church, Northfield, Minn. on 21 December, 2025.

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I was fortunate enough to be selected as part of one of the four ecumenical cohorts which Luther convened. Gathering with a diverse group of preachers from across the country, we embarked on a journey of study, discernment, and practice, moving outside the usual walls of our own ministries and getting into the thick of it with one another.

This is the sermon I preached as part of our final cohort retreat, which was hosted at St. Scholastica’s Monastery in Duluth, Minnesota.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

These familiar words can ring a bit hollow sometimes, can’t they?

Here we are

—pastors, priests, lay ministers, elders, professors,

preachers of God’s Compelling Word, all of us—

gathered together in this holy house of St. Benedict’s daughters,

for our final days together as a cohort.

The reading I chose for us today is the first reading from the Third Sunday of Advent,

Gaudete Sunday,

the day the Church bids us rejoice in the Lord always,

the day when the deep blue of Advent tilts ever so slightly toward rose,

when the midnight of waiting gives way to the first whisper of dawn.

And as it perhaps ever has been and ever will be,

thiiiiiis Advent comes to a world aching for hope.

There is a certain absurdity to Advent.

And perhaps only preachers can really name that absurdity quite so honestly.

We know what it is to stand before our people

—week after week, year after year—

and proclaim a hope we ourselves sometimes strain to hear.

We know what it is to speak about the coming of the Lord

while also paying attention to the griefs and fears and exhaustions

our congregations carry and the ones we carry ourselves.

While we light candles and sing songs of expectation

—songs that dare to name justice, restoration, peace—

the world outside our doors, outside our thresholds, outside our gates,

the world outside does not orient itself toward prophetic hope.

We bear witness to an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots;

to power clutched and hoarded;

to wars and rumours of wars;

to conflicts so constant they wash over us like white noise;

to private griefs our people whisper in hallways and hospital rooms;

to illness, addiction, anxiety, economic strain, and quiet despair.

And yet, that old hymn meets us still,

not with a suggestion, but with an imperative, with a demand:

Rejoice!

No qualifications.

No ifs, no ands, and no buts.

Rejoice!

Seems a bit of a stretch, doesn’t it?

And yet—perhaps that stretch is a gift to us preachers?

Because we

—maybe even more than our own people—

tend to forget what real joy is.

The great C. S. Lewis writes that

All joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be’.”1

And Henri Nouwen reminds that

while happiness is dependent on external conditions,

‘joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved

and that nothing

—sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death—

can take that love away.’2

A love nothing can strip away.

Joy is yearning.

Joy is attentiveness.

Joy is a posture of holy listening,

a posture of listening for the God who is always and already on the move,

listening to Holy Scripture until it begins to compel us

not with pressure, but with promise,

not with force, but with conviction.

Rejoice. Rejoice.

Yearn. Pine. Long. Listen. Love and be loved.

This is the joy the Prophet Isaiah invites us to enter into today.

Isaiah gives us a vision you can almost see if you let the words rest in your ears:

water breaks forth,

burning sand becomes a pool,

a desert erupting in blooms;

the feeble strengthened;

the fearful steadied;

the blind seeing;

the lame dancing;

dry places become nourished;

waters springing up where hope was long ago given up.

A highway stretched across the wilderness, guarded by joy itself,

“the ransomed of the Lord shall return… and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

This is Advent joy, dear servants of the Most High God;

not cheerfulness, but reorientation;

not saccharine optimism, but holy desire;

not a forced smile, but a deep listening for God’s promised future.

And as preachers

—people who carry both the hope and the heaviness of our communities—

we need this reminder.

We need to remember that God’s joy is older and sturdier than our weariness

and that even in the driest, dustiest, most vexing years,

God is still coaxing streams out of stones.

I found myself wondering this season, along with the Prophet Isaiah,

what waters need to break forth the wilderness of my life,

what weak hands in my life or the lives of my colleagues need to be strengthened,

what feeble knees need to be made firm?

And so I decided to listen to the people of God.

I posted on social media and asked lay folks

what they want their pastors and priests and preachers

to hear during this holy season of Advent.

I received honest, tender, practical wisdom,

wisdom which invites us to move away from performance and toward patience,

away from self-sufficiency and toward interdependence,

toward a holy re-ordering,

not only of the world,

but of our own hearts and minds.

They didn’t say anything you haven’t heard before,

but perhaps you need to hear this wisdom afresh.

And so in the spirit the holy listening we’ve been practicing

and which we’ve asked our people to practice,

I offer you words of wisdom from some of God’s people:

• REST this time of year is precious and [you’re] allowed to take it..

• Advent is all about Grace. We wait for God to do what God wants, when God wants it, and how God wants it done…

• Literally do less. Rest, lament, find joy, create space for others to do so in whatever way [you] can that is also diametrically opposed to grind culture. I.e. don’t hustle to crowd the calendar with Advent quiet days. Just be a non anxious presence and breathe.

• Jesus wants for [you] the same things that [you] want for [your] congregations.

• …we never work alone, for God is with us, within us & works through us and our communities….

• Longing for a better world is holy…accepting & living out of the grace & love of our God makes the world better.

• Yours might be the only voice this season that reaffirms for us Christ’s eschatological promises. It’s as hard as ever to accept that Jesus is returning in the flesh to [bring] justice from above. Tell us about it some more; bolster our hope.

• Don’t lose hope; small steps can have great effect. A solitary candle can keep the darkness at bay.

• [It’s] ok to be sad. It’s ok to lament, to wail, to gnash the teeth. It’s ok to not have the answers. Parishioners…need us to experience the weary world in real time. And in the hopelessness we feel, that’s where God shows up. [Don’t] fix things, but…sit with us.

• [Remember that it is] God with us, not as a superhero, but as a human full of doubt and hurt, trauma and sadness. It’s ok to be there with him. [You] don’t have to cheer people up. It’s the weary world that rejoices because where there is no hope, there is God.

• [Make] it real for people, [help] them choose to infuse this season with meaning. This starts with the leaders and pastors getting it and helping the people connect to it.

Dear friends in ministry,

—sisters, brothers, siblings—

my Advent hope and wish for you, for me, for us

is to create space to yearn,

to long,

to pine,

to remember,

to really and truly listen

to God who is even now “turning the world around,”

to God who comes to us in Word and Sacrament,

who comes to us as a baby in Bethlehem

and as a monarch on the threshold of the Great Beyond;

to lean into the joy that does not deny sorrow but defies it;

to rest in the goodness and mercy of God,

to take stock of our lives and our callings and our ministries,

to clean out what isn’t serving us or God’s people well

and make fresh room for the indwelling of God’s own spirit.

Be strong; do not fear.

Rejoice. Rejoice.

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

By God’s own grace, may it be so. Amen.

This sermon was offered by the Rev. Cody Maynus at St. Scholastica’s Monastery in Duluth, Minn. as part of the Luther Seminary Compelling Preaching Grant Project.

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Since most of the college students are either on winter break

or rehearsing for next weekend’s Christmas Fest,

I don’t mind telling you all that I lived in a party house my senior year of college.

Didn’t expect that, did you?

Well, neither did I.

What my friends and I didn’t realize when we signed the lease

was that this shabby old place behind the main drag in downtown St. Joe

had, shall we say, seen some things in its day.

Among the many previous occupants of the Halfway House

—because of course it was called the Halfway House—

among the many previous Halfway dwellers was the St. Ben’s women’s rugby team.

I was not acquainted with the girls rugby team prior to moving in,

but I came to learn that they were, shall we say, formidable.

I came to learn that, of course, in the middle of the night one Wednesday

when our whole house was woken up by an extraordinarily loud sound outside.

I stumbled out of my room, bleary-eyed and without my glasses,

wondering if if the furnace had exploded or if we were being robbed

(either of which might have been better than meeting the girls rugby team after dark.)

Just before I could make sure that the backdoor of the house was locked

and we were safe and sound on the inside,

the door burst open and in spilled at least half of the women’s rugby team

— well-marinated in “school spirit,” shall we say—

hoping that they could relive their glory days in their old stomping grounds.

I will tell you: nothing wakes you up faster

than unexpected “guests” at your door in the middle of the night.

One minute you’re in your sensible flannel night shirt,

sound asleep and dreaming of a day without final exams,

and the next you’re very, very awake,

your entire nervous system working overtime,

and patently aware that the world is not as quiet or as peaceful as you thought.

It’s precisely that feeling of alarm

—that sudden jolt from comfort into alertness—

which Jesus is talking about in this morning’s gospel.

Keep awake!

You don’t know when the Son of Man is going to return.

Live as though something

—or Someone—

might knock at the door when you least expect it.

This holy season begins not with twinkling lights or gentle carols,

but with Jesus pounding on the door of our souls,

shaking us awake,

and insisting that we look at the world as it really is.

Because once we’re awake

—really and truly awake—

we can’t help but notice that the world is not as it should be.

If we’re awake, we will see that our world feels unsteady and frightening:

war and talk of nuclear weapons,

rising authoritarianism,

creation groaning under the strain of environmental degradation,

hatred and division on prime time news,

guns in churches and schools and movie theaters and shopping malls,

children suffering and starving,

long dormant diseases making their return.

Some days it feels like all of this arrives on our doorstep all at once.

Some days it feels downright impossible.

Nothing is more jarring than realizing that the world in which we’re living

is not the world we have to live in.

Nothing is more jarring than realizing that we don’t have to live like this.

Nothing is more jarring than realizing that another world is possible.

The prophets set out before us a different vision,

an alternate reality which is, in fact, within our grasp.

“In the days to come,” [says the Prophet Isaiah,]

the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established

as the highest of the mountains…”

The Most High God will teach us to live in peace.

Justice and mercy and righteousness will be ours.

Weapons of war

—spears and swords—

will “be destroyed and their technology re-harnessed towards feeding the hungry.”

Weapons of destruction and death will become tools to cultivate life and growth.

Peace—true and lasting peace with justice— will be so commonplace

that nobody even knows how to wage war against each other.

This holy season of Advent

—this time of preparation and contemplation,

of watching and waiting—

is when that longing for another and better and somehow still attainable world

rises to the surface of the Church’s communal consciousness.

It is when we most acutely feel that ache for the world to be made whole,

for all that oppresses and disfigures human lives and human dignity to be swept away.

Advent is our wake up call to the truth that we need God to come,

that we are not only waiting for a baby in a manger,

but for the One who will set our broken and bent world right again.

This Advent wake up call is not only about what’s wrong.

It is just as much a wake up call to what is possible.

It shakes us awake to Isaiah’s dream—

the mountain of the Lord, the end of war,

the tools of death reforged into tools of life.

This holy season invites us to believe that this mercy-drenched, justice-soaked world

is not a fantasy but a future already breaking in.

And every single week, God gives us a taste of that future.

Every Sunday we gather in this holy house of the Lord

and we make our way, one-by-by, to this altar

and we witness something truly astonishing:

ordinary bread and ordinary wine

—fruit of the earth and the work of human hands—

through God’s own grace and love,

become the Body and Blood of Christ.

As you stand or kneel at this rail, the Most High God is whispering to you:

“If I can transform bread and wine,

I can transform you.

And if I can transform you,

I can transform the world.”

The Eucharist is not just comfort food

—Liz’s greenbean casserole or Fernan’s corn pudding—

it is our training ground in the sometimes lost art of hope.

It is a weekly reminder that transformation is possible

and perhaps even inevitable.

It is a regular reminder that what seems broken can be mended.

If bread and wine can become Christ’s real and tangible presence among us,

then division and destruction can become peace and justice,

weapons of wars can become tools to feed the world,

and weary, frightened people can become bearers of light.

This is the wake-up call of this holy season of Advent:

to stay alert,

to keep hope alive,

and to be willing

—when the knock comes—

to open the door and let Christ in.

This sermon was offered by Fr. Cody Maynus at All Saints Church, Northfield, Minn. on 30 November, 2025.

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Although the musical ‘Hamilton’ is decidedly secular

—with no references to the religion of the Founding Fathers—

The Episcopal Church does make a brief and somewhat unfavorable appearance.

About a third of the way through the first act,

a waif of a man wearing a black clerical gown and white preaching tabs

stands on a platform and shouts,

“Hear ye! Hear ye! My name is Samuel Seabury

and I present ‘Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress.’

This Samuel Seabury is, of course, the first bishop of The Episcopal Church,

though he was then the rector of St. Peter’s Church, Westchester Square in the Bronx.

Like many Church of England clergy in the Colonies,

Seabury was an active and vocal loyalist,

having sworn an oath of allegiance to the King when he was ordained,

and believed firmly that the Colonies were basically well-served by the British Crown.

Accompanied by harpsichord ornamentation in the Broadway show,

Seabury proceeds to sing in a dainty and extremely proper voice:

Heed not the rabble who scream revolution,

they have not your interests at heart.

Chaos and bloodshed are not a solution,

don’t let them lead you astray.

This Congress does not speak for me.

They’re playing a dangerous game.

I pray the King shows you his mercy…”

Even a casual observer of American history

will know that the King did not, in fact, show us his mercy.

Not by a long shot, in fact.

And the musical acknowledges this.

Immediately after ol’ Father Seabury’s harpsichords are silenced,

King George himself steps out onto the stage

and sings a doowop breakup ballad about how much he still loves the Colonies:

You’ll be back, soon you’ll see

You’ll remember you belong to me.

You’ll be back, time will tell

You’ll remember that I served you well

Oceans rise, empires fall

We have seen each other through it all

And when push comes to shove

I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!

This is the mercy of kings and emperors,

presidents and prime ministers.

Not all kings are bad, of course,

but, as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s George III sang,

violence is the tool kings most readily reach for

to enforce their authority,

violence is the final argument of every earthly throne.

Earthly kings preserve their power by force:

by drawing boundaries, defending borders,

and reminding their subjects who is in charge.

But Christ the King rules in a different way entirely.

Christ the King reigns not from a throne, but from a cross.

His crown is not inlaid with gemstones, but woven with thorns.

His power is shown not with displays of domination

but through acts of self-giving love.

Where earthly kings secure peace through fear,

Christ the King secures peace through the forgiveness of sins.

Where earthly rulers send battalions,

Christ sends apostles.

Where earthly kings have subjects, Christ the King has friends.

Where earthly authorities say, “Remember, you belong to me,”

Christ the King says, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

This is the scandal and the glory of Christ the King,

a ruler whose might is mercy

and whose kingdom comes not by force but by love,

who deals not with vengeance but with forgiveness.

This great feast of Christ the King

was instituted in 1925, only a hundred years ago, by Pope Pius XI

Following the ravages of World War I

—the Great War, the War to End All Wars—

the pope noticed a wave of violent nationalism

and the increase of oppressive governmental overtures.

(Who can possibly imagine any of that happening!)

In 1925, Mussolini’s fascist party was gaining momentum in Italy

and, in Germany, Adolf Hitler had been imprisoned for treason

and, after only nine months (during which he wrote his infamous Mein Kampf),

was free and rapidly drawing followers.

In his encyclical creating this liturgical feast, the pope wrote:

“ [people] must look for peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.”

The pope insisted that if the world were ever to know a peace that does not crumble,

a justice that does not devour itself,

it would not come from the thrones of this world

but from the kingship of Christ,

this strange King whose reign is revealed most clearly

in the outpouring love of the cross.

Because the cross is where all our illusions about power go to die.

The cross is where God refuses every violent shortcut to glory.

The cross is where Christ reigns,

not by crushing his enemies,

but by absorbing the world’s violence and answering it with forgiveness.

As preachers have said, “where suffering is, love is. And where love is, God is.”

God intentionally chose to meet the suffering of the world head-on in the cross.

This is the throne of our King.

This is where his kingdom begins,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Though the cross should have been the end of Jesus’s story,

it is simply another beginning.

And, through God’s grace, it is another beginning for us as well.

When we call Christ our King, we are not merely admiring him,

we are pledging to reorder our lives according to his teachings:

to let mercy become our might,

to let forgiveness become our strength,

to let suffering be transformed and transfigured,

to let vulnerability become the place where God’s power shows up most clearly.

Next week, we will turn the pages of our liturgical calendars

and will find ourselves in Advent,

that great season of waiting,

of preparing our hearts and our world for the coming of Christ the King,

for his birth in the manger

and for his return one day in glory.

We wait for a king who refuses the weapons of the world.

We watch for a kingdom that arrives quietly, in the stillness of the night,

light just barely edging over the horizon.

We prepare not for a tyrant’s march but for a child’s birth,

for a mercy that slips into the world through the smallest and humblest crack.

Christ the King has died.

Christ the King is risen.

Christ the King will come again.

By God’s own mercy, may it be so. Amen.

This homily was offered by the Rev. Cody Maynus, nOGS at All Saints Church in Northfield, Minn. on 23 November, 2025, the Last Sunday after Pentecost which is also known as the Feast of Christ the King

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but do you all know that I sometimes get it wrong? 

And perhaps even more shocking? You also sometimes get it wrong!

There are times when you or I

—when any of us—

have our priorities twisted

or tangled up in things that don’t really matter,

so tangled, in fact, that we fail to see the small, sacred gifts

God is placing right in front of us.

The good news is that Jesus’s disciples

—his students and friends and followers—

the disciples also got it wrong sometimes. 

We see the disciples screwing up big time in the Gospel today. 

There Jesus was, doing his thing

—teaching or healing or telling another goofy and incomprehensible parable—

when people start bringing children to him for a blessing. 

Who knows what the disciples were thinking,

but they start to reprimand the people for bringing their little babies to Jesus. 

“Don’t you see that he’s doing something important!” they might have said. 

“This is the Son of God, the Savior of the World. He doesn't have time for babies!” 

When Jesus sees what’s going on, he stops the disciples in their tracks. 

The version of the Gospel we heard today says that Jesus “was indignant.” 

The Greek word that St. Mark uses there (aganakteó) suggests that Jesus was aching with grief. 

He was so sad at the disciples' actions that he was upset. 

So sad that they thought about turning babies away,

so sad that they thought his blessing and his presence were reserved for more important things,

so sad that he was aching,

so sad that he was in pain. 

“Let the little children come to me,” he says.

“Don’t you dare get in their way. The Kingdom of God is theirs.

These little babies get it. 

These little babies understand God’s kingdom,

God’s reign of love and justice. 

You all have sadly missed the point.” 

As most of you know, I don’t have children of my own

and have arranged my life via religious vows such that I will not ever have children of my own. 

I can’t tell you how much admiration I have for those of you who do have kids. 

I love spending time with your kids here at church

—as acolytes during the liturgy, at youth group, on trips, sneaking potato chips before the service—

but I also love knowing that they get to go home with you at the end of the day! 

I think it’s incredibly difficult to be a kid right now. 

The weight of the world presses on our children 

in ways that many of us couldn’t have imagined at their age:

the pressures of school, of screens, of anxiety, 

of a planet on fire, of a culture that demands they grow up too fast.

And yet—and yet!—children have this astonishing capacity to trust, 

to wonder, 

to love without calculation. 

This is why Jesus points to them and all but says

“You want to understand God’s kingdom? 

You want to know what God is about in this world? 

Start here.” 

It is into this world that Megan and Sho (who is watching at home in Japan) 

bring Alex to be baptized. 

Alex is too young to have memories of this day,

too young to articulate belief or doubt or wonder. 

But, because Alex’s parents and godparents 

have brought him to this font to be baptized,

he will never remember a time when he wasn’t surrounded by the love of God

and the love of the Church throughout time and space. 

Today the Church receives little Alex into the Household of God 

and claims him as Christ’s own forever. 

For the rest of his life 

—and beyond it—

Alex will belong to the God who created heaven and earth, 

the God who delivered our ancestors from slavery in Egypt and set them free,

the God whose ways and thoughts are higher than our ways and thoughts,

the God whose prophets spoke up for widows and orphans and immigrants,  

the God who, out of deep love for the world, entered into our existence,

the God who took on human flesh in order to more fully relate to us,

the God who sat down with sinners and consorted with outcasts,

the God who gathered children into his arms and blessed them,

the God who, even now, delights in this dear, small child. 

And even though Alex won’t remember this, I want to say to him directly: 

Because you belong to God

—because you will soon be washed in the waters of baptism

and marked as Christ’s own forever—

because you belong to God,

there is not a single thing you can do that will put you outside the reach of God’s love,

not a thought, not a word, not an action. 

Nothing. 

The love you receive today

—the love God pours over you—

is unconditional, unearned, and unending. 

And the rest of us

—parents and godparents, family and friends, All Saints folks, visitors—

Jesus says to us what he says to his disciples:

“Don’t get in Alex’s way.” 

Do not obstruct him or any other. 

Do everything in your power to protect this child and his innocence. 

Do not let the weight of this world

—this world which feels terrible and awful sometimes—

do not let the weight of the world extinguish the wonder of this or any child.

Surround this child with love, 

rejoice with him, weep with him, 

teach him justice, mercy, and peace,

help him grow into a young person and an adult who recognizes God’s voice in his life 

because he has heard that voice from others. 

Welcome to the Household of God, little brother.

God has your back and so do we.

By God’s own grace, may it be so. Amen. 

This sermon was offered by the Rev. Cody Maynus on Sunday November 16, 2025 at All Saints Church in Northfield, Minnesota.