Second Epiphany (Year A)
John 1: 29-42
St. John’s, West Seneca
January 18, 2026
Grace to you and Peace from God our Father and the LORD Jesus Christ. Amen.
What were they looking for, those who came out to see John the Baptist? He had been preaching for some time, and still they came. His appearance was compelling, but once you’ve seen a man wearing camel’s hair, you’ve seen it. No, they came for more. They came because they desperately wanted to hear the good news. And they wanted to be baptized as a sign of their new life.
Today John announces that Jesus is the “Lamb of God,” not once, but twice.
The second time John is with two of his disciples, and after John calls Jesus the “Lamb of God,” they follow him.
And then Jesus asks the question we still need to ask: What are you looking for? They want to know where he is staying. And then his answer: Come and see.
What are we looking for?
I imagine that many who followed Jesus were looking for one thing or another.
As Jesus’s ministry begins, there may have been only that small group of disciples. But as Jesus’s reputation spread, there were crowds all around him with various diseases and ailments. They were looking for healing.
As Jesus became more popular, there were the religious authorities who began to question his theology and orthodoxy. They were looking for a fight.
As the miracles increased, there were the crowds of groupies, so to speak, because after all, at times it created a spectacle. They were looking for entertainment.
What are we looking for?
I maintain that a great many are looking for Jesus, for God, for the divine in their lives -- even if they don't realize it. The answer to Jesus's soul-searching question, "What are you looking for?", can't be brought home from a religious store. Each one of us has a hole in the heart that only God can fill.
Jesus knew there were a lot of wrong reasons as well as wrong ways for spiritual searches. Our world is filled today, as then, with fake Christianity that proposes no sacrifice. When Jesus confronted these two would-be disciples with his question, "What are you looking for?", the answer he received may sound strange to us, but it was actually a pretty good start.
"Rabbi," they replied, "where are you staying?" "Teacher," they were saying, "let us join with you and be your students." When Jesus responds to this address and request, his answer is that compelling invitation, "Come and see."
How do we invite others to “come and see?” Last week, Pastor Dean made a remark about this church, saying there is a difference between members and disciples. Membership is like a club, with dues. Martin Luther had something to say about that.
“…The church is not merely an association of outward ties and rites like other civic governments, however, but it is mainly an association of faith and of the Holy Spirit in men’s hearts…This church alone is called the body of Christ, which Christ renews, consecrates, and governs by his Spirit.”
Discipleship is service. And as Dietrich Bonhoeffer maintained, there is a cost to discipleship. It can be a hard and narrow way.
And discipleship is not a one time event. Growing your soul, filling your spirit with the right things is a lifelong process, and often a painful one.
I found this from the late Pope Francis about being disciples, and he suggests:
“a kind of preaching which falls to each of us as a daily responsibility. It has to do with bringing the Gospel to the people we meet, whether they be our neighbours or complete strangers. This is the informal preaching which takes place in the middle of a conversation, something along the lines of what a missionary does when visiting a home. Being a disciple means being constantly ready to bring the love of Jesus to others, and this can happen unexpectedly and in any place: on the street, in a city square, during work, on a journey.”
When you put it like that, it should come naturally. As St. Francis said 800 years ago: Preach the Gospel. Use words if necessary.
The world needs disciples. God is calling you.
In another article, Lutheran scholar Peter Marty talked about words that we should avoid, and warned they might not be what you expect.
“When it comes to the work of shaping Christian community, words and phrases matter. How people come together, stay together, and live expressively depends on language that inspires belonging and faith. Some words and phrases do this well; others miss the mark so considerably that I sometimes think they should be banished from a congregation’s vocabulary. …
"Visitor. Nobody entering a church deserves to be labeled a visitor. Newcomers may be guests in the house of the Lord, but they’re not visitors. Visitors are people who sit on makeshift bleachers in high school football stadiums, looking up at impressive crowds across the field whooping it up. In most settings, visitors hold second-class citizenship. …
"Attending church. Organizations that survey religious practice often chart trends of people attending worship. But when you attach yourself to a faith community, you’re not an attendee. Rubbing shoulders with people with whom you may have nothing in common except your humanity and God, but whom you’re willing to let impact the shape and substance of who you are, means it’s time to speak of belonging. …
"Family. It’s great to have ministries that serve families, but try not to speak of your congregation as a family. No matter how intimate your faith community is, you don’t want it to be a family. That metaphor doesn’t work. Families are closed social units. Remember that first introduction to the relatives of someone you love or loved? No matter how confident you were, or how warm and genuine that family was, some part of the early encounter was awkward, intimidating, or uncomfortable. …
"I could go on, but I will spare you. Wait, just one more: Join us for … This no-no is an easy slip that creeps into announcements. Unless you’re cultivating clubbiness, try a more open invitation for all to join in an activity.”
We are a church. We are not a club for social activities. We are not here to make money. We are not here to be entertained. This is not a game. This is not a place for you to be exalted, but for Christ to be exalted. We are here because we do believe that God is active in the world, that in Him there is forgiveness, wholeness, and ultimately, life eternal.
We are here to listen to His word and to receive the sacrament, to confess our sins and know that they are forgiven. We are here to then go out into the world and be a “little Christ” to everyone we meet. And we had better be taking Jesus’s words seriously: Go therefore and make disciples.
I was reminded this past week that Martin Luther King Jr. said “I have a dream.” He did not say “I have a strategic plan.”
My dream is that we remain a beacon for the lost, the left-out, and the looked over. We will never run out of work because God’s work is not done. Nor is our spiritual journey ever done.
“We live in a world that is as multicultural as the Galilee of the Gentiles, and our challenge is to create places in which people can come and see Jesus. Everything we do should help people to see him as clearly as the two disciples of John did by the Jordan River, and as Philip and Nathanael did on the road to Galilee. In our fractured and polarized world, we don’t need more arguments about religion and politics. Instead, we need to create places in which people can have personal encounters with Jesus."
Lives will be changed if we show people where Jesus is staying and encourage them to remain with him. The words of Jesus are always an effective invitation: “Come and see.” Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Homiletics, January 18, 2026
Baptism of Our Lord (Year A)
Psalm 29
St. John’s, West Seneca
January 11, 2026
Grace to you and Peace from God our Father and the LORD Jesus Christ. Amen.
“If you want to feel small and powerless, take a fishing boat into the ocean, miles away from land. There is nothing but sky and water as far as the eye can see. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.”
The ocean appears enormous, deep and mysterious from your tiny boat. You can grasp that we live on a watery planet with three-fourths of the Earth’s surface covered by water. When a storm rolls in, you face powerful winds, massive waves and driving rain.
Back in the early 1960s, Adm. Hyman Rickover gave President John F. Kennedy a small brass plaque, engraved with a prayer. Kennedy liked it, and he used it at the dedication of a memorial to people missing at sea. The prayer says, ‘O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.’”
We have all been lost at sea, in a tiny boat, perhaps not literally, but lost none the same.
What would you do if you were lost at sea? Pray, apologize, atone, confess? I imagine one or all of those.
But we can pray at any time, in any place, and for anything. Perhaps this may even serve as a reminder to do just that. We don’t have to be adrift on the ocean to come up with resolutions on what we need to do to get ourselves right with God. Of course, as you and I know, there are far more heartfelt prayers in the Emergency Room than even here.
“A young man named Alec Frydman recently went fishing for albacore off the coast of Washington State. This was his first attempt to be a commercial fisherman after taking a Coast Guard course at a community college. He headed out with a captain named Mick on a 43-foot wooden boat constructed in 1941.
"Their fishing went well on the first day, but a storm blew up on the second. They put the boat on autopilot and headed back toward land. When waves began to crash over the sides of the boat, Alec reached for the radio and sent out a Mayday. Alec urged Mick to come outside, but the captain remained frozen in his seat. Then Alec fell overboard, into the ocean.
"He was living the words of Psalm 69: “I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.
"Bobbing to the surface, Alec saw the inflatable life raft in its canister, floating nearby. He yanked the rip cord, inflated it and climbed in. The wooden fishing boat rolled onto its side and then sank quickly. Alec never saw Captain Mick again.
"‘The life raft was small but sheltered,’ recalls Alec in The Atlantic magazine, ‘like a kiddie pool but sturdier, and with a camping tent on top. The sides shuddered in the wind and rain, but I felt relatively safe inside. Certain that rescue was coming … I fell asleep.’
"When he awoke, the storm was still raging... He took inventory of his supplies and shot off two flares. But there was no one to rescue him, so he floated for days under dark, stormy skies. The sea was so great and his boat was so small.
"‘I prayed often,’ he says, ‘always aloud. At first, pleas for rescue. Over and over, I asked God to save me — not my soul, but my physical self. After days of praying the same prayer, I tried offering God something in return. First, I apologized for every past transgression I could remember. Any injustice or sin I feared I may have committed, I tried to atone for, so God would listen to my prayers.’
"Alec recalled the Ten Commandments and realized that he had failed to keep them. ‘I hadn’t honored the Sabbath in years,’ he admits; ‘I had lied; I had coveted; I had stolen. Worst of all, I hadn’t honored my mother and father.’ He asked God to forgive him for the way that he had treated his parents, ignoring their guidance and insisting that he could figure out everything on his own. Alec came to the depressing conclusion that he was going to lose his life, and his parents were going to lose their son.”
Alec was truly “at sea,” a term we use to describe a variety of situations. The literal meaning is that we are like Alec, riding in a ship or a boat, physically floating on the water. But the figurative meaning of “at sea” is that we are confused or perplexed, in a place that we do not understand. We often feel lost, or bewildered. Perhaps we are facing a situation that seems to have no answers. Or we just don’t understand. We’ve all been there, maybe not like Alec in the Pacific, but in school, or a job, or a relationship.
The good news is this: As the Psalmist says, God is with us, looking for us.
“After five or six days of drifting, Alec saw a ship and launched a flare, but the ship kept going. By the end of the first week, he ran out of fresh water, and he accepted the fact that he was going to die. But instead of falling into despair, something amazing happened. Alec says, ‘A peace I hadn’t known to look for found me.’
"He hadn’t been looking for peace, but peace found him.
“The next morning, Alec woke up and saw a boat. It was close and coming closer. He lit his last flare and held onto it until it burnt his hand. He screamed and waved his hands, looking and sounding like a madman.
"Then he heard a person say, ‘We see you. We’re coming. We see you.’”
He had been at sea for 13 days and had drifted about 150 miles
And that is where the Psalm for today tells us a powerful truth. When we are lost at sea, with chaos all around us, God finds us and gives us peace.
“The voice of the LORD is upon the waters,” says the writer of Psalm 29. God has power over the watery chaos of life and can offer us the gifts of his peace and powerful presence when we feel we have no options available to us. In our most desperate situations — at school, at work and at home — God is with us. We are not alone. That is the promise, that God has power of all creation.
We celebrated Epiphany on Tuesday, which means a new season is upon us. An epiphany is a moment of insight, when something comes into view. This season should show us who Jesus is, each week a new insight as to what God is up to.
In today’s text, it is the baptism of Jesus. A ritual of water, along with God’s voice…
Then John the Baptist who calls Jesus the Lamb of God…
Walking by the Sea of Galilee, he calls men familiar with water as they are fisherman: Simon and Andrew, James and John…
Then come the Beatitudes…
And as the Sermon on the Mount continues, Be salt and light in this world.
And then to the mountain and God’s voice again.
In Jesus, we see the clearest sign of God’s power. “Jesus is nothing less than living proof that God is with us. Jesus is like the person on the boat who called out to Alec and said, ‘We see you. We’re coming. We see you.’”
That is the work that we continue today as disciples of Christ. As we are His body, it is our holy task to see and reach out and rescue. We are to be that presence. As Theresa of Avila wrote: “Jesus has no eyes but our eyes, no hands but our hands, no feet but our feet.”
“When a person is feeling lost at sea, we can say, ‘We see you.’ When people are facing fear and confusion, we can say, 'We’re coming.' When there are situations that seem insurmountable, we can say: 'Let’s work on this together.'”
Like Alec, we’ve all been lost at sea. Maybe not in the ocean deep, but in our everyday lives. God is with us in the stormy waters, looking for us, listening to us, and giving us strength and that peace that passes all understanding. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Homiletics for January 11, 2026
4 Advent (Year A)
Matthew 1
St. John’s, West Seneca
December 21, 2025
Grace to you and Peace from God our Father and the LORD Jesus Christ. Amen.
Years ago, at Holy Trinity’s Lenten series, one of the local pastors spoke about Joseph on appropriately, St. Joseph’s Day. The gist of his sermon was how Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, is a man who should be considered and emulated for his faith to God and his devotion to Mary.
Joseph may be the original average Joe. A regular guy with a regular job who finds himself in what seems like a bad situation.
But we know that Joseph was far from ordinary. This quiet man, who doesn’t speak, is a forgotten man of faith. He was chosen by God to be the provider for His son. And while he does not say a word, his actions speak volumes about obedience and faithfulness, even courage.
Matthew begins: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit.”
Who knows what Joseph’s reaction was? Hurt, heartbroken? He is determined to do the right thing. He resolved to divorce her with as little gossip as possible.
But God had another plan for this average Joe and so an angel comes to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: "he took her as his wife…” He offers no argument and there is no delay. Joseph believes and simply does.
We need more like Joseph today. He stands as a symbol of faith because while his plans – no doubt well laid – fall through, God steps in with another task.
This past week, I came across this story on FACEBOOK. I’ve seen it several times, and I believe at least one person here has reposted it.
"Martha, a retired nurse, shared this. '…for five decades, I was the last face people saw before they left this world, and the first face they saw when they came back to it. I was an ER nurse in a city that doesn't sleep, where the sirens never stop.
"I remember the day I realized the world had gotten its priorities backwards.
"It was Career Day at a local high school about five years ago… I looked around at the other presenters. It was intimidating.
"To my left was a tech entrepreneur, wearing a hoodie that probably cost more than my monthly mortgage, talking about ‘disrupting the market’ and ‘scaling synergy.’ To my right was a corporate lawyer in a sharp Italian suit, handing out glossy brochures about intern programs. There was a financial planner flashing a laser pointer at a graph showing compound interest.
"The kids were mesmerized. They were terrified of debt, hungry for status, and desperate to know the formula for being ‘Someone.’
"Then there was me.
"I walked in wearing my old comfortable scrubs and my stethoscope around my neck. I didn't have a PowerPoint. I didn't have a ‘brand.’ I just had a badge that was scratched from years of use and hands that were dry from a thousand washings.
"When it was my turn, the room went quiet. I didn't stand behind the podium. I walked right up to the bleachers.
"‘I’m not here to tell you how to make your first million,’ I said. My voice shook a little, then steadied. ‘I’m here to tell you what it feels like to be the only person awake in a terrifyingly quiet hallway, listening to the rhythm of a ventilator, praying for a stranger’s lungs to expand just one more time.’
"The kids stopped scrolling on their phones.
"‘I’m here to tell you about the smell of fear,’ I continued. ‘And I’m here to tell you about the specific, holy silence that falls over a room when a doctor calls the time of death. I want to tell you what it’s like to hold a mother as she screams, and what it’s like to wash the body of a homeless veteran with the same tenderness you’d give a king, simply because he was a human being and he deserved dignity.’
"I looked them in the eyes.
"‘It isn't glamorous. You won’t get a corner office with a view of the skyline. You will come home with aching feet and a broken heart more often than you’d like. But I promise you this: You will never, ever wonder if your work mattered.’
"The shift in the room was palpable. The questions they asked the tech guy were about stocks and salaries. The questions they asked me were different.
"‘Do you ever get scared?’ a boy in a varsity jacket asked. ‘Every single shift,’ I said.
"‘Do you cry?’ a girl in the front row asked. ‘I cry in the car. I cry in the shower. I cry because I care,’ I answered.
"After the bell rang and the gym cleared out, a skinny boy with messy hair lingered behind. He looked down at his worn-out sneakers, kicking at a scuff mark on the floor.
"‘My dad is a janitor,’ he whispered, almost like it was a secret he was ashamed of. ‘At a big office building downtown. People walk past him like he’s invisible. Like he’s part of the furniture.’
"He looked up at me, his eyes wet. ‘He comes home so tired. But he says he keeps the place safe. He says he stops the germs so the business people don't get sick.’
"I reached out and took that young man’s hand. ‘Son, listen to me. Your dad is a hero. The world stops spinning without people like your dad. We have enough 'visionaries' in corner offices. We don't have enough people willing to do the hard, invisible work that actually keeps civilization running. Taking care of people? Cleaning up the messes? That is everything.’
"We live in a culture that is obsessed with titles. We teach our children that success looks like a verified checkmark next to their name or a salary that creates envy. We praise the disruptors and the influencers.
"But let me tell you something about the real world.
"When the power grid fails in a winter storm, a résumé won’t save you. An electrician will. When the pipe bursts and floods your basement, a diploma won’t save you. A plumber will. When your child burns up with a fever at midnight, your stock portfolio won’t save you. A nurse will.
"We have forgotten the nobility of service. We have forgotten the sacredness of the ‘essential.’
"Last winter, I received a letter. It was from that boy with the messy hair. He’s not a boy anymore.
"'Dear Martha,' it read. 'I almost dropped out. I thought I wasn't smart enough for college, and I didn't want to be invisible like I thought my dad was. But I remembered what you said about dignity. I’m an EMT now. Last week, I saved a guy who had a heart attack on the subway platform. Nobody asked me for my business card. I just did the work. Thank you for telling me it mattered.'"
This woman wrote that she wept because this young man got it. So for those chasing the dream, stop chasing the “American Dream.” The question isn’t “what do you want to be?’ It’s “who do you want to help?”
Change the metric. And that is where Joseph comes in. He is the quiet man of the Incarnation. He is essential.
- "Joseph stays.
- He takes Mary as his wife.
- He embraces the shame and whispers from others.
- He raises a Son who is not biologically his.
- He teaches Jesus the trade of carpentry.
- He protects his family when Herod threatens.
- He moves his household to Egypt in obedience to another dream.
In a culture where honor, bloodlines and male pride were everything, Joseph lays all that down to do the will of God.”
Of course we need visionaries. But those visions have to run on something and that’s where the average Joes and Janes come into the picture. The people who get things done: at home, at work, and here, in this place. In the new year, let’s get to work doing the tasks that need to be done.
If you think about it, God’s metric is different from ours. God’s kingdom has always been built on the regular people, whether old or young, able to speak eloquently or not, sometimes not even the oldest son, but rather the eighth, like King David. God chooses the ordinary and makes that person extraordinary.
This week it is Joseph, a carpenter from Nazareth. And, as will be said in John’s Gospel: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” The answer is yes. Let us all resolve to be a Joseph: faithful, obedient, courageous. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria.
3 Advent (Year A)
Matthew 11
St. John’s, West Seneca
December 14, 2025
Grace to you and Peace from God our Father and the LORD Jesus Christ. Amen.
We met him last week, this John the Baptist. And what a sight. Dressed in camel’s hair and leather with an interesting diet. And all came out to see and hear, as he called out the religious authorities and King Herod. His was a thundering voice in the wilderness and he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind.
But speaking your mind can be dangerous, and today we see John languishing in Herod’s jail. For a man who lived as John did, this must have been torturous. He was a man of the outdoors, now he could only look out on the world and wonder what was going on. And as he had much time to think about his own ministry, he asks the question that we should be asking ourselves this season. “Are you the one?”
Did John have second thoughts about whether Jesus was the Messiah, the one he had prepared for?
There were lots of false messiahs running around the region, claiming to be God’s one and only. A man named Judas of Galilee led a revolt against a Roman census in the year 6. There was Simon - a slave of Herod - who became a messianic figure when he led a rebellion the year 4. There was Theudus, who attempted a revolt against the Romans in the 40’s.
So you see, there was no shortage of fake messiahs claiming to be the one, which is why John asked, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
The answer Jesus gives has always been one of my favorite passages. He doesn’t say “yes” or “no,” but instead suggests that they look around and make up their own minds. “Go and tell John what you hear and see,” says Jesus: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me”.
"Look at what I am doing, Jesus suggests — then decide for yourself if I am the Messiah.” And what actions they were. The blind were receiving their sight, including two who called out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David”. The lame were walking, after Jesus said to a paralytic, “Stand up, take your bed and go to your home”. The lepers were being cleansed, such as the one who knelt before him and begged, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean”. The deaf were regaining their hearing, including a deaf man who also had an impediment in his speech. The dead were being raised, such as the little girl who was restored to life by the Jesus’s touch. And the poor were having good news preached to them, in words such as, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for yours is the kingdom of God”.
Look at what Jesus is doing here, not just what he is saying. He’s not just talking the talk; he’s walking the walk. His actions are proving that he is the one. “Go and tell John indeed…”
And then, Jesus turns around and gives credit to John the Baptist. “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at?” he asks the crowd. “Someone dressed in soft robes?” Jesus is mocking those who hiked into the wilderness to hear the preaching of John the Baptist, only to be offended by his clothing of camel’s hair, his leather belt and his diet, and of course, his words. “Look,” says Jesus, “those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces”.
John is a prophet, not a royal palace advisor. Furthermore, John is more than a prophet, insists Jesus — he is “the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’”
People had listened to John for a reason. Sure, all the hoopla about his clothing and his diet would have brought them out, but something kept them there. The prophetic tradition had been silent, but something in the collective memory of the people recognized a prophet. And prophets were fearless. So is John. If there is one thing about John, it is that he denounced what was evil. If King Herod had sinned in marriage, John let him know about it. If the Pharisees were mired in legalistic religion, John let them know. If he believed that they were a “brood of vipers,” fleeing from the flames, John let them know. He was not shy in his choice of words, because what he saw all around him was offensive, too disturbing not to say something. It takes a great deal of courage to do what John did.
Today we have John asking that question: Are you the one to come?
It is Advent, time to keep awake, to prepare. I wonder, do any of us ask this question? Do we ask if Jesus is “the one?” We celebrate this season each year, but do we ever ask, as John did?
We know the end of the story, so it may seem ridiculous to even think of asking such a question. However, in this season, a season of “waking up,” perhaps we need to ask the question because we, like John, may be in some type of prison — a prison that has shut us out from what Jesus is doing in the world. A prison we have created. What does Marley say to Scrooge in A Christmas Carol? That the chains he carries, he had made, link by link?
We are caught in our own prisons, in our own secure life, in our idea of what a good life is. Add to that the busy-ness of the season, and it can be difficult to discern the presence of Christ in our midst. And so we ask: “Are you the one?”
The answer should come back to us: “Go and tell what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”
Where do we see what God is doing? What do we see? And, are we being seen as the “good news?” Do we “do the right thing?” When those who are seeking a life in Christ look to us, do they see that while we are not able to heal as Jesus does, we are the carriers of that good news that changed the world and still changes lives? Or do they see Pharisees and Saduccees, wrapped up in our traditions, the way we do things. Do they see a “little Christ?"
Advent calls us to “wake up!” Advent calls us to prepare for the birth of Jesus in such a way that others want to follow. “At the heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus is Lord. To say that Jesus is Lord is to say that he is in charge. He is the One to whom we look for guidance for our daily lives, and the One in whom we place our trust as we move into an uncertain future.”
So, as we move forward, we need to leave whatever prison is holding us. We know that Jesus is the One who came and who will come again. We know that life in Him is a life worth waking up to. Our part is to “wake up” and be the good news. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Christ the King (Year C)
Luke 23:33-43
St. John’s, West Seneca
November 23, 2025
Grace to you and Peace from God our Father and the LORD Jesus Christ. Amen.
Before we end this church year and celebrate Thanksgiving, before we turn the cradle, as it were, to Advent, we have one more glance at the cross to consider its meaning. But we Christians know the end of the story, and of course, the cross is only the apparent end. “Still, when we adore the Christ child, the tapestry on the wall beyond is dark with the shadows of the cross. We know this child’s destiny, and we know that our own destiny is wrapped up in his.”
“Crucifixion was a common and shameful form of execution in the first century. It was an agonizing and extended death, compounded by the sneering, mocking and scoffing of onlookers.
"There are three distinct groups of mockers: the public rabble including the leaders, the Roman soldiers and one of the criminals.
"Each one challenges Jesus to do for himself what he has said he could do all along. These provocateurs probably had no faith that Jesus could indeed save himself; rather, “their comments are gratuitous barbs tossed at Jesus in the form of mockery, sneers, and insults. The ironic truth of these taunts is that those who mock him declare his messianic identity and the saving significance of his death — “King of the Jews,” “the Messiah,” “Save yourself and us!” — but they do not grasp the truth they speak.”
In Luke’s narrative, he makes these unique contributions to our understanding of the crucifixion story. “This gospel is the only one to record the words of the men crucified with Jesus, or to report a conversation among the three dying men. Here, one criminal takes a different tack from the other — the ‘penitent thief’ delivers what is arguably Christianity’s first sermon, a speech from the cross in which this outcast understands things the disciples could not yet comprehend.”
Crucifixion was such a shameful thing that the disciples never understood how the Messiah could be rejected and executed. But this criminal, this outcast, gets it. He understands that precisely because Jesus is on the cross, he is the Messiah. The disciples do not, nor does Jesus's family. Rather, this criminal, this outsider, who “gets it” and gives witness to whom Jesus was when everyone else had deserted, double-crossed and derided him and then gone into hiding. And because he believes this, he asks: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
The beauty and joy of this moment is that just as Jesus is saving the whole world, he takes the time to save one person. Jesus never sacrificed the one for the many, or the many for the one. He kept the one and the many together at all times in his life ... and death.
This Sunday – Christ the King - is the Johnny-come-lately of church festivals. Pope Pius XI, in a 1925 papal encyclical, was the one who set this day apart, saying that the kingship of Christ is a wall, a protection against the “manifold evils in the world.” Pius reminded Christians reeling from the aftermath of World War I that the central theme of Jesus’s teaching was the kingdom of God. And what a different king and kingdom. Unlike earthly kings, there is no coronation ritual, rich with symbolism: the robes, the scepter, the orb, Saint Edward’s chair.
These days, when religious identity is often “spiritual, but not religious,” or a lifestyle choice based on convenience, Christ the King challenges all of us. In a fallen world corrupted by sin and lust for power, Christ proclaims a kingdom based on love and mercy. Grace and truth are to flow freely, beyond the goodness of what any earthly kingdom or human ruler can provide.
Situated at the end of the liturgical year, one writer described Christ the King Sunday as a joyful exclamation point. It reminds us of the joys of our Christian life, just as we prepare to begin the cycle again with Advent, anticipating the newborn King.
But the cross is always at the center of our faith as we begin a new year.
Martin Luther has a great deal to say about this, in his theology of the Cross. He believed God revealed His power and love most fully through Jesus's suffering and death, not through human reason or works. This perspective emphasizes that God is with believers in their suffering and that salvation is entirely a gift from God through Christ, not something earned through human merit. That contrasts with a theology of glory that looks for God in our accomplishments and reason.
The good news is that when we learn to recognize this God, then we can also learn to “recognize God in his glory and majesty” in a way that actually does feed our faith and life. If we start with glory, the cross will, in one form or another, take on secondary importance in our thinking and feeling about God. If we start with the cross, then our understanding of who God is will grow deeper, richer, more complex, and, in the end, more glorious.
So, on Christ the King Sunday, perhaps this is as good a time to be reminded that the King we serve – Jesus Christ – is not a king in the usual or even expected way. This king – as we see in the Gospel text – is a crucified one, between two criminals.
It is the last Sunday of the Church year, and we begin again, always taking the crucifixion and resurrection with us. After giving “Thanks” later this week, we will jump into Advent, with Matthew’s Gospel, and start over yet again with the same story told by a different author. The story is of the same loving God who comes to us and walks with us, and yes, suffers with us.
We know the story. Jesus will come to us as a child. Another king will be threatened by him and he and his family will be refugees. He will be baptized by the strangest man around and will travel and teach with a motley group of followers. He will eat with no distinction between sinners and saints. His popularity will grow and He will be welcomed as the next David, then betrayed and crucified. This is Christ the King, God’s Son, Jesus, and through this coming year, we will learn again that God will stop at nothing for us, his people. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria.
26 Pentecost (Year C)
Luke 21:5-19
St. John’s West Seneca
November 16, 2025
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have just come from Reformation Sunday and All Saints’, and are soon to reach the end of the church year. For me, once we come to Reformation, it is just a slide into Christmas. And yes, next week we will celebrate Christ the King Sunday and another church year will be in the books. And then we start the cycle all over again.
And yet, I find myself at odds with trying to finish off one church year before Thanksgiving, and when there are Christmas decorations and lights. An article from TIME magazine comes to mind, one in which the author is on the same page that I am. The name of the essay was “Merry Hallowmas.”
“’A perpetual Holiday,’ George Bernard Shaw said, ‘is a good working definition of hell.’ It's as though we've supersized our holidays, so that they start sooner, last longer and cost more, until the calendar pages pull and tear, and we don't know which one we are meant to be celebrating.
"Seasons once had a rhythm to them, tuned to the harvest or the hunt, with rituals spaced through the year to bring the rain, praise the sun, mark the time between solstice and equinox, celebrate birth and honor death. Our holidays answer our needs to feast and mourn and manage risk, our customs customized to the point that the Roman pagans had a holiday specifically designed to prevent a certain kind of mold from destroying the wheat by offering animal sacrifices to the god of mildew. We remember those we love on Valentine's Day, those we revere on Easter or Passover or Ramadan, those we fear on Halloween. Thanksgiving was a celebration of harvest, the stuffing of oneself a natural response to all the work that once went into managing one's crops and now goes into managing one's relatives. Just as meals and sleep and work and recess pace the days, so do holidays pace the year. Clump them together, and they lose their fizz and juice, the useful little monthly boosts turned into a pileup of duties and lists. When every day is a holiday--or more precisely, part of the holiday season--none really are.
"It's true that our forebears could never agree when the cycle should begin. The ancient Egyptians celebrated the new year as the Nile rose at the end of August. The Incans picked the year's shortest day (June 21 in the southern hemisphere), while Chinese New Year usually falls on the day of the second new moon after the winter solstice. It was Pope Gregory in 1582 who finally settled on Jan. 1 for Europeans. But wherever it lands, it serves its purpose: the past falling away…
"Since winter can be long and dreary, when days are short and the sunlight thin, we rely on the revelry of carnival and Mardi Gras to carry us over until spring and rebirth. Then come the patriotic plumes, of Memorial Day and Flag Day and July 4 (not to mention Cinco de Mayo, Bastille Day and Samoan Independence Day) before a long spell when the holidays themselves go on holiday. August is the rare month with no shared celebration in it, when we gasp along for weeks on end without collective permission to overspend, overeat and overindulge…”
Wow. There is more to that article, of course, and if that is not the truth succinctly written, I don’t know what is.
Just as holidays mark time, so does the church year. The rhythm of the church year begs us to consider – as holidays do – just who we are and who we are becoming as children of God.
The church year has six seasons: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost. Advent always has four Sundays. Christmas is always twelve days long, and the first day of Christmas is Christmas Day. Lent is 40 days, not counting Sundays, and has five Sundays, then Palm Sunday. Easter is fifty days long, with seven Sundays. The seasons of Epiphany and Pentecost vary in length, depending on the date of Easter, although the date for the Day of Epiphany is always January 6. This coming Epiphany will have five Sundays, then Transfiguration, marking the end of the Epiphany season. Ash Wednesday comes February 18, with Easter on April 5.
Besides those statistics, which may or may not get you a place on Jeopardy, the intention behind the church year is always to examine where you are in your faith life by focusing on what Christ has done, and what we should be doing in each season. Just like the holidays, if you clump them together, they lose their fizzle and their meaning. As we come to the end of the year, it’s time to take stock. It is time to revisit where we’ve been.
The church has set aside these last Sundays to remind us that Jesus will come again. With Malachi and Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, and Jesus’s own words, all of it can sound dire.
It’s not an easy thing to speak of the end times. Either we don’t want to hear it, or we have heard that the end is near far too often, and time after time, the calculating has been off. You see, rumors of this world's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Consider the example of William Miller, a Baptist farmer from New York who was convinced that Christ would return to Earth in the early 1840s. With the assistance of Boston preacher Joshua Himes, Miller persuaded tens of thousands of Christians that the "day of the Lord" was at hand. Some followers even quit jobs and sold property in anticipation of the Second Coming. What came instead was the so-called Great Disappointment, and with it the discrediting of William Miller. Within a short time, however, Miller's shoes were filled by others who reinterpreted the texts, reworked the math, and issued new predictions. And it happens over and over. Remember just a few short weeks ago, the Rapture was supposed to happen.
All three lessons are looking ahead to that day. Paul is especially concerned with those believers who were fervently believed in the imminent return of Jesus. “Since his ETA was unknown, but could be at any moment, some of the Thessalonian Christians had given notice to their employers, left their professions, and were arranging for their imminent and final flight to parts unknown…Paul tells the church to get back to work. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Yes, Jesus is coming again, but until he does, we must make our own way and not expect others to finance our idleness.” As Paul put it: “Do not be weary in doing what is right.”
Jesus assures us as well, by stating that that despite all the terrors and calamities that may befall us, we will be safe. Jesus's approach is more about dealing with your heart and mind than building a bomb shelter and retreating from the world.
We are to live with readiness and awareness. Denial is a common coping mechanism in us humans. It's common to scan the headlines as you check the news on your phone each morning and think, "Nope -- that's not going to happen here." What Jesus stresses is that we are to realize that can happen here, where we are. Again, Jesus is not calling us into a state of paranoia or fear. He's simply asking his people to be honest; to realize that this world is struggling with sin and despair, until that day when he returns.
The readings today do not give us permission to spend our time wringing our hands and wondering when. If anything, it is the opposite. Instead, live with your eyes wide open but your heart at peace, confident that God will give you what you need when the time comes.
The function of eschatology – a fancy word for the end times - is nothing more than a reckoning to remind us that while the words are alarming, for us, it is just another day of service to God. We live under grace and hope, not doom and gloom. Jesus gets the message out, loud and clear: "I'll be back." He just doesn't mention when.
And so we don’t give up. We don’t have to give up and we should not give up. Because God has sent us the One who will always keep us alive, both here and eternally. The signs all around us may point to the end, but God wants us to keep working wherever He has placed us. There's a lot of life yet to live, and work to be done. May we always be ready and aware, but not obsessed and afraid. Amen.
Soli Gloria Dei
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