StAlbansChurch

June 28, 2026 Sermon from The Reverend Jim Stickney

Instead of pouring in more better stop while you can

making it sharper won’t make it last longer

rooms full of treasure can never be made safe

when your work is done retire this is the way of Heaven

This poem expresses ancient wisdom from a Chinese text called the Tao Te Ching, and it is a foundational document in the practice of Taoism. I picture Taoist thought as the negative space in much of Chinese painting — a recognition of the background needed so that the foreground stands out.

When I do Morning Prayer, in addition to Christian texts, I often include readings from other traditions, such as the poems of Rumi, or stories from the Sufis. I often read these poems from the Tao Te Ching — but they can be rather impersonal. So I’ll balance this quote with a couplet from the Old Testament Book of Sirach. It is advice given to a venerated elder who is presiding at a festive celebration. So this morning I am assuming the role of your local venerated elder.

Speak, you who are older for it is your right

But with accurate knowledge and do not interrupt the music

I have arranged that this day shall be the last time I preach and celebrate here — and a Taoist might observe that this is a “propitious” time to retire. The church observed the feast of St. Alban just this last Monday — June 22nd.

Forty years ago, on July first, 1986, was my first official day as your Rector. As it happened, I was also forty years old at that time.

Thirty years ago, I met a parishioner here named Joni, who became my wife — and she has wedding photos she would like to share with you at the reception.

Twenty years ago I stepped down as your Rector to begin serving as an interim pastor. I was 60, and after a long pastorate, it was time for a major change.

I did agree to return on a volunteer basis as the church dealt with Covid, and continued to serve once a month for in-person services. But I’m eighty now and today concludes forty years of my service here.

So — what next? I’m pretty excited for your future. Your numbers did decrease during Covid, but you have proved very resourceful. Other churches closed, and even our flagship Episcopal seminary in Berkeley has been revisioned for the digital age. Its buildings are repurposed. But you are still here! You serve the community with much-needed childcare, and you support the arts with Calliope, and a range of musicians here.

As for me, it’s no secret that I have become possessed by the benign spirit of the Muses. Every day I am either working on stained glass projects, or at least thinking about my current and my next projects. I post motivational quotes in my shop. Here are a couple of them. Richard Diebenkorn tells me: “Art is not delivered like the morning paper — it must be stolen from Mount Olympus!” Or Picasso: “Art is a lie that tells the truth.” Or from a Japanese artist group: “Fracture is simply the revenge of the material for being extracted from the earth.” Glass is mostly sand that has been tortured into a molten state and then annealed and sliced up. If not treated with respect, the glass will fight back.

My shop can resemble a monastic cell, but with music and a dart board. From the letter to the Romans: “God calls into existence things that do not exist.” We share in God’s creative actions when we create new things. From the Angelic Doctor Thomas Aquinas: “God is an artist, and the universe is God’s work of art.” Some of our parishioners have visited a hermitage on the Big Sur coast. The founder of that order of monks, St. Romuald, wrote this, which I see every day in my shop: “Sit in your cell as in Paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman looking for fish.”

When this church undertook a capital funds drive and remodeled the church. you brought in this well-crafted table to serve as your altar. So — do you remember what happened to the big seven-foot altar that was here before? Well, I’ve got it! now Your old altar has become my work-bench. It’s ergonomic, and I store supplies and tools in the spaces that used to hold the communion kneelers.

In his book, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce makes a connection between what the artist does and what the priest does in celebrating the Eucharist: The artist “transmutes the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everlasting life.” I suggest that all of us are artists of our own lives.

Each of us has to take the daily details of our ordinary days, with all their limitations and potential, and create something out of them — not just anything, but something we are proud of, worthy of divinity. Each one of us has a divine spark within — which is why we gather here — to remember our divine calling and to recharge us on our spiritual quests.

Well, I have just exceeded my two-page limit for my sermons. Time to wrap it up.

First, a repeat of that gentle poetic nudge from the Tao Te Ching:

Instead of pouring in more better stop while you can

making it sharper won’t make it last longer

rooms full of treasure can never be made safe

when your work is done retire this is the way of Heaven

So far, so good — reasonable and balanced words, a little cool and impersonal.

Now, that sage advice from the wisdom of Sirach — for that venerated elder:

Speak, you who are older for it is your right

But with accurate knowledge and do not interrupt the music

Sermons

June 21, 2026 Reflection from Margaret Doleman

“The Price of Discipleship”

Interesting readings today.

First, Sarah convinces Abraham to send Hagar and her son away. God reassures Abraham, but not Hagar, that the boy has a future.

Next, Paul tells us that to belong to Christ, we need to die to sin.

Finally, we have Jesus laying out in detail to his disciples what their commitment to him will cost them.

These are the kinds of passages that make me wonder if I have any business calling myself a Christian.

What is the cost, for us, in our time and place, of following Jesus?

And how do we deal with our fear?

Most of us here probably won’t be called to put our lives on the line for our faith. Some may have religious divisions in their families that are painful, especially if any of the people involved believe that the consequence of wrong belief is eternal damnation.

But for many of us, the worst reaction we’ll face for believing in Jesus is ridicule, or possibly a verbal outburst from someone who sees nothing in religion but shame and blame and war mongering.

So, no, it really isn’t much of a risk for us to show up at church every week. Of course, we do have more responsibilities than that, as Christians.

This congregation is pretty conscientious about offering practical help to people in need. But sometimes, I think, our faith asks us to step out of our comfort zones. For example, this spot right here is not my comfort zone.

And this is where fear comes in.

I read a commentary on this Gospel reading that talked a lot about fear. Fear as a powerful motivation, and fear as a tool for politicians (and I would add advertisers) to manipulate us.

I imagine that physical reactions to deep fear are probably the same for everyone, but the things that we’re afraid of are not. One person’s exciting challenge is another’s worst nightmare. I know that’s true. I’ve seen pictures of people appearing to sleep soundly on a portable ledge, attached to the face of Half Dome.

But I would guess that almost everyone would be afraid of the kind of violent death that Jesus warns his disciples about. And we know that many of them did die violently and probably very painfully.

So, how do we overcome our fears?

Jesus tells his disciples that they need not fear those who can only kill the body but not the soul. I thought about that for a long time, wondering if I could really trust even God enough to look death in the eye.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I do see how this works. Jesus is telling them that if they can don’t run away from this physical danger, they will be rewarded with something much better than a few more years on earth. I remembered times when I found a way through my fear because I trusted that the outcome would be better than if I gave in to the fear. Sometimes the equation is very simple, like standing up here and reading what I’ve written, because for me, it’s worth a few butterflies to dig into the readings like this.

Other times, it’s harder. Once, on a hiking trip, I found myself looking at a more or less vertical rock face, which the guides informed us we would be climbing. This was really not my idea of fun, as I think I hinted earlier. But there were rewards, getting to finish the hike, for one, and at least equally important, not feeling like a wimp in front of the rest of the group. The guides assured us it wasn’t that hard, and I made sure that a couple of people were ahead of me, so I could watch how it went for them. It was fine. And I was really glad when it was over.

I don’t know if this is helpful or not, or if it applies to everyone or every situation. Personally, it’s been interesting to think about fear, because I see myself as a rather fearful person, and I know it holds me back sometimes. There are some things I can’t imagine I could ever do, no matter what the situation was. Maybe there are things like that for you, too.

Trusting in God is a good thing. So let us all pray for the courage to do what we need to do, and to be spared from challenges that are too much for us.

Amen.

Sermons

June 14, 2026 Reflection by Steve Hitchcock

Several of us in this congregation read lots of mystery novels. Others of us count on Britbox TV, so we can watch those British detectives at work. And some of you are highly skilled with crossword and jigsaw puzzles.

Part of our pleasure – okay, addiction –is that we like to solve puzzles and see how all the pieces fit together. There’s also the satisfaction that the bad guys get caught. Life may not be perfect, but some measure of justice can be achieved. There is at least some level of “righteousness” – of things being made right.

But there’s another reason why we’re drawn to these stories. In every mystery novel and every TV show, no matter how brilliant the central character is, he or she never solves the mystery alone.

At least one other character – and more often several – help the lead detective get to the solution. And we are intrigued and enchanted by the interactions – both playful and poignant – of the team of detectives who solve the mystery.

To be sure, team members almost always make mistakes, get distracted by false leads, fight among themselves, and are often more bumbling than brilliant.

Today and the next two Sundays, our third reading will be from Matthew’s Gospel, from what is known as the Mission Discourse, the second of five long speeches that Jesus makes in Matthew’s Gospel.

The Pentecost Season is how we experience the reality of what the Easter Season promises – that the Risen Christ is present among us, that we have been raised to new life, that our worn-out lungs and frazzled brains are now Spirit-filled.

Listening to Matthew’s Gospel is an ideal way to keep the Easter promise alive because this Gospel invites us to follow Jesus … to be his disciples … to join the Jesus team.

Matthew wasn’t written at the end of the first century to be a story about what happened 30 or 40 years earlier. Rather, it’s a story about what was happening to those Christians, probably in Syria, two generations after Jesus. And it’s our story today.

And that story is good news, good enough to move us – as Reverend Linda suggested last week – from fear to faith. More than that even: from despair to hope, from paralysis to joy, from dark to light.

All that’s possible because we are being invited to join a team, to be part of a circle that helps – if you will – solve the mystery of life, to help make things right.

Matthew’s Gospel highlights the significance of this team by focusing on the 12 disciples. They represented the 12 tribes of Israel. And Matthew calls them “Apostles,” the post-Easter name given to the 12 disciples.

What this team of 12 disciples constituted was nothing less than the restoration of 12 tribes of Israel before civil war and exile decimated all but two of the original tribes. Jesus’ words about a shepherd and the flock and about the harvest are promises that God’s kingdom is coming and all things will be made right. And this team of disciples – this new Israel – will be a light to all nations.

To turn this promise into a reality, Jesus gives the disciples and us today – a mission. And that mission is the same mission as Jesus’ mission.

In the chapters immediately before this reading, Jesus has been doing exactly what he instructs the disciples to do: Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.

It wouldn’t have been lost on Matthew’s first readers that what Jesus was doing was – in actuality – going on a mission only to Israel. The “lepers” cleansed suffered not from what we know as leprosy but from a “skin disease” more akin to eczema. These disfigured individuals were excluded and cut off from society, but Jesus says his mission now brings them in.

And, even more startling, in the verses immediately following the cleansing of the leper in chapter 8, a centurion – a Gentile and an enforcer of the brutal Roman occupation – asks Jesus to heal his paralyzed son. Jesus does so and thereby makes it clear that revenge and violence have no place in God’s new kingdom.

In today’s reading – and in the next two weeks – Jesus will offer detailed and forceful instructions to his team. Helen Mirren would be proud! But, boy oh boy, does this team run into trouble.

In subsequent chapters we will see that the disciples failed to understand and to follow Jesus. In Matthew’s own community two generations later, the breakdown of community and the behavior of its leaders left a lot to be desired.

As we read in today from Romans and as is hinted in Matthew’s Gospel, it’s not only internal problems that threaten the Jesus team. There will be rejection, there will be suffering, there will be evil that drives us to fear and despair.

Right now, all our efforts seem so futile. Our prayers, our protests, and our political action have so little impact. Illegal and insane wars go on. Diseases are surging as science and medicine are underfunded and scorned. Millions of people in our own country and around the world are struggling to get enough food to eat.

And, in the midst of all this evil, our mission team – we as Jesus’ disciples sent on a mission – seem so ineffective.

But we really shouldn’t be surprised that our “Jesus team” is so dysfunctional, so likely to make mistakes The One we follow also ended up failing, failing so badly that he was crucified as a common criminal and a political renegade.

Matthew’s Gospel – as we hear in Eucharistic Prayer A – Jesus stretched out his arms on the cross, as a perfect sacrifice for the world. Through his death, we have the forgiveness of sins, the wiping away of our failures, an end to our fear and our arrogance.

But the curious thing is that, after all the instructions they receive in today’s Gospel reading, the disciples don’t actually go out on a mission. They have to follow Jesus to the cross.

We see now that the solution to this mystery – the big mess of our lives and our world today – is that, in swallowing death, Jesus overcame death and the grave and was raised to newness of life. And, in Matthew’s Gospel at the crucifixion, there is an earthquake and all those dead bodies – including us – come out of their graves and start walking around.

That’s why Matthew’s unique ending to his gospel is so powerful. In these final verses, after his death and resurrection, Jesus does actually send out the disciples – and us today – into the world. But unlike the meager supplies we hear about in today’s reading, Jesus sends them – and us – with lavish resources. He tells them he – as the Risen Christ – will be always with them.

And Jesus doesn’t send us out one by one, but two by two, and 12 x 12, and 70 x 70. As we stumble along together on the hard road ahead, the Risen Christ joins us, he walks beside us, he stays in the midst of us.

So, as we gather together this morning and as we go out in the world, our spirits are lifted, our hearts strengthened, and our minds comforted. Thanks to the Spirit’s work, this team – our team – has the mind and the heart of the Risen Christ to heal the sick, welcome the outcast, and proclaim good news.

Sermons

June 7, 2026 Sermon by The Reverend Linda McConnell

Faith over Fear to Move Forward

We are in transition, on the way from the known to the unknown. We don’t know who our next state governor is going to be, or if the midterms will proceed smoothly, or how or when the Strait of Hormuz will open or gas prices will come down or… or..we can all plug in our own unknowns, right?   Some of us are facing surgeries, some of us are facing the unknown territory of changes in family members health, some of us are attempting to remodel our kitchens, or remodel our psyches! Some of us are in the process of coming out as gay, some of us are transitioning genders – All of us are in the transition of aging.

It’s safe to say that most all of these journeys – from the known to the unknown – from the smallest to the largest – require courage and trust and faith.

And that’s what we get in the story of Abraham and Sarah leaving their country and their people to go to a new land, simply on the basis of having been called out and responding with yes, ok, we’ll go. Responding with yes on the basis of a divine word for which they had no proof. And the always amazing thing, every time we come to this story, is that they this wild word of adventure and hope and danger and possibility resonated with something inside them, and they trusted it, trusted the future of following this call. And so can we. But before we look forward let’s peer back into the scriptures – The story is that about 4,000 years ago a family of semitic nomads left Ur of the Chaldeans, perhaps in southeastern Iraq near Nasariyah. They settled in Haran, Turkey, on the Syrian border, where a child named Terah was born, and lived.

When Terah died, it was his son Abraham who heard the voice of God calling him to continue the journey his ancestors had begun. So this word didn’t arise out of nowhere. His ancestors were already journeyers. It’s just that they had stopped and settled and become quite successful. But now the word to continue the journey comes: “Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” Abraham believed this word that came from the divine, and so, at the age of seventy-five, “Abram left, as the Lord had told him.” Maybe this voice appealed to an inner nature of adventure, maybe to some restless quality of his nomadic ancestors was passed down to him – who knows? But it’s no wonder that Paul uses Abraham’s astounding faith and trust to ground his theology in his letter to the Romans. By the way, we will be reading through Romans for most of the summer.

Because I am keenly interested both personally and as a preacher in this movement from fear to faith, as I think Paul was as well, I want to spend some time on three basic fears that are common to all of us, fears that could have kept Abraham from moving forward but that he overcame through trust in God – whom I should point out, he more intuited than knew at the beginning of this journey. He and God were not well acquainted. He was busy being a businessman, a high-level rancher, a successful man of the community. He was not a mystic or religious guy. We tend to put these people on a pedestal but they were a whole lot like us.

Ok – so three fears that can enslave us to the past and to the known, even when what we already known is not healthy or helpful. I’m indebted to theologian Dan Clendinin for outlining these three movements from fear to faith.

Ignorance. We human beings tend to fear what we don’t know and what we can’t control. Our gay and transgendered friends can testify that moving towards being out and about with who they are might be freeing, but it can also be dangerous, because others often react out of fear about what they don’t know and cannot control. A potent spiritual practice is to embrace our own ignorance. Our own lack of control. It’s freeing to do this, and it keeps us from potentially harming others as we attempt to squash what we can’t control. A dear friend of mine contemplated her own gender transition for many years before making visible changes, and she did so without knowing how others would react or receive her, and she was fully aware of how little control she would have over that. But she found that her trust in God deepened with every step forward she took. The thing was that she had to take the steps with as much faith that she had, and then found that God was meeting her there and calling her onward.   My friend can testify to the faith that Abraham discovered as he moved forward. The letter to the Hebrews says: “By faith Abraham obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country.” (Hebrews 11:8–9)
Which brings me to the second fear that enslaves us to the past. Fear of Including others who are different from us. Abraham had to open his mind and his heart to receive the stranger. Actually, he had to endure the discomfort and awkwardness of being the stranger. Right? He was the one journeying. He was the immigrant. As the gay theologian Manuel Villalobos Mendoza writes, “A true coming-out demands acceptance of the other as brother and sister. In a true coming out, blessings flow; cultures are exchanged and enriched; the stranger becomes a friend, the sojourner becomes a citizen.” Through Abraham, the sojourner, the immigrant, the stranger, Genesis says that “all peoples on earth will be blessed.” (12:3). The challenge of inclusion is always with us. God is always setting us towards widening the circle of blessing. Now here’s the rub – widening the circle, including more voices and perspectives necessarily means giving up some power – which brings me to the third fear which is that of powerlessness or impotence.
This fear is so strong that it can create extreme backlash. Witness what is happening now, in terms of women’s rights over our own bodies, the flood of anti-trans legislation, the swing towards extreme exclusion of immigrants. This fear of powerlessness is deep seated and dangerous. And so, the spiritual practice is to accept not only our fundamental lack of control, but our fundamental powerlessness. One of the central promises Abraham hears from God is the promise that his progeny will be as many as the stars in the sky. But he is 75. His wife Sarah is far beyond child bearing years. And so both Abraham and Sarah laugh, but God replies, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (18:14). And so Abraham leads by giving up insisting on his own control and his own power and trusts that God can do what God promises to do. Now the truth is, Abraham also hedged his bets. He had a plan B and a plan C. But the point is – he tried, in spite of his fears, to trust that God will “give life to the dead and call into being things that were not. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations,” as Paul writes to the Romans. (Romans 4:17, 21). Our own spiritual growth is built on that same rock – God’s ultimate and infinite power to bring life out of death, something good out of nothing. Resurrection.   So friends, however fear shackles us, however it manifests in our lives, we can take steps forward into the fullness of life through faith. Maybe it’s on a big adventure like Abraham and Sarah, or maybe it’s just greater ease with what is. However we are called forward, let’s take a deep breath and say yes.

And as we say yes to moving forward in faith, we can use Paul’s words from his letter to the Ephesians: We give Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Sermons

May 31, 2026 Reflection by Larry DiCostanzo

Today is Trinity Sunday. In fact, it is the 692d Trinity Sunday after the Feast was put on the calendar in 1334. And since we’re counting, I think this is my third or fourth reflection for Trinity Sunday. And each time the reflection gets shorter. And I wonder if this is because the subject is getting simpler or I am getting dumber.

Leaving my IQ aside, I don’t think the subject is getting simpler. Trinity Sunday is kind of the Sunday to which the whole first half of the church year, from Advent through Pentecost, points. And a lot is commemorated in that period. There’s God the Father’s creation of the universe: Jesus’ gift of salvation; the presence of the Holy Spirit among us. After all this, Trinity Sunday raises the question who exactly is our God. No, the Trinity is definitely not a simple topic.

So, how do we approach the question of who our God is. We don’t want to be presumptuous. And we can’t pin down an answer. But I think not getting an answer is the point. The question will go on forever, and our attempts to understand will be bits and pieces of understanding. The bits will come to us through Scripture, through contemplation. And I don’t mean something fancy when I say contemplation. I mean prayerfully thinking about what kind of person God is.

Today, I’m going to mention one of the bits and pieces: This is how God looks at us and feels about us. Since we are made in God’s image, we do have a little access to God’s feelings. This means we can answer from our experiences and the experiences of the kinship between all of us here.

In his First Letter, John actually defines God. He says that God is love. (1 John 4:8). In what follows this definition, John points out two other things. The first thing are the events that we commemorate from Advent to Pentecost — the Creation, the Incarnation and Salvation, the activity of the Spirit. The second thing that I think John wants us to know is that the structure of the universe is love, that this love became flesh so that we can live or abide in God, and that the Spirit is our witness to this. (1 John 4:7-16)

So, let’s take the abstract word “Love” and give it content, that is, let’s give it some down-to-earth reality by dragging it down to the level of our experiences. In other words, let’s put ourselves in God’s shoes. And let’s put God in our shoes.

So I thought of three examples, and I am sure that you can think of others. I think these examples will, I hope, show us what God is like and also let us feel a kind of intimacy with God.

First, the Bible has a huge arc. Simply put, the arc is that God put us in Eden and has been working hard ever since to put us back there. This is exactly the love that we have when we want others to be happy. It is the love of gift giving at Christmas or whenever. It is the parent’s and teacher’s love that wants us to grow up and be happy. It is the child’s love that works for the well-being of the parent. These are all the kind of love that wants others to be in Eden. This is the same love that God has when the Bible says he wants to open Eden again for us, that he wants us to be happy.

Here is another example. In the Letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul lists the fruits of the Holy Spirit. These are really nice. Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) These are qualities that I think everybody wants to have. They are the love that we give to our church kinship, to our co-workers, to the store clerk, the passerby on the sidewalk, the dog, and so on. If we look back at the source of these fruits, we are looking at God because a giver of personal qualities like these fruits has to have these qualities himself. God is certainly generous! But he also has to be gentle and kind and patient. He gives us what he has. Let me give you the list of the fruits of the Spirit again: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-control.

A third example comes from the world of sorrow. Perhaps, someone beloved is ill or is no longer capable of thought or is angry with you. He will not talk to you. He will not acknowledge you. He behaves in ways that ignore your wishes and hopes. He contradicts you. He has cut you off. He even seems to hate you. Yet, you still worry and fret and pray and phone. You still try to talk. That is, you still love. And I think your love is the same love God has for the sinner or the person who ignores him or even despises him or the idea of him. It is the love of the father in The Prodigal Son who runs out before his son reaches the door because his son has always been his mind and the father hangs out around the door. God loves to the point that he is always hanging out at the door, always picking up the phone to make a call. In a way, this love is the summation of the other two examples I gave.

So, in conclusion, if God is love as John writes, I think he is an awful lot like us and we are an awful lot like him. It is because we both love, God first — I mean, he is the Creator — and then us. For God it is one-hundred percent love. For us, well, let’s say that frequently it is love. Pick your own percentage. We can talk this over with God when we meet the Trinity face to face and no longer have to struggle with one of my reflections because we are seeing Love as in a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Sermons

May 24, 2026 Sermon by The Reverend AnnaMarie Hoos

Acts 2:1-21, Psalm 104:25-29, 32, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13, John 7:37-3

Amazed and astonished, the [crowd] asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? …. in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

Have you ever gone somewhere special for a big event? A place where crowds of strangers from all over the world are there with you? This year alone we have the World Cup here in North America, and events all over the country for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Events like this are hectic, and joyful, often hot and expensive, and there are usually long lines for the bathroom. I have fond memories of one New Year’s Eve in Times Square, and being in Jerusalem during Ramadan. In New York, I was confident that I was safe – I spoke the language, after all. Jerusalem was a little more unnerving – I spoke neither Hebrew nor Arabic, there were a lot of police and security barriers, the streets were narrow and crowded with worshippers. I remember one time I found myself in a narrow passageway near the Dome of the Rock, with worshippers rushing in the opposite direction I wanted to travel. I just had to wait, and trust I wasn’t lost. if someone around me had spoken English I would have been so relieved!

This, then, is the setting of our Acts reading today. A crowded city, Jewish believers from all over the Diaspora, gathered together, intent on prayer and celebration. And the disciples, still reeling a bit from Christ’s final words, and ascension. Waiting for something to happen. Wondering what comes next.

The author of Acts tells us the disciples “were all gathered together in one place,” probably to celebrate the Jewish feast of Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks. Pentecost, or “Pente-kosti”, in Greek, simply means “50th” – it’s been 50 days since Passover, 50 days since that great feast of sacrifice and salvation. Shavuot was originally a harvest festival, marking when you could harvest the first wheat. And, since all first-fruits belong to God, devout people made pilgrimage to the Jerusalem Temple, bringing loaves of bread made from that first, freshly-harvested wheat. Later, the feast became a time when the people remembered the covenant God made with Noah after the great Flood. Then, after the second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, the feast commemorated the Torah, when the people of God received the law of God, to direct and govern their lives. So – a feast day for receiving, and giving thanks. Amen! But also a day when we remember: it is God who directs our lives, and God is getting us ready to go to some unexpected places.

Think what it means that each of the disciples were speaking in different tongues. That everyone in the crowd – people from all over the Mediterranean world – could understand. The message of the gospel – God’s good news, shown in Jesus, was no longer going to be contained in Jerusalem, or Galilee, or even the cities across the Jordan River. It was time for the good news of the kingdom of God to spread to the whole world. Now people everywhere could hear about Jesus’s healing, compassion, and love. Now their hearts could be touched, and receive the Word of God, and have new life in Christ.

Now, I realize that, depending on how you were raised, this last bit of my sermon might sound pretty “evangelical.” And, in fact, I was raised evangelical. I actually wanted to be a missionary as a teenager; I even studied linguistics and foreign service in college. I read stories of missionaries who went to China and traveled into the rain forests of Ecuador and Papua New Guinea. After college, though, I left that kind of church, and over the years I learned to recognize the harms that western, colonial powers brought, alongside the gospel, over many centuries. But what I continue to be interested in is this question of language.

Communication and connection. What made the day of Pentecost remarkable was that the disciples and the people surrounding them could communicate. They could understand one another. And therefore they could enter into a relationship – with each other, and with God. The Holy Spirit gave them this moment of pure understanding, pure connection – a moment of the kingdom of heaven, here on earth.

Now, it doesn’t seem that this magical moment of linguistic understanding lasted beyond the day of Pentecost. The disciples didn’t instantly become polyglots, speaking all the languages of “Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene.” But they did come away with an experience of understanding, and being understood. Of connection and communication that leads to community. They came away from that day with the understanding that this was now their work to do. To connect. To communicate. And to build the kingdom of God.

Communication takes work. Anyone who has ever had a friend, or parent, or child, or neighbor, or co-worker, or boss or any relationship, really, knows that communicating takes work. Means getting quiet, so you can listen.

Means listening for what might not be said, means noticing emotions and trying to understand motivations, means wanting the other person to be happy and well, means finding common cause and looking for common ground. And that’s just communicating with the people around us in our day-to-day life! All of that before we try to address, say, the school board, or local politics, or the increasing polarization of our national politics.

Communication takes work. And it can only happen if we are willing to turn our minds – and our hearts – towards learning another language – the language of another person’s heart.

We all do this, sometimes out of necessity but also out of curiosity and even love. What language have you learned to speak, to connect, to be heard? How do you talk to your kids, even when they’re making you crazy? How do you communicate with your boss, or a co-worker whose help you need? What do you say – or not say – to your parents, now that you’re an adult? I learned about Pokemon and soccer for the kids at my last church; I speak differently about being a priest to people outside the church than I do to Episcopalians. And I don’t pick fights with my dad about our political differences because I love him. But I do talk with my parents about the issues that are important to me, like migrants and asylum seekers who are afraid, or my friends with trans kids who worry about getting gender affirming care. We can hear one another, because we love one another, and we’ve decided to use language in a way that keeps us connected.

We make these kinds of choices about speaking (or not speaking) out of love, or necessity, or care, or sometimes just to meet our own needs. But what about all the people and situations that we don’t think we “need” to communicate, or connect anymore?

In recent years, we’ve all become sorted by “the algorithm” into more and more separate bubbles of language. We no longer watch the same evening news broadcasts or read the same newspapers; we don’t listen to the same music on the radio or watch the same TV shows. One person gets Kpop and makeup tips in their Tiktok feed; another gets world war II documentaries and tips on grilling on Facebook; another gets quick healthy meals and yoga poses on Instagram. We watch what we want and scroll past what doesn’t interest us. We talk to whom we want and block anyone who irritates us. We no longer have to tolerate difference, or stay in the room when it gets uncomfortable. We are losing the ability, and even the desire to hear, and to speak, these other languages.

But this is not the way of the Spirit, who wants to blow through any barriers in our hearts. This is not the way of the gospel of Jesus, who showed us a life of communication, connection and love.

We are called to show God’s love to the whole world, not just the people around us who we already need and love. We are called to speak Jesus’ words of healing and justice and peace to our whole community, not keep that light for ourselves. The Holy Spirit wants to be blowing and flowing everywhere. Wants us to be connecting and communicating with people who are different from us. People we don’t think we share common ground. People we find challenging to listen to. People we are afraid won’t heart us. People we aren’t sure how to love.

But we are called to this holy work of connecting and communicating God’s love. Of listening and speaking with loving hearts. Of spreading the good news of God’s love everywhere, not just in our little algorithmic bubbles.

And we are blessed. We don’t have to do this on our own! We do it filled with the Holy Spirit. Filled with the confidence and boldness that God’s love is for everyone, and that the Spirit will give us the language we need to communicate it. If we open our hearts to learning to listen, and to speak, with spirit of Pentecost. Amen.

Sermons

May 17, 2026 Sermon by The Reverend Jim Stickney

Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before.

This phrase comes from our opening Collect this morning, and it points in two directions: looking ahead, it refers to next Sunday, the feast of Pentecost. But it also looks back to Ascension Thursday, exactly forty days after Easter.

When we recall Christ’s ascending from this earth, we’re marking a departure date. The Ascension of Jesus means that the person of Jesus Christ has gone from earth. We’re not completely abandoned. Next Sunday we’ll celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, who reminds us of all the teachings and the powerful deeds of Christ Jesus.

Next Sunday’s we’ll hear about the number of new Christians baptized that day, and when we do, recall the number of Christians present in today’s first reading. It’s not a large number, considering all the redeeming work that Christ Jesus did.

After all his teaching and healing and leading by example, those who remained after the experience of Easter were, St. Luke tells us, “about one hundred twenty persons.” 120 persons constitutes a small group, the size of many parish churches.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. A sociologist, Margaret Mead wrote that.

Margaret Mead worked as a cultural anthropologist in Samoa, among other places. And in her own life, some of her ideas, shared with her small group of friends, did indeed change a lot of minds, and hearts as well — not without controversy!

To repeat her insight: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Next Sunday, on Pentecost, we’ll see what became of that small group of 120 persons.

Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before.

It’s worth pointing out that Jesus did not leave any organizational plans for a church. In fact, more than one theologian has made the ironic observation that “Jesus came preaching the reign of God, but what arrived instead was the Church!”

To my mind that’s a little too cynical, as if the church were a human mistake and that God had something else in mind entirely. But my point is that Jesus didn’t give specific instructions on how human beings were to carry on his work.

So Peter and the other early church leaders figured out the church as they went along, not without heated disagreements about who’s in and who’s out — and how you tell. And you know, we’re still doing that two thousand years later, re-creating the church.

As I mentioned at the start of this sermon, Ascension marks a departure date. We cannot get to know the human Jesus in the same manner his first followers did. But the sacraments — especially the Eucharist we are about to celebrate — keep Christ’s presence lively for us — as individuals and as a community.

This day, this week, is full of potential. Recalling what is past, we can be looking for finding the love of God at work in new ways in our lives.

Sermons

May 10, 2026 Reflection by Sandy Burnett

Good morning everyone, and Happy Mothers’ Day.

I think it’s kind of interesting that today’s most notable reading is the first one. Paul, who apparently didn’t write the misogynistic letters attributed to him, is preaching in one of the intellectual capitals of his world, a city dedicated to the goddess Athena. He is speaking to the council or court, that meets on the Areopagus — or Hills of Ares, the God of War — just a few hundred yards down the hill from the Acropolis.

According to the verses preceding the one we read today, Paul was concerned by the number of idols he saw in the city. Now, Athens, like most of the rest of Paul’s world, had been conquered by Rome, after being conquered by Sparta. Rome had become the political center of the world, but Athens was still considered a cultural and intellectual hub. Athena was the Goddess of wisdom, warcraft and handicraft. She was not a mother. The Romans called her Minerva.

When Paul said, “The God who made the world and everything in it . . . does not live in shrines made by human hands.” he was standing just below the magnificent Parthenon, which in those days was still fully intact and brightly painted. When he said, “we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals,” he was a short walk from a 40-foot statue of Athena clad in ivory and gold, fashioned by Phidias, the most renowned sculptor of the Golden Age of Greece. For comparison, the nude statue that currently stands in front of the Ferry Building in San Francisco, is 45 feet tall.

Paul was an educated man who had been shown the sites of Athens. I think he was aware of his surroundings and his audience. He also was looking for common ground with the Athenians. In the past, he usually spoke to Jews, or Gentiles who were friendly with Jews, but this time, he was in a meeting space that had nothing to do with a synagogue. He was in a place that was – and is—still renowned for its public architecture, which has influenced the rest of us for thousands of years. He was looking for some other Greek idea that we all could share.

He grasped at the idea of the unknown god as the god who is everything. He also recognized that even some of the Greek poets and philosophers had talked about a single god who not only made everything and everyone, but also is a personal God for each of us. “’In him we live and move and have our being’ as even some of your own poets have said,” he tells them.

At the end of the chapter, we find that a lot of the audience didn’t buy Paul’s talk about Jesus’ resurrection, but some did, including a member of the council and a woman named Demaris. The idea that it was time to repent because the one God had raised a Jewish prophet from the dead in some backwater Roman province . . . .Well, that was a tough sell, especially for people who weren’t primed for a Messiah.

However, it was only about three hundred years later that the Roman world became the Christian world, largely due to the work of Paul and the Apostles, and idols were outlawed. We don’t know the final fate of the great statue of Athena but we have descriptions and copies. Of course, one person’s idol is another person’s is well, another person’s object of veneration.

And despite Paul’s belief that God doesn’t need temples and images, apparently, WE human beings do, because we keep building them. Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro is 124 feet tall. I think our need for shrines and images is one of the ways we humans try to connect with the vastness of our all-seeing, all-being God. We sing, we pray, and perhaps we carry a plastic pocket angel or a silver crucifix. It is one way, I think, for us to “search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him” as Paul says, “though he is not far from each one of us.” That one and only God may seem so distant, but we have only to look to find him next to us.

As a child, I remember a song with the lyric, “the Father up above is looking down with love, so be careful little eyes what you see.” I don’t think I felt I needed another father keeping an eye on me. But as an adult, I came to lean on the presence of a holy one who stood with me through the ups and downs, most often silently, but there.

Amen.

Sermons

May 3, 2026 Reflection by Margaret Doleman

Today’s gospel reading (John 14: 1-14) comes right after the long discourse in which Jesus tells his disciples some bad news: one of them will betray him. Jesus will be leaving them soon. Peter will deny him three times. In today’s reading, Jesus is reassuring the disciples that they will be all right and will be with him in the end. He also tells them that after he leaves, it will be up to them to do his work. As usual, they have a little trouble understanding what he says.

Imagine what they must have been feeling. Most of us, at some point, maybe several times in our lives, have made the transition from student or trainee to doing a job without constant supervision. It’s often a little scary, but imagine your teacher is Jesus and the job is bringing people to God. And maybe you hadn’t quite grasped that someday it would be your job.

Now he’s telling them that he’s leaving, but he’ll be back for them. Who wouldn’t be confused?

Jesus promises that he will prepare rooms, or dwelling places for his disciples in his Father’s house. We hear these verses often at memorial services, so it’s easy to imagine that he’s talking about personal luxury suites in the afterlife. But Jesus isn’t usually that literal, is he?

So what are those places? I was a literature major, and I’m capable of squeezing every drop of blood out of a metaphor. My favorite translation is “rooms”. A room is a contained space, can be large or small, might have a single purpose or many…. Well, you get the idea. What are the rooms that Jesus is preparing for his disciples, and by extension, for us?

My best guess is that the phrase points to the places in ourselves where faith dwells.

For me, that place feels like a room. The door is always open, in the sense that I believe I’m on the right path by trying to follow Jesus. But most of the time I don’t quite feel that I can get all the way in, to the space where I trust that I’m truly walking with Jesus.

This uncertainty reminds me of a line from the movie, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”? It’s about some British senior citizens who answer an ad for a retirement hotel in India. When they arrive, they find it’s not quite the luxurious place they were promised. The owner tells them not to worry, because everything will be all right in the end. And if it’s not all right, it’s not the end.
I actually think that’s a pretty good philosophy. The trouble is, we’re not in a movie, where there will be a few tears and some laughs, and everything will be resolved in a couple of hours.

We’re in a real world where things are not all right at all. Even if we have enough faith to believe that it will get better, we can’t help feeling angry about what’s happening and fearful about what might happen next. I can’t help wondering, when will everything be all right?

Friday evening, I had a conversation with a neighbor who was justifying her failure to get to the demonstration that afternoon by the fact that it wouldn’t do any good, because the government doesn’t care what we do, it would just have been to make herself feel good.
I’ve thought a lot about that conversation. I wondered why I seem to feel less discouraged than she does.

And I realize, for me, it all comes back to faith. I really do believe that a better world is possible, and I feel a responsibility to do whatever I can, however small, to bring it about. Not to be silent in the face of evil. And I believe that if enough of us are out there, they’re going to have to start listening.

I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have the faith and the commitment to do it without the support of this community. This is the room where our collective faith dwells.

We know what happened to the disciples after their final meeting with Jesus. They did, in fact, do the work of Jesus. As we try to do, in the hope that everything will be all right in the end.

Sermons

April 26, 2026 Reflection by Steve Hitchcock

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. Last week, it was the Road to Emmaus Sunday.

Today, after a brief detour last Sunday in Luke’s Gospel, we’re back to reading John’s Gospel. In fact, in all three years of our lectionary cycle, throughout the seasons of Lent and Easter, almost all the Gospel readings are from John.

I could be wrong, but it seems like those who designed the lectionary felt John had something special to say about Jesus’ death and resurrection. Perhaps they were hoping that, by hearing John’s Gospel, we might experience the Risen Christ in our lives.

That may be why, in all three years, the Fourth Sunday of Easter is Good Shepherd Sunday. In years two and three, we will hear the verses that follow today’s reading, when Jesus keeps talking about the Good Shepherd.

Yet the point of today’s Gospel reading isn’t that Jesus is the Good Shepherd, nor is it that we are the lucky sheep.

Rather, today we are invited to hear and see the Risen Christ in our Eucharistic community – to see God’s new life at work in each other. In this community, we experience and practice God’s love, the self-renewing love that literally flows and breathes into us from Jesus’ death and resurrection.

John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus uses the “Good Shepherd” as a figure of speech, an image field. Jesus uses this figure of speech because he is talking to the Pharisees and Jews.

Our reading today is part of a larger section of John’s Gospel. In chapter 9, Jesus heals the man born blind from birth. We heard this as the Gospel reading for the Fifth Sunday in Lent.

But some Pharisees are upset that Jesus claims that this healing proves that he, Jesus, is from God. John’s first readers would see this point more clearly because the pool where Jesus sent the blind man to wash his eyes was called Siloam, the “sent one.”

In response, Jesus tells the Pharisees that they are blind. They have refused to see that Jesus is the Light of the World. In today’s reading, Jesus goes on to tell the Pharisees that they are the thieves and bandits who try to kill and destroy the sheep.

Here we need to say that the Pharisees and Jews in John’s Gospel are not those devout and respected lay religious people active at the time of Jesus. Jesus and the Pharisees were, in one sense, on the same side. The real enemies in Jesus’ time were the Romans – along with some co-opted religious leaders – who enforced a brutal occupation.

A better way to understand all this is to see that in John – and in Matthew, from which we’ve been reading in Year A – Pharisees and Jews are interchangeable, and they serve as stock characters who represent the central conflict in the drama (almost Greek-like) that John presents.

The purpose of all this is to encourage us to confess that we are the Pharisees and Jews. We are blind from birth, and we hold on to the privilege of our ancestors. We are prisoners of our upbringing, of our past experience, or nostalgia for the days our youth.

Because of our blindness, we have been exiled from the sheepfold. The image from Psalm 23 recalls the great garden – Eden. Adam and Eve were exiled from that garden. The people of Israel were exiled from Egypt and wandered in the wilderness. The Israelites and the Judeans were exiled by the Assyrians and Babylonians. In Jesus’ day and in the days of John’s Gospel, they were exiled in their own country under Roman occupation.

Today, we too are exiled into an era of corruption and war, of cruelty and divisiveness. We live in time of unending uncertainty and ceaseless anxiety.

This passage from chapter 10 is, in a real sense, the gate that opens to the second half of John’s Gospel. As we go out through the gate, following the Good Shepherd, we discover that we are following him to death – his own death and ours. In the verses that following immediately, Jesus tells us that the good shepherd lays down his life – a foreshadowing of the crucifixion.

Then as Jesus leads us further, in chapter 11, we have the foreshadowing – a practice run, if you will – of the resurrection in the raising of Lazarus. Here we have been led into green pastures, back to the garden of Eden.

Later, in chapter 20, we find ourselves with Mary – in another garden – where the Risen Christ calls her – and us – by name. Then, later the same day, Jesus asks Thomas – and us – to put our hands in his wounds. Jesus urges us to keep trusting what the Apostles and those after them tell us about this new life.

All of this is meant to take us out of our minds: we are being moved to hear, see, and touch the Risen Christ.

Right now, our heads are spinning and our hearts are racing. We worry about the future, we re-live past events, and we struggle to respond to the violence and poverty that have been unleashed.

Some of us – all of us? – get up in the morning determined to figure this out, do something to make it all better – or, at least, to not let all this “get to us.”

But today’s Gospel promises us that as we hear Jesus’ voice, as we keep our eyes on focused on each other. And then we realize that, alone, we can never figure all this out. By ourselves, we can never make it better. Left to own devices, what’s going on in the world will get to us.

The good news is that, when Jesus opens the gate and welcomes us into this new community, we are led into green pastures beside the still waters.

In his account in of the feeding of the 5,000, John goes on for 71 verses. Mark takes a mere 14 verses. Only in John’s account do we hear there was lots of grass where the people were fed. That’s the pasture where the Good Shepherd leads us. In this Eucharistic community, there are huge cisterns of the best wine, gushing water, and an endless supply of the Bread of Life.

The gardens that surround our sanctuary here at the corner of Washington and Curtis are green and beautiful. And, inside, this gathering today is lively and joyous. Here we experience the abundant life.

What makes our life together so abundant is not so much amount – we aren’t a large and wealthy gathering – but rather, as the Greek word for abundantly implies, our abundance something that happens over and over, again and again. Week after week, we hear and speak, sing and pray – and again and again, we see God’s love at work among us.

Our first reading from Acts 2 says it best:

Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.