Deacon of St. John’s Church and Archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida.
John the Baptist stands in a long line of prophets. Their goal in the scripture is not to predict the future but to speak the truth.
Sermons by The Ven. Dr. Kathleen Moore
Every one of us, in baptism, is buried with Christ in his death, to rise with him in resurrection. We are all called to be dead to sin and alive to God. We are all called to be saints.
The people of St. John’s clearly know that we are stewards of God’s creation, and that we are called to give of our time, talent, and treasure for the spread of the kingdom of God.
By using the little child as an example, Jesus is demonstrating the importance of accepting the least and the lowly without asking what benefit we may derive from including them. They are worthy and they belong, as do we all.
The mana story teaches us that blessings stored soon spoil.
By bringing the disciples along to observe his own drubbing down at the hands of his hometown community, Jesus is teaching them that his and theirs is a ministry in which they will experience rejection, even humiliation, and when that happens, they will literally dust themselves off and get back to work.
…Now here comes Jesus proclaiming a new kind of family defined as those who seek to do God’s will, regardless of their family or kinship background.
With the Spirit’s help, we too are able to speak truth to the powers of the world. And this means that wherever and whenever we see injustice, we are duty-bound to address it.
Jesus is telling his disciples then, and us now, that this is how He cares for us. He’s not a leader who is around just long enough to get paid, like the hired hand. He’s not there just to do the easy work. Jesus the Good Shepherd has come to offer salvation through love, self-giving, tenderness and vulnerability.
This is the night. This is the night when we gather as God’s people to hear the stories of salvation history. The stories that teach us who we are, who’s we are, what we believe, what our God is like.