Rejoice

Preached on the Principal Mass of Easter, April 5, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Colossians 3:1-4
Matthew 28:1-10

The Myrrh Bearers, by Gracie Morbitzer

On Wednesday, February 28, 2001, this region suffered an earthquake of magnitude 6.8. It lasted about thirty or forty seconds. It was severe. The epicenter was in the Nisqually area northeast of Olympia. Several hundred people were injured, and one person died of a heart attack attributed to the upsetting event.

That particular day in 2001 was Ash Wednesday. I know this because I was working as the organist at Queen Anne Lutheran Church, up the hill, and we were finishing up our morning Ash Wednesday liturgy. I was standing next to a small portable organ — small by the standards of a pipe organ, that is. The hulk of pipes in their casing rose above my head. We were in a little chapel, and everyone had received Communion except me.

I told myself. “Eh, I can just go up for Communion tonight.” I stayed by the organ and did not receive the sacrament.

And then the earth shook.

I am from the Midwest. I did not know how to behave in earthquakes, and this was my first one. Someone later said to me, “You were just standing there, and you were ghostly white.” If this were an earthquake at the tomb of Jesus Christ, I would resemble the devastated guards more than anyone else. I had nothing to say. I was breathless. For a few moments, I felt closer to death than life.

Some animals are aware sooner than humans that an earthquake is coming. Your dog is a prophet, able to perceive approaching calamities: she will start to whine. Birds will suddenly take flight. Nothing seems to be happening. And then the earth shakes. Resurrection is like that. The women rise early, taking flight to see the tomb, to be there well ahead of time. But — it’s a tomb. What’s the hurry? Somehow they sensed more, somehow they knew more, than the sleeping men in their community.

Maybe — like your dog, and like the birds of the air — maybe the women can feel the slightest tremor of good news; maybe they can perceive the tiniest reason for hope. They’re keenly intelligent and highly sensitive. They get to the tomb in time for the earthquake. Then, like native Californians, they are unfazed by the shaking, even as the imperial guards fall to the ground in fear.

I wonder where you enter the scene. Are you among the wise, discerning women, up and alert because you sensed an early sign of trouble? Or are you next to me, slack-jawed and ashen, frozen in fear by everything shaking and collapsing around you? Maybe you’re still home in bed, unaware that the world is about to change, in the space of about thirty or forty seconds.

Of course the most unfazed person of all is the Risen One himself, who comes upon the faithful women and says, in what sounds like a bizarre non sequitur, “Greetings!” The original Greek doesn’t punctuate the word with a chipper exclamation mark, but there’s one in our English version. The earth shakes; the worldly powers and principalities, personified by the guards, fall unconscious to the ground; and the women, as savvy and skillful as they are, need to be told not to be afraid. And then: “Greetings!” 

It seems to be such a flip, hammy, English expression. Did the risen Christ really say something so light and airy, and if so, did he have an absurd smile on his face? No. There is nothing saccharine or silly in this robust word of cheerful exhortation. It’s better to translate the Greek word as Rejoice. And it’s helpful to remember that “Rejoice” shows up in other serious places in our holy book.

Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses the same word when he tells us that we will be reviled and persecuted on his account, and that people will say false things about us because we follow him. “Rejoice and be glad,” Jesus says at that time, “for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” 

“Rejoice,” Jesus says, not because terrible things are going to happen to us, but because the mission will make a difference.

It is definitely odd, this coupling of the encouraging command to “Rejoice” with bracing realism about how hard it will be to be prophets of justice in this world. But then, I doubt you would trust the Risen One if he gave you an uncomplicated announcement of good news, if he barked a glib “Greetings! Everything is great!” at you. His cheerfulness would ring hollow, what with the whole world breaking apart, with war tearing allegiances into pieces, with innocent lives perishing under the boot of injustice and oppression. We need a few answers. We need authentic hope. We need someone to make sense of the earthquakes rocking around us, someone to tell us what’s next, someone to interpret to us the meaning of all this suffering, and the way forward. We need a Savior, not a pollyanna.

That’s the great value of the strange one-word greeting of the risen Christ to the faithful women. There is not the tiniest fiber of silliness in his Easter greeting. “Rejoice” is a world-wise challenge as well as a reassuring encouragement. 

With that in mind, here are a few “Rejoice” greetings to consider on this bright morning:

Rejoice, good people of God: now is when you hear the startling but wondrous news that everything you thought you knew has been disrupted, including your sad despair that all was lost. 

Rejoice, good people of God: you are welcome in this faith community, where children are loved and kept safe, and where young people rise in our midst as our teachers and guides, sending us out to protect so many other children whose lives and safety are under continual threat.

Rejoice, good people of God: you are welcome in this faith community, where elders are affirmed and honored, and where we learn how to notice and care for so many other elders who live at risk of destitution and despair in an economic culture that ignores or even abuses them.

Rejoice, good people of God: now is when you search your hearts for strength to meet this moment, and discover that the Risen One rises to life within you, filling you with confidence to advocate for all in peril.

Rejoice, good people of God: now is when you join the movement that disrupts the powers of sin and death, creating even more prophetic earthquakes that topple thrones and liberate the captives. 

Rejoice, good people of God: you have a mission of mercy, advocacy, and solidarity that refuses to cast aside those at our doorstep who starve for food and healthcare in this nation of preposterous wealth and atrocious inequity.

Rejoice, good people of God: we fiercely advocate for those among us who are undocumented in this time of jingoistic violence, and we are not disillusioned.

Rejoice, good people of God: you know well the sting of death and you yourselves will die, but through Jesus Christ, the firstborn of the dead, in death our lives are changed, not ended, and whether we live or die, we belong to the risen Lord.

Rejoice. Greetings! Take heart. Be of good cheer. Don’t you worry. Do not be afraid. The earthquake of resurrection routs the forces of evil, even if we can’t yet see all ends, even if it takes all of human history. The seismic disruption of our expectations fills us not only with fear, but also with bracing joy, for even now, gathered at this Easter feast, even here, on this very morning, we already have been sent on God’s mission: to proclaim to a world aching for good news that we who care for children are kneeling in service to the vulnerable; that we who honor our elders are drawing alongside all who are lonely or anxious; that we who share food and clothing with our neighbors have good news for those in need; that we who protest government oppression stand in strong solidarity with our undocumented partners in ministry, that we who weep as we bury our friends also know that in dying, Christ destroyed death, and to those in the tombs bestowed life.

In short, Rejoice, for alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.

Restless all night

Preached at the Great Easter Vigil, April 5, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Nine readings from the Hebrew Bible
Romans 6:3-11
John 20:1-18

Mary Magdelene, by Gracie Morbitzer

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb.

Mary was up all night. Was she a “morning lark” up early, or a “night owl” out late? Neither one, I say: She just had a bad night. In this hardship, she is our companion: you’ve surely had some bad nights. You came here this morning while it was still dark: I doubt you slept all that much last night.

Coming to the tomb before dawn; coming to church before dawn; getting up and out of the house when you can’t stop thinking about everything: We all know this. We’re all restless. Mary found her way to the tomb before dawn because she was restless.

She was grieving of course, and this great feast of Resurrection is at least in part about human grief, the kind of grief that wakes you in the night, and haunts you day and night. Mary’s closest friend and beloved teacher had been publicly executed, dashing everyone’s hopes — and profoundly traumatizing all of them, too. It took almost four centuries for Christians to make visual art about the crucifixion. This is generational trauma.

So yes, Mary was overwrought with grief. She returns to the tomb later in the morning to weep some more, after telling the others that the body was gone. Let Mary be your exemplar: You aren’t wrong to bring your grief with you, before dawn, on Easter day. You aren’t wrong to carry your grief all the way up here, to this Table of thanksgiving. And you aren’t wrong to still be weeping hours later, whatever Good News you might discover here.

But there are other things going on today, other ideas and insights, other teachings and exhortations, reasons other than grief why Mary Magdalene was keeping vigil in the night. Resurrection is not only about grief! Consider this: she saw that the stone had been moved, then rushed back to tell the others that his body was gone. How did she know his body was gone? Somehow she knew there was more going on in the shadows of that open cave, but we aren’t told that she went inside to investigate. She just knew.

She knew because she had been thinking it through. Mary was savvy and discerning; Mary was sharper than most of the others, quick to reach correct conclusions. She saw the disturbance at the tomb and quickly sized up the situation, having spent the night contemplating everything in her mind.

Maybe she was dogged in her night-long vigil by nagging questions, continually lobbed at her by her inner voices, questions like, “Didn’t he say he would rise on the third day?!” or “This just can’t be the end of the story, of his story, of our story. He said wondrous things and performed miraculous signs. He went into this awful weekend so serene. How could this be the end?” And the most vexing question: “What now?”

Mary was up pacing, or (if she’s like me when I’m restless) Mary was up cleaning, sweeping, tidying, laundering, organizing. She couldn’t breathe deeply and rest. She couldn’t just leave it alone, let it go.

And so it is with us, the restless nighttime vigil companions of Mary. By day and night, we work in our various vocations. We teach and counsel; we act and sing and play musical instruments; we support complex data systems and file our clients’ taxes; we care for our neighbors and tend to our families; some of us care for this parish in myriad ways, most of them far from spectacular.

So… maybe we’re restless in the night because our daily labors all feel so weak and inadequate, so disappointingly insufficient to the massive task that lies before us, a task that demands our hope and confidence, but like the sleepless Mary, we have a hard time with hope and confidence because we’re just overwhelmed by all the terrible things blowing up everywhere.

And our faith tradition just piles on the pressure. The Gospel of Jesus Christ sends us into the world to liberate the oppressed, to lift up the broken-hearted, to proclaim good news to the poor – and that all sounds so grand. How exactly can our mission be as ordinary as whatever you did last Tuesday afternoon? Whether you’re a lark or an owl, when you pass a bad night, you’re probably worrying about your small part in a tiny corner of this roiling world.

Mary has an encouraging answer for us. She was an unremarkable peasant in a backwater colony of a vast empire. She missed her friend. She fretted about the catastrophe they all just suffered, one of countless catastrophes that happened on the regular in that occupied land. She wondered what went wrong, and worried what was going to happen next. She pondered what she should do next. But be encouraged: When she was up and active while the world slept, she successfully worked out her next steps. She found an answer or two. Then she got up and out, and got started on the most wondrous day of her life.

So take heart. Here at this Table of Thanksgiving, here at this festive wedding banquet with the Risen One, now on this first day of the week, now on this first day of a new creation, you’re an ordinary little person in a big broken world. You need not have it all worked out, and you certainly need not leave your grief at home. Come and gather here.

You’ve been up for hours now, but maybe you’ve been fretting for years about the thousand thousand problems we face in these hard times. Maybe you’ve been pondering how the word “resurrection” has any meaning when so many people are in harm’s way, and the body count just keeps rising. Maybe you’ve been doing your part, pushing past your doubts and discouragement, clearing the clutter of your anxiety and confusion, working out how you’re going to make a tiny difference each morning.

Bring all of that here, up here to this Table. Bring your fears, your dilemmas, your puzzled wonderings. You may find, like Mary, that you’ve already worked out more than you know. And you will find, like Mary, that you will not be the only one who’s here. You will not be the only one who’s been up in the night trying to work everything out. You will not be the only one exhausted by grief. And you will not be the only one who finds your greatest friend and teacher here, living and moving, reconciling us all and sending us back out to announce, to ears aching for good news, that we have seen the Lord.

Empty

Preached on Holy Saturday, April 4, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington, by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Job 14:1-14
Psalm 31:1-14, 15-16
1 Peter 4:1-8
John 19:38-42

Long ago I was the organist at a funeral for a small child, a victim of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It was a dreadful day. I do not recall what the preacher said. I remember the parents, ashen and mute, in the front row. I remember the child’s wrecked grandpa. I remember the open casket, and what looked like a terrible, forlorn, yet serene little doll inside it.

I spoke to the child’s grandfather. He had proudly doted on his grandson, a delight in his sunset years. I don’t remember what I said to him. I probably just said, “I’m so sorry.” But I clearly remember him saying to me, “We’re empty. We’re just empty.”

Millions of children have perished since that day. Millions of families have been shattered, devastated, emptied. There are the terrible accidents of life: a mysterious affliction stops the heart of a toddler; an airplane collides with a fire truck; a tumor slowly grows, undetected; someone steps out into the street at the exact wrong time. Theologians call these unintentional tragedies “ontic evils.”

Then there are intentional, immoral acts of destruction and death: the atrocity of genocide, the careless bombing of schools and hospitals, the sick pride taken by our own government officials in their casual obliteration of human life, as if everything is just a video game. Theologians call these intentional horrors “moral evils.”

It is good, and wise, that we Christians set aside two nights and a day to contemplate the presence of our Savior experiencing and contending with both ontic and moral evil. Jesus of Nazareth, as a human being, experiences ontic evil just like you and me: the ordinary predicaments of vulnerability and mortality, the accidents of circumstance common to all people. He was born into a particular time and place; he hungered and thirsted; he worked and studied; he shared dinners with friends; naturally, he wept at the grave of a friend; he then died. How ordinary, how everyday, how… ontic.

But Jesus also fell victim to moral evil. He was born into a refugee family fleeing persecution; his lower-class parents could only afford common turtledoves for his presentation in the Temple; he was finally executed by the empire in a public ritual of abject humiliation.

And today we recall his descent among the dead, the emptying of life from his body, the emptying of our Savior from the universe, the effects of ontic and moral evil at their worst. Today we contemplate the worst they both can do.

Our tabernacle where we keep the reserve sacrament is empty. It’s just a little box with its door hanging open, but it reminds me of that poor grandpa mourning the terrible, senseless death of a child. We need at least two nights and a day to stand empty before God, to stand in solidarity with those who have been emptied out, to contemplate emptiness, to be empty.

Yet even now, the Crucified One is moving, working, harrowing, hallowing. But maybe you share with the theologian Hans Urs von Balthazar the belief that on Holy Saturday, Christ merely participates fully in human death; that today, Christ is dead, and that is enough for today. This can offer an odd kind of satisfaction for us: if we live in a world of heartbroken grandparents, maybe we need today to be the day on which God joins us under the shadow of death, full stop.

But other Christians read the first letter of Peter and see in those verses the Good News that on Holy Saturday — not just a 24-hour earthly day, but an eternal spiritual reality — on this Day, Jesus is not just emptied out and dead, but he also proclaims the Gospel “even to the dead,” to everyone in Hell. (And “Hell” is any human place or condition or experience in which God is absent. This includes those places where we push God out and lock our prison doors from the inside.)

I am persuaded by this view. Even in death, the Living One rises. Even in despair, the Living One preaches hope. Even in emptiness, aching emptiness, wretched nothingness, even in that most desperate place, the Living One draws alongside us, locked in our grievous prisons.

All of this reminds me that on that most wretched day at that awful funeral for a child, there were dozens of people in the building. Behind the devastated family stood their community, and everyone sang their deepest hopes and prayers for that family. Everyone wept bitterly with them. Everyone held them close. This is what those who follow the Crucified and Risen One do. In the face of ontic evil, there is nothing we can say to the bereaved, but we can be with them.

And in resolute defiance of moral evil, we embrace one another in mighty fellowship, and we embrace all who cry out in lament. We preach hope to them and to one another, even if everything around us is laid waste; even if our hopes and dreams have been reduced almost to ashes.

Even today, on this ashen and empty day, even now, we can just hear, off in the distance, the first glad strains of God’s song of Resurrection.

"I am thirsty."

Preached on Good Friday, April 3, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington, by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 18:1-19:42

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), "I am thirsty."

Last Friday, four of us were here in the afternoon cleaning the baptismal font. It is a mighty undertaking. There are power plugs, filters, pumps, basins, beeping leak monitors, buckets, wash towels, and hoses. It takes a long time to drain the large font, the smaller pool, the filter mechanism, and the lowest tank. It takes a long time to wipe clean all the surfaces. It takes even longer to fill it all up again. We discovered that a few bugs had met their end in the filters; they are now at rest in our garden. The whole setup of font and machinery exists on two floors of the building. Laura, Barbara, Shimi, and I took this on. 

At one point I stood over the font and took a photograph of the empty basins. It is so rare to see the font bereft of all water. If you tap your knuckle on the dry inside wall, you’ll hear a satisfying clang. I asked Barbara if it would harm the machines for the font to stand empty for a time. (I was thinking it might be powerful for folks to encounter an empty font this week, on this side of Easter.) “It wouldn’t be good for the font system,” she said. The mechanism is meant to continually hold and move water. 

Basins and bays and riverbeds — they are meant to hold and move water. In Tucson, Arizona, where some of my in-laws live, there are “washes,” dry riverbeds that can hold and move water during heavy rains. It is odd, if oddly beautiful, to see them bone dry. I grew up by one of Minnesota’s lakes, and when I was a child, the city of Worthington dredged that lake for many summers to prevent silt from reducing it into a swamp. Now, in this century, Lake Okabena hosts an annual international windsurfing championship. Basins and bays and riverbeds — they are meant to hold and move water.

Water is an essential element in our existence as biological creatures. Without water, we would have only two or three days to live. But water is also an essential element in our spiritual life, in our life of faith, in the Gospels we proclaim, and in the Hebrew bible that records the stories of salvation of our Jewish cousins in faith.

The Spirit broods over chaotic waters; God speaks the Word and separates those waters; God causes water to flood the earth; God ensures that the infant Moses is saved when his mother places him in a papyrus basket and sets it afloat among reeds on the river Nile; God parts the water of the Sea of Reeds to liberate the Israelites; God makes water gush from a dry rock in the wilderness; the prophet Ezekiel sees water flowing from the temple, restoring the people to life; Christians echo that ancient memory in our vision, in the Revelation to John, of water flowing through the New Jerusalem; Jesus is immersed in water by John the Baptizer, and the Spirit descends; Jesus turns dozens of gallons of water into wine at the wedding at Cana; Jesus calms the stormy waters of the Galilee (a deep lake that required no dredging!); Jesus offers the Samaritan woman living water that will forever quench her thirst.

Now, hear again — in the wake of all these watery salvation stories — hear again this remarkable word from the cross: “I am thirsty.” How can the creator of this watery planet be parched? How can the Font of living water be bone dry? How can God the Son, the Living Word who separated the waters at creation, be thirsty? This was the One who said to the Samaritan woman, “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty”! And later in John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

How can he now be thirsty?

The theologian and Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge offers us an interpretation. In a Good Friday sermon she preached many years ago, Rutledge said: “The One who gives the calm of lakes and pools, the freshness of brooks and streams, the majestic depths of seas and oceans, the glory of pounding surf, the might of Niagara and the tinkle of the garden fountain, the One from whose being flows the gift of the water of eternal life — this is the One who is dying of a terrible thirst on the Cross for the love of his lost sheep.” (End quote.)

He thirsts by choice. For the love of his lost sheep, he rises between the waves of the Sea of Reeds, forming a wash as dry as Tucson, a safe highway from bondage to freedom.

For the love of his lost sheep, he dwells on the dry mountain where Noah’s ark comes ashore, the dry soil that bears the relieved footprints of Noah and his family.

For the love of his lost sheep, he is the hard rock in the wilderness, water gushing from him so the people may live.

For the love of his lost sheep, he empties himself of water — he becomes thirsty — to invite the Samaritan woman into a thirst-quenching encounter, one that restores her to her community, and evangelizes them all.

For the love of his lost sheep, blood and water gush from his body in death, like the water we can hear right now, cascading into the lower basin of our sparkling-clean baptismal font.

All four of the souls who cleaned that font last Friday have thirsted for water, living and otherwise. I am not authorized to tell you their stories, but I can assure you — like you, all four of us have known thirst. All of you, in your baptismal life, pour out living water in loving service for the lost sheep of Jesus our Good Shepherd. And all of us thirst for answers, for peace, for forgiveness, for courage, for love.

Blessed be the Crucified One, the Thirsty One, who joins us by choice in our thirst, so that he might quench it in a gushing of resurrection water that will soak the whole earth with God’s creative outpouring of love.

No better thing than this to do

Preached on Maundy Thursday, April 2, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Samuel Torvend. With gratitude to Dom Gregory Dix.

Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17

Divine Mercy, by Gracie Morbitzer

Was ever another command in the history of the world so clearly obeyed as this one: Take and eat; take and drink? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this eating and drinking has been done in every conceivable human circumstance and for every conceivable human need: from infancy and before it, to old age and after it; from the grandeur of cathedrals to the fox hole amid the terror of war to the shanty towns that mark the earth. The Christian people have found no better thing than this to do for the infant newly-born; for the couple uniting in the bonds of marriage; as the sick or injured recover their health; as the dying receive the food and drink of eternal life; at the death of one’s beloved friend, spouse, child, or parent. The strong have found themselves humbled by the self-giving love of the monarch who wears no crown and directs no army; the weak and fearful discover their fragile souls nourished and strengthened by One who says, “Fear not, I am with you.” 

The people of God have no found no better thing than this to do in the midst of famine or war; at the death of a slain president or princess; in the settlement of a strike as workers receive the Body and Blood of the laborer from Nazareth; in the prisoner of war camp among the wounded and the tortured; upon hearing the passage of a law that benefits the downtrodden; with those in the hidden room who must eat and drink in secret for fear of persecution: Christ hidden in a fragment of bread and a sip of wine. 

The members of the Body of Christ have found no better thing than this to do in memory of the martyrs – in memory of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem and the hundreds of school children who have been slain in this land; in memory of Peter and Paul, Stephen and Perpetua, Justin and Agnes, Thomas Becket and Thomas More and the many among us who cherish their union with the Prince of Peace more than their nation, tribe, or race; of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and all those whose love for God’s holy justice has been and continues to be sealed with the shedding of their blood.  Was ever a command in the history of the world so clearly and gratefully obeyed as this one: Take and eat; take and drink? 

Women and men have found no better thing than this to do as the summer breeze floats through the window; as people of good will, in Autumn’s cool days, share bread and cup with those who live on the streets in this wealthiest of nations; as Winter rain and cold herald the land’s death; as Spring marks the increase of the houseless seeking food and shelter; as the monks and nuns of every monastery throughout the Christian world receive each guest as Christ himself and thereupon offer them the most precious Body and Blood of the One who wandered from village to village, proclaiming the coming of God’s kingdom with shared food and drink; as the mother, the father, holds open the hands of their child so that he, so that she, might receive the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation; as the priest traces the wine, the medicine of immortality, on the lips of the man, the woman, the teenager dying of AIDS, of cancer, of loneliness. 

Week by week, and month by month, on the most ordinary days of the year and on this most Holy Thursday, on a hundred thousand Sundays, faithfully and unfailingly across all the parishes of the world, and in this church whose patron, Paul, was the first to write of this Lord’s Supper, the people and their priests continue to gather at table where heaven meets earth, where God becomes bread, where we are joined with our beloved dead who are alive to God in this sublime communion, where Christ nourishes you and me and then sends you and me into this troubled world as a blessing – as living food and drink for those who yearn for the compassion and justice this world cannot give itself: a blessing and not a curse.

Love as strong as death

Preached on Palm Sunday (Year A), March 29, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Matthew 27:11-54

“The greatest among you will be your servant.” Matthew 23:11, Artwork by Claire Fox (Shimi)

A short reading from The Doctrine of God, by Katherine Sonderegger:

“Love is the Truth of God, but also the Beauty. God is sublime, a zealous Good. Love alone is as strong as death, its passion fierce as the grave. To know this God, the Living Lord, is to hunger and to delight and to hunger once more. Theology should pant after its God, the Love that is better than wine, for God is beautiful, truly lovely, the One whose Eyes are like doves.”

Love is the Beauty of God.

Love is beautiful.

You’ve been to weddings. You’ve appreciated how carefully couples plan everything, the invitations, flowers, party favors, placecards, dresses, suits. The goal is beauty: on this day the couple and their community celebrate love, and love is beautiful.

In 1970 my grandmother, a skilled and patient seamstress, created a beautiful baptismal gown for me, covered in an intricate leaf-and-branch pattern. The little gown is a wondrous work of creativity, and love. Several of my nieces and nephews wore my gown at their baptisms. Love is beautiful.

Here are more occasions of beautiful love:

Not long ago someone asked me what I like most about my work. I told her about an experience I share with many of you, lay and clergy alike. I told her about drawing alongside parishioners at St. Paul’s, being present with you in your struggles, in your adventures, in your losses. Three times in the last year, I have been evangelized by the honesty and insight of companions who were about to die. Countless other times, I have seen beautiful, tremendous courage in the eyes, in the flinty faces, of companions who grapple with illness and adversity.

There is magnificent human beauty in these struggles, but even more astonishing beauty in our intimacy. Terrible intimacy! Piercing grief. But behold its beauty.

But ultimately, in our discernment about the beauty of love — in our contemplation of the idea that love is the Beauty of God — Christianity takes on a particularly challenging task. We look up at a dreadful, disgusting, atrocious, revolting sight — a man fastened violently to a wooden frame, dying in agony — and we strive to see great beauty there.

His love for his friends, his love for his enemies, his love for us, his love that inspired him to give away even his life rather than abandon us — that beautiful love transforms those bloodstained planks of wood into a Tree of Life. Maybe you know the ancient chant about this glorious Tree of Life: “Faithful cross, above all other, one and only noble Tree; none in foliage, none in blossom, none in fruit thy peer may be; sweetest wood and sweetest iron, sweetest weight was hung on thee.”

How beautiful is our Lord and Savior, beautiful in his condescension down to us, down into our muck, down into our plight. How beautiful is his free release of power, his closing of a safe distance from us. How beautiful is his emptying of self so that he could abide with us, sharing in our living and our dying, our glories and our grief, our passions, our sorrows, our endings.

Weddings, baptisms, the ordinary companionship we share here — these poignant encounters reveal the beauty of love, the beauty of God. But again, look at that Tree of Life, that Tree of Love. Look there, and see the most exquisite beauty, the most terrible gift, the most sublime love. For this is love that comes at immense cost. This is love that reveals the cost of all loves, even the loves that seem easier by comparison — the love of newlyweds, or the love that washes over you at your baptism. Even those joyous forms of love foreshadow great struggle: a marriage takes a lot of work; baptism in Christ is a drowning, not just a happy washing. Our lesser selves drown; the easy and safe spiritual paths are flooded. Love hurts; love comes at a price.

The beauty of love, then, is terrible. Just ask a sponsor helping someone get clean and sober. Ask a counselor confronting a client with the truth they need to hear. Ask the parent of a struggling young adult. Ask our neighborhood missioners drawing alongside the unhoused. Ask our Eucharistic visitors bringing Communion to someone who is dying. Ask our altar servers watching as the ashes of their friend are poured into the earth. Ask a widower trying to live without his lifelong sweetheart. Ask yourself how terrible, and yet how indescribably beautiful, your love is for your people, your chosen family, your closest heart friend.

The writer Naomi Klein commented recently on the mighty solidarity that women journalists offered to survivors of sexual assault who stood up to confront their abusers. Listen to how Naomi describes these courageous women:

Naomi Klein says, “And the women journalists who believed them when nobody else did, this is a beautiful story. I mean, it’s a horrible story, but there’s also beauty in it.” 

Klein reflected more on the beauty of solidarity. She said, “Everyone is so cynical about those early Covid days when people clapped for health care workers. But I actually think there was something really beautiful about what was being expressed, [something really beautiful about] insisting on seeing the people who make the world work, who hold the world up.”

But Klein acknowledges that simply standing alongside someone — alongside an abuse survivor, or a health worker, or anyone else on our long list of human survivors in these hard times — Klein acknowledges that, as she put it, “clapping [our hands in approval] is not enough. [The Covid health workers] also deserved wage increases and sick days and all kinds of things that they didn’t get.”

Klein said that our society had a choice in those worst days of the pandemic. We had the option to really side with people on the front lines, to really lift them up, and not just applaud their heroism, as beautiful as that encouragement was. Klein says, “This is what I mean by that fork in the road that Covid represented: There could have been a breakthrough for labor rights. [But] all of the discussion about who essential workers were… was very threatening to a lot of people, and that’s why we’re in this fascist alternate timeline.” We chose the easy road.

But all is not lost. We can still choose better. We are still at that fork in the road. Naomi Klein, in her conversation with another writer who shares her surname — Ezra Klein — then reflected on people in our present day who stand alongside the oppressed and make real gains on their behalf. 

We are always at this fork in the road, you and I. One direction leads away from justice and health, away from equity and peace; the other direction — the painful one, the horrible but beautiful one, the excruciating path — that way lies all we long for, all we pray for, all we want for every living human person, and for the earth herself.

And: at this fork in the road where we are standing today, contemplating the terrible beauty of human courage and love, and contemplating which path we finally might take — at this fork in the road rises this beautiful, terrible cross, shining with love as strong as death, with passion fierce as the grave.

The promise of resurrection

Preached on the Fifth Sunday in Lent (Year A), March 22, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Samuel Torvend.

Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 130
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45

St. Lazarus of Bethany, by Nikola Saric

I think the creation of a healthy relationship relies, in good part, on the ability to keep one's promises: The promise to show up on time; the promise to do what one has promised to do; the promise to be faithful “for richer, for poorer,” in sickness and in health; the promise to be faithful in marriage to one's spouse; the promise to serve the wellbeing of one’s employees and coworkers rather than oneself. For we know – do we not? – the disappointment as well as the anger that accompanies the broken or failed promise.

Some 70 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the editor of the fourth gospel we call John, addressed his gospel to a dispirited community in mourning. And the cause of their grief was this: they believed that Jesus’s promise of eternal life would take place in their lives, would take place in their lives so that they would not experience death. “You promised us eternal life and yet we continue to bury our dead community members.” And so, in the gospel reading for today, Mary serves as the voice of this late first century community when she says to Jesus: "Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died" – that is, none of us would die if you had been faithful to your promise; none of us would be lost to death if you had ushered in eternal life while you were still with us. 

It is this misperception, this misunderstanding, that John corrects in his gospel, a correction directed at his community when Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” But the promise of resurrection did not and does not abolish death. The promise of resurrection did not entail the resuscitation of a corpse. After all, Lazarus would eventually die. What John wants his community to know is this: faith in the risen Christ is not fully developed, does not mature, until it enables his followers to embrace physical death in confidence – in confidence because they are already united to the risen Christ. 

But there is more: the promise of resurrection does not begin at death, at some point in the future, but now, right now in the present. To trust this promise is to see it alive in one’s experience, in our life together, as we participate in the life of the ever-living Christ in the present moment. That is, those who have been washed into the life of the risen Christ, who have been baptized into his death and resurrection and nourished with his Body and Blood, are already experiencing eternal life. This is to say that the future has entered into the present, into your present and mine.

But you might ask, What does living the resurrection and the life in the present look like for us, we who live 2,000 years after John completed his gospel for a community anxious about death? Why there is a clue in the today’s gospel: “The dead man came out,” writes the evangelist, “his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’” Note that Jesus does not unbind the restrictive burial cloths enclosing his beloved friend. Rather he asks the community gathered around Lazarus to do this: he asks them to engage in the work of releasing this bound brother so that he might live freely in the present moment. That is, he asks you and me to recognize that Lazarus is among us today ... and that our first work is to come to this table and be nourished in his ever-living life, to come to his supper and receive his resurrection energy – so that – so that you and I might engage in the good but challenging work of advocating for those who are vulnerable among us: the immigrant and the transgender person, the lonely and the forgotten, the houseless, the hungry, and those caught in poverty, the fearful and the discouraged. 

Oscar Romero, the martyred bishop of El Salvador, in his reflection on this reading from John, preached this: “To each one of us, Christ is saying: If you want your life to be fruitful, [to be filled with the power of the resurrection,] do as I do. Give your life away out of love to others and for others. Give yourself away yet do not be afraid. Those who shun the suffering of this world remain alone. Indeed, no one is more isolated than the selfish. But if you give your life out of love to others, you will grow and flourish, reaping a great harvest.” 
And so I wonder: will this sage advice, will this paradox, lead you and me into the days ahead? For you must know, dear friends, that the world in which we live today desperately needs nothing less than the power of the resurrection and the life as witnessed in your loving action. 

"Surely we are not blind... are we?"

Preached on the Fourth Sunday in Lent (Year A), March 15, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41

“Mercy and truth have met together.” – Psalm 85:10, by Shimi

Some of the Pharisees said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?”

The world is exploding, yet again, in ever more horrific ways. In the face of all this chaos, and in response to all this injustice, we remain a progressive, affirming, Christian faith community, sent on a mission to mend this neighborhood, this city, and this world, in any way we can.

Our faith took root and flourished twenty centuries ago, in yet another terrible, apocalyptic time, led by a few dozen courageous souls who responded to the cruelties of war and empire by building a community of joyful yet serious mission in the name of the Risen One. In our own time of violence, fear, division, and discord, what then shall we do?

I’d like to begin our discernment by reflecting on ourselves a bit. This is not a narcissistic exercise. I just want to begin with our community’s identity: who are we, and are we ready to go on this mission?

At first glance, I’d say we have some notable virtues. We support honorable public servants, and many of us contribute to the campaigns of just and good politicians… Well, okay, we have concluded that they are just and good enough.

“Surely we are not blind, are we?”

We say fervent prayers. We are faithful to the Prayer Book, and when we make changes to ableist or gendered language, we do so carefully and consciously. (Today, we’re squirming with discomfort at the metaphor of “blindness”.) We have a real mission in Uptown, a mission that has grown and flourished in recent years, a mission that has literally saved human lives.

We strive for gender balance at the altar, and we prayerfully intercede with God on behalf of innocent people and just causes. We care for our sick; we lovingly bury our dead; we nurture our children; we honor our elders. Our liturgy and music are second to none. We plan and rehearse our movements and actions at this Table. Our choir studies challenging sacred music and sings it beautifully. We engage all the senses in worship. We not only use incense; we search for hypoallergenic incense! We offer gluten-free bread.

“Surely we are not blind, are we?”

We greet our newcomers with genuine warmth, and nourish them with God’s Eucharistic Meal… and cookies and cake downstairs. We brew good, fair-trade coffee and bake fragrant bread for mass. We greet our neighbors. We stand at our curbside and protest injustice. We pay money to Real Rent on behalf of those who lived on this land long before us, and live here still.

We account for every penny of donated funds. We ensure our staff doesn’t work in a hostile or unethical workplace. We employ self-deprecating humor to be sure we’re not too proud or haughty. We express remorse, and forgive. We read widely and often. We sweep our sidewalks and operate a lift for those who don’t walk. We don’t shout in anger; we sing with gusto.

“Surely we are not blind, are we?”

This question rightly worries us.

But — now let’s talk about them, about other people, about those people.

We could borrow another line from the Pharisees and say to “those people,” “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?”

“Those people” wear red ball caps and call human beings “illegals.” They overlook violence against women, girls, and trans persons, or even endorse cruelty against them. They take the Christian gospel and twist it into a nationalist nightmare, not because of anything that Jesus said, but in spite of everything he said and did.

“Those people” burn with resentment that they live in so-called “flyover country” and have been ignored and mistreated in politics and popular culture. They enjoy more representation per capita in the U.S. Senate; and in the expanding gerrymandering war, they’re doing quite well, thank you very much. They roll their eyes at our demand for tolerance and affirmation of personal pronouns, and even mock the practice, saying things like, “My pronouns aren’t they/them; my pronouns are U.S./A.!” 

We think that the worship practices of many of “those people” are silly, dull, corny, and tacky. They flash their song lyrics on TV screens and rock the house with electric guitars. They preach a self-centered, individualistic faith that’s more concerned about “me and Jesus” than the needs of our neighbors.

Or at least that’s what we think they do; that’s who we think they are.

“You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?”

Some others of “those people” live outside, in this neighborhood. They don’t smell very good, and they look even worse. They leave sharps and propane tanks on our sidewalks, and start fires in our garden. Sometimes they’re homophobic, or just generally hostile and incoherent, or just scary. Even the nice ones, the kind ones — even they are unsettling. They remind us of our own vulnerability, that everybody gets sick, that everybody could run out of money and friends, that everybody will die.

“You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?”

Still others of “those people” seethe with contempt for us, for our Christian faith, and definitely for our membership in the Episcopal Church. (They attack us from the left.) They know we have inherited a church tradition that has propped up and even cultivated patriarchy and white supremacy. They know our province of the Anglican Communion holds vast wealth that was gained from the genocidal destruction of cultures across Turtle Island, also known as North America. They know what we’re guilty of. It would be quite easy for us to defensively write them off, or at the very least ignore them.

But Jesus has something to say to all of these people, to all of “those people,” to all of the people we would prefer did not enter this room, to all of the people who — from our perspective at least — were “born entirely in sins.” If you ask us, those people are spiritually unseeing, they are those who reject God, they are our adversaries, they are our bad guys, they are not in our fold. And here is what Jesus says to them:

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me,  just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.”

Not every one of “those people” will listen to the Good Shepherd. (If only!) But what if just one of “those people” — one of the ones for whom Jesus lays down his life — what if this guy wears a red baseball hat but he understands better than we do what kind of world Jesus is resurrecting? That’s hard to imagine, let alone believe: how could Red Ball Cap Guy support such atrocious political leaders who do such terrible things, and yet he announces the Good News? We might have to get to know him to find out, to make sense of the vexing contradictions in his life, to empathize with him and truly hear what he has to say, and why he says it. And maybe he will hear us and empathize with us, too.

What if another one of “those people” — what if she lives in West Texas or southern Indiana or somewhere beyond familiar Seattle, somewhere (let’s be honest) beneath our contempt, but she is a daughter of Mary Magdalene who may be wrong about a great many ideas and issues of our time, but has gotten something right? We might have to get to know her to find out, to hear her story, to be vulnerable to her and willing to listen and not just talk. If she harbors violent or unsafe beliefs about immigrants or trans folk, we must stay firmly at their sides and not be irresponsible or foolhardy about our decision to break bread with those we call our enemies. But maybe, in breaking that bread, she might come to understand us, too.

What if some of “those people” who live outside here in Uptown are struggling in deep despair, battling addiction and hardly able to carry on a conversation, and yet they see what we cannot see, and they have a gift for us? What if everyone in Uptown, us included, is hungry and thirsty?

What if he attends a megachurch, and she belongs to a synagogue, and he prays at a mosque, and they want nothing whatsoever to do with organized religion, and each of them sees something we cannot see, knows what we refuse to learn, or hears the voice of the Holy One in their native spiritual or religious language, and unlike us, readily follows that voice?

Can we allow the Good Shepherd to open our eyes to all of these difficult people?

It will help a lot if we first recognize that our eyes are closed. In the Sacred Ground anti-racism curriculum of the Episcopal Church, we meet two people in a video, one from blue-liberal Berkeley and another from the ultra-conservative heartland. To their mutual astonishment, their brave shared decision to sit down and talk about their mutual hopes and dreams opened their eyes, and increased each of their friends lists by one. Both of them had always known they were right about many things. Only in this encounter did they see how their eyes were still closed.

Thankfully, joyfully, wonderfully, Jesus speaks to everyone, including us, when he says this: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me,  just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.”

Jesus calls to us, too, inviting us to open our eyes.

But… if Jesus is trying to get us to talk to these problematic and upsetting people, maybe some of us will say that Jesus “has a demon and is out of his mind. Why listen to him?”

But maybe others among us will say, “These are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

Guest Preacher: The Rev. Ivar Hillesland

Preached on the Third Sunday in Lent (Year A), March 8, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Rev. Ivar Hillesland.

Exodus 17:1-7
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42
Psalm 95

Detail of Samaritana, by Julio Romero de Torres

This is Not Normal

Preached on the SecondSunday in Lent (Year A), March 1, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Dr. Mark Lloyd Taylor.

Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

Christ and Nicodemus, by Mike Moyers

My wife Debra made her first protest sign of the Donald J. Trump Memorial Era of U.S. History almost a year ago. Her sign said: “¡THIS IS NOT NORMAL!”

Debra has held up other protest signs since. Some made by St. Paul’s parishioners for our weekly protest out on the Roy Street sidewalk from 12 to 1pm on Sundays. “Pray with Your Feet,” read one of her signs. These days, she raises a pair that say: “Jesus Was a Refugee” and “Love Your Neighbor.” I appreciate the links of those signs to our communal life of faith here at St. Paul’s. But I still do resonate with “THIS IS NOT NORMAL.” A protest sign that says it all. Clearly. Concisely. Profoundly. This is not normal! Things should not be this way!! You can read between the lines: a Department of War that lives up to its name, especially with yesterday’s attacks on Iran; mass deportations and disappeared persons; voting rights and election integrity; unaffordable or unavailable healthcare for many while the few get richer than ever; and so on.

Debra and I have also been listening to historians and sociologists interviewed on radio and podcasts. They raise questions about “This is not normal.” What is normal, after all? From what vantage point? And when? Out of whose lived experience? Robert Kagan, for instance, believes that since the end of World War II we have been lulled into a false sense of normalcy by eighty years of American world dominance and the relative peace and prosperity it has brought us. American power derived in large part from alliances with other nations, not conquest. An alignment of more-or-less liberal democratic values. But – and here’s Kagan’s point – viewed from a wider historical angle, these past eighty years have been abnormal. From the time of Napoleon in the early 1800s to that of Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s and 40s, the normal world was one of constant competition and warfare, bloodshed and chaos, authoritarian regimes and dictatorships.

And I can’t wait to read the new book by Stacey Floyd-Thomas, African American scholar of religion and society, called When the Good Life Goes Bad, where she argues that the traditional seven deadly sins of Christianity have become the seven markers of success in America: lust, pride, greed, sloth, envy, gluttony, and wrath. These once-condemned principles now guide people’s pursuit of the good life.

This is not normal! Or rephrased a bit: the new normal in which we now live turns out to be an old normal. Which is still not normal. Things really shouldn’t be this way!

+++

Our scripture readings this morning put before us two pairs of characters. Abram (later renamed Abraham) and the Apostle Paul. Nicodemus and our Lord Jesus. Each of the four – in different ways – could hold up the sign, “This is not normal.” If not as protest, then at least as descriptive of their story. And I think their stories are more relevant today than ever, and I do mean today.

Abram the archetypal immigrant. Go from your country and your kinfolk and your parents’ house to the land I will show you, God says to him. Away from everything and everyone and every place you’ve known, out into the unknown. A journey. An escape? A new beginning? Abram’s flesh and blood descendants are called “the Hebrews” – ivrim – which literally means those who crossed over. But his new name “Abraham” promises more: the ancestor of a great multitude of different peoples. Did you hear it in his story? Abram, leave behind home and everything you call familiar and go to that foreign country to be a blessing to others, not just for yourself. A blessing to all the families of the earth. This is not normal!

What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, asks the Apostle Paul? Paul a descendant of Abraham according to the flesh. A rabbi, a teacher, a scholar of the inherited wisdom of his Hebrew people. Paul’s journey is theological, spiritual, even racial and ethnic. Paul has to let go of an entire worldview and embrace a new one – which turns out to hold fast the deepest and truest meaning of the old. What was gained by Abraham? What does the story of his immigrant journey into the unknown mean for Paul and the diverse people – both Hebrews and Gentiles – he meets in the cities of Asia Minor and Greece? That Abraham is the parent, the ancestor of us all, not just Paul’s own racial/ethnic/religious group. For, Paul writes, Abraham’s greatness comes as pure gift from God. Not an entitlement. Not something transactional that Abraham manipulated for his own image and enrichment. Not something due to Abraham because of his own actions, his accomplishments. God’s promise to Abraham belongs to all people by faith, Paul concludes. Abraham the homeless immigrant blessing many, many nations. Not normal!

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Hebrews. He came to Jesus by night. Nicodemus comes as a privileged insider. One of the powerful elite. Something about Jesus attracts him. Nicodemus comes as a skeptical inquirer, or  maybe a cautious admirer. But Nicodemus will only come by night, under cover of darkness – afraid that association with Jesus will embarrass him or cause his social standing to slip. An elder in the religious community, Nicodemus is constrained by tradition. His identity and worldview established and certain. Or are they? Nicodemus may come by night, but against all odds he does come to Jesus. A Pharisee, a defender of the solid wall separating clean and unclean, those blessed by God and those accursed, Nicodemus shows up at the door of Jesus – friend of sinners, the demon possessed, lepers, women and children, even the dead. Highly abnormal! There’s something whispering in Nicodemus’ heart, nudging him toward a journey. Jesus, I want to live and act and relate the way you do. I want to join the community around you. I long for a new and more spacious life.

But maybe the most hazardous journey of all was the one Jesus made. A journey to the door from inside the house where he was staying. We know from Minnesota the past couple of months how dangerous it can be to open a door. But our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ opened the door to Nicodemus. In the middle of the night! For all Jesus knew, to an enemy who meant him harm. This is not at all normal! And Jesus invited Nicodemus in to sit and talk. Jesus accepts Nicodemus’ disguised and awkward questions, teasing from them hints of deeper insight. Jesus draws Nicodemus out into productive uncertainty, instead of shutting him down and closing him in with premature answers. Midwife Jesus refuses to coerce Nicodemus. Jesus honors who Nicodemus is and what he brings, even as Jesus clears space for the spontaneity and mystery of a second birth, of new life from above – born not of our flesh but God’s own Spirit. Like the wind that blows where it chooses; we may hear the sound of it, but we do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

+++

Debra has begun to wonder about what new sign she will create for the third “No Kings” protest at the end of March. I’m guessing now that the U.S. is at war with Iran, she’ll work on it sooner rather than later. For those of us who gather most every Sunday outside the front doors of this church to protest, also spend the hour talking with each other. We talk about family and friends. We talk about the Bible. About the news of the day. We talk about this parish. About other people and organizations beyond St. Paul’s with whom our values align. Even those who just drive by on Roy Street and honk or wave to us. We become more truly ourselves by being in community.

Maybe protest signs serve as places to gather community. And as we’ve learned from Minnesota, maybe the most consequential protest is simply to love and take action to care for our neighbors. All our neighbors.

Our daughter Rebekah happens to live and work in and around the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Debra and I have heard a lot from her about this kind of neighborly protest. Rebekah also hangs out with a group of religious sisters at their little monastery north of where George Floyd was murdered. The sisters’ motto is “Live Jesus” – and they practice an open door form of monastic life. Whenever someone, anyone, rings their doorbell in that impoverished neighborhood, they open it and try to meet the person’s needs, whether physical or spiritual. Food. Something to drink. Welcome for the stranger. Clothing. Care for the sick and sick at heart. A pastoral visit to those imprisoned in any way. They also operate a school. Back in December, a few days after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Roman Catholic calendar, a fourth-grade boy learned that his Mexican immigrant mother – named Concepción! – had been seized and taken away by ICE while he was in class. The sisters quickly came and gathered outside the school. Their school. Rebekah joined them. In sub-zero Minnesota temperatures, they prayed the rosary together while holding images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, only to have an ICE agent laugh in their faces. At least he didn’t shoot them like Renée Good and Alex Pretti.

After hearing that story, I realized I needed a prayer to hold my broken-heartedness and anger and exhaustion and offer them up to God. I searched until I found one by a Jewish rabbi named Annie Lewis. It has become my new sign of protest and petition and penitence, of resistance and resilience. Here are some lines from the prayer:

As parents have compassion for their children…

Have mercy on us, LORD, we are afraid.

Have mercy, we are dust. / We are made in your image.

…

Be with the children, their mothers, their fathers / who wear desert dust,

who brave desert crossings because they have no choice.

Be with the families who flee the narrow places / and find themselves stuck.

…

Save us from those who follow orders.

Save us from those with hardened hearts.

Save us from those who forget to remember

the cruelty our country holds in its bones.

…

For the sake of all that is holy, / all that is good,

open our eyes, our hearts, our gates.

Turn us around. / Return children to parents, parents to children.

Bring us to the streets. Bring us back to you.

I hold up Rabbi Annie’s protest prayer before you in the name of the God of Abraham, Nicodemus, and Jesus; the God who, in Rabbi Paul’s words: “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”

This is not normal! Thanks be to God.

Resources

Robert Kagan was interviewed on the NPR program “Fresh Air” on February 4, 2026. His article “America vs. the World” is published in the March 2026 issue of The Atlantic (but available online on since January 18, 2026).

Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, When the Good Life Goes Bad: The US and Its Seven Deadly Sins (University of Illinois Press, 2026).

The full text of Annie Lewis’ “Prayer for Families Separated by ICE” can be found at https://ritualwell.org/ritual/prayer-families-separated-ice/

You better work

Preached on the First Sunday in Lent (Year A), February 22, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Psalm 32
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11

Temptation of Christ, by Nicholas Roerich

A reading from a (slightly redacted) song by Britney Spears.

You wanna?
You wanna?
You wanna hot body? You wanna Bugatti?
You wanna Maserati?
You better work.
You wanna Lamborghini? Sip martinis?
Look hot in a bikini?
You better work.
You wanna live fancy, live in a big mansion,
party in France?
You better work.
You better work.

Here ends the reading.

Britney did not coin the phrase, “You better work.” RuPaul made it famous, and it is a time-honored expression in queer culture. One day, when the gay comedian Matteo Lane was in a restaurant in Rome and discovered that Oprah Winfrey was also there, he thought carefully about what to say to her, something that would quickly telegraph “I’m gay, I’m American, and she looks great.” He cheerfully snapped, “You better work!”. Oprah, being Oprah, didn’t miss a beat. “You better work!” she shot back, with a smile.

And so, for us, inspired by Britney, Matteo, and Oprah, the holy season of Lent begins. Lent is here: we better work.

On this first Sunday in Lent, we are taken into the primordial garden of creation where God asks the human one, “Where are you?” Later, when God sends the humans out from the garden, God says to them, and I’m paraphrasing, “You better work.”

We then find ourselves today in the wilderness of the Negev desert, where the new Human One needs no reminding from Britney or Matteo or Oprah: he is already hard at work, on a six-week spiritual project. In his wilderness sojourn, he is tested by the Accuser. He passes the tests, and then he’s waited on by God’s angelic and hard-working diaconal messengers. Like our friends on Wednesday evenings in Lent, they fill him up with soup and bread.

In these classic biblical scenes, alongside the mighty and sometimes troubling company of Adam, Eve, the Accuser, the angels, and Christ himself, we might discern a lot of things; we might think and feel a lot of things; and we might try in various ways to make sense of these momentous conversations, these intense encounters, these ultimate experiences of human ones in crisis, in both gardens and wastelands.

We can situate ourselves anywhere we like in these scenes that we proclaim at the beginning of Lent. Are you Adam, on the run but aware of your absurd culpability, and all too aware that you can’t outrun God, since God finds you no matter where you go, because God is found even inside your own most private thoughts and feelings? Maybe you’re Eve, problematized and blamed for your dubious choices, even though you’re actually just an intelligent, courageous woman struggling toward a new enlightenment. Or maybe you identify with Jesus, finding yourself these days in a desert of difficulty, in a wilderness of worry, in a landscape of lament. If you’re anything like Jesus, then you will be tested in these hard times.

Or maybe you’re the one doing the testing, the Accuser, in Hebrew the satan. Maybe you’re a devil’s advocate, if not the devil himself. Maybe your journey of faith raises up in you the spirit of the skeptic, the calling of the critic. And even though this satanic figure in biblical stories is typically portrayed flatly as evil, maybe it’s not that simple. Maybe, if you identify with the Accuser — maybe you are, in your own way, not just a gadfly, but also a prophet, albeit a troubled and dreadful one. Maybe you’re a prophet because you provoke and challenge others — you goad and poke at us, disturbing our comfortable arrangements, questioning our unconscious assumptions. As our bracing ‘accuser,’ you test and strengthen us. You might not be comfortable or widely liked, but this could be a useful role for you in this community.

But it would be much more comfortable and pleasant for you around here if you found yourself in the story at the very end, when the angels come to wait on Jesus. Maybe you’re a waiter, a server, a helper, a deacon. Maybe you’re just cooking soup and helping out. If so, that would be a life-giving, holy calling.

But in all of this, no matter who we are, no matter how we feel or what we think as we tell ourselves once again these ancient stories of salvation, in all of this, I believe we hear this instruction from God, as Lent begins, this invitation, this calling:

Girl, you better work.

Now, let me hasten to assure you that I’m not preaching works righteousness. We can’t justify or redeem ourselves by being extremely well behaved or by logging ten thousand volunteer hours. That heresy, let me be clear, is beneath us. It was rejected as long ago as St. Paul’s time. Lent is not a fitness challenge at the gym, with a star chart at the reception desk, something I confess is actually part of my life right now, at a gym in Ballard. I can stick as many stars as I want on that colorful chart: God won’t love me any more. And I might actually be more lovable if I weren’t in achievement mode so much.

No, the “You better work” of Lent is better explained by Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans. Paul tells us that “if, because of [Adam’s] trespass, death exercised dominion through [Adam], much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”

Let me break that down a little bit. As the children of Adam, we fall short, and death dominates our world; death dominates us. Adam and Eve eat fruit in the garden — they receive the good gifts of God — but they do this in a self-directed way that diminishes health, drives them away from each other, and damages creation. We inherit that tradition as fallible, vulnerable human beings.

But we also receive free grace and righteousness from Christ, and so we exercise dominion in life: life dominates our world; life dominates us; we rise up in life. And we rise up to work hard, together, to share the creative, regenerative gifts of God with everyone we meet and know. When God says (again, this is an absurd paraphrase!) “You better work,” the work is outward-focused and life-giving: we receive good gifts from God, we share those gifts here, and we distribute those gifts beyond here, working to restore God’s living garden.

(Quick sidebar on the churchy phrase, “gift of righteousness”: the biblical word righteousness refers to a right relationship, a sound emotional attachment, a strong intellectual engagement, a life-giving relational bond. God’s gift of righteousness through Christ pulls us from a path of death onto a new path of life. Righteousness is simply us being and doing what God intends for us.)

But all of this might be said best in the table prayer we will say a bit later in this liturgy. When we gather once again around this table, our hearts will overflow with thanksgiving. That’s what Eucharist means: thanksgiving. But then, when we say today’s particular Eucharistic Prayer, we will ask God for this: “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only and not for strength; for pardon only and not for renewal.” As much as this is a welcome Table, and as much as the gifts laid on this Table are food for the starving, this Table is also an energy station for runners in a great race. This Table is fuel for our life-giving labors of love. This Table gives us strength and renewal so that we can go to work.

No fancy Italian car awaits us as the fruit of our labors, in Lent or beyond. The dominion of life calls us far higher than that, and rewards us far better. This will be the fruit, the joy, the glory of our Lenten labors, as sung not by Britney but by the ancient psalmist:

“All the faithful will make their prayers to you in time of trouble; when the great waters overflow, they shall not reach them. You are my hiding-place; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Mercy embraces those who trust in the Lord. Be glad, you righteous, and rejoice in the Lord; shout for joy, all who are true of heart!”

Ash Wednesday: our laundry day

Preached on Ash Wednesday, February 18, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Psalm 103:8-14
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see — we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

When he writes these words, Saint Paul is on the defensive. He is on his back foot. (Maybe you can sympathize.) The church he founded in the city of Corinth has lost confidence in him. They think he is ineffective. They even disrespect his physical presence. In the portion of his letter to them that we just heard, he sounds more desperate and plaintive than anywhere else in the letters of his that survived into our own day. 

But Paul, the patron of this parish, never merely wrote letters, defensive or otherwise. No matter what happened, he took every opportunity to think and write theologically. Every disappointment or setback, every triumph or victory, every event in the chaotic, colorful story of his work as a developer of churches was grist for Paul’s theological mill. (He would encourage us to do likewise.)

So… when he’s on his back foot with the Corinthians, Paul reflects on how simply being a Christian is inherently a disadvantageous position. We preach Christ crucified: we will always be one down; we will always be at a disadvantage. You want to build a faith community? You want to lead a movement for justice? Maybe you want to organize a protest, or revitalize this neighborhood, or just make life easier for the people around you who suffer the worst of our unjust socioeconomic society. If you want to do any of these good things, and if you want to do them because you are a Christian, you will struggle at it. You will be choosing an uphill road.

This is because, to be Christian, we are not just giving handouts or riding above the fray as policy makers. We are joining ourselves to the least of these as allies and companions. We are taking a place of profound humility. We are honestly confronting and confessing our own shortcomings. We are discarding weapons because Christ calls us to be nonviolent actors. We are responding to hatred with love. If they gaslight us, we respond with the truth. If they malign us, we say little or nothing in our own defense, and stay focused on the mission. And I’ll bet you know this chant — so if you like, say it with me now — when they go low, we go high.

I read yesterday that lots of people are mighty tired of that “when they go low, we go high” chant. It would feel a lot more satisfying for them to just slug back. But to be Christian, we are called to become like Christ, who “opened not his mouth” at his sham trial.

And look at what happened to him.

These hard and bracing truths are on our hearts and minds on this day, on this difficult, ashen, serious, late-winter, honest, humble-pie day. Today, we are marked with a cross, a symbol of humiliating defeat at the hands of a violent authoritarian government. And we are marked with ashes, a symbol of cleansing (ashes, in the ancient world, were used as a cleanser), but also a symbol of death.

And then, cleansed in ashes as mortals who preach Christ crucified, aware of our weakness and our finitude, then, we, on this day, like Paul on his back foot — then we own up to our shortcomings, mistakes, and failings. 

And finally, we set our faces toward Lent, a solemn season of penitence and discipleship, of consuming less so that we can give more, of living simply so that others can simply live. What might you forego this Lent, to focus your prayers, to turn your attention, to deepen your discipleship? What might you abstain from doing or consuming?

Alternatively, what might you take on during Lent as a new discipline of prayer, study, or action? I encourage you to set aside some time to prayerfully consider the Lenten practices of setting aside some things, and taking on other things. Whatever you decide, it’s not about performance or perfection. Lenten disciplines are simple practices, tentative experiments, just prayerful exercises, all for learning, growth, and reflection. Be gentle, and take it day by day. Better yet, share a practice with someone else in our community, and by doing so, you’ll both get to know each other better.

It’s too soon to share my Lenten disciplines for this year. But last year, I chose a practice that might initially strike you as silly, even though it helped me focus on my development as a faith leader. Last Lent, I decided to practice a habit of positive thinking and intentional smiling between the two services on Sundays. As many of you know all too well, I don’t have a poker face, and I can get uptight about all that’s going on around here. I can get stern and serious. I can get self-important and even aloof. Then I start walking fast, head down, face grim, and only later do I come to my senses and repent of these sins. I am sorry, friends. I can always do better. I admit that when I get into that mode, it’s usually because, underneath the crusty crankiness, I feel sad, or scared, and it can be hard for me to be up front and honest about those deeper feelings.

Today is a good day to come clean about things like that.

But here’s some Ash Wednesday Good News. When Paul was on the defensive with the church in Corinth, he kept saying “We,” as in, “We entreat you, be reconciled to God,” and even more reassuringly, “We were treated as imposters, as unknown, as dying, as punished, as sorrowful, as poor, as having nothing…” This is reassuring because Paul was never alone in his predicament: as Christians, we are often on our back foot, often down and out, often weak or vulnerable, often liable to mess things up, but we are never alone. Our faith is communal.

That’s why Paul — regaining his old confidence again — adds these reassuring assertions: “We are true, well known, alive, not killed, rejoicing, rich, and possessing everything.” Whenever the chips are down in our life of faith, we are rich toward Jesus Christ; rich toward one other. Often enough, we ask each other for forgiveness. If we forgive each other, forgiveness is always offered by someone who knows what it’s like to do the wrong thing. If you feel weak and restless, defeated and even despairing, then grasp the hand of your neighbor, for she gets it, she’s been there, and together, with God’s help and with Christ as our forebear, we will kindle again the fire of resurrection that rises from all these ashes.

Many years ago, I imagined Ash Wednesday, this day of sober reflection, this day of coming clean about our shortcomings and finding our way together as God’s imperfect people — I imagined Ash Wednesday as a kind of “laundry day” for the church. Using this image for Ash Wednesday, my confession a bit ago about being cranky on Sundays is, let’s say, my dirty t-shirt, thrown into the community laundry basket that you could imagine stands here in the center of our common life. If Ash Wednesday is our communal laundry day, I wonder: what’s your dirty t-shirt, your pair of jeans with mud and blood on the knees?

Again, our patron Saint Paul teaches us that the community is restored when we honestly just offer up our dirty laundry, as it were, trusting that through Christ we are all made new. And so I will close with one of my favorite poems, by Jane Kenyon, one of my favorite poets. Her poem is titled “Wash,” and it has the power to focus and steady us on this early-spring day, this laundry day, when we come together to… do our wash.

Here is her poem:

All day the blanket snapped and swelled
on the line, roused by a hot spring wind….
From there it witnessed the first sparrow,
early flies lifting their sticky feet,
and a green haze on the south-sloping hills.
Clouds rose over the mountain….At dusk
I took the blanket in, and we slept,
restless, under its fragrant weight.

The Brightness of God

Preached on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany (Year A), February 15, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Samuel Torvend.

Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 2
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9

There is a striking parallel in the readings appointed for this day, this last Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. In Exodus, we hear that Moses went up Mount Sinai and that for six days a cloud covered the mountain in which Moses behold the glory of the LORD, God’s glory, God’s presence, likened to a brightly burning fire. And there for forty days, Moses remained with God. In Matthew, we hear that after six days – six days after he announced that he would suffer in Jerusalem for his teaching and his actions – Jesus and three of his followers climbed to a mountain top where God’s glory as a cloud surrounded Jesus whose clothes became dazzling white, whose face was as bright as the burning sun. Attending Jesus were Moses and Elijah, two prophets who had encountered God on a mountain, what the ancients believed was the highest a human could travel to encounter the divine. This event in the life of Jesus has come to be called the transfiguration, a word not often heard in common speech, one that refers to the change in one’s appearance or a change in one’s nature.

My mother of blessed memory was trained as an art educator. She would frequently find in one of her many art books, a painting or mosaic of the gospel reading appointed for a Sunday and invite us to see the artist’s interpretation of the story, an interpretation that might be different from the one we heard from the preacher that day. In 1971, some fifty-five years ago, she gave me this little book entitled An Introduction to Icons, a simple introduction for western Christians unfamiliar with the sacred images so prevalent among eastern Christians. This little book ignited my interest not only in the sacred art of Eastern Orthodoxy but also its liturgy and its theology. Among our Eastern Orthodox friends, the transfiguration of Jesus is called the Brightness of God, a title intended to highlight the Christian conviction that the presence of the divine is revealed in the human – what we confess in the creed concerning Jesus when we say or sing “God from God, Light from Light.” The Orthodox icon of the transfiguration [which you find on the cover of the worship program] depicts Moses (on the left) and Elijah (on the right) facing the Jesus in the center: his clothing bright white. But note how the artist has surrounded Jesus with three concentric circles at the center of which is a dark circle with many rays of light radiating outward from behind the dark circle – radiating outward to the two prophets and downward to the three followers struck by amazement at the vision. 

Well, what’s up with that? Perhaps it has something to do with the Eastern Christian emphasis on Jesus Christ as the new or second Adam, an image inspired by St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians in which he writes that Jesus presents to us what it means to be a truly human being, living in God’s grace, and embracing the world with compassion. Needless to say, it is an image of light shining forth from within the human Jesus, the light of the divine. Indeed, in the liturgy of eastern Orthodox evening prayer, we hear this acclamation sung: “O Christ, on Mount Tabor, the mount of transfiguration, you transformed the darkened nature of the first human and filled it with brightness, making it godlike.” Well, to some that kind of language might sound so esoteric or so florid. After all, who among us imagines that we’re filled with the light of the godhead. I mean when I get up in the morning, struggling through the fog of sleep to find that first cup of coffee, I am hardly thinking about being godlike.

But I say: Hold on! The Orthodox title of this event – the Brightness of God – and the icon that portrays Jesus with light radiating through him and around him, and the evening prayer acclamation about what true humanity looks like all point to one thing, to this core Christian conviction and sacramental mystery: that ordinary things – water, oil, bread, and wine – can hold, bear, reveal extraordinary things; that ordinary human beings – that you and I – are capable of revealing the extraordinary presence of God in our lives. Or say it this way: we are called as Christians to bear the brightness of God in our lives, in our words and in our actions. It may be a stretch for some of us to imagine that we are becoming godlike – and let’s be clear: there are far too many people in our nation who imagine that they are gods with absolute power over others. 

But to live as the brightness of Christ in this place and in this frequently darkened time: I think we know what that means. You and I do not spread disinformation, lies, or malicious gossip – rather we tell the truth but do so with love; you and I do not speak of others in a demeaning manner – rather we strive to respect and honor the God-given dignity in every human being, even those we might find strange or oddly eccentric; you and I do not remain silent in the presence of injustice and violence – rather we protest such travesties and strive for justice and peace; you and I do not expect to be served by others as if the world circles around us – rather we seek to serve Christ, especially in the poor and vulnerable, the lonely and the forgotten. Dear friends, this – this, I think – is what the brightness of Christ might look like in you and me. 

As a Roman Catholic priest, I was taught to pray this prayer while adding water to the flagon of wine at the altar in preparation for the eucharistic liturgy: “By the mingling of this water and wine, may we come, O Christ, to share in your divinity as you humbled yourself to share in our humanity” – the water of our humanity mingling with the wine of his divinity, becoming one. The intent of the prayer and indeed of the communion was to make clear, is to make clear, that you and I are being nourished in the Brightness of Christ’s life. The only question is: will that sip of brightness shine forth in our words and deeds and so give others what our suffering nation desperately desires: why, a sense of hope?

We all fall down

Preached on the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany (Year A), February 8, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 58:1-9a
Psalm 112:1-9
1 Corinthians 2:1-12
Matthew 5:13-20

Light of the World, by art4prayer

A reading from the song lyrics of the Paula Boggs Band. (Paula Boggs is a Seattle-based musician and a member of this congregation.)

When life takes a turn for worse
remember this little verse:
we all fall down.
Let's not make it even worse.
There's more than enough to curse.
We all fall down, don’t you worry.
No matter how high we climb,
life will find a way to kick our behinds.
And so, I am no better than you,
Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew,
we all fall down. 
Even your boss the jerk, chases skirts,
and thinks he's cool as Captain Kirk —
he will fall down, don't you worry,
cuz just when we think we’ve arrived,
something really crappy breaks our stride.
We all fall down, don't you worry.
Guaranteed! We all fall down.
Believe me! We all fall down.

Here ends the reading.

Sometimes it helps to just admit it, just accept it, just come right out and say it: we are all fallible, we all make mistakes, we’ll never measure up, life kicks our behinds, we all fall down. But I’m eager to remind you that this bracing acceptance of reality is cherished in our tradition. We Episcopalians often like to say that we are Catholic but also Protestant, and that we hold both identities together in creative tension. So let’s allow the best of our Protestant tradition to reassure us: Protestants admit freely that humans are error-prone, and that only by God’s grace are we saved from the dreadful future of our own design. 

So… relax. We all fall down. No need to worry about whether it will happen to someone like your skirt-chasing boss: he will fall down. And no need to worry about all the rest of us falling down. We will. It has occurred; it will occur.

I offer all of this as a preamble to the daunting Good News we hear today, news that tells us first how great and lovely we are, and second how high God’s standards are for us. Jesus begins by calling us “salt of the earth” and “light of the world.” This is high praise! As salt, we season the world around us with our insights, with our trustworthiness, with our strong and refreshing presence in the worlds of home, neighborhood, church, and public square.

Salt-of-the-earth types are found at protests: just look at the hordes of them on the streets of Minneapolis! Salt-of-the-earth types are stocking our pantry shelves and pulling our wagons around Uptown. They’re hosting coffee hour and bringing Communion to our homebound members and teaching Godly Play lessons to our children and digging graves for our friends. Salt-of-the-earth types are practicing courage and ethics in their relationships; they’re raising children with insight and patience; they’re showing up for their co-workers and friends; they’re voting for change and advocating for those in peril.

And then there are the light-of-the-world types, dazzling us with their intellects, brightening our days with their poetry or their paintings, showing us the way through the wilderness as torches of wisdom, pillars of encouraging fire in the night. And maybe the salt and light come together in one person — maybe in you. Are you a salt-and-light person? Jesus seems to think so. (No pressure or anything.)

Salt and light came together recently in another playful yet prophetic way. Christy Drackett, one of our members, texted me yesterday with a meme that was just created by someone in New York. It says this: “In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus calls us to be salt and light. Looking out my window in New York City, I think… both of those things melt ICE!”

Yes. Yes they do. Salt-and-light people melt the powers and principalities that occupy cities, abuse children, execute innocent people, and separate families. I would only correct one thing in that clever meme: Jesus does not “call us” to be salt and light. He says that we already are salt and light. (Again, no pressure or anything!)

And then, piling on, Jesus reminds his followers that his movement is not a relaxation of the Torah commandments. “Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments,” he says, “and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.” Then, after this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus launches into a series of “You have heard that it was said, but I say to you” statements, and in each of them, he turns up the heat on us.

We shouldn’t murder, for that is what we are taught in the Torah. But Jesus turns up the heat: we can’t even be murderously angry at one another. We shouldn’t betray our spouses with adultery, for that is what we are taught in the Torah. But Jesus turns up the heat: even the casual betrayals common in his time, particularly those that demeaned women, were taboo in the Jesus Movement. Jesus is determined to remind us that his movement is serious, and that we — his salt-and-light followers — need to bring our A game.

Which brings me back to Paula’s song I love so much, the song that reminds us not to worry, because we all fall down. Jesus calls us salt and light, and then he turns up the heat on us: being a Christian is serious business. Much is expected of us. But hold up for a second. Let’s look again at people we know who are salt-of-the earth people, or light-of-the-world people.

I do not know one person I would call “salt of the earth,” or “light of the world,” who is not salty or enlightening because they fell down; because they are fallible. 

How can you be a salt-of-the-earth visitor to someone who is sick or dying? Only by empathizing with them by drawing on your own history as someone who gets sick, or by drawing on your own self-awareness that you are mortal, and that one day you also will die.

How can you be a light-of-the-world protester for the rights, freedom, and dignity of others? Only by acknowledging the deep darkness people experience at the hands of our government, and relating it to your own experiences of glum sadness and dim despair. 

How can you be a salt-of-the-earth neighbor, or co-worker, or spouse, or wise elder? Only by empathizing with your neighbor’s errors, your co-worker’s shortcomings, your spouse’s blind spots, or the times without number when you as a well-intentioned but fallible human have messed things up, or let someone down, or just blown it because you were just having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

“You are the salt of the earth, and you are the light of the world,” Jesus says, and then he gives us our daunting assignments in this community of faith. But he gives us these assignments, not flawless machines who succeed without failure, without error, without the slightest flaw. We are mortal and vulnerable; we are anxious, sometimes short-tempered, and often simply absurd. But that is in our essence as salt-and-light people. It is what makes us good at all of this. 

And God has our back. Remember the Protestant wisdom about grace saving us, not our own works? It’s God’s grace that saves us, God’s grace that sends us, God’s grace that brings all of our efforts to a good end. We heard this once again today in a stirring speech by the prophet Isaiah. (Sidebar! Do you know how many of God’s prophets were fallible, shortsighted people who resisted the call and made a ton of mistakes? All of them.)

Isaiah sings to us great words that rival even that great prophet of our time, Paula Boggs. Isaiah sings to us, the folks who will fall down, and he sings great reassurance to us about God having our back: When we imperfectly do the work of loosening the bonds of injustice, letting the oppressed go free, sharing bread with the hungry, bringing the homeless poor into our house, and covering those without clothes, then, Isaiah sings, our light (remember, we’re light!) — our light will “break forth like the dawn, and our healing shall spring up quickly”...

Your vindicator shall go before you,
[and] the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and [God] will say,
“Here I am!”

Click here to hear the Paula Boggs Band song, “We All Fall Down.”

"My Lord and my God!"

Preached at the Requiem Mass for Robin Allan Jones, February 7, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 121
Romans 8:14-19, 34-35, 37-39
John 20:24-29

Do you like getting things right? Perhaps that is a universal trait, something all humans have in common, but I really wonder sometimes if every one of us is truly wired in this way. I always felt good when an exam or term paper came back with a high grade, and I definitely have felt better about my work over the years when someone said, “That’s right, yes, you did that correctly.” But… I tend to flex about things. Maybe you do, too. Did we mostly get it right? If so, maybe that’s good enough for us. “Progress, not perfection,” goes the bumper sticker. 

But that’s not Robin’s way. Robin gets things right.

Robin comes early on Sundays to practice. You’ll find him swinging the thurible, up and down the main aisle in here, and you’ll check your watch and wonder to yourself, “How — not just why but how — is he here well over an hour early for mass, just to practice something he’s done countless times?!” Or you’ll walk up the short staircase over here and hear Robin singing in the chapel. He’s rehearsing his lines for the Prayers of the People. He has sung them many, many times before. But here he is, practicing them yet again.

Robin is working hard to get things right.

As a minister of the ceremony here at this altar, Robin prepares carefully, reviewing the bulletin, studying it, reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting it, until he has a short speech ready to inform the rest of us of all that is about to take place. In all of this, Robin cares for this assembly. Exactitude is one of Robin’s love languages. Diligence, conscientious attention, deep and sometimes even stern respect for the right way to do things: these natural inclinations of our brother in Christ have sustained and nourished this assembly for decades now.

And so it may bother Robin that one thing I am getting wrong right now is the use of the present tense when describing him, for the self-evident reason that we are all here today to mark Robin’s painful absence from our immediate company. But if Robin is bothered by that, I will stand by it nonetheless: Robin, I am certain, is still here, if beyond our immediate sight and sound. Robin is a descendant of Saint Thomas, one of the Twelve, and Thomas has never left the Christian assembly. Like Peter and Mary Magdalene and all the saints, Thomas remains with us, in the great cloud. Robin, too, is close at hand.

And speaking of Thomas, today we heard again, in an enigmatic aside by John the Evangelist, that Thomas was called “The Twin.” This is probably not the evangelist’s report that Thomas had an actual twin sibling (though who knows, perhaps he did). It’s probably a literary hint by the evangelist that we readers of the Gospel can insert ourselves, if we like, in Thomas’s role, that we are his twin sibling.

Give it a try: Thomas the Twin wasn’t there when the risen Jesus appeared to his closest friends. That’s true about us. Thomas the Twin is eager to know what exactly happened. That’s certainly true about many of us, if not all of us. And Thomas the Twin wants to get things right. He heard the reports that Christ was risen, but he wanted the details. He’s like us going into the New York Times app and clicking on story updates (something I personally did just yesterday): we want to know what exactly happened. 

And Thomas consistently was this kind of a person in all of his appearances in John’s Gospel. SIx chapters before the resurrection in John, Jesus says, in his mystical way, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” At that moment, in my reading of the encounter, Thomas has a very Robin Allan Jones expression on his face when he says back to Jesus, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 

But here’s the best part about Saint Thomas, and about his twin, Saint Robin: They develop; they grow; they get out ahead of us and show us a path of transformation. Thomas demands to see the terrible wounds of Jesus, who had been brutally executed by the government in a public show of force (an atrocity we are again seeing happen in our own place and time). But when Jesus appears and invites Thomas to directly examine the wounds — “Put your finger here and see my hands,” Jesus says; “reach out your hand and put it in my side” — Thomas does not need to do it. He transcends his previous, demanding self. He opens himself up to faith. Thomas grows.

Despite certain vivid paintings of this scene by artists, paintings that have Thomas gruesomely sticking his finger into an open wound, the Good News according to John doesn’t record that. Thomas simply gapes at Jesus and proceeds to call him God. “My Lord and my God!” Thomas shouts. This is probably a direct borrowing from Psalm 35, where the psalmist sings:

“You have seen, O Lord; do not be silent!
O Lord, do not be far from me!
Wake up! Rouse yourself for my defense,
for my cause, my God and my Lord!
Vindicate me, O Lord, my God,
according to your righteousness…”

All this enthusiastic and vigorous prayer, this shouting with surprise at the Risen One: all of this sounds, in my hearing, like our own brother in Christ, Robin. Robin is, as I’m sure you know, not just eager to do things right. He also does things with enthusiasm, with energy, with urgency. If someone here at St. Paul’s is going to be the first among us to call Jesus God — and take note: Thomas is the first saint in the New Testament to do so! — the first person to shout “My Lord and my God!” will probably be Robin.

Now, like Thomas, perhaps Robin sometimes comes across as impulsive, or impatient; maybe, on a feisty day, Robin and Thomas are brash companions of ours, sometimes in ways that can be a lot for the calmer among us to understand or appreciate. But Thomas and Robin are tremendous evangelists, and they are willing to learn, willing to grow, willing to move from where they once were. They are robust examples for us of faithful discipleship.

And Robin also makes it fun. Robin is a juggler and a pirate. Robin is a character actor and an entertainer. Robin is playful, sometimes silly, endlessly creative, and possessed of an infectious young-at-heart desire to savor this colorful world. In these activities, Robin is again a robust example for us, particularly now, in a time when the powers and principalities are trying so hard to suppress our good spirits and discourage our stout hearts.

Little do they know that we count Thomas and Robin among our companions. Instructed by their examples, guided by their prayers, evangelized by their faith, and goaded by their bracing good spirits, we will flourish here on God’s holy mission for many, many more generations, with Robin firmly by our side.

Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God

Preached on the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (Year A), February 1, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.

Micah 6:1-8
Psalm 15
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12

The view of the Sea of Galilee from the Church of the Beatitudes.

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and [he] taught them.

When United States District Judge Fred Biery, in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, San Antonio Division, saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down at his bench he heard the case of Adrian Conejo Arias and L.C.R., a Minor, versus Noem, Bondi, Lyons, Margolin, and Doe. Then Judge Biery’s disciples came to him, and he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

“Before the Court is the petition of asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son for protection of the Great Writ of habeas corpus. They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law. The government has responded.

“The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and order them deported, but do so by proper legal procedures.”

Judge Biery continued (and yes, I’m reading his ruling in its entirety): 

“Apparent also is the government's ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among [other grievances] were: ‘[The King] has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People.’ ‘He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.’ [He has quartered] large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.’ ‘He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.’

“‘We the people’ are hearing echoes of that history.”

But the judge had more to say from the mountain of his federal bench:

“And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment: ‘The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.’

“Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable-cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.

“Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration's detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R. The Great Writ [of habeas corpus] and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.”

But the good judge had even more to say in his Sermon on the Bench:

“Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.

“Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.”

And finally, Judge Biery shared this quotation: “Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: ‘Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?’ [Benjamin Franklin replied,] ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’

“With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike, It is so ORDERED. SIGNED this 31st day of January, 2026.” (End quote.)

But then! Judge Biery did one more thing. He attached a photo of the detained child to his order, and underneath the photo he included two scripture references: Matthew 19:14 and John 11:35. Matthew 19:14 is this: “Jesus said, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’” And John 11:35 is this: “Jesus began to weep.”

Judges never attach such things to their opinions and orders. But Judge Biery did so, because this is where we are, as a nation. It’s this bad.

And this is where we Christians are. This is where we live, where we work, where we struggle, and where with God’s help we overcome. Our faith is not found poolside, with cocktails and sunscreen, all the world being at peace and us taking our leisure. (Though I hasten to say that rest is vital, and vacations are healing!) Our faith is found in the fray, alongside public servants like Judge Biery.

We praise Jesus of Nazareth and call him our Lord and Savior. So we should take heed: When he finds himself surrounded by disciples and crowds, this Jesus of Nazareth goes up the mountain and proceeds to place the victims of injustice and oppression in the center of his program of action, the center of his agenda of revolution, the center of his mission of mercy in an occupied land.

We have crowds surrounding us, too. We see them thronging the streets of Minneapolis. We see them in all the major cities, marching past closed shops and shuttered businesses, closed because they are striking in solidarity. These crowds can fill us with hope, but these crowds must also — if our faith is true, and if we understand the radical thing we do every time we gather at this Table — these crowds must drive us up mountains, where we can be heard, where our voices join Judge Biery and so many others, where we clearly and without wavering place L.C.R., a minor — a five-year-old child — at the center of our faith, the center of our mission, our top priority.

Our government abducted that child and used him as bait to lure his family out for deportation. But that’s where we come in, friends. L.C.R. is one of many, many people who have us as allies and advocates. If we step up, that is.

But maybe you are still discouraged. You might admire Judge Biery for his eloquence and courage. I’d be delighted to break bread with him here. But will he really get us anywhere, finally? And as for Jesus of Nazareth, maybe you’ve heard it, you’ve seen it, you got the memo, and you’re unimpressed. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” he intones atop the mountain, and then he says they will receive the kingdom of heaven, and be comforted, and inherit the earth, and be filled.

When, Jesus? When? Maybe these Beatitudes hit you as absurd platitudes offered in vain for the people harassed by our government.

But Jesus isn’t done. Then he talks to us. “Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers,” he says. Then he gets direct: “Blessed are you when people revile you and curse you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.”

In heaven? Where’s that, Jesus? 

Maybe you’re still unimpressed! Saving the reverence of the good judge in Texas who did his job with courage and righteousness, and giving Jesus of Nazareth his propers for doing a standup job as a prophet and savior in his time, maybe you’re still down in the dumps about our terrible time. I won’t bug you about that, too much. I get it.

And people younger than me get it even more viscerally. My friend Io is, like me, a member of Generation X, and Io’s Gen-Z kids are really discouraged, and in a way we Xers often aren’t, not because we are deluded or apathetic, but because we have a longer view, stretching back to a time not so long ago when the world seemed right-side-up, even if there were still countless injustices everywhere. Younger adults and youth don’t have these memories, and so many of them are grimly hopeless.

But they also are found surging through cities in protest. They also are rising up in anger and determination to bless the poor in spirit and fill those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And we can join them.

It’s a simple program, really. Are you discouraged, and even despairing? Then know this: the entire New Testament was written in a time like this, and it is filled with stories of advocates, workers, teachers, and apostles who banded together and transformed their corner of the troubled world, and did so in a way that caught fire around the Mediterranean, and launched a movement that now includes us. This is what God’s power can do in the world.

But you can go even further back and listen to the words of a minor prophet. Micah teaches us a simple program, so simple we can commit it to memory and chant it when we feel frail, when we forget how to do this, when we are wishing we had half the gumption of Judge Biery. Here’s Micah’s formula: 

Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with God.

So… you don’t feel like you’re a prophet or a peacemaker, let alone a federal judge with justice on your side? You can still “do justice.” You can do it in your relationships, in your vocation, in your writings, in the voting booth, in the way you spend your time as a volunteer or a faith leader or a resident in your neighborhood.

So… you don’t feel all that merciful, and definitely don’t feel pure of heart? You can still “love kindness.” You can notice and regulate your anger, and your sadness too, and channel your upsetting feelings into daily actions of kindness and honesty, with everyone you know, everyone whose lives you touch.

As for “walking humbly with God,” that task is made almost easy when we do it together. We pray here together. We welcome the stranger here together. We serve neighbors in need here together, and protest here together, and walk lightly on the earth here together, and study and work and live and love here together. And above all we break bread here together. In all these actions, we build each other up, always by God’s power and with God’s help, and we walk humbly with God — together.

So to borrow and modify that classic Ben Franklin quotation, what do we have, here at this refuge for sinners, here at this school for the faithful, here at this haven for the weary? What do we have? 

We have the Kingdom of God, if we can keep it.

"It's been a hard year"

Preached at the Requiem Mass for Prudence C. Kluckhohn, January 24, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.

Lamentations 3:22-26, 31-33
Psalm 121
1 John 3:1-2
John 10:11-16

Prue recently got a new car. She never really got to enjoy it. It is a sad irony that the most unfussy and practical person that any of us has ever known did not have a chance to enjoy a shiny new car in her twilight years.

Prue wore fun t-shirts that played on words. One of our best photographs of our sister in Christ has Prue in a Seattle Aquarium t-shirt with a Star Wars theme, “The Otters Strike Back.” It is a funny irony that one of the most serious and missional Christians that any of us has ever known was famous for her quietly playful, self-effacing silliness.

Prue lay on her deathbed holding the golden gift of self-aware wisdom and the majestic power of love for God and neighbor. It is a lovely irony that the person who has done more ordinary, menial tasks for this community than anyone we have ever known was given a holy death of the kind we read about in the lives of the saints.

The Cappadocian father Gregory of Nyssa, brother of Basil the Great, remembered his older sister Macrina’s holy death with great solemnity and awe. Filled with the Holy Spirit until her last breath, Macrina reflected insightfully on the human soul and on the Resurrection, and then she died in the peace of God.

Such was the death of Prue, who knew every corner of our storage rooms and sacristies, who scrubbed out our stains and ironed wax off our linens, who spread mulch and swept up dirt and stocked our shelves with supplies. She lay in great weakness last month, and when her kidneys began to fail she knew it was time. “Either the kidneys or the tumor will do me in,” she said, on the day before she died, in her straightforward way, in that pragmatic, sensible, cheerful way you all know so well.

But then she got quiet. 

She looked at me. She blinked. (“I never knew how pretty your eyes are!” I thought to myself but had the sense not to say out loud.) Then Prue said to me, “It’s been a hard year.” It never occurred to me that she was talking only about herself, about her cancer struggle, about the pain and the fear, the long days and nights of feeling “puny,” her word for the awful side effects of chemotherapy. “It’s been a hard year,” she said, and I knew, just as you would have known, that Prue never, ever speaks only about her personal struggles. She is always focused on other people, and on this parish. Until the very end of her life, Prue spoke the way a shepherd speaks about her flock.

When she said it’s been a hard year, Prue was talking about Tom, John, Ellen, and Robin, who all died in the months just before Prue. She was talking about Zoli, who we mourned in the spring, singing together the Hungarian national anthem, surrounding our beloved Maria with prayers and friendship. She was talking about a few of our members enduring chronic illness. And Prue’s husband and soulmate Bob also died, if not in 2025 – another loss we sustained all too recently.

But Prue didn’t wail her lament. She didn’t speak as one without hope. Congregations have hard years, and she knows that. She has lived that. And Prue doesn’t need the usual consolations, either. I didn’t need to remind her that last June we held a festive celebration of the hard labor and awesome generosity of our membership that led to the renovation of this mission base from drain pipes to rooftop. I didn’t need to remind Prue, of all people, that we are a hardy crew, a mighty band, a strong and faithful congregation. She knows all of that. It still has been a hard year. That’s all.

Not, “It’s been a hard year, but we’re great.” And definitely not, “It’s been a hard year, and we’re defeated.” It’s just been hard. Shepherds know about that. They live that.

In the wake of Prue’s death, a few of us have tried to remember all the things she did through each week and month, and do them in her stead. Sometimes we remember something when it doesn’t happen: a supply runs low, or a laundry basket overflows, or a candle doesn’t get changed, or a closet of old robes quietly says, “Prue would have sorted me out by now.”

But what we can’t catch, what we can’t replace, what we can’t solve or fix or mend, is the quiet absence of Prue herself, an absence that sneaks up on me in my undefended moments, when I get quiet, as she did at the end of her life, and when I repeat to myself her simple yet sublime deathbed pronouncement, that “it’s been a hard year.” I can’t easily salve that wound. We must just embrace one another, and hold our sister in remembrance, and make our alleluia song at her grave.

But this, finally, is the true task set to us by Saint Prue, who has taken her leave with great courage and serenity, and gone before us in the faith. Should we change the candles, launder the linen, and spruce up the garden? Of course. There are a hundred hundred things Prue did that we now must do. But the true task, the most important task, is something deeper, something bigger, something more: we are supposed to shepherd this flock as she did. We who are shepherded by the Good Shepherd himself, the One who even now welcomes Prue – a lamb of his own redeeming – into Paradise: we must follow his lead, and follow Prue’s lead, and tend this flock with skill, with courage, and with love.

Prue gives us some clues to the best way to do this.

Think back, all the way back, so far back that almost no one in this room was here at the time. Think back to 1971, when Prue and Bob celebrated the very first wedding held within a Sunday morning liturgy of Holy Eucharist here at St. Paul’s. They were the first couple to do this. It was late in the season of Epiphany, the season we’re in right now. Prue and Bob stood right over here and married each other in the presence of the parish they loved. Their wedding evoked all the marital themes and metaphors we find in Holy Scripture – that God and the Israelites are married; that Christ and the Church are married; that the City of God descends to earth and all of us will join the marriage supper of the Lamb.

On that winter day in February 1971, Prue and Bob taught this parish that heaven is here, that God is Love and that we therefore should walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us. To be a shepherd is to love the flock in your care. Prue and Bob both taught us that, on their wedding day, but also in the tens of thousands of days that followed. Their love sang down the decades, showered over us in hundreds of ordinary tasks, offered with cheer, and maybe a dash of impatience with our impractical mistakes. 

And finally there is the earthy yet heavenly task that Prue performed countless times over the years: as shepherds of this flock, we must dig the graves of our friends. When I met with Beth and Ben, Prue and Bob’s children, to talk over all the arrangements, we came to this question. “Who will dig the hole?” I wondered. Then I said, “I don’t like that word, ‘hole’, for a holy grave.” Beth and Ben laughed – they were raised in a good home; they know how to laugh with love. Of course Prue never gave it a second thought: it’s a hole, and someone has to dig it. That was enough for Prue to understand the weight and glory of this task. 

Prue did not dig her own grave. Three other shepherds here – Anne, Mark, and Jasper – did that humble yet holy work. And so, a little while from now, we will tuck Prue into the very same earth she herself tended so lovingly, so reliably. We will hold her close, as she rests in the peace of God. But before that, we will gather here at this Table and sing yet again our song of thanksgiving, our wedding song, our antiphon of rejoicing that the Good Shepherd himself is here, in the breaking of this bread, and sends us saints the likes of Prue. 

Strengthened by that meal, I think I will feel bold enough to pray to Saint Prue one small correction to her last words: “Prue,” I will say, “It has been a hard year. But you made it a lovely year, too. Thank you for everything. We all love you, always and forever.”

I want to sit quietly in a room

Preached on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (Year A), January 11, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.

Isaiah 42:1-9
Psalm 29
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3:13-17

Baptism of Christ, by Vladimir Zagitov

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

I would like to sit quietly, in a room. That is a New Year’s resolution, I suppose, but more accurately it is a lifelong aspiration. It is a plank in my intentional Rule of Life, my Way of Life. When I see others doing it, I admire their maturity and integrity. I want to be the kind of person who can simply sit quietly in a room. I am glad I have a job that asks me to practice doing exactly that, every week. 

The march of evil and violence overtaking our nation relies on noisy spectacle: decapitate a nation’s leadership with no plan for what to do next, then threaten to violently seize territory from a NATO ally, then terrorize a high school and murder a woman in her car, then gloat with macho bluster in a viral interview, saying, “...We live in… the real world… that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” These actions and words are all profoundly unchristian and unethical and even monstrous, but mostly it’s all just noisy spectacle. It’s intended to keep us roiled and riled, exhausted, tense, and finally desperate.

I find all of it maddening, sickening, enraging, disgusting, revolting, agonizing. My friend Mark, a native of Minneapolis, has been apoplectic with rage this week, posting daily on social media, echoing the mayor of Minneapolis in his demand that ICE “get the f— out.” I have lived in Minneapolis. I have family there. I still have one niece young enough to attend high school there. I understand and share Mark’s outrage.

Winter-hardy Minnesotans don’t cancel school often. But my niece got a couple of “snow days” last week, not because of weather, but because the Minneapolis schools needed to protect the children in their care from the federal government. That’s where we are right now. My brother John — my niece’s father — texted wryly to our sibling group, “[These are] not the kind of snow days you would hope for.”

But, as outraged as I feel, I really mean it: I want to be the kind of person who can sit quietly in a room. I don’t want to be tossed about, at the mercy of the chaos agents. I quickly feel nauseated by the upheaval. I can barely look at images of certain federal employees, and find it even harder to watch videos of their violent crimes, videos of them murdering a young mother, videos of them tearing children from mothers and fathers. “The collective ache of mothers this week is palpable,” one of the members of this parish posted yesterday. I think we all know that ache.

So, sitting quietly in a room: maybe it will feel like a dream come true, if only for a few minutes. To stop, to breathe, to feel your heart rate slow, to let your body metabolize all the stress hormones zapping through your blood.

But there are some problems with sitting quietly in a room. There are personal problems, and vocational problems. 

Here are some personal ones, for me. When I sit quietly, I sometimes am overwhelmed with debilitating fatigue. I just want to sleep. Or I am buffeted by suppressed feelings of rage or anguish, pushing against my lifelong habit of enduring everything with stoic steadiness. There’s a part of my personality that likes to take over when I’m feeling hard and painful feelings: I call her Queen Elizabeth the Third. No doubt most of you have met her, when I’m striding sternly up and down the decks of this ship. “Duty first, self second,” she teaches, full of the self-reliant, latchkey-kid wisdom of Generation X. “One does not wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve,” she proclaims. Queen Elizabeth the Third doesn’t like it when I sit quietly. She prefers I stay up, and stay busy.

Then there are the intrusive thoughts. Do you hear those? “You’re not doing enough,” one of them says. (That voice is not wrong.) “Why bother doing anything?” says another particularly nihilistic voice. Another friend of mine told me that her Gen Z daughter wonders rhetorically why her mother would expect her to feel hopeful about the future, with the world in such endless, outrageous turmoil. If we sit quietly in a room, we are prone to hearing these intrusive voices.

And then there are the vocational problems that arise when we sit quietly in a room. When we stop and rest, when we breathe and listen, God gives us work to do. In the Good News we heard today, Jesus pauses quietly in a river — in his case, the room in which he sits quietly is the Jordan River, the countryside around it, the cruel empire crushing that whole region, and even the whole cosmos itself — and when Jesus pauses there and gets quiet, he hears God’s voice. God declares that Jesus is God’s Son, the Beloved. But this is not just an empty honorific: Jesus is sent on a mission.

And so, in turn, are we. Our lengthy silences in this liturgy are not just moments of Zen, sweet time to just bliss out in serene contemplation of the woodwork in here, or the candles, or the billowing incense. Our silence is an opening, a vulnerability, to God’s call to us, God’s instructions, God’s marching orders.

In a few moments we will interrupt our sitting quietly in this room by standing and reaffirming our baptismal vows. These vows are an acceptance of mission, a “Yes” to the call from God that arrives uncomfortably on our hearts and minds in moments of gentle yet dreadful silence. The mission of Jesus claimed his life. When we follow him, we say yes to entering the fray, to putting ourselves in harm’s way, to joining those anguished parents whose children are in mortal peril, to drawing alongside school kids and teachers and parents who remember their city before it was invaded by their own government. 

So: the silence is challenging; the silence is daunting.

But in all this personal struggle and vocational challenge, we do not necessarily need to turn into brash warriors. Now, some of us do shout loudly, and often, as prophets of the Holy One, and God blesses that cacophony! Shout it out! But Holy Baptism also forms us into peacemakers, into skillful allies, into quiet yet effective servants like the one that Isaiah sings about. Isaiah’s song is worth singing yet again:

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

This is our calling, our identity, and our hope. As we once again are showered today with baptismal waters, we may just hear God’s affirmation of us as beloved of God, but also hear the call, the challenge, the great daunting task to which God sets us: to be quiet yet effective, merciful yet ferocious leaders, advocates, and healers.

Joseph Fasano, a contemporary American poet, evokes for me this call, this identity: a call and identity that last week cost Renee Nicole Good her life. Fasano did not compose his poem specifically for the community of the baptized, but I will close with it, and then let you return to yet another time of daunting silence. We will once again be encouraged to sit quietly in this room. Here is Joseph Fasano’s poem, titled The Healers:

The Healers

You can hear them
moving among the ruins,
hear them by their silence in the noisy crowds.
You can see them, opening
their little bags, opening
the shrapneled hearts of strangers,
crouching before the body of a child
to lean down and whisper her a story,
a story in which what's happening
is not what's happening.
They mend; they stitch; they carry.
They work; they weep; they lose.
And when nothing can be done
among the rubble,
they kneel there as the fires fall around them
and they cradle the face
of the dying,
the life that is trying
to speak to them,
the life that whispers, listen,
and they do.

Are the kids alright?

Preached on the Second Sunday after Christmas, January 4, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington, by The Rev. Stephen Crippen.

Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84:1-8
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
Luke 2:41-52

The Boy Jesus in the Temple, He Qi.

The kids are not alright.

We are living in the first decades of an era when children in this country do not expect to exceed their parents in education, income, health, or length of life. The advent of new technology always inspires anxiety, but we really do not know how generations raised on the internet will develop, what they will need, or whether they will thrive. Children and youth, particularly trans and queer children and youth, are thrown around as political footballs in a profoundly unhealthy public square. They are abused by politicians who will say or do anything to distract us from what’s really going on in this country, and around the world. We should be talking about climate justice and wage justice and public education, but instead we are provoked to argue about trans kids in sports.

So I want to hear some good news. I want to hear the Good News. Thankfully, our companion in Good News this morning is Luke, the third evangelist, my favorite (Luke just barely wins my approval in a photo finish with the sublime John). I love Luke because Luke is sanguine, but not a pollyanna. Luke is cheerful, but not glib. Luke writes in gorgeous prose, and Luke assumes that a diverse audience can keep up with an urbane, sophisticated storyteller. So… Mark the evangelist tells the story of people “digging” a hole in a roof to let down their friend to Jesus, for healing. But Luke, in his telling, improves the architecture: the man’s friends remove roof tiles, not clumps of sod. Luke’s Gospel is a classy establishment.

Yet Luke is not a snob; Luke does not preen. Luke composes gorgeous songs and puts them on the lips of humble people — a young woman (Mary of Nazareth), two older women (Elizabeth and Anna), two older men (Zechariah and Simeon). This is exceedingly rare in ancient literature: a compelling story of salvation, but very young and very old people have lines in the story.  I am grateful to Luke for this. Luke is a good companion for us as we search for the Good News that can be announced to — and from — young people, including our kids who are not alright. 

And today, Luke does not disappoint. Today we hear a vivid story, told by Luke, a story that stars a teenager. And somehow, in his genius, Luke’s ancient teenager jumps off the page. We readily recognize this precocious, confident kid. We’ve met this kid. Luke gives us the lightest sketch of a scene: The Holy Family joins a “group of travelers,” probably a caravan, to make the yearly Passover pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem. The caravan likely makes the trip both cheaper and safer. (And this is a bit of subtle foreshadowing: years later, the adult Jesus will return to Jerusalem, again at the time of Passover, to accomplish his great work of salvation there.)

But back here in his teenage years, Jesus gets lost in the crowd, and his parents assume what you might assume if your kid gets mixed up in a jumble of friends and extended family: he’s fine, he’ll turn up, he always appears when he’s hungry! But he doesn’t appear. Three days go by as they search, ever more frantically, for him. (Always the three days! We Christians delight in three-day adventures, from Jonah in his fish all the way to the Great Three Days of Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection.)

Finally, the parents find him, and we can all forgive Mary for letting him have it. “Child, why have you treated us like this?” she hollers. “Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety." My mother would have required fewer words. “What is the matter with you?!” she might have shouted.

But this kid is unruffled, which I suspect might have been maddening for his parents. In fact he throws a bit of shade on Joseph, his adoptive father, by saying, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But Luke writes a safe and tidy ending to the story (perhaps in a way that stretches our belief), saying that after this encounter, Jesus obeys his parents, so much so that his mother has time and energy to “treasure” all these things in her heart. This is not the first time that Mary treasures things, ponders things, contemplates all that is happening to and around her.

And this “treasuring” of the mother of a teenager — we should stop and consider this. We shouldn’t just let it go by, a neat little ending to a story about a wondrous youth. By treasuring what her son told her, and treasuring what he did, even though his actions caused great anxiety, Mary takes her place among the Temple teachers, the ones who were spellbound by Jesus for three days. Mary is savvy enough to reflect on her provocative child. She is a scholar, and she is an example for us.

Friends, we should do some treasuring, some pondering, this morning. We should turn aside, like Mary, the mother of an intriguing teenager, and ponder what this Gospel might teach us.

We could enter the story anywhere we like: some of us may naturally identify with the exasperated parents, others with the precocious tween, still others with the friends and kinfolk in the caravan, helpless to relieve the anxiety of these parents, bemused by all that’s going on.

But I’d like us to enter the story through the teachers in the Temple, the ones who were smart enough to stop and listen to this youth. Luke doesn’t tell us what Jesus says to them — we will find out soon enough, as the story of salvation unfolds. But there’s another possible reason why Luke doesn’t record all the dazzling things Jesus says in the Temple: if we don’t hear what the young Jesus had to say all those centuries ago, then we stop reading it as an historical account (and while something like this could very well have happened, this story about the young Jesus is not a newspaper article). It’s better understood as a parable that turns our attention not to the long-ago 12-year-old Jesus, but to our own young companions.

That’s why, this week, I emailed the parents of our teenage members here at St. Paul’s. I wrote them to invite their children to consider these questions:

“What do you — a teenage member of St. Paul’s — think the rest of us need to know, or need to do, or need to be? If you could say one thing to us, what would you say? What is the most important thing for this faith community? What matters most to you? If you had the microphone and our 125 people on a Sunday could hear what you have to say, what would you say?”

And my friends, I got some answers! (And please know: I also received permission to share these answers, and their authors’ names, with you.) Damian Anderson is fourteen years old, a bit older than Jesus when he lit up the temple with his ideas. Here are Damian Anderson’s responses to my prompt, and you’ll notice that he took it very seriously, and answered every question:

Damian says that the people of St. Paul’s need to know “that a lot of kids (maybe more than you think) want to learn about God and will benefit from learning about God but need more spaces than just church [services]. [They need] a ‘youth group’ or something like that.”

Regarding what we all need to do, Damian says, "The people have been doing a lot already, but having kids help during the services is fun.”

(Are you writing this down? Don’t worry, I am.)

Damian said more. What do the people of St. Paul’s need to be? Here’s his answer: “The people need to be leaders in the community, a safe sanctuary. If you need safety, you know you can go to St Paul's. Or if you want to talk to someone, [you know you can go to St. Paul’s]. Maybe [have] a ‘hotline’ that is staffed by volunteers that kids could ask questions. That might be fun!”

(I suspect it might be more than fun. I suspect that if we took our cue from Damian and set up a hotline, we could save more than one young life.)

But Damian had more to say! When I asked him what he wanted to say to us, he answered my question with his own question. Damian Anderson, 14, asks this of us: “What is most interesting to you about the younger generation?”, Damian wonders. And he added this idea: “It would be fun to have an ‘ask the teens’ event or a game night with teens.”

Noted.

But there’s more! When asked what is the most important thing about or for this faith community, Damian replied, “That you know you are helping people, and [helping] yourself.” And when asked what matters most to him, he said, “My family; using my voice to help make changes that need to be made; and people being treated with kindness.”

Amen.

And finally, if Damian had a microphone and our 125 people on a Sunday could hear what he has to say, he would say this: “This is going to be a long year and we have to stay connected to what we care about and help our families and anybody who needs [help.]”

Damian speaks with authority, and not like the scribes.

Then I heard back from Ivey and Grey Hopkins. They had fewer words to say, but their responses were no less powerful. Their mother Kira replied by saying, “Ivey… is most interested in animal welfare, especially equine welfare. [She] did a school project on how horses should be treated better, especially in the Olympics, where the U.S. standards are not equally applied to other nations. I think for both [Ivey and Grey], they are most interested in fairness and justice.”

I would only add this, regarding Grey, who gets the last word in the Good News according to St. Paul’s, the Good News proclaimed more eloquently here than even Luke the evangelist can manage, the Good News that comes to us from our youngest companions. Here is something Grey recently did, and again, I have his permission to share. Some months ago, on a Sunday I was downstairs with our younger members, Grey was the only one in the room in his age group, and it didn’t really seem best to loop him into a Godly Play story. So he and I played chess. 

Chess? Yes. Heaven and earth are found, in splendid discourse, on a chess board. Two people can learn a lot about the world while playing chess together. Grey and I played our way through the game, and I realized to my growing chagrin that I was beating him. This was our first significant encounter: I didn’t want to win. I wanted Grey to feel welcome here. I felt that dull pressure we church folk feel to pander to people, to meet their every need as if we were the customer service department of a retail store. But I noticed my feelings, suppressed them, and went on to win the game.

Grey looked at the evidence of his defeat on the board. He thought for a moment, then tipped over his king, stood up, and extended his hand. “Good game,” he said. I almost burst into tears. The class, the wisdom, the maturity. The delightful, dazzling decency of this young person! I was evangelized. I was stirred with hope and eager expectation for a bright future on this weary earth. 

Keep listening to these companions, slight in years but vast in wisdom. Listen for their good words, their Good News, for us, and for the world. And take it from me, out here in the ministry field alongside these good Christian souls:

The kids are alright.

Click here to watch this sermon on video.

Children of light

Preached on the First Sunday after Christmas, December 28, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Samuel Torvend.

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 147:13-21
Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
John 1:1-18

The Organist’s View, by Heidi McElrath

All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 

Perhaps you know this simple scientific fact: that all living organisms - from germs to jellyfish to human beings - are made of the same basic chemical components. But, we ask, where do those building blocks of life come from?

Astronomers at the European Space Agency suggest that the answer is found in the light of the stars. Their research holds that ultraviolet starlight is the key to creating the molecules necessary for the formation of life: the formation of carbon atoms connected to hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements that make your life and mine possible. 

Patrick Morris, the director of Infrared Processing at Caltech in Pasadena, writes that “the sun is the driving source of almost all life on Earth. Now, we have learned more recently that starlight drives the formation of chemicals that are precursors to the chemicals” that make our lives possible. Thus, we can say that in the remarkable process of earth’s creation some 4.5 billion years ago and in the subsequent evolution of life on earth, including human life, you and I are dependent upon star light. Indeed we hold in our bodies traces of starlight in the trillions of molecules that make life possible. 

Imagine, then, that you and the people gathered around you here as well as your pets, if you have them, as well as your children if you have them, as well as friends, siblings, spouse, and co-workers are bearers of star light, unseen to the human eye yet vibrating within you and them.

But there is more. Since 2006, Dr. Masaki Kobayashi of the Tohoku Institute of Technology in Japan has been photographing the light in human beings and has done so with incredibly sensitive camera technology. What Kobayashi and his colleagues suggest is that virtually all living things – from fireflies to human beings – emit measures of light, of light unseen to the human eye but nonetheless particles of light. This is to say that that you and I glimmer, we glimmer as chemical reactions in our bodies liberate energy, produce heat, and release particles of light: a glow that tends to be strongest in the afternoon and strongest on the face. What comes to my mind is the priestly blessing in the Book of Numbers: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord’s face shine upon you – the Lord’s face shine upon you – and be gracious to you” (Numbers 6:24-25). 

It would seem, then, that we and all other creatures, both fauna and flora, are united in our need for light and are united as holders of natural light within us: a network of beings who share in the light of the stars and whose bodies glimmer with particles of light. Is it any wonder, then, that the author of the fourth gospel would say that the creating Word of God has endowed all things with life and with light? Of course, here we move from the natural light accessible through scientific study to light as an image of who we are called to be as disciples of Jesus.

And so I wonder: What does it mean that you and I are children of the light, that we are called to be light in the world? Perhaps it can be helpful to remember that light has always been seen as a  sign of God’s presence and God’s unmerited, unconditional, and ever-flowing grace: God’s grace as that photon of light, as that spiritual energy which causes the molecules of our souls to vibrate with energy and radiate outward. To be called light bearers might then suggest that we are called to be gracious toward ourselves and toward others, to let that annoying voice of negative judgment about ourselves or others, that voice we sometimes hear within ourselves, take a rest or just go silent. 

To be bearers of the light might mean that we recognize our capacity to enliven, why even to excite the particles of light, of grace, of graciousness, in others. For, as you must know, light is a radiating power that begs to be shared in order to make life possible. Imagine that as your purpose in life: to look for the particles of light, of grace, of graciousness in others and support them.

Or this: to be light bearers in a world frequently marked by conspiracy theories, rejection of science, and untold waves of misinformation filtering through the internet, might well mean that we are committed to the work of enlightenment, of seeking the truth and telling the truth even when it is hard to hear or might get us in trouble. As Anglicans, we are quick to say that God’s gift of reason to each of us is an enlightening ability intended to support and enrich life rather than diminish or degrade it.

To speak then of light and imagine that we are children of the light is no dopey New Age trend that places my sweet bliss, your sweet bliss at the center of the world. When, in this place, we hear in the baptismal liturgy that we are called to let our light shine before others, that call comes to us from the flesh-and-blood Jesus whose “light” was expressed in what? Why in caring for the sick, in releasing people from tormenting spirits, in welcoming so-called social outcasts, in forgiving others, in refusing to retaliate when harmed, in God’s alliance with the poor, in eating and drinking and thus sharing life with those considered by one’s culture or peers to be undesirable table companions. That is, his light radiated an energy that gave others hope. I wonder: should it be any different for us?

The interesting thing about light particles is that, in and of themselves, they don’t make any  sound. However, when heated even slightly and expanded in material such a wood or metal or a human body, light particles generate sound waves. That is, light can become sound, photons become phonons. And when warmed and expanded in an enclosed space such as this, we can say that we are literally being showered with musical light, photons transformed by chant, hymn, canticle,  anthem, bell, and organ. Imagine, then, that if we had the highly sensitive camera technology of Dr. Kobayashi, we would see glimmering, sparkling waves of light emanating from the loft as we sing that great hymn of praise, the Sanctus, with angels and archangels and all the host of heaven, with our beloved dead who are eternally alive to God and join us in that chorus of thanksgiving. 

And so, I say: come to this eucharistic table where the creating Word of God continues to share that radiant energy with you and me; where his generosity is for our good and the good of the world in which live. Dear friends, we are small in number and yet each of us can be a light within this city, a light that shines and sings brightly amid the darkness. After all, what good is light unless it is shared?