November 2, 2025

We have come to one of my favorite two or three points in the year. As I think many of you know by now, those of you who are meeting me for the first time, you'll learn I absolutely love the winter. It is my favorite time of the year. And it's not just the cold weather, the prospect of snow, but it's also, strangely, the dark quiet of those long winter nights as well. There's something in that solitude. Something in the depths of that darkness. That compels me. Compels me in a way that kind of draws me deeper into my own faith life. It's so much harder to be totally honest. When the sun is bright and shiny. When the air is warm and humid. It's so much nicer to kind of get distracted by the things of this world. And I find in those kind of dark, cold moments of the winter night, that place of coming back again to God. Coming back again to my communion with God. those who have come before me and shaped and formed me in the faith.

Interestingly, I, in that proclivity, love what I think of as real time. This moment that we've just had where we've ended daylight savings, we've returned to something of normalcy. My wristwatch, which I accidentally forgot to wear this morning, is always set to real time. I don't bother changing it during daylight savings in this vain attempt to try to force my will on the world. Unfortunately, I think that's going to be a losing battle. It sounds like even if we switch over to a seamless time, they're going to go with daylight savings time year-round. So, I don't know. It is what it is. But I'm going to cling to the things of meaning in my own life.

But it's interesting. it's interesting that we have this connection every year between this shift in time, this celebration of All Saints. And it's particularly fitting and beautiful today that we have the celebration of Lila's baptism because when we have this opportunity to kind of see the fickleness or the immateriality of these concepts that so shape and form us, this concept of time by which we live our lives, we begin to see how the things of this world aren't as stable, aren't as concrete as we often want them to be or think that they are. It gives us this moment of recognizing the fluidity of our life experience.

All saints is a fitting time for baptism in the prayer book. But it also is listed with a few other major feasts. One of which is the Easter Vigil. And out of the entire liturgy of the year, Easter Vigil has this incredibly powerful statement at the very beginning of the service. It's in what is called the exultant. It is this proclamation of Easter. And it says this: "This is the night." This is the night that Christ was raised from the dead. This is the night that heaven and earth met. This is the night that death was overcome. It's not that we are memorializing something in the past. Some kind of long ago far forgotten experience. but that we are stepping into the lived, real reality of the moment of resurrection. That we are in a space outside of time and place. That we are in the presence of that moment of new life and transformation.

Our Orthodox brothers and sisters do this beautifully themselves in the whole conception of what a divine liturgy is each and every time it is celebrated. There is this fundamental belief that the divine liturgy is not a point-in-time experience in this material plane, but in fact the entering into the eternal, timeless divine liturgy that goes on forever in the kingdom of God. That when you enter into the sacred worship space, of the nave, the sanctuary, that you are entering into the presence of God in that timeless experience of worship and praise.

All saints touches on some of these same themes. Because when we celebrate all saints, we are not simply reflecting on the past. Remembering and recalling those who have come before us in a sense of looking backwards and memorializing. But we are joining in the presence of the great cloud of witnesses. Being really and truly present to them as they are present to us. Stepping again into this space that is outside of time. Outside of all of the kind of material concepts and parameters that we want to put on it. We are becoming fully present to the real and true presence of the kingdom of God. When we come to this moment. To this opportunity to join into this worship and praise with all that has come before us. All that will come after us. We experience, even if momentarily, the true and lasting power of the kingdom of God.

And I think, I don't know this for a fact, but I think there must have been something of that sense in the decision that the editors of our lectionary made in having us read the Beatitudes on this Feast of All Saints. Because if you look at what Jesus is fundamentally doing in the Beatitudes, those who are blessed and those that he calls to account, there is this parallelism in material substance. Those who struggle materially in this world are the ones who are of true and lasting blessedness in the kingdom. And those who can very easily be distracted or diverted or consumed with the material things of this world are the ones, in fact, who are furthest from the kingdom. And I think that's so very instructive for us in these moments of thin spaces in our liturgical year, in the lives that we lead throughout the calendar year, when we get too fixated on the material, substantive things of this world, we often lose sight of the true and lasting priorities of the places in which we are called to step out of those obsessions and embrace the greater and more transformative reality of God's valuation. Of God's kingdom. Of the justice and righteousness that comes with that reorientation.

And what is a baptism but a recommitment for us and a committing on to the next generation? Those values. Those commitments. Those promises to live for the world to come. To not be mired in and distracted by the things of earthly value. But to be truly committed and focused on the things of kingdom substance. And I'll admit. In this very moment. In this very time. That can feel like an off note. That can rub against some real and true anxieties that we have about the state of the world around us.

During the announcements, you're going to hear about some of the incredible work we've been doing with the Up County Hub in Germantown. The ways that we as a congregation are striving ever more fully to help address material inequalities in our community. The ways in which we are addressing food insecurity in our community. And very often, in the great history of the church, this encouragement, this admonition to live for the things of the kingdom and not for the things of the world, have in fact perpetuated such inequalities instead of addressing them. And so in as much as I encourage us to, to move more fully into this season and time of thin ambiguity. This time in which heaven and earth seem so very close together. And as much as I encourage us today to lift up and focus and reorient ourselves on the things of the kingdom.

We must be mindful and cautious in recognizing that even as Jesus encourages us not to be obsessed with material things, that that encouragement is only and always framed within the larger reality of the justice and righteousness of that transformative good news. In the world around us. That even as we look beyond the horizon. To the coming kingdom. We are called even now in the present moment to speak the things of transformation. To speak the goodness of a God. Whose nature is compassion and love. And to call out those places of brokenness, to lift up the meek and the poor, to strive as we will commit in our baptismal covenant in a few moments, strive for the goodness of every human being and the dignity of every human being.

And so we come now to this season, this time, this moment of thinness. We gather together with the great cloud of witnesses on this All Saints Day Feast to acknowledge and embrace our place in the larger and greater story of God's unfolding work in this world. And we do so with this invitation to step outside of time, to be transformed by that experience of God's presence. But then, as always, to let that reorientation send us back out into the world. That the commitments, the renourished transformations, the power of new life that we experience in this place might be carried forward into a world desperate for good news. desperate for new life, desperate for a better future.

So friends, thank you. Thank you for being here today. Thank you, family, and those of you who have gathered to celebrate with Lila. Thank you for the commitments that we are about to make together in supporting her and raising her up in her life in Christ. That we, with the great cloud of witnesses, all the saints who have come before us, and even the saints here now present on earth, that we all together may be those hands and feet of Jesus that carry forward the love and transformation of the new and better life ahead. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

October 26, 2025

I had an opportunity this past week on Thursday evening and then all day Friday to spend time in deep discernment with a number of our aspirants to ordained ministry. About a year, year and a half ago, the bishop asked me to serve on what's called our Commission on Ministry, one of the elements of diocesan life, one of the commissions who journey with these folks as they discern their call either to ministry in the diaconate or ministry to the priesthood. Every two years we have a retreat with the aspirants for priesthood ministry for priestly ordination, where we gather with them. We spend time getting to know them, discerning with them this call that they feel on their lives.

We gathered at the Claggett Center. Now, if you haven't had a chance, I invite you to go up. It's kind of funny for me, at least, because for many of our fellow Episcopalians in the Diocese of Washington, it's quite the journey north, especially for our folks all the way down in Calvert, Charles, St. Mary's counties. But for us it's about a 20-minute drive, just up in Bucky's town.

Claggett is named for Bishop Thomas Claggett, the first bishop of Maryland, who spent his entire life on the coastal plain, along the Chesapeake, even some amount of time here, kind of in this Piedmont transitional zone. But he never went beyond the mountains. He lived his entire life kind of in this ethos. And I think it's kind of interesting that Claggett is where it is because you see those first rolling foothills of the Blue Ridge as you look across the fields and the spaces that you were provided at that retreat center.

I was thinking about that barrier that the mountains presented for so many in the early years of European settlement here in Maryland. And I was thinking about it in the context of this ordination journey and in the context of what we hear in our gospel lesson today from Jesus.

In the first case, as we talked to these aspirants, to a person, they highlighted at some point in their sharing with us the place of brokenness or the place of incompleteness that they encountered. They had some point at which they came to realize they could not do life on their own. They could not follow this call on their own. They could not deny any longer the things that Christ was inviting them into. There was fundamentally, at some level, a recognition that community, that support, that greater engagement with others was their path forward.

That might seem somewhat of a strange juxtaposition if we think about at least the narratives that we have been taught about that barrier of the Blue Ridge, of the Alleghenies. The great mythos we have around these early frontiersmen and women, Daniel Boone and his family, John Cressop here in Maryland, one of the earliest settlers in Cumberland. This idea that they left community, that they made it on their own. They struggled and found a path forward, that they had a resiliency within themselves that helped them to survive.

Just recently, I've learned that there's actually a growing body of scholarship that suggests for many of these folks, Cressip, Boone, others, who were crossing the mountains in the 1750s, they were in point encountering a landscape devoid of humans, but a landscape that was only recently devoid of humans. That in many instances, the tragedy of smallpox had impacted Native American communities that were quite numerous and quite present in a lot of those places just on the other sides of the mountains. But those communities had dwindled. People had relocated.

And so when Boone, when Cressip encountered these spaces, they saw an empty landscape, but one that nevertheless had remnants of cultivation that they didn't recognize as human impact. They saw it as some sort of divine engagement of God setting the place of goodness before them. And yet, in truth, they were able to flourish because of what had come before. Because of those who had tended and cultivated the landscape before them.

I want to really focus on that today, because I think so often in this particular parable, our takeaway can be that final statement of the author of the gospel, that Jesus looks upon these and says, "Those who exalt themselves will be humbled. And those who humble themselves will be exalted." We see it fundamentally as a matter of pridefulness, as a matter of arrogance.

But I want to focus us on where Jesus begins. In verse 9 we hear, he also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves. And I want us to focus on that today. Because I think our experience of arrogance, our experience of pridefulness, the pitfall that those things have for us in our society are often the pitfall of thinking we can go it alone. It is such a fundamental part of our national narrative: the pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality, the self-made man and woman, that we do not need to rely on anything or anyone beyond our own abilities.

That kind of makes sense when you think about what this Pharisee is doing, too. Because what is piety? What is devotion? Except that seeking or that openness to seeking that which is beyond you, larger than you, that which helps you enter into a greater and more meaningful whole.

And surface, fake piety. It's piety that thinks, "I just need to do this for the showmanship of it, to look good amongst my friends. I don't actually need these acts of contrition, these acts of prayerfulness, because at the end of the day, I can take care of myself. I can do everything that needs to be done."

I want to suggest, friends, that that kind of thinking, that kind of trap, is so very prevalent today, and is as prevalent today as it was for this community to which Jesus was speaking. We so often find ourselves enamored with our own echo chambers, with our own beliefs and our own capabilities. And the place of greatest growth, the place of greatest goodness, the place of most profound truth that we have on offer to us, is those spaces and places of community and connectivity and relationship.

There's so much doom and gloom today about the church, unfortunately. And some of you may well have seen this, heard it. It's not uncommon to have thought pieces written in popular media about the decline of the church. And even in point of fact, within the church itself, we can get wrapped up in this kind of individualism: What do we need to do to pull ourselves up? What do we need to be? How do we need to contort ourselves to make the most of the opportunities we have before us? Such a very easy trap to fall into.

And yet, our invitation today is to step back from that kind of thinking and to reorient ourselves, not around our own drives and motivations, but where we are finding community, how we are cultivating community, how we are resourcing the support and love of others to be most fully who we are being called to be.

In the study of mission in the church, there's a specific way of talking about this. For so many decades and frankly centuries in the Christian tradition, we have talked about the mission of the church. What are we doing to go to other people to get them to become Christians, to convert them to our denomination, to convince them of the rightness of our way of being in the world? And in the last 50 years, with the rise of post-colonial theology and other academic reflections on this subject, conversation has shifted to the question: What is the Missio Dei? That's your fancy word for the day. The Missio Dei: the mission of God. What is God doing? What is God on about? And how as a community in relationship to God, a God because of God's Trinitarian nature who is fundamentally community God's self, how are we participating in the work of that larger reality? The moment we get mired in those go it alone attitudes is the moment we lose sight of that greater call and truth that we should fundamentally be oriented towards.

The more we've lived into that, the more we've cultivated that sense of community, the more we've found our path forward. In the midst of all the doom and gloom thought pieces, we've now seen in the last year to 18 months a number of new observations: that especially on the other side of the pandemic, this incredibly isolating and individual experience of loneliness, folks are seeing the need, are desperate for the place of community again. And yes, the church is a part of that, spaces and places in society as well.

But we're reinvigorated in our sense and in our recognition that we cannot go it alone. And that whatever our great national narratives are about who we are, we're finally coming to that recognition that we are only who we are when we are fully together and fully supportive of one another.

And you may look at me today and say, "Father John, I cannot see that in the landscape of all the chaos currently surrounding us." And I hear that. I see the places where things are falling apart. But, but, I still see. I still hope for those green shoots of new life that even in incremental and kind of stagnated ways are beginning to bring forth that transformed and new way of being.

So friends, today I invite us to embrace the invitation into community, to be those people of deep humility like this tax collector, and to offer ourselves anew to the greater work of community that is before us. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.