August 10, 2025

I speak to you this morning, friends, in the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated. Have you ever had a moment of inaction or indecision that gnaws at you, that you know you should have acted but didn't? Or, conversely, have you had the experience of feeling like you need to do something, even when there is nothing to be done? I invite these questions this morning because I think they are the polarities of Christ's message to us in our gospel passage from St. Luke.

As I was reflecting on this reading from chapter 12, I was reminded of two moments of profound impact in my life that speak to each of these emotional experiences. While I had gone off to college with a sense of call to the ministry and this well-thought-out roadmap for completing a bachelor's degree in religion and going on to seminary and then becoming a minister, I didn't count on having a crisis of faith and identity that would throw all of that into upheaval. In the midst of processing and working through that stressful time, I felt myself unmoored and full of indecision.

Then, in a heartbeat, everything changed. A friend from college invited me to a house party in Little Rock, and sometime late into the night, a group of us were gathered on the front lawn chatting when a speeding car came flying down the street, lost control, and careened into seven or eight vehicles parked just a few houses down. Like most of us gathered on the lawn, I stood there dumbstruck and shocked at the scene, while at the same moment, a small group of maybe four or five bolted into action and raced down to check on the driver.

I didn't move from my spot that night, but almost immediately I felt a weight of guilt that my instinct in that moment wasn't to help but to watch and observe as a bystander. I had always thought of myself as a helper, and I was crushed that I didn't act in the moment. I became obsessed for a time with understanding why I froze. It just so happened that this occurred right as I was considering switching my focus of study to psychology. Eventually, I became that person I wanted to be, the person whose instinct is to jump in when folks need help. But it was in that failure that I found new strength. In this time of great need in the world around us, there is a real and present danger of being bystanders when we are very much called to be alert and prepared to be people of action.

But then again, as is frequently the case with Jesus and his many teachings, the truth is not so singular or linear. There is also a pitfall in obsessing over action, so much so that we lose sight of the reason for which we act. Fear. Fear of what is happening around us. Fear that we are not doing enough. Fear, for all sorts of reasons, can sometimes cause us to act simply for the sake of doing something, anything at all, when maybe—very likely—the more impactful course would be to wait and conserve our strength for a time in which our actions would be most impactful. In point of fact, Jesus calls us to be alert and attentive, but sometimes to wait and be patient with that alertness and attentiveness.

One particular week in the spring before Julie and I moved to Northern Virginia, I found myself in the throes of this particular pitfall. We both had pending applications in with our respective graduate programs, and we had submitted our housing materials for an apartment but still hadn't heard anything. On top of all of that, my work as a hospital chaplain was proving especially grueling with the number of patients actively dying in ways that could not be helped or fixed. Fear was there, to a degree, but also, and maybe more importantly, the anxiety of having to wait, to be patient, to accept the unknown. In the parlance of psychotherapy, I caught myself over-functioning out of the depth of this fear and uncertainty. I was simply doing things for the purpose of feeling like I was doing something to alleviate the weight of the fear and the anxiety.

Action is so critically important in a world that needs care and compassion. But Jesus highlights for us this morning the importance of not acting out of fear and out of anxiety for the unknown. Action for the sake of the kingdom is action that truly transforms and brings new life into broken realities. Action for the sake of action just exhausts us and wears us down and makes us unprepared for the time in which we are truly needed.

If we read just a bit further in our gospel passage today, we see the danger of getting worn down and complacent before the time for action arises. In St. Matthew's rendering of this same parable theme, there is another story of ten maidens, some of whom fall asleep waiting for a delayed bridegroom and then are unprepared to do what they need to do when he finally arrives and action is required. If we burn our oil lamps down with activity, spinning our wheels of energy on things of little consequence, how will we be prepared for the time when action is actually required of us?

So, how do we navigate this discernment? How do we know when to act or when to wait? Or when we are called to act, how do we know what action to take? This is the last thought I want to offer this morning, and the answer comes to us through St. Paul and this beautiful so-called Hall of Faith passage from Hebrews chapter 11. It is called the Hall of Faith because it recounts for us the great heroes and ancestors in faith who have shown us the way forward in ages past. It is by faith that these ancestors knew what to do and when to do it. It is through the wellspring of their faithfulness that they stayed centered and sane in times of great upheaval and uncertainty.

It is by faith that they had the strength and energy to go on day after day, year after year, century after century, doing the work of the kingdom of God that they were called to do. And it was ultimately by faith that they could keep their gaze affixed on their true homeland in that kingdom and not get mired again and again in the fickleness of this world's allure and power.

I don't think I am saying anything out of turn when I say to us this morning that we, as the people of St. Anne's, are a community with a long and storied history of action. But we are also a community that has never quite figured out our spiritual rootedness and the wellspring of our faithfulness. Three years ago, when we did our parish survey for the Tending Our Soil initiative, we self-identified one of our weaknesses as a lack of deep spiritual identity and a lack of connection between our actions and our understanding of them in the context of our faith journey and our relational connection to God. We can sometimes too easily be a people of this world and not a people of the kingdom.

Don't get me wrong. By being a people of this world, we have been attuned to a great many needs and issues in the community around us. But by not being a people of deep spirituality with a rootedness in the faithfulness of God's kingdom, we have often found ourselves overworked, exhausted, and frankly, burned out.

God desires us. God has dreams for us. And God wants us to act with compassion, love, and transforming kindness in the world around us. But he wants us to do all of that as citizens of his kingdom and as people with a deep faithfulness and an ever-more deepening connection to him.

So friends, this morning as we are invited to join Christ in acting with deeper love and compassion in the world around us, as we are invited to release the chains of fear and anxiety which so easily trap and enslave our thoughts and emotions, as frequently people of this world, may we find our way forward in these times through a deeper faithfulness and spiritual relationship to our living God as people of the kingdom who are sojourners in this world but nevertheless share with the world the ceaseless center of all of our energy, all of our love, all of our compassion. That is the God who has made us, sustains us, and is evermore drawing us into himself. Thank you, friends. And in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, may we hear and receive these words today and always. Amen.