March 1, 2026

So, I apologize if this seems a little bit of dark humor or not quite befitting the seriousness of the situation we find ourselves in and the levity of this moment. But I have to admit I found myself kind of chuckling last night because I’m about at the point where I think I’m going to give up writing my sermons until Saturday night or Sunday morning. The chaos of the world right now is so overwhelming that inevitably it seems like something happens, no matter how far in advance I prepare things, that utterly shifts and transforms what I have to say to you each Sunday morning.

I don’t want to say any of that to dismiss or excuse any feelings that any of you have, but I’m also constantly and painfully aware of how fraught all of this is too. Almost every single issue we’re confronting right now as a community, a region, a nation, and a world has myriad complexities and complications. It’s so very hard sometimes to figure out who we are, where we stand, and what it is that we should be about as a Christian community.

I want to start this morning in a place that I had not intended to start at all 24 or 36 hours ago, but I’m going to start with a letter from our fellow bishop in the Anglican Communion, my beloved friend Archbishop Hosam Naoum of Jerusalem. Archbishop Hosam is the Anglican bishop in Jerusalem, but he is also the provincial head—the presiding bishop—for the entire Church of the Middle East, which covers every single geographic region presently impacted.

Yesterday he wrote this letter. It describes a coordinated and massive military assault by the United States and Israel against numerous cities and installations within Iran, followed by retaliatory strikes across the Middle East. He calls upon the global church to join in urgent, unceasing prayer for the protection of the innocent, to offer one another the sanctity of love, and to remain bridge builders even as diplomatic windows seem to close. He reminds the world that our hope is not in missiles or might, but in the Prince of Peace.

It is a powerful witness to the foundational strength of our Christian faith in times of peril. I want us to think about Archbishop Hosam’s words as we encounter our gospel lesson, because we meet a passage full of ambiguity. Nicodemus is an enigmatic figure, mentioned only in the Gospel of John at three points: in chapter 3, when he comes to Jesus by night; in chapter 7, when he speaks cautiously before the Sanhedrin; and in chapter 19, when he helps prepare Jesus’ body for burial.

Nicodemus is educated, privileged, and powerful—a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin. Yet he comes to Jesus secretly, under the cover of darkness. His transformation is never clearly shown, but Jesus does not condemn him. He meets him where he is. Jesus offers relationship and companionship even as Nicodemus wrestles with his limited worldview.

Years ago, when Julie and I first joined the Episcopal Church in Arkansas, I met a woman named Freshta, an Iranian‑American who prayed constantly for her two brothers still in Iran. They had converted to Christianity and lived in fear of persecution. Week after week we prayed for their safety. I think of them now as our world again trembles with conflict. As we hope for new freedom in Iran, we cannot ignore the tragedy of how such change often comes—through violence, uncertainty, and loss.

Closer to home, I think back to my time in the Boy Scouts as a child. Only years later did I realize that several of my fellow Scouts were boys who were gay or bisexual. Scouting offered them a rare refuge of safety and acceptance in a community that was otherwise inhospitable. Later, in college, I became friends with Xander, a trans man, who helped me understand more deeply the experiences of our transgender siblings. The Scouts once stood for inclusion and character formation for all, but recent national decisions have reversed much of that progress.

As a church that charters Scout troops, we face the question of how to respond. Who would we be if we simply abandoned them because of disagreement? We are called not to withdraw in anger but to remain in relationship, offering transformation and new life to everyone regardless of who they are or what they face.

I found my answer in preparing for a service with our Holy Trinity South Indian brothers and sisters last night. Their lectionary reading was from Mark 2—the story of the paralyzed man lowered through the roof by his friends to reach Jesus. The text says that Jesus saw their faith, the collective faith of the community, and had compassion. Through the faith of the many, he restored the one.

So what does it mean for us to be bridge builders and purveyors of Christ’s love? Between the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John, we find two complementary answers. Sometimes we must act boldly—digging through roofs, breaking barriers, getting our hands dirty so that others may encounter Christ. At other times we must simply be companions—sitting with those who wrestle in darkness, listening, loving, and waiting without resolution.

Jesus did not abandon Nicodemus. He engaged him in patient dialogue. Things were left unresolved, yet love remained. And sometimes that is our calling too: to dwell in uncertainty, to offer presence instead of answers, and to extend grace to a hurting world.

I don’t know where each of us finds ourselves today or what actions God will call us to take. But we will be called at times to labor and at times to wait, to act and to accompany. Both are faithful responses.

And so my prayer for us this morning is that, in the midst of chaos and division, we may hear again the call of Christ—to be repairers of relationship, restorers of love, communicators of compassion, and proclaimers of an alternative way: a kingdom not of this world, but one that reveals the fullness of who we are as beloved children of God.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Feb 22, 2026 “Grace at Work in Us”

Friends, I speak to you this morning in the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

In 1968, the economist Garrett Hardin published an article in the journal Science called "The Tragedy of the Commons." It referenced over a millennia's worth of thought that seemed to suggest we have a fundamental social dilemma in that we cannot seem to control ourselves when it comes to shared assets. The ultimate sin of Adam, in some ways, is that when we try to preserve and share common assets, we find some way of mucking it up. We end up depleting the resource, or we end up trying to take too much for ourselves. We get caught in these systems of everyone out for their own benefit.

There certainly seems to be a lot of examples of this phenomena to go around: mineral extraction for the very phones and tablets and technologies that we use day in and day out; the ways in which ground and river water extraction is happening out west here in our own country, in California and over into the high plains of West Texas where my family lived; the depletion of the Colorado River and the Ogallala Aquifer. Even—and this is most tragic for me—the depletion of our resources in producing coffee and tea, because frankly, I'm not sure what I would do without my caffeine kick in the morning.

But the flip side is the other side—"the rest of the story," as Paul Harvey used to say. In actuality, the whole "Tragedy of the Commons" theory has kind of been blown up in the last 20 years. For one thing, it's now recognized that Dr. Hardin was a pretty virulent racist, and a lot of his theory was built on this presupposed framework of resource scarcity and a competition and conflict that doesn't necessarily exist in the world around us. For another, Dr. Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University became the first woman ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 for showing that people, and community systems made up of people, often can and do work cooperatively to preserve resources.

I think this is the perfect framework for us approaching our epistle reading this Sunday and for approaching the whole of our Lenten journey this particular year. St. Paul, in the epistle reading we have today, utilizes a Jewish form of dialectical thought called the Kal V'Chomer, which is to say "from light to heavy." It's a logic argument that's somewhat similar to Western a fortiori argumentation. Paul deploys it in this passage from Romans chapter 5, and we see it most clearly in verse 15 regarding the impact of Adam's transgression.

Adam was a simple human being just like us. If Adam, as a simple human, can have such an impact on the whole of humanity through transgression, then how much more impactful, how much more profound, how much more all-encompassing and totalizing is the restoring work of God's grace in the human form of Jesus? When we think about that greater reality of God's grace, we also find that we have a strength to imitate and follow it. If God provided us this grace, then we—even as humans as broken as Adam was—do not have a lost cause. All is not lost to us. We have a way forward and an opportunity in that imitation of Christ to see through to a new day.

As we hear in verse 17: "If because of one man's trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, 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." So, this Sunday, especially as we reflect on the Gospel passage of the temptation narrative, it can be so very easy for us to fall into the trap of our own temptation: seeing the world just as it is, seeing this desperate struggle for resources, for power, for influence, and seeing things in these bifurcated black and white terms—that all is either wholly ours or wholly lost to us.

But we are invited today to embrace a new way of being. We are invited to imitate Christ in being the abundant purveyors of good and transforming work in the world around us. That work is often in a very small and limited way that, like a stone or a pebble being dropped in a river or lake, begins to ripple out and have larger and larger impacts as the work continues and grows.

To give you a concrete example: In 1966, Robert Boyle, an avid angler and conservationist in New York, began the Hudson River Fishermen's Association because he saw the pollution impacting the Hudson River and the degradation through over-harvesting and a resource-scarcity mentality. Through his efforts, the system was rehabilitated. People began being more conservative with their takes, cooperating to clean up the river, and opposing further pollution. His efforts turned into the National Waterkeeper Alliance, which has these mythic-sounding figures called "Riverkeepers" who advocate on behalf of river systems all over the country.

This has import this very day because the Potomac River has its own Riverkeeper, Dean Naujoks. I once mentioned to him that it sounds like he should have a cloak and a staff, standing on the riverbank protecting the water from all these forces. He quite literally did that in a metaphorical sense just a few weeks ago. As you probably all have heard, a sewer pipeline transfer point broke, and millions of gallons of raw sewage poured into the river. For about 96 hours, Dean was the sole voice drawing attention. At one point, he was in his waders in the muck and the mire, live-streaming on Facebook saying, "Look what's going on. We need to do something about this."

That one stand began to ripple out. It progressed from getting those immediately in charge involved to becoming a state, regional, and even national emergency where resources are now pouring in to address the issue on the Potomac. But it started with his lone stand. We have many ways in which we can take that same approach in our own lives, right here in Damascus. Across the street, we have the Magruder Branch Park, and the Seneca Creek Watershed Alliance helps maintain that system all the way to the Potomac. We have an opportunity to be involved with what they are doing.

Our EDOW Refugee Resettlement Committee works tirelessly to help support those who have come here with so very little. In our own neighborhoods, we work to address food insecurity through our partnership with the Up County Hub, Damascus Help, and other agencies. Each of us, in our own way, has an opportunity to stand, to act, and to offer a transforming and renewing perspective to a world that often gets trapped in a mindset of destruction and lost causes.

This Lent, of all Lents, I am especially drawn to this sense of finding a path forward. One of our great temptations in this moment is to throw up our hands and give up in the face of what seems like so much chaos, discord, and conflict. It can seem a very dark moment in time. And yet, over and over again throughout Holy Scripture and the history of the church, we see the power of individuals and communities standing up for the good news of the Gospel and shining the light of Christ in a world consumed by darkness.

In this Lent, as we return and renew—finding those places where we haven't hit the mark and have come up short—we have an opportunity to be reminded that we are not just "Adams." We are not just destructive forces. We are agents of transformation. Because of the work Christ has done, we have the ability to exercise our "dominion of grace" in the world around us. May we be reminded this season of the power we have through Christ to be those change agents. In big ways and small, may we work to bring about a greater sense of justice, peace, and goodwill.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.