April 2, 2026 Maundy Thursday

I’m going to share with you all at the outset tonight that this sermon and tomorrow’s sermon are paired this year as one thematic arc connecting these first two nights of our great and holy Triduum—the three holiest days of our Christian year.

And I promise, this is not simply a ploy to get you all to come back tomorrow—though that would be nice. The truth is that these two nights take us into the deepest heart of our faith and the truth of who we believe Jesus to be, and the salvific significance of his work upon the cross.

But I want to start in a place very far from there—and from here.

I was born in 1986, and we moved to the Illinois side of the St. Louis metro area when I was a year and a half old. My father pastored a small church for a few years, but by the late 1980s, we were attending Winstanley Baptist Church, which became my spiritual home for the rest of my childhood and adolescence.

Winstanley is located on the top of a small rise on the edge of the bluff line overlooking the Mississippi River, and its entrance sits a mere 500 feet from the eastern edge of East St. Louis. I suspect there were some who wished it was farther away than that.

Winstanley was a product of East St. Louis. Originally a mission church, a group of 33 people met together in the fall of 1907 to formally establish it as a congregation. For decades, they worshiped just blocks from Miles Davis’ childhood home. But in 1968—like many predominantly white churches of that era—they abandoned their downtown home for a place just over the line, literally on the “better” side of the railroad tracks.

And that could have been the end of the story. Except for death and rebirth. Except for servant leadership.

Some of you may remember the years when East St. Louis was consistently one of the most crime‑impacted communities in the country. For years, incredibly high violent crime rates paired with profound corruption made life unimaginably hard.

I’ve told you before about Chet and Michelle Cantrell, who toiled for 30 years serving disadvantaged and underserved children and youth, and about Dr. Steve Phillips, who on his first Sunday in the pulpit at Winstanley proclaimed, “It’s all downhill from here,” reflecting our call to be servant leaders in the community and world around us.

That regeneration—that renewal of spirit and mission—turned a white‑flight church into a powerful force of good works and justice in the world around it. And that legacy of transformation left an indelible mark on me.

That mark isn’t just because of the works. It’s because of who Winstanley was. Over the years, we counted among our membership clean‑cut Air Force officers alongside battle‑scarred enlisted men from Korea and Vietnam. I sat in Sunday school with two Matts—one from a family of leading auto dealers and the other the son of a truck mechanic whose hands were permanently oil‑stained.

It was a church that taught me something profound about being a servant, about being a Christian in this world—but also about the humanity within each and every one of us. The imago Dei—the image of God—that each of us is endowed with by our Creator.

This night, more than any other night of the church year, reminds us of these parallel realities. Christ, in his service to his disciples, models for us the way we are to be servant leaders in the world around us.

If we really put Jesus in context and remember that many of his life experiences were not so different from our own, we begin to see how we are to be in the world. He could have been a zealot—a fighter and protester in the streets, zealous for the law but focused solely on external transformation of systems and institutions. He could have been a Pharisee—or even a Sadducee—focused on the law as a way of living a righteous but detached life, removed from the struggles of inequality.

But he does neither.

He is the Word of God made flesh. He comes as a presence of service—one who builds relationships. He does not take sides, because he offers transformation and healing for all.

What Jesus teaches us—both in the institution of the Eucharist and in the hidden sacrament of foot washing—is that we are to be involved in the dirty, grimy work of service, healing, and transformation that the world so desperately needs. But we are always to do such work within the context of relationship.

Remember too, tonight, that Judas is here at the table. Judas too gets his feet washed. Judas too dines and reclines with Jesus.

Even the one who seeks our death—we are to wash their feet too. We are to invite them to the table.

Years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. observed, “I think it is one of the tragedies, one of the shameful tragedies, that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in Christian America.”

And yet, research in the last twenty years has shown that churches and places of worship remain some of the last bastions of diversity—of relationship across economic, social, and cultural lines.

Blessedly, that was my experience at Winstanley. And I pray that can be our experience here at St. Anne’s too. And in many ways, it is.

But my invitation to us tonight, friends, is this: as we follow Christ and his instruction—as he institutes the Eucharist and teaches us to care for one another and wash one another’s feet—let us remember the central and fundamental call that Christ gives us:

To be people of relationship.

Relationship grounded in justice. Relationship grounded in the works of the Kingdom. Relationships that do not tolerate or accept systems of oppression and injustice, but that are always open—to new life, to transformation, to a new way of being.

The door to relationship is never shut. It is never shut for Christ. And it should never be shut for us.

So tonight, as we receive these admonitions, I pray that not only do we embody them in this moment, but that we carry them forward—this call in a world so divided, in a moment so polarized—to be the people of relationship.

And in being people of relationship, to be the people of transformation that Christ calls us to be.

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

March 29, 2026 Palm Sunday

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

270 – 15 – 81 – 84 – 87.
This may seem cryptic to you or a jumble of nonsense—unless, perhaps, you’re familiar with the eastern half of Pennsylvania. But it’s the line I thread through the network of U.S. highways and interstates when I go to see my confessor at the Episcopal Church’s Holy Cross Monastery outside of Poughkeepsie, New York.

That journey takes me past a lot of evocative place names—Gettysburg, Carlisle, Allentown, Scranton. These places carry complex and dark histories: from the sin and death of war to the atrocities and abuses of the Indian boarding school system. They lie heavy on the landscape with an oily residue of human sin all around.

And sometimes this sin is born of even the best of intentions. I think of those industrialists and working poor of Pennsylvania’s coal fields who sought the great American project of industrial revolution, even as they destroyed the health and vitality of the land and natural resources.

Sin abounds. And yet, we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge that in each of these cases, many of our fellow Christians viewed their actions as righteous. Very rarely in life are these complexities easily resolved. Time and again, we are confronted with the ambiguities and sorrows of a broken world—caught between moral quandaries that seem impossibly hard to resolve.

Very often, we look backward on even our best intentions and see in them spaces and moments of fractured brokenness.

And in some ways, this is the reality of our observance of Palm Sunday and Jesus’ so‑called triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Because that triumphalism is but a fleeting moment of elation.

To play with Leonard Cohen a bit, what we find today is a strained and broken hosanna.

Pope Benedict, in his multi‑volume work on Jesus, writes that all three synoptic Gospels, as well as St. John, make it clear that the scene of messianic homage to Jesus was played out on his entry into the city—and that those taking part were not the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but the crowds who accompanied Jesus and entered the holy city with him.

Things are almost always more complicated than they seem, are they not?

It can be easy to see today’s narrative as Jesus finally getting the earthly recognition he deserves. But that’s not exactly the case. These were ragtag folks from the fringes. The usual crowd of Jerusalemites—especially the social influencers and people of wealth and power—were not the ones participating in today’s activities.

As St. Matthew records, “The city was in turmoil, asking, ‘Who is this?’”

Remember too that it was the feast of the Passover, and people had come from all over for the festival. Matthew continues, “The crowds were saying, ‘This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.’”

The regular citizens were probably unaware of who he was or what was going on. They were perturbed that their routines were being disrupted. They likely looked askance at this spectacle and saw in it nothing more than a circus of distraction—something to gawk at or be frustrated by.

And what of this hosanna?

Pope Benedict points out that this Hebrew term, transliterated into Greek, is a liturgical phrase with ancient roots in the Jewish festival of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles. It is a complicated term, originally with a more somber meaning: “Come to our aid—save us.”

Over time, however, the feast became more festive, and the petition became more a proclamation of joy with messianic overtones. Yet it retains some ambiguity and complexity—and that plays out in the text as well.

In Matthew’s Gospel, after the procession, the chief priests and scribes become particularly angry—among other reasons, because the children of Jerusalem are running around proclaiming hosanna in the temple. Jesus quotes Psalm 8 in reply: “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise.”

But even here, Jesus doesn’t resolve the complexity of the situation.

Even in his crucifixion and resurrection, he doesn’t eliminate our experiences of ambiguity or alienation. He doesn’t take away our feelings of being torn—stuck in the middle, morally compromised.

What he does is stay in the fray. He offers us understanding in times of trial and tribulation.

I say this not to diminish the power of the cross or the profound reality of salvation offered once and for all—but to emphasize that what it does offer is companionship when assurance feels distant.

When we look at our palms and our hands today and see a ragamuffin band of outsiders proclaiming joy into a void, Jesus is here today saying: “I get it. I’m here. This is hard and fraught. But still—find me a donkey. Find me a colt. Be the innocent children playfully running in the temple. Remember who I am, even if no one else does. Dance in the dark. Be silly. Be joyful. The world won’t understand—but that’s okay.”

And so, when we consider who we are to be—how we are to be in the world in this moment—let us fully appreciate our own location.

Just like the other ambiguities, we do not fit neatly into one category or another. I do not truly know your hearts this morning, but I would hazard to guess that many of us here are most like the intelligentsia and state functionaries of the Jerusalem scene.

In our comfort, we look around at the chaos and often get angry or agitated because our way of life has been impacted—our comfort compromised.

Much of what we are confronting in this moment of social upheaval are long‑standing structural and social inequalities, perpetuated by powers that be for generations. We’ve simply not been aware of them because they haven’t impacted us personally.

May we find in this time and season of discomfort not exhaustion or outrage, but instead a greater awareness of those on the margins—a greater ear to listen to their stories, to let them lead us into deeper, righteous relationship.

But then, too, as the church—as a people of resurrection, joy, and hope—we as a community are also a marginalized and outside voice in a present world of cynical nihilism and materialistic obsession.

We, as a community of resurrection, remember today what our first ancestors did on that hillside morning millennia ago.

To a world full of Gettysburgs and Carlisles and Scrantons—to a world full of broken promises and lost dreams—our being the Body of Christ is a ministry of companionship, a witness of understanding and support, a witness to the silly joy in the midst of sorrow.

And like the string of numbers I began with this morning, that may sound like incoherent nonsense to the world at large. It is as though we are speaking an incomprehensible language of hope.

But that doesn’t remove its truth. That doesn’t remove its power.

And especially in times when we, as individuals in the Body of Christ, struggle to remember that truth, it gives us power to go forward.

Even now, we are witnessing the power of light over darkness. Again and again, the world over, we continue to witness the power of joy and light breaking through even the most difficult and darkest of times.

Even now, we can run and jump and shout with glee—“Save us, Hosanna!”—because the one who saves us is with us, even now.

And what a relief that is.

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