Joy is a life-giving and essential thing. Joy is also elusive and unpredictable. Sometimes joy feels distant and unattainable. Anxiety, fear, loneliness, and depression can trick us into believing that joy is not for us. And it is true: joy can be fleeting. It is not an everyday emotion. We may desire joy, but we cannot summon it. It is like the spirit, blowing where it will.

In September, the Vergers Guild of the Episcopal Church held their annual conference in New York. While in town, they visited a few churches and chose Saint Mary’s as one of the parishes to come and see. The scaffolding in front of the church had come down a few months earlier, after blocking our façade for years, so I wanted to make sure to include this in the tour.

I was speaking with a friend of mine recently about whether I’ll be in Rome for Vinoforum this year. Vinoforum is a week-long wine expo that takes place along the Tiber River each year in June. In addition to over 2,500 different wines, there are several top chefs preparing food. I’ve been a few times, though not since before the pandemic. The expo is set up kind of like a small village, a little heavenly town to walk around in, going from hut to hut.

This is one of the well-known parables of the New Testament. It is unique to Luke. No parallels in Matthew or Mark. It is also one of the most difficult to understand parables in the Gospels. This is the third time I’ve preached off of this text at St. Mary’s. I first encountered it with you in 2013 and I took another stab at it in 2019. This is my third attempt to figure out what it means and it differs from my first two accounts, particularly to my sermon in 2019.

I was out one evening this summer with some friends, three couples, and one of them brought along their young daughter, Maia, who was just over a year old. Her mother was trying to get her to eat some sort of baby mush and Maia wanted nothing to do with it. She kept protesting and her mother kept trying to get her to eat it. Maia was persistent. She wanted the potato chips that were on the table. The rest of us found this to be amusing. We were enjoying our drinks and didn’t mind having Maia out with us. I could tell her parents were getting frustrated. At some point, her father gave up and just let her have some potato chips. Maia was thrilled.

When I was in graduate school, I had two classmates who were members of a Roman Catholic religious order well-known for its serious, no-nonsense attitude. The three of us were having dinner one night, sharing stories about seminary. I asked them if their training had been as strict as I’d been told. They told me that it had been at times, though not as tough as in years gone by.

Frequently I hear people talk about how loving, forgiving and accepting the NT is as opposed to the OT. People who feel this way have not read this passage for it exceeds any judgment in the OT. But this is an important if oft neglected passage, especially to preach a sermon about the value of Christianity and its recognition of the real world in which we live. This is a gospel aimed at those who understand that Christianity requires real and hard choices. This passage knows nothing of cultural Christianity, the predominant form of Christianity today.

What does it mean to be the church 2,000 years after the Resurrection? Paul recasts his expectations as the Parousia, that is the 2nd Coming, is delayed. In his early letters he expects the Risen Lord to arrive during his lifetime but in Philippians he revises his expectation to say that (Phil 1:21) for to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.

I still vividly remember the first time that I received the Body and Blood of Christ. Though, I’m not sure I knew that’s what it was. I’m certain I didn’t really know what it meant, even if I knew what it was called. I was pretty young. Let’s say around four years old. I was at church with my grandmother, and she turned to me and said, “today you’re going to receive communion”. “Um, OK”, I said.

In this difficult week we hear, although not as much as formerly, that our Thoughts and Prayers are with the victims and their families. What difference do Thoughts and Prayers make? Are they meaningless words of empty consolation by those who refuse to act? Probably.

Miroslav Volf, a theologian at Yale Divinity School, has said that “There is something deeply hypocritical about praying for a problem you are unwilling to resolve.”[1]

This afternoon, after Mass, our AIDS Walk team will gather and walk together in Central Park. We’ve raised over fifty thousand dollars so far this year! I say “so far,” because our team will continue to raise money through June 10th. The money goes primarily towards the GMHC, the nation’s leading provider of HIV/AIDS care, prevention services, and advocacy. They help and serve nearly 13,000 people here in the city. But, the question I have for us, given today’s Gospel, is how should we understand our work here? Or, our Neighbors in Need program? Sure, I know we are helping where there’s need and making a difference in our community. But, do the implications go even deeper?

It has been my practice for a number of years to preach only on the Gospel. However, the Gospel for Easter II is always the Doubting Thomas story and while I don’t imagine you remember clearly what I said last year when I preached on it here, I do, and I’m tired of hearing what I have to say on Doubting Thomas. I wanted to go off in a new direction. I have preached, here and elsewhere on Doubting Thomas for at least six years. Today my sermon is based on the interesting reading from Revelation. That’s how radical a break I’m taking.

In the collect of the day, our opening prayer, we prayed, “Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners” and we went on to ask God to help our hearts to be “fixed where true joys are to be found.”[1] It's a prayer that sounds perfectly at home in Lent, talking about “unruly wills and affections of sinners.” So, it may be a little surprising that in the prior prayer book, this Lenten-sounding prayer was appointed for the fourth Sunday after Easter.[2] In the middle of Eastertide. And, in fact, that’s where it had been at least since the 700s.[3] Sort of.

Do you think that the Ukrainians, who are suffering and dying, are worse sinners than all of us here in New York? “I tell you, No; but unless [we] repent, [we] will all likewise perish.”[1] That’s essentially Jesus’ message in first part of today’s Gospel passage. It’s startling. And, it is meant to be.

I first preached on this text when I was assisting at All Saints in Princeton, and while the text in front of me was Luke I decided to preach off of Matthew and talked for the entire sermon about what it means to be poor in spirit. This was in the 70s when churches were still full. After the Family Service I would lead a group of about 40 in adult ed and the Rector would lead a larger group on a different topic. For a variety of reasons, I was doing all of the preaching at the Family Service and we were in a period in which my adult ed group reacted to my sermon. So after the Eucharist I went to the meeting room and about 40 men and women told me what they thought of my sermon. They were mostly polite. People are usually polite to the preacher. But a Princeton professor spoke up and said that I had failed.

A week or so ago, Fr. Smith asked me whether I had included a picture from the December drop-in day in the prior issue of the parish newsletter, the Angelus. The Neighbors in Need ministry at St. Mary’s organizes and distributes clothing and other basic necessities for our drop-in days on the third Friday of each month. It’s an important outreach ministry of the parish and I had put a picture in that week’s Angelus. Following the Feast of the Epiphany, which we celebrated on Thursday, I’ve been reflecting on the importance of the picture in ways I hadn’t before.

The Feast of the Epiphany has long been special to me. So, before I work on the Gospel text a few words on why it is special to me. This is the first sermon I’ve preached in a church on the Feast of the Epiphany since at least 1987. In September 1973 I matriculated at Virginia Seminary. Had you asked me I would’ve told you that I was a Christian but in reality I was an Episcopalian with little to no idea what it meant to be a Christian.

It was warm last Thursday, unseasonably so, as I walked home from the East Side. I was not alone. The sidewalks were crowded. I crossed Park Avenue, walked south for a bit, and then headed west toward Madison Avenue. I noticed that many of my fellow New Yorkers had been shopping. They were carrying those distinctive bags, small and exquisitely tasteful, used by exclusive boutiques. As I walked west, the shopping bags changed a bit—more department stores, the maroon bag of a popular doll store, and the flashy bags from stores that sell expensive athletic shoes or the latest phone equipment. As I headed home, I suddenly realized that at the bottom of each one of those bags there was something precious.