The Long Journey Of Healing

4th Sunday in Lent
March 15, 2026
St. Mark’s/San Marcos, Worcester, MA

¹ As [Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. ² His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” ³ Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴ We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. ⁵ As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” ⁶ When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, ⁷ saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. ⁸ The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” ⁹ Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am he.” ¹⁰ But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” ¹¹ He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” ¹² They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

¹³ They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. ¹⁴ Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. ¹⁵ Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” ¹⁶ Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. ¹⁷ So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”
¹⁸ The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight ¹⁹ and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” ²⁰ His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind, ²¹ but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” ²² His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. ²³ Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
²⁴ So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” ²⁵ He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” ²⁶ They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” ²⁷ He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” ²⁸ Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. ²⁹ We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” ³⁰ The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. ³¹ We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. ³² Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. ³³ If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” ³⁴ They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.

³⁵ Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” ³⁶ He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” ³⁷ Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” ³⁸ He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. ³⁹ Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” ⁴⁰ Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” ⁴¹ Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” – John 9:1-41

I wish that healing always came quickly.

In truth, it rarely comes quickly enough, and too often it comes not at all.

I think about work that has been done at Reconciliation House in Webster, where others in our diocese created a place for healing from addiction. Some years ago, Rev. Ford and others created a space for men to live in community, supported through their recovery journey and away from situations that might have made it hard to continue their healing.

Like so many other illnesses, addiction is not a one-time change. It’s a lifetime of healing not just physical effects and chemical addiction, but the deep work of reorienting one’s life and ones relationships.

Today’s gospel reading is one that is a frequent favorite among those who have experienced addiction. Because his healing isn’t a one time change that fixes everything. In fact, at first it makes his life a whole lot more complicated. He gets what sounds like an uncomfortable treatment of mud on his eyes from Jesus, he washes in the Pool of Siloam, and now he can see. But that isn’t the end of the story.

The Pharisees want to debate Jesus’s healing on the sabbath. The man himself doesn’t even really understand what has happened. He gives a kind of half-hearted answer when he is dragged in. Then man’s parents get called in. They don’t know much about what’s going on either.

As the leaders begin to argue over top of him, he finds not only his sight but now also his voice. He speaks up: “I don’t know much about your argument, but that man healed my vision.” However, they can’t let allow that to stand. This healing has disrupted their sense of who is worthy and who isn’t. And they drive him out of town.

Now he can see but he has lost his community all over again, because they could not accept his transformation. There – on the outskirts of human community, feeling lost, alone, and in need of a place to continue his healing in supportive community – there, Jesus meets him again. We don’t know exactly what happens later, but at least in that moment the man not only sees but is seen. He is made new, not just in his body but in his relationships and deep in his soul.

I wonder – what kind of healing are you longing for? So many among us live with chronic health challenges. Every family has strained and broken relationships. Most of us know people who experience depression and anxiety. We are always longing for healing.

We are people whose whole world is in need of healing. We are at war again as a nation, another round of a conflict that has no easy answers and no quick solutions for peace. We live in a divided country where some people try to cast out others from the halls of power and wealth and who refuse even to give one another safe community in which to live.

Our churches are struggling. We have an incredible gift in the presence of God with us, and yet: our buildings weigh us down; we wish for more people to experience the gifts we have and to share in our ministry; we get anxious and fearful about what comes next. Jesus has come and been among us, brought healing even! But often it feels as if the healing is incomplete. Like the man in the gospel reading we are still caught in the fray of messy human community.

Jesus is with us, but healing is often so much slower than we’d like it to be. Even when we resolve some smaller challenge, hundreds more seem to await us.

In this season of Lent we remember the ways we are broken people. Not just bodies that get sick, and age, and one day die. But also people whose relationships are imperfect, whose actions don’t always match intentions, whose hopes are not always realized. And we come together Sunday after Sunday to remember that Jesus comes to be among us. Here, now, in the midst of our unfinished healing.

In Lent we are awaiting Easter, now just a few short weeks away. It will, I pray, be another glorious Easter for you here at St. Mark’s and for all people of faith celebrating around the world. But Easter will not solve the world’s problems. It will not, in most cases, bring healing to all the broken bits of our lives we carry in prayer day in and day out. It will not, unfortunately, bring peace to the world. It will not make doing ministry in our present context any easier.

But maybe this Lent and this coming Easter, we can learn from this man who encounters Jesus and begins a long journey of healing. Perhaps this story invites us to look around and see God at work resurrecting the world in ways that feel imperfect and incomplete to us for now, but which might be signs for us of God’s all-powerful love pouring out daily for us, the ones God so dearly loves.

I see it in places like Reconciliation House that provide a safe community for healing. I see it in the ways that you seek to build relationships with your community here at St. Mark’s. I see it in the ways we begin to work together across lines of race and language and parish and denomination. I see it in the ways that when a member of our community is ill or grieving that we surround that person and those families with food and companionship and prayer.

Some days it all feels like not enough. I wish sometimes that God would swoop in and fix it all. But I do know we meet God here in this place and out there in the world. And that God is slowly opening our eyes to the resurrection that is already blooming here in our broken and hurting world until that day that God has promised when all things are made new.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Stay Salty

5th Sunday after Epiphany
February 8, 2025
St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, Worcester, MA

¹ Shout out; do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
² Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments;
they want God on their side.
³ “Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day
and oppress all your workers.
⁴ You fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
⁵ Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?

⁶ Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
⁸ Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you;
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
^9a Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.”
[

^9b If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
¹⁰ if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
¹¹ The Lord will guide you continually
and satisfy your needs in parched places
and make your bones strong,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water
whose waters never fail.
¹² Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in. – Isaiah 58:1-12

[Jesus said:] ¹³ “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. ¹⁵ People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

¹⁷ “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸ For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹ Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 5:13-20

I know that here at St. Matthew’s, one of the things you do really well is feed people. As such, I’m sure at least some of the key leaders have had to have some training in food safety. You’ve had to think about how to keep surfaces clean, cook food thoroughly, keep cold food cold and hot food hot and make sure that you aren’t accidentally doing any harm in your good efforts. We all know what happens when food spoils. It looks bad, smells bad, and tastes bad. It goes bad when certain kinds of bacteria are able to multiply to unhealthy degrees. Don’t worry, this is not a food safety lecture, I’m going to bring this around to a theological point.

Here in the 21^st century, we have refrigerators – like yours outside ready to serve perishable food to people who need it. We have handwashing protocols and plastic gloves, cleaning spray and high-heat dish sanitizers. But in the ancient world, their resources were more limited. To keep food from spoiling before widespread refrigeration, one of the primary methods was salt. It dries out the food and makes it hard for bacteria to grow. It provided not only essential flavor as it’s most commonly known for today, but allows people to preserve food that might otherwise go bad.

When Jesus says, “you are the salt of the earth,” I’ll bet he’s saying more than just that we are nice to have around, but that we play a central role in the life of our communities.

Because, sometimes our communities can spoil, too. We know when things are off in our community and in our world. We know when things are starting to turn.

Our communities go bad when we fail to communicate well with each other. This, of course, happens in churches as much as any other community – times of disagreement and conflict. It happens in our families and friendships. Our communities go bad when we are torn apart by death, by fear, or by grief.

Our communities go bad when we do violence to one another. When people go hungry. When economic inequality abounds. When we allow some people to have access and others not. Our communities go bad when we single out some people who deserve to be present and others who deserve to be excluded. When we set up some groups of people as enemies. When we try to remove some parts of our community that we don’t like or who are different from others.

In our first reading today, Isaiah shares God’s righteous anger at a community that has spoiled. They have let homelessness and hunger abound, they oppress their workers, they quarrel and fight and sometimes use physical violence. And that’s just the temple-going folk that Isaiah is speaking to! The community has gone bad. How can it be restored? When salt isn’t salty anymore, how can you get it back?

That’s the central question, isn’t it? How do we fix a broken community, one which we ourselves have both sought to serve and help, but which we have also helped to create?

When the world is so utterly broken, how can it be restored to God’s vision of reality again? If salt isn’t salty anymore? What can be done?

You. YOU are the salt of the earth. You disciples, You crowd who have come to listen at Jesus’ feet, you people of St. Matthew’s. All of us people of faith. All of human family. You are the salt of the earth.

The fascinating thing about what Jesus says here is that he doesn’t chide people into being better. He doesn’t proscribe a plan for them to improve themselves or add more community service hours. He just proclaims that they’re salt. That’s who you are. That’s who you’re created to be. And this world needs you to be you in order for it to work.

I sort of imagine God up there as a preparer of food, and to preserve the community, to restore wholeness, God uses what God has – you and me, ordinary people, with ordinary gifts and ordinary faults. To salt the community. God uses us to be the agents that help restore the community.

It’s nothing new – it’s the same thing Isaiah is calling the people to on God’s behalf. “Sit up! Pay attention!” Isaiah says – loose the bonds of injustice, share your food with the hungry, share your home with those who need shelter of a roof or the shelter of a loving family. That’s who you were created to be!

I know that sometimes I live up to that and sometimes I don’t. I don’t always know what to do with that. When salt isn’t salty, when we fail to live up to our calling as the people God made us to be, what then?

I sort of take Jesus’ line in the gospel reading two ways at the same time. On the one hand I hear it as God’s exasperation that despite centuries of reminders to live in right relationship we still manage to mess it up and forget who we are. And that’s the nudge to engage again, to mend, to heal, to reconsider what it is we have to share. To keep doing all the things you’re doing here at St. Matthew’s – feeding the community, caring for one another, proclaiming good news week in and week out.

And at the very same time, I hear God’s promise that either way we’re still God’s beloved children, the very thing God chooses to use to bring wholeness to the community. You’re salt. You can’t be anything else. That’s just who you are – beloved and gifted children of God sprinkled out into the world to enhance the flavor and keep our communities from spoiling.

For now, that doesn’t always feel like enough. The need seems more than we can meet. The injustice seems more than we can stand up against. And yet God comes into our midst, not even in one sense to do something new, but to bring to fulfillment the call and the promise that have been from the beginning. God made the world to be in right relationship, and gifted us with the law and the prophets and the call of Jesus to draw us back to that when the community starts to spoil, when our own hearts start to lose their saltiness.

But even with all the ways we manage to mess things up, God just keeps entering our world and promises one way or another the final restoration of wholeness. God promises that the world will again be a place of peace, a place where every human being feels at home, a place where neighbors help one another and support one another, a place where all creation can thrive together.

Until that happens, take comfort in Jesus’ words that you are the salt of the earth. You are God’s beloved, chosen and sent to a world in need. You are God’s means of preserving our fragile common life. Stay salty!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

#Blessed

4th Sunday after Epiphany (Year A)
February 1, 2026
St. Phillip’s Episcopal Church, Easthampton, MA

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Epiphany/AEpi4_RCL.html

Are you blessed?

I mean, do you feel blessed?

Have you ever posted to social media about some positive development in your life and used #blessed?

Do you have a throw-pillow embroidered with the word or a fancy calligraphed piece of artwork that says how blessed you are?

Because that’s what a lot of people mean when they use the word. A lot of times it gets thrown around as a word to name gratitude. Certainly a good thing – noticing, giving voice to our gratitude for life and love and good things. But blessed sometimes has this connotation of God given. As in, God made this good thing happen, therefore I am blessed. Again, I don’t mean to knock it – noticing with gratitude and giving thanks to God for it is a beautiful spiritual practice.

The challenge comes when we feel #notsoblessed. It doesn’t negate the feeling of the good things, the gratitude. But it’s easy to start to question God’s presence when things aren’t going as planned. What exactly is Jesus talking about?

When we read this famous passage of blessing, the beatitudes, often we take it as some kind of call to become Mother Teresa. Again, we could use a little more Mother Teresa energy in our world, no doubt. But it’s also pretty unattainable.

Or we take the passage as a call to be nice. The poor in spirit, the meek, the mourning, the ones thirsting for righteousness, the merciful, and so on – we too often picture calm, gentle, keeping the peace. A dear friend and colleague of mine likes to say that the church is afflicted by “nice,” meaning we’re better at pretending everything is calm and peaceful in order to avoid doing hard things.

So, what does it mean, then, that Jesus more or less begins his public-facing ministry in Matthew’s gospel with these words? This is Jesus’ campaign launch, setting his agenda, describing who he is and what he’s about.

` He begins not with a declaration of strength, or power, or glory. It is not a declaration against others, against an ideology, against anything.It’s a declaration of blessing. And not a blessing on the victors but on the forgotten, the ignored, the despised, the rejected. It’s blessing where one does not expect it. It is blessing in places that are not usually #blessed. It is blessing for those who are longing and hurting, weeping and sighing.

And it isn’t abstract for Jesus. This is a declaration of what his ministry will be about. He is about to spend the next three years healing the broken, eating with sinners and outcasts, touching lepers, engaging the oppressive authorities, living without a place to go home to. He’s about to put his life on the line not just so that he can inherit the earth with the meek but such that all creation is restored to itself. This is not just a list of nice things we should try to go and be, this is a list of exactly where Jesus plans to be – despised and persecuted. This is a list of where we, in our world today, will find God.

I think one of the challenges for us is to figure out who in our modern world today are the people Jesus is proclaiming blessed. Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber has a well-known list of modern day beatitudes from which I draw here with some of my own updating and editing.

Blessed are the agnostics and those who have doubt, those who aren’t sure and so can still be surprised.

Blessed are those who have nothing to offer and whose need can feel overwhelming to themselves and to those around them.

Blessed are the preschoolers who cut in line at communion and who sing the hymns too vigorously.

Blessed are they for whom death is not an abstraction, whose tears could fill an ocean.

Blessed are the incarcerated, the tear-gassed, the deported, and the beaten.

Blessed are they who feel they cannot fall apart because they are keeping it together for everyone else.

Blessed are the unnoticed, the forgotten, the lonely, and those forced into hiding.

Blessed are the children who eat alone at the lunch table, the youth who stand between the bullies and the bullied.

Blessed are those without documentation and those without an advocate in a broken system.

Blessed are those who stand between the oppressed and the oppressor.

Blessed is everyone who has forgiven us when we haven’t deserved it.

And that is just the beginning. Just the beginning of God’s blessing that which we forget to bless. Just the beginning of where we will find the strength and joy and comfort and love of God’s presence in our world. Just the beginning of where God will show up in us and our lives and our ministry. This word of blessing is just the beginning of all Jesus will do in his life and all Jesus will do in ours.

There is blessing not just because of what God promises in the blessing, but because it is in those very places that we will find Jesus. Blessed because there we are in the presence of God.

Dear ones of St. Philip’s, I dare say Jesus today blesses churches that have moved from just trying to survive to celebrating their thriving. Blessed are churches that don’t have a budget as big as they might want and do ministry anyway. Blessed are churches that feed the vulnerable with take and eat meals. Blessed are churches that pray and sing and speak God’s love for this aching world week after week.

It doesn’t always feel #blessed. Maybe sometimes it does. I hope sometimes it does. But it is always where we find Jesus. But I have a warning for you. Living in the places we find Jesus is not safe. To live in these spaces, to put ourselves not with the powerful of our world, to stand with the vulnerable, to actually do the things that might bring about a just peace in this world? Well…in the words of Paul, it’s foolishness.

It will likely get you nowhere in terms of how the world measures success. Doing justice, loving mercy, and walking with God in these ways is not guaranteed to increase your average Sunday attendance or your parochial report revenues. It will not likely gain you riches or fame or power over others. Sometimes, like Jesus and like so many others who put themselves between the powerful and the vulnerable, it will get us killed. That’s the foolishness of the cross. It’s the foolishness of believing what Jesus says about where we find real blessing. It’s the foolishness of God’s abundant mercy for me, for you, for the neighbors we love so dearly, and for the ones we hate with a passion.

This world right now needs to know the presence of Christ in these beautiful and powerful and blessed ways. And that is what we are doing here today, doing here every Sunday. We are becoming again the body of Christ, blessed and broken for the sake of the world. We are feasting together in order to remember the presence of God in us, so that we are ready to go again into a world who calls this radical love foolishness. But we remember, that wherever we go from here, God calls that radical love blessed. And, that no matter what, God proclaims you blessed, in your life today, tomorrow, and the next day, in your life in joy and sorrow, in your life when you walk the way of justice and when you feel the weight of the broken world. Dear ones, blessed are YOU.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

The Voice That Creates

Baptism of Our Lord (Year A)
Sunday, January 11, 2026
All Saints, South Hadley, MA

1 Ascribe to the Lord, you gods, *
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his Name; *
worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
3 The voice of the Lord is upon the waters;
the God of glory thunders; *
the Lord is upon the mighty waters.
4 The voice of the Lord is a powerful voice; *
the voice of the Lord is a voice of splendor.
5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedar trees; *
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon;
6 He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, *
and Mount Hermon like a young wild ox.
7 The voice of the Lord splits the flames of fire;
the voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; *
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
8 The voice of the Lord makes the oak trees writhe *
and strips the forests bare.
9 And in the temple of the Lord *
all are crying, “Glory!”
10 The Lord sits enthroned above the flood; *
the Lord sits enthroned as King for evermore.
11 The Lord shall give strength to his people; *
the Lord shall give his people the blessing of peace. – Psalm 29

Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” – Matthew 3:13-17

The old saying goes, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

Well, sorry if this bursts anyone’s bubble, but despite the good intentions behind its use, I think that saying is nonsense. We all know that words can and do hurt. They can, certainly, also heal. But at least according to one study it takes 4 positive comments to overcome one negative comment. Anyone who’s ever felt a deep gut punch at harsh words or felt their body shake in a tense verbal conflict knows that words create physical realities.

That’s the language the Bible uses to talk about the very creation of the world. God spoke and it came to be. God’s voice, God’s words, shaped oceans and mountains, fish, birds, and creeping things. God’s words, at least according to the first poem of creation in Genesis, created human beings.

In today’s psalm God’s voice breaks the cedars of Lebanon, splits the flames of fire, shakes the wilderness, and strips the forests bare. Just words, one might say. Just a bit of speech, sound waves the bounce around. But they have immense power to create new realities.

Most acts of violence start with words. It’s well documented that oppressive regimes and the genocide of peoples most often begins with a shift in the ways we talk about each other. Speech that subtly, at first, dehumanizes some person or group of people. Speech that becomes gradually more aggressive, more violent. Speech that makes some uncomfortable, but which takes over gradually enough that the backlash is too little too late. Speech that sooner or later justifies physical violence, and which has already done violence without lifting a finger.

It’s how all manner of painful and violent things begin on a smaller scale. A relationship deteriorates when the communication becomes contemptuous. Skirting ethical boundaries often begins with a little voice of justification from within. We begin to doubt ourselves when some voice we’ve internalized tells us we’re not good enough. Words make things happen in the world.

The voice of God is a powerful voice, the voice of God is a voice of splendor.

God uses God’s voice for all manner of things. To create the world. To call people to a particular ministry. To liberate God’s people. To shake the earth, whether that’s in sheer glory or in the rumble of transformation and judgment, it isn’t always clear.

And God does something else with God’s voice that is, maybe one could argue, the most powerful thing God does with God’s voice: God names things beloved. The earth-shaking, fire-splitting voice of God tears open the heavens and speaks: “This is my beloved one with whom I am well-pleased.”

God proclaims these words about Jesus at his baptism. Each gospel phrases it just a little differently – in Matthew’s gospel we read today is framed as a proclamation to everyone, clarity about Jesus’ identity for all to hear and know. But God could say a lot of things in this moment. This is my Son, the powerful. This is my Son, the wise. This is my son, the perfect one. This is after all in the context of John’s baptism of repentance calling people to right behavior and right relationship. But of all the things the voice of God could speak into being in that moment, God speaks belovedness.

While Jesus’ baptism is clearly a unique event, it is also a huge part of the basis for our own baptismal practice. In this world that claims God’s voice to do and say all manner of things, when we baptize God’s voice says to the new child of God, “You are my child, my beloved, with you I am well-pleased.”

What does it sound like, what does it feel like when the voice that created the heavens and the earth speaks to you with love and tender care? I won’t presume that God always uses and audible voice to say it. But I have known moments that I’ve heard it deep in my bones. Or more accurately deep in my gut. There have been moments for me that God’s voice has cut through all the other loud voices around me and within me to make those words known. You are my beloved.

And I know that whether you’ve had those moments of recognition in your life or not, whether you’ve heard that voice in your life or not, that God is speaking that to you over and over, desperate for you to know deep in your being the profound, earth-shaking love that God has for you.

And, like it did for Jesus, that incredible love spoken at baptism comes with a call. God’s voice can and does speak wherever and however God needs it to. Later in the gospels comes the line, “If these are silent, even the stones will cry out.” God speaks in nature, in scripture, in bread and wine, in water. And God chooses to speak through us.

That powerful, earth-shaking voice resonates through us and through our words and our actions. Our neighbors in the UCC use the slogan, God is still speaking. I believe that. God’s belovedness speaks into being a reality for us that opens our hearts and minds and mouths to share that with the world.

They say that just one affirming person in a mentoring role can often keep a young person who identifies within the LGBTQIA+ spectrum alive long enough to find their community even if others around them condemn them. That’s the power of God’s voice speaking belovedness.

We live in society that fails to fully welcome the stranger and the foreigner. Whatever policies we support or hopes we have for us as a country, we are called to speak the reminder that all human beings are beloved of God. Everyone is worthy of life, shelter, food, and community. We are called as God’s people to echo that message of belovedness and work against even the more subtle ways that some of God’s children are dehumanized in our communities.

We have a call daily to speak that belovedness in our words and actions with those around us – our families, our colleagues and classmates, people we don’t yet know that we encounter out in the world. We bear the weight of so much happening in the world and in our lives that it can be more challenging than it seems it should be to speak and act with that recognition. But when we hear God’s care for us cut through all that, it cannot help but spill out beyond us into the world around us.

Friends here at All Saints, you’ve been used to one primary voice speaking to you from this pulpit for many years, calling you back to this truth. I know that Rev. Wallace made space for lots of people to share their voice, to be instruments of God’s speaking love into this hurting world. But she was present to lead you, remind you, walk with you in that work. Now you enter a time of transition. In the midst of grief at her leaving, God’s reminds you – you are beloved. In the midst of figuring out what is next, God reminds you – you are beloved. Now and in all the ministry that is still ahead for you here at All Saints, God echoes through you to the community and to the world that message that all God’s children are beloved.

Wherever and however you hear that voice and feel its power, know that if it’s God’s voice it comes with this undeniable truth that you are God’s beloved. It may come alongside other truths that are hard for us to hear. It may come alongside a call to something that is harder than we think we can manage. It may be hard to decipher at times in the midst of so many other voices. But hear it now, today, for you: You are God’s beloved child, in you God is well-pleased.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Honoring God’s Body

2nd Sunday of Christmas
January 4, 2026
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Millville, MA

¹ In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, magi from the east came to Jerusalem, ² asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star in the east and have come to pay him homage.” ³ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him, ⁴ and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵ They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet:
⁶ ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah,
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ ”
⁷ Then Herod secretly called for the magi and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. ⁸ Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” ⁹ When they had heard the king, they set out, and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen in the east, until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰ When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. ¹¹ On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. ¹² And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

¹³ Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” ¹⁴ Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt ¹⁵ and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

¹⁶ When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. ¹⁷ Then what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
¹⁸ “A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” – Matthew 2:1-18

How does the beloved Christmas story, filled with angel song, a shining star, and rejoicing so quickly take a turn? How is it that the gift of God to the world becomes the trigger for a murderous rampage by king Herod? Where is God in all this?

Valid questions, all of them. And ones I don’t fully have answers to. But I will say that it has something to do with King Herod and his tendency to use people rather than seeing people for beautiful people who bear in themselves the very image of God.

That’s the only way that kind of violence, whether on a large scale or small one, comes into being – when we fail to recognize the humanity of another. I’ll presume that none of us here are seeking to be like Herod. He’s clearly the bad guy here. As soon as the magi appear, the scheming begins and the visitors and officials become pawns in his game. He wants to eliminate the threat to his power, to the tiny thread of power to which he is clinging. He is a small town pawn of the much bigger Roman empire, using his power mostly to oppress his neighbors. I think it’s fair to say that his ego outstrips his actual power. It’s a sign of how fragile his hold on power is that a tiny infant threatens him.

When he realizes he’s been tricked by the magi, and he can’t directly eliminate this threat, he issues an absurd command. He seeks to eliminate all the little ones of the region. To him those innocent ones and their families who will grieve for the rest of their lives are just more pawns. They are already less than human in Herod’s mind. To issue this terrible decree is to have already deemed some people less than worthy of their existence.

Jesus and his family, thanks to the angelic messenger and Joseph’s listening, escape. But so many are not so fortunate. So many others are forever harmed by this act of violence.

We know all too well that acts of violence still plague our world. There are plenty of Herods out there using violence to cling to power. Herods who dehumanize whole swaths of people. But it’s not just international headlines. We don’t have to issue genocidal decrees to devalue other human beings.

I don’t know about you, but all too often I judge others and deem them less than for one reason or another. I one hundred percent believe that every human being is made is God’s image, and put me on the highway behind someone going below the speed limit in the left-hand lane, and my belief fails to go into practice.

Road rage aside, there are a lot more poignant moments in our daily interactions where we fail to recognize the humanity of others. How often have I met someone and made a quick judgment based on appearances? How often have I discredited someone because of some detail in their background? How often have I been barely courteous to service employees because I was caught up in my own busyness? How often have I bypassed someone in need because I didn’t feel I had the time or energy to help? How often have I played into the deep political divisions in our country and judged someone who thinks differently, even when that person is someone near and dear to my heart?

In case you’re wondering, these are rhetorical questions. I haven’t been keeping an actual tally, and if I had, I’d probably be embarrassed to share it this publicly. I don’t want to give you the impression I’m a terrible person, but I know I’m far from perfect. And I suspect you resonated some with at least a few of those, or something similar. The thing is that we often fail to recognize the humanity of others. When we are in conflict, when we feel threatened, when we are ourselves hurting and broken, we tend to demonize others or at least dismiss them. We may not by King Herod, but we contribute in little ways to the kind of dehumanization that ultimately leads to such terrible actions.

It’s into this human mess that God is born. God’s response to our inhumanity is to take on humanness, to take on flesh, to dwell among us. God’s response to our tearing one another down and tearing the world apart, is to be a human among us. That’s what Christmas celebrates. God’s choosing not just to take on the frailty of a human body, of an infant completely dependent on human parents, but to take on flesh in the midst of a world that fails to honor the basic dignity of others.

In doing so, God reminds us in the most profound way I can imagine, that every body is holy, that every human life is worthy, that every human being is precious and loved by God. Like the magi we come to this place seeking Christ, seeking a mystery beyond our imagining. Whatever has drawn us here, we meet Christ, embodied in bread and wine, embodied in word and prayer and song. Perhaps most importantly we meet Christ embodied in one another, gathered together to worship and live in faithful community together. Like the Magi, that encounter changes us. It invites us to journey back into the world by a different way.

The encounter here with Christ invites us to go back into the world seeking out the humanity in others. When we respond to the call to serve others, we can do that in a way that is transactional and reinforcing of the divisions between haves and have-nots or we can lean into a more relational opportunity. Rather than just offering things to others, we can find appropriate ways to connect and humanize each other. The inequities that divide us dehumanize both those who have and those who don’t. I have challenged myself even in encounters where I am not able to offer help to those who ask, to engage with them as a human.

When we enter into conversations that become tense or conflicted, we can pause and remember that whatever the disagreement, however vitally important, we can be grateful that the person before us exists, that the person is a human worthy of love. It does not solve our problems, and there are big consequences to some of the disagreements we experience. But we can always affirm the other person’s full humanity.

I strive to do this. Sometimes, I am successful. When I manage to do this, I’ve learned it is utterly transformative for me. That recognition of the humanity of another, especially someone with whom I disagree, helps me reorient myself and broaden my experience not just of the world but of who God is. In some ways that’s the move we are making this week from the season of Christmas to the season after Epiphany. It is the move from encounter with Christ to the broadening of that message for the nations.

Despite our best efforts, though, we all sometimes fail at this. When that happens we will need to seek forgiveness. We will need to try again. We will need to make repairs to our neighbors and our communities. But God will not abandon us. God will be born in our midst again and again and again. God will continue to show up in our lives embodied in the world around us, embodied especially in the people we encounter. And in doing so God will continue redeeming us and all the world. Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Christmas is For YOU

Christmas Eve 2025
Christ Memorial Episcopal Church, North Brookfield

² The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.
³ You have multiplied exultation;
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people exult when dividing plunder.
⁴ For the yoke of their burden
and the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
⁵ For all the boots of the tramping warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
⁶ For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders,
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
⁷ Great will be his authority,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. – Isaiah 9:2-7

¹ In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. ² This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³ All went to their own towns to be registered. ⁴ Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. ⁵ He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. ⁶ While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. ⁷ And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room.

⁸ Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹ Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: ¹¹ to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” ¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
¹⁵ When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” ¹⁶ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. ¹⁷ When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child, ¹⁸ and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them, ¹⁹ and Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told them. -Luke 2:1-20

I had lots of Christmas-time traditions growing up, but one that was often sort of in the background but often present, was the music of Handel’s Messiah. Though it was originally composed with Easter in mind, the arc of that narrative begins with incarnation. Over time it found a place in the Christmas repertoire. And the only real line I remember with distinction from hearing it in childhood was the part that sets to music the lines we read tonight from the prophet Isaiah:

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be call-ed: Wonderful Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace!”

I loved the way the music proclaimed those names for God. Jesus may have come as an infant, but he would know how to walk with us, support strong civil authority and justice, rule with might forever, and, perhaps most importantly, bring peace.

These are words we long to hear just as Isaiah’s first listeners did. They were in a time of political upheaval. There was turmoil among their own people and threats their small Hebrew community would be overthrown by mightier armies. They were questioning God’s presence and the future of their faith community, their ability to be free to practice their faith. And as there is in every age, there was injustice, fear, illness, and death. They longed for the promised messiah.

The same is true of the beloved Christmas story itself. Luke’s gospel sets the birth of Jesus in the context of empire. Once again, the Hebrew people are facing oppression from rulers and empires bigger than they are. They are wrestling with what it means to live their faith in the midst of big questions and daily challenges. The town of Bethlehem is overflowing with guests. Mary and Joseph can’t even find a welcoming place to lay their heads. The birth of the Christ child happens among the animals, unnoticed by almost everyone. Even the shepherds would have been unaware had the heavenly chorus not shown up to alert them. It always strikes me reading the story that almost everyone in the world missed the birth of Jesus. Longing as they must have been for the prince of peace to transform their lives and the world, they missed the important moment.

Perhaps you feel that way, too. The violence in our world cries out for peace. The injustice in our world longs for a reorientation. Our hearts broken by grief long for comfort, for new life. Most of our days, and perhaps especially at this time of year, our calendars get full, our lives are busy, the next urgent thing calls our attention until we are too exhausted to rest.

In the midst of all that I return to the words of Isaiah. Reading those lines again this week, I was struck by the little words the music doesn’t really emphasize that much, the little words that easily get lost as we focus on the mighty God and prince of peace. To us. To us a child is born. To us a son is given.

Tonight you have come to this space, in the midst of all that is going on in the world, in all that is going on in your own lives. To meet again the one who comes for you. For us.

Even here it can be easy to miss. We sing the beloved carols, we read the familiar story, and we know how it all turns out. We know that Handel’s messiah rolls on to tell the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection for the life of the world. We confess as much in the creeds. Even if we feel in deep in our hearts this night, we are tempted to quickly roll on to the next thing, the next celebration, the next task that needs our attention.

But here tonight, hear again those little words. The holy one comes to you. For you. Christ comes into this world where empires rage and violence abounds. Christ comes to this country, divided and hurting. Christ comes into this busy season. Christ comes to this congregation seeking to be faithful in this time and place. Christ comes to our lives, with all their joy and sorrow and pain and surprises. Christ comes…to you.

Much of the time I suspect we are like the multitudes on that first Christmas Eve, and we miss entirely that God has entered the world anew, and miss that the presence of God is slowly growing in our midst toward the cross of Good Friday and that Handel-worthy Hallelujah chorus of Easter. Sometimes, like the shepherds, we get a wonderful sign that points us to the in-breaking of God to our world. But even when we miss it, as we often do, God is still present in this world, not just in a generic way but for each and every one of us.

Tonight we gather, of course to sing the familiar carols, to hear the familiar story, but also to receive the embodied presence of Christ. You all invited me months ago to be here with you for Christmas Eve because it has been several Christmas Eves now that you have been without a priest for Eucharist. And of course God is just as present when we are unable to celebrate at the table together. But there is a way in which that holy encounter at the table is an opportunity to come before God in a particular way.

Like many others, when I teach first communion to younger kids – and sometimes with adults too! – I help them prepare for receiving communion by suggesting that they put their hands out together like this and to think of it like making a manger with their hands to receive Jesus. For it is Christ’s very body we welcome and hold in the bread and wine, it is Christ we welcome into our hearts and our bodies. In my own Lutheran tradition the typical words we say when we share communion are different: instead of “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven. The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation,” we say “The body of Christ given for you. The blood of Christ shed for you.” Tonight Christ is here for you.

I invite you tonight, in the midst of joy-filled carols that ring out with the heavenly chorus, in the midst of the familiar story, in the midst of our complicated, messy, broken lives, in the midst of broken systems that perpetuate injustice and violence, to pause and remember that this night, and every night, the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting parent, the prince of peace comes here and now for you.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Asking About Resurrection

22nd Sunday after Pentecost
November 9, 2025
Zion Lutheran, Oxford & Reconciliation Episcopal, Webster

Anyone who knows me just a little bit knows that I’m a planner, and organizer, a type-A personality. I have a plan A, B, and C, knowing what I’ll do if things don’t go the way I expect. When I go on vacation there are spreadsheets involved in planning. If you know anything about the Enneagram personality type system, I’m a 5, one of my core drivers is to get information, and the belief that if I just had all the information I could fix all the things. I want to understand how things work and how to make a system that maximizes benefit for everyone. Like any personality traits, this is both a strength and a weakness.

But I share it with you because it makes me a little sympathetic to the Sadducees. They have taken in the information they have available to them and they’ve come to seriously question that an afterlife is possible. Their question is meant, I’m sure, to trap Jesus. But I think it also comes from their own deep desire to understand – if God’s going to resurrect people, how will this really work? I mean, it’s pretty implausible when you think about it.

The scenario they choose highlights a vulnerable woman. Someone acquainted with tragedy and grief. Someone who through social norms was likely on the margins. They create a hypothetical not out of care and concern for the subject of their story but in order to prove a point. These are men in power who are using the plight of a vulnerable woman to argue a point. That’s not to say they didn’t also in their faith make meaningful acts of charity and support the vulnerable. But not unlike in our own day when recipients of SNAP food aid are caricatured in the media and used as a pawn in bigger political game, they ignore the humanity of the very people they are seeking to lead and guide.

They come to Jesus with this hypothetical situation and ask how this will all work in the resurrection that Jesus and other Jewish groups at the time believed in. Come on, Jesus, they say, this whole thing just doesn’t make sense! Just admit it, it’s just a fantasy to make everyone feel better. People have been wrestling with what happens when we die since long before Jesus and they still are today. Among Christians in the 21^st century you’ll find faithful people who have very different ideas about what God means by resurrection and ideas about heaven. That’s to say nothing of those people of other faiths who have their own breadth of beliefs about the afterlife, and those who are not people of faith who certain include those who point to a logical argument to debunk the idea.

Jesus doesn’t explain how it will all work. God doesn’t have a rulebook that explains whose husband she will be in death. It’s not as if God pulls out volume 73 of the Heavenly Code and recited section 574 subsection B, defining the marriage rules of heaven. Instead Jesus’ answer is that they’re asking the wrong question. Falling into the fullness of God’s love isn’t about rules, or even human relationships and conceptions. It’s something so outside of what we can conceive that we wouldn’t even understand it.

What Jesus is doing, this whole resurrection thing, isn’t about fixing up the world as it is, it’s about an entirely new creation. Something beyond what we can conceive.

We have our own existential questions when faced with death – our own or the death of those we love. We want some assurance that we will be together again, some promise that it isn’t the ending. These become very real questions for us – will my pet be with me in heaven? Will my body be fully healed in resurrection? How will I be both the child my parent remembers and the adult my children know me to be? Will the streets be paved with gold? Will heaven be an endless feast or a joyful unending worship?

God’s answer to our deepest longings, the hopes we cling to in grief, is not to give us definitive answers, but to show us resurrection. Jesus doesn’t explain it all for us, but invites us to trust his leading through death into new life. God’s answer to every last one of those deep questions is “I love you. You are mine. I am bringing you new life.”

Jesus not long after speaking with these Sadducees goes to the cross and the grave. Jesus shows us the fullness of life and death. And then, when all hope seems lost, when the end has come, new life begins again. Jesus’ resurrected body is both familiar and mysterious, both comforting and challenging, both wounded and restored. In response to the fear and grief and pain of his followers Jesus shows himself to them and calls them forward into yet another new life, another restart, another resurrection.

The answer to what happens after we die is beyond our knowing. But God’s love and God’s promise of new life is already erupting in our world. Every time we get caught up in trying to puzzle out how everything works, every time we try our hardest to organize our life and our plans, God has something more in store.

When congregations are no longer sustainable on their own, God finds a way to continue the work of the gospel – for some through the generous releasing of resources, for others like you here at Zion/Reconciliation – in partnership that enriches and strengthens the opportunity for ministry. These are resurrection moments. And that’s really the way of the church – it’s not a place where everything is neat and orderly and life is made simple and easy. It’s a place where embodied people gather to be together and celebrate the ways that God is doing something new and unexpected in our midst.

When people go without food and strangers are not fully welcomed, our ministries make the table a little bigger and stretch the loaves and fishes until all are fed. When veterans are struggling to find a community that cares, a table is set to provide not just food but community. These are resurrection moments.

A few of you might have heard that my family and I traveled to Jamaica to attend a dear friend’s wedding and we ended up having to shelter there through the hurricane and its aftermath. We were and are safe, we were in a place of incredible privilege in the midst of disaster. As we talked with local people afterward, they not only spoke with a sense of togetherness, community that has and will support one another through whatever comes. It was a terrible tragedy that will take years and even lifetimes to recover from. Many are very much in survival mode still. And yet, there is resurrection already happening. They aren’t focused on how, they are focused on life.

This is what Jesus is about. Not careful plans, not everything going right, not everything working out neatly and orderly. Jesus is about life, wherever it is and however it comes. Jesus does not ignore death and all of the questions and grief that comes along with it. Instead Jesus walks us through it, not just telling us the answer but leading us there in this life and the one to come.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Holy Cross, Tree of Life

Holy Cross Day & Second Sunday in the Season of Creation
September 14, 2025
Grace Episcopal Church of the Southern Berkshires

Last week I worshipped with my home church community, Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in South Hadley. The first Sunday after Labor Day is a nationwide Lutheran day of service, and at our church we continued the long process of making the church property more environmentally friendly as well as supportive of our human neighbors. There is a growing vegetable garden to support the local food pantry, a gradual transformation of grass lawn to wildflower meadow, a hope to make space for people to come and meditate in the natural world. Nothing compared the extent of your work here at Gideon’s Garden but a big endeavor for the small congregation. Several members are dedicated to learning and leading in this endeavor and last week my task for our day of service was to tackle some invasive plants.

I was pulling up swallow-wort, an invasive plant Monarchs sometimes mistake for milkweed, laying eggs that hatch caterpillars that can’t eat the plant. It was seemingly everywhere in the small patch in which we were working, its seedpods already opening and spreading themselves on the wind. It felt futile even to try, but every plant and seed pod put away was something against what should not be there.

And I was pulling out as much oriental bittersweet as I possibly could. This invasive vine is well known for taking over. It grows up and grabs on to whatever it can – in this case some large and healthy evergreen trees. It can outcompete native species and take over an area. It was easy to identify, but as I pulled at one part of the vine it would bring along with it vines from other directions, often bringing with it much longer vines trailing much higher up than I realized. I would wrap a bit around my hand, pull until it either came loose or stuck firm, and used the clippers to what I could. It was, I have to say, rather satisfying to pull these up, even though I knew I could not fully eradicate it from the property.

As I did this, it was reminding me of a hymn called There in God’s Garden. It’s a hymn often sung on Good Friday: a beautiful poem that weaves the tree of wisdom from the Garden of Eden, the cross of Jesus’ death, and Christ himself crucified and risen in every age. These are the first three stanzas*:

1 There in God’s garden
stands the Tree of Wisdom,
whose leaves hold forth
the healing of the nations;
Tree of all knowledge,
Tree of all compassion,
Tree of all beauty.

2 Its name is Jesus,
name that says, “Our Savior!”
There on its branches,
see the scars of suff’ring;
see where the tendrils
of our human selfhood
feed on its lifeblood.

3 Thorns not its own
are tangled in its foliage;
our greed has starved it,
our despite has choked it.
Yet, look! it lives!
its grief has not destroyed it
nor fire consumed it.

These mighty evergreens on our church grounds stood, continuing to grow, to shelter other life, to breathe oxygen into our world, even with the vines that grew, tangling themselves in the foliage, threatening, if not to overtake the mighty trees, at least to bother them a bit and choke out other plants.

How like our world, where our greed attempts to starve the tree of life, where our spite has choked it. The invasiveness of our human destruction is everywhere. We remember in this season especially the way we destroy habitats, harm our plant and animal neighbors, pollute our waters, and consume carbon at alarming rates, destabilizing the climate that supports us all. While the bittersweet might not fully choke out those evergreens, our destruction might well destroy the earth our home.

So, too, all the terrible things we do to our human neighbors. We use guns to silence those we don’t agree with and destructive weapons to destroy people we consider expendable. We plow forward with policies that leave too many without healthcare, food access, and even their freedom. Our whole communities are harmed immigrants are singled out and shipped away.

I don’t know about you, but it feels like those things are reaching up like oriental bittersweet, not only making it hard to grow and thrive, but putting us at risk of death itself. I’ve become so accustomed to the evil in the world and within myself, that those things seem like the native species of our garden.

Jesus invites us today in the gospel to keep walking, not to let the powers of evil and destruction overtake us. But that invitation is one that can be exhausting. Fighting the vines of greed, fear, anxiety, prejudice, and division, it feels as if they pull us down even as we try to take those steps forward. Ripping them from our world takes concentrated effort and even then it only does so much good.

The garden in which we live, despite the prevalence of those invading vines, is one that is planted for our flourishing. A garden rich in welcome for all creatures – human, animal, and plant alike. A garden that produces food enough for all. A garden that grows shade and shelter for people from every tribe and nation. A garden that flourishes from the peaceful interconnectedness of a great multitude of species.

We have a call, my siblings in faith, to do our part to pull out those invasive species. Literally, of course. But figuratively as well. We plant anew every spring to feed people with nourishing vegetables, but also with needed mentorship and community in your garden. We advocate for policies that protect the most vulnerable. We share our resources with those in need. We seek peaceful ends, not just to global conflict but in our own small disputes with our neighbors. We learn and pray and act. And it is never enough.

As I pulled up the bittersweet last week I knew I would not get it all. It is, even now, growing back in places. The swallow-wort had already gone to seed and our destruction of the remaining pods on one small property does not quell the advance of that and other invasive species across the state. We do that work not because we will fix the world, but because we honor the garden of wisdom and life that continues to grow.

On this Holy Cross day, we honor the symbol at the heart of our faith. The cross we wear around our necks, that we process in worship, that finds prominent place on banners and church logos – it’s become so common I think we forget what it really means. Yes, an instrument of shame and torture, but more than that a reminder that oppression, death, violence, destruction are all an ongoing part of our world and that Christ is deeply present in it.

Paul says it this way in Galatians: May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Another hymnwriter, Marty Haugen, says it this way: Tree of Life and awesome mystery, in your death we are reborn; though you die in all of history, still you rise with every morn.

In every garden there is death and new life. In every place weeds and invasive evil abound. And yet the tree of life stands in the midst of it all, breathing life-giving oxygen to feed our breath, sheltering and shading, producing nourishment for body and soul, experiencing with us the victories and the defeat, drawing all people to the center.

God promises one day a new creation, a restoration of that beautiful garden to its natural state, creating a home for all. But we live today knowing that is not just some distant reality, but the foundation of our earthly home despite so much evidence to the contrary.

And so the last three stanzas of that hymn:

4 See how its branches
reach to us in welcome;
hear what the Voice says,
“Come to me, ye weary!
Give me your sickness,
give me all your sorrow,
I will give blessing.”

5 This is my ending,
this my resurrection;
into your hands, Lord,
I commit my spirit.
This have I searched for;
now I can possess it.
This ground is holy.

6 All heav’n is singing,
“Thanks to Christ whose passion
offers in mercy
healing, strength, and pardon.
Peoples and nations,
take it, take it freely!”
Amen! My Master!

Shake Off the Dust

4th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 14C)
July 6, 2025
Christ the King-Epiphany Church, Wilbraham, MA

Worship, including readings and sermon are recorded here: https://www.youtube.com/live/waWnW3J3gXY?si=EgT8dsQN4rLayl0h

[¹ My brothers and sisters, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. ² Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. ³ For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. ⁴ All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor’s work, will become a cause for pride. ⁵ For all must carry their own loads.
⁶ Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher.]
⁷ Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. ⁸ If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh, but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. ⁹ So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. ¹⁰ So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all and especially for those of the family of faith.

¹¹ See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! ¹² It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who try to compel you to be circumcised—only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. ¹³ Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh. ¹⁴ May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. ¹⁵ For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation is everything! ¹⁶ As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. – Galatians 6:1-16

¹ After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. ² He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. ³ Go on your way; I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. ⁴ Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. ⁵ Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ ⁶ And if a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on that person, but if not, it will return to you. ⁷ Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. ⁸ Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; ⁹ cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ ¹⁰ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ¹¹ ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’

¹⁶ “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

¹⁷ The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” ¹⁸ He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. ¹⁹ Indeed, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you. ²⁰ Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” – Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

There was a time, hopefully mostly in the past, when we told our children and our peers to just get up, dust yourself off, and move on.

And I can appreciate that advice on the one hand. There are times when we make a mistake, we fall and get mildly hurt, something we have worked on just doesn’t work, and there’s some level of resiliency that is good – to be able to pick up and keep going.

On the other hand, sometimes it has been used to cover up pain that needs attention, to suppress emotions, to ignore a process of repair and amends when wrong has occurred, and promote a kind of toxic bravado. Just push through, carry on.

And all that rings in my mind when Jesus tells the seventy that he sends out in pairs what they are to do when they encounter an unwelcoming community. Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Just dust yourself off and keep going.

On the one hand, Jesus is in a moment of urgency to communicate the good news of God come near. He encourages the seventy apostles to keep moving and do the work where its possible to do it, and not carry with them the lack of welcome that they will inevitably encounter.

But on the other hand, we all know that trying to do good work, God’s work sometimes we get burned. People resist, complain, argue, and sometimes outright disparage one another. The ways of the world prevail against the equality and justice and compassion of God’s realm. And you know what, sometimes it leaves us scarred, bruised in soul if not also in body. It can leave us feeling defeated, questioning the power of God to be at work in the world, and afraid or too tired to try again to work toward the sharing of good news in word and deed that our baptism calls us to do.

We can support food pantries and feed our neighbors, donate our resources, and advocate for policies that support everyone around the globe having enough to eat. But people still go hungry and our calls for care in our policies go too often unheard.

We can take a strong stand against gun violence, support neighborhood programs that develop community bonds and reduce harm, but down the street and around the globe weapons destroy bodies and lives at an alarming rate and wars that seem bent on destroying whole peoples rage on as if that is normal.

We can support immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, honoring the biblical call to welcome the stranger, but we cannot seem to overcome our own and our communities’ fear of the other, the ways we draw lines between peoples and create hierarchies based on race, citizenship, language, and so much more.

We hold here in our local parish communities this incredible gift of grace. We have a message of love and compassion, of welcome and joy. This parish is one of our most vibrant communities. I know you’re not perfect – none of us are, but you’re doing pretty darn good work being Jesus people together. And yet, so many don’t know or don’t even want to know the transforming love that we feast on here in this place and at all our tables across the synod and diocese and beyond.

I don’t know about you, but it feels like we encounter the unwelcome far too often. It feels as if the world is bent against the transforming nature of God’s love. And we can follow Jesus’ advice and shake the dust off our feet and carry on. But after a while it gets harder to find the energy to brush the dust off. And at the risk of carrying the metaphor too far, the dust starts to cake on, and harden, and make it harder and harder to take the next steps and harder still to brush it all off.

And what of the communities that resist the apostles? Is Jesus’ advice simply to abandon them to their own brokenness? I’m not one who worries about evangelism as a means to make sure as many people as possible end up in heaven. That’s God’s business and I tend to lean into my experience of God’s ever-expanding grace and love in that regard. But I do worry about evangelism in the sense that my faith and my experience in a faith community has been an incredible gift in my life, challenging me and comforting me, connecting me to God and neighbor. And I grieve that so many who long for those things have not found them.

And this is where I think there is a great gift in Jesus’ advice. Jesus isn’t interested in his apostles’ success rate. His call is to keep doing the work and lean into the places where it flourishes. It’s not meant to kick us forward when we’re feeling run down or ignore the hurt of rejection and the frustration of the world’s lack of welcome to the gospel. It’s about working where we can and seeing what happens.

Something that strikes me is that no community exists in isolation from others. If some of the pairs of apostles find themselves in a place where God’s transformative love flourishes, that cannot help but affect the communities around them, welcoming or not. I understand the world to be deeply connected. When we work in one place it is not an abandonment of others, but a trust in God’s Spirit flowing beyond boundaries and transforming the world through us, and because of us, and in spite of us all at the same time.

God does not abandon God’s people. Not us, not anyone. Whether we are eager apostles, reluctant followers, welcoming communities, or closed off towns, God does not abandon us. Instead God plants seeds here and there and everywhere. Some grow, some don’t. But the persistently invasive realm of God is always pushing its way past our resistance and reluctance.

Paul admonishes the Galatians not to weary in doing what is right and to work wherever there is opportunity for the good of all. Siblings in Christ, sometimes that work is wearying. We face resistance from others and even resistance within ourselves. And yet God chooses us and sends us out as the vehicle for the spreading of God’s love and mercy and compassion. God does not force it on anyone, but also never lets go.

Keep striving to follow the call. Keep planting – literally in your pollinator-friendly gardens and figuratively out in the world. Keep welcoming – into this wonderful place and out there in the community making space for others. Keep striving for peace – in your own hearts and in the global community. Don’t do it alone. Go together, two by two, or eight by eight or 100×100. Join with others wherever there is an opportunity for the common good. Jesus cannot promise your message will be welcomed. But he can promise that he is with you always in everything, and that Jesus’ presence with you is enough – in fact, all you really need.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Dance of Delight

Trinity Sunday
June 15, 2025
St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, Worcester, MA

¹ Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
² On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
³ beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
⁴ “To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.

²² The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
²³ Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
²⁴ When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
²⁵ Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth—
²⁶ when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
²⁷ When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
²⁸ when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
²⁹ when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
³⁰ then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
³¹ rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.” – Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

[Jesus said,] ¹² “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³ When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵ All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” – John 16:12-15

With thanks to Amy Frykholm for her wonderful lectionary essay that inspired the focus for this sermon and from whom I have quoted Julian of Norwich: https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3875-divine-delight

I have a friend who says that when we get to heaven she thinks that God doesn’t ask us for an accounting of our work: Did you do enough? Did you pray enough? Did you stay on the straight and narrow? But instead she imagines that God asks whether we enjoyed the ride: Did you eat enough ice cream? Did you enjoy enough sunsets? Did you get and give enough hugs? Mostly, though, did you get enough ice cream?

Now, who knows what heaven is like – we can only ponder what God has in store. But I do think there there’s something to this. I think we have a God who delights in our delight, who wants us to enjoy life, to know love, to celebrate abundance.

My friend is not alone. The famous 14^th century theologian Julian of Norwich, known for her ascetic lifestyle locked away in isolation for prayer, said this: “Our soul must perform two duties. The one is that we must reverently wonder and be surprised. The other is we must gently let go and let be, always delighting in God.”

Again, who knows the mind of God, but it sounds like a beautiful midrash on the summary of the commandments to love God and neighbor.

In our first reading we hear the ancient words about wisdom: “When God marked out the foundations of the earth, then I [, wisdom,] was beside him like a master worker; and I was daily in his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”

God delights! In us!! God playfully, artistically, masterfully sculpts a world in which God takes delight. And God invites Wisdom, often associated with the second person of the Godhead – the same one who incarnates in Jesus – to delight in the process.

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday – a day when we ponder the mystery of God, too vast and expansive to make sense in human language. I think we rarely do well to attempt complicated explanations of this doctrine. But what always draws me is the idea that God is fundamentally relational and that God opens up that relationality to delight in creating us, human beings. And that God doesn’t just delight in the idea of human beings, but delights in each and every specific creation of a human person. And in the trees and flowers, rocks and waterfalls, insects and elephants and all the rest.

God dances and sculpts, paints and brings to life in playful, loving delight. And then invites us to dance and sculpt and paint and bring to life in similarly playful, loving delight.

Of course, we must wrestle with the reality that much of life is not sunshine and roses. This is not a call to deny reality and stick a smile on our face. We live in a world of inequality, where some are given the opportunity to satisfy their hunger to excess while others starve. I am deeply disturbed at the celebration of violence that seems to mark the wars that are happening around the world – in Russia and Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Congo. We live in a time when nationality, language, skin color, gender, and all kinds of other factors can make it more difficult for someone to fully live with delight in our communities.

If we have a relational God who delights in creating a diverse and joyful world, we also are called to live into that open delight for others. How can we delight in a world that is so broken, so full of pain, so challenging for others without engaging those things and seeking to bring the world into closer alignment with God’s vision for creation?

I know that here at St. Matthew’s you are deeply engaged with your community. Lots of congregations have food ministries, and you are one that not only feeds people but seeks to connect and be in relationship with all your neighbors. You have found a way to care for and delight in one another and then open that up to the neighborhood. I got to visit you last fall on a day when you were getting food ready to share, and I had had the sense you were all excited to be preparing and meeting the community. What a reflection of holy relationship and mutual delight!

You have welcomed in this time of transition the gifts of many – supply preachers and your own leaders who bring themselves and their gifts to leading morning prayer. I have heard you delight in one another in that way -honoring each other’s gifts and presence as you go through a time of clergy transition. What a reflection of holy relationship and mutual delight!

You are known for the way you honor the worship traditions of the church. You bring your musical gifts together from different backgrounds. You lean in to the holy. I don’t believe there’s a “right” way to worship, except insofar as it has to do with delight in God and one another. That’s something I sense here in your Sunday morning gathering. What a reflection of holy relationship and mutual delight!

In the midst of hard things – challenges in the church, challenges in the community, challenges in the world, challenges in our own lives, we often lean in to our anxiety. Fair enough. I do plenty of that. All of us do. But anxiety sometimes leads us to fear and fear to closing ourselves off and locking ourselves into the way we’ve always done it, only talking with those we already know, relying on what we’ve already learned.
But today invites us to something different. Invites us to join the dance of God. The playful interweaving of three persons, the beautiful mystery of unity in one God. The delight that Wisdom models for us. The delight God has in each of us. It invites us even in the most difficult and intractable situations, in the midst of violence, conflict, and even facing death, to ask the fundamental question of where we can honor the holy delight God takes in us and in our neighbor and in the ones we have labeled as enemies. Reshaping our every interaction around that idea of delight in the existence of the other, may well move us closer to the vision God has for our world.

So go forth this week looking for delight. Look for God’s unique delight in your neighbor. Look for God’s unique playfulness in creation. Look for God’s gifts and opportunities for you. And look in the mirror sometime this week and rejoice that God takes delight in you, welcoming you into the holy and life-giving dance of the Trinity.

-Pastor Steven Wilco