About Father Maney

The Venerable Dr. Kevin Maney retired as rector of St. Augustine's Anglican Church in May 2022.

From the Sermon Archives for the Sixth Sunday of Easter 2026: Our Resurrection Hope: Raising Our Desire to Proclaim the Good News

Posted on May 10, 2026 by Father Maney

Sermon originally preached on Easter 6A, Sunday, May 25, 2014. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before you read the sermon. My prayer is that Christ rid his Church of those teachers, leaders (especially bishops), and preachers who are ashamed of the gospel; they do immense harm to the people of God. May God help them repent of this wickedness. Christians, after all, have the greatest treasure of all—the hope and promise of Resurrection life in God’s new world. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Acts 17.22-31; Psalm 66.8-20; 1 Peter 3.13-22; John 14.15-21.

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

As Christians, at our very core we are resurrection people. As we have emphasized throughout this Easter season, when God raised Jesus from the dead, he not only destroyed the last enemy, death itself, so that those of us who are in Christ know that our destiny is resurrection and life, God also ushered in his promised new creation in which he will ultimately put all that is wrong and hurtful to rights and banish evil forever in his righteous judgment. In other words, God’s good creation matters to God. We matter to God as his image-bearing creatures and this is both Good News and our hope. This should be a game-changer for us! As we have also seen, if God didn’t really raise Jesus from the dead, we have nothing and are without a hope and a future (cf. Jeremiah 29.11), and all our work in Jesus’ name is in vain.

But there must be more to our resurrection hope than making it all about us and our needs. The Good News that is in the death and resurrection of Jesus is available to all people, even those who are our enemies, and as God’s people in Jesus we are called to speak the truth of God’s righteous salvation and judgment to a world that is fundamentally hostile to God’s truth but which paradoxically wants desperately to hear it. How else are we to explain the plethora of false, manmade gods? This is what I want us to look at briefly this morning—specifically, how and why our resurrection hope must lead us to be bearers of God’s Good News in Jesus.

Before we look at this more closely, let us acknowledge that proclaiming the Good News of Jesus’ death and resurrection is going to be an increasingly difficult thing for us to do because our society is increasingly rejecting the gospel and God’s authority over our lives. Like St. Paul in Athens, we are confronted with voices who oppose the Good News of Jesus in favor of their own gods or version of religion. We are told, for example, that there are many paths to God, that all religions are essentially equal. We live in an age where folks increasingly reject the idea that there is one standard of truth. Instead, we are told that truth is in the eye of the beholder and it is up to us to establish our own truths. Furthermore, we are told that if there really is a God, he is more like a distant landlord who only occasionally peeks in on his tenants, and then only to harass them for their behavior. Do you hear the echoes of this in Paul’s speech in Athens? Increasingly, we as Christians can expect to have our worldview marginalized in favor of some-thing else that is fundamentally hostile to God and his truth contained in Scripture. And if current trends remain unchecked, we can expect to be actively persecuted for our beliefs because many are increasingly unwilling to tolerate hearing God’s truth. They only want to hear their own and we need to engage in this work with eyes wide open to the very real dangers that exist.

Despite all this, however, we are called to proclaim God’s great love for his stubborn and rebellious human creatures and as both Ss.Peter and Paul remind us in their own ways, we should always be prepared to give a defense for the basis of our hope. But we are to do it gently and graciously, and we have a magnificent example of this kind of defense in Paul’s sermon to the Athenians, which we will look at shortly.

Our hope, of course, is in the cross. There God dealt decisively with our sin and the dark powers of evil. As St. Peter puts it, Jesus suffered for sins once and for all so that he might bring us to God, i.e., so that we might be reconciled to God and finally begin to enjoy real life in ways God originally intended for us. Peter also reminds us that because Jesus is now raised from the dead and ascended into heaven (God’s dimension) as Lord and ruler of the cosmos, the powers and current rulers have been made subject to him (cf. Col. 2.15). In this dense little passage, St. Peter reminds us that if the resurrection did not happen, nothing has changed. Jesus is just another failed Messiah and we are lost, alienated, and separated from God forever, cut off from our very Source of life because only in God can there be life. But because the resurrection did happen, we are assured that God’s goodness and life-changing love for us have won the war. The bad guys, while winning some battles, have won only a temporary victory and are ultimately defeated. And our archenemy, death, has finally been conquered forever, thanks be to God!

But there is more. Because Jesus has ascended into heaven and is no longer available to us in his bodily presence, he has promised that even this will not separate his followers from him because he has promised to be with us in the power and person of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us individually and collectively as Jesus’ body, the Church. And because we have been given the gift of the Spirit, we never have to fear being left alone or abandoned by Jesus. Ever. This latter point is massively important to help us speak the truth in love to a hostile world because we need to be convinced that the Spirit will give us wisdom and insight when speaking to the enemies of the cross and to help bolster our faith when we (and it) come under attack.

In sum, we believe that God the Father has come to us as God the Son to suffer and die for us so that we could be healed and reconciled to God and to finally defeat the powers of evil that plague us, especially death. We further believe Jesus is always available to us in the per-son of God the Spirit and that God does this because of his great love for his creation and his desire to rescue us from evil, sin, and death. It’s all about God’s faithfulness to his creation and this emphasis on the game-changing impact of Jesus’ resurrection is woven throughout the NT.

And we must be very clear on this point. If we do not believe our own story, the story of God’s rescue plan for his fallen and disordered creation through Abraham and his family Israel (Genesis 12.1-3) and ultimately through Jesus the Messiah, there is no way we can be faithful witnesses to Jesus. If we have bought the enemy’s line that Jesus is really no different from other religious leaders or that he is somehow just a great teacher and nothing else, we might as well stay at home on Sundays because that is the surest indication that we really are not resurrection people, i.e., we really don’t believe the hope and promise of resurrection as it is manifested in Jesus. This kind of thinking is also decidedly unbiblical. Notice, e.g., how St. Peter assumes we have a resurrection hope in us for which we must always be ready to give an account!

But if we really are resurrection people and we really do take God’s command to us seriously that we are to love God with our whole being and others as ourselves, why would we want to keep quiet about the Good News that is ours in Jesus? If Jesus really is the only way to the Father and the way, the truth, and the life, how could we possibly keep quiet and claim to love others? Does not compute. But we have let our enemies cow-tow us into silence. Why?

So how do we proclaim the Good News in the midst of a hostile society? Here we can take our cue from St. Paul in today’s New Testament lesson. Notice that St. Paul did not come to Athens and immediately start to denounce it. While he certainly would have been justified in doing so, he didn’t because he surely knew that people do not generally respond well to denunciation when that is the first thing out of our mouth. And besides, how can we as Christians proclaim God’s love for people if we immediately tell them they are evil, wicked, mean, and nasty, and going to hell if they don’t get with the program? Of course there will be time for us to talk honestly with people about God’s righteous and holy judgment on his sinful and rebellious creatures. But that time is not when we are first trying to get people to hear us about God’s great love for them and his plan to rescue them in and through Jesus the Messiah. So when we begin to talk to others about God’s love for the world as manifested in Jesus, we must be prepared to meet folks where they are, just like St. Paul did with the Athenians.

So, for example, if we hear folks advancing the idea that all religions are equal, we should be prepared to challenge that notion by reminding them that no other religion makes the claims the Christian faith makes, that God is indeed the creator of the world and has revealed his plan to rescue it and us from Evil, Sin, and Death by raising Jesus from the dead. We should be prepared to tell others why Jesus’ resurrection is the first-fruits of God’s promised new heavens and earth and why that is the basis for our hope as individuals. No other religion comes close to making such a claim and if the resurrection is an historical fact (here we can be prepared to offer reasons why we think it is), it is decisive proof that our claim to truth is complete and valid.

Or we might hear folks expressing a deist view of God, in which they talk about a distant or uncaring God. We can point out to them, gently of course, that this is not the God of the Bible and we do not worship that god either because that god is a false god of human making! We should be prepared to talk about God’s intimate involvement in the lives of his people, e.g., Ruth, David, Abraham, Noah, Esther, et al., including our own, and about how we know Jesus’ promise to send us the Holy Spirit is true because we see the fruit of the Spirit and signs and wonders in our lives. Think, for example, of the many times you have had prayers answered or how God’s people have helped you when your prayers seemingly went answered. Tell folks about how God has helped and been with you as you have walked through the darkest valley or how you have walked with others in theirs. Remind the person that God usually works in and through his people (and occasionally even through those who are his enemies). This is no deist god and it is certainly not the God of the Bible. This is exactly what Paul told the Athenians!

There are literally hundreds of examples I could cite, but I hope you get the idea. Notice that in these examples, we are meeting folks where they are and we are not beating them down (or up) over their beliefs. We are trying to share the truth, God’s truth, with them and we should always understand there is real power in sharing the gospel with others. We are Spirit-filled people, remember? So that when we share God’s word and truth with others we can expect God to produce some positive results. Our New Testament lesson ended before we heard the outcome of St. Paul’s preaching in Athens. Luke reports that when they heard St. Paul talk about the resurrection, some of the Athenians scoffed. It was too incredible for them to believe. But some wanted to hear more and some decided to become believers like St. Paul. At that point, Luke tells us, St. Paul moved on. His work was done. There were more people to reach. The point here is that St. Paul understood about witnessing for Jesus. It is not our job to get people to believe. That is God’s job. Our job is to invite them into a life-giving and saving relationship with Jesus and if it is going to be any kind of real relationship, people must enter into it freely and without coercion.

And what about those who scoff at us, who try to make us feel like we are out-of-touch, or lunatics, or hate-mongers, etc.? What do we do with those folks and their attempts to demonize us (and sadly we will encounter more of them than we might care to)? We leave them with a blessing. We might politely tell them that we are saddened at their attempts to demonize us and the hardheartedness and closed-mindedness that is always reflected in such attempts. We might say that we were simply offering real life and real truth so that they too could benefit from a relationship with the living Lord as we have and that is our heart’s desire, not to impose our will or some arbitrary rules on them. This response may further infuriate some and if it does, we need to move on and ask God to bless them and open their mind to his great love for them as manifested in Jesus. This is probably best done silently, but the point is this. Christ came to offer everyone life and healing and forgiveness, not just those who treat us nicely. As St. Peter reminds us, Christ the righteous died for us the unrighteous. As his baptized image-bearers, we are called to take up our cross and proclaim our Lord, rejoicing in our suffering because we know that like him, God will also vindicate us in our suffering for the Name. Of course we cannot do any of this on our own power. We do it in the power of the Spirit and we do this work together so that we can support and encourage each other when we encounter opposition. When we are able to act thusly toward our enemies, we have further proof that the Lord’s promises are true.

And of course the effectiveness of our witness to Jesus will be ultimately influenced by our lifestyle. If others see us preaching one thing and practicing another, we are telling them in a very powerful way that we don’t really believe our story, that like the world, we are simply trying to fabricate a god of our own making to justify our chosen lifestyle and that we are still hostile to the Spirit who dwells in us to heal and transform us. We don’t try to obey God’s ethical commands to get our ticket punched because it already has been punched in the cross of Christ. We choose to live like Christ because we know that only in him can there be real life as well as a real hope and a future. We believe this because we believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection marked the turning point of history, and for our good. And that of course means we have Good News, now and for all eternity. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.

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

A Classic Old Poem for Mothers’ Day 2026

Posted on May 10, 2026 by Father Maney

Learned this poem as a boy back in the Stone Age and I think it represents the beauty of Motherhood exquisitely. Yeah, I know that not all mothers live up to this standard but that misses the point entirely. What this poem/song points to is the critical importance of having a mother’s presence in a child’s life. Being a good mother, warts and all, is one of the most important callings in the entire world. Too often I hear voices denigrating motherhood and that is both a shame and a sin. If you are blessed today to have a mother like the one exemplified in the poem below in your life, give God the glory and thank him for his immeasurable gift of love to you made manifest in your mama. Happy Mothers’ Day to all you mamas out there! For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

‘M’ is for the million things she gave me,

‘O’ means only that she’s growing old,

‘T’ is for the tears she shed to save me,

‘H’ is for her heart of purest gold;

‘E’ is for her eyes, with love-light shining,

‘R’ means right, and right she’ll always be,

Put them all together, they spell ‘MOTHER,’

A word that means the world to me.

V-E Day 2026

Posted on May 8, 2026 by Father Maney

Today marks the 81st anniversary of V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day), May 8, 1945, in which the Allies celebrated the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany the day before. Take a moment today and thank God for bringing us victory over evil. Remember the brave men and women who fought against Nazism. If you know a veteran who is still alive, take time today and thank him (or her) for his service to our country. Ask that person to tell you his story and remember it so that you can pass it on to your children and others. Nazi Germany may be a thing of the past, but unspeakable evil certainly is not.

May 7, 2026: Happy Birthday, Mom

Posted on May 7, 2026 by Father Maney

Today would have been my mama’s 104^th birthday, something I simply cannot fathom (and something she would have undoubtedly hated!); where has the time gone?? My mother was an exquisite role-model of motherhood. She loved me, spent time with me, loved me enough to instill what it meant to be a Maney, and disciplined me when I did not live up to that standard. I hated it at the time, but am grateful for it today. She allowed me to have a childhood that was second to none because she insisted that I be a kid and worked sacrificially to make that happen. In that regard, I have very much missed her presence these past 18 years and my life has been so much poorer because she is dead. But I cannot be sad because I would rather her be where she is than to be here with me and struggling with illness and infirmity like she did in her last years (check out this reflection on grief and consolation over parents who have died). I must grieve her death as one who has hope, real hope—the sure and certain expectation of God’s new heavens and earth to come—previewed in the Resurrection of Christ.

Thank you mama, for being the mother you were. Thank you for all your sacrifice for me and for our family. Thank you for allowing me to grow up in a timely manner and not before it was my time to do so. Thank you for personifying sacrificial love for me. And thank you, dear God, for blessing me with the best parents a man could ever want or dream of having.

Happy birthday, mama. I love you. Enjoy your rest with the Lord who loves you and has claimed you from all eternity.

Rest eternal grant unto Margaret, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon her. May she, with the rest of God’s saints, through the mercy and grace of God, rest in peace and RISE IN GLORY. Amen.

And for those of you whose mother is still living, make sure you remember your mama on Mothers’ Day this Sunday. Better yet, treat her like every day is Mothers’ Day. I know my mama would surely approve.

May 7, 2026: Germany Surrenders to the Allies 81 Years On

Posted on May 7, 2026 by Father Maney

On May 7, 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, bringing an end to World War II in Europe.

Read the original AP story. From here.

From the Archives of The Associated Press:

Editor’s Note:
Edward Kennedy, AP’s chief of bureau in Paris, was the first to file a story announcing the end of the war in Europe. Kennedy and other reporters had witnessed the German surrender at Reims, France, and had been told by military officials that they could not report the event until it had been announced by the Allied governments in Washington, London and Moscow. The military later said it would be the following day before the surrender news could be transmitted because a second surrender ceremony was being planned for Berlin. Kennedy decided to break the embargo when the surrender was announced – at the request of the Allies – on German radio. Military censors retaliated by suspending the AP’s filing privileges from Europe. (The ban was lifted after six hours.)

Here is the first word that moved over the AP wire at 9:35 a.m. New York time on May 7, 1945:

FLASH

REIMS FRANCE–ALLIES OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCED GERMANY SURRENDERED UNCONDITIONALLY.

That transmission was followed one minute later by:

BULLETIN

BY EDWARD KENNEDY

REIMS, FRANCE, MAY 7-(AP)-GERMANY SURRENDERED UNCONDITIONALLY TO THE WESTERN ALLIES AND RUSSIA AT 2:41 A.M. FRENCH TIME TODAY.

Here is the rest of Kennedy’s story:

The surrender took place at a little red schoolhouse that is the headquarters of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The surrender was signed for the Supreme Allied Command by Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, chief of staff for Gen. Eisenhower.

It was also signed by Gen. Ivan Susloparov of the Soviet Union and by Gen. Francois Sevez for France.

Gen. Eisenhower was not present at the signing, but immediately afterward Gen. Jodl and his fellow delegate, Gen. Admiral Hans Georg Friedeburg, were received by the Supreme Commander.

They were asked sternly if they understood the surrender terms imposed upon Germany and if they would be carried out by Germany.

They answered yes.

Germany, which began the war with a ruthless attack upon Poland, followed by successive aggressions and brutality in concentration camps, surrendered with an appeal to the victors for mercy toward the German people and armed forces.

After having signed the full surrender, Gen. Jodl said he wanted to speak and received leave to do so.

“With this signature,” he said in soft-spoken German, “the German people and armed forces are for better or worse delivered into the victor’s hands.

“In this war, which has lasted more than five years, both have achieved and suffered more than perhaps any other people in the world.”

May 6, 2026: The Hindenburg Disaster 89 Years On

Posted on May 6, 2026 by Father Maney

Eastertide 2026 for the Fifth Week of Easter: Victor Lee Austin: The Wrongness of Human Death (First Things)

Posted on May 4, 2026 by Father Maney

This is a very good article, one I highly recommend to you. Death is the bitter fruit and sting of human sin and rebellion, originating in our first human ancestors’ rebellion (Genesis 3). Read it therefore with this truth in mind: Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life. Those who believe [he is], even though they die, will live, and those who live and believe that Christ is the resurrection and the life will never die (cf. Saint John 11.26-27). For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Decay and death seem built into the structure of physical creation. Even if there could be a world in which only plants and fruit were eaten—the world suggested by God’s arrangements at the end of Genesis 1—still, plants and fruit would be eaten. People walk and make paths. Animals carry seeds and pollen from one place to another, and contribute to the erosion of soil. Paths make indentations that can become not only paths for animals but also for trickles of water, then streams, and on it goes. Leaves fall and turn to mulch. Plants with edible roots are uprooted; the plants will die as the rabbit enjoys his carrot. One could go on at length. Physical reality is ever-changing reality, and at its heart is the decay and death of plant life.

And perhaps more than plants: Physical creation, or at least the physical creation we know, also entails the death of animals. From insects to vertebrates, those with wings, those with fins, those tied to the ground: all are mortal, all die at some point or other. You needn’t look at human beings to find sadness at death: Many of the higher animals exhibit it. You can see it in the behavior of a dog whose companion is no longer around, and so forth. This too seems built into physical creation, this death, this separation, and with it the animal experience of sadness.

Animal feelings are manifest in behavior. Yet there is something additionally wrong in a human death, a depth in our sadness that is qualitatively different from the sadness of our pets and livestock. We often express this additional level of wrongness in anger, and indeed it is right to respond to human death with anger. But with whom are we angry? It might be a doctor who bumbled a surgery. It might be a corporation that produced a faulty product, an engineer who cut a corner, a spouse who didn’t take care of herself, or any of a hundred other people or institutions. Ultimately, however, our anger is with God, and it is right for us to be angry with him.

What is it about human death that arouses anger? As Herbert McCabe put it in an Advent sermon (televised on BBC in 1986, reprinted posthumously in God, Christ, and Us), when an animal dies, nature takes back what she had given. We are born with a given genetic structure into a world with its given physical laws and the environment and other inhabitants that are around us. With animals, that’s all there is to say: The combination of nature with life events is the story of that animal. But with humans it’s different. There is more to us than our genes and what has happened to us; there is also what we have made of it. We have freedom to shape our lives ourselves—not the absolute and ridiculous freedom of trying to be anything at all, but within what is given, we still have freedom to make ourselves out of it. If you will pardon the self-reference, nature did not give me a strong body, but she did gift me with an intellect. I could have chosen to do more to strengthen the body that I have. I felt an obligation, on the other hand, to nurture my mind and study.

Every one of us has some measure of freedom to make ourselves. Even prisoners have freedom, as Solzhenitsyn discovered. One way to put this is to say our lives have a narrative. And here is the point: In every human death, a narrative has been cut short. McCabe underlines the point by saying that in human death, nature takes away more than she gave, because there is more to a human being than just genetic structure and environmental influence.

And this is a cheat. We feel this cheat especially in the death of children. Funerals for children can be packed affairs, and parents, in their grief, often don’t want the funeral to be sad. With damp eyes I once said, in such a situation, that there was not one person present who wouldn’t have changed place with the child who had died. If we could crawl into the coffin and the boy could come out, we would. That’s how we feel the cheat of the death of a child.

This, however, is true of every human death. Even a centenarian who had long lost many bodily functions still had a life that was in important ways unfinished. She had outlived her ability to hear; she sometimes didn’t know whom she was talking with; but in her life there were many narrative threads that had not been completed. Age and decay had, instead, just cut them off. Her story had an end but was still incomplete.

And this is wrong. And the person to blame for this is God. And so we do, in words of Scripture, in psalms of lament, in Rachel weeping, in Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus. Even Jesus on the cross cries out to God. Death is wrong.

Once you feel this wrongness, you are ready for a theological surprise. It is God who causes you to be angry. God is the creator who upholds everything in existence and that includes our anger at him. We are, of course, not angry with God but with an image of God; God himself we cannot see in this life. But why is God causing us to feel this anger? In order, says McCabe, to make us long for resurrection.

What this means is that when we repeat psalm-shaped words that express anger with God over death, God is causing us to desire something that overturns death. God is opening us up to a longing for resurrection. Of course, we cannot know what resurrection life is, except to say that it just is the life of God. We can say, nonetheless, that for us to enjoy the life of God, our bodies will have to be raised from death, as Jesus’s body was. Our anger at death will be satisfied by nothing less than bodily resurrection. We want the boy to rise out of his coffin. We want ourselves to rise from wherever our body lies. We want our human stories to be narratives that find the only end that will satisfy, and that end is the being of God himself.

Victor Lee Austin is theologian-in-residence for the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas.

May 4, 2026: Remembering the Kent State Shootings 56 Years On

Posted on May 4, 2026 by Father Maney

Today marks the 56th anniversary of the confrontation between the Ohio National Guard and students at KSU. When it was all over, four students lay dead and others seriously wounded. I was a junior in high school when this happened (also on a Monday) and I remember wondering if our country was not coming apart at the seams—a fear not unlike I have about our country today. It was simply unbelievable. Take a moment today to remember this tragedy and ask God to heal his broken and hurting world, a world gone increasingly mad.

Eastertide 2026: From the Sermon Archives for the Fifth Week of Easter: Changed by God to Make a Difference for God

Posted on May 3, 2026 by Father Maney

Sermon originally preached on Easter 5A, Sunday, May 14, 2017. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned lectionary texts before reading the sermon. In it I deal with what the Easter Faith lived out looks like. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Acts 7.55-60; Psalm 31.1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2.2-10; John 14.1-14.

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

Today is the 5th Sunday of Easter, day 29 to be precise. We are a little past the halfway point of the 50 day season of Eastertide. In our gospel lesson this morning our Lord makes some mind-boggling promises to us about troubled hearts, our present, and our future. They are promises filled with power, the power of God. But are we taking advantage of those promises? In other words, is Easter making any difference in our lives and the lives of others at this point in Eastertide or any other time?? The title of today’s sermon is our mission statement and if we are to be true to its intent, we must believe the astonishing promises of Jesus in our gospel lesson and appropriate the power underlying them. This is what I want us to look at this morning.

We start with the comforting words of Jesus in our gospel lesson. Do not let your hearts be troubled, he tells us. The context for this command, of course (the Greek construction indicates these words are imperative), is the Last Supper and come from Jesus’ so-called farewell discourse found in Saint John 13-17. There’s plenty of reason for Jesus’ disciples to have troubled hearts. He will be crucified dead in less than 24 hours and their world will be shattered, just like ours is whenever we lose someone we love to death, especially an unexpected death.

And like Jesus’ disciples, our hearts are often troubled. The Greek word for troubled has the sense of us being thrown into a state of confusion or being terribly distressed. We know all about that, don’t we? We know about the confusion of lawlessness in its various forms and the fear it produces. We know about health and/or family issues that can cause us to be distressed, or economic difficulties or uncertainties that can cause us to be altogether shaken. The list goes on and on and none of us is immune to troubled hearts. Jesus himself experienced a troubled heart in Gethsemane, sweating great drops of blood when confronted with the terrifying prospect of having the forces of evil gather together to do their worst to him and having to bear the sins of the entire world. And so our Lord speaks comfort to us. Don’t let your hearts be troubled.

But how, we want to ask? Jesus tells us. Believe in God. Believe also in me because I am the very embodiment of God. More about that in a moment. Now I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking how glad you are it is me preaching today and not one of the other loser priests. Well of course you are. Who wouldn’t be? But I digress. You are also wondering how belief in God can help remedy a troubled heart. Jesus tells us. The Greek word for believe means to have a strong confidence or reliance on something or someone. For most of us most of the time, that strong confidence or reliance is on ourselves, and we all know how well that has worked out for us. We are finite, mortal, prone to mistakes, and enslaved to the power of Sin. The result is a troubled heart because deep down we all know we do not have the means or the power to overcome all that afflicts us. But Jesus does because Jesus is God become human, the only Son of the Father, and nothing is more powerful than God.

There’s more. Jesus tells the disciples that in his Father’s house there are many permanent dwelling places and that he goes to prepare a place for them to be with his Father and him forever. Of course in about 24 hours, their world will be turned upside down. They will see him crucified dead and buried. Before then they will all abandon him and afterwards hide in fear for their lives. In other words, their hearts will be troubled, and desperately so. After he’s dead, they will be tempted to think he was lying to them to make them feel better, that it was all just a sham and a farce. But they (and we) would be very wrong in thinking this because he is not lying to us and will return to us one day to take us to himself so that we can enjoy God’s new heavens and earth and live with the Father and the Son forever in their direct presence.

St. Thomas is wonderfully humble and honest with Jesus. Lord, he tells him. We don’t know where you are going. So how can we know the way? This, of course, is how we are to approach Jesus with our doubts and fears and lack of knowledge. We don’t make demands on Jesus, telling him how and why he is wrong because what he tells us doesn’t fit our own preconceptions and/or worldview. We ask him to help us understand what we are able, and when we approach Jesus like this we will never, ever be disappointed. Ever.

In response to St. Thomas’ question, Jesus makes a truly startling claim. You do know the way, Thomas. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. In response, many of us today want to ask Jesus how that is possible. It’s possible, Jesus replies patiently, because the Father and I are one. In other words, I am the very embodiment of the Father. And if you know your Scripture, you know that no one can see God and live because we are all sin-sick individuals and God cannot countenance any form of sin or corruption in his direct presence. Great, we reply. How does that help our troubled heart? If anything, we are even more afraid when confronted with the dangerous truth of God’s holy perfection and our sin-sick state.

And when we have the grace of good sense and humility to understand this terrible reality of our standing before God without God’s help, we are ready to understand why Jesus is the only way to the Father. Jesus is the Way because of his Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. On the cross, God condemned sin in the flesh to spare us from God’s right condemnation of us for our sins. That is why Paul makes the bold proclamation that there is now no condemnation for those of us who have a real and living relationship with Jesus (Romans 8.1-4). On the cross, God broke the power of Evil, Sin, and Death over us and freed us to be like Jesus our Lord so that we can live forever in God’s direct presence again. The Resurrection is our guarantee of this. Like we recite in our Easter Anthems each Sunday during Eastertide, our baptism testifies that we share in Jesus’ death so that we can share in his resurrection. And when God brings about the new heavens and earth at the right time and our mortal bodies are raised from the dead and transformed into resurrected, immortal bodies, death will finally be destroyed forever, thanks be to God! Without Jesus’ death and resurrection, we have no hope of living in God’s house because only Jesus can take away the sins and Sin of the world so that we can live in God’s direct presence forever. This is primarily why Jesus is the only way to the Father.

And we can be confident that Jesus speaks the Truth because Jesus is God become human and God never lies. As our Lord tells us, only he is the resurrection and the life so that those who believe in him will live, even though their mortal body dies, barring his return before that happens (John 11.24-26). All this makes Jesus’ claim that those who see him have seen the Father even more balm for our troubled hearts because we no longer have to be terrified of God’s goodness and right judgment on us. We see the heart of the Father being nailed to the cross for our sake. We see him ransoming us from our slavery to Evil, Sin, and Death so that our future is life, not death. We begin to understand that God’s justice is a good thing because only then will all the things that are wrong with God’s world be put right, us included. This is the love of God that can give peace to our troubled hearts. Do you have that knowledge and peace?

In sum, Jesus has given these three antidotes for our troubled hearts. First, he reminds us that he is going to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house for us to live forever with him. He does that by going to the cross for us to break the power of Sin and Death over us and to bear the punishment for our sins so as to spare us from God’s good but terrible wrath. Second, Jesus promises us that he will return one day to fulfill completely this breathtaking promise to us to be able to live directly in God’s presence forever. Third, Jesus tells us to look to him to see the very heart and love that the Father has for us, a love so deep and wide and broad that the Father became human to die for us so that we can live.

But there is also a fourth promise Jesus makes that is balm for our troubled hearts. Jesus isn’t some dead guy who is out of sight and out of mind. No, Jesus promises to be with us in ways that weren’t possible when he lived a mortal life on earth. Now that Jesus has ascended to the Father, he promises to be with us in the power of the Spirit so that we have the power to live as the new creations he has made us in his death and resurrection. Whatever Jesus had in mind when he told the disciples that they would do greater works than he did after he ascended to the Father and gave them the Holy Spirit so that he could be with him, Jesus surely didn’t mean we would do lesser things than he did. Ask for anything in my name and I will grant it, he promises us. Now I am pretty sure many of us here don’t really believe that. We may pay occasional lip service to it, but in our heart of hearts, we simply don’t buy it. And when we don’t buy it, we let the darkness that still dwells in us make us fearful, timid, and ineffectual Christians.

This is what St. Peter is getting at in our epistle lesson when he tells us to long for the pure spiritual milk that is the word of God in Scripture and the Word of God personified in Jesus our Lord. Without mother’s milk, babies will die and without God’s word, without Jesus, we will die too. We will die from our egoic mind, as Fr. Bowser calls it, that tells us to be afraid and to trust ourselves, not Jesus. It tells us not to risk great things for God because, well, that’s just not in our power and everybody knows we’re in this by ourselves. In traditional terms, this is the world, the flesh, and the devil exerting power over us and we are ripe for the picking if we do not trust and believe in the power of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

But when we dare believe and trust in the God made known to us in Jesus and available to us in the power of the Spirit, we have a power at our disposal to literally change the world because it is the power of Christ working in us through word, prayer, and sacrament. Here’s how it works in real life. The next time your heart is troubled, learn from the psalmist how to focus your attention on God instead of yourself and the chaos/evil in your life. Hear him now:

I cried out to God for help;/ I cried out to God to hear me./ When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;/ at night I stretched out untiring hands/ and I would not be comforted./ I remembered you, God, and I groaned;/ I meditated, and my spirit grew faint./ You kept my eyes from closing;/ I was too troubled to speak./ I thought about the former days/ the years of long ago;/ I remembered my songs in the night./ My heart meditated and my spirit asked:/ “Will the Lord reject forever Will he never show his favor again? Has his unfailing love vanished forever?/ Has his promise failed for all time?/ Has God forgotten to be merciful?/ Has he in anger withheld his compassion?”/ Then I thought, “To this I will appeal:/ the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand./ I will remember the deeds of the Lord;/ yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago./ I will consider all your works/ and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”/Your ways, God, are holy./ What god is as great as our God? You are the God who performs miracles;/ you display your power among the peoples./ With your mighty arm you redeemed your people. (Psalm 77.1-15a, NIV).

Note carefully the psalmist’s utter despair. He is inconsolable to the point where it is possible for his troubles to overwhelm him completely and destroy him and his faith in God. So what does he do? He goes to the word of God in Scripture to help him remember the mighty works of God, in this case the Exodus, so that he is reminded not to let his troubles overwhelm him because God still loves him and is still in charge, even in the midst of the darkest valley.

This is what we are to do as Christians when our hearts are troubled. We are to focus on Jesus the Word in Scripture, especially his death and resurrection, and on the promise of Jesus to be with us in the power of the Spirit during our mortal life and directly in God’s new creation in the world to come. When we do this, and when we consume Jesus every week at the Eucharist, the Truth is reinforced in us, our desire to be with and like Jesus is strengthened, and our hearts will no longer be troubled. Of course we don’t do this solely as individuals. Like Jesus, St. Peter reminds us we are new creations, living stones that constitute the Temple of the living God, the place where God dwells with his people. God saves us to be his people who will embody his great love and healing for the world so that all may know God’s Name and be healed and saved as well. No temple is built with just one stone, living or otherwise. It takes multiple stones to build a temple and so we are reminded that we must become God’s new people together. So we feed on the pure spiritual milk of God’s word together so that our desire for Jesus and to be like him is reinforced and strengthened. This is what it means to be changed by God. When our troubled hearts find peace in Christ, so too will we be changed because we really know Jesus. Of course, until our Lord returns, our hearts will always be troubled to some extent and we will never be fully healed. So we must continue to return to Jesus the Word to be nourished and find peace. If you are not doing this, you are robbing yourself of a power that is life-giving and transformative, and I encourage you to do some serious soul-searching about what your relationship with Christ is really all about and then to repent of that which is holding you back.

As we just saw, God does not do save us so we can sit around and act snotty, thumbing our noses at the unsaved. We are saved, St. Peter reminds us, to be God’s holy people, to make known the love and goodness and righteousness of God to the world. In other words, we are saved to be God’s people and presence in God’s world. We won’t do this perfectly or anywhere close to it. But as Jesus reminds us, he is alive and available to us each day in the power of the Spirit so that we can accomplish greater things than he did in his earthly ministry. As we have seen, the first obstacle that we must overcome is our fears and doubts about this promise to have God’s power available to us. That will always be an ongoing struggle but we’ve just seen how to overcome that by feeding on God’s word and sacrament.

So empowered by Jesus’ Presence, we are equipped to do great things in his name. I don’t know what all God is calling us to do, but I can tell you this. God is not calling us to be a Sunday morning people where we come and give an hour and a half or so of our time and then forget about it all till the next Sunday. I have seen signs of this kind of complacency in us lately and it troubles me (I include myself in this statement). When we are content to give Jesus only an hour and a half of our time one day a week we effectively announce to ourselves and the world that we really don’t think Jesus is Lord who has conquered the dark powers or who is available to us to empower us to do his work. Or even if he is all this, we really don’t care because we’ve got other things/people to worship and give our time, energy, and attention to. When our faith does not produce kingdom fruit, but instead produces consistent lethargy, fear, timidity, and/or idolatry, we simply cannot say we have a meaningful relationship with the Lord. When, for example, we only have two people show up for a food drive or to visit Worthington Christian nursing home, or when we refuse to read and study Scripture individually and together or invite new people to come and meet Jesus in our midst, we are really saying we do not have time for Jesus or that we believe we can do great things in his name. I am not talking about missing out on ministry opportunities on occasion because of prior commitments that cannot be broken. I am talking about not showing up at all because we are too tired or not interested or think there are more important things in the world that require our attention or loyalty. At best, this kind of non-involvement is indicative of a tepid relationship with Jesus our Lord, and if we care at all about having life here and hereafter, we need to repent of these kinds of behaviors.

So we all have some very serious soul-searching to do, my beloved. Simply put, if Jesus isn’t the most precious thing in our lives—more so than family, friends, or whatever else may own us—we have a lot of growing up to do spiritually. Let us not tire of running the race and living out our faith. We have the promise of our Lord himself that he is with us and will answer our prayers in his name. This includes finding a true home for ourselves, reaching out to invite others to join us in our work, and doing the work itself. Anything less simply will not do. We are changed by God to make a difference for God and this is what we must do always in the power of the Spirit. Our Lord Jesus is alive and present to us and gives us the power and strength and stamina and desire to do great things for his name’s sake and the sake of God, his Father and ours. Far from being an odious burden, this is balm for our troubled hearts and peace and wholeness for our broken and fractured lives. Let us therefore not grow faint or weary in doing good and proclaiming the Lord’s name in word and deed and by how we love each other. Doing so is living the Good News that is ours, now and for all eternity. Let us do so with joy and thanksgiving. Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.

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

Eastertide 2026: From the Sermon Archives for the Fourth Week of Easter: Is Your Shepherd Good Enough to Get You Through the Night?

Posted on April 30, 2026 by Father Maney

Sermon originally preached on Easter 4C, Sunday May 12, 2019. As always it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before you read the sermon. This sermon essentially challenges you to decide whether you are ashamed of the gospel, a critical question that all Christians must answer honestly. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Acts 9.36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7.9-17; John 10.22-30.

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

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, which always falls on the fourth Sunday of Easter. Accordingly, this is what I want us to look at this morning. Is your notion of Jesus as the Good Shepherd big enough to truly honor him and get you through the dark valleys of life?

What do you conjure up when you think of the term shepherd? For most of us living in a post-agricultural society, I suspect when we think of shepherds we think of some quaint fellow leading his sheep to pasture. In other words, if we think about it at all, we think of shepherds as being pretty irrelevant to our lives. But shepherds meant something very different to the Old and NT writers. When they spoke of shepherds they had in mind a king who would not only lead his people but also protect them. And the best way for a king to lead and protect God’s people Israel was to encourage them to be faithful to their covenant with the Lord. Doing so would ensure that they would receive his blessing and protection as Moses made clear to God’s people Israel as they prepared to enter the Promised Land. When the Bible speaks of shepherds, it has something quite different in mind than we do. Life, happiness, blessing, and safety are not possible without a Good Shepherd.

And this ought to make sense to us because we live in a world that has been invaded by evil and hostile powers, powers that were unleashed on God’s good world by human sin and folly. These dark powers are death-dealing. They hate us and want to destroy us. Combined with our proclivity to elevate and worship self over God, the dark powers often have an easy time finding human agents to assist in dealing out death to us. Think of the rash of bombings and mass murders that have occurred over the past month. Hundreds of Christians were blown up in Sri Lanka as they celebrated Easter. Another synagogue was attacked in CA. Then of course we have yet another school shooting. We see the devastating results of those who allow themselves to be used by the dark powers to bring death and sorrow and anger whenever they can. Christians seem to be especially targeted by the dark powers and their agents. While not prevalent in this country—at least not yet—did you know that in 2017 there were some 215,000,000 Christians who reported being persecuted for their faith, and that today 4 out of 5 people being persecuted for their faith are Christian? Never have Christians been more widely persecuted. Just this past week, Asia Bibi, a Christian Pakistani woman who had been sentenced to death for preaching blasphemy and who was finally exonerated, was allowed to leave for asylum in Canada. Yet even there she is not safe as Islamic extremists have vowed to hunt her down and kill her. She has become one of their favorite targets to hate. Our Lord surely knew what he was talking about when he warned his disciples that they would be hated because the world hated him first (John 15.18-23).

As we think about these things, we dare not develop an “us vs. them” mentality. Without the help from an outside power stronger than the powers of Evil and Sin (God), we are all capable of collaborating with the forces of Death. As our culture becomes increasing less Christian, our innate desire to elevate ourselves over God will only increase and so will the darkness that ensues. The Vatican apparently recognizes this trend as well as it recently opened up its exorcism summit for the first time to those outside the Catholic Church because of the unsettling rise of satanic worship and demonic incidents throughout the world. It seems that ever since Eden, we humans seek to worship and follow anything but God, the only Source of Life.

Given this reality, we instinctively know that we need a shepherd in the true biblical sense who can guide and protect us from the forces of Evil and Death that hate us and want to destroy us. We wall ourselves up in gated communities, we refuse to get involved with issues of justice or deal with people who are “not like us,” we seek all kinds of power to insulate us from the darkness of this world, we stockpile our wealth and other material goods, hoping that they will protect us from all the darkness that life can bring. But this is just delusional thinking. All the money in the world, all the fame, all the power, all the gated communities cannot protect us from sickness or madness or growing old or loneliness or alienation or death. Nothing in this world is capable of doing that. Nothing. Even if we are faithful Christians, if we do not have a grown up conception of who our Good Shepherd is and a resurrection hope that is lively and robust, we are most to be pitied because we are play acting and whistling through the graveyard, hoping all our futile self-help efforts will suddenly and magically work. They won’t. As we have just observed, self-help is of this world and nothing of this world in its current configuration has the power to give life. Nothing.

Even if we have a healthy understanding of the nature of Christ as our Good Shepherd and an accompanying resurrection hope that is lively and relevant to us, it doesn’t make us immune from the dark valleys of life. But God never promised us this. We note that the beloved 23^rd psalm doesn’t tell us that the Good Shepherd keeps us out of the dark valley. No, the Good Shepherd promises to be with us to strengthen and comfort us when we are confronted by the darkness of this world and our sins and ultimately the darkness of death. We aren’t told why a good and loving God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, allows Evil to operate in his good world to corrupt it. No one has that answer, not even our Lord Jesus when he walked this earth. What Christ gave us was much better. He gave us himself. He gave his life to free us from the power of Sin so that our destiny is life, not death—after all, only Christ is the resurrection and the life—and here is where we have to be crystal clear in our thinking about our resurrection hope because it is the key to us living life with a tenacious and dogged hope, even when confronted with the reality of death.

As St. Paul reminds us in his first letter to the Corinthians, Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said, and that he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. This is how the powers of Evil, Sin, and Death are defeated. Christ died for our sins so that we can be spared God’s good and right judgment on our sins. And in raising Christ from the dead, God showed us that even the universal power of death is destroyed. Not completely yet, of course, but it’s coming and Christ’s resurrection is historical proof that God’s promise to destroy death one day is true (apparently God’s word isn’t good enough for us; we need historical proof as well, another reminder of why the cross is so necessary for us to be reconciled to God, but I digress). The dark powers did their worst to Christ. They had him arrested, tortured, humiliated, reviled, and killed in the worst and most degrading manner ever devised by human depravity. The result? Christ is risen! Death is overcome by life! God showed us decisively his intentions for us: life, not death, thanks be to God! Amen?

And when the New Creation is ushered in fully, we see two things happen. First, we see the abolition of death on a universal basis, at least for the followers of Christ. Death is destroyed forever. Second, we see the implementation of God’s perfect justice. Human justice, no matter how just and right it can be, is never complete. Murder victims, for example, are still dead. Lives are destroyed, the loss is still real. Not so in God’s new world. Evildoers are vanquished forever, the dead are restored to life, all brokenness and imperfection is healed, along with our memories, and we shall live directly in God’s presence with his attendant protection and healing forever. Let me give you a personal example. In 2008 my mother had a massive stroke and lingered for three days. She died a hard death and it was painful to watch. She died when my wife and I were out for supper, after all the time we spent keeping a vigil over her. When I returned to her room I saw her corpse lying there. It was ugly and unnatural. It showed the recent signs of her physical suffering. My mother was a good woman and a faithful Christian. You’ll find no better mother around. She didn’t deserve to die in this way, a death that was made more painful by our decision, made out of ignorance, not to hydrate her. This awful vignette encapsulates the entire history of human sin and folly. Sin results in death, in this case my beloved mother’s. Human folly was involved, in this case my ignorance of the importance of keeping her hydrated which only increased her suffering and my guilt when I found out what I had inadvertently done to her. There was grief over the loss of a dearly loved one and its permanent alteration of my life. She was my last surviving parent and even at aged 55, I felt like an orphan for the first time in my life. Nothing in this world can change any of that. I could run after false gods, choose to dampen my pain in a variety of ways, tell everyone what a great person my mom was, seek to increase my bank accounts, or try to increase my status, but none of it will bring her back to life. That’s not how this world works.

But now let’s shift our attention to our epistle lesson to see what I am talking about in terms of having a resurrection hope. In it, St. John shares his glimpse of the heavenly throne room. It isn’t a vision of the future; it is a vision of the present heavenly reality. And what did he see? A huge and countless throng of people from every tribe, language, and nation. They are wearing white robes and waving palm branches. They are in the direct presence of God and his Lamb, Jesus Christ our crucified and risen Savior. St. John is asked the question we want to ask. Who are these people? An elder tells him that they have come out of the great ordeal (they have survived being persecuted and suffering, even unto death). They lack nothing because they are living in God’s direct presence and are now under his eternal protection, and God himself has wiped the tears of sorrow and suffering from their very eyes. Think about that! Think about God wiping your tears from your eyes and how wonderful and restorative that must feel! The Good News is that you’ll get to find out one day.

We notice several things from this poignant vision. First, we note that the palm branches the throng waves are symbols of their victory over the dark powers and Death. The Christian dead have this victory because the blood of the Lamb has taken away their sins and made them pure and able to stand in God’s holy and life-giving presence, without which we are all walking dead. Their white robes symbolize their Christ-endowed and life-giving purity. Notice carefully that St. John doesn’t tell us that the people standing in God’s heavenly throne room are the ones who did the most good or went most regularly to church or are a superior race or ethnic group. No, everyone is there because of the love of Christ for them, not because of who they are or what they’ve done. Likewise with us.

We notice too that we see the risen Christ with his transformed body in heaven. Does it surprise you that human bodies can exist in heaven? I know it surprised me when I first was taught it. The vast throng are not yet risen. They are not yet fully alive as Jesus is, but they are alive because they are with the Source of Life and their destiny will be like their risen Savior’s because they belong to him, just like we do. Even in their pre-resurrected state, the Christian dead find life and they suffer no more. Whatever injustices they had to endure are made right and their memories are healed. We know this because they are worshiping God and the Lamb for redeeming them from the darkness of Evil and Death, just like we do when we give thanks for the Resurrection in our Eastertide liturgy. Did you notice that? And because they are in the presence of God and his Lamb, they are protected from evil of any kind because no evil can survive in God’s holy presence. Returning to the story of my mother’s death, this is the only satisfactory hope I could have to sustain me in my grief and loss. I know when I see her next, the memories of that hospital room and her dead body will be erased forever, in part, because when I see her next she will be alive! And when the new creation comes in full, she will have an indescribably beautiful body that will also be indestructible. The injustice of her death will be made right. Her death will have been swallowed up in life. Works for me. Worked for Dorcas in our NT lesson, short-term and for eternity. How about you?

Clearly, St. John intends this vision to encourage us in our suffering as well as give us an indomitable hope because we realize our present and future are secure if we are the Lamb’s, and we can be sure we are his because we hear his voice and obey, not perfectly, but we hear his voice nevertheless and seek to obey him. And he assures us that we will remain his. Nothing can snatch us away from him because nothing is stronger than the love and power of God. He tells us this in our gospel lesson. But what if the worst you have suffered for your faith is having to endure long sermons by your preachers, especially when Fathers Sang, Bowser, and Madanu preach? Then what? How can this lesson encourage you? My only response is that suffering of one sort or another will come before your mortal life ends and you had better be ready with the power of the risen Christ when it does or you will be left without hope. The encouragement found in this story will help you develop that needed power. But what if you have suffered for reasons other than your faith that are beyond your control? Then what? Well, consider this. What if our present suffering is a result of those dark powers working against us and not God punishing us, especially if we cannot directly attribute our suffering to the consequences of our sin, stupidity, or folly? What if God uses our afflictions as opportunities to test us and to draw us closer in our suffering to our Lord Jesus who suffered and died for us? St. John’s vision testifies that Christ will use our suffering to draw us closer to him if we have a resurrection hope that allows us to see that nothing is beyond the redemptive power of God, not even death itself. So be ready. Your hour will come. Draw then on Christ’s power.

Of course, our hope must remain just that until it is realized in the new creation. We will still grieve our dead and have to deal with all the hurt and sorrow and brokenness in this sin-corrupted and God-cursed world. But there is no one or nowhere else to which we can turn. Only in Christ is there hope and life because only Christ has been raised from the dead to break the power of Sin and Death. Only the resurrection offers a real future with full justice and restoration and healing. It is too breathtaking for us to fully contemplate because it comes from God, but contemplate it we must; otherwise we die of hopelessness, wallowing in our sin. And if you are not a fan of delayed gratification, think of the alternative: Hopelessness and no future at all in the face of darkness and the finality of death. So let us persevere and rejoice in Christ, our living hope. Let us resolve to stop seeking life in the world of the dead. Instead, let us embrace fully our Good Shepherd who takes away the sin of the world. Let us live joyfully in the power of the Holy Spirit who makes our risen Savior available to us, even in the face of suffering and death, so that by God’s grace we can show the world and each other what a true and lively Easter hope looks like, and thus encourage each other. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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

Eastertide 2026: From the Sermon Archives for the Fourth Week of Easter: Living Out and Dying In Our Resurrection Faith

Posted on April 28, 2026 by Father Maney

Sermon originally preached on Easter 4A, Sunday, May 3, 2020. As always, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before you read the sermon. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Acts 2.42-47; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2.19-25; St. John 10.1-10.

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

Today is the 4th Sunday of Easter, the Sunday traditionally celebrated as Good Shepherd Sunday. In these dark days of virus, social isolation, death, and fear it seems especially appropriate to talk about why we need Christ as our Shepherd and this is what I want us to do this morning.

In our gospel lesson, our Lord tells us that he is our Good Shepherd, who both leads and guides his followers, and it is critical for us to remember in these dark times, especially you self-loathers, that it is the shepherd who seeks his flock, not the other way around. As our psalm lesson reminds us, Jesus, and only Jesus, is the Shepherd who can and will lead us to peace, the kind of peace our first human ancestors enjoyed with God before their rebellion in paradise. Ps 23 is a beloved psalm, especially the KJV, and it is traditionally used at funerals. But if nothing else, this cursed pandemic has shown us in no uncertain terms that all of mortal life is lived in the valley of the shadow of death, not just when we die. I suspect prior to the onset of the pandemic many of us would have said, “Medical science and technology are my shepherds, I shall not want” instead of saying, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want” because we can cure (or slow down) all kinds of diseases, and this has made us very adept at putting off and denying death in our culture. With our facelifts and tummy tucks, we deny the aging process that is part and parcel of this mortal life. We send off our old folks to “retire” and die in nursing homes and hospitals. Doing so helps us manage our fear of death and keeps us from having to deal with the reality of living in the dark valley of death, a reality caused by human sin and God’s just judgment on it. Don’t misunderstand. There are times when hospitalization and nursing homes are critically necessary and I would not want to live in a society where pre-modern medicine is practiced. God be praised that his image-bearers have used their minds and imagination to help increase our quality of life. My point is that our faith in medical miracles and technology can prevent us from seeing that all mortal life is lived in the valley of the shadow of death, which in turn helps us keep Christ and his demands on us at arm’s length.

But our delusions have been thoroughly exposed by this virus that is both insidious and evil. If we are honest with ourselves, many, if not most, of us are stunned that we even have to deal with a pandemic like our ancestors did and many other parts of the world still do. We are stunned because we foolishly believed our medical and scientific communities could protect us from evils like this. We were wrong. We now find ourselves living in social isolation and fear, terrified that we will be stricken with the virus and die. We have clearly forgotten that we have a Good Shepherd who leads us and guides us, even during our transition from this mortal life to the eternal life of new creation. But rather than wring our hands in fear and despair over the current state of things, I want us to remember we are people of real power, God’s power. We are resurrection and new creation people by virtue of God’s grace and great love for us made known fully in Jesus Christ, and we are promised that as Christians we are united to our crucified and risen Lord in and through our baptism and faith that he is who he claims he is and has done for us what the NT claims he has done for us.

So what does it mean for us to have Christ, the Great Shepherd, walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death? It means first and foremost that we are not to be afraid of the precariousness or fickleness of life. While none of us is guaranteed immunity from being afflicted by the virus (or a thousand other diseases)—nor are we immune to the heartaches, disappointments, failures, or hurts that come with living in a sin-sick and evil-corrupted world—we nevertheless live in the presence and power of the One who loved us and gave himself for us so that we might live. When we follow Jesus Christ, we live out our belief that condemnation and death is not our final destiny and that means we have the power to overcome our natural tendency to be afraid because we know that on the cross, God has dealt with all that could cause him to condemn us and lead to our permanent death. And when God raised Jesus from the dead, he gave us a preview of the day when our greatest enemy, Death itself, would be destroyed. Medical advancements and technology, wonderful as they are, cannot keep us from dying. When a vaccine is developed to help us overcome the virus, we will be protected but we will still die. Only the power of God who creates things out of nothing and raises the dead can give us eternal life and that is exactly what the resurrection of our Lord Jesus proclaims God intends to do! St. Paul put our situation in stark terms when he wrote to the Ephesians that, “You lived in this world without God and without hope. But now you have been united with Christ Jesus. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the blood of Christ” (Eph 2.12-13). Living in a world without God and hope is an awful thing. It makes us afraid and it slowly kills us. All of us instinctively know that living without hope is not sustainable. Imagine, e.g., what would happen if we found out that a cure or prevention of this virus was never going to come; it would be catastrophic to us and our society. Sadly, however, many choose to find hope in things that do not and cannot give hope and life; it is a symptom of our deep-seated hostility toward God that causes us to rebel against him. Nothing in this life, not power, money, fame, political identity, medicine, or science, to name just a few, can overcome the valley of the shadow of death and putting our ultimate hope in these things is idolatry at its finest, which will result in God’s condemnation and our death. Only our crucified and risen Shepherd can help us overcome our fear of death because only in him are our sins forgiven and we are reconciled to God. Only Christ is the resurrection and the life who promises that those who follow him will live forever, even though our mortal bodies must die (Jn 11.25-26). So let us resolve in this time of pandemic to put our whole hope and trust in the only One who can and will walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death. When we do, we have nothing to fear because we know our greatest enemy, Death, has been defeated and will one day be destroyed forever when God’s new creation comes in full with Christ’s return. Living without fear of death is partly what it means to live as resurrection people. In Christ our ultimate death is abolished. Why should we be afraid?

Second and related to the first point, when we are convinced our Great Shepherd walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, we are able to die well. Hear me carefully here. Nobody should want to die. Death is our greatest enemy. But we are mortal and despite our denial about this fact, we will all die. Dying without fear, dying a peaceful death when our time comes, are marks of a vibrant and lively resurrection faith rooted in our Great Shepherd. One of the most wicked things about this virus is that it has forced many to die alone without human presence and touch. That in itself should be enough to convince us that it comes from the devil himself. But when our Great Shepherd walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, we can go without that human touch because he is there with us and we know we are not dying alone. Human senses may not perceive his presence any more than we know when our Lord speaks to babies in the womb at their conception, but that does not make his presence and peace any less real. Again, please do not misunderstand. I deeply lament the fact that some have to die alone. This is not how God intends it. But those who have a lively resurrection faith in Christ have his assurance that they are never alone, not even in death, and that he will welcome them into his loving presence, so that they no longer have to be afraid. How well we die is as important as how well we live, and without a real and lively relationship with Christ, it is impossible to die well, human denial and fantasies about death notwithstanding. Are you prepared to die well in the faith and peace and love of Christ who gave himself for you because he loves you, even in all your unloveliness, so that you can live forever? During this time of pandemic, we as God’s people in Christ have the holy opportunity to proclaim our faith in our Savior by knowing how to die a good death whenever it comes. Christ is key.

But as we have seen, the whole of mortal life is lived in the valley of the shadow of death. So how do we cultivate our Lord’s risen presence in the living of our days? To that we turn to our NT lesson for some helpful insights because as all our readings make clear, being people of our Great Shepherd is a collective, not individual, thing. As St. Luke makes abundantly clear in Acts, our life in Christ is to be lived out together as a family. If we ever hope to develop the deep and abiding faith in Christ needed to allow us to live as people without fear who are prepared to live and die well in his risen presence, people who know his great love for them and who stake their very lives on this knowledge, we have to participate in the four marks of the Church: We have to appropriate the apostolic teaching contained in the NT, enjoy a common life together (fellowship), break bread together, and pray together. The history of the Church is littered with various examples of the wreckage of those who failed to participate in these four marks of the Church and if we at St. Augustine’s fail to participate in them fully, we can expect to be part of that wreckage. I appeal to you, my beloved, let us not do that to ourselves!

First, we are to learn the apostolic teaching in the NT because we believe that they were eyewitnesses of our Lord’s life and death who received Christ’s teachings and example directly, and are therefore in a position to pass on to us what we must do/think/say to be his followers. For example, last week we learned how the first Christians became resurrection peeps who believed in the power of Christ’s bodily resurrection that announced the new creation and the resurrection of the dead, filling them with joy and new hope. In our epistle lesson today, we learn from St. Peter that followers of Christ are not to retaliate against their enemies and those who afflict them with suffering. We are to do this because this is what Christ did for us. He did not condemn us for our sins but took them on himself so that we would not suffer God’s just condemnation. As we study the Scriptures together, we learn how to live out hard teachings like this and to identify markers of what real love looks like, the love of God that heals and sustains, not human love that often seeks its own distorted pleasures and goals. As fallen human beings, we are prone to misinterpreting the word of God, so we need the family corrective to help us get it right and keep it right. And as our NT lesson also attests, we can learn from apostolic teaching how we can know Christ’s presence in and among us in the power of the Spirit. St. Luke tells us the Church did the four things at which we are looking and God blessed and grew their numbers because they did, filling them with joy and power.

Second, we are to enjoy sweet fellowship together because as we have already seen, we all need the human touch. We also need sweet fellowship to help us not be afraid. Think about it. When are we most vulnerable to fear and despair? When we are isolated and feel all alone. We need each other to weep with and celebrate with. When we enjoy the kind of intimate family relationships St. Luke reports in our NT lesson today, we can be real with each other. We will be there for each other and we can be charitable in our agreements and disagreements. We may not always see eye to eye on lesser things in life, but that will not prevent us from being part of the same flock our Great Shepherd leads, and together he helps us help each other in our weaknesses to grow in our relationship with him as well as with each other. As St. Paul reminds us, the Holy Spirit lives in us individually and collectively (1 Cor 6.19), and Christ is made known to us in and through the Spirit’s presence. Families are the glue of a coherent society and God’s family in Christ is no exception!

When we break bread together, especially at the eucharist, we remind each other that we have died and been raised with Christ to new life. We feast on our Lord’s body and blood, literally consuming him, and we are sustained and nurtured by him in the power of the Spirit. If you have ever wondered where Christ is in the midst of darkness, look no further than his Word contained in Scripture and in the sacrament of Holy Communion. There you will find a healed and redeemed people, people who are far from perfect but who have caught a glimpse of what risen life in Christ is like and are refreshed and made whole over time. We will have to wait for God’s new creation to come in full to enjoy perfect healing and health, but we still enjoy the imperfect healing and wholeness made known to us in Christ’s death and resurrection. This is why in the midst of a plague-ravaged world, Christ’s resurrection with its announcement of new creation can be such a healing and stabilizing factor to help us navigate during these desperate times. When we do not participate in the eucharist on a regular basis, we are in clear danger of failing to make Christ’s death and resurrection the center of everything we say and do and believe, and we will suffer badly as a result.

And finally, of course, we are to pray together because we are heaven and earth people. We pray for ourselves and for others who are in desperate need because we desire to bring God’s power to bear in our lives and the lives of others so that his kingdom will come on earth as in heaven. It is what loving people do. In prayer we can draw close to Christ himself, who sits at God’s right hand (rules) and intercedes for us out of his great love for us. We can pour out our hopes and fears in prayer, asking for Christ’s guidance, confident that he will guide us—often through his people—because he has promised to be our Great Shepherd. Prayer helps keep us rooted in the reality of God’s Kingdom and reminds us we do not worship an absent or uncaring God.

This is what St. Luke is describing for us. It is the family of God at work (and play) together. It isn’t a version of primitive communism as some have argued. It is a winsome and wholesome description of the first followers of Christ living together as a true family and it is a far more compelling notion of church than those who see doing church as coming to worship once a week and then going their own way to do their own thing. And I am here to tell you, St. Augustine’s, that we fit this description of church pretty well. Not perfectly, of course, because we are a bunch of ragamuffins. But we have the marks of a vibrant family and so there is no reason for any of us to be afraid or not have a lively resurrection faith. And if you are still skeptical, I would invite you to read or reread Bethany’s testimony of how she came to believe in the resurrection of the body. It wasn’t just apostolic teaching. It was fellowship and breaking bread and prayer as well. She realized you aren’t the total losers she originally thought you were and God used you to help bring her to a healthy faith, thanks be to God! This is how Christ nurtures us and helps us not to be afraid. This is worth celebrating, my beloved, even in the midst of pandemic. I pray we will all do what is necessary to become people of power, resurrection people who know they have the Great Shepherd to walk with them wherever they go, even in the valley of the shadow of death. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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

Eastertide 2026: From the Sermon Archives for the Fourth Week of Easter: Why We Need The (Not A) Good Shepherd

Posted on April 26, 2026 by Father Maney

Sermon originally preached on Easter 4A, Sunday, April 25, 2021. As always, it will be helpful for you to read the assigned texts below by clicking on or tapping their links before you read the sermon. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Lectionary texts: Acts 4.1-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3.16-24; St. John 10.11-18.

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

Today is the fourth Sunday of Eastertide and we are at day 22, almost midway through the 50 days of Easter (how are your new creation celebrations going, BTW? Are you causing anyone to wonder why you are partying so much?). In the Anglican Tradition, we celebrate the fourth Sunday of Easter as Good Shepherd Sunday, where our readings point to Christ as our Good Shepherd. But what does that mean for us as Christians living in an increasingly chaotic 21^st century world? This is what I want us to look at this morning.

So who needs Christ as their Good Shepherd? Well, all of us, frankly, because we live in a world of instant communication that allows us to see with increasing intensity the dark and chaotic world in which we live. My wife and I can barely watch the news anymore and we increasingly stay away from social media because of the ever-growing toxic strand of stories that stream from these various sources. In short, we avoid the news for the sake of our mental health, and we’re not alone. As the Christian faith and those who profess and live it come under increasing attack, not to mention the very foundations and traditions of our nation, if we are not careful we can quickly and easily fall into despair. Then of course there are the personal failures, setbacks, losses, anxieties, and other difficulties we all face. Many of us who try to live up to the high calling of the Christian life are all too painfully aware that we miss the mark, sometimes as much as we hit it. Like David in Psalm 51, we know our transgressions and our sin is ever before us. Perhaps a better question might be, where is our Good Shepherd, rather than do we need one! Then there’s the quaint and seemingly outdated term, shepherd, itself. Most of us don’t come from a rural background and even if we do, shepherding seems to be a thing of the past. Why would we need a good shepherd when we live in the 21^st century?

But we mustn’t let the historical context of Scripture lull us into false and misleading conclusions. We must remember that it is to the glory of God that he indeed works and is active in the context of human history, meaning that Jesus lived at a particular time and in a particular culture where his listeners would have quickly related to his use of the term shepherd. No, as Scripture consistently proclaims, our God is not some absentee god who is disinterested in this world and our lives. Nor is he a god who focuses exclusively on things “spiritual” as any self-respecting gnostic, past and present, would have us believe. Instead, Scripture proclaims consistently that God our Father is the God of history and our Creator. And as the resurrection of Christ proclaims boldly to us and to the world, creation matters to God and God intends to make all things right again. The risen Christ is our living preview of coming attractions so to speak, testifying to this truth, thanks be to God!

If we keep all this in mind, we are ready to answer the question as to why we need Christ the Good Shepherd. A shepherd is one who looks after those who follow him, in this case human image-bearers, not mindless sheep. This image therefore reminds us that the notion of shepherding by definition applies not to individuals, but to groups (think Christ’s body, the Church). Of course, Jesus leads us and is available to us as individuals. Anybody who knows the risen Lord knows that. But Christ does not call us to live our lives in isolation. He calls us to live together as a family of believers. We are all in this together because we are all subject to the same dark powers and forces of chaos, which at its root is the very nature of sin. Show me sin of any kind and I will show you chaos. Given that we are subject to powers and forces far stronger than we are, forces that have enslaved us and stripped and robbed us of our original human dignity as God’s image-bearing creatures whom God created to rule his good creation on his behalf, we are in constant danger of being undone. Simply put, we are not able on our own to free ourselves from our slavery to that alien and hostile power we call Sin, and if we are unable to free ourselves from its slavery, we all face Death, not only our mortal death, but also the Death that results from being disconnected from God, our very Source of life. This means that we are already dead people walking without God’s help. Take the patient off his life-support systems without a cure and the patient dies. Try to live life in the face of the dark powers and the chaos they impose on our lives and world without the help of someone or something stronger, and we become people who live without hope. And without hope, we all die.

But thanks be to God that we do have someone who is stronger than the forces who hate us and want to destroy us. We have Jesus Christ, crucified, died, and raised from the dead, available to us. Christ is our Beautiful Shepherd (a more accurate description for the Greek word, kalos, than the term “good”), who loves us enough to give up his equality with God to become human and to die for us to break Sin’s power over us, and to bear God’s righteous and just punishment for our sins. This self-giving love for us reflects the heart and glory of God the Father who does not give up on us, irrespective of how badly we manage to screw things up. None of us know all that transpired on Calvary that Good Friday because none of us has the mind of God. Yet we believe that our sins are forgiven and that we have new life starting right now because Christ’s death reconnected us to God our lifeline and promises one day to raise our mortal bodies from the dead to live with him forever. How do I know this? How can I be sure, especially with so many unanswered questions and in the face of so much dysfunction and suffering and alienation and chaos (sin)? Because Jesus Christ is raised from the dead as he tells us he would be in our gospel lesson today. As St. Paul proclaimed in his letter to the Romans, at just the right time, Christ died for us, even while we were still God’s enemies (Romans 5.6-20) so that we could have life once again and be the image-bearing creatures God created us to be as human beings. This is what real shepherding looks like, the only kind that matters, and this is why we have only one real Shepherd because only in Christ do we find forgiveness of sins and salvation. And here we need to spend some time unpacking this extraordinary statement found in our NT lesson. Isn’t it incredibly exclusionary? Well, no it isn’t.

Why? Because what Ss. Peter and John were proclaiming, along with the early Church, is that only Jesus is God become human and only his saving death can break our slavery to Sin and restore us to our rightful place as God’s image-bearers. In other words, Christianity has a truth that other religions simply do not because only Jesus Christ is raised from the dead. Neither is God’s love closed to anyone. All are invited to put their faith in Jesus Christ and no one is shut out expect through their own stubborn refusal to see and believe the truth that is in Christ. Now of course the history of Christianity is littered with all kinds of folly that has accompanied our proclaimed faith in Christ and all kinds of wickedness that has sadly accompanied real Christian wisdom. But human wickedness and folly do not negate the truth of the claim itself! Jesus Christ is raised from the dead, proving he is who he claimed to be, not to mention the testimony of hundreds of millions of people over time and culture, our little parish being a blessed microcosm of that collective witness! Christ himself tells us this today in rather stark terms: you’ll never know me or that my claims are true if you don’t know the One who sent me, i.e., God. Why? Because the Father and I are one and that kind of deep intimate relationship characterizes the relationship my followers have with me. Confess me as your Lord and live like you believe it, and you will know that my claim to be the only way to the Father is true (John 14.6). As both the psalmist and St. John in his epistle remind us, Christ our Beautiful Shepherd is the basis for our reconciliation with God and our confident trust that he is with us, even at the moment of our mortal death. What more protection and promise do we need, my beloved? That is why only Christ can be our Good Shepherd, because only in Christ do we find forgiveness of sins and the promise of resurrection. No other shepherds will do because no one but Christ can give us life. Pinheads like me who claim the title of pastor (shepherd) by virtue of our office cannot give you life; we can only point you to the One who can and does, and encourage and exhort you to believe the power and the promise, especially in today’s world where it is increasingly viewed with disdain and hostility. Even so, we do not fear nor will we let ourselves be kowtowed into silence if we really do believe that there is no other Name than Christ’s by which we are saved! That is why Christians, and by that I mean those who have a real and lively faith with Christ, have never feared persecution and have actually rejoiced when suffering for Christ’s sake. As Jesus himself reminded us, we shouldn’t fear those who can kill our body but are then powerless to do anything else to us. We should instead fear God who has the power to end our life forever (Matthew 10.28).

I can hear some of you grumbling right now. You have questions. Father Maney, why do you sweat so much when you preach and lead worship (A: I am a born sweat hog)? If Christ really is the Good Shepherd, why is my life so blown up right now? C’mon dude. Get real. Well, my skeptical interlocutory friend, here’s the deal. I don’t know why God allows what God allows to go on in his world. Nobody does and if you hear someone claim otherwise, run like crazy from that person! What I can tell you is this. Life is not a grand experimental design. It does not consist of experimental and control groups where we can manipulate variables to determine causation and/or correlation. It just doesn’t work that way. We aren’t God and we aren’t omniscient. We aren’t privy to all to which God is privy. That’s why, for example, I can’t prove in any kind of strict empirical sense that God answers prayer or that God is moving mightily within our parish family by bringing new families in and opening up your generous hearts to enable us to occupy our new premises. I can’t “prove” any of this, but I know it’s true because I know the power of God in Jesus Christ raised from the dead, in my life, in the lives of many of you, and in the life of the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church, broken and dysfunctional as she is. It’s called FAITH. And because I know the power of the risen Lord and his presence in and among his people, I don’t feel the need to try to “prove” anything to skeptics with their sneering questions. I’m not copping an attitude here. I simply don’t feel compelled to play by the enemy’s rules or by the rules of scoffers. I know the reality and so, I pray, do you.

None of this means that we are immune to hurts, heartaches, failures, and brokenness as a parish. We know this all too well. Wendy just lost her dad to congestive heart failure. Chris recently lost his brother to the wicked disease of cancer. Doug is still not fully healed, to name just three examples. You all can add your own heartbreaking stories. But mysterious as this all is, it does not negate the reality of Christ’s promise to be our Beautiful Shepherd in life and in death because he is risen from the dead and because we don’t live a life that is built like a cosmic experimental design. There’s much more than meets our senses and Scripture affirms that there is an unseen reality out there of which we are unaware. Think, for example, of Elisha and his young assistant who found themselves seemingly trapped by the Aramean army. The young man fell into despair as a result, thinking that they were about to be utterly undone. But then Elisha prayed for God to open the young man’s eyes and he beheld the unseen forces of God ready to intervene on their behalf to rescue them (2 Ki 6.8-23)! St. John essentially tells us the same thing in our epistle lesson when he reminds us that when we are Christ’s we have the invisible Presence of the Holy Spirit working in us to remind us of God’s great love for us despite the fact that we were at one time God’s enemies. God’s love reminds us that we no longer need to languish over a guilty conscience. Rather we are to repent of that which caused that guilty conscience and ask God’s forgiveness. And because we know the crucified and risen Lord, we know that God gladly answers our prayers. Do you believe this? If you do, let Christ’s shepherding strengthen and encourage you in the dark valleys of your life. And by all means, let us encourage and strengthen each other with this reality when we become aware of of those dark valleys.

All this reminds us why we need Christ our Beautiful Shepherd and what it leads to: changed lives and the power to be living a embodiment of Christ’s love for us and for his world. If we really believe that there is no salvation other than in the Name of Christ, and if we really believe God does truly love us despite our warts, sometimes quite sizable, then we must live and proclaim our faith to others because having Christ as our Good Shepherd really is a matter of life and death. It means, in other words, we put our faith into action, starting with our families and our extended parish family. When we see others in need we act on their behalf, having generous hearts that imitate our Savior. It means we give our time, talents, and money to help our families and those around us who desperately need to both survive and to hear and see the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed and lived out faithfully. It means we are to embody the self-giving love Christ has for us to others in the context of our daily lives and communities. And here I want to offer counsel to you because many, if not most, Christians misunderstand what self-giving love looks like. To embody the self-giving love of Christ doesn’t mean we become punching bags of all sorts to others. Jesus Christ did not love us and die for us to enable us to continue in our (self-)destructive behavior. He died for us so that we might learn to live and love like he loves us and the Father loves him. He died for us so that we might be truly healed and find wholeness and peace. Remember this as you attempt to love others. Becoming their verbal, emotional, or physical punching bag or enabling their destructive behaviors is not loving them. It is actually participating in their sin and this is never the loving thing to do. We sometimes are confronted with difficult choices when dealing with others. That is when we go to Scripture and pray to the Lord for guidance and wisdom. And we learn to trust each other enough to seek and receive their godly guidance. We can do so with confidence, a confidence not rooted in ourselves or others, but because we know the One who is our Beautiful Shepherd and who promises to be with us, individually and together, in any and every circumstance because of his great love for us. This is Jesus Christ, crucified, raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven to rule until he returns again to finish his saving work on our behalf. This is the Shepherd we desperately need and the One on whom we can count and to whom we can give our wholehearted love, loyalty, trust, and obedience because only in him is forgiveness and life. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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

Mark 4:9

"Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand."

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About Father Maney

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