15th Sunday After Pentecost 2026

• 1 Samuel 27:1-3, 8-12
• Psalm 72:1–4, 12–14, 18–19
• Romans 2:12–16
• Matthew 18:1–7

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 3:26

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And blessed be God's family now and forever. Let's pray together. Almighty God, to you all hearts true, all desires. And from you no secrets are dead. Go into the hearts of our hearts. By the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, we may perfectly love you and Lordly magnify your name. Through Christ our God. Amen. Let us pray. Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts. For as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. As you're being seated, our children, grades five and below, are invited to godly play in the back with Emory of Ryan.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

David said to his heart, Now one day I shall be swept away by the land of Saul. There is nothing better than that I escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul will despair of seeking me any further within the border of Israel, and I shall escape out of this his hand. So David got up and went over, he and six hundred men who were with him to Akish, son of Mah, ruler of Gath. And David stayed with Akish at Gath, he and his troops, each man with his household, and David with his two wives, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail of Carmel, wife of Nabal. And David and his men went up and raided on the Jezreites and Gizerites and Amalekites, for they were the inhabitants of the land from old, in your way to Shur and on the land of Egypt. Then David smote the hand the land where and there was neither woman or man living. He took sheep and cattle and donkeys and camels and clothing, and would return and come back to Achish. And I Kish would ask, Against whom did you all rave today? And David would say, Against the Negab of Judah, or against the Negab of the Jehimelites, or against the Negab of the Kenites. Neither woman nor man David left living to be brought back to Gath, saying, Lest they tell about us and say, Thus did David. Thus was his custom all the days he lived in the country of the Philistines. Now Akish trusted David, saying, He has made himself an abhorrent stench in the nostrils of his people in Israel. So he shall be my slave for all time. The word of the Lord. We will read responsively by the half verse. God, give the ruler your justice. May the next ruler judge your people with righteousness. May the mountains rise up well-being for the people. May the ruler do justice for the poor of the people. The ruler has pity on the poor and the needy. From oppression and violence, the ruler redeems their life. Blessed be the fount of justice, the God of Israel. Blessed be her glorious name forever.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

And their conflicting thoughts on I will excuse them on the day when God will judge the hidden things of women and men, according to my gospel through Jesus Christ. The word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

In that hour that Jesus taught about taxes, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, Who then is the greatest in the realm of the heavens? Jesus called a girl child. You all will never enter the realm of the heavens. Whoever humbles themselves like this girl child is the greatest in the realm of the heavens. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. But if anyone puts an enticement to sin before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you. If a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea, woe to the world because of enticement to sin. Enticements to sin are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the enticement comes. The gospel of the Lord. A lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated. I want to invite you to consider that Jesus talks about children twice in in the Gospels. The first one is probably more familiar to you, unless you receive the kingdom of heaven like a child. That is familiar language from Mark and from Luke. Matthew does it a little bit different though, doesn't he? He says, unless you are changed and become like children, you won't enter the realm of heaven. And then comes this next line: whoever humbles themselves. I'm so glad Will Gaffney added, girl, child. Humble yourself like a girl child. But then you don't get into the realm of heaven. So it's just interesting to think that in the one you're more familiar with, it's receiving heaven like a child. This one though seems to be more about humility. Everybody's favorite word. Now, if you're if you've grown up in the South, and I sure have, now, sure, Kentucky wasn't like one of those Confederate states, that's where I heal from. We we still do have this southernism where we decided that humility is about self-deprecation. Right? So the way we practice humility is by saying, well, sure, I'm in charge, but it's not that great, or, you know, sure I won that race, but I could have probably done better. Anybody else from the South? Right? This is like a thing we do, right? That's how we show we're humble, is we tell lies. Interesting, innit? And uh I even grew up in a tradition where we love to use humility that way as if it was some kind of ploy to get God to do a thing for us. In fact, I really love the musicality of this particular song. You don't have to raise your hand if you heard it. But there's this like lovely song I sang as a teenager: humble yourself at the sight of the Lord, and God will raise you up higher and higher. I mean, I love this song, like I want to sing it to you now. But you know, wow, humility as a strategy for God to reward me sounds like not very humble. I hope you don't mind me saying. It's almost like if in prayer I go around to debase myself, then God will reward me. So I should use that strategy to get my reward. There doesn't seem to be anything about character development in that theology at all, which is why I'm gonna call it bad. Sorry if I offended you. If I haven't, I probably will again. Um so so what does it mean to be humble? Like not just a child, but like a girl child. Well, I think we have to consider that, like, you know, children's welfare and children's rights are like a hundred years old. I hope you don't mind me saying that. In fact, we realized as human beings that kids are really good workers in minds because they've got little hands and can reach into little crevices. In the Industrial Revolution, you could pay kids less, so we did. So kids 100 years ago or more, I'm not still saying we do the best job we can, had no rights. And the odds of making it to the age of 18 at the time of Jesus were like 50 percent. Between, you know, getting an abscess tooth, right? Or just dying at work. So, and of course, I hope you don't mind me saying this, like, yeah, it's one thing to say kids have no rights, but I hope you recognize that girl kids have fewer rights than boy kids. Girls can't inherit property, they don't bear the family name. So when we talk about humility, like girl kids in the ancient world are utterly dependent for their life. I mean, boy kids are too. It's this interesting thing, isn't it? That we don't shame babies for being dependent on us for help. Nobody says, Oh, you look at that baby, they're gonna be a failure. They just need you to feed them and change them. What a loser. And we kind of get it. Babies need help. We understand that babies are dependent. Our brains have even evolved as mammals. I mean, unless you're a sociopath, you understand that as mammals, we have to raise and take care of little ones. If you don't understand that, you are a sociopath, but there aren't many of those. So I'm feeling like there's none in here. That's my guess, right? So we get it, they're dependent on one another, and that that's not shameful. So I don't know why it is that we decided that if we want help from somebody else, it's humiliating. I mean, I don't think my parents ever told me that directly. But we made this decision at some point culturally that being dependent is shameful. Being independent is virtuous. And I want to suggest to you that maybe this whole business about humility Jesus is asking us to consider is neither of those two options. It actually is a third option, which is being interdependent. The most independent people I know don't realize how interdependent they are. You can make quite a bit of money, but I'm suspicious that even in making your own money and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, which is like, you know, what's more American than that, we forget that like we didn't lay the fiber optic cable that it takes to run our business. Or that, hey, we didn't build the roads that we traveled to get to work. Oh, Mike, those are small things. I think those small things are recognition that we live interdependently. And by the way, if customers don't buy your product, you're not going to enrich yourself. So even the wealthiest people are interdependent on people to buy their wares. And yes, maybe you don't have the cultural baggage I have. I am rather unlike a little girl child. Maybe it's because of the way I was taught to raise animals. Let me just name this for a second. Uh maybe I should be careful with who I criticize here, but you know, there's this old way of how it is you train a dog. The way you train a dog is to shame the dog repeatedly by showing them that you have all of the resources. It turns out they already know that. Like you have the car, you bring the food, you put the food in the bowl. Like they already know that. So why would you need to rub that in their face? It's clear to them. By the way, children know that too. And yet, there are theologians like John Wesley, not the founder of Methodism, that came after him. John Wesley wrote that the best way to raise a child is to break their spirit as early as possible so that they will obey their parents initially and later obey God. Caesar Milan would like you to break your dog's spirit as well so that it will obey you. I think that is humiliating, but I don't think that's humility. So I don't think that God wants us humiliated. In fact, I think humiliation has nothing to do with what humility actually is. Humility, it seems to me, is an awareness that we are interdependent to make everything happen, to thrive, to grow, to work together, which is why the New Testament loves this image. One body, many parts. If everybody were independent, there would be no body. I hope you enjoyed that pun. There'd be nobody. And there would be no body. And if you're like me, you'd like to be independent anyway. Somehow, many of us have internalized a very sick spirituality in which we sound more like the disciples. How do I be the greatest? instead of how do we live in community. I wonder if Jesus isn't asking us to consider that question anew. No, you might be really uncomfortable, or actually, you might be all too comfortable with what Jesus says next. If anyone puts enticement to sin before one of these little ones, it'd be better if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. If that's literally true, there is no hope for any of us. If you rejoice in that, your spirituality probably looks more like humiliation than humility. Turns out there's something happening at play here. This whole thing about being drowned into the sea, that is a way of interpreting this. But that word shows up in Greek another time in the Gospel of Matthew. I don't know if you remember this, but the disciples are going on ahead of Jesus, and Jesus decides he'll just walk to him on the water. And Peter says, Let me come out. And Jesus says, Sure, come on now, walk with me on the water. You remember how this ends? Peter starts to sink, right? Do you remember why? Because he sees the wind and the waves, and he's afraid. That word sink is the word drown. Isn't that interesting? Jesus doesn't tell Peter in his moment of doubt, go ahead and drown and die and go to hell. He just asks him, Why did you doubt? But you know what else he does? He pulls him out. Isn't that interesting? Turns out Jesus is not as hateful as I am. He says, I see you're already doubting. I see you are already drowning. So instead of letting that happen naturally, Jesus intercedes for him. Now, this is so interesting, right? Because I don't know about you, and and I do want to use the parenting model just for a second. I often find myself thinking, well, I've done a little bit better job parenting than my parents did. I don't know if that's ever mattered to you when rearing your children. You know all too well the mistakes your parents made. You probably, even when you were in middle school, found yourself thinking, if I ever have kids, I am not doing nothing, right? And I even told my kids sometimes when it's rough, I said, Well, I hear that this is a rough experience for me you're having, but I just want to let you know I am doing a little bit better than my parents. Anybody ever had to go all and say that to their kids other than me? Yeah, I've done that because it's there's truth to it, right? Boy, but you know, I just can't imagine that Jesus wants us to take this phrase so literally that it would be better if we were drowned. Because who would raise our kids?

unknown 27:04

Jesus.

SPEAKER_03 27:05

Jesus is not gonna raise your kids. I hate to tell you this. I mean, not literally. He'll probably do that through an interdependent community that practice humility, but I don't think the Lord Himself is gonna raise your kids. Is that okay that I said that? You know, I think Jesus works through us. And the more independently Jesus works, interdependently we work together, I think the more we get closer to Jesus. I mean, we talked about this this morning in the Exodus class. You know, one of the sad things about the Protestant Reformation is we decided we could read the Bible by ourselves. And boy, when you do that, the Bible sounds as crazy as you. Which is why we've always read the Bible in communities so that people can say, I don't think so, friend. You know, or like, let's take your conviction to its logical conclusion and it's no longer that good. By the way, when we say it takes a village to raise a child, that's what we're saying. Sometimes I'm wrong. And I need checks and balances, or I need other hands. I don't think the Lord is saying, never make a mistake, or you're gonna go to hell. In fact, I would tell you, one of the burdens that I have given my own child, sin means burden, it means missing the mark. One of the sins I've given my own child is comparing, comparing my parenting to my parents. Why should she have to carry that burden? Why should my son carry the burden of comparison? Because I don't know if you know this. Comparison is the thief of joy. Oh man, should I jump into the sea with a millstone on my neck? I hope you recognize that, frankly, we all have burdens that we seem powerless not only to carry, but to lay down. I wonder if this isn't a more positive image than we initially think. Instead of make a mistake and go to hell, I wonder if this isn't asking us to consider another way of drowning that we actually consider sacramental in the church. Do y'all know what kind I'm talking about? Drowning? It happens at that thing sometimes. Turns out the word baptize means to drown. And why is that so important in the New Testament? Well, it it's an image that the old way in which we see the world, the patterns in which we're habituated that represent enticements for sin given to die. They don't just get whitewashed, they drown to death. Paul takes this so seriously, right, that he says, we believe we've been drowned with Jesus, so that just as he died and was raised to new life, literally, we get to do that as well. The scriptures aren't just talking about our bodies and our atoms. They are talking about the way we live. So I'd like to suggest to you that maybe what Jesus is saying is if you find yourself enticing other people to the same burdens you carry, time to be baptized. I could be wrong, I just don't think I am. Like change. A change that only God can work in us if only we would be willing. And I will tell you, changing myself by myself. You want to kick alcoholism by yourself, good luck. Because the big book says you need a community, and you go to meetings, because by yourself, what's your second line of defense? Right? AA says we need sponsors, we need communities. So why would we think that the living of our faith life is any different from that? Or parenting, or God help us, spousing. I'm not sure which one's harder, being a parent or a spouse. Having a model of what I don't want to do, which is what I saw from my parents, is not going to tell me what I ought to do and hold me up when it's hard. This is why I think Jesus beckons us to consider children are not humiliated to be interdependent. It's very natural for them. So why do we make that humiliating? Because we're better than them? I don't even think Jesus is contrasting who's better and worse. I think Jesus is trying to say we're all resource dependent. We're all resource dependent. And the sooner we realize that, the more we can choose to share instead of being stolen from. The more we can choose to receive instead of justifying or bilking ourselves out of something. You know, what's so interesting to me is that Paul in the book of Romans talks about the difference between knowing the right thing and doing the right thing. And I forgive me for saying this, because maybe I've laid a burden on my kid. Because I often say in my kid's presence, God, I just wish Christians didn't ruin so many good things. What do I mean when I say that? Well, I was at a community pre-faith breakfast with Adrian Garcia, and sure enough, we went around the room and introduced ourselves, and probably 90% of the people in the room were Christian, some kind of executive pastor or apostle or something like that. And then there was a couple of Jewish folks, and there was an Imam from the nation of Islam, that's the black American Muslim community, right? So just want to be really clear. We weren't all Christians. That was known. And then the commissioner invited somebody to get up and do an opening prayer. And boy, I don't know if it was a prayer or a sermon, but we she we sure got to hear about all the good things Jesus had done for us by dying and assuming our sins. And I just found myself thinking, there's a Jewish person and a Muslim in the room. And you know that. So why would you preach to them in a prayer? Maybe I've lost you again. That doesn't seem like humility to me. That seems like trying to humiliate somebody because they don't think like you think. Even if they're wrong, is that the place to do it? Jesus, help us. What's odd to me is that there are folks who know the right things and they don't do them. And they sure do foist that everybody ought to know what they know so that they can control them. And yes, I am talking about posting the Ten Commandments in a geometry classroom in a public school. It's shameful to me. Where does it say love your neighbor as yourself? That's the whole of the law. Why do we want to keep some rules that our Jewish brothers and sisters would not tell you is the heart of their own Torah? It's Christian people doing that. And for what reason? To control our children? They don't have compassion for them. The people pushing this aren't keeping them, and you know it. Paul calls them out. It's not just me. Paul calls them out. Some of the best people I've known in my life are not only not Christian, they're not religious, and they know what's right and they do it. Because they're interdependent and they have humility, and they're not looking to humiliate other people, they're just looking to practice love. Yeah. Now, here's my big humility story for you. Because, hey, we're starting our Fall Pledge Drive today. And I am the villain of this story. I'm gonna tell you, this was the most humbling thing that's happened to me a while. Oh, let me tell you one other thought about humility before I tell the story. I don't believe that humility is debasing ourselves. We already know we're not God. God already knows that. God doesn't need us to remind God every time we pray about how not good we are. That's already evident. So we're not saying anything new when we do that. No, I would like to suggest to you that one of my professors gave me this definition that humility is being exactly who God made you to be. No more and no less. Usually I find that we make mistakes in the extremes. And what do you know? There's a number of research studies that confirm that some of the most confident people are the most incompetent. If y'all have ever had a job, you realize that inverse relationship is often the case. And some of the least confident people are often the most competent. So humility is not being more than God made you to be at all. But it sure isn't being less. So it is not helpful for me to say, well, you know, Courtney and I were talking about this. So somebody will get up to win the Nobel Prize, and there's like four people, and they'll win the prize, and they'll say, Well, I'm just so humbled to be here. I mean, what does that mean? You won the freaking Nobel Prize. What's humbling about that? Oh, humbling that somebody recognized that God gave you a gift and you chose to share it with the world. Maybe that's what humility is all about. You didn't hoard it to yourself or try to maximize it for personal gain. You actually put yourself out there and shared it. So maybe that's not a bad definition of humility. Now, this week I ran into a thing. Actually, it was two weeks ago. Now we say here we can do more together. And I believe it. And I will also tell you as a priest, and I hope you find this as the case. I don't believe I'm better than any of you. I don't. I will tell you, like, I have different work to I'm called to do with the collar than y'all who don't have the collar on. I would tell you that. And I believe myself. But boy, sometimes I sure get this wrong. Like, when we had our really big function on August the 16th, when the bishop was here and we dedicated the monument, the vestry person of the day was cleaning up. I mean, there were many of us cleaning up, and that person had been here since seven o'clock, making the coffee, getting everything ready, was hauling trash, and it's like two o'clock. And the person had something they needed to do. And they looked at me with like a Santa Claus trash bag on their back, headed to the dumpster, and said, You know, is it okay if I go? I've got some things to do. And I said, Of course it's okay. You've been here since seven o'clock. I'm here, we got the rest of it. And they didn't go home. They kept working. So a couple of days later, I was talking to their spouse and I said, You know, I told your spouse they could leave, and they didn't leave. They stayed here, you know, like I don't even know what to make of that. And they said, Well, you do that stuff all the time. You ready for this? I said, Well, yeah, but I worked. Because I believe that. She said to me, We all work here. And it wasn't that she said the right thing, it's that she believed it. You want to talk about humility? We all work here. You want to talk about why we do stewardship and pledges? We all work here. And I want to make sure you understand because I get to see the work you do and how it's received, probably better than most of you here. Some people, the work they do here is they come in the door and they sit. And you don't know how much work that is for them. To come into a church that has hurt them repeatedly. Maybe not this one. Churches hurt people. I don't know if this is news for you. Churches hurt people, and those wounds are deep and they're really painful, excruciatingly so. And some people, that's what it's like to work around here if they come. Now, some people, the work they do, right, is they manage the HVAC system tirelessly, like it's a job. And some people run the Ultra Gill, and some people get up and they talk without notes. And we all work here. And I just think that's probably what Jesus is actually telling us. And Jesus is probably telling a priest like me that says, You can leave. I gotta do this because I work here. I think Jesus is saying, Why don't you drown that way of being?