May 3, 2026

Year A Readings
Acts 17:22-31, Psalm 66:7-18, 1 Peter 3:13-22
+ John 14:15-21

The Collect
O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.    

The Homily

We’re going to bridge last week’s readings with the ones for today, because we didn’t have time last week to talk about Saint Stephen. If you weren’t here, or don’t remember the reading, Stephen, a deacon of the early church, is condemned for blasphemy and stoned to death by the religious leaders of the Jews. In the moment when Stephen succumbs to the brutal beating of the rocks, Luke records that he prays for his murders, begging Jesus to forgive their sins. Stephen is a perfect example of someone who understood that Jesus cares far more about the quality of our love than the content of our belief, because he prays for those who believe differently than him as they execute him. Indeed, of any person mentioned in the New Testament, Saint Stephen is perhaps the most Christlike. Like Jesus, Stephen did wonders and signs in the power of the Holy Spirit. And, like Jesus, Stephen was lynched because his actions and testimony threatened the structures of power. And, like Jesus, Stephen begged for the forgiveness of his murderers. How would this world be different if we had the same depth of love, a love strong enough and fearless enough to make us beg publicly for the lives of our enemies? Let us pray:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace: where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is doubt, faith; where there is darkness light; where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that we might not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is giving that we receive; and it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are raised to eternal life.  Amen.

Stephen’s story got me thinking over the past week, and I ended up stewing on several arresting questions: What if our faith wasn’t hindered by the fear of what other people think? What if we stopped caring who was offended by Christ’s message of radical hospitality and inclusion? What if we began to seek out those from whom we are estranged? And, what if we began to proclaim the ethical wisdom of Jesus’ love in a much more public way?

I also thought to myself: What does any of that have to do with Mother’s Day… We’ll get to that in a minute…

With these questions prompted by Stephen in mind, I turned to the scripture passages for today and was blown away by the correspondence. Paul, whose name was Saul, was actually at the lynching of Stephen, and apparently Stephen’s fearless individualism as he bore witness to the truth of Christ left a deep impression. For in our reading from Acts today, we find Paul in Athens giving his testimony about Jesus to a skeptical, if not violent, audience. Whether Paul is afraid or not, he has not let his fear of what people might think immobilize him.

And Peter’s letter to the Church entirely corresponds with the action of both Stephen and Paul to a startling degree. Peter writes this: “…even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.” When we sanctify Christ’s in our hearts, is it the same ecstasy of adoration we find in Stephen, and Paul, and Peter?  And, if so, why doesn’t that ecstasy of adoration seem to drive us more often to the public demonstration of the ethics of the Cross? Why don’t we find ourselves more often enacting Jesus’ self-emptying love?

What if we had a vision of the glory of Christ so powerful that we began seeking out all the people in our lives that we know we’ve wounded, in order to humbly ask for reconciliation?

What if we had an experience of the fire of the Spirit so engulfing that we begged Christ to forgive all the people who have wounded us?

Or what if we admitted that we find it hard to believe that self-less kindness redeems the creation because we haven’t actually made Jesus sovereign in our day to day lives.

When Jesus ate the Passover meal for the Last Time with his friends, he made it really simple for them: to love him is to do what he says; in that faithfulness we will experience the faithfulness of the Father, who takes away our fear by placing the Spirit within us. There’s a distinctive order to that list of verbs. Listen to them in sequence: love, keep, ask, send, live-within. If we’ll come to God as a little child, with a tender love so complete that all our doubts melt away, we’ll find it easy to help Jesus out in his work. And like a mother, God will nurture us will everything we need to thrive.

For that’s what true mothering is, is it not? A mother is not simply one who has given birth to offspring — though having witnessed this miracle twice, I can say that giving birth seems to alter a person irrevocably, notably for the better.

But giving birth doesn’t necessarily make one a mother in the spiritual sense. This requires something more. Being a mother in the spiritual sense means creating the conditions where another person can feel safe and well enough to grow and flourish. Not all biological mothers do this for their offspring, and many who are physically childless nurture others so wonderfully that they somehow are able to take everyone they meet into the care of their love.

Jessica and I have a friend like this: Barb Boers. For reasons that I’m not completely aware of, Barb has chosen never to marry and has never brought offspring into the world. But she gives life to everyone she meets, and that power to create conditions in which everyone can flourish has directly to do with her love for Jesus. She is as much an Apostle of the Resurrection as Mary Magdalene, or Stephen, or Peter, or Paul—because the ecstasy of her adoration for the Resurrected Christ makes her selflessly kind to everyone: even those who have wounded her. Barb will show up at our house out-of-the-blue with hugs and questions about how we’re doing… and wild chocolate and incomparable coffee from her trips to South America. Barb is not my actual mother—whom I love very much—but when I am in Barb’s presence I know that she’s another person who loves us and with whom I am completely safe. Barb’s little gifts of selfless kindness redeem Jessica and I from the stress of parenting and full-time pastoral work. Barb is Christ with us and for us.

I’d like to say thank you to all the women who personify the Divine Feminine in this way. You are part of Love’s Redeeming Work in the most important way.

I wonder, though, why aren’t we all like this? Why aren’t all the followers of Jesus ready at a moment’s notice to publicly pour out selfless love on anyone who needs it, including a stranger, or an enemy?

What holds us back from making trips to the North Lake Processing Center to minister to all the people ICE has picked up in Midwest? What if we sacrificed a few dollars so we could buy Spanish and French Bibles for them? What if we sacrificed some time so we could serve them Holy Communion and wash their feet?

What if our love was so much stronger than our fear that we did our upcoming  service on Pride Sunday, June 21, outside on the lawn by the road: so that all the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer folx who see us saying Mass on the grass could perhaps believe that there is at least one church in Kentwood where they might be nurtured and loved?

What if our love was so much stronger than our fear that we attended our Kentwood city council meetings to advocate for investment and construction of affordable housing alongside the tens of millions being spent on the new civic community center?

I’m wrestling with questions like these. And I’m wrestling with the memories of the people in my life with whom I remain estranged. And in my wrestling, I see visions of what could be. I wonder: over the coming months and years, will you help me? Will you set aside the disappointments of the past, face the agony of the present world, and dream prophetic dreams with me? Can we open ourselves with one heart to envision a community capable of discerning responses to our own suffering and the suffering of our country… our world? Will you come alongside me and admit that the faithful question is not whether this congregation will close or thrive, but who can we love with the time that is given?

Reflecting on the story of Saint Stephen as it applies to the Church, a former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Montana, the Rt. Rev. Chandler Sterling, had this to say:

“The purpose of the Church is to produce saints, that is, individuals…. characters, if you will. The Christian Faith calls you to maladjustment with the world. A person who unthinkingly and submissively follows the dehumanizing material idols may be a well-adjusted person, but [they are] also on the edge of spiritual suicide, which I believe is where the Christian Church is today.

“There is once again too much of the organizational in the Church. It seeks for its own preservation, following the pattern of conformity, conventionalizing, and compromise. Stephen and Paul with thousands of [martyrs] after them fought this condition. They struck out against conditions that beset us, too, for worship in those days had become naïve, insensitive, and pedestrian, just as it has today. Its morality had become greatly sentimentalized.

“There is a way that we can become individuals with an incipient greatness of character and spirit. The Church can again become truth-centered and God-centered. All this can happen if enough rebels and characters of the spirit are raised up who are willing to pay the price of disagreeing with the crowd.

          […]

“As over and over again in the past…. God the Holy Spirit will come, lighting with flame as of fire, painful but purifying, coming like a rushing wind, filling all the house. God send that day, and soon, that we may again be freed from bondage to ourselves and the crowd, and once again have the courage to thrown off the shackles of incoherency, conformity… and popular religion…”

My beloved siblings in Christ: As the Apostle Peter points out, we weren’t baptized for the removal of dirt, but in order to be dressed in the selfless love of Christ: what Peter calls “a good conscience.” In baptism we are saved through ordination to the ministry of Jesus—a ministry of resistance and compassion, a ministry of prophetic and unrelenting gentleness and joy! Jesus has not left us orphaned, but sends the Spirit to empower and uphold us in our obedience to his commandments. And filled with the Holy Spirit we have power to care not only for one another here, but for all those who, within the circumference of our influence, are suffering and alone. Jesus gave his life that human beings might see the heart of God and understand the Divine Mother’s intention for us. Therefore, let us sing with the Psalmist:

Bless our God, you peoples;
make the voice of his praise to be heard;
Who holds our souls in life,
and will not allow our feet to slip.

Glory to the Mother of Being,
and to the Incarnate Love, and to the Indwelling Guide,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever:
world without end.  Amen.