Who Cares Whose Daughter or Sister She Is?

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
August 2, 2026
Proper 13, A
Isaiah 55:1-5
Psalm 145: 8-9, 15-22
Matthew 14:13-21

Last week, I saw something really awful and disturbing. There were several of us talking together, three women, another man, and I. After a while, the other man had to go, and he said, “hugs all around.” He hugged each of the older women and me with a quick, friendly hug, and then he got to the third woman, who was younger, and the man obviously found her attractive. When he hugged her, she was trying for the side hug, not really knowing this person, and instead, he pulled her close, squeezing her body to his, rubbing her back, basically groping her with his body. She finally was able to push him away, and he left, looking very satisfied with himself. 

It was disgusting.

He felt good pulling her body against his. He probably felt like a man, except those weren’t the actions of a man, not a real man. Those weren’t even the actions of a little boy. Those were the actions of, I don’t know what, someone who has lost part of his humanity. He didn’t see this young woman as a person; he didn’t treat her as a person. He just saw her and treated her like a piece of meat, a play thing that he used just to get hard.

That’s the same attitude towards women as rape, using a woman’s body just to get hard, to feel good, to get your rocks off. I get that a hug is not the same as rape, but the difference is a matter of degree. The man who did this saw and treated this woman as a plaything for his physical enjoyment. Her humanity didn’t matter, and even though it was only a hug, that’s a huge problem, that her humanity didn’t matter.

What do we often hear in defending the humanity of women? “That’s someone’s sister or daughter.” That’s a problem. Who care’s whose daughter or she is? She is a woman, a human being in her own right. She has eternal value and worth all of her very own. See, if her value only matters because she is someone else’s daughter or sister, then she has no value of her own. Well, if she has no value of her own, then it’s that much easier for guys to do whatever they want.

Look at the woman in John 8, whom people were trying to murder because she was caught in the act of adultery. What about the guy? They were all fine murdering the woman whose worth only counted as someone else’s, while the man, yeah, he got off scot-free. 

If we don’t truly value every human being as having eternal value all on their own, then we’re going to continue raping and killing each other just so we can feel better, or we’re going to do things like full-body groping people just to feel a little juiced, a little sexed up.

We’re going to continue to be disgusting with one another, if we don’t truly accept and believe that every single human being ever has eternal value all on their own.

I do mean “we” are going to continue to be disgusting with one another, because it wasn’t just this one guy devaluing and groping this one woman. What he did, we all do in various ways with one another. I’d guess most every guy in this room has at some point devalued a woman and seen her just as an object of lust. I’d guess a lot of the guys in this room have held on just a little bit long, wanting to feel the woman’s body against theirs, whether the woman wanted that or not. 

Disgusting behavior is, of course, not only something men do. Women also can see men as just pieces of meat, and everybody can treat others terribly. Every one of us has at some point devalued another person and treated them just as some thing, whether as an annoying thing or as an object of some kind of desire or way to get what we want. We use one another in a thousand different ways. We lie to one another. We cheat and steal from one another. We hurt one another, all in order to feel better in some way or to get something we desire. In all of these ways, we treat people as things, not as beloved human beings with eternal value.

In this way, we fill our lives with the hurt of others. We feed off of each other’s hurt. It doesn’t really help us, not for very long. The guy with the disgusting, groping hug felt better for a couple seconds, but he had just caused harm to someone else and hadn’t done anything to truly feed his soul. 

“Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” Isaiah asks. “Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.”

Of course, the food Isaiah is talking about is fulfilling the covenant that the people of Israel had with God. Stop chasing after foreign gods. Stop cheating one another and using one another just to get what you want. That is all food that does not satisfy. Instead, Isaiah was reminding the people to love God to love one another, to eat the food which does satisfy by following the ways of life that God had given them.

We talked about this during Bible study last Thursday, looking at the kind of spiritual food we eat. There is the food which does not satisfy, things like sexual immorality which I’ve mentioned a lot today; there is also the unsatisfying food of anger, jealousy, fighting, drunkenness and drug use, unforgiveness, and so many more things like that. Boy, those things sure taste good at first, but we are left feeling bad, wanting ever more just to keep feeling worse.

The fruit of the Spirit, on the other hand, is the food which does satisfy: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are all good, rich foods which will sustain and heal us. Like most good food, it requires some work actually to eat the fruits of the Spirit.

See, the food which doesn’t satisfy, the anger and lust and all that requires no effort. If we just go through our day and wait long enough, something is going to make us angry, or lustful, or whatever else. It’s like eating a bag of chips: easy, fast; you tear it open and chow down. 

The fruit of the Spirit is like good food which requires some time to prepare, like cooking a good meal. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We work at these things. Being led by the Spirit, eating the fruits of the Spirit means putting in the work to cultivate and prepare that good food. 

If we’re angry and want love, joy, and peace, then we need to take the time to offer our anger to God. We need to trust that any vengeance that needs to be taken will be taken by God, rather than trusting our own hand for vengeance. Time in prayer, time learning rules of a way of life that God has taught, and time practicing that way of life that God has taught, that’s some of the preparation needed to be guided by the Spirit. 

Treating people as full human beings with eternal value takes work. Taking a full-body, groping hug from someone, doing whatever we want to one another to get hard and feel good, that takes no work at all. We just have to let our base, animal desires take over and lose a bit of our humanity. Then we can eat all of that spiritual junk food we want, losing more and more of our humanity with every bite, or we can do the work needed to be real men and real women. We can do the work needed to be led by the Spirit and eat the fruit of the Spirit. We can gain more of our humanity and be healed with every bite. Choosing a life of Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, we can eat food which does satisfy and spend our lives on the true bread which comes from heaven, Jesus our Lord.

You Aren't Taking this Seriously Enough...And Don't Forget to Smile

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
July 19, 2026
Proper 11, A
Wisdom of Solomon 12:13, 16-19
Psalm 86:11-17
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Did you notice that in Jesus’ parable of God’s kingdom here on earth, there was no separation between the righteous and the unrighteous? The church wasn’t separated from the world. The people of the church didn’t isolate themselves from those they thought were too sinful, or not good enough, or impure. When churches do try to isolate themselves from everyone else outside the church, they miss an essential piece of God’s kingdom here on earth. God’s kingdom is lived out among all of us together, the wheat and the weeds, the good and the bad, the righteous and the unrighteous. Welcome to Jesus’ parable of the weeds among the wheat.

Of course, you’ve also got to notice that the wheat and the weeds weren’t the ones separating each other out declaring who was righteous and who was unrighteous. That was done by angels at the end of the ages, and we know from other teachings of Jesus that Jesus will be the one who judges us as righteous or unrighteous. 

So, to anyone who has ever been told you aren’t good enough to belong to a church, or anyone who has been told you are too sinful to be able to be a part of a church, I present to you Jesus’ parable of the weeds among the wheat. We aren’t meant to separate out the unrighteous from the church and leave only the righteous people in the church. 

When we do, we end up with things like the Salem Witch Trials and the Spanish Inquisition; people die when we end up declaring “only the righteous may stay and the unrighteous must leave.” 

I think in modern times of so many gay kids who have been kicked out of their churches for being gay, and then kicked out of their families for being gay, and then ended up killing themselves because everyone they loved had rejected them and told them they were weeds, good for nothing but destruction, and of course there are countless others who have been rejected by various parts of the church for not being righteous enough. Jesus said that people’s lives were on the line when they tried to pull the weeds out from among the wheat, and we know from our lived experiences in the church that Jesus was right.

In addition to the sometimes life or death decisions of telling people they don’t belong in the church, we have the little problem that if you want to uproot someone and have them gone from the church, remember, there is probably someone else who feels the same way about you. So, as the church, we are meant to be the wheat and the weeds living together, and even though we do try to help each other in living in loving ways, in not harming each other so much, even though we may say things like, “No, you can’t shout and fight with people in the church,” we don’t declare who are the weeds and who are the wheat. We do get to say things like, “You need to go away for a while because of your behavior,” but we also get to say, “You can come back.”

Monty Python - No One Expects ths Spanish Inquisition

Of course, it is certainly easier to feel safe when we get to declare who’s in and who’s out. I’m safe from God’s judgement so long as I’m in, and I know I get to be in so long as they’re out. When we start making these determinations, however, we end up turning God into ourselves. So, let’s look at what scripture says about the God who judges us as wheat and weeds.

In the Wisdom of Solomon, we’ve got this image of God who judges justly and mildly, who gives hope through repentance for sins. We’ve also got this image in Matthew of God burning all evildoers and causes of sin in a furnace of fire. How do we reconcile these images of justice and mild justice, with repentance of sins, and burning fire? How can God have justice and mercy? How can God have judgment and forgiveness?

Usually in the church, we’ve come up with very clear, easily definable answers to these questions. Some have said God’s justice is for those who aren’t Christian (or the right kind of Christian), and God’s mercy is for those who are Christian (or the right kind of Christian). That’s kinda lovely, I guess. It certainly makes the math really easy. Unfortunately, if God’s justice is only for those other people, then we aren’t taking God’s justice seriously. If God’s mercy is only for us and those who believe just like us, then we aren’t taking God’s mercy seriously. This has been our challenge for around 1,700 years. 

Around that time, around 1700 years ago, much of the church fearfully decided to follow certainty in their beliefs about who gets God’s judgment and who gets God’s mercy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, much of the church decided that people who were a part of the church got the mercy and people who weren’t a part of the church got the judgment. They used grand theological concepts to support their fearful assurance of God’s mercy towards them, concepts like election and predestination, and none of that took God’s justice or mercy seriously because all of those things gave us assurance of salvation and gave them, those outside the church, assurance of damnation. 

What we hear from Jesus is more complicated. What if instead of easy answers with bows tied around them, we took seriously both God’s justice and God’s mercy for all people?

We all have sin, and we all do evil. So that puts us on the burned up side the Jesus’ parable. We also all have righteousness and love, so that puts us on the shining in God’s kingdom side of Jesus’ parable. So, rather that fearfully deciding who gets God’s punishment and who gets God’s mercy, how about we put our trust in the one who judges? 

Jesus will be our judge, the one who welcomes sinners and guides them into a new life. Jesus will be our judge, the one who has no time for our self-righteous judgments of others. Jesus will be our judge, the one who said, let not your sin keep you from approaching God, but rather come humbly before God and be healed.

If any think that because they believe in Jesus, they are now wheat, and any who do not believe in Jesus are pure weed, people who think that need to stop fooling themselves. We’re told in the Wisdom of Solomon that, “God’s strength is the source of righteousness.” That means we all have plenty of righteousness in us, of course we do. Sorry to Augustine and Calvin, who really liked the who’s in/who’s out theological systems, but we are not totally depraved with no goodness within us. 

Of course we have goodness within us! God made us and declared us very good! Sure, we screw up, but that doesn’t destroy all goodness within us. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden didn’t destroy all goodness within us, and passages of scripture which indicate that they did are misunderstood and read out of context. There is plenty that is good in all humans. There is lots of good in non-Christians, and as much as Augustine or Calvin may say that non-Christians’ good works are hated by God because they don’t believe in Jesus, scripture tells a different story. Heck, just not being an idiot tells a different story.

Jesus said that at the end of the age, he’ll talk to all the people throughout the earth, folks who believe in him and folks who don’t, and he’ll say to some of them, thanks y’all for being kind and loving towards others, when you did that them, you did it to me; welcome into God’s eternal kingdom. That’s in Matthew 25. The love they showed to others is greater even than whatever faith they may or may not have had. So it’s great if we believe in Jesus, but if we don’t have love of others, our faith is meaningless. That’s in 1 Corinthians 13. So, what does God really want from us? Justice. Mercy. Kindness. Caring for others. Walking humbly with God in our lives, and we all have that ability in us. That’s in pretty much all of the prophets.

So yeah, there’s a huge amount of goodness in all humans. 

There is also plenty that is pretty darn broken and harmful in all humans. Of course there is. We get hurt. We get traumatized, and our brains react in ways that harm others, who then get hurt and traumatized, and the whole cycle just keeps on going. We have goodness within us, and we have evil within us. Welcome to Jesus’ parable of the weeds among the wheat. 

So, what are we to do? We are to grow together. We are to love one another as best we can and seek to help one another heal. We are to trust in Jesus and seek strength and healing from him. 

Sometimes we do have to have someone go away for a while, but that is always meant for healing, with an invitation to return. What we don’t get to do is declare who are the weeds and who are the wheat. We don’t get to kick out those evil ones, assuming that we’re the righteous ones. The folks who did those things never had Jesus’ backing. In fact, what we find over and over in scripture is that the weeds the righteous kicked out were the one Jesus had mercy on. Welcome to Jesus’ parable of the weeds among the wheat.

"If You Want to Be Who You Want to Be, You Have to Give Up Who You Are."

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
July 12, 2026
Proper 10, A
Isaiah 55:10-13
Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

What is the soil of your heart like? Can it receive and live the Kingdom of God here on earth? Jesus told a parable of the one who scatters seeds of the Kingdom of God. Depending on the condition of people’s hearts, they would receive and live the Kingdom of God here on earth, or they would not. 

The Kingdom of God here on earth is a life of faith and hope, trusting in God’s grace and love for us, trusting in God’s grace and love for every single person, ever. We believe that we are loved by God. We believe that we are forgiven by God. We believe that even after we die, will continue to live forever with God in God’s eternal Kingdom. 

So, with that faith and hope, Jesus teaches us to live the Kingdom of God in our lives on earth. Forgive people who wrong you, even if they don’t deserve it. Work to heal any damage you’ve done to others. Love those who love you, and love those who hate you. Rather than fight against a world that is full of problems, accept the things you cannot change, and lovingly live to help heal the things you can. Faith and hope build up the Kingdom of God, and they are built on the foundation of love.

In the parable Jesus told, he is constantly scattering the seed of that kingdom of faith and hope, built on the foundation of love, and as he scatters that seed, some people really don’t get it, just don’t understand. Their hearts don’t understand. Their hearts just can’t grasp the idea of a life of love, forgiveness, and service to others built with faith and hope. So, the idea of living God’s Kingdom of faith, hope, and love, is gone almost as soon as they hear it. 

As Jesus scatters the seed of God’s Kingdom, some love the idea, and they really want to start living a life of faith and hope. Other people they know, however think it sounds stupid and weak, and they mock them for such soft beliefs. So, they give up on the Kingdom of God because their hearts weren’t ready to live it without the total support of others around them.

Then, Jesus said there are some who receive the seed of the Kingdom of God, but they want power, wealth, and stuff instead. They put their trust in their own power; they want control over the world and the lives of the people around them. They don’t want to serve and heal the world, rather they want to force the world to be the way they want it to be. They may have a lot of money and power, or they only have a little bit of money and power, but either way, they want they everything to go their way, and so they reject the Kingdom of God to make the kingdom of themselves. They cause harm, so much harm to those around them, near and far.

Then, Jesus said there are some who receive the seeds of the Kingdom of God and they truly accept it. They choose to live a life of faith and hope, built on the foundation of love. These are the peacemakers, the merciful. These are the pure in heart, the meek, the poor in spirit. These are the ones who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the ones who mourn, the ones who may even be rejected and ridiculed for their way of faith, hope, and love.

When rejected and ridiculed, the ones who truly live the Kingdom of God don’t turn to their own power. They don’t turn to anger or rage. They offer their difficulties up to God, they accept what they cannot change, and they seek God’s strength to continue living a life of faith and hope as part of something bigger than themselves. 

When we see people shot on the Metro right beside us, we offer our fear to God, we leave rage alone, and we seek God’s strength not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. 

When we hear of people being chased in ordinary looking cars and then shot by people claiming to be police, we offer our fear to God, we leave rage alone, and we seek God’s strength not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. 

When we feel like we keep getting knocked down over and over again, we offer our fear to God, we leave rage alone, and we seek God’s strength not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. 

When we have given up and decide to do whatever we can to numb and feel better, we turn back again, we offer our fear to God, we leave rage alone, and we seek God’s strength not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. 

The seeds of God’s Kingdom are scattered over and over throughout our lives, and sometimes the conditions of our hearts aren’t able to receive them. So, we work on the condition of our hearts. We work to make the soil of our hearts ready to receive and live God’s Kingdom of faith, hope, and love. 

So, I’m going to sing a song by Guy Forsyth called, “Leave Me Alone.” It’s about a guy who wants to just be left alone, except that he actually desperately wants not to be alone. Maybe he’s been overcome by pain and hurt in his life, we don’t know, but we find in the end that he desperately desires to change so that he won’t always be alone.

Leave Me Alone - Words and Music by Guy Forsyth

https://www.guyforsyth.com/ (Sung with permission)

I’m all alone now, they’ve all gone upstairs.

I’m on my own now, except for the tables and the chairs.

Guess that’s what I wanted, you know I tried hard enough,

To make them leave me alone.

It used to scare me, now I crave it.

I keep joking about taking off to London.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

If I could, I would. I want to go, to go away,

To make them leave me alone. 

 

They all danced so well tonight,

Spinning cartwheels ‘round the moon.

I didn’t even have the strength to move my legs.

I didn’t even catch the tune.

If you want to be who you want to be,

You have to give up who you are.

Lie with your love, love with a laugh,

Laugh with a lie, life to your love.

Don’t let them see which one is me,

Or they will leave me alone.

Leave me alone.

When we find we want God’s kingdom and we just can’t seem to live it, we just can’t seem to receive the seeds of God’s kingdom, then we find we must give up who we are in order to be who we want to be. That’s resurrection. That’s Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 16:25, that, “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” 

“If you want to be who you want to be, you have to give up who you are.” If you want to live God’s kingdom, but you just can’t seem to receive the seeds of God’s kingdom, then it’s time to turn around, to give up who you are and ask God to take control and guide you into who God wants you to be, and like in the song, that work is not done alone. We can’t become who we want to be, living God’s kingdom of faith, hope, and love, and be left alone. We join with our church and others in our church to live the life of God’s kingdom together, becoming merciful peacemakers, pure in heart, meek, poor in spirit, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, even as we mourn, even if we are rejected or ridiculed for our way of faith, hope, and love. We live the kingdom of God with others, dancing so well together, spinning cartwheels ‘round the moon.

“Drop religion’s rules and listen to the voice and direction of love.”

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
May 31, 2026
Trinity Sunday, A
Genesis 1:1-24a
Psalm 8
Matthew 28:16-20

“Drop religion’s rules and listen to the voice and direction of love.” I heard that said by Michigan state representative candidate Joanna Whaley in a radio interview with Rand Mintzer on his show THNX on KPFT here in Houston. Joanna was talking about some of painful and harmful religious practices she had endured as a pastor in an evangelical megachurch. She eventually left that church but is still a Christian, and in talking about her experiences with Christian Nationalism and Evangelicalism, she said that she would love to see Christians, “Drop religion’s rules and listen to the voice and direction of love.”

Part of me wants to say, “Amen to that and sermon over,” and if you want to stop listening at this point, you got the message, but I will dig a little deeper. 

Before ascending into heaven, Jesus said to his disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” We have this command from Jesus for evangelism. Go make disciples. Baptize people. That’s about the last thing Jesus said, in Matthew’s gospel, so as Jesus’ disciples we kinda want to obey that one. We’re maybe not sure how, but we definitely feel like we have to because Jesus told us to.

Ok, so obedience is a lovely thing, doing what Jesus said to do, but how we choose to be obedient is really, really important. Telling people they are going to hell for not believing in Jesus, for example, is not a good way to be obedient to Jesus. In fact, telling people they are going to hell is not actually obeying Jesus’ command. Telling people they are going to hell for being sinners isn’t obeying Jesus’ command, and yet that’s what Joanna Whaley was told after she left her church. “You’re going to hell.” That’s what a lot of Jewish children are told by their Christian classmates, “You’re going to hell.” That’s what I’ve heard some people say in this community, in Bible studies, that these people, or those people, or people who don’t believe in just the right way are going to hell. 

Now, they didn’t hear that from me; they never heard that taught here, but many people who come to our church have been harmed by other pastors in other churches, just as Joanna was harmed by her pastors in her church. People and pastors threatening folks with hell and thinking they are fulfilling Jesus’ commandment to make disciples, baptize people, and teach them to obey what Jesus commanded. Notice, “You’re going to hell,” doesn’t fulfill any of Jesus command. “You’re going to hell” doesn’t fulfill anything other than anger and cruelty. In the words of one of my colleagues, “Some people have become so focused on evangelism that they forget to be human.”

See, when Jesus told his disciples to make disciples and baptize folks, he did so with a heart full of love. Therein lies the big difference between how Jesus commanded his disciples to evangelize and how the “You’re going to hell,” group does it. True evangelism is done in love, not fear of eternal torture. True evangelism is done in the image of God, who is love. 

Love does not threaten, coerce, or say, believe in Jesus or else. Any theology, therefore, that believes in such coercion as, “believe in Jesus or go to hell,” is not a theology rooted in love and therefore not a theology rooted in God. Evangelism done in the images of fear, anger, or contempt may be masked as love, but coercion and threats of hell are not love. 

Love looks at people not as a project for evangelism. Love looks at people and just loves them. That’s what humans do. That’s how we were made. What’d we hear in Genesis? We are made in the image of God. Every human being who ever was, is, and will be is made in the image of God, and as we know form 1 John 4:8, the image of God is the image of love.

So, when Jesus said to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he was saying to baptize in the name of love. We believe God is those three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we also believe God is one, which makes perfect sense if God is love. God is a community of three persons bound up together so completely in love that they are one. 

That’s the only explanation of the Trinity that has ever made any sense to me. God is a relationship of persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bound together so perfectly in love that they are one. 

Being made in God’s image, then, we are made to love one another as well. We are made to honor each other and care for each other. 

So, what does this have to do with evangelism? What does being made in the image of God, the image of love, have to do with making disciples of people, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey what Jesus taught?

Remember that evangelism means sharing good news, and being made in the image of God is good news. The fact that we are made to honor and care for one another is good news to people who have been abused and used by others. For women who have been treated as little more than sexual objects by others, the truth that we were made to be honored, respected, and loved by others is good news. If every person, and especially every man, who claims the name of Christian were truly to follow Jesus’ teachings, then there would be a lot fewer women used and abused as sexual objects. 

If we truly were to make people into disciples of Jesus, then teaching people to honor women and not treat them as objects for sex would be a really good place to start. You really want to be an evangelist? Don’t threaten people with hell, just teach people not to use and abuse women as sexual objects. That would be good news in this world. That would be teaching what Jesus taught. If you ever mentioned Jesus, lovely. If you didn’t mention Jesus, you’d still be helping women not get groped, raped, and sexually assaulted, and Jesus would be extremely pleased. 

That goes for men, and children, and everyone else, too. If you really want to be an evangelist, if you really want to tell people about Jesus, then share good news by how you treat people. Honor, respect, and love people. That’s probably the best evangelism anyone can do. Honor, respect, and love people. That’s living into the image of God, the image of love, in which we were made. 

If we are truly to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that [Jesus commanded]” then we need to remember to be human first. If we really want to live and proclaim the way of Jesus, then we ought to remember Joanna Whaley said, “Drop religion’s rules and listen to the voice and direction of love.”

Jesus the Unstoppable, Unkillable, Ultimate Weapon of Doom?

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
May 17, 2026
7 Easter, A
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
Psalm 66:7-18
John 14:15-21

So, in the Legend of Zelda video games, when you finally get to fight the big, bad, boss guy, Gannon, you get to fight him twice. You defeat him the first time, and then he immediately comes back from the dead, bigger and badder, and you get to defeat him all over again. It’s fun, some lovely extra play time, and I’m pretty sure that’s what Jesus’ disciples thought was going to happen when Jesus was resurrected, that he had come back bigger and badder, and ready to destroy the Roman Empire.

When Jesus told the disciples they would be baptized by the Holy Spirit, in Acts 1:1-8, they asked if he would be destroying the Romans and establishing his kingdom over Israel. That’s exactly what they thought he was going to do prior to his death, and after his resurrection, it seems like they thought he was even more powerful and would then take care of it, but his answer was still “no”. Jesus wasn’t going to kill a bunch of people to force his way in the world.  

Instead, he told his disciples to continue his mission of healing and reconciliation in the world. 

Unlike for the evil bad guy in the Legend of Zelda games, the point of Jesus’ resurrection was not that he would return as an unstoppable, unkillable, ultimate weapon of doom for his enemies. The point of Jesus’ resurrection was to show us that not only did God share in a death like ours, but that we will then share with him in a resurrection like his. 

Life continues on after death. Healing and reconciliation continue on after death. Our unity with God and one another continues on after death, and even during death.

Even in death, God is with us. We often feel God is with us when life is going well. Some of us feel God’s presence in beautiful worship. Some feel the Spirit moving in times of great joy or purpose. Some know God is with us when we experience blessing in our lives. 

Jesus’ suffering on the cross, his death, and resurrection assure us that God is with us even in our suffering. Peter says as much in the reading we heard today, 1 Peter 5:6-7. “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” God is with us and for us even in the dark times, so Peter tells his readers to give their anxieties and fears over to God. That’s the kinda stuff the bigger and badder resurrected Jesus is going to take on. 

He already took on our sin, and that killed him, but it couldn’t keep him down. Jesus proved more powerful than our sin, so what does he ask to take on now? All the stuff that causes us to sin. Give all that stuff over to Jesus, and let him fight it out for you, and know that you are not alone.  

“Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour,” Peter wrote. “Resist him, steadfast in your faith, [cast all your anxieties on Jesus], for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.”

Folks in Peter’s time were going through what he called “a fiery ordeal,” and Peter told them to rejoice since they were sharing in Christ’s sufferings. Ok, truthfully, rejoicing that we are suffering seems a bit much to me, but accepting the suffering and finding joy that Jesus joins us in that, that makes sense to me. When we suffer, Jesus is with us and has suffered with us. That means too that Jesus is with us and we will join with him in healing, joy, a resurrection like his. 

Now, the fiery ordeal that Peter was addressing seems to be that other folks weren’t too keen on that church being followers of Jesus. It seems like the church Peter was writing to was deeply disliked and even persecuted for their faith. ‘Remember guys,’ Peter was saying, ‘remember that folks did the same thing to Jesus when they didn’t like what he had to say, and they even killed him for it. So, Jesus is with you in your suffering.’

Notice that he didn’t tell them to take on an “us against the world” kind of stance. Cast your anxieties on God, Peter said. Give them over to God so that God can deal with your fears, rather than you living with them all alone. Don’t take on the world, thinking that unstoppable, unkillable, ultimate weapon of doom, Jesus, is going to fight against and kill all the bad people for you. Give all your anxieties to God, realizing that suffering indeed happens. 

There are Christians today who do seem to feel that unstoppable, unkillable, ultimate weapon of doom, Jesus is going to kill all of the people they think are bad, and they talk like Jesus’ disciples did in Acts 1, when they asked Jesus if he was going to kill the Romans and establish his kingdom in Israel. “Not gonna happen, guys.” That was Jesus’ answer to his disciples back then, and that is Jesus’ answer to the ultra-nationalist Christians nowadays who think they should be able to force their faith and way of life on others.

Forcing one’s faith and way of life on others may seem faithful to those who do it, but it isn’t loving, and it isn’t focused on eternal life. Those folks may think they are focused on eternal life, but really, they’re focused on avoiding punishment when they die. That’s not eternal life.

Jesus told his disciples what eternal life is, that we may know God and Jesus Christ whom God sent. That goes beyond faith, beyond belief. Knowing God goes beyond proclaiming certain doctrine as true. Knowing God comes not just through faith, but through love, as John tells us in 1 John 4:7, “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” 

Eternal life is knowing God, and those who love, know God. So, those who love have eternal life. Do you love? Then fear not, for you have eternal life. Do you love? Then fear not. Cast all your anxieties upon God because God cares for you. Do you love? Then give to God all of the worries and fears that cause you to sin, and ask the unstoppable, unkillable, ultimate weapon of doom, Jesus to fight those worries and anxieties for you. That is the battle Jesus wages in his resurrection, not against our physical enemies, but against our spiritual enemies. Jesus’ battle is against the fears, the hates, and the hurts that lead us to harm. 

So fear not, and trust that Jesus is with us in our pain and in our suffering. Jesus shares with us in our suffering, and we share with him in his resurrection. Trusting in Jesus, then cast all your anxieties on the unstoppable, unkillable, ultimate weapon of doom, Jesus, who loves and cares for us. Then, love others as he has loved us, for God is love. To love is to know God, and to know God is eternal life.

Trauma Wrapped Up As Religion

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
May 3, 2026
5 Easter
Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 23
John 10:1-10

When Homer Simpson became a missionary in the 11th season of The Simpsons, he went to some far away people on some small far away island, and he knew almost nothing about Jesus, or Jebus, as Homer called him. Back in Springfield, Homer had spent years faithfully sleeping through almost all of Reverend Lovejoy’s sermons, so when it came time for Homer to teach the people of this island about Jesus, he instead taught them what he knew, the joys of beer and gambling. They made a casino, and the people quickly fell to ruin as all they did was get drunk and fight. 

So, Homer decided he needed to do real missionary work and actually teach the people about Jebus. He told them something or other about Jesus, had them build a church, and when they finished, they were so proud of the church building they had made. Two of the people looked up at their beautiful building, and one asked the other, “How many times must we go to church to avoid Hell?” “Every Sunday for the rest of our lives.” “Hahaha – no, seriously.” 

They thought they were following Jesus, but they pretty quickly found a stumbling block. They had a really bad missionary. Sorry Homer, but he was a really bad missionary, and he left them with even worse theology. You gotta go to church every Sunday to avoid Hell. That’s ridiculous. Everyone knows you gotta go to church at least two times a week to avoid Hell.  

No, the bad theology was that the point of Jesus is avoiding Hell. That’s all Homer had really gotten from Reverend Lovejoy. Sure, he talked about other things too, but the basic crux of it was, believe in Jesus or go to Hell. That’s what Homer knew, so that’s what he taught. Little wonder then that as a missionary, he first led the people to a casino and beer. When your religion is threat of eternal torture and then a get out of torture free card, you have a religion that’s based on traumatizing people with threats of torture and then giving them the only option they’ve got. 

Well, as we know, drinking to numb anxiety and emotion is a fairly common trauma response. As it turns out, Homer wasn’t a bad missionary just because he had slept through Reverend Lovejoy’s sermons. The parts of Reverend Lovejoy’s teachings that had gotten through were a stumbling block to Homer being able to find anything good and healing about following Jesus. That bad theology had then turned Homer into a stumbling block for the people he was being a missionary to. Thinking that the point of believing in Jesus is to avoid eternal torture, that’s a stumbling block. That’s trauma wrapped up as religion.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” That’s wildly different than saying, ‘If you don’t believe in me, you’re going to be tortured forever.’ Jesus did talk about judgment and punishment for the ways that we are horrible to one another. He talked about God bringing justice. Thank God for that. What Jesus didn’t do was give the very clear formula that so many preachers offer of “believe in Jesus, or go to Hell.”

In Matthew 25, Jesus told of people being welcomed into God’s kingdom not because of anything they believed, but because they took care of one another when they were in need. People took care of one another, which is the way of Jesus, and so Jesus welcomed them into God’s kingdom. They came to the Father through Jesus by following in the way of Jesus, without even knowing Jesus. 

That was at the end of the ages, and Jesus also talked about the kingdom of God and living that kingdom of God here on earth in this life. Jesus talked about how loving and caring for one another is how we live in God’s kingdom. Loving and caring for one another is how we enter into God’s kingdom.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus said. You want to walk in the ways of loving and caring for one another, you want to walk into God’s kingdom? Then follow me, Jesus was saying. 

“Like newborn infants,” Peter wrote, “long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” Grow into salvation. Not get out of torture free when you die. Grow into salvation. 

What is salvation? Walking in the ways of Jesus. Bit by bit. Slowly learning to trust. Grow into a life that is trusting and following the teachings and ways of Jesus. For one thing we trust and follow Jesus’ teachings and ways by meditating on them day and night, as Psalm 1 teaches us. That’s a little thing, just a daily practice of prayer and scripture.

How about another practice, another little one from 1 Peter. “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you. Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you.” Rather than drink away your anxieties or drug away your anxieties, rather than take all your anxieties out on everyone around you, give them over to God. 

Spiritual milk, slowly learning to trust in God and as we do, growing into salvation, into a life lived in love and joy. 

How about Jesus’ teaching about not seeking revenge against your enemy? Rather than get revenge, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” Jesus taught to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Everyone may not be ready for that one yet. You first have to have tasted that the Lord is good to trust that one.

A spiritual baby starts trusting Jesus slowly, bit by bit. Then as we grow, we learn to trust Jesus more and more, because we keep tasting that the Lord is good. We keep learning to trust, finding that we have greater peace when we do. Even when bad things happen, and Jesus promised bad things will still happen to us, we find those bad things easier to handle with a heart full of love and forgiveness than a heart full of anger and hate. 

Finding peace amidst the storms of life, that is salvation. Trusting in the goodness of God, even amidst the horrors of humanity, that is salvation. Seeing those who harm others as also being broken, and harmed, and in need of healing, that is salvation. 

Trusting in Jesus is salvation because by trusting in him, we get to walk in his ways, and we find our heats healed as a result. Unlike the trauma and fear preached by the Reverend Lovejoys of the world, trusting in Jesus gives us healing in this life and greater compassion for others. Even if all you’ve got is just a little bit of trust right now, that’s enough. Keep drinking the spiritual milk of that trust, bit by bit, slowing growing into salvation, growing into following Jesus as the way, and the truth, and the life. Keep drinking the spiritual milk of trusting in Jesus, slowing being led to a salvation that is so much greater than avoiding eternal torture once we die. Keep drinking the spiritual milk of trusting in Jesus, slowing being led to a salvation that is peace and love in this life, and peace and love that continues on after this life and into eternity.

The Peace We Make & the Meals We Share

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
April 19, 2026
3 Easter
1 Peter 1:17-23
Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17
Luke 24:13-35

Cleopas and his companion didn’t recognize Jesus until they ate dinner together. Prior to that, they had walked together. They had talked about Jesus together. They had talked about the scriptures together. At no point during all of that time, however, did those two disciples recognize Jesus. Then, when they sat down and had a meal together, suddenly they realized Jesus was sitting with them. When they shared a meal together, they realized Jesus had been with them the whole day.

Something about having meals together is pretty important. When God freed the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, it began with a meal. Countless times, Jesus had meals with people. He ate with wretched and sinful folk, showing them during those meals a better way to live, helping to heal them as he did. Jesus’ last gathering with his disciples before his arrest was over the Passover meal, and he told them to remember him through the meals they shared.  

Author and Ph.D., Diana Butler Bass wrote a piece called “Maybe the Meal Is the Point,” and in that piece, she wrote that after Jesus’ resurrection: 

They never return to the cross. Jesus never took them back to the site of the execution. He never gathered his followers at Calvary, never pointed to the bloodstained hill. He never [gave glory to] the events of Friday. He never mentioned Friday. Yes, wounds remain, but how he got them isn’t stated. Instead, almost all the post-resurrection appearances — which are joyful and celebratory and conversational —take place at the upper room table or at other tables and meals.

https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-table

Dr. Bass went on to say that maybe the meal was the point. Many see it as simply the lead up to Good Friday, seeing Jesus last Passover meal with his disciples as simply a last meal before the important part on the cross.

What if we got that order of importance wrong? Dr. Bass asks. She sees that Passover meal that Jesus has with his disciples on Thursday as “the opening meal of the new age, in a community of mutual service, reciprocity, equality, abundance, generosity, and unending thanksgiving.”

https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-table

A meal is how Jesus described life in God’s kingdom. That goes for life now and life after death. God’s kingdom is seen as people sharing meals together. A great feast. A simple meal. Joining together to break bread with one another is life in God’s kingdom. So, that’s the meal Jesus had with his disciples on Thursday night before his crucifixion, and Dr. Bass sees that meal as one which declares God’s kingdom as a new kingdom living in this world, different from all the kingdoms of empire.

Now, by empire, I mean any great kingdom or institution which exerts power and dominance over others.

For the early Church, the biggest of these was the Roman Empire, and though the church was living the kingdom of God, the church didn’t try to destroy the Roman Empire. Instead, the church lived among it and beyond it. Even though the empire was going to be oppressive and control people’s lives, the church was going to be liberating, freeing people to love and serve one another. The church freed people not to live according to the rules of empire.

In the rules of empire, there are a few people are at the top, most of the people are at the bottom, and the power and authority of those at the top is inflicted upon those at the bottom. 

The church didn’t operate this way. Jesus had meals with people, and he didn’t care who sat with who. Jesus ate with people he wasn’t supposed to, according to the rules of empire, the rules of society which like to group the good people and the bad people, the worthy and the unworthy, the sinners and the righteous. Jesus didn’t go for that. He just ate with folks. He shared meals of God’s kingdom, all of God’s kingdom with all of God’s people. 

That’s how we’re called to be, living in the kingdom of God. For us in the church today, in the United States, we have a church that is meant to be separate from empire. The United States is not an empire like Rome was, but as a nation, it does follow many of the ways of power and dominance that mark empire. 

Empire says conquer your enemies. Bless those who curse you is not exactly the way of this nation. 

Empires says maintain your power over others, and use force to stay ahead if need be. Blessed are the meek; blessed are the peacemakers; and give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you; those things aren’t exactly the way of this nation.

The way of Jesus is different from the way of empire. That hasn’t stopped many Christians, however, from trying to tie the church to the nation and letting the way of empire be the way of church for them. Power, authority, control: these are the ways of empire that some in the church try to use as extensions of the nation. 

Forcing others to follow your beliefs wasn’t the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus was sharing a joyful Passover meal with his friends on Thursday. The way of empire came on Friday, forcing the will of the powerful and killing Jesus for doing his religion wrong. 

There are many times that parts of the church have fallen to the way of empire, choosing power, authority, and control over the ways of Jesus. There’s the obvious time when the church became the official religion of the Roman Empire, obviously choosing power, authority, and control. There are times when preachers start declaring power over other people, declaring who gets to go to Heaven and who will go to Hell. Pastors and preachers who tell us who will be damned are choosing the way of empire, rather than the way of Jesus. Jesus said not to ask who will go to heaven and who will go to the abyss. Rather, Jesus said to sit down and have meals together with people.

I was shown a video last week of a person who was upset that the Pope had gone to a mosque in Algiers and had paused for silent meditation while there. The Pope said to the head of the Mosque, “I thank you for these reflections and for these important words during this visit, from a place that represents the space that belongs to God, a divine and sacred space, where many people come to pray and to seek the presence of the Most High in their lives.” He expressed ‘hope that peace, justice, reconciliation and forgiveness would grow among peoples.’

http://vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-04/pope-leo-apostolic-journey-algeria-grand-mosque-algiers-dialogue.html

That’s what this person had a problem with. The Pope visited a Mosque, said a silent prayer, gave thanks for that house of worship, and gave hope for peace, justice, reconciliation, and forgiveness. The person who had a problem with the Pope’s visit noted that there had been killing of Christians by Muslims in the past and indicated that because of that, the Pope shouldn’t have been there seeking peace and honoring them.

Well, this person was giving great examples of the way of empire. Don’t forgive your enemies; keep seeing them as enemy decades and even centuries later. Stay away from them, unless you aim to conquer them. That may be the way of empire, but it sure as shootin’ ain’t the way of Jesus. Love your enemies. Bless those who persecute you. Try having a meal together and seek peace, for blessed are the peacemakers. 

We aren’t people of empire. We’re people of resurrection. We’re people of peace. We’re people of meals together, meals of love and hope, meals of justice and peace, meals of reconciliation and forgiveness. That’s how Jesus appears to us in the kingdom of God, in the love we have for one another, in the peace we make, in the meals we share.

Denying Jesus? Loving One Another? How Do We Choose to Follow?

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
April 2, 2026
Maundy Thursday
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

So, I know we don't actually talk about Peter denying Jesus, after his arrest, until tomorrow, on Good Friday, but I'm skipping ahead a little bit in the story because there are many ways we get to deny Jesus throughout our lives. Sure, there’s the obvious stuff like saying, “I no longer believe in Jesus,” but what about the less obvious ways where we deny Jesus by how we choose to follow Jesus? 

I know that sounds strange, denying Jesus by how we choose to follow Jesus, but what about when we choose to follow Jesus by praying against all of the evil ones whom Jesus is going to send to damnation? It’s one thing when hurting or angry to pray against people, and Jesus hopefully comforts us in those prayers, and we get to give that hatred and anger as our offering to God. Then, Jesus reminds us to pray for the healing of our enemies, and we follow as Jesus’ disciples by offering that sometimes difficult prayer of blessing and God’s will upon even our enemies. 

So, praying against our enemies to get our anger out, that’s one thing, but what about when we pray for the eternal damnation of our enemies with the absolute conviction that we are right and that Jesus truly is going to condemn those evil ones? That’s when we are denying Jesus, because we are praying and believing completely against how Jesus taught us to pray and believe. 

Pray for your enemies. Bless those who persecute you. Don’t judge others as worthy of eternal damnation; we’re all a bunch of screw ups here, what the hell do any of us know. Those were the teachings of Jesus, so when we claim to know better and to pray in ways and judge people in ways that Jesus expressly told us not to, we are denying Jesus.

www.instagram.com/p/DWXKkdPEvua/

What about when we declare that a war is being fought in Jesus’ name? Jesus, who said, “Put your swords away,” when enemies came to arrest him. Jesus who chose to be killed rather than summon hosts of angels to kill his murderers. Jesus who said, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword,” aka, war and killing people actually aren’t terribly great ideas. When we declare a war is being fought in Jesus’ name, we are denying Jesus, denying who he is and what he taught. 

What about when we look at others with contempt or even indifference. You don’t matter; your needs don’t matter; I have everything I need, and if you’d just work harder, you would too, but you’re too lazy; I deserve my good things and you deserve your bad things; you’re not worth my time or effort. When we treat other people that way, we are denying Jesus who said, “Whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done to me.”

What about when we determine that any of our success and wealth that we get through our success and wealth-making efforts are all thanks to Jesus blessing us for our faithfulness? As much as we may be trying to give praise and glory to God, when we claim all of our riches and success are because we are particularly faithful to Jesus, we are actually denying Jesus, who never promised us success or wealth as a reward for faithfulness. No, when we claim God’s favor on us for being more successful and wealthier than others, we’re actually just claiming to be better than others, not only in our own eyes but also in God’s eyes. 

Jesus didn’t say people will know we are his disciples by how strong our belief is in him. Jesus didn’t say people will know we are his disciples by how holy and righteous we are. Jesus certainly didn’t say people will know we are his disciples by how rich we get through all our rich-getting efforts, claiming that Jesus is the one blessing us with riches. 

No, Jesus said people will know we are his disciples by how we love one another.

To illustrate this point, Jesus took the role of a servant during his last Passover meal with his disciples. He washed their feet and told them that if they didn’t let him wash their feet, they had no share in him. Not letting Jesus wash their feet was denying Jesus. Then, Jesus told them to wash one another’s feet, meaning they should serve one another. They should love one another and live out that love by actually, physically caring for one another. 

Of course, we’re not very good at caring for other people if we are not cared for ourselves. So, Jesus told his disciples, you gotta let me wash you first. Be good sheep that you may be good shepherds. If we don’t let Jesus care for us and then assume we’re gonna care for others, we’re denying Jesus just as surely as Peter did after Jesus was arrested. 

Love one another, Jesus taught. That’s how we proclaim Jesus in the world, by loving other people. Eventually we may get to tell folks that we believe in Jesus, if they ask, if they want to know, but our proclamation is first about loving other people. Our proclamation is not first about evangelizing other people or saving other people; Jesus already took care of that. Our proclamation is first about loving other people, continuing to live the healing love that Jesus lived. Our proclamation is to draw near to Jesus to be loved by Jesus in prayer, in rest, in scripture, in service, in fellowship, in adversity, in joy, and in sorrow, we draw near to Jesus to be loved by Jesus and to share that love with others. 

Then, in those times when we do deny Jesus, because we all do, we repent. We return to the love of Jesus to share that love. When we deny Jesus by deciding which humans are bad and deserving of damnation, we return to Jesus with humility, choosing to see them as beloved, not damned. When we deny Jesus by deciding that our enemies or those others that we view with contempt are not worthy of Jesus’ love, we return to Jesus with humility, choosing to see Jesus in those other people, respecting their dignity. When we deny Jesus by determining that our blessings are due to our great faithfulness (and therefore other less-blessed people must not be as faithful), we return to Jesus with humility, choosing to trust Jesus not because of our success or failures but because Jesus showed us the way of love.

In Jesus, God said, I choose to join with you in every part of your lives, including being hated, tortured, and killed. Such is God’s love for us, and so Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Let It Go, For We Are People of Resurrection

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
March 15, 2026
4 Lent
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23

John 9:1-41

Dang it, but I really don’t like when things go the way I don’t want them to go. I get that it’s not my world and I’m not in charge of everything, but if things in my life would go the way I want them to, and if things in other people’s lives would go the way I want them to, and if things in the world would go the way I want them to, I would be so much more pleased. Life would be perfect, right, if only God would listen to me and respond exactly as I want God to?

That would kind of make me God’s master which is a little bit problematic. Ok, that’s completely problematic. If I’m in charge of the way God runs the world, then I’ve really taken God’s place so I’m essentially God over everyone else, and yeah, that’s hugely problematic, because I don’t think anyone really wants me as God over them. I certainly don’t want anyone else to be God over me, and I also really don’t want to be God at all. I mean, I definitely want things to go the way I want them to go, but I really don’t want to be in charge of everything. 

We human-type people tend not to be particularly good at playing God. Dictators, tyrants, warlords, they all try to force the world to go how they want it to, and they usually end up killing a bunch of people and bringing a lot of misery into world. Captains of industry, and ultra-wealthy business leaders are others who tend to try to make far too much of the world bend to their will, and while there’s a lot of money to be made, there’s usually a lot of people suffering because of the vast wealth made by a few.

Addicts are another group of people that tend to try to force the world go as they want it to go, and it tends to work pretty terribly for them too. Then, since the world is so terribly disobedient to the addict’s desires, they drink or use drugs at the world. “You won’t do what I want, world? Well I’ll show you!”

Like I said, we human-type people tend not to be particularly good as playing God. Saul, the first king of Israel, tried playing God, and unsurprisingly, it worked out pretty badly for him. Saul was in a war against the Philistines, and when he and the people of Israel saw how huge the Philistine army was, they were terrified. 

God had told Saul that he was with him and not to worry about threats from others, but when Saul saw the people of Israel retreating in fear, he decided to make a sacrifice to God, rather than waiting for Samuel to do it. That wasn’t good. Saul wasn’t the one who was supposed to make sacrifices. Samuel was. So, this meant that Saul was trusting in the sacrifice, rather than trusting in God. Saul was putting himself in God’s place, trying to force things to go how he wanted them to go, rather than letting go of things he couldn’t control. He couldn’t control when Samuel arrived, so a faithful response would have been to offer prayers to God, placing the outcome in God’s hands, rather than trying to force God to give them victory through sacrifice. 

Saul was trying to control God, therefore trying to put himself in God’s place, so after a few more incidences like that, God rejected Saul as king. 

Then, it was Samuel’s time to be tempted to play God. Samuel was grieving over the rejection of Saul as king, grieving over the many ways Saul had failed as king. God grieved for a time as well, sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel. Before long, though, God was ready to move on. God wanted Samuel to go anoint the new king of Israel, and Samuel was still grieving. “How long will you grieve over Saul?” God asked. “I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil, and set out” to anoint the one I will show you to be the new king over Israel.

In other words, God was saying to Samuel, ‘Let it go, man. I’ve got other plans. New life will spring up from this death. Don’t fight it. Go with it into an unknown future, trusting that I am with you in this.’

It is a bit much to say Samuel was trying to play God in his grief over Saul, and at the same time, God did need to remind him to let the past go and move forward into an uncertain future. Saul was mourning for an imagined future with Saul as king. Whatever he thought that future was, it was suddenly gone. 

I’m guessing most of us have mourned the loss of many imagined futures throughout our lives. We lose a job, and the future we thought we had is suddenly gone. A family member or friend dies, and a future of life with them is gone. We get attacked or beaten, and the future we thought we had is now darkened with fear and trauma. Our nation goes to war, and any number of possible futures are all thrown into chaos. 

Any time those things happen, we’re going to mourn the loss of those possible and imagined futures. Of course we do, and I figure God mourns with us, loving us as God does. Our challenge is not to stay there, grieving the loss of the future we thought we might have. When we stay forever in that place of grief and will not let go of that imagined future, we are in that place like Samuel where we’re not exactly playing God, but we kinda are because we refuse to let go of what we have lost, longing for something that cannot be. “If only this had happened or that had happened. If only God had done what I wish he had done, things would have gone differently.” That’s when we do get into the, “I could have done this better,” territory, and we are kind of longing to take God’s place. 

So, God says to us what God said to Samuel, “Let it go. I’ve got other plans now. We are people of resurrection, so new life will spring up from this death. You don’t need to fight it. Go with me into an unknown future, trusting that I am with you.’

Another way that we want to play God is when we sorrow at the loss of a longed for past. “In my day, we didn’t do things like…” whatever old people complain about, and yes, I am sometimes one of the old people who complains about how things are nowadays. Sometimes we lament that we just don’t this new generation, or that people aren’t doing things right. Kids are too noisy. Kids are too quiet. They should go outside and play more. What are all these kids doing running around outside, don’t they have parents? The schools aren’t right. The music isn’t right. People didn’t used to do things like that, or at least they’d be decent enough to be ashamed about it. 

Jesus healed a blind man, and that seems like it’s obviously a good thing, right? Unless you were some of the religious folks back in the day when Jesus healed that blind man, and then you had complaints. Jesus shouldn’t have healed you, they said. For one thing, this is the wrong day to heal people, and for another thing, we’ve never heard of anything like this before. That’s startlingly close to, “In my day, we didn’t heal people on Saturday. We’d rest and let ‘em suffer it out till Sunday, like good God-fearing people. And another thing, any decent person would know you can’t have your sight restored if you’re born blind. I just don’t understand you kids these days. You must be a really terrible person for Jesus to have restored your sight.”

The religious leaders wanted the past that they knew and understood to continue on, unchanged. God seemed nice and orderly in that past. The rules made sense, and they were on the right side of those rules. Now with this new stuff that this carpenter’s kid was doing, performing miracles like they hadn’t seen before and even healing on the Sabbath, their comfortable past was turned upside down. 

We’ve continued with challenges like this in the church, and very often when some seemingly new thing is happening in the church, groups of folks don’t like it, and there’s a split as one group stays with the ways things were and one group goes with this seemingly new thing God is doing. In the Episcopal Church, we’ve had changes such as the new prayer book: it’s 47 years old, almost half a century, but there are some folks who still won’t use it because it’s the new prayer book.

We’ve had changes about things like allowing for a person to get married again after that person has been divorced; it’s only been 53 years since that change was made. A year after that change, we began ordaining women as bishops, priests, and deacons, and more recently, we have allowed homosexual people fully to participate in the life of the church.

Each of these changes has turned the church upside down for some and been a moment of Jesus healing the blind man for others. Each of these changes has left people mourning an imagined future in which things hadn’t changed, and each of these changes has left people mourning the loss of a longed-for past. 

Through these and a thousand other changes throughout the life of the church, we have always sought to remain faithful to Jesus, and through people’s upset and struggle, longing for the past or mourning the loss of an imagined future, Jesus has been with us saying, “Let it go. I’ve got other plans now. We are people of resurrection, and new life will spring up from this death. So you don’t need to fight it. Go with me into an unknown future, trusting that I am with you.”

For each of us personally as well, our futures often die, and our pasts cease to be. As much as we may want it at the time, none of us are God to force our way onto the world, and so God tells us, “Let it go. Mourn for a time, but let it go. We are people of resurrection, and I have other plans now. New life will spring up from this death, so stop fighting it. Go with me into an unknown future, trusting that I am with you.”

Just Deserts

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
March 8, 2026
3 Lent
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
John 4:5-42

Don’t you just love it when your enemies get what’s coming to them? It’s like a delicious meal of deserved justice served with vengeance pie topped with self-righteous ice cream. It’s great. I love it when the bad guys fall and the really terrible people get exactly what they deserve. Enemies getting their comeuppance makes my little black heart sing. 

Then, the rest of me starts feeling pretty rotten, actually. That part of me that sings at other people’s misfortune ends up making the rest of me rather sick. Rejoicing at my enemies’ downfall may feed my cold little black heart, but it feeds my heart poison and grows in me like a cancer.  

It’s said that we are what we eat, and that is true of our spiritual food as well. Junk food and desert taste great, and when that’s all we eat, our bodies suffer. They stop working well. We end up with diabetes, and cancer, and heart disease, and even depression and anxiety can get worse from a bad diet. 

When we feed our hearts and souls with junk food, our hearts and souls become unhealthy as well. Vengeance, delighting when our enemies are hurt, that’s like really bad junk food for our souls. Think about what that diet really looks like: anger; rage; happiness that others are hurting, that’s cruelty. We can’t really be healthy and happy people when we feed ourselves on cruelty. We can’t be healthy and happy people when we delight in people’s suffering, even the suffering of our enemies.

See, the more we eat of people’s suffering, the more we want that food, which means we end up wanting people to suffer. So, even though our enemies might deserve suffering, when we delight in their suffering, we end up becoming cruel people.

Another problem with delighting in our enemies’ suffering is that we let ourselves focus on them, rather than ourselves. If they are bad and are getting what’s coming to them, I don’t need to look at ways I harm people. It’s still there, though, festering and eating us up from the inside. So, it grows in the dark, like mold, like fungus, rotting us from the inside. 

So, Jesus offers us different food. When he met the woman at the well, he told her he would give her water welling up within her to eternal life. Then Jesus talked to his disciples, telling them that the food he has to eat is doing the will of God. 

Well, what was the will of God that Jesus kept doing throughout his ministry? Healing people. Healing communities. Showing people a better way than the way of vengeance, a better way than the way of fighting and being against one another.

When the woman at the well asked Jesus which mountain was the correct one to worship God, he told her, neither was the correct mountain. The time is coming, Jesus said, when people will worship God neither on one mountain or the other, but they will worship God in spirit and in truth. 

So, what’s with the two mountains? They were the mountain on which the temple was built in Jerusalem and mount Gerizim in Samaria. The people of Israel and the people of Samaria were bitter enemies, so the argument over which mountain was the correct place to worship God was really an argument about which people God loved and which people God didn’t love.

So, when she asked which mountain was the best mountain, Jesus told her that folks would worship God neither on the mountain in Samaria, nor the mountain in Jerusalem. Instead, people would worship God in spirit and in truth. That sounds to me like all people get to worship God, regardless of which nation you belong to. That sounds to me like no more quarreling over whose mountain is correct, and if they stopped fighting over which mountain was correct, then they’d no longer be enemies. They’d no longer delight in one another’s suffering 

The food that Jesus offers is for each of us as individual people, and the food that Jesus offers goes far beyond individual healing. Jesus offers food that grows into healing among communities and even healing among nations. A community and a nation full of peaceful, loving, compassionate people is a community and a nation that will spread that same peace, love, and compassion to others.

Now, this is not about turning a nation into a Christian nation. Jesus wasn’t preaching to kings and rulers. Jesus wasn’t calling for a religious conversion of governments. Jesus wasn’t talking about forcing his way on others. Jesus was speaking to a woman at a well and to his disciples. Jesus spoke to the masses, to the people. Jesus met with religious leaders. Jesus wasn’t taking over a nation’s government to force change from the top town. Jesus healed and taught people the way of love to change lives and communities from the ground up. That’s things grow after all, from the ground up.

The food that Jesus offers feeds us in ways that lead away from bitterness, anger, and cruelty and into peace, love, and compassion. The food of taking delight in our enemies’ suffering, decays our bodies and souls, making us bitter, angry, and cruel. The food Jesus offers feeds our bodies and souls with eternal life, making us peaceful, loving, and compassionate. 

A community and a nation full of peaceful, loving, compassionate people is a community and a nation that will spread that same peace, love, and compassion to others. That peace, love, and compassion doesn’t spread through force feeding it, but by offering it and living it. When Jesus offered this food & water to the woman at the well, she wanted it. 

She ran to tell others to come and see a man who, “who told me everything I’ve ever done.” All Jesus actually said was that she’d had five husbands and the man she was with wasn’t her husband. Rather than dismissing this woman as sinful for having five husbands, let’s ask ourselves, “Why?” Only men could sue for divorce, so she hadn’t left her husbands; they had dismissed her. Why? 

Well, we don’t really know why five husbands had all sent her away, but we can guess that it left her feeling hurt and ashamed, probably bitter and resentful too. It could be a shameful thing to be dismissed by one husband, others wondering, “What’s wrong with her?” She’d been dismissed by five, so it’s a good bet she felt deep shame, like she was no good and unlovable. 

Then, Jesus talked to her, not like damaged goods but like a fully important, beloved human. “If he only knew,” she probably thought. Then, she found out that he did know, and he wasn’t shaming her or treating her like a lesser human. That was healing for her. That was the food and water Jesus offered, welling up in her to eternal life.   

The woman went from eating the bread of shame, bitterness, and resentment, to eating and drinking the love of God, the eternal life given by Jesus. Peace, love, and compassion was the food Jesus gave her, revealing the truth of her life, so she was no longer bound by it. There she was, fully exposed, and God was still calling her beloved. That’s being naked and unashamed, as we were created to be in Eden, in the beginning.

From there, the woman spread his message to others, bringing them to Jesus so he could feed them as well, the food Jesus offers growing from the ground up. That what Jesus calls us to do, to offer the same bread and water of peace, love, and compassion, to offer the same healing and eternal life we have be given to others. We’re reminded again and again to stick to this diet as well. 

As much as delighting in our enemies’ downfall is juicy and delicious (and it is delicious), it is also cancerous, harmful food which rots us from the inside out. Set aside that food. Offer it to God. “Here, Lord, accept my offering to you of my anger, fear, resentment, desires for vengeance. Accept my offering to you of the cruelty in my heart. Then, please feed me with your peace. Feed me with your love. Feed me with your compassion. Amen.”