Saint Rachel. Trusting We are Loved. Avoiding Tummy Aches.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
November 2, 2025
All Saints’ Sunday, C
Ephesians 1:11-23
Psalm 149
Luke 6:20-31

My son, on Halloween afternoon, said he was going to eat all of his Halloween candy that night and make himself sick. I didn’t point out that he was going to get sick if he ate all of his Halloween candy, mind you. He said, “I’m going to eat all of my Halloween candy and make myself sick.” I asked him not to, pointing out that if he did that, I’d have to take care of him, so really, he’d just be making life difficult for me, not to mention that he’d feel terrible and regret the decision. Grudgingly, he agreed to have mercy on his dad and not eat all of his candy in one night.

So, my darling angel chose to care about someone else and get a little less pleasure for himself. What a saint, and truly isn’t that the way of the saints? How blessed are you who don’t eat all of your Halloween candy in one sitting, for you avoid a tummy ache, as well as your father’s displeasure. That’s from an older version of scripture.

Seeking a little less pleasure for yourself so you can care more about other people and not get a tummy ache. That really does sound like what Jesus was talking about in the blessings and curses we heard him give in our reading from Luke 6 today.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” Woe to you who eat all of your candy all at once and even take more of other people’s candy, so they don’t have as much and eat all of that too, but blessed are you who have just enough candy to enjoy and not get a tummy ache. It’s not the best analogy, but the point works. 

Woe to you who have far more than you need and tend not to be all that bothered by the struggles of those around you. Woe to you who have far more than you need and end up relying almost totally on yourself and your money, seemingly without the need of anyone else. 

That’s not how God made creation, for us to depend on ourselves alone with our stuff. We were made to depend upon one another. 

So, Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” The kingdom of God is present when we are in love, and peace, and service with one another. When we are not rich, we kinda have to depend on one another, and Jesus calls that a blessing. Sharing what we have with one another, living with trust, and care, and concern for one another, that sounds like the kingdom of God. Sharing what we have with one another, living with trust, and care, and concern for one another, that sounds like the lives of the saints. 

Put that way, being a saint sounds kinda good, and not terribly hard.

I knew a young man when I was a youth minister, many years ago. He said he didn’t want to be a saint because it seemed too much like work. There were too many things he thought he’d have to say “no” to. He felt there was too much pleasure that he wouldn’t get to have.

So, he went another way with things, sought a lot of pleasure real fast, ate all of his candy at once, and he struggled quite a lot for many years. He’s doing well now, and it took a lot of work with his parents and others to help get him back on track.

Unfortunately, when he was younger, he had this notion that being a saint was all about behaving well, being good, and not enjoying life too much. He had this notion that following Jesus was all about not going to hell and having to be miserable in this life to avoid hell. Trouble is, both those notions are wrong.

Following Jesus is not about avoiding hell or being miserable in this life. Jesus never said, “Be miserable, or God will be displeased with you.” Following Jesus is about living and receiving a life of love, peace, and kindness with one another. Following Jesus is about living with trust, walking with God, and having hope for life abundant even after we die.

Being miserable is not part of the bargain. 

Being beloved and trusting how beloved we are, now that is part of the bargain.

Trust your belovedness, and then live in a way that brings love, peace, and kindness. Do not fear getting everything right. Just trust that you are beloved, and then live out that same love towards others. So, when Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” he wasn’t saying, “Make sure you’re poor so God doesn’t hate you,” Jesus’ teaching was more like, “Wait a sec, guys, you think you’re poor because God hates you? Look despite what others may say, you who happen to be poor are 100% beloved of God. Despite what others may say, you who are poor are not cursed by God. In fact, you who are poor are blessed by God, and the kingdom of God is yours to live, and love, and enjoy. 

Also, if you’re terribly jealous of those who are rich, who look down on you and think of you as cursed, God’s got some words for them, and they aren’t going to enjoy those words. 

Now, to be clear, there’s nothing particularly saintly about being poor, all by itself. Think of a guy who is angry and mean to everyone he sees, who then asks, “Do you think Jesus is cool with me? I mean, I’m a total jerk to everyone.” “Well, are you poor?” “Yeah.” “Ah, well then, you’re good. Don’t worry about it. Jesus is cool with you.”

Obviously, that’s not the case. You can be a hateful, mean, evil jerk, so long as you’re poor, of course not. Jesus wasn’t making a list of how to trick God into being on your side. 

Jesus was teaching us to trust that we are beloved, and then to live out that same love towards others. Think about the people we consider saints in our lives.

I’m thinking of one of our kid’s teachers, Saint Rachel. She was so good with our kiddo and strove with him when he was having an enormously hard time. She may never be in a book of saints or have her face on a medallion in a Christian store, but our family will always be grateful for Saint Rachel.

When we talk about people in our lives and say, “She was a saint,” we’re talking about how they were with us, the impact they had on us, the kindness, caring, and love they showed. They weren’t perfect, but they were saints to us, living the love of God and making that love real in our lives. 

That doesn’t mean perfection. It does mean habits and practices of doing good for others, treating other people as beloved. That’s part of what having faith in God is. We believe we are loved, and we let that belief be real enough to change our lives. See, we cannot separate what we believe from what we do. If we say we love God, but hate people, then we are lying to ourselves. We cannot claim to love God while hating people, and we cannot claim to love people while treating people terribly.

Having faith means we treat people well, and when we don’t treat others well, we work to repair any damage done. We see a beloved one whom we have harmed, and we work to help them heal. That’s having faith. Faith is not just what we believe with our minds, but also what we do with our bodies. 

God became human. So, our human bodies and what we do with them matter immensely. When we seek too much pleasure for our bodies all at once, eat all the Halloween candy in one night, we get a tummy ache, the people around us suffer, and our faith suffers. Our ability to receive God’s love and then love others in return suffers. So, being a saint is about living a faith of belief and action. Being a saint is not about being perfect. Being a saint is about believing we are loved, as Jesus taught that we are. Being a saint is about living out that love towards others, as Jesus taught us to do, and being a saint is about practicing that belief and way of living. 

Even as saints, we still get to have candy. We still get to enjoy life, and we get to do so with love and concern for others, trusting that we are loved. 

The Families of the Earth Can Be Blessed Through You

Brad Sullivan

2 Epiphany, Year B

January 14, 2018

Emmanuel, Houston

John 1:43-51

The Families of the Earth Can Be Blessed Through You

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  I love this question of Nathanael’s partly because it appeals to my snarky side, and also because the obvious answer is supposed to be “no.”  Nazareth was a Podunk little sparrow fart town.  The messiah was not supposed to come from there, and further, at least in Nathanael’s mind nothing good could come from such a crummy place.  Nathanael would have rather written off Jesus and anyone from Nazareth.  Let’s leave those people there, and go on and hope for the messiah to come from somewhere important.  God just wasn’t playing Nathanael’s little game of making sure things looked good enough on the outside to stroke his ego.  “Sorry Nate,” God said.  “I know you want to be associated with a Messiah from somewhere awesome, but I’m not here to inflate your sense of self importance.  I’m here to bring about my kingdom of love, grace, and truth, and that includes places like Nazareth, and other little sparrow fart town and countries.”

When we get tied up in the place, the location where greatness is supposed to be, where we think God is supposed to be, God just says, “Oh you silly humans; I’m not in any one place.  I’m in all places, and like the Psalm says, even and especially with those people and places whom you often deem too lowly to matter.”  So while the obvious answer is “no, nothing good can come from the proverbial Nazareth,” God’s response is “come and see.”

Nathanael reluctantly does, “Fine, we’ll go see your crummy Messiah,” and Jesus tells him something pretty huge.  First he convinces him that he is someone worth hanging around and listening to, and then he tells Nathanael, “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

This is of course alluding to Jacob’s ladder, the story in Genesis where Jacob (who would later be renamed Israel) was sleeping outside and he had a dream of the heaven’s opened up and the angels of God ascending and descending upon a ladder to heaven.  In the dream, God spoke to Jacob and told him,

all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.  Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’  Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’  And he was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’

This promise of God indeed came to pass.  Jacob was renamed Israel, and from him and his children came the people of Israel, the laws and ways of God, the prophets, and Jesus himself.  So, when Jesus told Nathanael “You will see heaven opened and the angles of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man,” he was telling Nathanael that families of the earth shall be blessed in you and your offspring (children, disciples, people whom you will teach about me and my ways).  “You, Nathanael, can be like a new Jacob.  God’s mission of healing humanity, of reconciliation to each other and to God can be lived out through you, Nathanael, and not only that, families of the earth will be blessed through you and through those who come after you.  Through you, Nathanael,” Jesus was saying, “the salvation that I offer, the life of God’s love, grace, and truth, can be known and lived and passed on to others, and families of the earth will be blessed through you and through those who come after you.”

You may notice, however, that there aren’t too many St. Nate churches.  “Through you, Nathanael, families of the earth will be blessed,” and yet we hear very little about Nathanael after this.  Most of what he did was not recorded in the pages of history, and yet through this seemingly unimportant man, families of the earth were blessed.  Like Nathanael, most of our names will not be written in the stars or even in the pages of history, and yet, the families of the earth can be blessed through each of us.  We can all be like a new Jacob, people of the earth blessed through us and those who come after us, as we live out Jesus’ ways and share with them his kingdom of love, grace, and truth.

Further, the kingdom of God can indeed come from Nazareth, or any other sparrow fart nothing of a place because God does not dwell only in one place, like the place where Jacob was.  Indeed, the dwelling place of God was in Jesus himself, with the angels ascending and descending on him.  The dwelling place of God is within all of creation and within humanity itself:  you, me, the important people from great places, and the lowly schlebs from sparrow far places like Nazareth and flooded out shells of buildings. 

We are Emmanuel, and God is with us.  God dwells with us and within us.  We can live out God’s kingdom of love, grace, and truth anywhere, and through us God can bless the people of West Houston and beyond to truly the ends of the earth.  As far as we can go and as many come to know and follow Jesus through us, God can bless the people of the earth. 

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?  Can anything good come out of this little flooded out gathering of Jesus’ friends?  Come and see.

Here's to the Alsorans: Those Litle-Known Saints In Our Lives

Brad Sullivan

All Saints Sunday, Year A

November 5, 2017

Emmanuel, Houston

Matthew 5:1-12

Here's to the Alsorans:  Those Little-Known Saints in Our LIves

Who are the saints?  (Icon of St. Joseph - is this a saint?  Picture of my dad - is this a saint?)

Both are saints, even though only a few knew my dad.

The saints are those who love God and love people. 

The saints are also those whom God loves and whom people love. 

In our Gospel reading, the beatitudes, is Jesus describing the saints?  Yes…and…he’s not always describing people who have done particularly saint-worthy things.  He’s also describing those whom he loves.

Did the people whom Jesus described do particularly saintly things? 

Peacemakers - yes.

Merciful and pure in heart - yes, they seem rather saintly.

Hunger and thirst for righteousness - maybe.

The poor in spirit - no…just kind of downtrodden.

The meek and those whom mourn - …also kind of sad, not particularly great.

Let’s look at that.  Thinking of mourning and being poor in spirit, remember being sick as a kid.  Remember feeling puny and just wanting to cuddle up with a blanket and do nothing?  How is that saintly?  Well, I have a secret for you, are you ready to hear it?  Sometimes when our kids were younger and they were sick, it was actually kind of nice.  We weren’t happy that they felt bad, but they were so cuddly when they were sick.  They would come to us and simply want to be held, to be nearer to us.  We couldn’t make the cold go away, but we gave them what they needed, to be nearer to us, to be held and loved.  We got to hold and take care of our cuddly little kiddos.  How blessed were they and we, when we simply go to hold and love them?

Blessed are little kids when they are sick, because they get taken care of by those who love them. 

In his list of those who are blessed, Jesus is describing some who live out God’s kingdom and live out the heart of God, and Jesus is also describing those who are sick and so draw nearer to God to be held by him and loved.  Blessed are people who live out God’s kingdom, and blessed are people who are down and out for they are cared for by God and live near to God through the love they share.

At the heart of the saints is a heart that says, “I love people and I want to live in a way that is loving toward others.”  Also at the heart of the saints is a heart that says, “I have nothing left; I am tired and poor and sick, and I want to rest in Jesus’ arms and receive God’s love.”

So that’s who we’re talking about when we talk about the saints.  We’re talking about those who love:  those who love God and love people, those who are loved by God and loved by people, and those who seek out and receive God love and receive peoples’ love.  Those who love and those who let themselves be loved.  Those are the saints.

Who are the saints in your lives?

Smacked Upside the Head by Hope

Brad Sullivan

4 Epiphany, Year A

January 29, 2017

Emmanuel, Houston

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Matthew 5:1-12

Smacked Upside the Head by Hope

“I get it, guys.  The Gospel sounds foolish, and you feel kinda dumb for proclaiming it, but just go with it.  That’s how God works.”  That’s basically what Paul is saying in his letter to the Corinthians.  He says Jesus seems like foolishness to the nations, although for us, he calls Jesus the wisdom of God. “For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.”  It’s as if Paul is saying, “I get it, guys.  The Gospel sounds foolish, and you feel kinda dumb for proclaiming it, but just go with it.  That’s how God works.” 

Jesus’ words sounding foolish, at least on some level, certainly seems to be happening with the beatitudes, the beginning of his sermon in Matthew 5.  Now, I love, this sermon, this list of blessings, this list of people who are blessed.  I love that Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  That’s fantastic.  There is hope in those words, as if even in our darkest moments, life is still moving towards hope.  At the same time, I can see how Jesus’ words sound kinda foolish.

“I am so blessed because I’m really down right now.  I feel kind of bereft of spirit, life, energy…I just don’t have anything left right now.  I feel so blessed.”

What!?  I think his disciples might have been thinking the same thing.  “What are you talking about Jesus?”

“I am so blessed because I’m mourning and in deep sorrow over the death of my father.  It feels like the world stopped when he died, and everyone else is silly enough to think the world is still going.  I feel so blessed.”

“I am so blessed because I don’t really speak up for myself all that forcefully.  I don’t really insist on things going my way, and consequently, things often don’t go my way.  I feel so blessed.”

“I am so blessed because I’m not really all that righteous.  I really want to be, but I’m just not.  I keep on messing up, not loving God or others the way that I’d like to.  I feel so blessed.”

I’m guessing that kind of threw Jesus’ disciples for a loop.  It doesn’t make an overabundance of sense on the first hearing.  None of those really falls into the category of things or people that feel particularly blessed.  Maybe not necessarily cursed, but blessed?  Phrases regarding blessing that sound more familiar to us are, “I am so blessed because of all that God has given me:  my talent, my family, my success, my money, my friends, etc.  I’m blessed because of my many obvious blessings.”  That makes sense.  That we get. 

Looking again at what Jesus said about blessing, we kinda get some of the last ones.  The merciful, who doesn’t like them?  They’re merciful. They’re great; of course they’re blessed.  The peacemakers?  We love the peacemakers.  We give them prizes from Sweden.  Sometimes we kill them.  The peacemakers!  They’re great, of course they’re blessed.

The pure in heart?  Those who are persecuted for being righteous.  Well, of course God’s going to bless those people.  They’re his favorites, right?

But what about when they’re not anymore?  What if they stop being persecuted, or what if their hearts aren’t quite so pure anymore?  Are they still blessed?  Do they move to a “blessings pending” category?  I think if we were in charge, they probably would. 

I think if we were in charge, blessing would be given based on our perception of merit, and those who are considered blessed would be those whom we perceive as obviously blessed with whatever great things.

Fortunately, God doesn’t seem to work that way.  Those peacemakers who lose heart, who are so tired of living in a world of conflict, a world that just won’t make peace no matter how hard they try to make peace; those peacemakers who end up losing heart and being totally bereft of spirit, life, energy that they just don’t have anything left, God has already declared them blessed.  Not blessings pending or blessings removed.  God has declared the poor in spirit to be blessed.

Those who were persecuted for righteousness’ sake so much that they just couldn’t take it anymore, and are no longer the paragons of righteousness that they had been even though they still really want to be righteous, God has already declared them blessed.  Not blessings pending or blessings removed.  God has declared those who hunger and thirst for righteousness to be blessed.

Blessed are the perfect?  No.  Blessed are those who never mess up?  No.  Blessed are those who are God’s favorites, those who do everything right?  Jesus didn’t say that.  There is no hope in that.  If that were the case, if God only declared as blessed those who did everything right, then God would be forever counting our sins against us and holding the carrot of blessing over our heads, smacking us upside the head with it when we mess up.  Does that sound anything like the Gospel of Jesus crucified?  Do the beatitudes sound anything like the words of someone who is interested in constantly holding our sins and past mistakes against us?  No.  There is no hope in constantly being condemned for past mistakes.  There is no new life, no resurrection.  The beatitudes are full of hope.

While our brains tend to get hung up on our own past mistakes and the past mistakes and sins of others, the crazy, awesome, foolishness of the Gospel is that God doesn’t get hung up on our past.  God is constantly looking to our future, vastly more concerned with what we can do than what we did do.  Such forgiveness, such hope often doesn’t make sense to our brains, and yet, such forgiveness, such hope is what we are so in need of.  We long for hope, and sometimes we just can’t see it.  That’s why Jesus sometimes takes hope and smacks us upside the head with it so that we can finally see the hope that he sees and has for us.  

I’d almost like to rename the beatitudes, “smacked upside the head by hope,” because Jesus offers us hope in something greater than ourselves. Hope that we are part of that something greater.  Hope that our lives have meaning, even when we can’t see it.  Hope that mourning and sadness are not the end, but part of a journey through darkness and into light.

When my dad died, I was mourning, and I didn’t feel particularly blessed.  I was comforted though, comforted by hope through our belief in Jesus, comforted by the church sharing and proclaiming our belief in resurrection, comforted by the love and support family and friends gave.  Through all of that, our whole family was tremendously blessed. 

During difficult times, feeling very poor in spirit, I have seen blessing, often on the other side of those times, not only for having been carried through those dark times, but also for looking back and realizing the Kingdom of God, the Gospel, Jesus himself never left during those times.  We’re still part of the Kingdom of God in and through the darkness.

During Bible study last Sunday, we were in the Derrick Tavern reflecting on Psalm 23.  Chris Delange had brought the topic and we talked about the many times and places in our lives which feel like the valley of the shadow of death.  Even in the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil for we trust in the shepherd, we trust in Jesus, to lead us from grazing place to grazing place.  Sometimes we must be led through the dark valleys, the valleys of the shadow of death, in order to come to the next grazing place.  Blessed are we when being led through the valley of the shadow of death, for Jesus is leading us to a green pasture, beside still waters. 

The valley of the shadow of death may be those times when we mourn, those times when we are poor in spirit, those times when we feel far from blessed.  Even in those times, even in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death, Jesus teaches us that we still have hope, that we are still part of his kingdom, beloved of God simply because we are beloved of God.  Jesus’ words of hope may not always make sense to us; they often don’t.  Those times are when we especially need his words.  When we are in the valley of the shadow of death, we need Jesus’ foolish sounding words to smack us upside the head with hope.