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.”

Freedom: Killing the gods That Bind Us

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
January 18, 2026
2 Epiphany, Baptism of Jesus
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Psalm 40:1-12
John 1:29-42

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” That’s what John the Baptist testified about Jesus when he saw him walking by. John had seen the Spirit of God descend and remain on Jesus, and God had told him that that person, the one on whom the Spirit remained, that person would baptize others with the Holy Spirit. That person would be revealed as God’s Son. 

Calling Jesus God’s Son, the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit, was calling Jesus much more than a child of God with special prophetic or healing abilities. Jesus was the Word of God, which was God, which spoke creation into existence. So, who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? God. God is the Lamb of God, because the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, was God who had become human. So, that means that the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world was God acting together with humanity. 

That’s pretty much been God’s M.O. kinda since forever.

When God called on Abraham to make a sacrifice and to trust God in that process, Abraham did as God instructed, thinking he would have to sacrifice his son. Instead, God provided a lamb for the sacrifice. God was working together with humanity so that we would begin to see God as trustworthy. 

When the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt, God was with the people and had them make sacrifices of lambs, eat them quickly, and mark their doors with the lambs’ blood so that God would only attack the Egyptians and then lead the people of Israel out of slavery. 

The lamb provide to Abraham, the paschal lambs of the Passover, Israel itself seen as a lamb, all little lambs of God which God used in working with humanity to heal us and free us from bondage. All of those are ways that Jesus is the Lamb of God for us, as John proclaimed, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Here is the Lamb of God who frees us from bondage.

John the Baptist saw Jesus, trusted God, and proclaimed to others who Jesus was.

Andrew, Peter, and their friend all began following Jesus as soon as he was proclaimed to them, and during good times and bad, they continued following him. That kind of devotion really only comes when you’ve actually been freed from whatever it is that binds you. Following and continuing following through good times and bad comes when you have actually been freed.

The fact that Andrew, Peter, and their fried would follow Jesus immediately when they were told, “Jesus is the Lamb of God,” or “Jesus is the Messiah,” that makes sense. Any good snake-oil salesman can get people to follow them pretty quickly. Find people who are vulnerable and suffering; promise them healing and wonders, a new life without pain; get them to give up something in order to follow you; and you can probably get some followers pretty quickly. 

Now, with folks like this, you’ve usually have to give up cash to follow people them. Some are selling various cure-alls. Some are selling some newfangled religion where you gotta give a good amount of money, or if you give enough money then god will reward you with even more. Some are simply selling drugs so you can feel better for a minute while they get rich off your misery. 

All of these charlatans and snake-oil salesmen can get a pretty good following pretty quickly, so long as they’re charismatic, smooth-talking, and willing to exploit people’s suffering and vulnerability.

They just can’t usually get people to follow them for their whole lives because people eventually find that they haven’t actually been freed from anything. They’ve followed, they’ve given money, and they’ve remained chained to whatever it was that bound them before, or they’ve become enslaved to the very thing they were being sold. Take this; feel better. Have some drugs; feel better. Oh, and keep giving me money; have this; feel better. Feel worse; give me money; have this; feel better. Feel worse; become enslaved; give me money; have this; feel better; stay enslaved. 

What we find with Jesus, what we find with the Lamb of God who is God is that Jesus wasn’t selling anything. He did heal a lot of people. He brought good news to a lot of folks who were suffering and vulnerable. He taught how to live a life of freedom and joy. He freed people from their sins and fears so they could live a life of freedom and joy. 

Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world; he offers us freedom from all of the thousands of ways we can end up bound and enslaved.

As I said earlier, one way Jesus is understood as the Lamb of God is as the Paschal Lamb, the lamb of the Passover. That’s from back in Exodus when the people of Israel were freed from slavery in Egypt. When God told the people of Israel to kill lambs to eat and to mark their homes, it wasn’t just random animal. The lamb was the form and symbol of one of Egypt’s primary gods. So, when the Israelites took lambs into their homes, killed and ate them, and put the lambs’ blood on their doorposts, they were killing Egypt’s gods. “We are no longer your slaves,” they were telling the Egyptians, “because we have just killed your god.” We have been freed from bondage, freed from the false god you put over us, and we will now follow God, walk in his ways, and be freed from you forever. 

When John called Jesus the Lamb of God, John was declaring him to be the one who will free us from bondage. Jesus frees us from slavery to whatever has us chained and enslaved. 

There are two things in particular which tend to bind us, and those are our past and our future, also known as our sins and our fears. We harm others and ourselves, and guilt turns to shame, and we become chained to the past, chained to our sins. We are anxious about the future, worried about what is to come, and we become chained to fears. 

We also become chained to our sins and our fears because we get so used to the ways of life of our sins and our fears that we forget how to live any other way. 

Something bad happens, get angry.

You’re afraid? Get angry, or get small and hide; push everyone away.

You believed that snake-oil salesman and got hooked on drugs, alcohol, sex, and now you’re trapped, chained by the false cure you were sold.

You think that money, power, or lots of stuff with fix you, and so you keep chasing after more and more, bound to a quest you can never fulfil. 

A thousand other ways we all become enslaved to our sins and our fears.

Jesus says, “Follow me,” and “I will become in you a fountain of eternal life.” (John 4:7-15) Rather than chain us with our sins, Jesus forgives us of our sins. Rather than frighten us with what is to come, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.” Rather than, pay me enough, and I’ll give you what you want, Jesus says, “Come to me, you who are weary and worn out, and I will give you rest.” Jesus didn’t say I will sell you rest, he said, “I will give you rest.”

Now, following Jesus does not mean you will have a life where nothing bad ever happens. Life still happens, and sometimes life is not great. There are still plenty of bad things that happen to Jesus’ followers. Even to those who believe completely in Jesus, bad things still happen in life. Anyone who says believing in Jesus means no suffering ever, is selling something. Only salesmen, trying to get your money, promise no suffering, ever. 

What Jesus promises is freedom. Freedom from sin. Freedom from fear. Freedom from the thousands of little gods that enslave us. Jesus is the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. Jesus is God and humanity joined so that nothing can separate us from God. We need not fear the future because we are one with God even beyond death. We need not be bound by the past because Jesus has forgiven us and allowed us to walk now in freedom. Jesus has allowed us to be reconciled with one another, forgiving each other, and trusting in God’s judgment, rather than our own, so we need not be bound by our hurt and our resentment. Jesus has freed us as we trust in him and follow in his ways. “Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”