Zero to Hero and Back Again: A Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost (A)

 Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, and St Luke’s, Creemore, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Sunday, 30 August, 2026.  Readings for the Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost (YrA):  Exodus 3.1-15, Psalm 26.1-8, Romans 12.9-21,Matthew 16.21-28

 

 

But Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” (Mt 16.23)

 

You may recall that last year in October I wore a Toronto Blue Jays hat in church and we were all pretty excited that Canada’s team, as we called them, was bound for the World Series and it was a good run, all the way to game seven.  The Jays were our heroes. 

So where did the heroes go?   This year the Jays a below average team, scuffling with a bunch of other mediocre teams under 500 for an undignified wild card spot.  Last year we couldn’t throw enough money at Vladdy to hit home runs.  This year we would just like him to not hit so many ground balls into double plays.  It’s a little shocking how quickly our heroes turned into zeroes.

 

That phrase “hero to zero” came to mind this week as I thought of Peter in today’s gospel.    Poor old Peter!  Last week, when Jesus asked the disciples “who do you say I am?”, Peter totally aced the exam.  “You are the Messiah,” he exclaims,”the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), to which Jesus basically says “Well done Peter, go to the head of the class!”   Jesus declares that Peter will be the “rock” on which he will build the church, which in the language of the creeds is the founding moment of the “holy, catholic, and apostolic church” that we are a part of, all because Jesus recognized that Peter was the hero needed to found and build the church.

 

How quickly it all changes!  Here we are just a few verses later in Matthew 16, and Peter goes from hero to zero in a heartbeat!  Last week he was the rock on which Jesus would build his church.  Today he is demoted to stumbling block.  Hero to zero, or maybe better yet, Peter goes from rock to block.

 In Matthew’s gospel, this is the first time that Jesus predicts that he will go to Jerusalem and die there.  He describes his death (note the word “must” in 16.21) as an obligation, something he has to do.   This news is a shock for Peter, who has just identified Jesus as the Messiah, the anointed saviour of Israel.  Peter and the other disciples were doubtless raised on stories of Israel’s great military heroes from stories such as those in the books of Joshua and Judges, so this is all a bit much to take.  Peter surely wants a Messiah who wins.  Peter wants a conquering hero, not a loser zero,

 

Peter doesn’t just challenge Jesus, he “rebukes” him, which in is like telling the boss, “sir, that’s crazy talk”.  So it is that Peter goes from rock to block.    What Peter can’t recognize is that in telling Jesus not to go to Jerusalem and die, he is essentially repeating the temptation that Satan offered to Jesus in the wilderness to save himself from death, to which Jesus replied “Away with you Satan” (Mt 4.10).  

Peter becomes an obstacle on Jesus’ road to Jerusalem, literally a stumbling block (scandalon), which literally means something you can trip over but it also means a trap.   Thus we can say that Peter goes not just from hero to zero, but he goes from rock (the foundation of the church) to stumbling block.  Hero to zero.  Rock to blockhead.  Ouch.  Poor Peter.

 

All this background is necessary to help explain two ensuing phrases which give Christians a lot of trouble.  One is Jesus telling Peter that he is “setting his mind not on divine things but on human things”.  There is a temptation here, especially after hearing Peter called “Satan”, to think of an absolute division between heaven and b earth, so there’s  the divine, God stuff, and the earthly, human stuff, which is bad and maybe even demonic.     Call this way of thinking sacred versus secular.   At it’s worst, it’s sectarian thinking, making believers want to have as little to do with the human world as possible.   At it’s mildest, it makes us compartmentalize God, so that we only occasionally think of ourselves as Christians and disciples while going about our business in the real or physical world.

 

This confusion is made worse when we don’t properly understand what it means to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus.   These words as they are often understood can reinforce the sacred/secular divide and make is think that a life focused on divine things must be a joyless life of abstinence and suffering, like the lives of the early Christian hermits in their hair shirts.    Which is all very strange when we remember that Jesus in the gospels went to weddings, visited the homes of people he loved, ate and drank with friends and was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard.    It all seems very hard to reconcile.

 

What if we didn’t have to think in terms of a faith that called us away from our earthly lives, but which instead enriched them?   What Peter doesn’t understand is that Jesus must go to Jerusalem not only to die, but also to live  (“and on the third day be raised” 16.21).   The cross that Jesus calls us to is thus not life-destroying but life-giving.  The cross gives us eternal life, but it also gives us life in the day to day of our lives.  

Our reading from Romans 12 gives us a good sense of what that life looks like:  rejoicing, blessing, befriending, companionship, all in the company of others.   The self that has to be denied in that life is the self that gets in the way of these things – cursing, hating, grudge-holding, pettiness, hatefulness, hoarding, and selfishness, fear and bigotry and racism.   No one wants to be that guy!   These are all the dark things that we need to take to the cross and give to God so that we are free to live the way God wants us to live.

 

This calling sounds like a life worth living, like our best possible life, and it is!  Our invitation to a better life as disciples is a calling or a vocation.  Aher, you vocation sounds serious, and what if we screw up?    Because we probably will, on any given day.   Even major league baseball players strike out and commit errors on the field.     If we slip up, God will say to us, as he says to Peter, “get behind me”.   Jesus never says “Get away from me”.   He only says that to Satan.  He won’t say that to us. Getting behind Jesus means retaking our rightful place as a disciple, as a follower.  Following Jesus means that we won’t get lost if we keep Jesus in front of us.

 

  

Fearful Disobedience: A Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost (A)

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, and Good Shepherd, Stayner, on 23 August, the Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost.

Texts for this Sunday:  Exodus 1:8 - 2:10, Psalm 124, Romans 12:1-8, Matthew 16:13-20.

“But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.” (Ex 1:17).

Video version of this homily is here.

A powerful king is threatened by a group  of people in his country.  He gives orders to his servants that they are to reduce their numbers, to get rid of them.  Does that sound like it’s from today’s headlines?   From recent history?  From our first lesson?   All of the above?

Sometimes parishioners tell me that they don’t like the Old Testament, which, perhaps because I’m ornery, makes me want to preach in that direction, and today’s first lesson seems worth saying some things about.     Pharaoh’s decision to kill the firstbornJewish males in Egypt is more drastic than what’s happening around us today, but, as I said, a king who wants to get rid of certain threatening people sure sounds familiar.

So today we continue to hopscotch through the Book of Genesis.  We’ve fast forwarded from Joseph some years, and now there is a Jewish population in Egypt, useful as labourers, but there’s also a new king who “did not know” the story of Egypt’s debt to Joseph and doesn’t seem to care.   He’s given orders that all the firstborn Jewish boys are to be killed at birth.  A few brave women disobey this order, and so Moses survives to become  the man who leads God’s people to freedom.

Now Pharaoh’s order to kill the firstborn hasn’t currently been imitated, but sometimes there are just degrees of awful behaviour, going from bad to worse to worst.   Yesterday I learned that there are currently 1800 unaccompanied children detained within the US immirgration system.  While they are officially considered to be refugees, they are subject to deportation.

On July 31 of this year, a one year old child appeared in an immigration court in Arizona.  A judge ordered the child to file an asylum application before the next hearing, or face deportation.   Before July 31, a non-profit group represented unaccompanied children, but their contract was given to another organization whose lawyer said nothing that day in court.   So how is this child, or better yet, how this baby was supposed to file a claim on their own was a problem that apparently didn’t matter to the judge or to anybody in authority that day?   One also wonders what it is like to be a one year old alone in a detention system, where this child’s parents are and what they must be thinking, or whether they can be united with their child after the deportation.

So is the US government deporting a one year old as bad as Pharoah killing a child at birth, or are we just talking about shades of awfulness?   If you deport someone, a child or an adult, to a dangerous country like Liberia or Haiti, where they have no family, supports, or even language, is that more merciful than killing them at birth?  How are we as Christians and followers of Jesus supposed to respond to things that are clearly awful?

Shiphrah and Puah were not Christians.   They were ordinary women, midwives, whose names are preserved for us because “they feared God” more than they feared Pharaoh (Ex 1:15-16).  They chose to lie to power in order to save as many lives as possible.   Likewise, the child’s mother resists power by doing what she can to save her baby, and, when Pharaoh’s daughter finds the infant, “she took pity on him” (Ex 2:6).  She and her maids choose their own path of resistance, to raise the child in Pharaoh’s house, name him Moses, and he will one day lead God’s people to freedom.

What does “fear God” mean?  It doesn’t mean being afraid of God, in the sense of finding God scary and threatening.  Rather, it means respecting God, understanding and agreeing with God’s desire for justice and righteousness.  Fearing God for Shiphrah and Puah, for Pharaoh’s daughter and for you and I, means having a reliable moral compass.  It means the ability to distinguish between what God wants us to do, and what an unjust ruler wants us to do.

Recently a woman named Laurie, a gate worker at a US aiport, realized that ICE agents were looking for a woman waiting to board a flight.  She told the woman in question, who was shocked and said that she had all her necessary papers.  The woman chose to leave the airport.  When the agents questioned Laurie, she referred them to airline security and told them she couldn’t give them any information without a subpoena.  The woman they were seeking got in touch with Laurie, thanked her, and said she had made it safely home.

I don’t know whether Laurie is a Christian, but I can say that, according to my understanding, she fears God in that she is aligned with God’s sense of justice.  Across America today, people who have fully complied with US immigration programs are now in hiding.  Often churches are helping them in ways such as buying them groceries and doing their laundry. These are small acts of resistance, but they are decisions made by people who, llike Shiphrah and Puah, know what is right.

The Book of Genesis is, as I remarked last week, an ancient text but it retains the capacity to speak to us in our day, to help us understand our times, and to help us discern God’s purposes and desires for the world God loves.    Often the Old Testament anticipates the gospels.   Pharaoh’s daughter looked on the infant Moses with pity, in the same way that Jesus looks on hungry crowds and the suffering sick.   God’s love remains, and it is often manifested in our own decisions, even when we have to chose disobedience because we fear God.

Opening The Door To Mercy: A Homily for the Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost.

Preached at All Saints’ Anglican Church, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on the Twelth Sunday after Pentecost, 16 August, 2026.

 

Readings for this Sunday:  Psalm 133, Genesis 45.1-15, Romans 11.1-2a,29-32, Matthew 15.21-28 

 And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them, and after that his brothers talked with him. (Gen 45:15)

One of the must-see plays at Stratford this year is their production of Shakespeare’s Tempest.  It’s a gorgeous spectacle to watch, full of action, and the acting is top notch, but I had partly forgotten that the play is a deeply moving statement about the power of forgiveness.

Prospero was a nobleman who was cheated out of his birthright by his brother and his accomplices.  Along with his daughter he’s been stranded on an island for many years, but since he is also a powerful magician, he has waited for his revenge.  Now, thanks to his magic powers, he has all of his enemies together, under a spell and  at his mercy.   But, in the fifth act, Prospero’s servant Ariel says that she would feel mercy for these helpless enemies.

Prospero is moved by Ariel’s kind heart, and he says 

Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling

Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,
Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
Yet with my nobler reason against my fury
Do I take part: the rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance: (Tempest 5: 2040-2047)

 

While Shakespeare isn’t an overtly Christian writer, this scene, Prospero’s change of heart, made me wonder if he was thinking of today’s first reading from Genesis, and the mercy Joseph shows to his wicked brothers.

Last week the lectionary’s hopscotch tour of the Book of Genesis dipped into the story of Joseph, and today we find ourselves almost at the end of that long story.   Last Sunday we heard how Joseph’s brothers, jealous of their father’s love for Joseph, plotted first to kill him, then relented somewhat and sold him as a slave to foreigners.

We don’t hear the middle part of the story, but I’m sure you know your bible or your Andrew Lloyd Webber to fill in the details.  Thanks to his prophetic dreams, Joseph becomes the second most powerful person in Egypt.   His situation is very much like that of Prospero.   He has his enemies at his mercy.  When he announces to them that ““I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt”, it could have been a total Game of Thrones moment, with the brothers dragged off to suffer torture and death.   

Instead, Joseph weeps with profound emotion.  It’s a remarkable  and refreshingly human moment. There is an ancient, remote quality about Genesis, that can sometimes make us think that this isn’t a story about actual people.  Sometimes the early books of the bible feel like mythology or legend, but here as Joseph breaks down, sobbing so violently that people hear him in the next room, it feels as fresh and as real as yesterday’s novel.  

 

It feels so real because we don’t know exactly where these tears come from.  Is it sorrow for a lost childhood, stolen from him by his brothers?  Is it joy at the thought of being reunited with his family?  Is it some cathartic experience of relief that he is capable of forgiving his bewildered siblings, a deep spiritual relief that he isn’t captive to some need for revenge?  We can’t be sure exactly, but this vivid climax to what is sometimes called one of the bible’s great novellas makes us think about how complex, and necessary, forgiveness and reconciliation can be in our lives. 

 

In Shakespeare, Prospero’s decision to be merciful comes from his “reason”.  Joseph’s compassion is theological, it comes from his sense that God has been at work in his story.  Joseph says to the brothers “now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life” Gen 45.5).  It may not have been apparent to him when the brothers threw him into the pit, but Joseph firmly believes that God brought him to this place and this power, where, because of his dreams and the influence they gave him, he can save his family from starvation. 

 Unlike earlier episodes in the family history of Joseph’s ancestors, where God intervenes and speaks directly in the story, we don’t see God act first hand in the Jospeh story, but Josephs words to his brothers – “God sent me”, “God made me” – make it clear that these things have happened for a reason.   Thus, the story of Joseph and how he saves others from starvation is tied into the big story of Genesis, of God using Abraham and his descendants to be blessings to all peoples.  

 

Joseph is also a blessing to his family because he is able to forgive them, even if, as his sobs and tears suggest, forgiveness and reconciliation can be difficult and painful work.  The work of reconciliation is not easy.  Setting aside pain and injury is some of the hardest soul work we can imagine.  Several times this summer, as we’ve gone through Genesis, I’ve commented on how the story of Abraham’s family, with all its faults and intrigues and bad behaviors, is the human story, but Abraham’s family never breaks bad.   After all the tears and embracing, that lovely phrase at the end of today’s reading “after that his brothers talked with him” (45.15), shows that it is possible for ice-dams of guilt and hostility are broken, we can be restored to relationship with one another.  Joseph’s forgiveness makes our story possible, because the story, from Exodus to Israel, from the prophets to Jesus to the adoption of the gentiles in the body of Christ, is our story. 

I’ll finish by looking briefly at today’s gospel, because there’s a mercy moment and a teachable moment in there that saves Jesus from looking like a complete jerk.   Earlier, when he sent out his disciples, Jesus told them to “Go nowhere among the gentiles … go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”(Mt 10:5-6).  And now a gentile woman is in his face, pleading for mercy because she has faith in Jesus’ power.   Calling her a dog is as cold and as rude as Jesus gets, and yet what happens when she insists on the same generosity that a dog under the table gets from its masters?  Does Jesus change his mind?  Is Jesus convinced to choose mercy?

There’s a lot of debate about this gospel reading, about whether Jesus, who is supposedly perfect and sinless, could at first be so rude and exclusive in his thinking, or whether Jesus needed to learn anything.  I would say that if Jesus was fully human, then his humanity included receptivity to new ideas, and the ability to change his mind and show mercy.   One could say that the turn to a wider mercy and grace in Matthew’s gospel begins here, when Jesus comes to see in this foreign woman as much faith and as much goodness as any Jew might possess.     If this is indeed a hinge moment in Matthew’s gospel, then the door to mercy is fully opened by Jesus’ last words at the end, telling his followers to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28.19).

It’s sometimes said that the gospels are about grace versus justice.   Justice, at it’s worst moments, can look a lot like revenge, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”, or as Shakespeare’s Shylock demands, “a pound of flesh”.   Mercy and grace sacrifice their claims on revenge so that greater and better things might happen.   Joseph forgives his brothers, and Jesus opens a door for the Caananite woman, a door so big that all of us gentiles can go through and become God’s family. So my question for us is this:  if Prospero, Joseph, and even Jesus can choose mercy, then what can we do to show mercy to others?