Sermons

Brought Together by Grace

Yikes, this scripture feels like it is reading my journal. Paul’s letter to the Romans says this,

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

Maybe it’s just me, yet you might think…. Well, that sounds familiar…uncomfortably so.

Paul doesn’t sound like someone who has everything figured out. He sounds like someone who’s had a tough week, and really, who hasn’t? Paul knows what is good and wants to do the right thing. He genuinely wants to follow God, yet keeps falling short.

If you’ve ever lost your temper when you meant to be patient, spoken before listening, held onto resentment longer than you wanted, or told yourself tomorrow would be different, you know what Paul is talking about.

One thing I appreciate most about being Episcopalian is that our tradition never asks us to pretend. We tell the truth about ourselves and about the world. On many Sundays, we confess that we have sinned “by what we have done and by what we have left undone.” We admit we can be remarkably generous and surprisingly selfish, sometimes before lunch.

We don’t gather because we have it all put together. We gather because we need grace.

Paul reminds us that faith isn’t about just trying harder until we get it all right. If determination could save us, Paul would have been first. Instead, he comes to the end of his ability and cries out, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Notice he doesn’t ask, “How do I rescue myself?” He already knows the answer.

“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” or, for you, it might be being fully present to a community, accepting help, or building up enough of yourself to ask for and accept it.

That is the heart of the Gospel/the good news.

I think that’s an important reminder for us at St. Mark’s. We all come from different backgrounds and experiences. We might not agree on worship styles, theology, politics, or how to live out our faith. Yet we’re brought together by something deeper than agreement. We’re brought together by grace.

Beautiful liturgy matters. Thoughtful theology matters. Tradition matters. These are all wonderful gifts. But they’re only gifts if they help us love and seek the divine spark and our neighbors more deeply.

Beautiful worship that doesn’t lead us to compassion misses the point. Theology that doesn’t help us love more misses the point. Our traditions that keep us from seeing what God is doing now also miss the point.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus isn’t asking if people have mastered the right religious categories. He’s asking if they recognized God right in front of them.

That’s a much harder question.

You can know a lot about God and still miss God completely. Jesus invites us to stay open, curious, and humble enough to be surprised.

Then come the words many of us know by heart:

“Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

Those words have comforted Christians for generations, and they still speak to us today. Some of us come carrying grief. Some are worried about children or parents. Some are worn out by work, caregiving, illness, or the fast pace of life. Some are anxious about where our country is headed.

This weekend, we celebrate 250 years since the United States was founded. Anniversaries invite us to give thanks for big ideals like liberty, democracy, and the belief that all people are created equal. They also call for honesty. Like Paul’s confession, our nation’s story is full of both courage and painful contradictions. We have worked for justice and denied it as well. We have expanded freedom, yet left many out. The work of building a more perfect union is never finished, just like the work of becoming the people God calls us to be.

In the gospel, Jesus doesn’t say, “Come back when you’ve figured everything out.” He doesn’t say, “Come once you’ve become a better person.”

He simply says, “Come.”

But then he says something we often overlook.

“Take my yoke upon you.”

A yoke is still something you carry. Following Jesus doesn’t take away all responsibility. It means trading one burden for another. We have community, and we also have the responsibility of making and maintaining community, and allowing others in, even if it changes us.

We spend so much of our lives carrying burdens we were not supposed to carry: the pressure to prove ourselves, the lie that everything depends on us, shame, fear, resentment, the exhausting belief that if we just tried harder, we could somehow save ourselves.

Jesus says, “Put those burdens down.”

Then he offers us his own.

I’ve been thinking about that this week because Michelle and I have been trying to fit a harness on our hound dog, Jasper.

Jasper is wonderfully sweet, but she’s built just like a hound dog: deep chest, long body, narrow neck. Every harness we’ve tried is either too tight across her shoulders or so loose that, if she catches the whiff of something interesting, which, since she’s a hound, happens about every thirty seconds, she backs right out of it.

We’ve measured, adjusted straps, watched videos, tightened it, loosened it, and adjusted it again. Apparently, finding a harness that actually fits a hound dog is much harder than either of us imagined.

What I’ve learned is that a harness that doesn’t fit becomes a burden. It rubs, it chafes, and it makes every walk harder than it should be.

Sometimes we have to grow into Christ’s yoke.

The Christian life isn’t about putting on Christ’s way of living one day and having everything fit perfectly. Discipleship changes us. Over time, our hearts get a little more generous. Our patience grows. We forgive a little sooner. We become less afraid. The yoke starts to fit because grace is quietly reshaping us.

Paul understood that. On his own, he couldn’t change himself just by trying harder. Neither can we. We know we should be kinder, yet we’re impatient.

We know we should be more generous, yet we’re afraid there won’t be enough.

We know we should forgive, but the hurt still runs deep.

Jesus tells us that the qualities our world routinely overlooks, like gentleness, humility, and mercy, are the very qualities that show us the heart of God.Imagine what our neighborhoods would look like if more people chose gentleness over winning.

Imagine our relationships if we listened before defending ourselves.

Imagine our politics if being curious mattered more than being right.

Imagine our churches if our first question wasn’t, “Who is correct?” but “How is the divine spark/a sense of goodness/ God calling us to love one another?”

At St. Mark’s, we often talk about growing in love for God and our neighbors. The more I thought about today’s readings, the more I realized that’s another way of describing what it means to learn Christ’s yoke.

Every time we welcome someone who wonders if there’s a place for them, the yoke fits a little better. Every time we make a meal, work for justice, support someone in grief, stand with those who are afraid, gather at this table, or choose forgiveness over revenge, the yoke fits a little better.

Not because we’ve become perfect, but because grace is forming us into a community that can bring hope to a weary world.

It isn’t effortless.

Love never is.

Forgiveness takes courage. Compassion requires vulnerability. Justice demands perseverance. But unlike the burdens the world places on our shoulders, Christ’s yoke gives life instead of taking it away.

And maybe that’s our calling—not simply as followers of Jesus, but as citizens marking 250 years of our nation’s life: to be people who tell the truth, receive grace, and keep doing the slow work of building communities where mercy is stronger than fear, where love is greater than certainty, and where others can see the tender and humble heart of God.

Amen.