FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR A

November 30, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Matthew 24:37-44

 

Back in the 1990s, I was serving in a parish in Staten Island, New York. Every year, on the Monday before Thanksgiving, the Episcopal Diocese of New York would hold a clergy tax seminar at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. All the canonically resident clergy were strongly encouraged to attend. The idea was that the end of November / beginning of December was an opportune time to be reminded of what needed to be done before year-end to put ourselves in the best possible position to prepare the coming year’s tax returns. 

 

The speaker was always Canon William Geisler, a priest who’s also a Certified Public Accountant, former Controller of the Diocese of California. Until recently, he served as a clergy tax consultant for the Church Pension Fund. He wasn’t a bad theologian either. One year, Canon Geisler began the seminar by enunciating three basic principles that he said should guide all our tax planning and preparation.

 

The first was accountability. In Canon Geisler’s words, “sunlight kills germs.” In other words, conduct our financial affairs with honesty and integrity, keeping our records as thoroughly and accurately as if we positively expected an audit.

 

The second principle was preparation. Don’t put off what needs to be done now. Set up tax-saving arrangements before the tax year begins. It’s too late to start asking what we can do to lower this year’s taxes once the year is over. Again, be prepared for an audit before we receive notice of one. It’s better to put our financial affairs in order ahead of time than to scramble to get all our ducks in a row once that letter from the IRS arrives in the mail.

 

And Canon Geisler’s third basic principle was repentance. As he put it, no matter what portions of the tax code we may have inadvertently violated, no matter how much of a mess we may have made of our record-keeping, we need not despair: “There’s still time to repent.” We can always start putting things right, here and now. Repentance means not only being sorry for our past mistakes but also acting now to correct them for the future.

 

Perhaps it was just a coincidence that Canon Geisler’s tax seminar always came shortly before Advent, but his message certainly fit well with the season. Advent asks us to prepare for the Lord’s coming with even more care and attention than we ideally give to our taxes! In fact, Canon Geisler’s three principles—accountability, preparation, and repentance—offer a good roadmap not only for our taxes but also for the Advent season and indeed for our entire Christian lives.

 

First: accountability—Advent reminds us that we shall face judgment. As the Nicene Creed proclaims, the Lord will return at the end of time as we know it to judge the living and the dead. That’s what’s known as the General Judgment. But even before that, immediately after death, we shall each undergo what’s known as the “particular judgment,” when our lives as individuals will be examined, and our eternal destiny decided. In other words, we’re accountable to God for all our thoughts, words, and deeds.

 

Second: preparation—The readings appointed during the Advent season remind us that we can’t predict the day or hour when we’ll be called upon to render our account. Jesus says in today’s Gospel that his coming will be unexpected, like a thief in the night. Therefore, we need always to be ready, watchful, and vigilant. Otherwise, we’ll get lulled into a false sense of security, with the risk that Judgment Day will catch us by surprise, off guard, and unprepared.    

 

Third: repentance—In this life, at least, it’s never too late to repent. Some people feel that they’ve made such a mess of their lives and are guilty of such terrible sins that God couldn’t possibly ever forgive them or love them. But nothing is farther from the truth. The good news is that no matter how far we’ve strayed from God, we always have the opportunity—right now, here, today—to repent, return to the Lord, and begin putting things right. 

 

Just as living in the expectation of an IRS audit incentivizes us to put our financial affairs in order, so living in the expectation of divine judgment incentivizes us to put our moral and spiritual affairs in order. The Season of Advent confronts us with the most basic question of all: If we really expected to meet our Maker in the near future—whether next year, next month, next week, or tomorrow—then what changes would we make in our lives in the little time we had left?

 

As with most analogies, the differences between the two things under comparison are even more instructive than the similarities. For most of us, financial record-keeping and tax preparation are necessary evils, to be endured for the sake of getting them over with—something we have to do, not something we get to do!

 

By contrast, the spiritual practices by which we prepare to meet the Lord—worship, prayer, Bible-study, spiritual reading, and service to others—are sources of never-ending reward and ever-increasing fulfillment—precisely because they bring us more and more into a loving relationship with the One whose coming we await.

 

But the biggest difference is that when we turn to God in faith and repentance, he’s always willing to forgive—without interest or penalties! Jesus has wiped our slate clean by paying the debt of our sins on the cross. All we need to do is accept that gift in faith.

 

A few years ago, I stopped using a software application to prepare my tax returns and hired a Certified Public Accountant instead. One of several reasons I did this was the assurance that my CPA would represent me and serve as my advocate if I were ever audited. But on Judgment Day, we can have Jesus as our Advocate, and the Holy Spirit as our Counselor, all available to us free of charge: an unbeatable team!

 

So, to make a good beginning of Advent, let's remember Canon Geisler’s three principles. Be accountable. Be prepared. Repent while there’s still time. Then, as we put our spiritual houses in order, the prospect of the Lord’s Coming will be an occasion of unspeakable hope and joy. So we stay awake, ready and eager to greet the Lord when he comes.

PROPER 29, YEAR C

(CHRIST THE KING)

November 23, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R.I.

 

Luke 23:35-43

 

Three years ago, the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the subsequent coronation of King Charles III got me thinking about our relationship with monarchy in this country. We tend to be of two minds. On one hand, Americans are often fascinated by the British royal family. Approximately 10.9 million US viewers watched King Charles’s coronation live in May 2023. For many Episcopalians, the royal pageantry showcases our Anglican tradition at its best. 

 

On the other hand, this fascination with royalty can create a misleading impression. In general, I think it’s fair to say that while we Americans find it wonderful that the British have a royal family over there, a monarchy is the last thing we’d ever want over here! Whether we agreed or disagreed politically with the recent “No Kings” protests, they did presuppose this aspect of our history, traditions, and culture. We live in a republic in which the people are sovereign. For most of us, then, the very thought of subjecting ourselves to a hereditary monarch is unthinkable. That's what we fought the American Revolution to get away from.

 

Still, every year, the Feast of Christ the King comes around to remind us that as Christians, we are indeed monarchists. We freely yield our loyalty and allegiance not to any earthly king but to the heavenly king. Today’s observance reminds us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, the risen and ascended Christ reigns over all creation, and no earthly political system, ideology, ruler, or power can thwart his saving purposes for humanity.

 

In 1925, Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King as an antidote to Communism, Fascism, and, more generally, modern secularism. So, it’s a relative newcomer to the Church calendar. (This year is the 100th anniversary.) Initially held on the last Sunday in October, it was moved in 1969 to its current position on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. We thus conclude our annual cycle of seasons, feasts, and fasts with a ringing affirmation of Christ’s gracious rule over all human affairs.

 

Christ the King belongs to a special category of feasts that afford a second look at doctrines and mysteries already given a first glance on previous occasions in the year. For example, on Corpus Christi, we take a second look at the Eucharist, previously considered on Maundy Thursday. On Holy Cross Day, September 14th, we take a second look at Christ’s suffering and death, previously considered on Good Friday. And on the Feast of Christ the King, we take a second look at the risen Christ’s exaltation to divine glory at the right hand of his Father in heaven, previously considered on the Feast of the Ascension.

 

On Ascension Day, we remember that forty days after his Resurrection, Christ ascended into heaven in the sight of his disciples to reign as king over all creation until the Last Day, when he shall return to judge the living and the dead.

 

By now, you may have noticed that I’m very interested in how Christian teaching gets expressed in art. The Western Church’s artistic tradition typically depicts Christ the King as the Judge separating the sheep from the goats, the saved from the damned, at the Final Judgment. By contrast, the Eastern Church’s iconography tends to present Christ as the heavenly ruler of all things, even now. Byzantine churches in places like Sicily and Greece feature magnificent mosaics depicting Christos Pantocrator—Christ the Ruler of all things—that dominate the entire interior of the building. Yet both types of image—Christ the future Judge, and Christ the present cosmic ruler—merely illuminate different aspects of the same mystery that we celebrate today.

 

What does it mean to affirm the universal kingship of Christ? The doctrine of divine Providence—after which the capital city of this state is named—holds that God is actively involved in all aspects of human affairs. Everything that happens in history is ultimately under God’s control and subject to God’s will.

 

I realize this claim may set off alarm bells. In seminary, we were taught that the one thing we must never say to people in times of personal loss, tragedy, or bereavement—such as the death of a child—is to accept it as God’s will. Bad pastoral technique and spiritually very harmful! And I really don’t believe that such tragedies, or any other catastrophes and disasters, represent God’s will in any active sense. God is infinitely good, and he wills only our good.

 

Here, some theologians make a helpful distinction between what they call God’s active will and God’s permissive will. That is, God doesn’t actively bring about the bad things that happen in this world. But he is in charge, and he is all-powerful, omnipotent, almighty, and that means that in some sense he permits these bad things to happen. 

 

Partly out of respect for our human freedom, he limits his exercise of divine power and lets things play out as they will in our fallen world. Nonetheless, the doctrine of divine providence assures us that no matter what evils may befall us in this life, God is working in and through them to turn them to our good—indeed to an infinitely greater good than we can ask or imagine.

 

Most of all, today’s Gospel reading reminds us that Christ enters into his kingship precisely in and through his own suffering and death on the cross. There, a king is the very last thing that Jesus appears to be. The soldiers mock him, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” The inscription placed over his head, “This is the king of the Jews,” is intended to be totally ironic.

 

And yet, miraculously, against all expectations, one of the two criminals being crucified alongside him recognizes his kingship: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” By his response, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise,” Jesus reveals that he is indeed already the king, for only the true sovereign of the universe has the authority to forgive sins and admit a condemned criminal to eternal life.

 

Such is the nature of Christ’s reign as king. Whatever bad things we may suffer in this life, on the cross he suffers with us, and there he turns our suffering to an infinitely greater good. And in those moments when it feels like we’re being crucified, then to find our king, we need look no further than the next cross over. From there, he exercises his universal kingship, gently reassuring us, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

PROPER 28, YEAR C

November 16, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I. 

 

 

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down." (Luke 21:5-6)

 

The Temple of Jerusalem on Mount Zion was the heart of Israel’s national life for over a thousand years, from the tenth century BC until the first century AD. During this time, it took three distinct forms: the First Temple, the Second Temple, and the Third Temple.

 

The First Temple was constructed by King Solomon. His father, King David, had completed the conquest of Canaan, the Promised Land, and established his capital in Jerusalem. Building a temple in the city legitimized the new kingdom by demonstrating that the king and his rule had divine approval.

 

Solomon’s Temple stood for about four hundred years until the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem in 587 BC. After that, the Temple lay in ruins for nearly seventy years while the people were captives in Babylon. When the exiles returned, they rebuilt the edifice, creating the Second Temple. From this time forward, however, the Jewish people were no longer politically independent. They lived first under the Persian Empire, and then, from the time of Alexander the Great, under the Hellenistic Greek Empire.

 

Under foreign rule, the Temple became the symbol of Jewish religious and national identity. When the Greeks foolishly installed a statue of Zeus in the Temple in 167 BC—what the Book of Daniel calls “the abomination of desolation”—Judas Maccabeus led a revolt that resulted in a century of Jewish political independence, until the Roman Empire took control in 63 BC.

 

The Romans appointed a client king, Herod I, known as Herod the Great, who undertook many impressive building projects, most notably the reconstruction of the Temple. Herod surrounded this third Temple with expansive courtyards on a large platform, which still stands to this day. The Temple's exterior walls were sheathed in gold. This project was a central part of Herod’s political strategy. He aimed not only to win the favor of his Jewish subjects, who often saw him as a traitor and collaborator, but also to impress his Roman overlords.

 

And it was of this third Temple that Jesus prophesied, “the days shall come when there shall not be one stone left here upon another that shall not be thrown down.” Although Jesus is here echoing Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, his words nonetheless must have been shocking to his contemporaries. 

 

In the ancient world, religious buildings didn’t function as they do today. We often think of churches, cathedrals, synagogues, mosques, and temples mainly as places for public worship. Even though the Jerusalem Temple was indeed the center of Jewish worship, with sacrifices offered daily on its altars, its primary designation in the Bible is “the House of God.” 

 

In other words, the Temple was viewed as a divine residence, the dwelling place of Israel’s God. Most people could access only its courtyards. Only the priests were allowed to enter its inner chambers. The Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctuary, was off-limits to everyone except the High Priest, who was permitted to enter only once a year—on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. As God’s dwelling on Earth, the Temple served as the visible symbol of God’s presence with His people, Israel.

For Jesus to predict that this holy building would be torn down would have seemed scandalous, even blasphemous. Yet, within a generation, his prophecy came true. In response to the Jewish rebellion of AD 66, the Roman legions laid siege to Jerusalem in AD 70. When the city fell, the Temple was set ablaze and destroyed. In its place today stands the Muslim Dome of the Rock, constructed in the 7th century AD.

 

But even though the Temple’s destruction seemed an unimaginable catastrophe at the time, the world didn’t come to an end. Life went on. The Jewish religion persisted. In the roughly hundred years after the Temple’s destruction, Judaism reorganized and transformed itself into a religion centered in local synagogues around the world, with worship no longer focused on animal sacrifice but on the study and practice of Torah, God’s teachings as received in the Hebrew Scriptures.

 

Today’s Collect reminds us that God caused the Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning so that we may embrace and hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The practice of hearing, reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting the Scriptures is a tradition we inherited from our Jewish forbears, for which we owe them our everlasting gratitude.

 

Now, I’m not saying that the Temple’s destruction was a good thing. It was a form of death, and death is always bad. But it did pave the way for something new. From a Christian perspective, before we can receive new life, we must first undergo death in one form or another.

 

Sometimes I look back on my life as a series of projects. While that’s probably not always the best way to understand one's life, it can provide a helpful perspective. There was the getting into college project, the graduate school project, the first job project, the getting married project, the seminary project, the first parish project, and so on. Some of these projects went better than others. Some were big successes; others had mixed results; a few were abject failures.

 

When a project fails, it can feel like a form of death, which is never pleasant. For example, when I graduated from college, I was all set on a career in government. That plan didn't work out. Instead, I ended up spending six years working in the corporate world before going to seminary. My original ambitions died a kind of death, which I mourned for a long time. However, that loss opened the way for me to discern my calling to the priesthood. These many years later, it’s clear that I’ve been much happier as a priest than I would have been doing anything else. Still, the initial plan had to fail so I could start to understand where I was truly being called.

 

That’s how God works: always creating new life, opening new possibilities, and bringing new worlds into existence. But before we can enter the new life into which God is calling us, we need to let go of the old life we cling to so desperately.

 

Sometimes we have no choice. Our projects fail and are dismantled completely, with not a single stone left standing one upon another. Still, the world doesn’t come to an end. Then we realize that God’s gift of new life is always there, waiting for us if only we have the courage to accept and receive it.

PROPER 27, YEAR C

November 9, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Job 19:23-27a 

Luke 20:27-38

 

Some years ago, an engaged couple sat across the coffee table from me in my study. They were attractive, intelligent, and very much in love. As I always do in my pre-nuptial instruction, I emphasized the importance of entering marriage as a lifelong commitment: “till death us do part.” With a smile that expressed utter confidence, the young man leaned forward and said, “Oh yes, Father, we love each other so much that we know that we’ll be married not only for this life but for all eternity as well!”

 

Although the thought flashed through my mind, I didn’t have the heart to quote today’s Gospel: "those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage." Instead, I just mumbled something inane like, “How nice,” and moved on to talk about the importance of making wills and balancing checkbooks.

 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is responding to a question posed by the Sadducees. An aristocratic religious group based in Jerusalem, the Sadducees were theological conservatives and biblical literalists. They believed only what they could prove from the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. So, unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees didn’t accept more recent developments in Jewish belief, such as the existence of angels or the resurrection of the dead. They would not have counted the Book of Job as authoritative, which in our Old Testament reading hints at the resurrection of the dead, where Job says, "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God …"

 

Perhaps to force him to take sides in these debates, the Sadducees challenge Jesus with the question about a woman who married seven brothers. In the resurrection, whose wife will she be? Of course, it’s not an honest question. It’s designed to ridicule the very idea of resurrection, and to make Jesus look foolish no matter how he answers.

 

Rather than attempting to answer the question on the Sadducees’ terms, Jesus rejects the premise. He says, in effect, that marriage is for this life only. In the life of the world to come, there’ll be no more marriage. So, the woman in the story won’t be anyone’s wife. For in the resurrection, they "neither marry nor are given in marriage."

 

Then, Jesus cleverly demonstrates the truth of the resurrection by quoting scripture that the Sadducees also accept as authoritative: the passage in Exodus 3, where God appears to Moses in the burning bush and identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Even though those three patriarchs lived long before Moses, they must still be alive, because God is the God of the living, not of the dead. It’s a brilliant comeback. And Luke notes that after that, they no longer dared to ask him any more questions.

 

But to return to the question of no marriage in heaven, this revelation may come as a bitter disappointment to some—certainly to that young couple in my office—and perhaps as a welcome relief to others. But why would Jesus say such a thing? Why should marriage be only “till death us do part?” Why shouldn’t happy marriages on earth resume in heaven and continue for eternity?

 

The explanation that Jesus himself gives is that in the resurrection they “neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore …” The underlying assumption is that we get married in this life to beget children to carry forward our name and inheritance after our death. Since those resurrected to eternal life don’t die anymore, they have no more need of either marriage or children.

 

That explanation may have been persuasive in first-century Palestine, but today we understand the purposes of marriage differently. Most couples planning to marry don’t tell me they're doing so to produce heirs to secure the family's future. Instead, the reason they almost inevitably give is that they’re in love with each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together. So, to understand our Lord’s teaching about no marriage in heaven, we need to approach the question in terms of love.

 

In the classical Christian tradition, marriage is a sacrament. In this life, God communicates his love to us by material signs, which we call sacraments. In Holy Baptism, for example, God uses water to show us his love by washing away our sins and incorporating us into the Body of Christ. And in the Holy Eucharist, God makes use of bread and wine to show us his love by feeding, nourishing, and sustaining us with Christ’s true Body and Blood.

 

Marriage is a sacrament because it follows the same pattern: God using the created realities of this world as vehicles of his love. Not everyone is called to Christian marriage, and those who aren’t have ample opportunities to experience God’s love in other ways. But in a Christian marriage that works the way it’s supposed to, the man receives God’s love through the love of his wife, and the woman receives God’s love through the love of her husband. At its best, the joy of physical intimacy serves as an anticipation and foretaste of the joy of heaven. Each spouse becomes, in effect, a sacrament mediating God’s love to the other. 

 

A basic tenet of Christian teaching, however, is that in heaven all sacraments shall cease. They won’t be necessary anymore, because there we shall see God face to face, and receive his love directly, without intermediaries. So, for example, in the world to come, the Eucharist shall cease, because there we shall worship directly at the Lord’s heavenly throne, and feast directly at his heavenly banquet.

 

Likewise with marriage: in a way that’s impossible to understand or explain, we shall all be married to Christ, the heavenly bridegroom, as members of the Church, his Bride. In this life, God places us in particular families, relationships, and communities where we can learn how to give and receive love. In this way, we’re schooled in the ways of heaven, where love reigns completely.

 

God communicates his love to us through many good gifts. Like that young couple in my office, however, we’re tempted to cling to the gifts rather than the Giver. We rightly rejoice and give thanks for all God’s blessings. But the happiness they bring in this life is never an end in itself. Instead, they point beyond themselves to the infinitely greater happiness and bliss that awaits us in the world to come.

 

COMMEMORATION OF ALL FAITHFUL DEPARTED

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

Monday, November 3, 2025

 

 

Together, All Saints Day (November 1st) and All Souls Day (November 2nd) direct our attention to a basic Christian teaching explicitly mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed: namely, the Communion of Saints. Here, the word “Communion” means fellowship or community.

 

The Church’s traditional doctrine of the Communion of Saints teaches that the Church exists in three dimensions or states: Militant, Expectant, and Triumphant.

 

The Church Militant consists of all Christians alive on this earth at any given moment in time. The Church Expectant consists of those Christians who have fallen asleep in the Lord, but are still awaiting the Resurrection of the Dead and the Last Judgment. And the Church Triumphant consists of all those Christians who have entered into the fullness of the joy of heaven, where they see God face to face.

 

So, when we speak of the Communion of Saints, the key point is that the Church encompasses all three dimensions: Militant, Expectant, and Triumphant. In Christ, we are in relationship not only with all other Christians now alive on this earth, but also with all those who have gone before us. The Church is a fellowship of the living and the dead.

 

All Saints and All Souls look at the same mystery from different vantage points in time. All Saints Day views the Church from the perspective of eternity, after the end of time, indeed from outside time as we know it. From this viewpoint, we see the Church’s final end, when all are safely gathered into God’s kingdom. All Saints Day thus offers us a glimpse of our future, and the future of all the faithful, in the Church Triumphant.

 

All Souls Day, by contrast, looks at the same mystery from the present moment, from within time. Our departed loved ones have gone out of our sight, but we’re all still waiting in hope for the coming of God’s kingdom—both we in the Church Militant, and the Faithful Departed in the Church Expectant.

 

The Church’s prayer for the Faithful Departed is that they may “rest in peace.” But what does this rest refer to? I think that it refers primarily not to our final destination in heaven, for then we’ll be too busy enjoying the celebration to do much resting, but rather to the intermediate state between this life and the life of the world to come. We pray that the Faithful Departed may rest in peace as they await the resurrection of the dead. Or, as some versions of the prayer put it, that they may “rest in peace and rise in glory.”

 

Think of some of the implications of this prayer. On a few occasions in the course of my priestly ministry—thankfully, very few—I’ve been called upon to bless a house or residence troubled by paranormal activity. In some cases, not all but some, the underlying problem turns out to be what’s called a restless spirit: that is, the soul of a dead person who is neither at rest nor at peace. When that turns out to be the case, the Church’s prescribed course of action is not only to spiritually cleanse the location, but also to pray for the troubled soul’s repose, that it may depart to its appointed place, there to await the day of resurrection.

 

But such cases are by far the exception rather than the rule. Most of the time, we pray for the departed to express our love for them—in the conviction that it’s the one effective thing that we can still do to help them in their continuing journey into the light of God’s presence, and in the hope that others will so pray for us when our time comes.

 

In this life, rest brings healing and wholeness. Ideally, we wake up restored and rejuvenated after a good night's sleep. So much the more, then, with the faithful departed resting in the sleep of peace. God’s Holy Spirit continues and ultimately completes the work, normally begun in this life at baptism, of healing their infirmities and purging away their sins. Then, at the sound of the last trumpet, they will wake up and rise, ready to see God face to face and share in the joy of their eternal inheritance.

 

The All Souls Requiem Eucharist is basically an all-purpose funeral service. We give thanks for the lives of the faithful departed, especially those whom we love but see no longer. We celebrate the Christian hope of resurrection from the dead. The purple color of our vestments signifies not so much penitence as hope for the day of the Lord’s coming. But, most of all, until that day, we pray that the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, may rest in peace. Amen.