STG Sermon - Oct 25 2026

I have the pleasure of working with a bunch of really cool young people who have come to our campus ministry and to our church from radically different Christian traditions than this one. And part of what they experience sometimes when they come to The House for the first time, or come to St. George's for the first time, or when they meet me or any of you for the first time, is that they realize we are practicing a kind of Christianity that feels really, really, really different than the churches of their childhood and adolescence. What do you mean women can be pastors? What do you mean I'm allowed to miss a Sunday? What do you mean "there's no such thing as stupid questions"? What do you mean you actually just want to get coffee w me and not as a secret ruse to chastise me for how I'm acting in small group?

The work that follows is that we get to make sense together of why that Christianity feels like that and why this Christianity feels like this and why there seems to be such a tremendous gap between them, and there are always a couple different ways to parse the question. Of course, there are the historical trajectories within the branches of Christianity that landed each denomination with different sets of political and theological concerns. There are, of course the differences in the ways that we and they read scripture; and how we understand it relative to itself and relative our histories and our traditions, and if and how much we elevate an individual's experiences and sense of reason against the reading of scripture. There are of course also just plain interpretive differences. There are passages of scripture that we think means this, and they think means that. There are multiple portions of the bible that come into tension with one another, how we choose to resolve that tension - does this passage mean more than that one or does that one mean more than this one, or are they both right, or do they apply in different contexts - how we choose to resolve that tension also creates tremendous differences between Christians, churches, and denominations.

I have a friend at the university who is a professor of religious studies, and in one of our long coffee chats, we realized that we've both held the same hunch for a while which is that many Christians, many priests, many denominations tend to have one big idea, or one central passage of scripture that they hold at the middle of their faith, that they use as the point of reference for all the rest of their faith. Like, there sometimes is a passage of scripture that is used as the lens through which other passages of scripture are read and understood and prayed with. And what that means is that this vast set of differences between what you or I or they or any of take as The Big Idea of Christianity or of scripture, creates vastly different lived experiences and theologies within the Church universal.

For example, take John 3:16 which is so ubiquitous and so quoted that it is even printed on the cups at In-N-Out Burger - For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. If the most resonant idea of the faith is, to you, sacrifice - the sacrifice that Jesus made of his own life, and the sacrifice that God the Father made of his son - then you might see the language of sacrifice and the encouragement to sacrifice pervade your faith, or your faith community. Giving as sacrificial, requests on your time and your ability framed as sacrificial, the necessity of you tabling your own feelings or needs compared to what Jesus had to give up and so why can't you too?

For another example, take the tension between, say, Genesis 1 and Matthew 13. For some people, it is a great big central idea of scripture that on the sixth day of creation, God made people, and called us good. And if that is a central idea for you -- you may be likely to look around at everybody and tryyyy to see the good in them, even if they're being bad or annoying, or you might be inclined to see the good in yourself even on your worst or most insecure days. Matthew 13 frames an elaborate parable and metaphor from Jesus as the people of the world as weeds and as wheat - the children of God and the children of the evil one. And if this passage alone holds the big idea of Christianity for you - you might find yourself moving through the world in a way that is discerning of who is wheat and who is weeds, or you might find yourself -- eager? excited? comfortable with the idea of casting the weeds into the fire yourself. We surely know many, many Christians who are. I

I say all this not to say that we aren't capable of holding multiple truths in tension with one another, or that sacrifice AND goodness AND temptation are not all important ingredients in the faith, but simply to say that if you lean waaaay into one over the other, you end up with the spectrum of incredibly different kinds of Christians with radically different and conflicting beliefs about what we're doing here. Full tilt sacrifice, full tilt sin accountability, full tilt innate goodness all land you in really different places. If you're honed in on the idea of who is good and who is bad, you're going to end up somewhere really different than if you're honed in on how everybody is at least a little bit good. This is where the idea many Christians, many pastors, many denominations cleave to one big idea (or a couple of them) has stakes, for how we act out what we believe.

This little bit from Matthew 22 is one of the few occasions in scripture where it feels like Jesus is breaking the fourth wall, still, 2000 years later for us the reader. He's saying - yes there's so much that you have been taught, so much that you have heard, so much that you have read in all the law and all the prophets, but if you take just one thing away here, it's this: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. This is the center tentpole of the faith, it is the main instruction, it is the lens through which can interpret everything else. How does this help me love God? How does this help me love my neighbor? How does this help me love myself?

There are just so many passages of scripture that feel like they point us in different directions- towards mercy, towards generosity, towards vengeance, towards judgment, towards care, towards withholding, towards submission, towards resistance, towards drawing the circle smaller, towards drawing the circle larger. And any one of these passages pulled out of context and blown out of proportion would a wind that pulls us towards a different shore, but the greatest commandment is the compass that rights us within all of it.

Of course, it becomes incumbent upon us to then show our work. It's not enough just to say the words, but to point to the ways that we are trying really hard to love God, trying hard to love our neighbors, and trying hard to love ourselves. What are the ways that we think we're succeeding? What are the ways we know we could be doing better? What are the places we find ourselves stretched thin, and have to prioritize one kind of care over another -- not because we don't see need but because we are finite beings, and one church among ten? fifteen? in downtown?

When it comes down to it, there are always people who are meeting us - this church, these members, this denomination - for the first time, and who scarcely have a lick of context for what kind of Christians we are, what values we hold, and what shapes our beliefs. What a challenge but what a gift to get to have the chance to model a Christian faith that is framed entirely by the call to love, to be loved, to give love, even if we do it imperfectly, even on our best days. Amen.