Sermon | The Rev. Peter Sipple | September 27, 2026
Sermon – Proper 21a – Trinity, New Haven -- Sept. 27, 2026
Our public news is full of the word “crisis.” Two weeks ago it was war and what war has become; last week it was the climate; this week it’s artificial intelligence. Now it’s all three, and we’re trying to determine which one’s going to get us first. We human beings have lived through and come out the other side of crises; but now it seems we are facing a confluence of challenges to our way of life and even to human existence. How did we get here, and so fast? Like a lot of Christian teaching, today’s lessons help explain what we’re going through, and they profess an alternative to living in crisis. We learn again that a lot of our problems stem from authority—how authority is used and abused. And scripture sets forth a theology of humility. We can pray that the faithful of other major religions will find this theology of humility as compelling as Jesus has made it for us.
Let’s draw first from St. Paul’s letter to the new Christian gathering at Philippi. He is intent on holding this little group together, but word has reached him that they’re in conflict. Most likely, several leaders were struggling to see eye-to-eye, pronouncing each assertion with authority. So Paul offers his take on Christian ethics: “If you gain any understanding of Jesus’ teaching, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my day! Come together in your discovery of Christ and be of one mind! Then let your shared faith and its shared authority give rise to shared behavior: Don’t be selfish or conceited! Be humble: regard others as even better than yourself. Look to their interests ahead of your own! In this way, you’ll be like Jesus who humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death.”
Now I’m convinced that allowing ourselves to be guided by this bedrock principal of our Christian faith is critically important to the future welfare of our world. We have an example in the Moravian Church, for it owes its history to such a coming-together. In the early 18th century, the Moravian elders in Germany remained in conflict over theological views. Their patron, Count Von Zinzendorf, grew tired of their divisions and hosted a conference, insisting that they seek to be of one mind. After a long afternoon, aware that they were making progress, he sent food to keep them at it. After finally resolving their differences, they credited the meal with keeping them together long enough to allow the Holy Spirit to achieve a unity of mind and spirit. To this day, the Moravian Love-feast celebrates the victory of humility over self-interested authority, sustained as it was by physical nourishment.
Paul asserts that humbly acknowledging the teaching of Jesus Christ calls us into unity of mind and purpose of life. If the little churches like the one in Philippi were splintering, it’s because the people were not yet united around the conviction that they could and would live in Christ, that their lives would manifest the spirit and wisdom of Christ. Each elder in his desire to exert authority was missing this great insight: rather than focusing inward on the self, the light of Christ shines from within, moving the faithful to humility and self-sacrifice in relations with one another. Being in authority, as well as being an authority, doesn’t grow out of competitive self-assertion; successful leadership doesn’t derive from an attempt to dominate others. It stems, rather, from the leader’s regard for the conditions and needs of her followers.
A brief biography of the new British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, suggests that his religious faith is undergirding policy objectives. He has called for moving from a crisis of trust between people and their government to a “culture of encounter,” a phrase attributed to Pope Francis. “That approach to politics,” writes one reviewer, “a healthy culture of negotiation that leaves no one behind, has gone missing from the American Church and American politics, to the detriment of both.”
Christ has shown us this way: renouncing claims to greatness; loving society’s outcasts; and assuming the humblest human position. Throughout the Gospels and Epistles, this theme gets repeated over and again: the last will be first; love those who persecute you; serve those most in need. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, but seek spiritual ones instead. These principles constitute a theology of humility. And Jesus adds more good news! Maybe the seeking of spiritual treasures doesn’t work for you early on. Maybe you say you’re faithful but your actions say otherwise. As Jesus asserts again in Matthew, and as Luk reminded us in his sermon last week, it’s never too late to come around to God’s way of living. Like the son in today’s story who says I don’t want to be part of this team but later joins up, it’s there when you’re ready to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God.
As we often find, the animal kingdom provides apt metaphors: watch geese in flight. At the apex of their triangular formation is a leader. After it tires in its turn, it retreats to the end of a line and lets another bird set the course and speed. Up-front leadership plays a temporary role and then summons a willingness to relinquish it. Perhaps geese aren’t so silly after all! Another metaphor can be found in music: from within the orchestra an individual voice projects when the score calls for it to be heard. With its solo phrase or melody complete, the instrument merges back into the whole to provide harmony for others.
If this theology of humility informs people in authority, what does it teach those who submit to authority? And to what authority do we ultimately submit? This is the question thrown at Jesus by the Temple elders in today’s reading from Matthew: who made you pre-eminent? Jesus never spoke of his own authority, but only God’s. If that wasn’t clear to his followers, then they hadn’t heard him, and they didn’t understand the first thing about him.
Maybe early or perhaps later on we come to understand our place in God’s creation, a realm distinguished by love, grace and the knowledge that each person is made in God’s image. Our faith offers each of us an ultimate allegiance. In submitting to that authority, we recognize that each soul is one among a throng of others, and we accept that reality gladly.
So then the questions become: Just where do I fit? Where is my place? How does my one self co-exist among and collaborate with the other selves around me? A familiar answer leading to self-understanding shines through the old Shaker hymn – Hymn 554 in the hymn books.
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come 'round right.
Amen! And finally, what more does our theology of humility tell us about leading? for Jesus and Paul encouraged faithful leadership in spreading the Good News. If everyone is deferential, who will show the way? Here’s our clue: Out of Jesus’ humility he is exalted. At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, not because that’s what he sought, but precisely because he sought for us the opposite. This is the meaning of the Cross: out of weakness, strength. Or as Paul put it so eloquently: “Being found in human form, Jesus the Christ humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. And it was out of that very condition that God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” AMEN.