Pip: There's a sermon at Candle in a Cave that opens with a man proposing marriage — and his girlfriend immediately asking about someone else. Which, honestly, is a better setup for a theology lesson than most theology lessons get.
Mara: Fr. John uses that story as a way into something the sermon calls "the story of the heart" — what God actually finds when he looks past the surface performance of faith. Let's start there.
Sermon: Proper 15 RCL A — "Story of the Heart"
Pip: The question this sermon is really asking is whether religious observance and genuine faith are the same thing — and the answer, it turns out, is that God is not fooled by the difference.
Mara: The sermon anchors that claim in Psalm 139, with the opening line setting the frame: "O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar."
Pip: So the premise is that the search is already happening, whether you invited it or not. The real question the sermon puts to the listener is whether you actually want God to find what's there.
Mara: And the honest answer the sermon gives is: not always. The words are, "Do I really want God to do that? I mean, I know my heart, and sometimes… it's best left hidden."
Pip: That's a braver thing to say from a pulpit than most people manage.
Mara: The sermon then traces the problem backward through Isaiah, where God tells Israel he is weary of their feasts and offerings — "your hands are full of blood" — while they go through every outward motion correctly. The external performance is intact; the interior is the problem.
Mara: Jesus makes the same move in Matthew 15, quoting Isaiah directly: "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men."
Pip: And then the sermon does something structurally interesting — it treats the very next scene, the Canaanite woman, not as a change of subject but as the proof of the lesson.
Mara: Right. The disciples tell Jesus to send the woman away. What comes out of their mouths, the sermon says, is "prejudice, contempt, judgment, anger, impatience." The woman, by contrast, keeps pressing — "Lord, help me" — and Jesus names what he finds: "Great is your faith."
Pip: The disciples followed every tradition. She broke every boundary just by being there. And she's the one who gets the blessing.
Mara: The sermon closes by returning to Psalm 139 as an invitation and a request together — not just "search me," but "if you find anything amiss, lead me out of it and into your ways." It calls that a good prayer, and also, honestly, a frightening one.
Pip: The sermon's final question — "what is the story of your heart?" — is one of those that doesn't let you off the hook by answering it quickly.
Mara: And it lands harder because the sermon already admitted the honest answer isn't always flattering. More from Candle in a Cave next time.
Johnny was proposing to his girlfriend. He held the ring and said: “Sweetheart, I love you so much. I want you to marry me. I don’t have a car like Hank Green. I don’t have a yacht like his or a house as big as his. I don’t have Hank Green’s money, but I love you with all my heart.” She looked into his eyes and said, “I love you too, sweetheart… but could you tell me more about Hank Green?”
The Psalms are a constant source of inspiration, and as we study them, we learn they serve different purposes. Like today’s psalm, the ones we share on Sundays are often in praise of God, but there are other Psalms for times when we are scared, angry, sick, and so forth. Perhaps the one that speaks to us most about who we are, who God is, and the relationship we share is Psalm 139.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.
The final two verses of the Psalm make a request to God.
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
(Psalm 139:1-3, 23-24)
Reading those words, the question I might ask, especially of myself, is, “Do I really want God to do that?” I mean, I know my heart, and sometimes… it’s best left hidden.
We know that within Judaism there is the Law. It has existed since the days of Moses. For the devout Jew, the Law of Moses governs every aspect of their life. Practicing it properly is good; however, the way the Law was practiced in Jesus’ time was often a major issue. The truth is, the problem goes back much further than that.
We will learn more about this when we begin our study of Isaiah next week, but in the first chapter, Isaiah, on behalf of the Lord, writes,
Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.
Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil,
learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.
(Isaiah 1:13-17)
On the outside, the Israelites and their leaders appear to be doing everything perfectly. On the inside, God has searched them out and knows their hearts, and what He sees displeases Him. Our gospel reading points to the same issue today.
Just before our reading, the Pharisees and scribes come to Jesus and ask, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” (Matthew 15:2) In response, Jesus calls them “hypocrites.” (Matthew 15:7) Why? He quotes from Isaiah,
“‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”
(Matthew 15:8-9)
Now, in our gospel reading, Jesus has just turned from that conversation and faces the people. He says, “Look, it’s not about what goes into the mouth; it’s not crispy fried bacon that makes you a bad person. It’s what comes out of the mouth—it’s what you say, what you believe, your inner dialogue—that’s what makes you bad. Why? Because what comes out of the mouth is from the heart. It is who you truly are. And understand, they did not need to speak these things for God to know them. The Psalm declares, God “knows the secrets of the heart.” (Psalm 44:21b)
“Johnny, sweetheart, I love you so much, but could you tell me a little more about Hank?” You see how that works. What’s in the heart?
The next scene in our Gospel appears to be such an abrupt change in setting and conversation that it is difficult to see how they are related. However, they are intimately connected. The first is the teaching, and the second, with the Canaanite woman, is the application.
The beginning of the second part appears to provide only geographic information, but it is, in fact, the clue to our understanding. (As we said before, the writers of Holy Scripture do not waste words. There is a meaning in them all.) Matthew 15:21 states, “Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.”
Early on, in the understanding of the law of Moses, the Israelites were told not to make a covenant with or marry the Gentiles. Easy enough. However, over time, those laws became even stricter as they were interpreted and reinterpreted. Over generations, those commands were surrounded by traditions intended to preserve Israel’s holiness and identity. The separation could become so profound that Peter would later say to the Gentile Cornelius, “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile.” (Acts 10:28). Tyre and Sidon, where Jesus and the disciples go, are Gentile regions. According to the interpretation of the Law, they have essentially broken the Law; at the very least, they have become unclean.
If that’s not bad enough, a Canaanite woman—a Gentile woman—speaks to him. The disciples know what’s what. They know this woman is a dirty Gentile, so they say, “Send her away, as she is crying out after us.” Jesus appears to confirm everything they are saying by responding, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” She responds, “Lord, help me.” Jesus answers, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She says, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Now hear this. The woman is saying, “Even if what you say is true, what You, Son of David, can give, even if it is a little, only a crumb, will suffice. It will heal.”
Do you remember from a few weeks back when we talked about Jacob wrestling with God until God did what Jacob asked? This woman is doing the same thing. She is wrestling with Jesus. She is wrestling with God, and she will not let Him go until He blesses her and heals her daughter. And as Jacob was blessed, so is she. “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
Yes. Good, but now go back to the first part of our Gospel lesson. It is not the following of the Law to the letter that matters. It is not what goes into the mouth that makes a person clean or unclean. It’s what comes out of the mouth, out of the heart, and the Lord knows the heart. Right?
With the Canaanite woman, what came out of the disciples’ mouths? Send her away. She is bothering us. She is a Gentile. They surely agreed with Jesus when he implied she was equal to a dog. What came out of the disciples’ mouths? Prejudice. Contempt. Judgment. Anger. Impatience. On the other hand, what came out of this dog’s mouth? What came out of her heart? “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.” “Lord, help me.” “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” What came out of her mouth? Humility. Perseverance. Submission to God. Faith. Not even the disciples had recognized in Jesus what this Canaanite woman did.
Jesus, God, did not see her as something unclean or beneath Him. He saw her as a human being and saw her heart. What came from her heart expressed her inmost being, and Jesus declared, “Great is your faith.”
By the story of their hearts, the disciples had lumped themselves into the same category as the Pharisees and the scribes—hypocrites. By the story of her heart, the woman showed herself to be a child of God and was blessed.
Question: What is the story of your heart?
The Psalmist wrote,
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
That is an invitation for God to look into your heart. What is He going to find? Maybe your heart is nothing like mine, but what He is going to find is not always good. However, the words of the Psalmist are not only an invitation. They are also a request.
“See if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
“I invite you, Lord, to look into my heart, and if you see anything amiss, lead me out of it and into Your ways, the way of everlasting life.”
That is a good and proper prayer, but I will be honest with you: it is also a scary one. In the Letter to the Hebrews, we read, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31) On that day in the region of Tyre and Sidon, it happened to the disciples. They fell into the hands of a loving God, and it changed their lives forever.
Let us pray: O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Our Youth Sunday was today, and Emalyn Terry was our preacher. She just turned 18, and this was her first sermon.
J.M.J
This morning, id like to start off with a riddle. I can’t be bought, but I can be stolen with a glance. I’m worthless to one, but priceless to two. I can fill a room but take up no space. What am I? The answer is love.
What comes to mind when we think about love? Maybe Valentine’s Day came to a couple of you; maybe thoughts of spouses, children, wee little babies, and even beloved dogs and cats came up. It’s a powerful feeling, one that has inspired many poems, books, movies, wars, and those infamous voicemails left at 3 in the morning. However, it is one of the first fruits of our spirits that tends to be guarded quite jealously. It is so easy to be quick to shower those near and dear to us with the greatest affections, but it is so hard to extend it to those who just tick us off. For example, how many of you have responded with love to that person talking a little too loud in the movies, or to that darn driver taking a little bit too long to turn? Loving others as ourselves can be a gargantuan task sometimes, so how do we do it? How do we respond with love when the environment around us is just not conducive?
The answer can be found within the age-old story of Joseph and his coat of many colors. He was a simple shepherd, favored by his father and envied by his brothers for the dreams he had about reigning as king. Eventually, his eleven brothers just had enough of him; they took off his magnificent cloak and threw him in an empty well. He was sold pretty quickly, was taken to Egypt, and was betrayed yet again by the wife of the pharaoh, who threw him in prison. There he had some dreams concerning the pharaoh, explained them to him, and eventually got let out. His brothers then came down to Egypt due to a great famine, and there they reunited with Joseph.
Now, if I were him, I would have slammed the door in their faces so hard that they fell over. However, Joseph had other plans. He welcomes them with open arms. In Genesis verse 5, he says, “Now don’t be worried. Don’t be angry with yourselves for what you did. It was God’s plan for me to come here. I am here to save people’s lives.” He even goes on to give them the very best of what he had, decking them out in the finest clothes and filling them up with the finest food. But how was Joseph able to bring himself to even LOOK at them? I mean, they blew up his life in one single day.
I would like you to notice how Joseph didn’t point out their flaws. He didn’t stand there with a list and rattle off each and every slight that they caused him. He instead looked at the positives of the situation. Instead of being mad at his brothers for hurting him, he instead chose to be glad that his family was there to see him. He saw in them God’s plan for himself, and forgave them with a smile. He led with love first, not even giving a chance for hatred to take hold.
Another example of this radical forgiveness born out of love would be the story of Jesus. People were absolutely TERRIBLE towards him. They mocked, scorned, abused, and even killed Jesus, but He still forgave them. He pleaded on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We were awful towards Him, but He chose to see the good of the world instead of all the bad. He chose to recognize that we could be good, and He believed that we were good, so He went to die on the cross for us. One of the books that I am reading proves exactly that. In this book, the Showings of Julian of Norwich, Jesus appears to an anchoress named Julian on her near-deathbed as she is staring at a crucifix, and gives her multiple visions of Him so that she may contemplate them.
In one of these visions, she writes, “Then Jesus our good Lord said: If you are satisfied, I am satisfied. It is a joy, bliss and endless delight to me that ever I suffered my Passion for you; and if I could suffer more, I should suffer more.” (Repeat, “and if I could suffer more, I should suffer more”). He didn’t say “If the chance comes up again, I might get around to it,” or “Yeah, it would be nice to do that again.” He said, “If I could, I should.” He would willingly suffer all of that again out of sheer LOVE and FORGIVENESS towards us. Despite how horridly we treated Him, despite all we did to Him, he would choose to suffer the immeasurable pain of His passion again for us. That is just how radical His mercy truly is. And that, my friends, is how radically loving we must be with others today.
When we lead with this intense mercy and grace for others, it often comes with affection and joy. It becomes easier and easier to see the good in others first, rather than all of their bad. An increase in love for others can grow and expand our hearts greatly. It is, quite literally, the bright rainbow after the flood. If we truly focus on the good of the environment around us, like Joseph and our Father have done, our hearts are more prone to open up to receive those around us with gladness and kindness.
Now, when we open up our hearts like this, it is in these pockets of true spiritual peace that God’s voice is loudest. A great example of this can be found in today’s reading from the book of Kings. God was not in the great wind, the earthquake, or the fire, but in the gentle silence that followed. When we get wrapped up in the tempest of our everyday lives and caught up in our judgment and scorn, it becomes too loud to truly hear Him. As the devotional book The Imitation of Christ states, “Watch over yourself and take care not to judge the actions of other people. We gain nothing by criticizing others, but often are mistaken and thereby offend God. But to judge yourself and your own actions is always profitable.” When we choose to lead with love instead of judgment, we allow ourselves the inner peace to hear God’s voice more clearly than ever before.
So…how do we get started? We have all the pieces to this puzzle, so how do we put it together? A tip comes from one of my favorite saints, St. Therese of Lisieux, also known as The Little Flower of God. In her autobiography, A Story of a Soul, she maintains that we must “bear with all the defects of our neighbor, not being surprised at his failings and being edified by his least virtue. A word, a kindly smile, will often suffice to gladden a wounded and sorrowful heart.” This does not mean that we just turn a blind eye to all the wrongs that someone has done, but rather acknowledge them and focus on what they have done well. We must figure out a way to turn pesky annoyances into great pleasures. For example, when a fellow sister was making a grating noise during morning prayer, St. Therese did not try to ignore it but instead chose to enjoy it, focusing all she could on it and imagining it to be a delightful concert in offering to Jesus. By just choosing to lead with love, she was able to transform that flaw into something beautiful.
Now, I know this is easier said than done, as I am on this journey myself. I used to be a very irritable person. Every little thing just ticked me off, and I would let people know. I was quick with my judgment, and even quicker to sling a little trash talk here and there; I was a hot mess for sure. However, I never felt whole. I always felt like there was a little part that was missing in my life, a part that led to my happiness. I tried finding it in books, movies, video games, but it just wasn’t showing up. My situation was getting worse, in fact, and things were getting pretty dark. This was when I knew I had to change. I knew that if I stayed down the road I was going, I wasn’t going to last.
This was when I stumbled upon A Story of a Soul. In that touching autobiography, she lit up the way for me. I mean, she spoke so delightfully about giving others grace and choosing to see all the good in other people that I just had to give it a go. That’s when I found it. I found that piece that was missing from my heart all that time. The name of that piece was “mercy.” By granting others mercy, by choosing to turn annoyances into pleasures, by choosing to love others radically, I found I was happier than I had ever been before.
It is important to remember, however, that this kind of mercy is a journey. I mean, I still stumble and fall sometimes. It takes a lot to choose kindness these days. However, it takes a lot more strength and courage to fight negativity than it does to wallow in it. After all, in the words of the Little Flower: “Merit does not consist in doing or giving much. It consists in loving much.” When we get back up after we fall into judgment, when we grit our teeth and give a smile to that screaming kid in the restaurant, we are earning ourselves much merit. We are also choosing peace for ourselves and overall happiness. By choosing to compliment the shirt of the guy that’s giving you a hard time, by choosing to focus on the pretty color of the car that just cut you off, you are choosing peace. You are choosing joy. You are choosing God.
I would like to end with a sweet little prayer from Saint Francis of Assisi. Let us pray.
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
Pip: A three-year-old invoking the name of Jesus to score twenty-three boxes of chocolate chip cookies — honestly, that is the most theologically efficient prayer in recorded history.
Mara: That story opens a sermon by Fr. John, and it turns out to be the perfect door into something much larger: what prayer actually does when God already has a plan.
Pip: Right — and that tension between providence and petition is exactly where this episode lives. Let's get into it.
Providence, Prayer, and a Busted Hip
Mara: The central question here is one that anyone who has prayed and waited and heard nothing will recognize: if God has a wise, loving plan already in motion, what is the point of asking?
Pip: The sermon lands its answer through Jacob — a man who wrestled God at the Jabbok River and refused to let go. Here is the line that frames everything: "Jacob prayed, 'Bless me,' and the Lord replied, 'What you are asking is good, but it is too small.'"
Mara: That reframe is the hinge of the whole argument. Jacob got his blessing — but it arrived as a dislocated hip, a new name, and a lineage that eventually produced Jesus of Nazareth. The prayer was answered; it just expanded far beyond what Jacob could have conceived.
Pip: So the sermon is not really arguing that God ignores us. It is arguing that our requests are structurally too small for what God is doing.
Mara: Exactly, and three reasons for prayer follow from that. The first two are fairly direct: Jesus commands it, and prayer enlarges the soul to receive more of God — the sermon uses the image of a teaspoon versus a five-gallon bucket both dipped in the ocean. Neither empties the ocean; one simply holds more.
Pip: The third reason is the one with some weight to it.
Mara: It is. The sermon draws on Paul's letter to the Corinthians: "We are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building." The claim is that prayer is not just petition — it is participation. God wants us asking so we can be woven into the work itself.
Pip: Which reframes the unanswered prayer entirely. You are not being ignored; you are being incorporated.
Mara: And when we do not know what to ask for, Paul's words from Romans carry the load: "The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." Our feeble attempts, the sermon says, are taken and perfected.
Pip: Twenty-three boxes of cookies, or a busted hip — either way, you are not praying into a void.
Mara: The through-line is that providence and prayer are not in competition — prayer is how we become part of the story rather than just recipients of it.
Pip: Jacob limped away from that riverbank with everything he asked for and more than he bargained for. That seems about right. More next time.
A story is told about a 3-year-old boy who went to the grocery store with his mother. Before they entered the store, she told him, “Now you’re not going to get any chocolate chip cookies, so don’t even ask.” She put him in the cart, and he sat in the little child’s seat while she wheeled down the aisles. He was doing just fine until they came to the cookie section. He saw the chocolate chip cookies, stood up in the seat, and said, “Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?” She said, “I told you not even to ask. You’re not going to get any at all.” So he sat back down. They continued down the aisles, but in their search for certain items, they ended up back in the cookie aisle. “Mom, can I please have some chocolate chip cookies?” She said, “I told you that you can’t have any. Now sit down and be quiet.” Finally, they were approaching the checkout lane. The little boy sensed that this might be his last chance. So just before they got to the line, he stood up on the seat of the cart and shouted in his loudest voice, “In the name of Jesus, may I have some chocolate chip cookies?” And everybody round about just laughed. Some even applauded. Due to the generosity of the other shoppers, the little boy and his mother left with twenty-three boxes of chocolate chip cookies.
Ever wondered what your life would be like if God answered your prayers exactly as you prayed them? There have been times when I wish He would: “Lord, please let me win the lottery so I can prove to you that it won’t spoil me.” But there have also been so many other prayers that would have ended miserably if they had been answered. However, I suppose it is a moot point, because it seems to me that God doesn’t answer too many of our prayers, and when He does, it certainly isn’t in the way we asked. Consider Jacob, whom we read about this morning.
Jacob wronged his brother Esau. Not only did Jacob purchase Esau’s birthright with a cup of stew, but he also tricked his father and stole Esau’s blessing. In his anger, Esau said, “The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” (Genesis 27:42) To resolve the issue, Jacob ran away. He was gone for twenty years, and today we read about his return home with his two wives and all his possessions.
They camped on the Jabbok River, and that night, when he was alone, Jacob spoke with and wrestled with a heavenly being. Whether it was an angel or God, we do not learn here, but the Prophet Hosea wrote, “He struggled with the angel and overcame him; he wept and begged for his favor.” (Hosea 12:4a)
The Church, looking at the event in light of Hosea’s statement, has long understood Jacob’s wrestling with God as an image of persevering prayer, for Jacob struggled with God and would not let him go until he received God’s blessing. However, what should be noted is that Jacob did receive the blessing, but not before God gave him a busted hip and a new name—Israel. Jacob had his prayer answered, but not in the way he asked for. Jacob prayed for something very specific and personal, and God answered the prayer, but not just for Jacob. God answered Jacob’s prayer for everyone, us included. How?
The Lord blessed Jacob/Israel and also gave him twelve sons, one of whom was Judah. Several generations later in Israel’s lineage, there was a king, David. Many more generations and years later, there was a man named Joseph, whom another angel of the Lord spoke to: “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20b-21)
Jacob prayed, “Bless me,” and the Lord replied, “What you are asking is good, but it is too small. I will bless you, but it’s not going to look like anything you could have ever imagined. Oh, and I’m also going to give you a busted hip so that you remember it.”
Last week we talked about God’s providence; we concluded that we do not believe things come about by luck or chance, nor do we believe the ways of the world have been set on a path of fate from which nothing deviates.
We are a people who believe in God’s providence, defined as God’s wise, loving, and continual governance of all creation, by which He sustains the universe and directs history toward His good purposes while respecting our free will. God takes the good, the bad, and the ugly and uses them for His purposes.
During this past week, I’ve continued to reflect on that, and I’ve been wondering how our prayers work within God’s providence. My question was, if God has this big, beautiful plan worked out in His providence, then what good are my prayers? Why pray?
The easy answer is that Jesus tells us we should pray, and He sets the example for us. But in addition, prayer enlarges our souls so that we might be able to receive more of God.
Imagine you have a teaspoon and a five-gallon bucket. You take them both to the beach and fill them in the ocean. Neither the teaspoon nor the five-gallon bucket diminishes the ocean; however, the five-gallon bucket can receive more. Now, think of God as the ocean. Through our connection and immersion in God, and even through our desires, our souls are enlarged, and we are able to receive more.
We pray because we are told we should, and we pray because it allows us to receive more of God. Those two reasons are fairly straightforward; however, the third reason is more complicated but also more exciting.
When we pray, we are most often looking for a particular result. “Lord, I need ____.” Even when prayed rightly, we focus on the outcome, but what if our prayer were more about communion with God than the result? What if God is saying, “I want you to pray, I want you to pray so that you can receive more of me, but I also want you to pray so that you can be a part of this great work”? This is what St. Paul means when he writes, “We are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.” (1 Corinthians 3:9) God says, “I want you to pray, asking for anything, and like with Jacob who wanted to be blessed, I’m going to take your prayer, your work, and incorporate it into something greater than you could ever ask for or imagine.”
Do our prayers matter? Are they answered? Yes. It’s just that we don’t know how to pray properly. St. Paul teaches us, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8:26-27) Our prayers matter, but we don’t know how to pray properly, so the Lord, in His loving care, takes our feeble attempts and perfects them. What does that look like?
I pray to win the lottery, and God says, “No, but through your prayers and your work in My kingdom, I will store up treasures for you in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:20b). You pray for healing, and God says, “Yes, but too small; I’ll take your prayer and weave it into Providence. I won’t just heal you and fix you up for a few more years, but I’ll prepare you for the resurrection and eternal life, and even more, I’ll give eternal life to all those who believe in me.” We pray, “Lord, relieve me of my suffering,” and God says, “I can do that, but My greater purpose is to teach you about My Son.” We say, “But Lord, it hurts.” And just when we begin to think He’s not going to answer, we discover that He is sitting with us in that deep darkness, speaking comfort, perhaps not to our physical bodies but to our souls.
We offer up our prayers; they matter, and God hears. God says, “I will take your prayer and perfect it. Along the way, you may get twenty-three boxes of chocolate chip cookies, or, like Jacob, you may get a busted hip or worse. Also like Jacob, you may see your prayer answered today, or tomorrow, or in fifty years, or never, but you and I will be in communion with one another. You and I will be working together, and in the end, you and I will be together, for that too is part of My providence and is, in fact, the ultimate goal.”
The Psalmist writes,
The Lord frustrates the designs of the nations, he defeats the plans of the peoples. His own designs shall stand for ever, the plans of his heart from age to age.
They are happy, whose God is the Lord, the people he has chosen as his own. From the heavens the Lord looks forth, he sees all the children of men.
From the place where he dwells he gazes on all the dwellers on the earth, he who shapes the hearts of them all and considers all their deeds.
(Psalm 33:10-15)
Let us pray (a prayer of St. Ignatius): Take, Lord, receive all our liberties, our memories, our understandings, our whole will, all that we have and all that we possess. You gave it all to us, Lord; we give it all back to you. Do with it as you will, according to your good pleasure. Give us your love and your grace; for with this we have all that we need. Amen.
Christ in the house of Martha and Mary, by Henryk Siemiradzki, 1886
An archaeologist once hired some tribesmen to lead him to an archaeological site deep in the mountains. After they had been moving for some time, the tribesmen stopped and insisted they would go no further. The archaeologist grew impatient, then angry. But no matter how much he cajoled, the tribesmen would not go any further. Then, all of a sudden, the tribesmen changed their attitude. They picked up the gear and set off once more. When the bewildered archaeologist asked why they had stopped and refused to move for so long, the tribesmen answered, “We had been moving too fast and had to wait for our souls to catch up.”
Thomas Merton, in his book No Man is an Island, wrote, “We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
“Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.” (No Man is an Island, 134)
I believe this is part of the message of Mary and Martha. We are always Martha. We are always running here and there, making lists of where we need to run here and there next, and planning the list of the next here and there. Yet, in the midst of here and there, we must find the space between the notes, the silence, and rest at the feet of Jesus as Mary did.
Even the great Saints of God must find times of silence to stop and allow their souls to catch up. You and I are no different. We must find a balance – and it is different for each of us – that allows us to carry on with the mission of Christ’s church and our state of life, while at the same time receiving the grace and renewal that come from God.
This time of silence or rest, when assigned to a day, is known as the Sabbath. In his book The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel writes, “In defense of the Sabbath, Philo, the spokesman of the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, says: this day we are commanded to abstain from all work, not because the law inculcates slackness. … Its object is rather to give man relaxation from continuous and unending toil and by refreshing their bodies with a regularly calculated system of remissions to send them out renewed to their old activities. For a breathing spell enables not merely ordinary people but athletes also to collect their strength with a stronger force behind them to undertake promptly and patiently each of the tasks set before them.” (The Sabbath, 13)
That is the Sabbath as a day, but it can also be understood as a time during the day set aside for the renewal of the soul, which the soul also needs. Again, from Thomas Merton and the analogy of music, “If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will silently withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.”
“Let us, therefore, learn to pass from one imperfect activity to another without worrying too much about what we are missing.” (No Man is an Island, 134)
Regardless of how busy you think you are or how busy you actually are, we must all find balance and make time to be Mary and sit at the feet of Jesus.
Pip: Eleven shells hit a fuel tank. None of them exploded. One contained a handwritten note in Czech. Fr. John is asking what you call that — and the answer is not luck.
Mara: This episode follows a sermon on providence — the claim that God's governance holds even when evil is the instrument. Let's start with that question: luck, fate, or something else entirely.
Sermon: Providence, Luck, and the Shells That Didn't Explode
Mara: The sermon opens with a World War Two bombing run — eleven shells lodged in a fuel tank, none detonating, one carrying a handwritten note from Czech prisoners of war. The frame is a question: what do you call a result like that?
Pip: The note inside that shell is the hinge of the whole argument. The translation, when Intelligence finally found someone to read it, was this: "This is all we can do for you now."
Mara: And the point is that neither luck nor fate can hold that story. Luck is pure chance — spin the wheel. Fate is predetermined and immovable. Either way, there is no room for free will and no need for God.
Pip: Providence is the alternative — defined in the sermon as "God's wise, loving, and continual governance of all creation, by which He sustains the universe and directs history toward His good purposes while respecting our free will." That is a precise claim, not a vague comfort.
Mara: The precision matters because the sermon extends it to evil, not just good outcomes. The Czech prisoners were in a Nazi labor camp. That was not a good thing. But the sermon argues God used that evil to preserve the crew — and that this pattern runs through all of history, including the crucifixion.
Pip: Peter's line from Acts 2:23 lands hard here: Christ was "delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God" — and still killed by lawless hands. Providence and human evil, occupying the same sentence.
Mara: The sermon draws the practical consequence plainly: if God redeemed the greatest evil ever committed, then no evil in your life is beyond his power to redeem. The question becomes how you respond when evil arrives — and the sermon offers exactly two options.
Pip: Option one gets its own parable — the Devil's Supply Store, where discouragement and doubt are kept off the shelves because they are too valuable to sell. Hopelessness, the sermon says, is the weapon that causes a soul to do nothing, which is far more deadly than anger or lust.
Mara: Option two is Paul's confidence in Romans 8: that nothing — "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come" — can separate us from the love of God. Providence is the ground that makes that confidence possible, not naive optimism.
Pip: Saint Padre Pio gets the closing word before the prayer: "God is our Father, so what have you to fear while you are the child of such a Father, through whose providence not even a single hair will fall from your head?" Lean on that and see what it holds.
Mara: The thread running through all of this is that the frame you bring to events — luck, fate, or providence — changes what you do when things go wrong.
Pip: Right. And the note in the shell is still there whether you read it that way or not. More to come from Candle in a Cave.
Elmer Bendiner, in his book, The Fall of Fortresses, describes a bombing run over the German city of Kassel: Our B-17 was barraged by flak from Nazi anti-aircraft guns. That was not unusual, but on this particular occasion our gas tanks were hit. Later, as I reflected on the miracle of a twenty-millimeter shell piercing the fuel tank without touching off an explosion, our pilot, Bohn Fawkes, told me it was not quite that simple.
On the morning following the raid, Bohn had gone down to ask our crew chief for that shell as a souvenir of unbelievable luck. The crew chief told Bohn that not just one shell but eleven had been found in the gas tanks—eleven unexploded shells where only one was sufficient to blast us out of the sky. It was as if the sea had been parted for us. Even after thirty-five years, so awesome an event leaves me shaken, especially after I heard the rest of the story from Bohn.
He was told that the shells had been sent to the armorers to be defused. The armorers told him that Intelligence had picked them up. They could not say why at the time, but Bohn eventually sought out the answer.
Apparently, when the armorers opened each of those shells, they found no explosive charge. They were clean as a whistle and just as harmless. Empty? Not all of them.
One contained a carefully rolled piece of paper. On it was a scrawl in Czech. The Intelligence people scoured our base for a man who could read Czech. Eventually, they found one to decipher the note. It set us marveling. Translated, the note read: “This is all we can do for you now.”
An almost unbelievable story. So how would you categorize the result? Was the B-17 crew lucky? Was it fate? Or was it something more?
Luck refers to events or outcomes that happen by chance rather than through our own planning or effort. Chance is the key element. Spin the wheel and see what happens. Fate, on the other hand, can be defined as a predetermined course of events, unwavering and unalterable. No matter what anyone says or does, good or bad, will have any effect on the outcome. Yet when it comes to luck and fate, where is God? Luck says chance and fate says predetermined. With either, there is no room for free will and there is no need for God.
Yet we know that there is a God who Rules over all things. Saint Paul teaches us in the letter to the Colossians, in Jesus “all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16-17) Therefore, we do not believe that things come about by luck or chance, nor do we believe that the ways of the world have been set on the path of fate from which nothing deviates. Instead, we believe in God’s providence, defined as God’s wise, loving, and continual governance of all creation, by which He sustains the universe and directs history toward His good purposes while respecting our free will. It is God’s providence that allowed Saint Paul to write in his letter to the Romans, which we read today: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”
I think that sometimes, when we read those verses, we believe they refer only to good occurrences, but that is not the case. They also include evil, for God uses both to serve his purposes.
Consider the fellows whose plane was shot up with those non-explosive shells. Miraculous. Incredible. They went on to live another day, and that is good. However, consider those Czech POWs in a Nazi work camp. Was that a good thing? Do you think they were thrilled with the idea? No. It was evil, yet God used that evil to bring about good and to serve his purposes.
The greatest example we have of God using evil to bring about good is Jesus. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter said to the Israelites, “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” (Acts 2:23) And the why, behind the good that came from this evil, Peter explains in his first epistle, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” (1 Peter 3:18b) If God could take the greatest evil ever committed—the crucifixion of His own Son—and use it for the salvation of the world, then there is no evil in your life that is beyond His power to redeem.
All of this points to the fact that much is going on in the world around us that we do not see or even catch a hint of. We see only our small world, but in all of it, nothing good or evil will disrupt God’s providence—His loving care of his children.
This teaches us something about our lives, although it is not an easy lesson or one that is easily practiced—both the good and the evil of our lives are used by God. God did not create the evil—hear that—God is not responsible for the evil in our lives, but He takes it and uses it for His purposes to accomplish His will and our salvation.
And the fact is, both good and evil will come. It is inevitable. So, how do we respond? When it is good, we dance. The more important question is how we respond to God’s providence when the evil comes knocking, because it most certainly will.
There are variations and nuances to the answers, but there seem to be only two options. Option one can be explained with a story. It goes by several different names, so I’ll call it The Devil’s Supply Store.
The legend explains that the devil used to sell his items and artifacts to potential buyers and demons. He would sell them items such as the scent of lust, a collar of greed, and blades that inflicted wounds of anger, along with other weapons that shot pride deep into the hearts of unsuspecting souls. With these weapons and more, demons were able to spread darkness across the world even more effectively.
One day, a potential buyer, another demon, arrived. As he perused the devil’s wares, he saw in the back corner something that caught his eye. On a plain pedestal sat two unmarked items, an old wooden mallet and a very boring-looking wooden spike. He inquired about them, and the devil quickly said they were not for sale. The Demon, even more curious, asked why. “Explain,” he said. The devil said, “They are discouragement and doubt. Together, they become hopelessness. They are my most powerful weapons. When none of my other items work, I employ these two, and they get the job done every time.” “How so?” said the demon, who would know very much more.
The devil sighed, leaned in, and said, “Nothing paralyzes the soul more than discouragement and doubt. While my other items may cause the soul to act out, such as anger or lust, hopelessness, discouragement, and doubt cause a soul to do nothing, which is much more deadly. They are no respecter of persons. They drain their victims of courage and faith, blurring and blocking out their visions and dreams with anxiety and fear. When the soul succumbs to hopelessness, it becomes an empty shell, a sack with only enough energy to feel sorry for itself.”
Option one, when evil comes knocking, is to fall into despair and hopelessness. You can lose your faith and curse God, or—option two—you can understand that when Paul says, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God,” he really does mean all things. Whether good or evil, all things are under God’s providence. This understanding gives Paul the confidence to go on and say, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Saint Padre Pio wrote, “God is our Father, so what have you to fear while you are the child of such a Father, through whose providence not even a single hair will fall from your head?”
Your life is not a matter of luck or fate. It is a fulfillment of God’s providence—God working out His will for your life and the lives of others, and for your salvation. That is what it is really all about. God sees all the good and all the evil and, in His love, uses it so that you might be with Him eternally.
“Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love.” (1 Corinthians 16:13 NIV) Stand secure in God’s providence.
Let us pray: Eternal God! Whose eyes are over all Thy works, especially intent on Thy servants: vouchsafe to turn away from us whatever is hurtful, and grant us whatever is advantageous, that through Thy favor, and under the benign influence of Thy special Providence, we may securely pass through the dangers and difficulties of this life, and happily arrive at the eternal joys of the next. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Pip: There is a cave, and there is a candle — and this week, someone lit it by asking who gets to decide which plants are weeds.
Mara: That question runs straight through the posts Fr. John published recently — a sermon that moves from a Charlie Brown comic strip to a Persian king to the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Let's start with the field.
Sermon: Proper 11 RCL A — Identifying Weeds
Pip: The sermon opens with a very relatable Lucy moment — she tells Charlie Brown his problem is simply that he is himself — and uses it to name something the sermon treats as a persistent human instinct: the confidence that we can correctly identify who the troublemakers are.
Mara: The sermon sets up that instinct and then runs it straight into Isaiah, where the Lord designates a deliverer for Israel. Here is the passage: "I have stirred him up in righteousness, and I will make all his ways level; he shall build my city and set my exiles free, not for price or reward, says the Lord of hosts."
Pip: And the deliverer in question is not David, not Gideon, not Jesus — it is Cyrus, a pagan king who worshipped idols and had never heard of the God of Israel. Which means the people hearing Isaiah's announcement would have looked at their liberator and seen exactly the wrong kind of person.
Mara: That is precisely the tension the sermon develops. Cyrus conquered Babylon, freed the Israelites, and funded the rebuilding of Jerusalem — all without sharing their faith. The sermon then moves to the gospel parable, where a farmer's field fills with Darnel, a poisonous grass nearly indistinguishable from wheat until the grain head forms.
Pip: By the time you can tell the difference, the roots are so tangled that pulling the weed destroys the wheat. So the farmer says: wait. Which is, frankly, a harder instruction than it sounds when you have already mentally drafted your weed-pulling list.
Mara: Augustine is quoted directly on this: "How many sheep are outside, how many wolves within! And how many sheep are inside, how many wolves without! How many are blaspheming Christ who will yet believe in Him!"
Mara: The sermon holds up Paul as the case in point — present at Stephen's stoning, feared by the early church, and yet the future Apostle to the Gentiles. The people who saw a wolf were not lying; they were simply wrong.
Pip: So the sermon's practical instruction lands in Romans 12 — repay no evil for evil, feed your enemy if he is hungry — because the alternative is letting someone else's sin generate yours.
Mara: And the sermon closes with a sharp reversal: those who crucified Jesus believed they were doing exactly the right kind of weed removal. The job of identifying and pulling, the sermon argues, belongs to the angels at the end of the age — not to us.
Pip: What stays with me is Cyrus — the idea that the person you would most confidently label a weed might be the one God has already called by name.
Mara: That tension between what we see and what God sees seems like territory worth returning to. More to come from Candle in a Cave.
Candle in a Cave 