October 11, 2026
20th Sunday After Pentecost The Rev. Mark S. Winward, MDiv,ThM
Proper 23A
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 4:6–7
When Our Sense of Security Is Shaken
This weeping and gnashing of teeth stuff in today’s Gospel is pretty grim. But remember what’s been happening. Jesus has cleared the temple, and the religious leaders have demanded to know by what authority he’s doing these things. In response, he tells a series of parables, including today’s story about a king whose invited guests refuse to come to his son’s wedding banquet. They’re so occupied with their own concerns that they disregard the invitation, and some become openly hostile. In the end, the banquet is filled with people brought in from the streets, people who probably never expected to find themselves at the king’s table.
It’s a warning to religious leaders who are so sure of their position, and so certain about how God ought to work, that they’re rejecting what he’s doing right in front of them. And there’s something there for us, too. Most of us have things we depend on to make us feel secure. We work hard, make plans, and try to be responsible. There’s nothing wrong with any of that. But it’s easy to begin believing that we’ve got more control over our lives than we actually do. Sometimes it takes something frightening to show us how much we’ve been taking for granted.
I remember what happened after September 11. When we held a memorial service at my little church in Maine, it was standing room only. People were confused and anxious, trying to understand how something so horrible could happen. They were looking for consolation, and many had come to church who wouldn’t ordinarily have been there. The attacks had shattered our sense of security. Things we’d assumed we could depend on suddenly didn’t seem so dependable.
That’s when the question of trust becomes much more than a religious discussion. What do we have to hold on to when we can’t make things turn out the way we want?
The Peace Paul Is Talking About
In today’s Epistle, Paul tells the Philippians, “Do not be anxious about anything.” Now, if you’ve ever been seriously worried about something, you know that being told not to worry usually doesn’t accomplish a whole lot. You’d stop if you could. But Paul knows what suffering is, and he isn’t dismissing their concerns. Just before this, he reminds them that the Lord is near. That’s why they can bring their fears to God in prayer, with thanksgiving. They don’t have to face what’s happening to them on their own.
Then he tells them that “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” You’ll recognize that from the blessing I often use at the end of our services: “The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The remarkable thing about that peace is that it can come when there’s still plenty to worry about. The circumstances may not have changed at all, yet somehow there’s an assurance that we’re in God’s hands. I don’t think Paul means that a faithful Christian should never feel afraid. He’s encouraging us to bring that fear to God and trust that God can sustain us through something we don’t know how to handle.
Trusting the God We Know
One of my heroes was a little old Dutch lady I had the privilege of meeting while I was in college: Corrie ten Boom. She came from a devout Christian family that sheltered Jewish people and others being hunted by the Nazis in the occupied Netherlands. In 1944, Corrie and several members of her family were arrested. Her father died in prison, and Corrie and her sister, Betsie, were eventually sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. Betsie died there.
Corrie survived and spent much of the rest of her life speaking about God’s love and forgiveness. Many of you know her story through The Hiding Place. One of my favorite sayings of hers is, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” That carries some weight coming from a woman who’d been through what she had. She knew that trusting God wouldn’t necessarily spare her from suffering. Her sister had trusted him, too. Betsie’s death wasn’t a failure of faith, any more than Corrie’s survival meant that she’d trusted God more. Corrie’s confidence rested in who God was, even when she couldn’t explain what had happened.
Paul goes on to tell the Philippians to think about what’s true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. They’re to put into practice what they’ve learned and received from him. He assumes that goodness and truth are real, that they have a claim on us beyond whatever we happen to feel at the moment. When we’re frightened, our feelings can take us in all sorts of directions. We need to hold on to what we’ve learned about God’s character and keep living by it, even when we can’t see how things are going to work out.
This became very real to me several years ago. I was on my bicycle near our home when I was struck by a car crossing the street. The impact threw me across the road. I landed hard on my side, and then my head hit the pavement. I’m absolutely convinced my helmet prevented a catastrophic injury or worse. So please, always wear a helmet when you ride a bike or motorcycle.
Initially, I thought I was uninjured, but I asked the driver to call an ambulance to take me to the hospital as a precaution. When I got there, the triage nurse sent me to the waiting room, where I sat for what seemed like ages as my hip began to ache more and more.
After they took me in for testing, my hip swelled rapidly, and I began to feel lightheaded. The staff suspected a broken femur, or thigh bone. I knew how serious that could be because that kind of injury had proved fatal for my mother. Then everything started to go black. I was seeing stars and fighting to stay conscious. For the first time in my life, I wondered whether this was my time.
At that moment, my accomplishments and possessions didn’t count for much. The responsibilities that usually occupied my attention suddenly seemed very far away. What mattered was my faith in God, my family, and the impact I’d had on other people’s lives. And a peace came over me, along with a quiet sense that this wasn’t my time.
I can’t fully explain that. I didn’t know what was happening to me but I found myself trusting that I was in God’s hands. Looking back, that’s what matters most to me about the experience. Whatever happened next, I belonged to him.
In Life and in Death, We Belong to Him
When it comes right down to it, pleasant platitudes don’t cut it anymore. It rings hollow to assure a dying person that everything’s going to be okay unless there’s something real behind those words. And while our memories of someone we love are precious, telling a widow that her husband will live on in her heart doesn’t answer the deepest question she’s facing. We want to know whether the person we love is truly lost to us, and whether death really is the end.
The gospel gives us something to stand on here. Jesus Christ has entered into our suffering and death, and he’s risen from the dead. That’s the reason we can trust our lives to him. His love reaches beyond the point where everything we can do for ourselves comes to an end.
Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth-century English mystic, expressed that confidence in words many of us know: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” Julian knew suffering was real. Like Corrie ten Boom, she trusted that all would be well because she trusted God.
That doesn’t mean everything will turn out as we hope. Betsie died at Ravensbrück. People we love die, despite our prayers and everything we do to help them. Christian faith has to be able to speak truthfully about that. The promise is that even death can’t take us beyond the reach of the God who loves us.
So we do what we can with the life and responsibilities he’s given us. We bring him our fears, including the ones that keep coming back, and entrust to him what we can’t control. We can do that because our future rests with the Christ who has already overcome death. In life and in death, we belong to him. That’s something we can hold on to even in the darkest and most uncertain of times. Amen.
October 4, 2026
19th Sunday after Pentecost – The Rev. Mark S. Winward, MDiv,ThM
Proper 22A
“…forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 3:13b-14
Suffering and Joy – Philippians 3:4b-14
It’s amazing that Paul wrote this in his letter to the Philippians from prison. Ironically, Philippians is perhaps Paul’s most joyful letter of all those passed down to us in the New Testament. The words “joy” and “rejoice” appear in it again and again. For Paul, he affirms he can know joy even while suffering, because his joy doesn’t depend on his circumstances. It depends on to whom he belongs.
That’s the key, because God doesn’t promise to spare us from suffering. We live in a broken world, and sooner or later that brokenness touches every one of us, through illness, through loss, and sometimes through things we can’t explain at all. Now I don’t believe God necessarily sends suffering just to teach us. But I do believe he can meet us in our suffering. Paul says at the beginning of his letter that even his imprisonment has advanced the gospel. Still, God didn’t need Paul to be in chains to work good – God worked good despite them.
So what does knowing Christ offer us when we suffer?
September 27, 2026
18th Sunday after Pentecost – The Rev. Mark S. Winward, MDiv, ThM
Proper 21A
Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” – Matthew 21:31b
The Religious Leaders and John
This short passage comes from Matthew’s account of Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem. Jesus is teaching in the temple when the chief priests and elders come to question him. These are people charged with the worship of Israel. They know the Scriptures. They are dedicated to the temple and deeply cherish the sacrifices, prayers, and traditions that have held their people together for generations.
The temple was the nexus of religious life for the Jewish people—the place of sacrifice, prayer, pilgrimage, and teaching. It was a magnificent sight, filled with crowds who had come from all over the country and beyond. Even what remains of the Temple Mount today gives some sense of its immensity. For a pilgrim coming to Jerusalem, being greeted by a gleaming temple rising on the landscape must have been overwhelming.
Now the chief priests and elders were not bad people because they cared about worship or took religion seriously. Jesus himself took the worship of God seriously. He went to the synagogue. He kept the feasts. He taught from the Scriptures. The problem was that, when God was doing something the religious establishment had not imagined,
September 20, 2026
17th Sunday after Pentecost – the Rev. Mark S. Winward, MDiv,ThM
Proper 20A
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” — Philippians 1:21
Jim Elliot and the Question of Suffering
Those words could just as easily have come from the mouth of Jim Elliot, the missionary who was killed while trying to share the gospel with an isolated people in Ecuador. I first heard about Jim through his brother-in-law, Tom Howard, a professor at my college who was influential in my own spiritual journey. Through him, I came to know the story of a man remembered for his courage, devotion to Christ, and desire to share the gospel.
Jim and Elisabeth went separately to Ecuador as missionaries in 1952 and married there the following year. Together with other missionaries, they served among the Quichua people, providing medical care, working at translating Scripture, and sharing their Christian faith. But Jim and several others also hoped to make peaceful contact with the Waorani, a people who had had very little peaceful contact with outsiders. After months of trying to communicate their peaceful intentions, five missionaries established a small camp along the Curaray River. Their first encounters with Waorani people seemed promising. Then, unexpectedly, the five men were killed. Jim Elliot was twenty-eight years old.
Years before his death, Jim had written words that would later become famous: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” And that raises a difficult question.