Christ the King Church, Hiawassee

He Sent His Son: Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22, Year A. Matthew 21:33–44. Jesus tells the parable of tenants who receive a vineyard they did not plant and then act as though it belongs to them. Isaiah 5 identifies the vineyard as Israel, while Psalm 80 remembers the vine God brought out of Egypt. Jesus gathers those images into a warning about stewardship, rebellion, and the Son. Th...

Matthew 21:28–32 places Jesus in the middle of a confrontation with the chief priests and elders. He tells of two sons. One openly refuses his father but afterward changes his mind and goes. The other says, “I go, sir,” but does not go. Jesus asks the question that matters: which son actually did the father’s will? The parable exposes the distance that can open between religious words and obedient...

Matthew 20:1-16 is framed by Jesus’ warning that “the first will be last, and the last first.” Peter has asked what the disciples will receive after leaving everything to follow Jesus. Jesus affirms that faithfulness matters, but the parable warns against turning sacrifice or longevity into a claim on God. The master repeatedly goes into the marketplace, calls workers, and sends them into his vine...

Peter asks Jesus how often he must forgive the brother who sins against him. Seven times sounds generous, but Peter is still counting. Jesus answers with a number that makes counting useless and tells of a servant owing an impossible debt. He asks for patience, but the king gives something greater: he cancels the debt. Christian forgiveness begins there. Before we are commanded to forgive, we are...

The Confession of the Church: Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 16, Year A. Matthew 16:13–20. Two Sundays ago the disciples worshiped Jesus in the boat and said, “Truly you are the Son of God.” So what is different at Caesarea Philippi? Peter adds the messianic title Christ. There is no new miracle in this scene to prompt it. And Jesus immediately names the source of the confession: flesh...

"Lord, Save Me". Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, second Sunday of Movement III: the King acts and is recognized. Matthew 14:22–33. Last week’s question was answered at three in the morning, in a storm, by men in a battered boat: Truly you are the Son of God. The storm is not the absence of Christ; it is often the occasion of his coming. After feeding five thousand, Jesus sends the disciples acros...

"He Had Compassion". Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, first Sunday of Movement III. Matthew 14:13–21. The miracle begins in grief, not abundance. Jesus has just learned of John the Baptist’s execution and withdraws by boat to grieve. The crowd follows on foot and is waiting when he lands. He steps off the boat and has compassion: splanchnizomai (splank-NIDZ-oh-my), gut-level visceral compassion that...

Of Great Price. Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, final Sunday of Movement II. We reach the end of Matthew 13 with five Kingdom parables that pivot from what happens in the field to what the field is worth. Three groupings: mustard seed and leaven (how the Kingdom works: from small beginnings and in hiddenness); hidden treasure and pearl of great price (what the Kingdom is worth: total reorientation o...

Until the Harvest. Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, final Sunday of Movement II. The parable of the wheat and the tares: good seed sown in the field, an enemy sowing weeds while men sleep. The weed is zizania (zi-ZAN-ee-ah), bearded darnel, virtually indistinguishable from wheat in early growth, root systems entangled; to pull it is to pull the wheat. The judgment that can separate them requires the...

It Shall Not Return Empty. Today is the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost and the opening of Matthew 13 in Movement II of our summer through Matthew. Last Sunday was the gentle and lowly king’s invitation: come to me. This Sunday is the parable of how the Kingdom grows: a sower went out to sow. Isaiah 55:10–11 is the theological premise: as rain comes down from heaven and waters the earth, so shall m...

It Shall Not Return Empty. Today is the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost and the opening of Matthew 13 in Movement II of our summer through Matthew. Last Sunday was the gentle and lowly king’s invitation: come to me. This Sunday is the parable of how the Kingdom grows: a sower went out to sow. Isaiah 55:10–11 is the theological premise: as rain comes down from heaven and waters the earth, so shall m...

Proper 9: Rest for Your Souls: Today is the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost and the opening of Movement II in our summer through Matthew. Movement I gave us the sending, the cost, and the cross. Movement II opens with the most tender words in the Gospel: Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. The context is rejection: the cities with the most exposure to Jesus have r...

Proper 7, Year A — June 21, 2026. Have No Fear of Them: Today is the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, and Jesus finishes the commissioning briefing he began last week. The mission that opened with such promise, the harvest, the authority, the blessing of peace on every worthy house, now receives its honest price tag: sheep among wolves, courts and floggings, families divided, hatred for the sake of...

Proper 6, Year A — June 14, 2026. The harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few. As we begin our summer journey through Matthew, Jesus sends the Twelve into the harvest with a message (the kingdom is at hand), an authority (heal, raise, cleanse, cast out), and a manner (freely received, freely given). The Exodus backdrop: Israel called as a kingdom of priests at Sinai. The Barnabas connection: hi...

Come, Holy Spirit: Today is Pentecost Sunday — the fiftieth day of Easter and the crown of the Easter season. We follow the Easter arc from Mary Magdalene weeping in a garden to a community of one hundred and twenty gathered in prayer, waiting for the promise Jesus made in the Upper Room on Maundy Thursday night: that the Father would send another Helper, the Paraclete, to dwell within them and em...

Nearing the end of the Easter season — one week before Pentecost — the sermon enters the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in any of the Gospels. We are not the audience of John 17. We are the subject. Jesus prays not for deliverance but for glorification — that the hour would accomplish what it was sent to accomplish. Later that same night in Gethsemane he would pray for the cup to pass, and toget...

On Rogation Sunday — when the Church traditionally processes through fields and farmland asking God's provision for the harvest — the Gospel appointed is John 15, the vine and the branches. The Church did not place an agricultural observance alongside the most agricultural image Jesus ever used of himself by accident. Still in the Upper Room on Maundy Thursday night, Jesus gives the last great I A...

On the Fifth Sunday of Easter, the sermon steps back from the resurrection appearances to Maundy Thursday night — the Upper Room, the Last Supper, the night before the crucifixion with the worst still hours away. John 14 is not a resurrection appearance but words spoken before the arrest, words the disciples heard in grief and confusion and that we now read with resurrection eyes. Everything they...

On this Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, Jesus declares in John 10, “I am the gate for the sheep.” In the familiar image of the ancient sheepfold, he presents himself as the one true entrance to safety, provision, and life—exclusive in that there is only one gate, yet generously open to anyone who enters by him. Contrasting the thief who comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, Jesus...

On the third Sunday of Easter, Jesus meets two grieving disciples walking away from Jerusalem on the road to Emmaus. Their hopes have collapsed into the past tense—“We had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel”—as they speak with exhausted detachment about the crucifixion and the confusing reports of the empty tomb. Unrecognized, the risen Christ draws near, gently rebukes their slowness to believ...

On the evening of the resurrection, the disciples are hiding behind locked doors — not just afraid of the authorities, but crushed by the guilt of having fled and denied. Jesus comes through the door anyway, stands among them, and speaks the one word that addresses everything in that room: peace — spoken first, before any apology, proven by the wounds he still carries. He breathes new creation lif...