A Homily for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
A homily preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on July 5, 2026 by the Reverend Steven Smith, Associate Priest.
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Let us pray.
Oh God, open our ears to hear what you have hidden from the proud, and what you reveal to the humble. Make still our busy minds, quieten our anxious hearts, and let us find rest in your Word.
I have a question for each of us this morning
What are you carrying right now that feels heavy?
What are you hefting that is a burden?
Some of us are worn out from raising children or caring for aging parents.
Some of us are worried about paying bills.
Others are anxious about job performance, job security.
Some of us carry grief
Some of us bear fear, others regret.
Others carry burdens of depression, loneliness, disappointment, or deep uncertainties about our faith.
Some of us simply feel tired, a deep-bone weariness.
Many, no, most of us are stressed and troubled with our world, its division, its bellicose rancor, its violence, its injustice, its cruelty.
Christ sees every one of us. And His word to us is not “Get your life together” It is not “Get over yourself” Jesus does not say “Resolve your doubts” “Improve your attitude”
No, Jesus’s word to us is simply “Come”
“Come to me”
“Come to me all you who are carrying heavy burdens,
Come to me, all you who are weary AND I will give you rest.
This invitation is preceded by, at first hearing, a strange prayer of thanksgiving. Jesus says, God, I thank you, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”
My brothers and sisters, let us be clear. This does not mean God values ignorance.
NO
It means God values humility. The Greek word here for “infants” means the very young, those who cannot fend for themselves, who are dependent. Jesus is saying, God reveals Godself to those who are humble enough in their own estimation to hold out their hands to receive from another, to reach up for a hand they cannot quite see. God reveals Godself to those with an openness that says,
I know how much I do not know.
Jesus promises that to those who come to him in humility,
“I will give you rest,” and then again, “you will find rest for your souls.”
It is often misunderstand what Jesus means by “rest.”
The Greek word does not mean the absence of work or inactivity.
It is the rest of deep peace and wholeness, the soul in alignment with its Divine source, a rest that exists even when life remains complicated, when the world seems caught in endless calamity and conflict.
The yoke is still there, it must be born. But it is easy, it is gentle, it is light.
The yoke of Jesus does not crush; it fits.
It does not diminish our humanity; it restores it.
And we are reminded by Jesus that gentleness is not weakness.
It is strength under perfect control. We often hear that power comes through domination. Jesus reveals another way — power through humility, victory through love, greatness through service, life through self-giving.
This is the way, the path, that we must consider as we mark two hundred and fifty years since its founding of these our United States, a Semiquincentennial that falls, providentially, near the very Gospel of rest and humility.
Today’s Gospel reminds us that the truest strength, whether in a single soul or in a great republic, is rarely the loudest.
It is the strength that serves, that listens, that does not need to crush or demean in order to lead.
Two hundred and fifty years is a long span for any nation to endure, to argue with itself, to fall short of its ideals, and yet keep reaching toward them.
We should, in gratitude, pray for this country as we would pray for any beloved and imperfect thing, that it might grow in humility as it grows in years, that its strength might increasingly be gentle strength, and that its rest might be found not in triumph over others but in justice, in mercy, and in the ongoing labor of becoming what it was always meant to be.
It is right to give thanks for these two hundred and fifty years.
Yet the Gospel of Jesus Christ will not let this birthday become only celebration without also becoming an examination of conscience.
We know that we must strive for the ongoing, unfinished work of forming what the founders called “a more perfect union.”
Here, I think of the words of “America the Beautiful,” which is in our Episcopal Hymnal, page 719. Bishop Phyllis, in last Thursday’s edition of the diocesan newsletter, reflected that the poem, written by Katharine Lee Bates as she traveled west across the United States to Colorado that became the words of this hymn, “emerged from lived experience—from wonder, gratitude, and hope.” To me, the poem shares words of majesty. My wife Valentina and I heard it sung on the radio this morning by The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Beautiful.
Yet, as our Bishop points out, the later verses become less a celebration of what America is than a prayer for what America might yet be.
The third verse prays that God would “mend thine every flaw” and “confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.”
It is a hymn of gratitude that never forgets to also be a hymn of humility.
I commend Bishop Phyllis reflection to you.
Today’s Gospel is an invitation extended to persons, and through persons to the communities they build:
Come to me, all you that are weary. Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.
If this nation's next quarter-millennium is to be worth celebrating, it will be built by those humble and grateful enough to keep learning, to keep listening, to keep reaching for common understanding, to speak in the voice of love, justice, and peace.
As Bishop Phyllis writes in concluding her reflection, “Insofar as it depends upon us, may it be so.”
When you come to the altar in a few minutes the receive the bread and cup, you do not do it alone.
You come in a procession of the weary, the hopeful, the broken, the mending, the certain and the doubting, the joyful and the bereaved.
Christ welcomes you because Christ never tires of receiving those who come to Him.
Come as you are.
Come with the burden still on your shoulders, the gratitude in your heart, the flag on your porch.
Come — and Christ will give you rest.
Amen.