A sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 8
June 29, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, Arkansas
Readings: Galatians 5:1,13-25; Luke 9:51-62
Free is not your right to choose
It’s answering what’s asked of you
To give the love you find until it’s gone
I don’t listen to secular music much. I am a church nerd through and through. My Spotify playlists are populated with the hymns of the Church, at least generally. The lines of the old hymns make me catch my breath, as the beauty and greatness of God are captured, or at least glimpsed, in a few words. But there are exceptions. There are a few non-hymns on my playlists with lines that make me breathless. Many of them come from the band the Avett Brothers, an American folk rock group. I quoted a few of those lines a moment ago, lines about freedom from their song “Ill with Want.” It’s a song about how greed consumes and leaves us sick and empty-handed. The only remedy, they sing, is the freedom found in giving love away, and ultimately giving ourselves away. For in the end that is what is asked of us by Jesus himself: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Or, from today’s gospel: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Free is not your right to choose
It’s answering what’s asked of you
To give the love you find until it’s gone
Storied Grace 