June 29, 2025: The Urgency of Now

Rex McKee

HOMILY – June 29, 2025

The Urgency of Now

Rex McKee

 

“Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the Creator rises upon you.
darkness covers the earth
and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the Holy Spirit she rises upon you
and sacred resistance walks with you. Isaiah 60

 

 

In Luke’s Gospel, we are told that Jesus “set his face toward Jerusalem.” He walked directly toward betrayal, denial, personal violence, and intro imperial power. He did not walk in anger, he walked with courage, mercy, persistence, and love.

In Say to This Mountain, Ched Myers critiques the church’s tendency to align with coercive power. James and John want to invoke divine wrath what Walter Wink would call “the myth of redemptive violence.” Jesus flatly rejects their request. Myers interprets this as a call to reject all divine sanctioning of violence, even against one’s enemies.

Jesus’ “face set toward Jerusalem” becomes, in Myers’ view, a prophetic, political act, sacred resistance. Jerusalem is not just a destination; it is the place where power, piety, and empire converge. Jesus walks directly into that conflict to unmask and confront it through suffering love.

The resistance of Jesus is not the resistance of the sword.

‘Peacemakers,’ a term used by Black pastor and author Osheta Moore to invite white Christians into the work of anti-racism; she reflects on the confusing messages we hear: Sit down and listen. Stand up and speak.

When we experience conflicting messages, we often freeze. We are caught between loving our enemies and speaking Gospel truth to power and we remain immobilized.

Speaking truth to power is the resistance of presence of showing up again and again where dignity has been denied. As Cornel West suggests: “Justice is what love looks like in public.”

 

Today’s Gospel clarifies that the path of discipleship is not for the faint of heart. Jesus does not invite us into casual commitment, but into urgency:

“I will follow you wherever you go.”

Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

“Let me first bury my father.”

Jesus replied, “Let the dead bury their own dead… go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

“I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell…”

Jesus said, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

This is not a comforting call.

It is a radical reorientation. Jesus does not soften the call rather he intensifies it. This urgency of discipleship is not someday, but today. Not when it is convenient, but now in the midst of crisis. Not when you finish painting the house, or come back from a vacation, or when your children are in college, but now.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it plainly: “When Christ calls a person, he bids them come and die.” Die to your old behaviors. Follow me, now.

This Kairos moment of decision, risk, and grace when love demands action is God’s Sacred time.

 

Jesus proclaims, “The kingdom of God is at hand” not some distant dream, tomorrow, or tomorrow, or tomorrow, but a radical reality breaking into this moment. We act now: to love, to heal, to resist, to reconcile.

Mystic Meister Eckhart invites us to be fully awake not distracted by nostalgia or fear, but alive to what love requires today: the Now where God lives.

The urgency of now refuses complicity with systems of oppression through silence or delay. Bonhoeffer writes, “Not to act is to act. Not to speak is to speak.” The gospel calls us to rise up, to stand and speak in the breach, especially when the world demands our silence and neutrality.

 

In 1966, I graduated high school, entered college, and began the process of becoming a conscientious objector. With the love and mentorship of George Regas, Rector at All Saints Pasadena, I was granted that rare designation in 1970. Those sessions with Selective Service, family, and church were painful and defining. I learned the deep spiritual language to express my deep conviction that military service was inconsistent with my baptismal promises. I declined St. Augustine’s and Thomas’s just war theories as incompatible with the Gospel. My guidance as father and grandfather has shaped similar decisions in my sons and grandsons.

Each day, I am committed to make moral, ethical, faithful choices consistent with those promises. That does not mean I am not challenged especially when tempted by the chaos in our time, haunted by Bonhoeffer’s moment of choosing to resist Hitler violently.

My continuing response is to follow the way of love. To rise up against the status quo systems of domination. To step into the liberating, disruptive work of love even when it costs me comfort, clarity, or control.

Outrage, fear, mistrust, and political violence are tearing us apart. We are tempted to take sides, draw lines, and demonize the other, be they immigrants on one hand or those with which we disagree on the other.

 

Yet the Gospel calls us to something more radical:

• To rise in sacred resistance with love
• To rise in complicated relationships without compromise.

 

Resist systems and structures that harm.

Resist militarism that leads to personal violence.

Resist racism.

Resist transphobia and homophobia.

Resist white Christian nationalism.

 

And yes, Jesus calls us to love our enemies even those who disagree with us, even those sitting next to us in the pews.

 

Walter Brueggemann writes: “The prophetic task is to nurture, nourish, and evoke an alternative consciousness… one grounded not in coercion, but in covenantal love.”

This is hard. We want simple lines. We want clarity.

But Jesus says: Love the Lord your God. And love your neighbor the difficult one, the disillusioned one, the dangerous one.

At St. John’s, our call to rise in resistance and relationship is rooted in our values:

• Sacredness – Every life is holy. Every relationship affirms creation’s original blessing.
• Belonging – We prioritize inclusion over division. We rise together because no one is whole alone. We trust that belonging precedes believing.
• Nourishment – At Christ’s table, we are fed and strengthened. This is a place of restoration and strength for the work of love and justice.
• Creativity – We are committed to reimagining how we live, pray, and serve with courage, innovation, and holy play.
• Transformation – God is not finished with us. We are not static. We are healers in need of healing, activists in need of grace, and communities in need of liberation.

 

These values ground us when resistance is exhausting. They feed us rooted in love. They transform our practice of resurrection.

From these values, we understand the Paul’s list of inner fruits that sustain our outer witness: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

These are not soft virtues. They are deep resistance in a world of self-indulgence, division, and rage.

We are reminded by Desmond Tutu: “When will we learn that we are bound together… that my humanity is bound up in yours?”

 

How Do We Follow Jesus and Walk in Love into Conflict?

We are invited to engage in spiritual practices:

• Centering Prayer – Even two minutes a day, breathing in love and exhaling fear, prepares the heart.
• Scripture and Sacred Texts – Let Psalms, Micah, Job, and your favorite writer shape your instincts more than the news.
• Practice Sabbath – Rest is resistance. Step back. Remember: the work is God’s.
• Engage a Circle of Trust – Don’t Walk alone. Confess, grieve, be reminded you are not alone and are loved.
• Practice the Inner Fruits with intentional acts – Through love, peace, joy and through gardening, calligraphy, tea, quilting, walking, music or other sacred arts.

As the Zen Koan Chop Wood, Carry Water provides a spiritual focus…

“Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.”

This wisdom calls us to a spirituality of intention where even the most ordinary tasks, done with presence and care, become sacred. Whether we sweep a floor, prepare a meal, or fold a bulletin, these can be acts of prayer and devotion. The divine is found not just in mountaintop visions, but in mindful labor and daily faithfulness.

 

 

 

 

 

The Giveaway as Sacred Practice

From Native tradition, we learn that to give away is to proclaim abundance, restore relationship, and offer reparative love. It is not about status but honoring the Creator and deepening community.

Three spiritual movements of the Giveaway:

• Giving as Trust – Giving as Trust in Sacred Abundance – To give from need is radical faith: what I have is meant to be shared. In the words of Jesus: “Sell your possessions, and give alms… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:33-34), and it embodies the spirit of Acts 20:35: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

• Giving as Relationship – As Cynthia Bourgeault writes, “Giving away is the path to becoming whole.”
• Giving as Healing and reparation – After harm, giving becomes prayer in action.

 

To live the giveaway is to resist a world of hoarding and exclusion. It echoes the Gospel: open hands, shared blessing, kinship with the stranger. The Greek word kenosis—“emptied himself”—expresses Jesus’ voluntary self-giving, not for gain, but for communion and love. It mirrors the heart of the giveaway: laying down privilege to uplift others.

Consider our collective generosity: to Ecuadorian Families, Casa Mara, FNK, Haitian School, and our sacred space here.

 

Reflection Questions

• How do I respond to the urgent commitment asked of me by Jesus?
• Where am I called to speak compassionate truth without losing my spiritual values?
• What do I do to resist injustice and practice peacemaking?

 

A Resurrection Spirituality

Jesus rose by forgiving. And in rising, he invites us to do the same again and again.

We rise with open hearts grounded in the way of love

We reach across divides.

We reject divisions and hatred.

We reject silence.

We commit to mercy, courage, and action.

 

“All the Law has been fulfilled in a single statement: Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:13–14)

 

Bishop Rowe wrote to the church, “we are offering an alternative Christian witness, centered in our relationship with God in Christ and with humanity and proclaiming God’s reconciling love. When we get it right, we Episcopalians are capable of resolute commitment to both justice and unity, and to extending grace to one another and to all of God’s people, even those who don’t agree with us.

We were reminded that Christian witness is increasingly a matter of life and death as, in the Christian nationalism’s “distortion of the gospel message causes dehumanizing attacks on transgender people, foments fear of migrants, and grows antisemitism and anti-Muslim bigotry.”

Elder Bishop Steve Charleston writes: “We are here for a reason. Our lives are entrusted to us for a purpose… the vital work of restoration, reconciliation, and renewal.”

 

Now is the acceptable time

Now is the acceptable time to give yourself to love

“Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.”

(2 Corinthians 6:2)

10am Service