Download Sermon TextNovember 9: Let the Main Thing be the Main Thing
Lisa Wiens Heinsohn
Let the Main Thing be the Main Thing
Homily by Lisa Wiens Heinsohn for the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church
November 9, 2025; Luke 20:27-38, Job 19:23-27
If I were to ask you to try to articulate to yourself for a minute what you think the mission of the Church is—the Church, capital “C”—what comes up for you? Let go for a minute of all the ways the Church has failed at its mission, which we don’t have to look very far to see. Regardless of how well or poorly it has fulfilled its mission, what do you think it is?
I’m asking this question because it matters a great deal why we are here. It’s easy to get into the weeds about our tasks and the details of daily living and to forget to let the main thing be the main thing. Most of the time when I ask newcomers what they are looking for when they join our church, as 20 people did last Sunday, they say some variation on the theme of they want a real community to do faith and life with. They want togetherness and belonging. They want to not be alone, for themselves and for their kids. Now you can have community in all kinds of ways. You can find it at the gym or in your book club or in volunteering. What is particular about the church is that there is a resounding heartbeat at the core of our togetherness, at the core of our belonging, and it is this faith of ours, which we continue to question and wrestle with and which each of us might express a little differently. But at the core of our faith are two key themes which reverberate like the singing bowl Rex sounds at the end of every sermon, the center around which everything revolves. The first theme is what our Bishop said on October 30 when he and Steve Grove were here discussing Steve’s memoirs and themes about the erosion of trust in institutions and lots of other things. The Bishop said that at the core of Christian faith is the experience, not just the belief, of being loved unimaginably, unconditionally, overwhelmingly; that each of us is radically loved in a way that we did not earn and that we cannot lose. And, he said, that is the one thing that is harder to believe than anything in the creed or any point of doctrine, but it is also the one thing that will really change your life if you let it. So this is one of the key pillars of our faith: you are loved, completely, unconditionally, world without end. And the second key pillar of our faith that resounds like a heartbeat is the theme we find in today’s scripture readings, and that is the mystery we call resurrection. It is the insistence that deep in the DNA of all that lives is a death and rebirth, dying and rising, a cycle of ending and beginning that happens over and over again like the sunset and sunrise, winter and spring, the ocean tides and the waxing and waning of the moon. As Christians we see this most uniquely and fully in the death and resurrection of Jesus that we remember and relive every Sunday at the Eucharist, in Holy Communion. Why this matters is that this gives us hope where there is no hope, in those times in our lives that we have come to the end of our rope and don’t see a way forward. It enables us to take the long view. It enables us to come to a peace about loss even though it does not take away our losses or our grief about them. So when I say “let the main thing be the main thing,” I’m referring to these two themes – that we are loved unconditionally and that resurrection is a rhythm built into the heart of the universe, so that we may have hope.
Now it’s easy to get distracted and sidetracked like the Sadducees did in today’s gospel reading. They did not believe in resurrection so they tried to ask Jesus an impossible trick question, this ridiculous tale about the woman who marries seven brothers and wondering whose wife she will be in the resurrection. But Jesus will not be sidetracked. He insists that God is not the God of the dead but of the living, and that to God, all of them are alive. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses. The loved ones we honored last week at All Saints Sunday. Each of us when we are birthed into what comes next when we die. The resurrected Jesus was not immediately recognizable even to the people who knew and loved him best; Mary Magdalene thought he was the gardener; the disciples on the road to Emmaus spoke with him for hours, pouring out their grief, telling him their story without ever realizing who he was. So obviously in this great rhythm of death and resurrection there is continuity and discontinuity. Some things that change and some things that remain the same. In our funeral liturgy we repeat the words we heard from the Wisdom book of Job this morning: I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last I will stand upon the earth, and in my body I will see God, the one who is my friend and not a stranger. The point is that there is a through line, a connection, that can give us hope if we allow ourselves to surrender to the great mystery of our faith: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
So two great themes resounding like a heartbeat: you are loved unimaginably, unconditionally, overwhelmingly; you didn’t earn it and you can’t lose it; it is the response of the person of God to your existence, and our job through all the stages of life is to learn to experience this and pass it along. And second, what we call the Paschal mystery, the Easter mystery: that the rhythm of death and resurrection resounds in all that is, so that as things are ending and dying away, things also are reborn and resurrected, not resuscitated. There are endings, and there are beginnings. There was evening, and there was morning, the first day. And all creation is refreshed and may have hope.
I am talking about all this because why we gather is really important. What we gather around matters. It is important to let the main thing be the main thing. Originally the followers of Jesus were a chaotic, diverse, wildly generative movement that became supported by the institution we now know as the Church. Without institutions movements die. As our Bishop said on October 30, far too many churches have forgotten the movement, the core mission of the church, which is to join God’s project to heal the world with love. Instead too many churches act as if their mission is to stay alive. To preserve the institution. But that is not our job. Our job is to join God’s project to heal the world through love. With or without the Church, this is what God is up to. And it is a beautiful project even when we fail. Even when we, like Jesus, experience death and grief and endings. But God does not fail. Love does not fail. It is the one force on earth that is stronger than death. Anyone who has lost a loved one knows this. Your love does not die when your beloved dies. God’s love for us can never die. It is the fabric of the universe. Maybe it is the dark matter scientists talk about.
So we are gathered here at St. John’s on Gratitude Sunday, this time when we offer financial pledges to St. John’s for the coming year so that the institution of St John’s can maintain the movement at its core, which is to join God’s project to heal the world with love. We will never do this perfectly. We sometimes fail each other. But if you will allow me, I submit to you that your one job, more important than believing any line of doctrine or doing anything at all, is to believe and accept and experience that you are loved at your core. You are made of divine light. Your true self, your original self, is made in the image of God, is good and blessed. You did not earn this love and you cannot lose it. Nothing can ever take that away from you no matter what happens in this world. Everything follows from this. Even if those you love most in the world have failed you, and even if you have failed them. Even if you have not experienced this kind of love fully through human beings. Each one of us is quirky and rough around the edges and beautifully and wonderfully made. You are enough. In fact you matter a great deal and your presence here blesses the whole community. Each one of you. This is why we say in St. John’s mission statement that we welcome all, without distinction, and that we reach out, beyond the Church, seeking Christ in all persons.
Let us join God’s project to heal the world with love, experiencing it first ourselves like putting on the air mask in the airplane before you put it on anyone else. Let us know that no one can threaten that core experience and that therefore we can engage people across difference with loving and restorative justice and kindness, even as we speak truth with courage. Let us remember these twin themes: we are loved unconditionally; and death and resurrection is the heartbeat at the core of the universe, endings and beginnings, so that we may have an unshakeable hope even as some things pass away and others are born.
