Sharing Our Stories

Sermon
Full Service

June 28, 2026

Anna Ostenso Moore

Good morning again Good morning. Thank you all for the warm welcome. I am honored to be serving with the ministers here, Rex, John, and all of you in sharing in pastoral care, presiding, and preaching during this sabbatical. I am also honored to be worshiping and wondering with you all these Sundays for these next four months.

For those of you whom I have not met, I am mother to a five-year-old, a wife, a member of a large Midwestern family, and for those of you who live in the neighborhood near St. John’s, I am a neighbor. Lisa and I were ordained priests together just over 10 years ago. I also serve as the convener of the Racial Justice and Healing Team for the Episcopal Church in Minnesota, and I’m always delighted to talk about that ministry at any time.

And I wrote the picture book that is given out at baptisms here at St. John. I am passionate about our sacred stories and how they shape our lives as followers of Jesus. By sacred stories, I mean stories about where God is moving in our Bible, our traditions, our faith communities, and our own lives.

As I was spending time with this week’s gospel, one of the stories I thought of was shared with me a couple years ago at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in St. Paul. Holy Trinity is a merged faith community of two historic African American congregations, St. Paul’s and St.

Thomas, along with Epiphany Church, where it now resides. And they introduced me to the ministry of the Reverend Earl Neal, who was raised at St. Philip’s Church in the Rondo neighborhood. Through them, I learned of his lifelong ministry working for civil rights wherever he was, and often at great risk to himself.

The image that stuck with me is how he encouraged his church, St. Augustine’s in Oakland, California, to give space to the Black Panthers Free Breakfast for School Children Program, the first nationally organized breakfast program for children in our country. Although he did not condone the violence that the Black Panthers used at the time, he was in his neighborhood, and he knew the need for children to be fed before school. What started as a handful of children quickly grew into hundreds, and shortly after that, it grew nationally.

School officials around St. Augustine’s reported seeing the positive results that we now take for granted. Children were able to focus at school and learn without having hunger pains to distract them. The program fed tens of thousands of children who had not been eating breakfast before.

Sadly, it was targeted by different government officials and dismantled within a few years. However, its successful legacy helped inspire the school breakfast program that is now federal in 1975, which before had had little reach or impact. In today’s gospel, Matthew speaks of welcome. Anyone who welcomes Jesus’ followers welcomes God.

Jesus speaks of the welcome of prophets, the righteous, and little ones, and that those who welcome will receive a reward. The gospel is the end of a very long speech that we have been reading for most of June, that Jesus gave his disciples when he was sending them out into the communities to spread his word. The words that Rex just read follow what we heard last week about division in families, partners. Throughout this long speech, Jesus shares instructions, warnings, and promises.

On first reading, I was uncomfortable with the reward language of this passage, and that it could be easily interpreted into the false promises of the prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel that says someone’s blessings are a direct correlation with how pleased God is with them is always false and never Jesus’ intention in what he says. To throw in a twist, a prophet’s reward at the time was lame, ostracization, even death. Think about that as a reward.

And the word “little ones” that he used was meant to be more than children, but those who were vulnerable, whatever that means. I hear through the reward language when I spend more time with it, that God sees us. God knows when we welcome others, whether followers, prophets, righteous, little ones, or someone else. And the image of the reward that I am sitting with this week is that we only discover God’s reward when we practice the deep hospitality of love.

As a Black priest and civil rights leader, the Reverend Earl Neal experienced many challenges and received many warnings in his ministry at a majority white Episcopal church. Still, his yes, his risky yes to hosting the Black Panthers program of feeding the little ones still impacts us today. Through the feeding of children, we are able to glimpse God’s kingdom here on Earth, and that is what I believe Jesus means by a reward Although the Reverend Earl’s story was in the 1960s and ’70s, it feels to me like it could be now. It is as important now to learn and share the stories of faithful people following Jesus, especially when resisting policies or actions that do not support the God of love or the dignity of every human being.

It’s important to share these stories because it shapes our whole imagination of how we follow Jesus now. And for me, it offers hope and a reminder that we are not alone. As a community, we stepped up to practice this hospitality during Operation Metro Surge. I was heartened to be part of neighborhoods and organizations that chose love over and over again through providing resources, rent assistance, rides, laundry, and being present.

But although we are through the worst part of the surge, the ramifications are still being felt. We all can see them, whether increased evictions, a lost sense of safety, separated families, or exhaustion that extends beyond a few nights of lost sleep. When I am tired, I can despair that my small bag of groceries dropped at the food shelf is not enough, or that one meal purchased at a restaurant who particularly was hit hard is not enough, or the welcome sign on my door. But this is why we need our sacred stories.

They are where I draw my resilience from and why I recommit to sharing them. At times, we can be too close to history to see where God is moving. And through sacred stories like the Reverend Earl’s or the gospel, we can find hope. Through them, I am reminded that those simple actions that we are all practicing in partnership with others show where God moves.

It extends love, and lives can be changed. Through the gospel, I am reminded that we can start wondering where God is calling us to welcome now and where we are called to receive that welcome. Through them, we are also reminded that these sacred stories broadly celebrate those moments. One of those moments that we are celebrating today is the many members of the Episcopal Church in Minnesota who are marching in the Pride Parade despite the weather.

It will go on. And we know that many others are celebrating Pride in a myriad of ways. It has been 50 years since General Convention passed a resolution declaring that LGBTQ+ people have full and equal claim to the pastoral care and support of The Episcopal Church. For me, that is longer than my lifetime.

This too started with a few brave, faithful people extending welcome, advocating for change. The most memorable sermon of my teenage years was hearing the Reverend Ernie Ashcroft explicitly extend welcome to LGBTQ+ siblings in my teenage church. It’s been almost 30 years, and now it seems like most Episcopal priests would do that. It was the first time I can remember some adults leaving our church, but it was also the only sermon I can remember from that time.

And it was the only one that I ever asked for a printout for afterwards so that I could learn from those words and inwardly digest them. Brave, faithful people extending welcome together change lives. In remembering all of these faithful stories, we can celebrate this work together today too. We know that there is brokenness in the world and there is much more to do, but hope is through God moving in all of these faithful ways.

Will you join me this week in continuing to share our stories?

Sermon Manuscript

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June 28, 2026

AOM

Sharing Our Stories