From college and campus ministry, through seminary, and into parish ministry, I became increasingly aware of the damage done by some theologies within the church: specifically, the "Believe in Jesus or to go Hell" theologies. Knowing people who turned away from the church and from God because they'd been lambasted by such theologies, I decided to address those beliefs head on and look deeply at scripture, rather than simply ignore the tricky passages.
My goal was and is to bring healing to folks who have been harmed by those older, even foundational theologies, and to help free people from those theologies - people who don't believe in "believe in Jesus or go to Hell", but also don't know how they can't believe in them without ignoring much of scripture.
May you find peace and healing in the pages of this book, and may you help bring that healing to others.
The Rev. Brad Sullivan Lord of the Streets, Houston April 5, 2026 Easter Colossians 3:1-4 Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 Matthew 28:1-10
Yesterday, I was reflecting on Good Friday, on the crucifixion of Jesus, and while I often feel rather somber or a little sad when thinking on Jesus’ death, I instead felt a sense of gratitude for Jesus’ crucifixion. Gratitude and peace, rather than the emotional turmoil of cry night. Now, if you haven’t heard me mention cry night before, that’s the night at various youth camps, or even adult camps, where the leaders get all the youth to cry about all the bad things they’ve done and how they were the ones who killed Jesus.
Ok, the idea of taking our sin seriously is a good one, and leading people to repentance for their sin, helping people see the damage they have done, also good. Emotionally manipulating tired teenagers to ensure a tearful response to Jesus’ crucifixion and death, however, may not be the best approach in the world. Also, while tears, sorrow, and guilt are totally appropriate responses to Jesus’ crucifixion and death, they are not the only appropriate responses.
Yesterday, on Holy Saturday, thinking of Jesus in the tomb, I felt a profound sense of gratitude. Jesus died to join with us in death. God experienced death to join with us in death. So, I felt gratitude, rather than guilt. When my dad died, he was not alone in death. God was with him in death because in Jesus, God died a human death so that even in death, we are joined with God.
So today, on Easter Sunday, as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, returning to life from the dead, I find that I can trust Easter because of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. I can trust in Jesus’ resurrection because Jesus joined with us in death. I can trust in new life after death because Jesus walks with us in death.
At the same time, with resurrection life, we don’t really dwell on the death. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb, and the angel who was there told them, to go take a look at see that Jesus wasn’t there, but after that, they weren’t supposed to hang around the tomb, turning it into a shrine, and praising God there. No, they were told to go away from the place of death, meet Jesus, and live new life.
“Jesus died for our sins.” “Jesus died for our sins.” “Jesus died for our sins.” We hear that over and over, and yes, that is true, but what’s really important is Jesus lived. Jesus came back from the grave to keep on living. So, we are not meant to dwell in the grave. We are meant to live. Beyond the grave, past the grave, after all the many deaths in our lives, Jesus’ resurrection tells us to mourn death for a time and then to leave the tomb behind and move forward into new life.
Now, what will that new life look like? Well, resurrection after our physical deaths, new life in God’s eternal kingdom, end of time type resurrection, we’re talking joy, bliss, huge banquet, surrounded and enveloped in love, tears no longer will fall type of new life.
Regarding our lives, here on earth, we suffer various deaths throughout our lives, and the new life of resurrection happens for those deaths too, and that’s going to look different for all of us, each time that new life happens, but there are some things that seem to mark the new life of resurrection.
When Mary Magdalene and the other Mary left the tomb, they were filled with joy at the news Jesus had given them. New life of resurrection is marked with joy. That doesn’t mean that the two Marys, happy for the rest of their lives. Even after they saw Jesus, they had times of sorrow in their lives. The new life of resurrection is still life. There will be times of happiness, times of sorrow.
In fact, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said, “God doesn’t want us to be happy.” See, of God wants us to be happy, then we deserve happiness, and happiness becomes an end in itself. Rather than happiness as a result of relationships, or achievement, or growth, we desire happiness just because we want to feel happy.
That sounds like addiction. Archbishop Williams noted the problem of expecting happiness from anything and everything in our lives. Relationships are supposed to make us happy. A concert or a game is supposed to make us happy. Then if it doesn’t, we end up resenting it. After 10 years of marriage, does that person make you happy? Well, one, it’s not their job to make you happy, so really asking, “Does this person make me happy?” is the wrong question. A better question would be, after 10 years of marriage, do you feel at home? That’s joy, and joy rumbles along underneath in our lives, even with challenges and trials on the surface.
So, a resurrection life is a life marked with joy, and a life marked with joy is a life marked with hope, with love. A life of joy is a life which accepts sorrow not as the end or the final way we will feel, and a life of joy does not expect happiness to be the way we will feel all the time. A life of joy finds fulfillment in relationships, feeling at home. A life of joy is a life of hope and love, feeling at home during times of happiness and sadness.
Another mark of the new life of resurrection is that there are barriers that are no longer present in the new life. In the new life of resurrection, the two Marys were the first apostles. The first two people Jesus appeared to and sent to tell about his resurrection were Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, as Matthew calls her. In the new life of resurrection, women were leaders in the church, until men decided they didn’t want that, relegated women to lesser roles and determined since Jesus was a man, only men could lead the church. They were looking to the old life of power struggle and one group trying to be more holy and more blessed than the other.
In the new life of resurrection, we are all blessed by God because we are all made in God’s image, and we have all been united to God through every part of our lives through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Truth is, we know from scripture that we already were all blessed by God, we already were all made in God’s image, and we already were all united to God. We just wouldn’t believe it. In the new life of resurrection, Jesus invites us to accept our blessedness, to accept the image of God in which we are made, and to accept our unity with God and one another.
Finally, in the new life of resurrection, there is unexpected blessing. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went from the tomb in joy because the angel had told them that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and suddenly, unexpectedly, Jesus met them, showed them that he truly had been raised, told them not to be afraid, and placed on them the mantle of apostles to the apostles. Unexpected blessing.
That meant letting go of the past, letting go of their former life and embracing this new life of apostle to the apostles. That meant a death for them, a death of their old life in embracing their new life.
For us, whenever a loved one dies, whenever the path we thought our life would take dies, whenever the assumed future that we think we will have dies, we are encouraged to let go of the past, to let go of our former life, learn to embrace our new life.
A young man I know is headed down a dark path of addiction and stealing, and it may already be too late for him to avoid jail. His parents have had to call the police as he keeps stealing from them and despite all their good efforts, he just keeps at it. For them, the death is letting go of the thought that they can help their son get off this path when he simply won’t choose to get off. For them, the death is accepting that their son may end up spending time in jail and may end up spiraling even further after that. For them, this means letting go of whatever future they thought they would have with their son and accepting the future that will come because of their son’s actions.
What will new life look like? They don’t know, and they are mourning. They are looking to the future with hope of some kind of resurrection, with no expectation of what that will be, and right now they are mourning.
We get to mourn. We get to return to the tomb, just as the Marys did, but we don’t stay in the tomb. We don't stay with cry night. We move forward into the life of resurrection that is coming. It may take longer than three days, and it won’t be happy all the time, but new life after death can be joyful. New life of resurrection is a life with joy rumbling beneath the surface. New life of resurrection is a life in which we look around after a time and realize, “I’m home.” New life of resurrection is life in which some of who we were and the ways we knew were right may not be anymore, and the new life of resurrection is life in which we find unexpected blessing.
Unexpected blessing like God choosing to die with us so that we are not alone even in death. Unexpected blessing like Jesus being resurrected so we can look to the future with hope and joy. Letting go of the past, releasing our fear of death, we can embrace the new life of resurrection and find that we are home.
The Rev. Brad Sullivan Lord of the Streets, Houston April 2, 2026 Maundy Thursday Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14 Psalm 116:1, 10-17 John 13:1-17, 31b-35
So, I know we don't actually talk about Peter denying Jesus, after his arrest, until tomorrow, on Good Friday, but I'm skipping ahead a little bit in the story because there are many ways we get to deny Jesus throughout our lives. Sure, there’s the obvious stuff like saying, “I no longer believe in Jesus,” but what about the less obvious ways where we deny Jesus by how we choose to follow Jesus?
I know that sounds strange, denying Jesus by how we choose to follow Jesus, but what about when we choose to follow Jesus by praying against all of the evil ones whom Jesus is going to send to damnation? It’s one thing when hurting or angry to pray against people, and Jesus hopefully comforts us in those prayers, and we get to give that hatred and anger as our offering to God. Then, Jesus reminds us to pray for the healing of our enemies, and we follow as Jesus’ disciples by offering that sometimes difficult prayer of blessing and God’s will upon even our enemies.
So, praying against our enemies to get our anger out, that’s one thing, but what about when we pray for the eternal damnation of our enemies with the absolute conviction that we are right and that Jesus truly is going to condemn those evil ones? That’s when we are denying Jesus, because we are praying and believing completely against how Jesus taught us to pray and believe.
Pray for your enemies. Bless those who persecute you. Don’t judge others as worthy of eternal damnation; we’re all a bunch of screw ups here, what the hell do any of us know. Those were the teachings of Jesus, so when we claim to know better and to pray in ways and judge people in ways that Jesus expressly told us not to, we are denying Jesus.
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What about when we declare that a war is being fought in Jesus’ name? Jesus, who said, “Put your swords away,” when enemies came to arrest him. Jesus who chose to be killed rather than summon hosts of angels to kill his murderers. Jesus who said, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword,” aka, war and killing people actually aren’t terribly great ideas. When we declare a war is being fought in Jesus’ name, we are denying Jesus, denying who he is and what he taught.
What about when we look at others with contempt or even indifference. You don’t matter; your needs don’t matter; I have everything I need, and if you’d just work harder, you would too, but you’re too lazy; I deserve my good things and you deserve your bad things; you’re not worth my time or effort. When we treat other people that way, we are denying Jesus who said, “Whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done to me.”
What about when we determine that any of our success and wealth that we get through our success and wealth-making efforts are all thanks to Jesus blessing us for our faithfulness? As much as we may be trying to give praise and glory to God, when we claim all of our riches and success are because we are particularly faithful to Jesus, we are actually denying Jesus, who never promised us success or wealth as a reward for faithfulness. No, when we claim God’s favor on us for being more successful and wealthier than others, we’re actually just claiming to be better than others, not only in our own eyes but also in God’s eyes.
Jesus didn’t say people will know we are his disciples by how strong our belief is in him. Jesus didn’t say people will know we are his disciples by how holy and righteous we are. Jesus certainly didn’t say people will know we are his disciples by how rich we get through all our rich-getting efforts, claiming that Jesus is the one blessing us with riches.
No, Jesus said people will know we are his disciples by how we love one another.
To illustrate this point, Jesus took the role of a servant during his last Passover meal with his disciples. He washed their feet and told them that if they didn’t let him wash their feet, they had no share in him. Not letting Jesus wash their feet was denying Jesus. Then, Jesus told them to wash one another’s feet, meaning they should serve one another. They should love one another and live out that love by actually, physically caring for one another.
Of course, we’re not very good at caring for other people if we are not cared for ourselves. So, Jesus told his disciples, you gotta let me wash you first. Be good sheep that you may be good shepherds. If we don’t let Jesus care for us and then assume we’re gonna care for others, we’re denying Jesus just as surely as Peter did after Jesus was arrested.
Love one another, Jesus taught. That’s how we proclaim Jesus in the world, by loving other people. Eventually we may get to tell folks that we believe in Jesus, if they ask, if they want to know, but our proclamation is first about loving other people. Our proclamation is not first about evangelizing other people or saving other people; Jesus already took care of that. Our proclamation is first about loving other people, continuing to live the healing love that Jesus lived. Our proclamation is to draw near to Jesus to be loved by Jesus in prayer, in rest, in scripture, in service, in fellowship, in adversity, in joy, and in sorrow, we draw near to Jesus to be loved by Jesus and to share that love with others.
Then, in those times when we do deny Jesus, because we all do, we repent. We return to the love of Jesus to share that love. When we deny Jesus by deciding which humans are bad and deserving of damnation, we return to Jesus with humility, choosing to see them as beloved, not damned. When we deny Jesus by deciding that our enemies or those others that we view with contempt are not worthy of Jesus’ love, we return to Jesus with humility, choosing to see Jesus in those other people, respecting their dignity. When we deny Jesus by determining that our blessings are due to our great faithfulness (and therefore other less-blessed people must not be as faithful), we return to Jesus with humility, choosing to trust Jesus not because of our success or failures but because Jesus showed us the way of love.
In Jesus, God said, I choose to join with you in every part of your lives, including being hated, tortured, and killed. Such is God’s love for us, and so Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
The Rev. Brad Sullivan Lord of the Streets, Houston March 15, 2026 4 Lent 1 Samuel 16:1-13 Psalm 23
John 9:1-41
Dang it, but I really don’t like when things go the way I don’t want them to go. I get that it’s not my world and I’m not in charge of everything, but if things in my life would go the way I want them to, and if things in other people’s lives would go the way I want them to, and if things in the world would go the way I want them to, I would be so much more pleased. Life would be perfect, right, if only God would listen to me and respond exactly as I want God to?
That would kind of make me God’s master which is a little bit problematic. Ok, that’s completely problematic. If I’m in charge of the way God runs the world, then I’ve really taken God’s place so I’m essentially God over everyone else, and yeah, that’s hugely problematic, because I don’t think anyone really wants me as God over them. I certainly don’t want anyone else to be God over me, and I also really don’t want to be God at all. I mean, I definitely want things to go the way I want them to go, but I really don’t want to be in charge of everything.
We human-type people tend not to be particularly good at playing God. Dictators, tyrants, warlords, they all try to force the world to go how they want it to, and they usually end up killing a bunch of people and bringing a lot of misery into world. Captains of industry, and ultra-wealthy business leaders are others who tend to try to make far too much of the world bend to their will, and while there’s a lot of money to be made, there’s usually a lot of people suffering because of the vast wealth made by a few.
Addicts are another group of people that tend to try to force the world go as they want it to go, and it tends to work pretty terribly for them too. Then, since the world is so terribly disobedient to the addict’s desires, they drink or use drugs at the world. “You won’t do what I want, world? Well I’ll show you!”
Like I said, we human-type people tend not to be particularly good as playing God. Saul, the first king of Israel, tried playing God, and unsurprisingly, it worked out pretty badly for him. Saul was in a war against the Philistines, and when he and the people of Israel saw how huge the Philistine army was, they were terrified.
God had told Saul that he was with him and not to worry about threats from others, but when Saul saw the people of Israel retreating in fear, he decided to make a sacrifice to God, rather than waiting for Samuel to do it. That wasn’t good. Saul wasn’t the one who was supposed to make sacrifices. Samuel was. So, this meant that Saul was trusting in the sacrifice, rather than trusting in God. Saul was putting himself in God’s place, trying to force things to go how he wanted them to go, rather than letting go of things he couldn’t control. He couldn’t control when Samuel arrived, so a faithful response would have been to offer prayers to God, placing the outcome in God’s hands, rather than trying to force God to give them victory through sacrifice.
Saul was trying to control God, therefore trying to put himself in God’s place, so after a few more incidences like that, God rejected Saul as king.
Then, it was Samuel’s time to be tempted to play God. Samuel was grieving over the rejection of Saul as king, grieving over the many ways Saul had failed as king. God grieved for a time as well, sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel. Before long, though, God was ready to move on. God wanted Samuel to go anoint the new king of Israel, and Samuel was still grieving. “How long will you grieve over Saul?” God asked. “I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil, and set out” to anoint the one I will show you to be the new king over Israel.
In other words, God was saying to Samuel, ‘Let it go, man. I’ve got other plans. New life will spring up from this death. Don’t fight it. Go with it into an unknown future, trusting that I am with you in this.’
It is a bit much to say Samuel was trying to play God in his grief over Saul, and at the same time, God did need to remind him to let the past go and move forward into an uncertain future. Saul was mourning for an imagined future with Saul as king. Whatever he thought that future was, it was suddenly gone.
I’m guessing most of us have mourned the loss of many imagined futures throughout our lives. We lose a job, and the future we thought we had is suddenly gone. A family member or friend dies, and a future of life with them is gone. We get attacked or beaten, and the future we thought we had is now darkened with fear and trauma. Our nation goes to war, and any number of possible futures are all thrown into chaos.
Any time those things happen, we’re going to mourn the loss of those possible and imagined futures. Of course we do, and I figure God mourns with us, loving us as God does. Our challenge is not to stay there, grieving the loss of the future we thought we might have. When we stay forever in that place of grief and will not let go of that imagined future, we are in that place like Samuel where we’re not exactly playing God, but we kinda are because we refuse to let go of what we have lost, longing for something that cannot be. “If only this had happened or that had happened. If only God had done what I wish he had done, things would have gone differently.” That’s when we do get into the, “I could have done this better,” territory, and we are kind of longing to take God’s place.
So, God says to us what God said to Samuel, “Let it go. I’ve got other plans now. We are people of resurrection, so new life will spring up from this death. You don’t need to fight it. Go with me into an unknown future, trusting that I am with you.’
Another way that we want to play God is when we sorrow at the loss of a longed for past. “In my day, we didn’t do things like…” whatever old people complain about, and yes, I am sometimes one of the old people who complains about how things are nowadays. Sometimes we lament that we just don’t this new generation, or that people aren’t doing things right. Kids are too noisy. Kids are too quiet. They should go outside and play more. What are all these kids doing running around outside, don’t they have parents? The schools aren’t right. The music isn’t right. People didn’t used to do things like that, or at least they’d be decent enough to be ashamed about it.
Jesus healed a blind man, and that seems like it’s obviously a good thing, right? Unless you were some of the religious folks back in the day when Jesus healed that blind man, and then you had complaints. Jesus shouldn’t have healed you, they said. For one thing, this is the wrong day to heal people, and for another thing, we’ve never heard of anything like this before. That’s startlingly close to, “In my day, we didn’t heal people on Saturday. We’d rest and let ‘em suffer it out till Sunday, like good God-fearing people. And another thing, any decent person would know you can’t have your sight restored if you’re born blind. I just don’t understand you kids these days. You must be a really terrible person for Jesus to have restored your sight.”
The religious leaders wanted the past that they knew and understood to continue on, unchanged. God seemed nice and orderly in that past. The rules made sense, and they were on the right side of those rules. Now with this new stuff that this carpenter’s kid was doing, performing miracles like they hadn’t seen before and even healing on the Sabbath, their comfortable past was turned upside down.
We’ve continued with challenges like this in the church, and very often when some seemingly new thing is happening in the church, groups of folks don’t like it, and there’s a split as one group stays with the ways things were and one group goes with this seemingly new thing God is doing. In the Episcopal Church, we’ve had changes such as the new prayer book: it’s 47 years old, almost half a century, but there are some folks who still won’t use it because it’s the new prayer book.
We’ve had changes about things like allowing for a person to get married again after that person has been divorced; it’s only been 53 years since that change was made. A year after that change, we began ordaining women as bishops, priests, and deacons, and more recently, we have allowed homosexual people fully to participate in the life of the church.
Each of these changes has turned the church upside down for some and been a moment of Jesus healing the blind man for others. Each of these changes has left people mourning an imagined future in which things hadn’t changed, and each of these changes has left people mourning the loss of a longed-for past.
Through these and a thousand other changes throughout the life of the church, we have always sought to remain faithful to Jesus, and through people’s upset and struggle, longing for the past or mourning the loss of an imagined future, Jesus has been with us saying, “Let it go. I’ve got other plans now. We are people of resurrection, and new life will spring up from this death. So you don’t need to fight it. Go with me into an unknown future, trusting that I am with you.”
For each of us personally as well, our futures often die, and our pasts cease to be. As much as we may want it at the time, none of us are God to force our way onto the world, and so God tells us, “Let it go. Mourn for a time, but let it go. We are people of resurrection, and I have other plans now. New life will spring up from this death, so stop fighting it. Go with me into an unknown future, trusting that I am with you.”
The Rev. Brad Sullivan Lord of the Streets, Houston March 8, 2026 3 Lent Exodus 17:1-7 Psalm 95 John 4:5-42
Don’t you just love it when your enemies get what’s coming to them? It’s like a delicious meal of deserved justice served with vengeance pie topped with self-righteous ice cream. It’s great. I love it when the bad guys fall and the really terrible people get exactly what they deserve. Enemies getting their comeuppance makes my little black heart sing.
Then, the rest of me starts feeling pretty rotten, actually. That part of me that sings at other people’s misfortune ends up making the rest of me rather sick. Rejoicing at my enemies’ downfall may feed my cold little black heart, but it feeds my heart poison and grows in me like a cancer.
It’s said that we are what we eat, and that is true of our spiritual food as well. Junk food and desert taste great, and when that’s all we eat, our bodies suffer. They stop working well. We end up with diabetes, and cancer, and heart disease, and even depression and anxiety can get worse from a bad diet.
When we feed our hearts and souls with junk food, our hearts and souls become unhealthy as well. Vengeance, delighting when our enemies are hurt, that’s like really bad junk food for our souls. Think about what that diet really looks like: anger; rage; happiness that others are hurting, that’s cruelty. We can’t really be healthy and happy people when we feed ourselves on cruelty. We can’t be healthy and happy people when we delight in people’s suffering, even the suffering of our enemies.
See, the more we eat of people’s suffering, the more we want that food, which means we end up wanting people to suffer. So, even though our enemies might deserve suffering, when we delight in their suffering, we end up becoming cruel people.
Another problem with delighting in our enemies’ suffering is that we let ourselves focus on them, rather than ourselves. If they are bad and are getting what’s coming to them, I don’t need to look at ways I harm people. It’s still there, though, festering and eating us up from the inside. So, it grows in the dark, like mold, like fungus, rotting us from the inside.
So, Jesus offers us different food. When he met the woman at the well, he told her he would give her water welling up within her to eternal life. Then Jesus talked to his disciples, telling them that the food he has to eat is doing the will of God.
Well, what was the will of God that Jesus kept doing throughout his ministry? Healing people. Healing communities. Showing people a better way than the way of vengeance, a better way than the way of fighting and being against one another.
When the woman at the well asked Jesus which mountain was the correct one to worship God, he told her, neither was the correct mountain. The time is coming, Jesus said, when people will worship God neither on one mountain or the other, but they will worship God in spirit and in truth.
So, what’s with the two mountains? They were the mountain on which the temple was built in Jerusalem and mount Gerizim in Samaria. The people of Israel and the people of Samaria were bitter enemies, so the argument over which mountain was the correct place to worship God was really an argument about which people God loved and which people God didn’t love.
So, when she asked which mountain was the best mountain, Jesus told her that folks would worship God neither on the mountain in Samaria, nor the mountain in Jerusalem. Instead, people would worship God in spirit and in truth. That sounds to me like all people get to worship God, regardless of which nation you belong to. That sounds to me like no more quarreling over whose mountain is correct, and if they stopped fighting over which mountain was correct, then they’d no longer be enemies. They’d no longer delight in one another’s suffering
The food that Jesus offers is for each of us as individual people, and the food that Jesus offers goes far beyond individual healing. Jesus offers food that grows into healing among communities and even healing among nations. A community and a nation full of peaceful, loving, compassionate people is a community and a nation that will spread that same peace, love, and compassion to others.
Now, this is not about turning a nation into a Christian nation. Jesus wasn’t preaching to kings and rulers. Jesus wasn’t calling for a religious conversion of governments. Jesus wasn’t talking about forcing his way on others. Jesus was speaking to a woman at a well and to his disciples. Jesus spoke to the masses, to the people. Jesus met with religious leaders. Jesus wasn’t taking over a nation’s government to force change from the top town. Jesus healed and taught people the way of love to change lives and communities from the ground up. That’s things grow after all, from the ground up.
The food that Jesus offers feeds us in ways that lead away from bitterness, anger, and cruelty and into peace, love, and compassion. The food of taking delight in our enemies’ suffering, decays our bodies and souls, making us bitter, angry, and cruel. The food Jesus offers feeds our bodies and souls with eternal life, making us peaceful, loving, and compassionate.
A community and a nation full of peaceful, loving, compassionate people is a community and a nation that will spread that same peace, love, and compassion to others. That peace, love, and compassion doesn’t spread through force feeding it, but by offering it and living it. When Jesus offered this food & water to the woman at the well, she wanted it.
She ran to tell others to come and see a man who, “who told me everything I’ve ever done.” All Jesus actually said was that she’d had five husbands and the man she was with wasn’t her husband. Rather than dismissing this woman as sinful for having five husbands, let’s ask ourselves, “Why?” Only men could sue for divorce, so she hadn’t left her husbands; they had dismissed her. Why?
Well, we don’t really know why five husbands had all sent her away, but we can guess that it left her feeling hurt and ashamed, probably bitter and resentful too. It could be a shameful thing to be dismissed by one husband, others wondering, “What’s wrong with her?” She’d been dismissed by five, so it’s a good bet she felt deep shame, like she was no good and unlovable.
Then, Jesus talked to her, not like damaged goods but like a fully important, beloved human. “If he only knew,” she probably thought. Then, she found out that he did know, and he wasn’t shaming her or treating her like a lesser human. That was healing for her. That was the food and water Jesus offered, welling up in her to eternal life.
The woman went from eating the bread of shame, bitterness, and resentment, to eating and drinking the love of God, the eternal life given by Jesus. Peace, love, and compassion was the food Jesus gave her, revealing the truth of her life, so she was no longer bound by it. There she was, fully exposed, and God was still calling her beloved. That’s being naked and unashamed, as we were created to be in Eden, in the beginning.
From there, the woman spread his message to others, bringing them to Jesus so he could feed them as well, the food Jesus offers growing from the ground up. That what Jesus calls us to do, to offer the same bread and water of peace, love, and compassion, to offer the same healing and eternal life we have be given to others. We’re reminded again and again to stick to this diet as well.
As much as delighting in our enemies’ downfall is juicy and delicious (and it is delicious), it is also cancerous, harmful food which rots us from the inside out. Set aside that food. Offer it to God. “Here, Lord, accept my offering to you of my anger, fear, resentment, desires for vengeance. Accept my offering to you of the cruelty in my heart. Then, please feed me with your peace. Feed me with your love. Feed me with your compassion. Amen.”
The Rev. Brad Sullivan Lord of the Streets, Houston February 22, 2026 1 Lent Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 Psalm 32 Matthew 4:1-11
Can you imagine if an Olympic athlete was so excited at having made it to the Olympics that they said, “Yea, I made it! Now I think I’ll rest up until my event and stop all preparation. I mean, I’m really good, so I’ll just go out there and assume it’ll be fine.” Yeah, probably not going to work out all that great. The athletes for the Olympics, or any great athletes train for years to master their sport. Even if they have huge natural talent, they gotta practice and learn, hone their skills, train their bodies, and discipline their minds to be able to compete at an elite level. Take the most naturally talented skater in the world with very little training, and throw them into the Olympics against lesser talents who have trained for years, and the natural talent guy is gonna come in last.
So, when “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, [and] fasted forty days and forty nights,” it wasn’t the first time that he had fasted or resisted temptation. We’re not told of other times that he fasted or resisted temptation throughout his life, but we know he did so because that’s how human beings work. Jesus’ natural talent at resisting temptation was through the roof, being God and all, but he was also human, so he still had to train his body and discipline his mind to be able to make it through those 40 days. If you’ve never fasted before or resisted any great temptation, and then you try it out for the first time for forty days, you ain’t gonna make it.
That would be like a 30-year-old, out of shape, non-athlete strapping on a pair of skis or ice skates and trying to win gold at the Olympics. It’s not gonna happen. You’d crash out, embarrass yourself, and possibly die. Winning the Olympics, or even getting to the Olympics, again takes years of training, years of dedication to your sport, years of controlling and conditioning your body, years of discipline.
Jesus won the gold in that forty day fast and resisting temptation, and to do so, he needed years of training, years of controlling his body and mind, years of discipline. He grew up learning Torah, the Jewish scriptures, and he grew up learning the ways of life of the Jewish people. He grew up with a life of prayer. Jesus lived a life of walking with God throughout his days. He followed the law, followed God’s commandments, and grew into the way of love though his childhood and into his adulthood. Jesus also grew up following the way of repentance. He chose to be baptized when John was baptizing people in the river Jordan, and he followed the way of repentance in the yearly Jewish Day of Atonement. Whether he needed it or not, Jesus followed the way of repentance, looking at your life and seeing how you might change to more fully walk in the way of love.
We are now in the Christian season of repentance, Lent, a season of discipline, a season of penitence, a season of fasting.
I was asked last week, “Why do we fast? What’s the purpose?” Well, there are several reasons why someone might fast. With a traditional fast, you simply don’t eat from sunup to sundown. So, you have and early breakfast, then you don’t eat again until a late dinner, after the sun has set.
Why in the world would someone do something so crazy? It teaches us discipline. When we’re hungry during the day, we discipline our bodies and discipline our minds to overcome that hunger and wait to eat until after sundown. Fasting teaches us control over our bodies and our desires. Fasting also teaches us to trust in God as we remember that even as we hunger for food, we also hunger for unity with God, unity with one another. Our food is not only the physical food we eat, but also to follow in the way of love. Fasting is meant to remind us to feed ourselves on the way of loving God and loving others.
So, there are other fasts we can choose. Rather than the traditional daily fast from food, we can choose to fast from some particular thing, as you hear people giving up something for Lent. Whatever it is you give up, the point is the same. We’re teaching ourselves to discipline our bodies and minds, to overcome our desires, and to live more fully the way of love.
Then, with the discipline of fasting, we’re more prepared to give up things that actually matter. Following the way of Jesus, we give up things like punching people in the face when they bothered us, shouting at others, stealing, lying. What about a fast from taking advantage of others? What about a fast from assuming the worst in other people? What about a fast from letting anger guide us?
Jesus fasted and disciplined his body and mind over his whole life. He fasted from things like over-charging folks for what he made in his carpenter shop. He fasted from deciding that prayer and committing himself to the way of love was getting boring and he wanted to just stop working at it for a few months. Jesus fasted from assuming that because he was God, he didn’t have to work that hard at repentance and being kind and loving toward others. “Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself…” (Philippians 2:6-7). Jesus disciplined himself, fasting, working hard at living a life in which he honored others, controlling his own desires and emotions.
That is why we fast during the season of Lent.
We fast to discipline our bodies during the season of penitence. Now, penitence is a form of prayer in which we confess our sins, we make things right with others when possible, and we work to change our lives so we stop harming others. Penitence is a prayer that Jesus practiced, whether he needed to or not.
More than saying “sorry” when we mess up, Penitence is a form of prayer which requires discipline, dedication, and practice. Penitence is a prayer that is done all the time, day in and day out. Sometimes you’re going to be voicing a prayer to God, confessing to God ways that you’ve harmed others. Other times, no one’s going to know that you’re praying, such when you tell someone you were wrong for how you treated them, and you see if you can do something to make it right. That’s just making amends to people, and that’s part of the prayer of repentance.
That prayer takes practice. Likely our first response when we do something wrong to someone is to deny it, try to minimize it, blame someone else, or just hope don’t get caught. Well, that’s the easy way, no work required, and it works out about as well as a thirty-year-old, out of shape, non-athlete throwing on a pair of skates and jumping into the Olympics. You get hurt. Others get hurt. No one wins.
Penitence requires practice, making a habit out of admitting our faults and trying to make things right with other people. We practice that over and over, making it our way of life, and every time we do, that is part of the prayer of penitence. Through discipline, dedication, and practice, penitence becomes a way of life, and the results are healing and love.
Now, one man said that he couldn’t admit to people when he wronged them because if he told this one guy that he had stollen from him, then he’d get his ass beat. “Ok,” I said, “so get your ass beat.” Then keep on doing the right thing. Keep on praying the prayer of penitence. If you know you’re going to fess up when you wrong someone and you know you’re going to get your ass beat when you do, then you might stop stealing from people. Then you might have more people on your side, and you won’t be at odds with everyone around you. You wouldn’t have to worry constantly about someone wanting to beat your ass.
That’s the way of life of penitence, a prayer that takes discipline, dedication, and practice. No one will know you are praying. You’re just living your discipline and dedication, and that way of life becomes your prayer.
It sounds like a lot of work. It is, and it’s also freedom. Eliod Kipchoge, Olympic gold medalist and world champion marathon runner said, “Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions.” Only the disciplined ones are free. The undisciplined ones are slaves to moods and passions.
You can’t just strap on a pair of skates or skis and compete in the Olympics. Jesus didn’t just decide one day it would be a really good idea to go hungry for a month. He practiced disciplining his body for years so that he wasn’t a slave to his moods and his passions. Jesus disciplined his body and mind and dedicated his life to the way of love so that when the devil’s temptations came, he was free. Jesus was free to be more powerful than the temptations of the devil. Rather than be a slave to his passions and a slave to his moods, Jesus was free because of his discipline, dedication, and practice, and so can we be.
Jesus said, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. Let your light so shine, that others may see your good works and give glory to God. This is more than getting someone to say, “Yay, God is good,” because they see your good works.
Giving glory to God is not the same as giving a “like” to someone’s good works. That person was kind; they were a light in the darkness. “Like,” and God is glorified. That’s not exactly giving glory to God. Seeing goodness and kindness in others and then giving glory to God comes through following in those same ways of life. When we see goodness and kindness in others, giving glory to God means loving others and showing kindness as well, living as God hopes for us to live.
The way God hopes for us to live, is to live in ways that minimize harm to each other and give the greatest healing and love that we can. We’re all God’s children, and God looks at us all with love, care, and concern. So when we talk about God’s way and God’s will for us, we’re talking about God desiring peace, community, and love for our lives. God desires healing and reconciliation for us so that we can love even our enemies.
That’s no small task, living as God desires for us to live. Following God’s will and God’s ways requires work on our parts. Daily, hourly, giving glory to God through our actions, through treating others with honor and love, respecting the dignity of every human being.
Glorifying God is not through words and religious practice, but through actions. Those words and religious practices are good, so long as they help guide our actions, to love and honor others, and respect this dignity of every human being. So, when Jesus said that he came not to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them, that’s what he was talking about, how we live our lives.
We heard what the prophets had to say about the law and how we live our lives in our reading from Isaiah. He said that following religious practices just to get you right with God isn’t the deal. When Isaiah spoke to the people, they were fasting, praying, making sacrifices…doing all the right things to make God pleased with them.
If we were to translate these practices into our life as Christians, you could say they were going to church every Sunday, giving to the church, studying the Bible, praying and turning their lives over to Jesus, doing everything they were supposed to do. Unfortunately, none of that was translating into how they lived their lives minute by minute, day by day. They were doing all the right religious stuff, but actually caring about other people enough to be a light for them, to heal them, to be healed together, that’s the part they were missing. Actually caring about other people enough to be a light for the, to heal them, to be healed together, that’s at the heart of the Gospel.
I came to fulfill the law and the prophets, Jesus said. The law and the prophets’ interpretation of the law were given by God for our sake, out of care and concern for us. The law and the prophets were given to help us learn how to walk in the light. The law and the prophets were given to help to minimize the damage we cause from generation to generation and to heal the damage we cause from generation to generation, because the damage and the healing we cause echoes throughout generations.
We know the harm we cause one another echoes throughout generations because we live that harm every day. We are still living to this day the echoes of the harm caused when the first human being was chained and sold as a slave in this nation. We are living the echoes of the generational trauma that came as hundreds of thousands of people were stolen from their homes in Africa, chained, and sold as slaves here in America, as the slavers used up and discarded the bodies of human beings as nothing more things to make them money.
Slavers used the law, or rather misused the law, to justify their captivity, beating, killing, raping, and terrorizing Africans who were taken from their lands and sold into slavery. The slavers would say, “There were slaves in scripture, therefore we can have slaves now,” but they could only say that by misunderstanding the scriptures and using the scriptures selfishly, rather than seeking to fulfill the law and prophets like Jesus did.
Those slavers built a nation on torture, rape, and murder of human beings. Those slavers built an economy on torture, rape, and murder of human beings. Those slavers built an economy on treating human beings as disposable things, used to make money and then discarded. Generations and generations later, our economy still works that way. Billionaires have luxury surpassing kings and pharaohs of legend, while the lowest of their workers don’t make enough even to afford a one-bedroom apartment.
Sure, we don’t have slavery anymore, but the grossly wealthy, like the slavers of yore, still create their great wealth by using up and discarding the bodies of the human beings as nothing more than things to make them money. The way our economy was built is the way our economy still is. The echoes of the harm done to even one person reverberate throughout generations.
If only the slavers had understood that, had understood what Jesus meant when he said that he came to fulfill the law and the prophets. To do that, you have to care deeply about people and then look at scripture deeply through that lens of caring deeply about people.
For example, Genesis 4:10 says, “For anybody who destroys a single life it is counted as if he destroyed an entire world, and for anybody who preserves a single life it is counted as if he preserved an entire world.”
Now, those words may not sound like anything you’ve ever read in the Bible, because they’re not. The actual words of Genesis 4:10 are, “And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!” That was God speaking to Cain after he had killed Abel. What have you done, Cain, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground?
I said that Genesis 4:10 says, “Anybody who destroys a single life is counted as if he destroyed an entire world,” because that is a rabbinic teaching about Genesis 4:10 in the Talmud. The Talmud is called the oral Torah, teachings of rabbis on the first five books of the Bible over centuries. In Genesis 4:10, rabbis teach that the word for blood was not singular, but plural. Your brother’s bloods are crying to me from the ground. The life-bloods of Abel were crying to God from the ground, meaning that all of Abel’s descendants who would never now be born, were crying to God from the ground.
Cain had not just killed his brother Abel. He had killed the countless generations of people, the world of people, who could have come from him. “Anybody who destroys a single life is counted as if he destroyed an entire world.”
Fulfilling the law and the prophets requires caring about people enough and looking deeply at scripture enough to realize that the harm we do to one another echoes through centuries and millennia. Jesus understood this when he taught that it isn’t enough simply not to murder someone else. Even if you hate someone, it brings generational harm, like slavery did. When you traumatize a single life, you traumatize an entire world. The hurt we inflict on one another is passed down to our children, and to their children, and to their children’s children, spreading and echoing for countless generations…and so does healing.
Remember, the full teaching from Genesis 4:10 is “Anybody who destroys a single life is counted as if he destroyed an entire world, and anybody who preserves a single life is counted as if he preserved an entire world.”
Jesus came to heal the wounds we inflict on one another, and Jesus came to lead us into healing those same wounds and hopefully causing fewer and fewer of those wounds. We are the light of the world, Jesus said, and that means we are hoping to help cause less harm and to heal others in this life so that healing and light will follow for generations.
That is the work of the church. You are light, Jesus said, so let that light shine before others. Show them, teach them, offer the light of the ways of God. We don’t do that with condemnation and threats, telling people how sinful we think they are. Jesus didn’t you are a light to burn people with or to set them on fire till they finally listen to you. That doesn’t glorify God. That just causes more harm.
Jesus said to be the light by how you live, and offer that way to others. That will glorify God. When we help one another heal from the hurts of our lives, and from the generational hurts of the world, that will glorify God. When we look upon one another and choose to see each person as beloved, that glorifies God.
As far as religious practice goes, that’s what we do to keep kindling the light within us. We keep connecting to God. We keep giving over fears and anxieties to God. We keep turning every day over to God’s guidance. Then we live that nearness and peace, loving others, honoring others, and respecting the dignity of every human being, even our enemies. When we glorify God in those ways, then the hurt that is echoing throughout generations is soothed and lessened as the healing we bring echoes throughout generations as well.
