20 Pentecost

 

October 26, 2025

 

Psalm 84; Luke 18.9-14

+ Well, we have a new bishop.

 

A bishop we have been praying for every Sunday and every Wednesday for the last several months.

 

And here we are.

 

I, for one, am very happy.

 

I think Shay Craig is just exactly what this diocese needs at this time.

 

And as I shared with our delegates yesterday at Prairie Knights at Standing Rock:

 

This is a new era in our diocese.

 

A much anticipated era for us Progressive Christians in this diocese.

 

Shay, I hope, is the answer to the prayer many of us have been praying for.

 

For 36 years our Diocese has been known as a very conservative diocese.

 

And for those of us who labored here, who endured policies and not-so-wonderful treatment for our convictions, for our beliefs and foresight, those 36 years were hard ones.

 

This December it will be 10 years since St. Stephen’s sought Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight (or DEPO)  so that we could make sure all people—especially our LGBTQ loved ones—were able to have the marriage rites of the Church.

 

As many of us know, the days that followed were often dark days.

 

We felt, at times, alone in this Diocese

 

We endured being the odd ducks for our stance.

 

We endured shunning and downright negativeness for that stand we made.

 

In those dark days, many of us hoped and longed for a time when what we stood for would be the norm.

 

In fact, there were times when the Psalm for today spoke directly to us:

 

Those who go through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs, *
for the early rains have covered it with pools of water.

They will climb from height to height, *
and the God of gods will be revealed in Zion.

 

Thanks to our provisional bishops and now with the election of Shay, that hope, I believe, is being realized.

 

In fact, it warmed my heart and the hearts of many of us at Convention that in Bishop-elect Craig’s first address to the Diocese, she began by expressing her appreciation for St. Stephen’s and all we stand for.

 

I don’t know about you, but I felt that all we have stood for and spoke out for and fought for was most definitely validated in some way with those words.

 

We have much to rejoice about today and in these coming months.

 

Now, I know you have heard me expound mightily from this pulpit in the past about my frustrations with the diocese.

 

In fact, as most of you know, for several years I simply stepped back from diocesan involvement.

 

Not only was I frustrated but I was realizing that my frustration was making me into a toxic element in this diocese.

 

As can often happen, especially when we express our anger at things instead of keeping quiet, but then just live in that anger.  

 

There were times, as many of you heard, when I felt that our efforts in this diocese were for naught.

 

I believe the phrase I used was: “I feel like we’re rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

 

And I wasn’t alone.

 

I was talking to another priest of this diocese at convention who expressed that same feeling to me.

 

But over these last several months, I have stepped back into diocesan involvement.

 

As you know, I was a part of the Nominating Committee (along with Dan Rice).

 

I was part of the Transition Committee (along with John Baird).

 

And on Friday I was elected to a three-year term to the Standing Committee.

 

I will say in all honesty that I am excited to once again be serving in the diocese.

 

The future is looking more brighter than it did before—at least in this moment.

 

And I truly do believe and hope that things can be done to revitalize and renew our diocese.

 

Of course, if we think a new bishop can magically do that for us, we will be disappointed.

 

It is not the new Bishop’s sole job to do that anymore than it is the Rector’s sole job to do that in a parish.

 

It is out job. Together.

 

And an innovative, committed leader can help lead us to do that work.

 

But with the energy that a new visionary bishop brings to the diocese, we can be rejuvenated and well.

 

We can be motivated to step up and help.

 

We can actually do some of the things that we have been hoping to do before this and simply could not.

 

As I said, this is the dawn of a new era in our diocese.

 

And we should celebrate that fact.

 

But that change begins with us.

 

Each of us.

 

For me, it began when I recognized my own toxicity and worked hard to move beyond it.

 

 

It also helped that I made a real and true effort to actually started praying for the diocese in a concentrated way.

 

Prayer is the key.

 

Not controlling prayer.

 

Rather, prayer that allows us to surrender to God’s will.

 

Prayer that allows God’s Spirit to truly work in our midst.

 

Prayer that opens ourselves up so that the Spirit can actually work through us.

 

That’s essentially what’s happening in today’s Gospel reading.

 

In our story we find the Pharisee.

 

A Pharisee, as you probably can guess, was a very righteous person.

 

They belonged to an ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism that placed utmost importance on a strict observance of the Law of Moses—the Torah.

 

The Pharisee is not praying for any change in himself.

 

He arrogantly brags to God about how wonderful and great he is in comparison to others.

 

 The tax collector—someone who was ritually unclean according the Law of Moses— however, prays that wonderful, pure prayer

 

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

 

It’s not eloquent.

 

It’s not fancy.

 

But it’s honest.

 

And it cuts right to heart of it all.

 

To me, in my humble opinion, that is the most perfect prayer any of us can pray.

 

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

 

It’s a prayer I have held very, very dear for so long.

 

And it is a prayer that had never let me down once.

 

Prayers for mercy are probably one of the purest and most honest prayers we can make.

 

And what I love even more about this parable is the fact that the prayer of the Pharisee isn’t even necessarily a bad prayer in and of itself.

 

I mean, there’s an honesty in it as well.

 

The Pharisee is the religious one, after all.

 

He is the one who is doing right according to organized religion.  

 

He is doing what Pharisees do; he is doing the “right” thing; he is filling his prayer with thanksgiving to God.  

 

In fact, every morning, the Pharisee, like all orthodox Jewish men even to this day, prayed a series of “morning blessings.”

 

These morning blessings include petitions like

 

“Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the Universe, who made me a son of Israel.”

 

“Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the Universe, who did not make me a slave.”

 

And this petition:

 

“Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the Universe, who did not make me a woman.”

 

So, this prayer we hear the Pharisee pray in our story this morning is very much in line with the prayers he would’ve prayed each morning.

 

Again, we should be clear: we should all thank God for all the good things God grants us.

 

The problem arises in the fact that the prayer is so horribly self-righteous and self-indulgent that it manages to cancel out the rightness of the prayer.

 

The arrogance of the prayer essentially renders it null and void.

 

The tax collector’s prayer however is so pure.

 

It is simple and straight-to-the-point.

 

This is the kind of prayer Jesus again and again holds up as an ideal form of prayer.

 

And sometimes it’s just enough of a prayer that it can actually kill off a bit of that toxicity we have allowed to fester within us.

 

Sometimes it’s enough of a prayer that it can soften our hearts and open our spirits to God’s love and lights.

 

Sometimes it’s enough of a prayer that it can actually change us in a positive way to do the work God is calling us to do.

 

As we being this new era in the Diocese together, let us do just that.

 

Let us do the work God is calling us to do with our hearts and our minds open.

 

Truly open.

 

God, have mercy on all of us

 

Let us look forward to a potentially bright future with true hope and true joy.

 

And let us be willing and able to work hard alongside our new bishop to make this potentially bright future the reality we have be longing for and praying for.

 

May God bless and have mercy on the Diocese of North Dakota as we being this new era.

 

May God bless and have mercy on Bishop-elect Shay Craig as she leads us forward into this new era.

 

May God bless and have mercy on St. Stephen’s as we continue to live out our visionary ministry.   

 

And may God bless and have mercy on each of us as we heed our calling from God’s Holy Spirit to do the work we need to do to renew and revive our diocese today and in the days to come.

 

May we truly rejoice to find the desolate valley renewed into a place of springs as we climb from height to height, finding that God is being revealed to us here in our midst.

 

Amen.