Sermon for Trinity III, preached by Fr Kyle Babin, from The Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, PA, USA

A few months ago, one of my newest parishioners showed up for our weekly adult formation class bearing a gorgeous violet peony freshly plucked from her garden. It was the beginning of spring, and the first flowers were in the inchoate stages of growth. She handed the small flower to me in a glass vase filled with water, clearly intended as a gesture of kindness. The vibrant color of that little flower brightened my day. After class that evening, before leaving the church, I placed it on the desk in my office.

But when I returned the next morning, I was utterly surprised. Being ridiculously inept in caring for plants, I had not realized that the little peony would be transformed overnight into a much larger flower. Indeed, within twelve hours, the flower had grown exponentially, with petals spread wide open as if reaching towards the sun. It took my breath away, and I immediately marveled at the quiet, mysterious life that plants have. They change so imperceptibly but dramatically in a short period of time.

As I’ve considered it, the quiet, dramatic blossoming of that violet peony given to me by a parishioner seems an apt metaphor for the latent power of the Gospel, a power that is known when seen and experienced, but otherwise, may be difficult to detect. It may, in fact, be difficult to trust.

And a spirit of trust is necessary for those seventy-two (or seventy, depending on how you translate it) laborers whom our Lord sends ahead of him into the places where he himself intends to go. There’s a strange tension between the abundance of the harvest and the dearth of laborers going out into the harvest. Many in Jesus’s ambit are unaware of the dynamism of the Gospel message, perhaps even oblivious to the vast potential for the harvest to bear fruit in response to preaching, healing, and teaching.

And at the same time, there’s a remarkable simplicity to the proclamation of the Gospel. Jesus instructs the seventy-two to carry few belongings along the way. They should not waste time in frivolous conversation. There’s a single-minded purpose to this mission, along with an exigency to spread the Gospel message, to heal, and to cast out demons. People are desperately in need of the good news.

But Jesus balances this sense of haste by enjoining stability and patience, too. Those sent into the mission field should not be restless, moving from house to house. They need to put down roots, so that the Gospel can be embraced and loved. Nor are they to guard the Gospel so zealously that they attempt to impose it on those who refuse it. Instead, they should hold it reverently but lightly. The Gospel has a power all its own, a power that surpasses the obsessive human need to control it.

And if we were to press this story even more, can we perhaps glean something about the spiritual and mental posture of those seventy-two disciples? Could it be that they don’t yet trust the Gospel enough? They are, of course, willing to go into the field of the harvest. But do they really know how magnificent the harvest can be? Are they too reliant on the things of this world in fulfilling their mission? Are they too eager for the Gospel to be received by everyone they meet, naïve about the rejection they will experience? Are they so energetic about Christ’s good news that they are tempted to move about restlessly, eager to witness miraculous healings and demons bowing down before them? Can they be content with the extraordinarily quiet power of the treasure they are to share with the world?

This hidden potentiality reminds me of the latent life within that violet peony given to me by my parishioner. I, for one, had no clue of what that little flower could become. But subtly and with remarkable alacrity, that flower grew into something magnificent, if small and delicate. That flower was also a fitting metaphor for the budding spiritual life of the one who gave it to me. Over some months, her own faith blossomed and deepened into a quiet fervor that moved me in a profound way, until she was baptized at Easter.

It seems that we live in an age where there are serious trust issues with the Gospel. For some, a bad experience with the Church occludes any desire to find good news in the apostolic witness. For many in the Church, anxiety over perceived decline breeds an unexpressed mistrust for the Gospel to speak forcefully on its own. We feel compelled to rely more on ourselves, on our flashy projects and heavy agendas. We have become deeply impatient with the long, stable growth of seeds planted by God, mistaking length of time for weakness of potential. Too often, we make ministry about us and not about the One from whom it comes and to whom it points. We mistake the sign for the deeper truth conveyed by the sign.

Likewise, the seventy-two return to Jesus from their time in the mission field, rejoicing in the feats accomplished after they were sent out two by two. But our Lord gently redirects their gaze not to the demonstrable and earth-shaking symbols of the power of the kingdom of God, but to the persistent and marvelous seeds of faith that are gifts from the One who calls us as his own.

It may be that our beloved Anglo-Catholic tradition is a much-needed witness in a time when the Church has become too insecure about the efficacy of Christian witness. The elegant tradition of which we are heirs has always put the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty at the forefront of life in Christ. At its best, it has redirected the gaze of Jesus’s followers to a mysterious power of God present in the sacraments and in the vigorous preaching of the Word. And then, it has taken this good news out into the streets, two by two, as an effective witness to those who would open their hearts to receive this Word. And little by little, as a peony blooming indiscernibly overnight, in stability and constancy, the seeds sown in the hearts of the faithful have borne fruit to the glory of God.

For us Anglo-Catholics in the twenty-first century, we can learn from the Church’s mistakes in being too overzealous for the Gospel, protecting it as if God were not the author of that same Gospel. At times, we’ve been too reluctant to shake the dust off our feet in front of those who would refuse to be touched by our labor.

But no matter the reception or lack of reception we experience, as we become bearers of the Word in our own day, one thing remains true. To all whom we meet and in all the places where we may go, the kingdom of God has drawn near. As stewards of the mysteries of God, we have only to trust the startlingly quiet power of the Gospel.

It all begins with prayer. Let us pray earnestly and with unflinching trust that the Lord of the harvest will send laborers into that harvest. For those of us who have already responded to that call, it’s enough to tend the plants sprouting from the seeds of faith, to water them faithfully but not excessively, and to expose them to just the right amount of light. The rest is up to God. And soon, I suspect we will find that the seeds of that Gospel faith have blossomed into fruit more abundant than we could ever have asked for or imagined.

preached by Fr Kyle in St Barnabas Jericho on Sunday 6 July 2025.