YEAR A-PENTECOST XXII

A sermon given on Sunday, October 25, 2026

by Sr. Helen Agnes, SSM

As someone who is not a native New Englander, the changing of seasons has always felt like a special time for me. Growing up in Florida, the lamentation often heard among my family members was, “If only we had four seasons.” This was usually heard during fall and winter, as it was rare to see any leaves changing to any color other than brown. Snow was also out of the question, except for the one year we did manage to get around an inch or two of snow. Naturally the whole city shut down for the day.

Each season, wherever it is experienced, has its own beauty if one knows how and where to look. My parents would take me to the Appalachians just to see the fall foliage whenever possible, and this was the beginning of my journey of noticing the changes that nature underwent each year. It’s a reminder that change is an inherent part of life that can indeed be very beautiful and life-giving. However, there are also changes that happen in nature, and in our own lives, that may be much more subtle or difficult to understand. Such transitions between one stage of life and another still have meaning even in the midst of our struggle to navigate them.

In today’s Old Testament reading, the Israelites must face the reality of entering the promised land without Moses, their revered leader for forty years in the wilderness. While they have Joshua, whom Moses chose to lead the people after him, there is still no one that can match the impactful presence that Moses had on the people. This isn’t just because of all the signs and wonders that Moses did among them, but as the scripture says, the Lord knew Moses “face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10). His relationship with God was unlike anything that anyone had experienced up until that point. Moses was allowed to draw so close to the presence of God that, in Exodus, when he asks to see the glory of God, God permits him to see God’s back. The encounter, and even future interactions with God, causes the skin of Moses’ face to shine. God and Moses’ close relationship is only highlighted by the fact that today’s passage tells us that Moses dies by “the Lord’s command” and is buried in an unknown place (Deuteronomy 34:5). It is traditionally believed this is due to God being the one who actually buries Moses, a fitting end to an ultimately very familiar relationship.

Most importantly though, God spoke through Moses to give the Israelites the law they were to live by in order to be in covenant relationship with God. Now with Moses gone, their direct line to the presence of God is no longer the same. So begins the mediation of priests between God and the people through the ancestral line of Aaron, Moses’ brother. The implications of this change in spiritual leadership is significant for the Israelites’ interactions with God. While there are more religious leaders through which to interact with God, even these mediators do not have the same relationship with God as Moses did and conveyed during his lifetime.

Like changes in seasons, so too do human relationships and situations change over time, because change is ultimately a necessary part of what it means to be human. As we grow in our experiences from childhood to adulthood, our relationships with God, others and even our own sense of self transforms as we learn more about ourselves and the world around us. As the Israelites traveled across the wilderness from a life of slavery to a life of freedom in the promised land, they needed constant assurances of God’s presence with them through Moses. With the promised land in sight, they now enter a new stage in their relationship to the divine without their strongest spiritual leader. The Book of Deuteronomy tells us that the people take time to mourn the loss of Moses, but the story continues soon after with the Book of Joshua, as the people’s new leader encourages them to move forward into the promised land.

I think perhaps it’s more than coincidence that next Sunday will be the Feast of All Saints, a liminal time where we remember all those people of faith both known and unknown who have gone ahead of us on the pilgrim way. Each of us know and have stories to tell of the people of faith who in some way or another have been a part of our lives and helped us on our spiritual journeys. Some of them are family and friends, others may be officially recognized saints who have inspired us, and some may be ordinary people who have still made a difference in our lives in one way or another. What’s most important to remember is that our journeys of faith do not happen alone: they happen in community with one another, and they necessitate an active relationship with God.

This is the point that Jesus makes when he responds to the question the Pharisees ask him in today’s Gospel reading. In answer to the question of what the greatest commandment is, Jesus states that there are actually two great commandments: to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and to “love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). Just as Moses’ relationship with God and the Israelites was instrumental in propelling God’s people onward to the promised land, so too do we need Christ and our neighbors above all else to grow into the people we are called to be. As both God and man, Jesus is the ultimate mediator and example of how to relate to and serve God and others in our lives.

Particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, there is a theme that runs through the text that demonstrates Jesus as a new Moses figure. Both Moses and Jesus were under the threat of death soon after their birth and had to be hidden away, and the Gospel of Matthew is the only gospel that describes Jesus and his parents fleeing into Egypt. Matthew is also the only gospel that places Jesus on a mountain when he delivers his teaching of the beatitudes, hence why it’s also known as the sermon on the mount. This directly parallels Moses going up to Mount Sinai to receive the first ten commandments of God’s covenant with the Israelites. Jesus’ teaching is thus the beginning of a new covenant between God and all those who have faith through Christ.

In a world under constant changes of growth and challenge, Jesus reminds us that the ultimate power that prevails under all circumstances is that of love. After the Gospel passage for today, Jesus goes on to condemn the Pharisees for their hypocrisy in following the rituals of the law, but not the heart of the law. They do not allow themselves to be transformed by love, only following a superficial faith that ultimately benefits themselves but not others. As Jesus makes clear, love demands an all-encompassing intention to follow God’s ways, as well as attention to the needs of others over one’s own desires. There are times where this is not an easy path, and like Moses, there is no complete guarantee we will see the ultimate fruits of our labor when it comes to serving God and others.

This, I believe, is the reason for having a community of faith that works together. Love of God and love of neighbor are meant to complement each other, as one is not complete without the other. I have come to experience this on a deeper, personal level as a Sister of St. Margaret. As sisters in a religious order, we rely on each other to make our communal life of prayer and service to others happen. This was as our founder John Mason Neale intended when he envisioned an order of women devoted to Jesus in worship and in caring for the sick. He guided the sisters in this work for several years, but being in ill health himself for most of his life, John Mason Neale died before even seeing the first convent building for his order completed. Yet the sisters continued on in their ministry of love, which eventually took them from England to America, spreading out to mission houses across the country. As times and locations have changed our ministry is very different from what it once was in the early days. Where once we acted as medical nurses, we now act as what I like to think of as nurses for the soul, as the main focus of our ministry now is hospitality at our retreat house. Still, our guiding principle remains the same, as the motto John Mason Neale left us is “love first, love midst, love last.”

There is no season of our lives in which love does not or cannot belong, because love is for all times. Love itself is the sign of the presence of God, as the ancient Latin hymn Ubi caritas proclaims: “where charity and love are, God is there.” I was not always an Episcopalian, but when my parents and I started to visit an Episcopal church before I entered high school, this hymn was often sung when we went. As I allowed the music and the words to sink into me, I felt the presence of God in a way that I hadn’t before. It became clear to me that one didn’t need to have some mountaintop experience to be in the presence of God, but that God could be experienced through loving and serving others, by being and sharing in community with one another. The translated text of Ubi caritas makes this clear: The love of Christ has gathered us into one. Let us rejoice and be glad in Him. Let us fear and love the living God. And from a sincere heart let us love one another. I am forever grateful for both the individual spiritual figureheads in my life, as well as for the many different communities of faith that have lifted me up in both times of joy and challenge. As the seasons of our lives ebb and flow, may we trust in God’s loving power as we continue to serve Christ in one another.