 |
| Salvation is not about your afterlife, it's about our collective liberation, so get your shoes on we've got some neighbors to love. |
Proper 18, Year A:
©2026 The Rev. Seth Olson
This sermon was delivered on the 15th Sunday after Pentecost at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles in Hoover, AL. A video of the sermon may be found here.
Holy God, may my words be your words, and when my words are not your words, may your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.
We’ll come back to this perplexing good news in Matthew about how to resolve conflict, and the familiar message regarding Christ being in our midst when two or three of us gather. For now, let’s start with Exodus 12.
“Eat [the Passover meal] with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand.” So says God to the whole congregation of God’s people. In other words: Get dressed. Put your shoes on. Grab what you need. Do not settle in. Eat like people who may need to leave tonight. If you can’t tell, there is urgency hanging over the Passover meal.
A lamb. Unleavened bread. Bitter herbs. Blood on the doorposts. Neighbors gathering with neighbors. Everyone dressed for departure.
And all of it happening at twilight—that moment when the old day has almost disappeared, but the new one has not quite arrived.
Israel is still enslaved.
Pharaoh is still Pharaoh.
The sea has not yet opened.
Nothing visible has changed.
And yet, God tells them:
Dress for freedom. Practice liberation before you have tasted liberty. Eat the meal of a free people while you are still living inside the house of bondage.
There is something in that image that sticks with me…
But before we Christians go farther, we need to remember whose story this is.
Passover is not merely an ancient Christian illustration waiting for us to discover Jesus hidden inside it… so, the next time someone asks you, “Have you found Jesus?” Please do not reply:“Yep, we found him. He was hiding in the Passover story the whole time!” I digress.
The Exodus story, generally, and the Passover Meal, in particular, aren’t worthless stories, just waiting for us to infuse them with Jesus… NO! This is Israel’s story, a sacred memory but a living reality within Judaism, in Jesus’ Day and in our day.
Jesus knew this story because Jesus was Jewish. He was formed within this story and celebrated this liberation as part of his people’s memory. We receive it with reverence, remembering that we have been grafted into a story whose roots existed long before us.
And what a story it is! Stepping inside it we hear the cry of an oppressed people rising up to God. For Pharaoh has built a society that depends upon deciding that some human lives matter more than others. Egyptians must be protected. Hebrews may be spent. Their bodies may be worked. Their freedom taken. Their children threatened.
And perhaps that is one way to describe domination more generally:
Domination divides humanity into those whose lives must be protected and those whose lives may be spent.
Even in our world today: some people are treated as neighbors. Others become labor, threats, problems, enemies, inconveniences… But God hears the ones the empire has stopped listening to. And God moves toward their liberation, their freedom to be the people who they truly are!
And yet, the Passover Story is not a clean one. As God moves towards freedom, Pharaoh’s heart hardens, and Egyptian children die. Egyptian families mourn on the banks of the Red Sea. Whatever else we make of this difficult text, we should never hear the deaths of others, of children and cheer.
Empathy does not mean pretending that Pharaoh and enslaved Hebrews share equal responsibility. They do not. But naming oppression clearly does not require us to surrender compassion. We can resist domination while refusing to become so accustomed to another person’s suffering that their humanity no longer matters to us.
And, I say this because the moment we decide another life is disposable, their time, their energy, their dignity… when we do this we are no longer free ourselves. Pharaoh’s logic has begun growing inside us, and this leads us to one of Exodus’s uncomfortable truths:
Israel can leave Egypt in a night. Getting Egypt out of Israel will take much longer.
For Israel will carry fear into the wilderness, as well as:
Scarcity.
Memories of bondage.
Patterns of captivity.
The geography around them changes faster than the hearts within them. So, perhaps that is why liberation is not merely escaping something. It takes time and space.
God must form a people who can live differently once they are free.
Which brings us to Paul and this beautiful section of his letter to the Romans:
“Owe no one anything, except to love one another.”
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
And then (the untimely born Apostle) Paul makes it wonderfully concrete:
“Love does no wrong to a neighbor.”
There is our test!
Not: Did I win?
Not: Did I protect my side?
Not even: Were my intentions good?
The question is: Does this do wrong to my neighbor?
Because freedom that simply gives me permission to dominate someone else is not God’s freedom. This is not what salvation is—I have my eternal fire insurance, now I get to do what I want! No! A liberated people must not become another Pharaoh. And that matters in our families, our churches, our communities, and our own hearts.
We like liberation when it means somebody else needs to change. We become less enthusiastic when God says: You, yes, you, put your sandals on. Pick up your staff. We are leaving our old ways behind. Because sometimes bondage is horrifying, but often, it is also familiar. And we human beings can cling to what we know even when it diminishes us or our neighbors.
So salvation becomes more than God saying: “You are forgiven,” or “You’ll be with me in paradise.” Salvation grows into God saying: “You are free. Now come with me.”
Come with me into a place where we are:
Free from the lie that another human being must become smaller so that I can become larger…
Free from the lie that another person must lose dignity for me to possess dignity…
Free from the lie that human beings can be divided neatly into neighbors and disposable people…
God frees us from domination so that we can become neighbors.
And then writing the Good News of Christ to his own community, Matthew brings this enormous theology down into an awkward little room—a space where two people have hurt each other. Here, Jesus says, “If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.”
Did you hear Jesus, just then? Go toward the fracture. Steer into the conflict. Then, speak truthfully—listen abundantly—and, seek restoration. If this stalls, bring others into the conversation. When necessary set boundaries, for Jesus does not command endless access to someone who harms you, nor is forgiveness permission for abuse. Reconciliation is not pretending nothing happened.
But neither does Jesus allow us simply to throw human beings away—because even conflict becomes part of learning freedom when we stay in conversation with one another across difference. Because there’s a difference between the good news of the empire and the Good News of God in Christ.
The empire’s way of domination says: Win. Humiliate. Control. Destroy.
Jesus says: Tell the truth. Listen deeply. Protect yourself and the vulnerable. Discern openly. Seek restoration where restoration is possible. Involve the community when need arises. All good, right?
But, then comes a line we know so well:
“Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” When I hear this it brings up sweet memories of saying prayers together with all of you, sharing communion, being together. And, y’all Jesus is definitely there!
But, given the context of where and when this is said, Christ is also there when two people sit across from each other trying to tell the truth without destroying one another. And, Christ is there when we draw a boundary without denying another person’s humanity. Christ is there when we refuse to make somebody disposable. This is what a liberated people must learn.
And perhaps that is why the Passover Meal instructions are so physical. Eat this. Wear that. Mark the door. Stand ready. Remember. Because freedom has to get into our bodies.
We have to practice another way of being human. We must together learn how to be God’s people in both peace and conflict until the Way of Christ becomes our way, until reconciliation becomes our reflex.
And here, at God’s own table, week after week, we practice too. We hold out our hands. We receive what we cannot earn. The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven. We, who are different people, from different places, with different perspectives, different opinions, different hopes, and different disappointments—we, who are many, are one Body in Christ.
And then we are sent back into the world—a world that is constantly trying to teach us who matters and who does not. Who’s us and who’s them. But the Eucharist keeps speaking peaceably to the world: Here is one body. You are part of it. So is your neighbor. And no member of the body becomes whole through the diminishment of another. To remember that we ALL are part of this Body is to re-member, to allow God to put us back together…
And unlike Humpty Dumpty, God is constantly putting the Body of Christ together again. Here and now. Across the globe. In ancient days and distant futures.
So, maybe this is salvation: God freeing the whole congregation from the lie that we can become whole while our neighbors remain disposable:
Freeing us from Pharaoh outside us.
Freeing us from Pharaoh inside us.
And while it is still twilight—while the world is not yet what it should be, while we still carry old habits from captivity—God sets a table.
God gathers our neighbors and tells us to remember.
God tells us to put on our shoes because freedom is coming.
As we watch God’s salvation ever-dawning, calling all people into freedom, the questions for us is simple:
Where does Pharaoh’s way of domination still live in us?
What have we learned to protect at the expense of a neighbor?
Who are we tempted to see as expendable?
And what might love require us to leave behind?
Because God is still calling us out of bondage.
Still forming a whole congregation.
Still teaching us to become neighbors.
Still remaining with us when two or three are gathered…
Still in the midst of our conflict…
Still setting us free.
So, put on your sandals, grab your staff, and let’s go love our neighbors as ourselves.
Amen.
