"At the River We Stand" - Sermon for Last Sunday after the Epiphany, 2-15-26

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“Precious Lord, take my hand,

Lead me on, let me stand,

I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;

Through the storm, through the night,

Lead me on to the light,

Take my hand, precious Lord,

Lead me on.”

Thomas Dorsey – not the big-band leader, but the son of a Black revivalist preacher – Thomas Dorsey composed these verses and this music during the Great Depression, in his great depression, after his wife and infant son died.

Dorsey wanted to give up on God and give up on his vocation as a gospel musician. God had done him an injustice, he thought.

But God hadn’t given up on Thomas Dorsey. One day, sitting at the piano, Dorsey said, “As my fingers began to manipulate over the keys, words began to fall in place on the melody, like drops of water falling from the crevice of the rock” (Morgan, R.J.: Then Sings My Soul, 289).

Every Sunday before Ash Wednesday, just before Lent begins, we listen to an account of Jesus’s transfiguration. Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem and to his death. He knows well-enough what lies ahead. Crucifixion was a common and terrifying method of state execution. Jesus and his disciples likely had seen other crucified victims as they wandered about Roman-occupied Palestine.

It was a divine mercy, then, that the Father blessed the Beloved Son with these echoed words of affirmation that Jesus heard at his baptism, and with the steady, sturdy companionship of his two prophetic forerunners, Moses and Elijah.

Yet even with this blessing, Jesus later would cry out from his cross that the Father had done him an injustice – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? How much Jesus must have suffered to sob and scream this psalm. But soon, Jesus, dead and buried, would rise from a crevice in a rock, baptizing us into his death and resurrection.

“When my way grows drear,

Precious Lord, linger near,

When my life is almost gone;

Hear my cry, hear my call,

Hold my hand, lest I fall,

Take my hand, precious Lord,

Lead me on.”

The apostles Peter, James, and John went up the mountain with Jesus and witnessed his transfiguration. They heard the Father’s voice. They saw Moses and Elijah. They saw Jesus’s face shine like the sun. Yet even that wasn’t enough to bolster their courage. After his arrest, they all fell. Of these select three, Peter fell the hardest. Three times he denied knowing Jesus. Peter gave up on Jesus. But Jesus didn’t give up on Peter. After his resurrection, Jesus gave Peter three chances to make good. Peter made good: a leader in the early Church who went to his own death by crucifixion – upside down, tradition holds, in deference to his precious Lord.

“When the darkness appears,

And the night draws near,

And the day is past and gone;

At the river I stand,

Guide my feet, hold my hand,

Take my hand, precious Lord,

Lead me on.”

This week, we transition from Epiphany, a season of light, to Lent, a season where the Church invites us to probe the dark corners of our hearts. The places and the times when we gave up on God and ourselves, or at least thought about it. Or when, in a season of crisis, we thought that God had done us an injustice. And we do this in the national and global context of relentless human injustice.

At the river we stand. Is it the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness? Or the Styx the river of the dead? No. It is the Jordan, the river of repentance and the gateway to God’s promised land.

Beloved of God: Easter’s liberation is some fifty days away. We have forty days of wading ahead of us, on a slippery, stony riverbed. God has not given up on us. We do not wade alone. At the river we stand, / Guide our feet, hold our hands, / Take our hands, precious Lord, / Lead us on.

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Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

Last after Epiphany A – February 15, 2026

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“At the river we stand”