"Enough, and more than enough" - Sermon for 10th after Pentecost, 8-2-26

† The sidewalk preacher in Union Square last Sunday afternoon said something that I heard. People walk around, he said, wearing jerseys with the names of athletes on their backs – athletes who neither know nor care about them. People spend hundreds of dollars or more to go to concerts to listen to people who neither know nor care about them. Yet people ignore the God who knows them by name and loves them.

He was right. Given the option between going to a game or a show, or going to church, we know the choice nearly every San Franciscan would make. Given the same option, we know the choice that nearly every Episcopalian would make.

The sidewalk preacher’s observation is as old as the hills. “Why,” the Lord said through Isaiah, centuries before Christ, “why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”

Of course, most modern people, faced with the Lord’s same question, would say that the entertainments of, say, sport or music are deeply satisfying. The same would be said by the people in our neighborhood who stand in line for hours, waiting to buy the newest shoe or video game or collectable gizmo. In twenty years of priesthood, I don’t recall even once opening the church doors to a line of people waiting to get in to listen to what the preacher has to say, or to hear what the choir has to sing, let alone to receive the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation.

I could be bitter. The truth be told, sometimes I am. Preachers, both in churches and on sidewalks, preachers tire of being ignored.

Poor me.

I almost chose not to begin this sermon this way, but the Holy Spirit had another idea.

Didn’t – the Spirit nudged me to recall – didn’t the Incarnation of the Son of God change everything?

Didn’t God becoming human in Jesus re-sanctify creation?

Make the ordinary extraordinary?

And make the extraordinary superlative?

Isn’t it possible that Christ is at work in the athletes or musicians who strive to entertain?

And in the acolytes who take the tickets and vend the merch and clean up afterward?

And in the attendees who cheer them on?

And all of them clueless – clueless! – that the God, who knows them by name and loves them, that God is right there.  

Who are you, the Spirit said to me, to presume to limit my reach to the length of church-pews and my passage to the boundary of church-doors when I have something much bigger in mind?

Now this is not to say that church doesn’t matter. That gathering specifically in God’s Name doesn’t matter. That the grace of the sacraments doesn’t matter. I believe that what God does here through Christian liturgy absolutely matters. It is the way that God acts in chronos and cosmos that is like no other. Christian liturgy has no equal, and only one reason to be.

The theologian David Fagerberg writes that “the liturgy of the Mystical Body of Christ, and the liturgy of the lives of each member in it, is designed to accomplish one purpose, and one purpose only: to praise the Father, in the Spirit, with a filiality that comes from being an adopted brother [or sister] of the Only Begotten Son” (Desiring, 70).

In other words, while we benefit from Christian liturgy – conducted faithfully and performed reasonably-well: I do have my standards, after all – liturgy is not about us. It is not entertainment.

It is about God.

Most people don’t get that. Many otherwise faithful Christians don’t get that. Consumerism clouds and compromises and contaminates even the Church. Which, I suppose, is why people don’t line up to get in. Perhaps that’s a good thing.

And yet, of course, God is not constrained by or contained wholly within Christian liturgy. God goes beyond human constructs, even the divinely-ordained construct of Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

Now, I’m not a pan-theist who claims God is everything. Nor am I a pan-en-theist who says that God is in everything. But I do believe that God chooses to be present in everything – sharing our joy in celebration when life is good; sharing our sorrow in solidarity when life is painful; and empowering us – who believe that God knows us by name and loves us – empowering us to be God’s agents of compassion and of community.

The twelve disciples of Jesus had a compassionate impulse. This place is deserted, the hour is late, and the people are hungry. Let them be on their way to search for food. Jesus affirmed their compassion and challenged them to think bigger.

Give what you have to me.

I’ll give it back to you.

You give it to the people.

Then let’s see what happens.

For them, it was five loaves of bread and two fish – taken, blessed, broken, shared. And it was enough … more than enough. The community that Jesus created through his compassionate healing and hope-giving was maintained in one moment and enlarged in the next with his disciples’ help. It was they, after all, who served the meal and cleaned up afterwards.

How about you?

What do you have to give to Jesus?

For him to give back to you?

For you, in turn, to give to others?

And then to see what happens?

Will people line up on Waller Street hours ahead of time, hundreds of dollars in hand, waiting for us to unlock our gates and open our doors?

Will people fill our pews, rather than the box seats and bar stools and bleachers?

 Will people shed their sports jerseys, and instead wear crucifixes around their necks, not as jewelry but as an outward sign of their Christian identity and commitment?

Now that would be a miracle of Jesus-sized proportions!

What if instead God desires something else of you?

Of us?

Not something that is less-than the wild scenario I presented; but rather something good and faithful in its own right.

Like your own continued conversion of heart that increases your compassion and builds this community.

In such a way that deepens your spiritual maturity in a visible way.

A way that compels even a few of our neighbors to investigate.

An investigation that discovers not an entertaining, consumer-driven liturgy, but rather one that is the source of an authentic relationship with God through Christian liturgy.

A liturgy conducted faithfully and performed reasonably-well.

That begins and ends with God – the God who knows them by name and loves them.

And who benefits them by bringing them along.

That would be enough … and more than enough.

+++++++

Jesus – take us, bless us, break us, give us.

Let us not be embittered or lose heart by what isn’t your desire.

Rather, fill us with what is your desire.

What is, and what will be.

For only in you is there enough.

And more than enough. †

Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

Pentecost 10A, Proper 13 – August 2, 2026

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“Enough, and more than enough”