- May 24, 2026 Sermon
The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Pentecost A
“Out of the believer’s heart will flow rivers of living water.”
For us at Pentecost, we always go for the flashy flames of the Holy Spirit. We wear red, we celebrate the untamable fire of the Spirit as it descends upon the disciples of Jesus gathered in prayer. Sometimes, we’ll go with a different element. We think of the wild wind that rushes over the void in the beginning of creation, this powerful voice that brings into being order from chaos.
But Jesus in today’s Gospel points a different direction: to water.
Water is a blessing – we need it to drink, we need it for cooking, we need it for washing. We need clean water, water that is not contaminated with lead, not contaminated with chemicals or waste products from factories or data centers, not contaminated with sediment and sewage or pathogenic microbes. We need water that is fresh, not salt.
We also rightly fear water. Water that is rushing has a lot of power behind it. A flash flood can swell a river high above its banks and sweep away anything in its path. A glacial lake like Lake Bonneville 30,000 years ago could burst its boundary and flood down into the Snake River plain on its way down to the Pacific. The storm surge of a hurricane pulls seawater far inland, and a tsunami can strike from an earthquake far away on the globe.
Water is powerful. It is healing. It is not to be trifled with. As the Indigenous peoples remind us, water is life.
And so, too, is the Spirit. The Spirit is life. The Spirit is breathed into us in our creation. The Spirit is breathed into us in our baptism. The Spirit is called down upon us at confirmation, at ordination. The Spirit is life.
The Spirit, like water, flows in our veins. The Spirit gives us life to move and breathe and sing and dance. The Spirit gives us energy to serve, to understand, to preach and teach. The Spirit, who is Love, the Spirit moves in our souls to bring us to love like God loves.
This is not a comfortable truth, in a way. We might celebrate the gifts of the Spirit without fully understanding what we are asking for. We celebrate the tongues of flame and the gift of speaking the Gospel prophetically all throughout the world in every language. But what are we asking for? Are we asking for a gift that we get to possess and do nothing with? A gift that we hold without it holding us, without it molding us and forming us?
The water of the Spirit soaks down deep into our very being, into our own hearts and flows outward from there. It is alive, it is living water. It is water that might swell up and overflow the boundaries we put to it. We might be overwhelmed by water and find ourselves speaking words of prophecy, we might find ourselves preaching the Gospel (gasp! What are we introverts to do?), we might find ourselves healing others, we might find ourselves so overwhelmed by God’s love that all that is not love within us gets drowned in its depths.
Like fire and wind, water is wild, untamed and untamable. The Spirit is wild, untamed and untamable.
The water of the Spirit is alive and in our hearts. When we were baptized this water was poured over us to proclaim our re-birth in God. Reborn as a member of the Body of Christ, reborn into the body of the Resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.
Pentecost is the same living water that we celebrate at the Easter Vigil when we renew our baptismal vows. Pentecost is the baptismal font swelling up from the depths of our heart to overflow in abundant and eternal life. Jesus promised us life – and he gives it now as well as forever in the power of the Holy Spirit, the Living Water that springs up from our souls.
It is living water, full of the Spirit of Life. It is living water for a world parched and drying from desolation and despair. It is living water for a world aflame with fires of contempt, cruelty, and callousness. It is living water that threatens to drown us with life and to drown us in its love.
It can be scary to relinquish our control and let this living water flow up from us and flow throughout us and overflow from us. But the Holy Spirit loves us too much to let us stay the way we are. The Spirit is eager to give us deeper, better life.
The fire of the Spirit will thaw our icy hearts and frozen ways. The wind of the Spirit will fill our lungs with breath and song. And the waters of the Spirit will flow up from the depths of our souls to make, re-make, and renew what was dead and parched, and make it flourish like a watered garden, a fresh spring, the holy rhythm of the waves lapping on the shore. The water of the Spirit is poured out for you. Drink up. Amen.
- May 17, 2026 Sermon
The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Easter 7A
From 1 Peter this morning: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.”
Suffering is one of the core questions of religion and spirituality. What do we do with suffering and pain? We open the news on our phones and find ourselves fretting over what is happening and what might happen. We see the suffering far off in the world and we see the suffering in our local community. We see the suffering of others, and we experience our own suffering and empathy brings us to experience the suffering of those nearest to us.
Religion, spirituality, and philosophy all have to wrestle with the concept of suffering because it’s all around us. Life is not easy, and we human beings want to make sense of our lives. We want to make sense of suffering. So, what do we do with suffering and pain?
Our Buddhist friends read the question of suffering through the lens of the four Noble Truths: Life is suffering, suffering is caused by attachment, there is a way to end attachment and thus be free of suffering, and the way to end that attachment is the eightfold path of the Buddha. For our Muslim siblings, suffering is an invitation to look more closely for the work of God in the midst of it all, to seek God’s purposes. Our Jewish siblings have wrestled with the concept of suffering through long ages of persecution.
So, then, what is our Christian answer to suffering? How do we Christians make sense of suffering?
In some generations, the emphasis on suffering was about seeing God’s purposes in the midst of suffering. Christians would say that we’re supposed to see what God is teaching us, or that God is calling us to greater faithful trust. In other generations, unfortunately, suffering was seen as punishment for sins. And today that still lingers – so the people who are successful must be blessed while those who suffer must be guilty of something.
The problem with any understanding of suffering for us Christians is that at the heart of our understanding of suffering is the cross, where Jesus who is truly human and fully divine suffered and died, as we proclaim week after week. The cross, this nexus of profound suffering links God to us and links us to God and one another – the cross is the crossroads wherein a suffering humanity and a loving God meet. For us as Christians, any and all suffering is linked back to the cross.
Which means that we say something radical: the Messiah’s suffering embraces all suffering. Christ’s suffering embraces our suffering when it comes through no fault of our own. Christ’s suffering embraces our suffering that comes as a consequence. Christ’s suffering embraces our suffering when it happens almost like a bad roll of some unlucky dice.
Christ’s experience of suffering in his life and death brings God closer and closer to our daily experience. We Christians are then making a bold truth claim: suffering happens for a multitude of reasons, but no matter what, God draws near to us in our suffering. God is not pushing us away in judgment – Jesus draws closer to us with his open wounded hands in his resurrected body. God is not waiting far off for us to figure out what suffering means – Jesus’ heart is opened in empathy for us in our struggles. The experience of suffering actually unites us to other human beings and to God in Jesus Christ – we all suffer in different ways to different degrees, but our suffering brings our wounded hearts to touch one another if we let them.
Yet there are forms of Christianity that are so distorted in their relationship to suffering that they cannot accept the cross at the heart of our religion. Some forms of Christianity see suffering as failure, or suffering as something to ignore with a focus on heaven, or suffering as something to impose on others, or suffering to be wielded as a medal of righteousness.
First, suffering is not failure. False forms of Christianity try to make suffering an illusion, or that suffering only happens to bad people. They want to make suffering logical, that people who are bad get punished and those who are good get rewarded. Just point to the cross, the martyrs, the prophets – suffering happens to very, very good people, too. And there are plenty of terrible people who have had immense power and wealth in the world – doesn’t take too long looking in the history books or today’s news to see that.
Second, suffering is not something we just ignore to focus on heaven. Suffering is real – suffering is not a lack of faith, suffering is not a lack of gratitude, suffering is not an illusion. I’ve met people who think that they have to believe they are “too blessed to be stressed” in order to be faithful Christians, that if they simply had greater faith it wouldn’t be suffering. But, again, we point to the cross. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. Jesus cried out on the cross. Jesus was mocked by others. Jesus can weep and cry out – and so can we.
Third, suffering is not something we impose on others. That’s another thing I see in the world around us. So many Christians claiming the name of Christ but actively wanting others to suffer. We Christians are called to accept the cross when it comes – Jesus told us to take up our cross and follow him – but we are absolutely forbidden from crucifying others. We should be working to alleviate suffering, which is what Christ calls us to do repeatedly. He forbids us from causing suffering.
And fourth, suffering is not some medal of righteousness, a badge of perfection. This might seem odd, as so many Christians throughout the ages have been keen to accept persecution and martyrdom, but the problem is that if we view our suffering as a badge of honor then we have secretly begun to turn our focus in on ourselves, that we must be righteous and better than others. It is a blessing to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake because then we’ve actually done something – there’s evidence to convict us of goodness! But it’s still not about us. We do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do and it brings us to follow Jesus. If we do good, and that leads to suffering, then we’re just following Jesus. If we do good, and it leads to praise, then still, we’re just following Jesus.
Returning, then, to our reading from 1 Peter: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.”
Rejoice? Be glad and shout for joy? Being blessed for being reviled? How does that sit with what I just said?
I put it to you this way: we rejoice because we know that whatever pain we experience in life, whatever pain and heartbreak we see in the world around us, we know that Jesus Christ himself is present. No less than God is present in the midst of suffering. When we weep because our bodies feel like they are falling apart or our brains have become our own enemy, Christ is present in the fullness of his love. When we see the heartache of those we love, or when we see the cruelty of the powerful visited upon the marginalized and downtrodden, our hearts break open just as Christ’s heart breaks open for them. When people say we’re unrealistic dreamers who actually believe in the power of God’s love, it is blessing because we’re being reminded that the way of God is vastly different from the way of the world, and at least someone noticed! Suffering, then, for us Christians calls us back to the cross, to the crossroads of God. God meets us there, God opens our hearts to the suffering of the world and even sometimes to our own suffering if we don’t notice it anymore. God meets us right there in the person of Jesus Christ and abides with us, to walk alongside us, to carry us, to help us carry one another. It is a profound blessing to know that at the heart of our Christian journey is a God who loves us so much that the suffering of the cross was simply one more way to love us. Amen.
- May 3, 2026 Sermon
The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Easter 5A
“Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
A friend once described the process of growing in Christian faith as one of “milk churches” and “meat churches.” The milk church was seeker-friendly, low-barrier, low-expectations. It would get you into a relationship with Jesus, but it could also keep you in infancy. But as time would wear on, the move would be toward a “meat church” – a church community where you go deeper, what was easy to digest now takes some chewing, it takes effort. And then you grow as an adult.
At the time, it made good sense to me. It might have also been a little bit of Episcopalian hubris; “Well, you can start off with *that* Christianity, but at some point you’ll come to see the light and come to the Episcopal way of doing things – Scripture, Tradition, Reason and all that,” because clearly we would be a “meat church.” We like delving into things, we like our brains, we have a long tradition of wrestling with deep theological questions and deep spirituality.
But, as you can imagine, I’ve changed my perspective on things, and I think my friend was ultimately wrong. We need both milk and meat – all of us, at different times in our lives and for different things.
When we’re little kids, we need milk – a loving community around us that models how to pray and how to love. We also need meat – we begin to encounter the big questions of life early, like suffering and death. We need people around us who won’t shield us from those things but will sit with us as we cry.
When we’re teenagers, we need milk – adults who show us the values that are most important instead of the values of consumerism or popularity or wealth. And we also need meat – to start wrestling with our own identity in God, what it means for us to be us.
When we’re young adult, we need milk – the peace of God for when we take our new wobbly steps into the working world. We need meat – going beyond the simpler ideas of our childhood understanding of spirituality and faith to see more intricacies. I imagine it’s like learning about colors: when you’re a child, you can name the big, main colors, and when you’re an adult, you can start giving them more precise names, like scarlet or burgundy instead of red… even though red is still correct.
As we get to be middle-aged, we still need milk – we need our spiritual practices to bring us back to the basics of gathering in prayer with others, in caring for neighbor, in just slowing down and being with God! And yet we still need meat, too – we now can start to look backwards on our life and see the trajectory of how it has unfolded, and we need to wrestle with the grief of what once was, and is no longer.
And even in older age, we still need milk – those little daily blessings of gratitude that keep us going when we face new limits to our strength. And meat, too – sharing wisdom we’ve accumulated and yet still learning, of giving guidance and love to others, of letting go of some of those things we’ve carried with us for too long.
And I think we as a parish can be both milk and meat for people. Remember our conversations at Annual Meeting this year? Your vestry and I have been hard at work on synthesizing that conversation. We came up with the following little summary:
Ask and Listen;
Pray and Grow;
Share and Proclaim;
In All Things: Love.
It is both milk – simple enough to understand – and meat – something we can continue to grow into each day. It is a guide for beginners, and it is a guide for those well-traveled in the way of faith in Christ. Much like the Rule of St Benedict – he said his rule was a guide for beginners, and yet it has persevered as a rule of life that takes a lifetime to live into.
We’ll be returning and revisiting this over the weeks ahead, too. Not a one-time thing!
In it, we can reflect on our own way of doing these things. We don’t all do them the same way. We live them each differently, and yet we come together to live them out together. We are still growing in these areas, and we are also capable in these areas, too.
The Gospel reading from John that we read today is a good example of this. There are passages ready to understand and bring into our hearts right now: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places” – there is a place for you, for me, for all of us. Comforting! And there is much that we need to chew on, wrestle with: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” That is something that it takes a lifelong of prayer and reflection to unfold in its depths. There is milk, there is meat, there is plenty for a life long journey of discipleship. Amen.
- April 26, 2026 Sermon
4th Sun Easter, Year A
Deacon Christina Cernansky
I speak to you in the name of Source, God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, mother of us all. Blessed Good Shepherd and Earth Day Sunday, All Saints!
Say what? Yes, Earth Day was April 22, and today is also Good Shepherd Sunday. Good Shepard Sunday, the 4th Sunday in Eastertide, and in all three years of the lectionary calendar, we get to read Psalm 23. I find that so appropriate, right, or maybe the Holy Spirit is at work!
Psalm 23 is one of my favorite psalms…
At first glance, we are reminded that we are never alone, that God is always with us, and that we can find comfort in that relationship…being cared for as a shepherd watches over its flock.
When we dig a little deeper, it brings us hope when we feel lost, and we can lean into God’s grace, God’s shepherding, and God’s unbridled love. We are encouraged to find greener pastures during times of sorrow and despair.
Coupled with Earth Day, this is the week to focus our attention on God’s creation and on how we are called to be good stewards of that creation. We humbly have the privilege and honor of stewarding God’s creation during our time here on Earth.
Last week, we heard a great presentation from Mike Ritthaler. He shared the Bee Pollinator Garden committee’s plans to restore All Saints’ grounds to their original role in supporting a larger ecosystem. This symbiotic ecosystem would not have invasive lawn-type grass but would instead feature native plant species to support the local environment and help restore it to a more functioning landscape. He will give the same presentation to us a little later today and invite you to hear not only about the plans but also about their progress. Spoiler alert, he saw a bunny hopping around recently, so God’s work is most definitely at play!
After the short presentation, we will take a tour, and, God willing, our neighbors will join us for an educational conversation about how we are being good stewards of the land and inviting the community to join us in those efforts. Next Wednesday, we are going to hear a talk on the two Saints that walked the walk and talked the talk in this conversation. St. Francis of Assisi and Francis Perkins, to further empower us to do our due diligence on this plot of land, we have been tasked with overseeing.
So often, we can look at scripture as a one-way street, God directing us to do things or find comfort in God’s mercy and grace. I offer another perspective this morning: what if Psalm 23 is a two-way street? What if we are called to go beyond a surface-level understanding?
We can look at it as a task to care for the environment, as well as a poem that asks for God’s grace, inviting God into our lives through nature. We are asking to be restored, to rest, to be renewed, to be overseen by the shepherd, and to flourish in that tender loving care. What if we are also tasked with doing the same for God’s creation?
When the Psalmists say, “The Lord is my shepherd”, they might also be pointing to how we are also being asked to be shepherds over the flock, over God’s flock, over God’s creation.
When I read Psalm 23, to not fear, to lean into being good stewards of everything that God created, but to also be righteous, to continue on with the work, it’s maybe a call to action. It’s a request to oversee all of God’s creation, to be good stewards.
What does that look like in times of caring for our siblings during Earth’s cycles of challenges, such as famine, droughts, super hurricane seasons, and, I pray, this fire season isn’t too harsh.
It is hard to grasp that God created all of these things, all of these cycles.
God has also given us the ability to continue building structures that destroy nature and to profit from it.
Psalm 23 might be calling us to return to what God is actively giving us, to steward over, to share, to love, and to preserve. Yes, the Lord is our Shepeard, but how are we overseeing his flock?
I offer a friendly reminder that, through all the pain and suffering, we have been called, have taken action in the past, and that there are miraculous things going on today.
Friendly reminder that the first Earth Day in 1970 was founded by Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin and a graduate student, Denis Hayes. They were tired of rivers catching on fire, trash littering the countryside, and the general population was dismissive of caring for God’s creation. From that important day, President Nixon created the EPA, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. The nation came together to clean up our backyards, our shared spaces, to preserve and be dutiful stewards over this great land.
Right here, in Idaho, we have the Idaho Conservation League. They work with industry leaders and governments; it’s a public-private partnership that has helped permanently protect the Boulder-White Cloud Mountains, earned designation for America’s first international dark sky reserve, and developed policy recommendations for the Governor’s Salmon Workgroup to further secure commitments to saving Idaho’s endangered salmon.
Did you know that we are harnessing energy from lake waves in the Great Lakes, Iceland is utilizing pioneering technology to capture CO₂ directly from the air and store it permanently by turning it into stone, which is powered by local geothermal energy, and the US currently gets 18% of its electricity from solar, and by 2027, it’s projected to jump to 21%.
That’s a lot of caring for God’s infinite creation!
So I ask you to consider that Psalm 23 pushes us to walk with Christ, as we shall dwell in God’s creation, and to come together to restore and preserve our green pastures. I pray we continue to create a sustainable future for all of God’s Creation; surely our cups will overflow if we remain good stewards of God’s Kingdom.
And we can start right here with our little plot of Earth by creating more space for bees, and, yes, maybe for some more bunnies.
Let us close with a prayer, please grab your BCP, page 814:
For Joy in God’s Creation
O heavenly Father, who hast filled the world with beauty:
Open our eyes to behold thy gracious hand in all thy works;
that, rejoicing in thy whole creation, we may learn to serve thee with gladness; for the sake of him through whom all things were made, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
- April 19, 2026 Sermon
The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Easter 3A
While I very much appreciate the scholarly depth and dedication to accuracy in the translation of the Bible we normally use in church, the New Revised Standard Version, sometimes the translation also can feel stiff. Part of that stiffness is because we want our Bible to sound holy, we don’t want it to sound too much like our everyday speech. If it sounds too “everyday”, then it sounds too casual, almost unserious. The other part is that we’re translating texts from vastly different cultures than ours. How do we translate comparisons and slang and phrases to modern English – do we rewrite them to match how we might say it today, or do we translate it exactly and put the information into a footnote?
Do we go the direction of formal equivalence, translating word for word as they are, even if it sounds clunky and confusing, or do we go the direction of functional equivalence, translating thought for thought even if it means not following the source very closely? Formal equivalence wants to preserve as much of the word choice and grammar of the Hebrew and Greek; functional equivalence wants to make it sound more like natural English.
The translation we use in church is the New Revised Standard Version, updated recently, which leans toward formal equivalence. It wants to follow the original language as closely as it can and has footnotes to help explain obscure word choices; the translating committee represents a variety of religious traditions: Christians of many different denominations, and Jewish scholars in translating the texts of the Old Testament. It also retains some of prior translation choices, too; the NRSV is, in a way, a revision of a revision of a translation revising the King James Version of the Bible, which is still claimed as the “historic” Bible of the Episcopal Church since it was the Church of England that made that translation and we come from them.
But, again, that’s not the only way to translate the Bible. There are many translations. Some of them are perhaps more… ideological in their intent and how they translate. I’m not a big fan of those, but that’s hardly a surprise to most of you. I’d rather wrestle with a difficult Biblical passage that says something *different* than what I believe than make the Bible match my beliefs. And of course, there are times when people say something is in the Bible but it absolutely isn’t. They read into the Bible words and stories and meanings that aren’t even there, because it’s what they wish the Bible would say. That’s not ok at all.
There are, however, functional translations of the Bible that tell the story faithfully, but aren’t focused on translating word-for-word. They try to use everyday language. Though, perhaps we sometimes shy away from reading those translations because we’re worried they aren’t faithful translations, that they’re too simplified since they’re understandable. That was a criticism thrown at the Good News Translation of the Bible in the mid-20th Century; it didn’t sound holy and lofty and so it must be a less-than-accurate version of the Bible. It’s a solid translation, though!
Nowadays, there are many, many different translations. Perhaps too many! Here’s a translation of our 1 Peter reading from a translation that aims to be at a seventh-grade level, it’s called the Common English Bible. Why don’t you turn to the second reading and compare them as I read: “Since you call upon a Father who judges all people according to their actions without favoritism, you should conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your dwelling in a strange land. Live in this way, knowing that you were not liberated by perishable things like silver or gold from the empty lifestyle you inherited from your ancestors. Instead, you were liberated by the precious blood of Christ, like that of a flawless, spotless lamb. Christ was chosen before the creation of the world, but was only revealed at the end of time. This was done for you, who through Christ are faithful to the God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory. So now, your faith and hope should rest in God. As you set yourselves apart by your obedience to the truth so that you might have genuine affection for your fellow believers, love each other deeply and earnestly. Do this because you have been given new birth—not from the type of seed that decays but from seed that doesn’t. This seed is God’s life-giving and enduring word.”
What did you think? Did the second reading hit differently than the first? What did you notice this time, and how did it sound to you? Did it bring to mind images and meaning that weren’t as clear the first time around?
Part of what we are doing in listening to the Bible being read is listening for God speaking to us in the text. Just as Jesus interpreted the Old Testament for these disciples on their way to Emmaus, so we are listening to what the Spirit is telling us through the texts of the Bible. We are active participants in a process – the Bible isn’t dropped into our life for us to decipher like a code book. The Holy Spirit is at work in us, in our eyes, ears, hearts, and minds as we bridge the meaning of the sacred texts into our current world.
You see, there’s these final steps in the translation process that get ignored: your role as the reader of the translation. You read or hear the translation, and you translate it in your mind. You take it into yourself. You pick out certain phrases, words, images. You take the phrases, words, images, and take them into your mind and heart. You make them part of yourself. You translate them into your life, I hope. You take this translation of an ancient text and translate it from English into your everyday life.
But the translation isn’t over yet! You also translate this text for other people. You take these words, these stories about God’s work in the world and translate it for other people in church, for other people in the world, for friends and family and strangers. Other people hear the story about Jesus feeding the thousands when you buy or make food for the community meal. Other people hear the story of Jesus saying to visit the sick and the hurting when you reach out to someone in need. Other people hear the story of the goodness of everything that God has made when you care for creation. Sometimes they hear the story because they see you doing it; it’s even better, though, when you share the story in word as well as in deed. The world needs to hear the Bible translated. The world needs to hear a good translation – not just a written translation but also to hear it translated in your life, in our lives together. How will you make the words of God come alive in your life, and how will you translate the Good News for others? Amen.