Trinity Church in the City of Boston
September 6, 2026
Proper 18, Year A
Psalm 119:33-40
Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 18:15-20
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
All you with mercy in your heart, forgiving others, take your part,
O Sing now Alleluia
All you that pain and sorrow bear, praise God, and cast on him your care.
Alleluia Amen.
– Hymn All creatures of our God and King v. 5
Good Morning Trinity Church!
I don’t know about you, I have been feeling the heaviness of the world lately. Like the intermittent rainy days of this past week, the brokenness of the world has seemed to have intermixed itself within all of the daily routines.
Wars continue, shootings take innocent life, legendary singers, actors, poets, activists have died, the red sox continue to take us on a roller coaster of wins and losses and closer to home, we each have our own personal struggles in health, in relationships, in loss and seeking identity. One can feel a bit hopeless amidst the literal gray skies.
In the midst of the storms and gray skies of pain and sorrow, we can find ourselves seeking a magic fix, the perfect solution to all of the worlds’ problems. We crave a flipping of a switch to change all of the challenges, a quick fix, a resolution that makes us feel better immediately and yet….
We know that deep healing takes time, grieving, and persistent, gracious relationship.
Healing and restoration of relationships takes digging deep, settling into what connects us in order to repair the fractures.
Recently at my home, we have undertaken a home project of regrouting the bricks on our front steps. The bricks were coming undone, the grout between the bricks has disappeared and several had become wiggly- no longer supporting the weightiness of day to day activities. Their brokenness was going to cause someone to fall as they attempted to reach the threshold of the house, our own gathering space.
Mortar holds those little bricks together to create a much bigger step for reaching the threshold. We had to stop and repair that binding agent. That mortar is important, made from other small pieces of concrete, add water, and cement occurs. (I have an MDiv not an engineering degree, clearly- this is the extend of my home repair knowledge)- what I do know is that you have to take care when placing and setting that mortar to achieve your desired result. Intention, patience, and waiting is involved for the bond to re-establish.
The Gospel of Matthew has often been seen a step by step guidance for the stepping stones on how to rebuild community. The gathered people.
Humanity contently seems to choose to fracture relationships rather than build them up. I caution us not to use today’s reading prescriptively as a multi-vitamin that is the definitive way to cover all things. The gospel reminds us how one can meet the fracture, the gap in relationship and..
Matthew’s words today imply grace and invitation, each movement settling into the grooves of relationship to re-establish the connective links to the community out of love and compassion for each person in the relationship. Caring for the individual, seeking restoration of community.
While the Gospel’s words are prescriptive in a step by step process, each moment is not a box to be ticked waiting to move to the next step. Rather, with each person meeting each other where they are, each listening to their pain and sorrow bound up in actions. Working together shoulder to shoulder, the gospel is reminding us that the community should strive to come together towards unity. To fill the gap between with tiny and large bits of love, accountability, and a generous amount of compassion.
Jesus, in this gospel reading, reenvisions the Deuteronomic understanding of the consequences of an individual’s actions, rather than capital punishment, Jesus reaffirmed the idea of expulsion from the community and then beginning again with invitation.
No one is ever excluded from the invitation of the grace of God to join the community of Faith and live that faith in our common humanity. The gathered community is united by covenant to build up the kingdom of God together.
Soon, we will watch four families stand here presenting their children to be baptized. They too will promise to bring their children into this community of love and belonging.
Baptism doesn’t mean the children from this day forward will make all the right choices, rather — these families will strive to live out God’s love in their life and in the world around us- as a testament of love in a broken world.
AND We commit to “whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord” with these families in the baptismal covenant- the question is not if but WHEN… and we promise “I will with God’s help” repent, turn from our mistakes, and return to seeking full relationship with God. Reminding us to pause, ask forgiveness, seek to restore and build up the community.
Jesus lived that example in this world, inviting each person from children to adult, individuals of all socioeconomic backgrounds and educational levels. His arms of love were and are open to all those who encounter him with their brokenness and need for forgiveness. Everyone. Re-establishing, restoring, returning us to God’s full embrace and love. Taking our brokenness and binding us up.
Now, Trinity Church has it’s own sort of mortar that is visible in this space, my favorite space is to see the mortar in the foundations of the pillars and on the hallways of the Lower Level. The stones are LARGE and so is the amount of mortar necessary for holding these stones together. IN these large fixtures the mortar is made up of not just pebbles and sand but actual stones from the original church- the fractures and the splinters gluing this amazing space together. Building upon what was and creating a stronger space to hold a larger community today and for the years to come.
That is our call as church, holding the heavy times together and persistently and graciously living with the hope that change can occur despite humanity’s choices to the contrary.
The church or “ecclesia” is the gathered people, wherever they might find themselves, in the pews here in a worship service, along the paths we walk, in the first days of school orientation or even in traffic (grace can find itself in even the impossible spaces!)- in the midst we are bonded together by the past and by what is to come.
We gather in community for strength, reaffirming our faith, and seeking the hope and love that will carry us forward, united by the bond of the love that God has first given us and bound us together as gathered people.
The work of being in community is messy and at the same time strengthening to who we each are called to be as a beloved child of God in a world that wants to extinguish the hope we know through the persistent love of God that meets us in the fractures and lights our path.
Wherever you might find yourself, in the broken space or distanced from an other, be filled with the hope and love that God is there with you too guiding you (in the fullness of time) towards community and belonging.
"I will with God's Help" 