We have before us today a difficult Gospel text, in which Jesus says some surprising and disturbing things: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! … Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

When I am faced with a difficult text like this one, I often find it helpful to put myself in the place of the people for whom the Gospel was first written.

So this morning I’d like to try something:  just for a moment, let’s try to imagine ourselves as some of the first hearers of the Gospel of Luke.

May I speak in the name of God who created us…

I hope you don’t mind if today I address my sermon to Rhys. If I know anything about one-year-olds, it’s that they love sermons, so I’m sure he’s paying attention to every word. I want to speak to Rhys, today, just a few moments before he is baptized because today is, I believe, one of the most important days of his life.

Rhys, today your parents and godparents will be asked whether they “put their whole trust in [Christ’s] grace and love.” And they will answer on your behalf saying, “I do.”

I want to tell you about a moment that is changing how I see everything. It happened in Cold Spring Harbor on an October morning in 2023 after a storm. As I walked across the bridge that crosses over the spillway in the middle of our century old dam holding our lake back from the harbor I heard something unusual. As I looked, I immediately knew something was wrong. One wooden board from our wooden weir was missing—washed away in the night—and St. John's Pond had dropped ten inches of depth across its 14 acres.

This is a well-known reading to many of us. It’s one of those parables that Jesus tells that many of us immediately recognize and those of us who have spent any significant time in church  have all probably heard a dozen sermons on it.

And each time I've returned to Dublin Lake - sometimes angry, sometimes broken, always overpacked, always carrying more than I thought I could bear - something about this place has slowly, patiently, restored what felt irretrievably lost. Not dramatically, not all at once. More like... well, more like Naaman's seven trips into the muddy Jordan.

July. Day whatever of summer vacation. Vacation had just begun, but the boredom of an idle mind was everywhere present. The cereal bowls lay crusted in the sink, cartoon reruns droned from the living room, and my older brother Sam and I wandered the house like caged animals looking for something—anything—to do.