The camera pans across the inside of a small, quaint house as jolly piano music plays; the wooden front door opens and in walks a pleasant looking man with a friendly smile dressed in a tie and sport coat. He begins singing a simple song as he takes off his sport coat, opening his closet door, he grabs a sweater to replace it. Sometimes the sweater is red or blue or green or gray, but there is always a sweater. The next thing he does is to take off his dress shoes and put on a pair of sneakers, all the while continuing to sing his simple song about being a neighbor. This, you may know, is the how the television show Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood began nearly all of its 33 year run from 1968-2001. It was a simple ritual; it was one that shaped many generations of young children, myself included. It was then, and perhaps is even more now, a concrete reminder that how we intend to spend our time, shapes how we live our lives. Fred Rogers was a man who understood that to live the life that he wanted to live, he must do so with intentionality, attention, and constant adjustments.
In our Epistle lesson today, St. Paul takes us on a whirlwind, that always reminds me of Mr. Rogers’ nightly routine.
It is nearly a mind-bending use of words that sounds almost like a tongue twister, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” The question here is if Paul is saying that we are frail humans that, despite our convictions or our salvation, will continually fall into the trap of sin and death? Have we to have any hope of living a righteous life when St. Paul himself posits that even he cannot break the bonds of the life lived according to the flesh.
Yes…and no.
Paul, in his brilliant, but oh-so-confusing style speaks rhetorically here, playing off the classic question, why do people do what they do not what to do? Using the first-person pronoun here is not Paul’s attempt to make an autobiographical account of the struggle to live this life but is rather an attempt at portraying the reality of life lived outside the life of Christ.
In Romans, Paul makes it clear that in Christ there is freedom from this way of life; there is a freedom found in a life shaped by the crucified and resurrected Christ. Life according to the flesh is self-centered, it is one that thinks that we can rely on our own abilities and that our choices don’t affect others; a life not shaped by Christ is one that makes our own experiences, life, or knowledge to be the standard for how we spend our days. Liberation from this way comes only through letting our life be shaped, over and over and over again, by the reality and the hope of the crucified and resurrected Christ.
The reality that St. Paul lays out rhetorically here in our Epistle passage today is one that is marked by right intentions being spoiled by lack of orientation to what is guiding us toward the good. To live a life shaped and marked by the law of God rather than the law of the flesh is to live a life with intentionality, attention, and constant adjustment. To live fully into the freedom that we are granted by our baptismal vow, we must continually return to it; we must live a life continually shaped and reshaped by the truth of the resurrection, not just for ourselves, but for others around us and for the whole world.
And so, we pray. We pray for the church, our country, the world, for those who are in need in our own community, and for those suffer and are in any kind of trouble. We pray not just because the longings of our heart will not go away, but we pray because to pray is to orient ourselves to God, and this is the only path to orienting ourselves to care for others. We pray because to pray is to bring our hopes and fears to God, and we pray because prayer motivates us to act.
And so, we act. We choose to enact the love of Christ in this world that is desperate to hear it. We move individually and collectively to live our lives more and more in alignment with Christ’s teachings; to follow the greatest command, and the second like unto it. When our lives are so consumed with the love of the Divine, the type of love that is our whole heart, mind, soul, and body, then we cannot help but to move through this world with a powerful love for our neighbors. We move through this world with love, but it is important to remember our limitations—that we cannot continually give and give without also receiving this love in return.
And so, we receive. We come and we kneel at this altar rail and hold out our vulnerable, soft hands to receive the gifts of God. We come and we receive not just because this is the next part of our liturgy, but because to extend our hands is a sign that we cannot do this alone, and that perhaps it is not solely the refugee, the homeless, or the poor who are in need, but so are we. We receive the body and blood of Christ as a sign that the hope of the resurrection life is for all.
And so, we go out. We go out this Sunday much like a multitude of Sundays before and hopefully many more to come. We leave this church in the confidence and power inherent in our baptism to notice the other, to see the ways in which we might act or react and to choose to have those actions shaped by the faith and love that we proclaim; we go out to do the things we want to do. At the end of our liturgy, our dismal doesn’t just mark the end of our Sunday liturgy, it marks the beginning of the liturgy that you live outside of this building. It marks a new week of trying to do what we want to do, as St. Paul says, no matter how many times we might fail: we go to pray, to love, and to receive.
We must continually reorient ourselves to this freedom and hope, letting our days be shaped by the faith we proclaim, as it is only through the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord, as St. Paul says, that we will be able to do the things we want to do in this world. One of my favorite theologians and writers, Annie Dillard, has one line that sums this all up, as she is much more succinct than both Paul and I, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” May God grant us the grace to turn and return to lives spent praying, loving, and sharing both within and outside these church walls. Amen.
This sermon was delivered on July 5, 2026 to the people of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Georgetown, Kentucky for Proper 9A on Romans 7:15-25a.
Becca Kello 