Creation Restored

Creationtide Sunday 6  |  October 11, 2026

Isaiah 65:17–25  ·  Psalm 98  ·  Matthew 28:16–20

Beloved, today our city celebrates Phoenix Pride. We also observe National Coming Out Day. We bring both into our prayers as we hear Isaiah's promise of creation restored. For some, today brings joy and a sense of belonging. Others are still wondering what honesty about their lives would cost. As we gather before God, I want us to hold these neighbors close and ask what our faith requires of us.

Isaiah gives us words for this hope. God promises “new heavens and a new earth.” Yet the prophet spends much of the reading speaking about things we recognize. People have homes. They eat what they grow. Their children have a future. They live long enough to enjoy the work of their hands. The promise reaches into the lives people are already trying to live.

I think we sometimes make salvation sound so distant from ordinary life. We speak about heaven while someone sitting beside us is wondering how to pay the rent. We speak about peace while a person in our own family is afraid to tell us who they are. Isaiah brings our attention back to the people before us. God cares whether they have somewhere to live. God cares whether their home is somewhere they are loved. Our faith should make us attentive to these concerns.

As a gay man and a bishop, I have a responsibility to speak plainly here. The life I share with my husband and our children belongs within the goodness of God's creation. So do the lives and families of our LGBTQ neighbors. Our dignity comes from God. No congregation has authority to take away what God has given. When we speak about restoration, the shame imposed on people needs healing. The rejection needs to end. Our humanity already belongs within God's love.

As a father, I want my children to know they belong before they have accomplished anything. I want them to grow up without wondering whether love will disappear when they struggle. Those hopes shape how I hear Isaiah. They also leave me with a responsibility. Every child deserves care beyond the limits of my own household. Every parent deserves a community willing to share some of the concern.

We also hear these promises while carrying losses. Some of us have buried someone far too young. We know families whose lives have been changed by suffering no amount of faith prevented. We must be careful how we preach to one another. Isaiah’s vision of long life gives us hope for God’s renewal. We have no right to use such a promise to judge the faith of someone grieving. Their loss deserves our tenderness.

Toward the end of the reading, Isaiah describes the wolf and the lamb feeding together. Then comes a promise I wish the Church would hold before every decision we make. “They shall not hurt or destroy.” Those words give us something by which to examine our own life together. Are people safer because they have come among us? Have we helped them recover their dignity? Do they have room to speak without fearing what honesty will cost?

For LGBTQ people who have been hurt by the Church, this promise asks something serious of us. We owe people more than a change in vocabulary. We owe an honest acknowledgment of harm and a different way of living together. Reconciliation requires safety. Nobody owes a religious community another opportunity to hurt them. If trust grows again, those who have been wounded deserve a voice in how we proceed.

National Coming Out Day also calls for care in how we speak. Your story belongs to you. You choose when to share and whom to trust. If speaking openly would place your safety or housing at risk, taking time does not diminish your dignity. God's love has no disclosure requirement. Whether you are ready to speak or still finding words, you deserve care today.

For those receiving someone's trust, our responsibility is clear. Listen. Thank them for telling you. Keep their confidence. Resist the urge to turn their honesty into a debate or make them responsible for your discomfort. Parents especially need to remember how much our response matters. A child should leave such a conversation knowing they still have a home and a parent's love.

We also have to confront our habit of gathering around a shared enemy. Whenever Christians describe queer people as a danger whose exclusion will protect everyone else, we should recognize the harm in such reasoning. In Jesus, we see the one rejected and condemned raised by God. His resurrection calls our judgments into question. Following him requires us to give up the security we seek through making someone else an enemy.

Psalm 98 brings the whole creation into worship. The sea roars. The floods clap their hands. The hills rejoice before God, who comes to judge the earth fairly. There is joy in this judgment because the world belongs to a God who cares how the world is treated.

There is room for joy here too. Pride gives us an occasion to celebrate lives and relationships we cherish. We celebrate couples caring for one another and families raising children with love. We give thanks for friendships through which people have found belonging. LGBTQ people deserve a church willing to rejoice with us. Our lives hold goodness worth celebrating, alongside the wounds needing care.

Creationtide brings these questions close to home. Here in the Phoenix area, care for the earth has a great deal to do with water and shelter. We know how much shade matters when someone is waiting outside in the heat. We know the difference a cool home makes. These ordinary needs connect care for our neighbors with care for the place where we live. The same earth sustains all of us.

Our worship should help us remember this. We bring water to the font and oil for anointing. We bring bread and wine to the altar. God meets us through the material world. Every sacrament gives us reason to treat creation with reverence. We receive these gifts with thanksgiving and then accept responsibility for how we live among them.

The Gospel brings us to another mountain. The disciples gather before the risen Jesus. They worship, and doubt is still present. I am grateful Matthew leaves this in the account. These are the people Jesus sends. Their understanding is unfinished. Their questions have survived the resurrection. Jesus comes near and gives them work to do.

Some people come to church carrying questions about God. Others are wondering whether Christians are safe to trust. We need to respect the difference and make room for both. The disciples worship while still uncertain, and Jesus entrusts them with responsibility. A person arriving here deserves patient companionship as faith grows. Their honesty gives us an opportunity to practice the love we proclaim.

Jesus begins by speaking of his authority over heaven and earth. We should pay attention to who holds this authority. The one standing before them has endured rejection and death. Now he commissions his followers to teach his way of life. The Church receives our mission from him. Our use of authority must remain answerable to the Jesus we proclaim.

He sends the disciples among all nations. They are to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are to teach people to live by his commands. Following Jesus takes practice. We need to learn how to love people who irritate us. We need help admitting when we are wrong. We need a community willing to hold us accountable with enough patience for change to take root.

I hear a particular responsibility for us at Holy Wisdom. Our welcome needs to be dependable. Same-sex couples deserve the same respect and pastoral care we offer other couples. Transgender and nonbinary people deserve to be known by their names and treated with dignity. People who are still questioning deserve freedom from pressure. The gifts LGBTQ people bring belong in the full life and leadership of the Church. Each of us also shares the call to grow in faithfulness, mercy, and love.

We will fall short. I will fall short. Being a bishop does not place me beyond correction, and belonging to an inclusive church does not finish anyone’s conversion. We still have to listen when someone tells us we have caused harm. We still have to apologize without arranging every sentence around our own defense. God’s work of restoration includes us.

When we come to the Eucharist, we come as people who need grace. We receive Christ together. We bring different histories and different burdens, yet we share in the same gift. This communion asks something of our life beyond the altar. The neighbor we struggle to love also belongs to God. The person whose need interrupts our plans deserves our attention. Worship forms us to recognize these responsibilities and respond with care.

So I want to ask something of us this week. Choose one place where your faith needs to become more dependable. Follow through on help you have promised. Give someone the apology you owe. If someone trusts you with their story, protect their confidence. If a cruel remark passes unchallenged because speaking would feel awkward, accept the awkwardness and speak with care. Let another person experience some measure of safety through your faithfulness.

Our responsibility also reaches beyond individual conversations. As a parish, we need to ask whether our welcome is reflected in the decisions we make and the care we provide. We need to notice people whose needs receive little attention. Care for our LGBTQ neighbors belongs alongside care for the earth and everyone sustained by the same water, air, and land. God's promised renewal embraces the whole creation.

And if you are exhausted, please hear me. Your life belongs within God’s care too. You have no obligation to earn your place here by making yourself useful. Ask for help. Let someone share a responsibility. Receive the care you would gladly offer another person. We need a church where people are allowed to need one another.

We still live with a painful distance between Isaiah’s promise and the world before us. We pray for healing and sometimes face another loss. We work toward reconciliation and sometimes find trust still beyond reach. Faith gives us room to tell the truth about this sorrow. We bring our grief to God because we believe God receives us, even when our prayers have become difficult to put into words.

Our hope rests in Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. We trust the God who gives life where human judgment has declared everything finished. This hope gives us reason to keep loving and to keep accepting the work of repentance. We take responsibility for the life entrusted to us. We leave the fullness of creation’s restoration with God.

At the end of the Gospel, Jesus promises, “I am with you always.” He speaks to disciples who still have much to learn. His presence goes with them into the lives ahead. We receive the same assurance as we return to our own responsibilities. Christ is with us when change asks more of us than we expected. Christ is with us when we need to begin again.

Beloved, today we give thanks for those celebrating Pride and hold close those still finding words for their lives. We pray for parents learning how to listen and for people rebuilding trust after religious hurt. Let our life together give substance to these prayers. Let people experience love they are able to trust. God has given us one another to care for, and Christ goes with us as we learn how.

God of all creation, bless those celebrating today and those longing for somewhere safe to belong. Give us courage to face the harm we have caused and patience to make amends. Help families receive one another with love. Teach your Church to honor the dignity of LGBTQ people and to care faithfully for the whole creation. Receive our grief and deepen our joy. Form us into a people whose life together bears witness to your mercy, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.