Standing in Awe, Hungry for God

The Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year A
Sermon for May 17, 2026

My friends, I speak to you today in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

Happy Easter, Church of the Epiphany. Yes, that is the last time I will say that to you this year; this is week seven of the season and next Sunday is Pentecost Sunday. Don’t forget to wear red next week, if you partake in that tradition. We have two baptisms next week; we have a few other extras you won’t want to miss. I promise it will be a memorable day.

Over the last week… well first, over the last two weeks since I last preached (and over the entire Easter season as we have been quite busy around here, trying new things), I have been overwhelmed with how much goodness we see here in this building. It has been so encouraging just to be a part of this new, exciting life here at Epiphany, to see all of your gifts come pouring out into our life together. And yet, over this last week, spent mostly out of the building at our annual clergy conference I’ll admit, over this last week, I have had a quote from Evelyn Underhill stuck in my head, and I have not been able to shake it. Underhill was an English writer and pacifist who I’ve quoted here before, and she wrote this quote in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the leadup to the 1930 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops. She wrote this: “God is the interesting thing about religion.”

God is the interesting thing about religion.

Now that may seem like common sense to you, or maybe it doesn’t connect at all, and that’s okay, but for me, especially away at clergy conference, it felt like an important reminder. “God is the interesting thing about religion.” A little personal context: this week’s “Clergy Retreat,” which I now refuse to call it, our “Clergy Conference” was a mandatory gathering of the priests and deacons of the Diocese of the Great Lakes. I also will refuse to badmouth our diocese from the pulpit, but I think I can say here that when something is mandatory and comes with an agenda and seminars and workshops we are expected to attend for days on end, it is hardly a retreat. (Our vestry might want to remind me of this when our “Vestry Retreat” comes up this summer.) Now my three days in DeWitt, just outside Lansing, this week were indeed full of good and valuable workshops and conversations. I learned about taking an “Energy Audit” of the parish, about a “Congregational Sabbath,” about “Discernment Circles,” about “Formational vs. Informational Church Communications,” and we had services and liturgies mixed in between, with plenty of friendship too. But what I did not hear much about, at this clergy conference, was God. Maybe they assumed we as clergy have the God part all figured out. They were only trying to be helpful, I know, and they were. All good things.

But with Underhill’s quote, “God is the interesting thing about religion,” circling my brain all week, I often wondered if our diocese was missing the point of all this church/ religion stuff. And then… turning that critique inward as I often do… I wondered where we were missing the point here at Epiphany, where I was missing the point as your priest.

This has been a busy month, as I’ve said many times here during announcements, during sermons. Today, as you might’ve seen, we have a new church logo, put on the front cover of your bulletin (only for this week). It’s the product of more than a year of brainstorming with staff, more than six months of work with a professional graphic designer. It’s a good thing, one that gives us a sharp and recognizable look for all the things churches need logos for in 2026, from digital to print. I’m happy with it. But I hope none of you think this is why we gather, nor why I’m here as your full-time rector, to make shiny logos.

So too did we install a new HVAC this spring, after securing an $18,000 grant from the Bishop Whittemore Foundation and a $5,000 grant from the diocese I just maligned. We have reliable heating and cooling. We have our new Gather & Grow group, meeting with nearly 20 people every Wednesday; we had Deacon Beck Leclaire visit and we have a Pride ministry now growing with momentum; we had Plainsong’s Emily Ulmer visit and we cleaned up our portion of the highway last Monday; we have Justin Johnson and his new indigenous art coming soon thanks to your generosity. We have yoga. We have Centering Prayer. We have Evensong. We have brunch. And we have so much more.

These are all very, very good things. Do not get me wrong this morning, friends; all of these come forth from a church doing life together, loving each other well. They are all worthy of thanksgiving and signs we are loving God and loving neighbor well here in this place. And still… I am reminded that “God is the only interesting thing about religion.”

Last Thursday was Ascension Day, the feast of the Ascension, forty days after Easter. We read about the Ascension in our first passage this morning, the reading from Acts: “as they were watching, Jesus was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” Then in our gospel reading, we get what’s been called the “High Priestly Prayer,” Jesus looking up to heaven and praying for his disciples before his crucifixion, praying to God to “glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify” God. These are paired in the lectionary on this final Sunday of Easter, I think in part, so that we can connect the glory of this post-resurrection moment with the glory Christ prayed about before he was betrayed, so we see it’s all part of the same story. God and Jesus (with the Spirit coming soon), they are separate and they are one, and we are invited into their life now, today: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

God, we learn, this creator of the world, God is more than some nebulous far off almighty force, more even than a king worthy of worship, but God is “Father,” a relational term, God is a parent to Jesus and also to us, God’s children. We are not God’s product or God’s creation or God’s project; we are God’s children. And Jesus, we learn, is God’s Son, the incarnate God, born of the Spirit and the virgin Mary, crucified, dead, buried, resurrected, and now, this last Sunday of Easter, we read he has ascended into heaven, full of glory we cannot comprehend. The Spirit, well, we’ll save the Spirit for next week.

But here this Sunday we read and hear about the Trinity, we read about the Ascension, we read about the divine life we are called to participate in, not just affirm through intellectual ascent, but to live, every day, in love. We read about God. And that, friends, that is mysterious and confusing to modern ears. God is easily dismissed by those who put their belief only in science (which itself makes no truth claims about existence). This God, this is the interesting thing about religion. And, this is what people are looking for.

Evelyn Underhill’s full letter is available online, should you want to read it, but her quote that begins “God is the interesting thing about religion” continues with “and people are hungry for God.” God is the interesting thing about religion, and people are hungry for God. Underhill emphasizes prayer, spiritual growth; she writes against getting wrapped up in routine work and even social activities, which I happen to enjoy, but I understand what she’s saying. Underhill writes that God is not only the only interesting thing about religion; God is what people are really hungry for, longing for, looking for, every day. 

This week, the songbirds of spring have been out in full force here in western Michigan. When I wake up before the sun rises to get kids ready for school, I walk our dog Charlie, and I look up at the sky and take at least a minute to listen and to breathe it all in. Several times this week, as the clouds began to turn pink, the songbirds left me in awe. Charlie, also, seemed either frightened or confused but maybe in awe of nature’s sunrise song.

Whether you affirm all the phrases of the Nicene Creed or not, whether you can call God a personal, relational term like Father or Mother, or whether you believe that Jesus was incarnate, crucified, resurrected, and glorified in ascending before his disciples, I bet you can experience and have experienced awe. Maybe at the songbirds, maybe at the birth of a child, maybe in a cathedral or in a field, maybe just sitting on the beach and looking at our lake, or at a sunset, or watching a mighty storm roll in… I know you have had moments of awe in your life. We humans are part of something bigger and greater than we can possibly understand, and every time we recognize that, it can leave us in awe, awe of something holy, something mysterious, something grand. Everyone knows this feeling, whether they identify it with our understanding of God or not. We’re part of something.

So, this morning, friends, on this last Sunday of Easter, I merely ask that we set aside all our activity for just a minute and that we join the disciples in awe, staring up to the sky as their friend ascends and a cloud took him from sight. I cannot imagine the level of awe I would feel in that moment. I ask that we make time and space in our own lives and in our church, here, to experience awe, to consider the glory of God, the Ascension and the Resurrection and the Incarnation, to really consider them, to consider the questions we have no answers for, to consider beauty, to consider how grateful we could be for each breath, each flower, each blade of grass, each sunset, each sunrise, each songbird. Every good thing we do, while still incredibly loving and good, will pale in comparison to these.

“People are hungry for God,” Underhill says. Friends, this is why we gather, to make space for something beyond what we ourselves can do or comprehend, to acknowledge our hunger for God, to worship, to sit in awe and wonder, to recognize the holy.

May we join all of humanity in that awe and wonder, not just on Sunday but every day; may we acknowledge that, in that awe, we are hungry for God, hungry for a relationship with the Father, Mother, Creator of all we see and experience. May we find God, eager and ready to embrace us.

And then, in awe of everything, in relationship with God, may we respond with action, with logos and brunches and art and worship and service and ministry for the oppressed and with ever abundant love. May we do so, here, gazing up to heaven in awe and wonder and gratefulness to our God, and then moving into our world, together.

Amen.