June 28, 2026 Trinity IV

June 28, 2026

Trinity IV

You are staring at a frozen computer screen. Nothing happens, no matter how many times you click the mouse or how hard you bang on the keyboard. But, before you pick up the machine and take it to the trash in  the fit of a temper tantrum, you move on to the last-ditch solution: reboot.

Rebooting is what you do when something goes deeply wrong — with either your machine or one of its key programs. You probably had to learn how to reboot a computer at some point, not because you wanted to, but because you had to.

If it is a PC, you hold down three keys at the same time: control, alt, delete. PC operating system designers chose those keys because hitting all three requires both hands and some intentionality. They did not want it to be a key sequence you could hit accidentally. You do not want to reboot if you do not have to because you could lose any unsaved work — an important email, vacation plans, or the best sermon you have ever written.

But sometimes there is no other option. Rebooting your computer is your final, desperate choice to get things running again. (Of course, if you have shaking hands and an impulsive right thumb such as I have, there is no telling what kind of trouble one could get into!)

“Reboot” is a strange word with its own back story. To “boot” a computer means to start it up. The origin, they say, is in that colorful, old expression “pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” In other words, to start something up from nothing. To reboot is to shut everything down, then start it up again.

Pulling yourself up by the bootstraps is, of course, absurd. Try to picture it. You crouch down and slip a finger through each of the leather bootstraps just above your heel. You yank hard, both boots at the same time, and you pull yourself up in the air!

It is the sort of thing that only works in cartoons, like Wile E. Coyote dashing off a cliff and running along through the air — until he looks down, loses his moxie, and holds up a little sign that says, “Help,” before plunging to the canyon floor below.

Sometimes, though, rebooting is the only choice you have. Turn it off, turn it back on again, then hope for the best.

What do you do when it is not your computer that needs a reboot, but your life? How do you clear out the bugs in your personal programming so God the Creator can breathe new life into you again?

Romans, chapter 6, introduces God’s “control-alt-delete” combination. Like a great operating system designer, God has provided us a reset routine that is an effective way to start over again when all else fails.

It is called baptism. For some people, the rebirth comes in being baptized as adults when they come to Christ for the very first time. But for a great many other Christians baptized as infants, it is the remembrance of baptism that is effective for rebirth — the taking up of promises made for us, long ago, by our parents or sponsors and renewing them. It is all about making those promises our own. We receive this opportunity every Easter when we renew our Baptismal promises.

When St. Paul tries to describe this life-changing experience, words fail him. The only expression he can come up with is one that, for most of us, is acutely uncomfortable to hear, especially when we are talking about babies. It is the image of baptism as death and rebirth.

“Do you not know,” he asks, “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?” This is pretty shocking stuff, especially when you consider the way Jesus died. But Paul goes on, sticking his shovel deeper into the soil of the graveyard.

“Therefore, we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.”

Now before you go thinking of Paul as a first-century Stephen King, consider that he believes the death-and-rebirth images of baptism to be a blessing, not a curse. They are a blessing because, after the experience of spiritual death comes a resurrection, as followers of Christ walk with him “in newness of life.”

Sometimes, it does happen that there is nothing left to do in life but reboot — to shut everything down, in a spiritual sense, and start over again. It is, in every way, a fearsome step to take. But it is a step any of us can take in confidence, trusting in Christ’s promise to pull us up out of those baptismal waters, gasping and spluttering, and revive us!

As last on last Sunday’s Father’s Day, more than one of us may think about the virtues of being a man. To many people, one of the essential traits of masculinity is being impervious to change — standing firm, holding the line, or anchoring the end of that tug-of-war rope, feet dug deeply into the sand.

Paul clearly has a different image of Christian manhood in mind. A Christian man, in his view, stands firm when he needs to stand firm. But he can do so — paradoxically — only because he has already yielded, deep in his heart, to another. He has yielded his life to Jesus Christ.

Sometimes life is a struggle. Sometimes, in our resistance to what we perceive to be the enemy, we end up contending even with God. We know what is required in the Christian life. We have heard that sermon since we were small. We know God demands sacrifice, the turning over of the heart to Christ. We know that to be a Christian is to live differently from the rest of the world. We know that, as Paul says, we “you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. But sin, as we all know, is not laid aside so easily.

There comes a time in life when there is nothing else to do — a time when our proud talents are all tied up in knots, when we know we can never extricate ourselves from the mess we have gotten ourselves into. Such are the times when, spiritually speaking, there is nothing left to do but press the control and alt keys with our left hand, then hit the delete key with our right hand.

We might even feel that warning message popping up … “Are you sure? Unsaved data may be lost.” But yes, we are sure — maybe for the first time in our lives — that we do want to do it. There is no other choice. We have exhausted every other alternative. Control, alt, delete.

Our screen goes blank. The fan spins down and all is quiet for a moment. We take a deep breath as everything seems to hang on to the fearsome decision we have just made. But then comes the reassuring whir of the fan spinning up again and our favorite desktop background appears as the computer restarts. The essential data is still there. All is not lost. Death in Christ — and rebirth!

At the age of 36, Count Leo Tolstoy was thrown from his horse while hunting. When he came round, a thought entered his mind that he just could not get rid of. “I am a writer,” he told himself. Soon after, Tolstoy began writing and eventually authored the book War and Peace.

Harriet Tubman’s name is famous in American history. Once a slave on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, she escaped to the North but returned again and again to lead other slaves to freedom. Harriet’s life as a liberator began one day in her teenage years, when she stepped between her master and another slave he was savagely beating. Harriet was struck on the head. She fell to the ground, her skull fractured. She laid comatose for weeks but finally recovered. She would suffer epileptic fits for the rest of her life because of that injury.

Yet that injury was also Tubman’s liberation. “The blow that cracked Tubman’s skull,” a biographer wrote, “struck off her psychic chains. She had already died once; she had nothing to lose.”

Death and rebirth. It sounds paradoxical, to be sure. But that is the spiritual truth of it.

Facing such a dire decision, who is there to trust but the man who went to his death on a cross, then was raised to new life to the glory of God? The mark of his followers is baptism, and the meaning of baptism is death and rebirth.

That meaning is lost, unfortunately, on the infants we bring to the baptismal font. They are too young to understand. It is also often lost on many adults who get caught up in the cuteness of the occasion. We call it a baptismal font for a reason. Spiritually speaking, it is like a fountain, a spring bubbling up from the earth. We may not see it clearly, but the essential meaning is still there — living water for God’s children. It runs under the desert sands of life, like some great, underground stream. It becomes suddenly real, bubbling up for us in those moments of crisis when there is nothing else to do but trust the risky promises of Jesus.

As the poet Stephen Vincent Benét writes:

Life is not lost by dying! Life is lostMinute by minute, day by dragging day,In all the thousand, small, uncaring ways …

Do not lose your life in “the thousand, small, uncaring ways.” Lose it once and for all in Jesus Christ. Lose it in him — and you will gain everything!

Let us pray.

In today’s Gospel we are reminded by Jesus of the importance of hospitality, kindness, and generosity in our Christian lives.  We pray that we be ever mindful of His message and that we hear the cry of those in need and be generous in our response. We pray to the Lord.               

We pray for those workers and volunteers who feed and clothe the poor and needy, that the Lord bestow on them the grace to continue in their work and reward them for their sacrifices and acts of mercy. We pray to the Lord.            

We pray for a generous response to today’s Peter ’s pence collection which supports Pope Leo’s humanitarian, social justice, and charitable activities throughout the world. We pray to the Lord.            

As many areas of our world suffer from unprecedented high temperatures, we pray for climate justice, for fairness in the distribution of resources and opportunities, and for the protection of those most affected by our environmental crisis. We pray to the Lord.                                    

We pray for our children, now officially on their summer holidays, that they have a safe and happy environment in which they can enjoy the wonders of nature and the good company of friends. We pray to the Lord.            

We pray for the success of the ongoing peace negotiations in the Middle East, so that the suffering  peoples of the Holy Land may be able to return to their homes and enjoy safety and peace in their lands and with their neighbors. We pray to the Lord.  

As we approach our 250^th anniversary as a nation, we pray that everyone celebrates in safety, knowing the great strides we have made to get here and come together as a nation and simply enjoy this great milestone. We pray to the Lord.

We pray for an increase of priests, deacons, and religious. We pray to the Lord.

We pray that those with generous means may be led to our small church and give generously to our mission so that we may continue to be a church open to all peoples . We pray to the Lord.

For those on our parish prayer list, that they may receive swift answers to their needs and that they may find consolation through Christ’s healing presence. We pray to the Lord.

We bow our heads and remember in silence our own personal intentions and the intentions of those who have asked for our prayers (pause). We pray to the Lord.

God of liberty, we rejoice in the blessed abundance you have bestowed on our cherished land. We praise you for the freedom of religious expression which allows us to gather the way we have today. We praise you for the freedom to say what we think without fear of the governing authorities. We praise you for the freedom to come and go as we please. We praise you for the benefits of education made available to all. We praise you for the freedom to dream our own dreams and to strive to make them come true. We praise you for the gift of living in a land untorn by war. We rejoice in the bounty of this fruitful land, which provides us with plentiful food and beautiful places to rest and play.In freedom we are strong, yet freedom is a fragile thing. Help us protect our freedoms through the exercise of personal and civic responsibility. Sting our conscience every time we say to ourselves, "Let someone else do it; it's their problem; I don't care." Give us as citizens the brains to realize that poverty and violence anywhere weakens the nation everywhere, just as illness in one part of a body weakens the whole.Help us choose leaders who will do what is necessary for the well-being of the nation, who will not simply promise to grant our selfish wishes in exchange for re-election. Help the citizens of this land to achieve consensus on our most pressing issues, so that united we can help our elected leaders lead with clarity, consistency and decisiveness.As people who have been freed forever through the blood of Jesus Christ, help us defeat in ourselves the impulse to slavishly submit to the tyranny of self-interest and greed. Help us, whom you are preparing for eternity, to take the long-range view of what would be best for all, not merely what is expedient for those who presently enjoy political and economic advantage. Inspire us to be advocates for people whose voices cannot be heard in the public debate, that all your people may have a share in honor, prosperity, and hope. In Jesus' name. Amen.

God Love You +++

The Most Rev. Robert Winzens

Pastor – St. Francis Chapel

San Diego, CA.

As a small parish, we come to you all as beggars! Share with us this Christmas, a little sacrifice for the Christ Child. Your generous support also allows us to continue these important projects that fuel the movement of progressive Christianity. Thank you and God bless you! +++

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