Lay Preaching

Preaching Abundance Over Scarcity

Role: Preacher | Storyteller | Advocate
Context: Sermon at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, April 6, 2025
Medium: Video Sermon

Click here to view on YouTube.

As part of my ministry at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, I preached this sermon during the Fifth Sunday in Lent, reflecting on John 12 and the tension between scarcity and abundance. Drawing from personal experience, Scripture, and the poetry of John Donne, the sermon explores how systems shape us—and how we, in turn, can reshape those systems through intentional acts of love, generosity, and grace.

This sermon serves as an example of my approach to public witness: engaging theologically, culturally, and pastorally to connect complex truths with lived experience. It also illustrates my commitment to storytelling as a tool for justice and transformation, reinforcing the Episcopal Church’s message of radical welcome and hope.

I chose to share this piece as part of my advocacy portfolio because it reflects what I believe great communication in the Church should do: challenge assumptions, inspire generosity, deepen discipleship, and invite all people to live into God’s abundant love.

Transcript:

In the Name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen, please be seated. We are going to travel back to 1993 today. Jurassic Park is in the movie theaters. Michael Jackson is performing at the Super Bowl, and I am a moody 13 year old prone to stressing out about everything and anything when it came to school. Of all the stresses that I carried, the biggest one that year was finding out I had been assigned to Mr. Carney’s eighth grade English class. Now everyone knew Mr. Carney’s class was the hardest of all the eighth grade classes, and to make it worst, it wasn’t just known for being hard, it was known for being weird, while most students rushed into their classrooms at the bell. Mr. Carney’s students lined up outside, entering one at a time. Inside, they could be seen moving around a classroom, rather than seated at their desks. And when the bell told to signal the end of class, his students often didn’t leave. They were still hard at work. And Mr. Carney himself was a bit of an enigma. One minute, he seemed aloof, the next, he was animated and outspoken, and he created this aura around himself and his class that made me absolutely dread being in it. And as predicted, my first few days in his class left me reassured in my dread our very first task on the very first day was simply to find a seat.

The classroom was laid out in two very specific sections with a really clear division between the two, and there were slightly more seats in one section than the other. Once we chose our seats, we had to vote for a representative from our side, the top two people from each side then moved to four special seats at the front of the classroom. What I didn’t realize initially was that Mr. Carney had laid out the classroom like a miniature US Congress for the rest of the year, there was a majority side and a minority side, and each had a leader and each had a whip. He structured his class this way because we were responsible for a lot of the decisions. We had no textbooks. Instead, we discussed and voted on what books to read. We even had entire classes on things like how to properly fold a newspaper while reading it, which is harder than it seems. I remember all of us sitting quietly reading the paper while Mr. Carney stood ready to reprimand any student who failed to turn the pages quietly.

I also learned why students lined up outside of class, we had to shake his hand as we entered, and we moved about at the start of class, because we had to greet classmates across the aisle before we could sit down and begin. Some days we watched C span. Other days we considered the worthiness of reading Shakespeare. And all the time we discussed deeply and thoughtfully. We read and we wrote and we discussed so much that by time I got home, it became second nature for me to crave engagement through deep conversation and my poor family, I became the least popular member of I didn’t realize it then, but I was learning about how we live in pre existing systems, systems that were created long before we arrived.

And Mr. Carney was showing us that we have the power to choose how we live within them. Systems can be dysfunctional. They can and they often are oppressive, but I was learning that those of us living within them have the power to change them for the better. John Shelby Spong was an Episcopal bishop. He was an author and a North Carolina native who wrote a wonderful book about the Gospel of John called the fourth gospel Tales of a Jewish mystic. The subtitle, which I absolutely love, is rescuing John’s Gospel from its creedal captivity. He talks about today’s Gospel as part of the book of signs. Lazarus is death and resurrection, which happens just before today’s passage marks the end of that section. The signs are the great plot points that defines Jesus’s earthly ministry.

Spong characterizes today’s readings as a transitional chapter. It’s the moment where the story pivots. It sets the stage for what’s about to come, which is the Passion narrative we’ll all hear next weekend. And the scene here today is pleasant, a theory. All, it’s a dinner with friends in this world. John describes. We meet two seemingly contrasting people that many of us know Well, Mary of Bethany And Judas Iscariot, both part of the same group, both part of the same following the same teacher, and both part of the same system, but each acts within this system very differently. The story is set into motion when Mary uses an expensive oil to anoint Jesus’ feet, not unlike what Jesus will do in a couple days when he washes the feet of the apostles. And the oil she uses is commonly described as costing about a year’s worth of wages.

Think about that for a minute, a year’s worth of wages in one single bottle poured out, used up in one fleeting moment. Of these two people, Mary and Judas, one sees love and the other sees waste. And I think that if we’re honest, it’s hard not to sympathize with Judas, regardless of his motivations. In our capitalist world, we are often conditioned to believe that there is not enough there’s not enough time or energy or money or meaning, it’s a Judas world, a world of scarcity. One Friday afternoon towards the end of the school year, Mr. Carney pulled out a stack of papers, and he slammed them down on the desk with a bit of drama. They were our latest writing assignments. These are awful, he declared, pausing for dramatic effect as we squirmed in our seats. Then he announced that no one would be leaving this classroom until they wrote an acceptable first paragraph.

He handed back the papers and we went to work. I remember writing my second draft and raising my hand, reading it out loud, only to have him say, Nope, sit back down. Try again. Each and every one of us tried multiple times, each time we read our paragraphs aloud, and each time we sat back down defeated and tried again long after class was supposed to be over, Mr. Carney finally began to praise our work, highlighting the brilliant moments, the important sentences, the places where it mattered. I went home that day mentally exhausted, but also changed. I realized that if you wanted to make something matter, you had to intentionally make it meaningful. It’s a choice, and the more things we make matter in our lives, the more times we help create a world that is that much more abundant.

Yes, we live in systems that often seem designed to hurt some of us to help others, but even so, we have the power to work within those systems and to free ourselves and others by choosing to make our time matter. Both Mary and Judas made meaningful choices that day. Judas chose scarcity. He believed the system didn’t have enough for everyone, so he would take care of himself first, but Mary chose abundance. Living in the same world as Judas, she poured out what mattered and made it meaningful. 

That poem has VIP status in my brain, thanks to Mr. Carney, and I think it speaks directly to today’s Gospel. In just a few days after this dinner. Here, Jesus will hang from a cross. He knows it, and Mary knows it. And in the background of this pleasant meal, death looms. Lazarus was until recently, very dead. Religious leaders are already plotting to kill him again. The path to crucifixion is well laid out at this point. Soon, Judas will die, the disciples will scatter, even Paul will deny Jesus. This meal happens just a couple miles away from Jerusalem, where Jesus knows that the story is about to take a dramatic turn, and for me, all I hear is Donne’s rumination. Never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee, like Dunn’s poem, John’s gospel, reminds us that our time together is short, but so wonderfully woven together that it speaks to the abundance of possibilities we share, and that’s why Mary and Judas both matter so much today. The lesson isn’t to be more like Mary and less like Judas.

The truth is, sometimes we are Mary and sometimes we are Judas, but always, we are loved. The systems around us have only as much power as we choose to give them. It’s up to us to decide if we live in a world of scarcity or if we live in a world of abundance. Are we living as if there’s not enough time, there’s not enough grace, there’s not enough forgiveness to go around? Are we holding back love and encouragement and intention because we’re afraid we’ll run out? And I’m not saying we need to do more or give more or push ourselves harder. Sometimes the person who needs the most grace is ourselves. What I am saying today is that we have to make our time matter.

Jesus knew death was near, yet he received Mary’s offering with open arms. And even though Judas chose scarcity, Jesus never closed the door on him. No, the message today isn’t about choosing to be Mary over Judas. It’s about knowing that we all have a seat at the table no matter what the invitation is there after all this time, and it’s up to us whether we experience this life as a world of abundance or a world of scarcity. If I spend all my energy supporting people I disagree with, I won’t have enough for the people I love. That’s scarcity. I will give grace to every person, whenever I can, however I can, even to myself. That’s abundance. So my hope for you this week, my friends, is simple.

Pour something out,

pour out forgiveness, pour out encouragement, pour out generosity, pour it out recklessly, full of love, whenever and wherever God gives you the chance. And remember, while we may only have so much time here before the bell tolls, the time we spend together can be gloriously abundant if we just decide to make it so. Amen.