Homily January 25, 2026, Rev. Holly Cardone

Ordinary People, Costly Faith

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

January 25, 2025

Speaking at a vigil honoring Renée Cole Good—a wife and mother who was shot in the face three times by an ICE officer on January 7 of this year—the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, Robert Hirschfeld, told the gathered crowd that he had urged his clergy to get their affairs in order and finalize their wills. He said we are living in a new era of martyrdom. It is time, he told them, for the Church to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable in our communities. Statements, he said, are no longer enough.

This past Friday morning, while walking our dogs, I told my mother I was going to a Sacred Resistance march at noon. I told her that if anything happened to me, my kids were already listed as beneficiaries on both of my retirement accounts. Any other money in the bank, they could split. I told her what the Bishop of New Hampshire had said. I didn’t want to frighten her, but it felt important that she knew why I was saying this now—what he had counseled his clergy, and why it felt real enough to prepare for.

I’m just an ordinary person, like you. I have some God-given skills and talents that allow me to do what I do. But as we say in my recovery program, I’m just another bozo on the bus. And it’s true. We are all just human beings doing the best we can in a time of extraordinary violence—when retaliation by the federal government against its so-called enemies turns out to be violence against ordinary people. People taking care of their families. Dropping kids off at school. Coming home from basketball games. Going to church. Buying groceries. Stopping for gas. Trying to care for and protect their neighbors—and being met instead with unthinkable brutality and fear-driven tactics.

In last week’s gospel, John the Baptist is out there with his disciples—a street preacher—pointing passersby toward Jesus, calling him the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. John’s disciples are so compelled by Jesus that they leave John and begin following him.

Not long after that, John is arrested. Roman soldiers seize him at the command of Herod Antipas, under pressure from Herodias. Herodias harbors a grudge against John because he publicly criticized Herod’s marriage to her—a marriage that violated Jewish law, since she had been married to Herod’s brother, who was still alive. Soon enough, John’s head will be served on a silver platter. Herodias’s daughter dances beautifully for her stepfather, and in his intoxicated pride he promises her anything she desires.

When Jesus hears of John’s arrest, it’s as if he knows there is no time to waste. God’s kingdom is at hand. The work must begin now. The healing, the teaching, the reordering of life—it all has to happen before it is his head on a platter, or his body nailed to a tree.

And so Jesus calls ordinary people.

Fishermen. A tax collector. A political activist—a Zealot. Women, too: householders like Mary and Martha; patrons, providers, and organizers like Joanna, Susanna, and Mary Magdalene. Regular people living regular lives in a world that viewed them as strange and suspect. People burdened by the heavy heel of Roman soldiers pressing into their daily existence. Exhausted by crushing taxes that kept them perpetually poor. Tired of offering sacrifices to a God who seemed far away from their suffering. They were not living in God’s kingdom. They were living in the emperor’s.

Jesus comes with a new story. A new narrative.

A story of hope and redemption. A story of healing and restoration. A story of justice and equity.

A story in which their Abba in heaven—whose name is holy—brings God’s kingdom to earth. A world where everyone has enough. Where sins are forgiven, and forgiveness flows freely from one person to another. A world delivered from occupation, poverty, illness, and political violence.

It’s striking, isn’t it, that the Bishop of New Hampshire is calling his clergy to put their bodies on the line—to protect immigrants and citizens alike from the violence of their own government. Because when Jesus was arrested, when standing with him might have cost them everything, his own disciples ran. They hid. They disappeared. Only to be martyred after the resurrection and the establishment of the church while preaching the gospel of love, mercy and forgiveness standing in opposition to the oppression and cruelty of Rome and its emperor.

And across the centuries, followers of Jesus have done exactly what Bishop Hirschfeld is calling for now—placing their bodies between the vulnerable and the forces of harm.

Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist pastor, murdered while fighting for civil rights and dignity for Black Americans.

Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels, killed in 1965 while shielding seventeen-year-old Ruby Sales from a shotgun blast in Alabama.

Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated while celebrating the Eucharist for speaking out against military violence and the oppression of the poor in El Salvador.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who resisted Nazi control of the Church and was imprisoned and executed.

On Friday, I went to the Sacred Resistance march. There were hundreds of ordinary people doing something extraordinary—standing in solidarity with the people of Minnesota, who are witnessing terrible things. Clergy gathered outside a federal building. Rabbis, pastors, and priests prayed together for peace.

And there it was—the good news of the kingdom of God.

Not power. Not domination. Not fear.

But people walking together. Singing together. Refusing to let their neighbors stand alone.

Ordinary people, choosing love.

That is the good news.