Homily, July 5, 2026, Rev. Holly Cardone
The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
July 5, 2026
"I do not understand my own actions." The opening line of our reading from Paul's letter to the Romans.
Today I'm going to get more personal than I normally do. Someone cautioned me early in my journey as a priest not to make my preaching all about me. But today I want to share my experience with two ideas from the Epistle and Gospel readings this morning.
I spent a good portion of my life not understanding my own actions—doing what I did not want to do and not doing what I did want to do. The same conundrum Paul wrote to the Romans about.
Even in elementary school, I never felt like I could do what needed to be done. I was a procrastinator from a young age. A slow reader, I had to go to reading class instead of taking Spanish. I couldn't manage more than C's and B's. It felt like everyone else had the guidebook to life, and when I got off the spiritual plane at my birth into this physical one, I forgot to pick up the manual. As I got older, it seemed I was less able to do what I knew I ought to do, and did more of what I knew I ought not do. I had no control over any of it. Tough way to live at any age, but as a teenager, it only confirmed what I already believed about myself: "For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh."
For me, the evil was drinking, running away, causing my mother pain, dropping out of high school, hooking up with boys who only wanted one thing. I knew something was wrong with me, and I believed that if I could find someone to love me, if I could just change, if I could do the things I knew I ought to do, then I'd be okay.
Like Paul, I resolved to do the right thing: show up to school, do my homework, stop partying, make friends with kids who were doing the right thing. I knew what I needed to do. I couldn't make myself do it. I'd start with every good intention I could muster, and I could not follow through.
More of the same in my twenties. I stopped running away, held down a job, started community college—but the thought that there was something wrong with me never left. I drowned self-doubt and self-hatred in alcohol. I had to organize every other part of my life around drinking so I could escape the failure I believed my life to be.
And then I found God. God was right in the middle of a room full of drunks. Drunks and addicts who were like little children—wide-eyed, hearts open. People plucked from lives that would, no doubt, have ended in a horrible alcoholic death, incarceration, or institutionalization, who became willing to do whatever it took to get better. Rooms where people admitted to far worse than me, where drinking had destroyed everything, where people wanted to will what was right but could not do it. For they did not do the good they wanted, but the evil they did not want was what they did. All of us coming into those rooms saying, "Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" It was war—between the sin of drinking and the consequences we couldn't control no matter how hard we tried to quit, and the peace of becoming people who could live in integrity.
The Greek words Jesus uses when he says, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants," are sophia—the wisdom of esteemed philosophers and educated people—and synetoi, meaning comprehension, intellect, the ability to put facts together. Education, intelligence, being good at math or well-read in philosophy was never going to get an alcoholic better. It was a disease. Even with all the money, power, and prestige in the world, we couldn't fix ourselves by force of will. But being like little children—open, willing, honest—that got us everywhere we needed to go.
In first-century Judaism, a "yoke" was a metaphor for a rabbi's particular interpretation of the Torah, dictating how a person should live out the commandments. Disciples who followed a rabbi took on his yoke—memorizing his words, adopting his worldview, living exactly as he lived. The yoke of Jesus wasn't the dogma, rules, and heavy legalism the Pharisees clung to. It was something much closer to what I learned from a room of drunks meeting in church basements all over the world—twelve spiritual principles:
1. Honesty
2. Hope
3. Surrender
4. Courage
5. Integrity
6. Willingness
7. Humility
8. Compassion, or agape
9. Responsibility, or justice
10. Discipline
11. Awareness and spiritual connection
12. Service
God did not appear to Paul on the road to Damascus because he was a dedicated Jew, faithfully following the laws of his religion. God came to Paul while he was persecuting Christians—condoning their imprisonment and death, making life miserable for people who only wanted rest in Jesus.
Paul was carrying a heavy burden: leading the charge against the very people Christ came for. And even after his encounter with the risen Christ, he wasn't perfect.
We aren't perfect either. We are human beings—spiritual beings having a human experience, and this spiritual being needs God. We don't need to work hard to be good, or sinless, or perfect. I, for one, just try to do the best I can each day, turn my burdens over to God, and let the teachings of Jesus shape me into a slightly more loving person than I was yesterday.