I preached this sermon on Sunday, October 25, 2026 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Matthew 22:34-46.
Each year growing up, sometime around mid October, I would get really excited figuring out what I was going to be for Halloween. The costumes that my mom helped me come up with were quite elaborate at times. When I was four, I was a werewolf, and I was fully committed to the character, with pieces of fur stuck onto my face and arms. I won a costume contest for that one.
When I was 9, inspired by the movie Amadeus, I declared that I wanted to be Mozart for Halloween, complete with a velvet coat and a powdered wig and a lace ruffle. The kids in my class all thought I was George Washington, but what did they know?! They couldn’t see my vision!
Every year I was all in on the disguise no matter what it was. There was something really fun about taking on a different character, becoming something else for one night. Especially as a kid who was somewhat shy and didn’t always feel comfortable in his own skin, it was an escape.
I no longer dress up for Halloween, but sometimes I wonder if I’m still walking around in a costume of sorts. Not my priestly garments, but the costume of the self that I present to the world. I wonder if a lot of us do that.
Because somewhere along the way, maybe we decided that whoever we are at our core is insufficient, unimpressive, a bit too much of this or too little of that, and so we put on a mask, a persona, an outer shell of some kind, to cope with the things that scare us.
Have you ever felt this way? I especially notice it whenever I run into someone I know casually or in some professional networking-type space. They ask, how are you? How are things?
And I feel the need to share something impressive. A trip or an accomplishment or a big development. Because I dare not say the truth: that I doomscrolled on my phone for too long yesterday, and I put off going to the gym yet again, and I stayed up too late fretting over all the things done and left undone, and I did not yet come up with a new way to solve the world’s problems.
No, no, better to put on the costume of someone who does noteworthy things. Even if it means that if I do that, and if you do that, then we never really get to know each other for real. We just walk around comparing our powdered wigs and tucking away the frayed edges of ourselves.
This is why I need Jesus. This is why I love Jesus, and admire him, and believe in him, and keep following him. Because Jesus does not wear a costume of any sort. Jesus does not give a darn about measuring up to anyone else’s idea of impressiveness. He is wholly and fully and simply and wondrously himself, and he expects us to be the same. It is the starting point of what will save us.
Just look at today’s gospel passage.
I think we tend to read this passage and think of his words about the greatest commandment as some big, new revelation—some amazing insight with which Jesus stuns the Pharisees and the Sadducees: love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
But here’s the thing we need to really understand: it’s not new. Jesus is not being innovative here. He is simply reminding people of the timeworn fundamentals that they already know: that love is the fulfillment of the Law; that a society held together by love for God & neighbor is the whole reason God gave the law to Israel, and that this same love is what underlies everything that has been created.
You see, Jesus is never trying to impress us; he is simply calling us back to what is true. When he gives the Pharisees and Sadducees this answer about the greatest commandment, they have nothing to say, not because they are surprised but because they already know this. They just don’t want to have to do it!
And, if we are honest with ourselves, neither do we, a lot of the time. That’s why we put on flashy costumes for each other instead—because we don’t always trust that love is enough. We don’t always trust that the love we bear in our hearts is the most powerful thing about ourselves, not our accomplishments.
But friends, Jesus’ reminder of the greatest commandment, and his example of a life lived by that commandment, reminds us that until we do trust this—until we take off the powdered wigs and the funny masks and show ourselves as we are—to one another and to God—and confess our deep hunger to love and be loved—until we do that, we will never know peace. We will never know it, our whole lives through.
And I don’t know about you, but more than ever these days, I want to know peace.
The world will not give it to us. You don’t need me to tell you that. Just as in Jesus’ time, people are still putting on frightening personas and doing horrible things to one another in the pursuit of power—exploiting vulnerabilities, telling lies, demonizing the vulnerable.
And Jesus knows that we do this. It’s why he refused to enter that fray or to be the kind of savior that the people wanted him to be. He refused to put on the costume of an earthly king or a mighty warrior.
It’s why, in today’s reading, he pokes at the notion of the Messiah being just another successor of king David, because he knows that true salvation comes, not from a temporal ruler but from a timeless truth: that only the love we share will deliver us, body and soul and society. And the world will laugh at this and call us soft and weak and disappointing, just like they did to Jesus. But honestly, anything other than love is just a dead end.
Ultimately what this means, friends, is that following Jesus and doing as he did is an invitation to take off our impressive disguises. It is a commandment to look at God in the face and to look at your neighbor in the face, and to look at yourself in the face, and dare to love what you see in those faces, unhidden, unadorned, unafraid.
For as C.S. Lewis wrote in one of my favorite novels, “how can [God] meet us face to face til we have faces?”
If you can do that, if you can show your real face to God and the world, you will have done one of the bravest and holiest things a person can do. You will be a saint.
And if it feels scary to be that vulnerable—I get it. We’re all trying our best. Here, together, in community, we’re trying our best.
But if I have one dream for us as a parish, and a prayer for each of us as followers of the God Incarnate who refuses to hide behind any disguises, it is that we would take off the costumes and find our peace in honesty with each other, and with God.
If we are anxious in these times, then let us say so. If we are ridiculously hopeful, then let us act like it. If we are just doing our best to get through the day, then let’s trust that this is enough.
I, for one, am tired of hiding behind the veneer of success and self-satisfaction.
Because if it is truly true that the greatest commandment is to love God and love your neighbor as yourself, then that starts by getting real with God, and our neighbor, and ourselves. Otherwise, it’s all just a costume contest.
Mind you, I still think I could rock a powdered wig.
But that pesky Jesus, he won’t rest until I am just myself. And until you are just yourself. For whatever reason, that’s who he wants to shepherd and love and save: just ourselves.
And if it’s been a while since you thought about what that looks like—today is a good day to begin.
Don’t be afraid. Masks off.
