The Sermon I Preached Today
Bound to Hope Baptism, Waiting, and the Christ Who Carries Us
I had the honor and privilege of giving the homily today at church. Here’s the written version, which only differs a little from the version delivered, as reading a text out loud to a crowd always invites moments of change and tweaks of phrasing in the moment.
Bound to Hope
Baptism, Waiting, and the Christ Who Carries Us
Lectionary texts: Zechariah 9:9–12; Psalm 145:8–14; Romans 7:15–25a; Matthew 11:16–19, 25–30
There are seasons when hope does not feel bright or easy. It feels like waiting with open hands, longing for God to finish what God has begun while we still live with questions, fatigue, and unfinished places in us. On a baptism Sunday, that kind of hope is close to the surface. We come to the water not because everything is whole, but because Christ meets us there and promises that we do not wait alone.
That is the hope Zechariah names: “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope.” It is a strange and beautiful phrase. It describes people bound by the promise that God is not finished yet. Hope is a gift, but it can also feel like a burden, because hope asks us to endure before we feel restored.
Zechariah speaks to people who know that burden. Israel has returned from exile, but return has not meant restoration. They are back in the land, but the land does not yet feel whole. Home is still marked by ruins, weakness, pressure, and loss. They expected coming home to feel like resurrection. Instead, it became another kind of waiting.
A prisoner of hope has received enough of God’s promise not to return to despair, but not enough fulfillment to stop longing. Israel is no longer in Babylon, but they are not fully restored. They have seen enough mercy to believe, and enough brokenness to keep asking, “How long?” Hope is heavy because it asks us to keep walking when restoration has begun but has not arrived.
That may be closer to us than we imagine. Many of us know what it is to have returned but not yet feel restored. We come back to worship, prayer, community, or ordinary life, and remain tired, guarded, disappointed, or afraid. Even as Christ Church grows, even as we talk about future space and possible new work, there is still holy waiting in us.
It might be someone back in church after a long season away, grateful but still unsure how to pray. It might be a family that looks steady while quietly carrying grief or fatigue. It might be any one of us doing the next faithful thing while the heart lags behind.
That is why this is such a good word for a baptism Sunday. Baptism is not a sign that life will now be easy. It is the sign that Christ’s presence comes before we have learned how to endure. In baptism, God names us as his own, and the burden of hope is made lighter because Christ bears it with us.
Zechariah’s promise begins with a king: “Lo, your king comes to you.” But this king does not arrive as kings usually arrive. The king is “triumphant and victorious,” but also “humble and riding on a donkey.” He comes not with war horses and chariots, but lowly, speaking peace to the nations.
That, too, must have been hard to receive. Israel longed for restoration, but God’s restoration did not arrive first as domination. It came as humility, peace, and power almost too gentle to trust. This is the king whose throne is a cross, whose victory comes not by crushing the weary but by carrying them.
That brings us to John the Baptist in prison. The one who prepared the way now sits confined. He had announced judgment, fire, cleansing, and deliverance. He had baptized Jesus, seen the heavens open, and heard the voice name Jesus beloved. The baptizer who stood beside the waters of promise now endures where deliverance is not visible.
So, John sends his disciples to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” This is not unbelief. It is the question of someone who believed deeply and now suffers in the gap between promise and fulfillment. It is the question of a prisoner of hope. Baptism does not shame that question; it joins us to Christ while we ask.
Jesus does not rebuke him. He points to the signs of God’s kingdom: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”
Restoration has begun, though not as John imagined. The promise has not failed. God is healing, freeing, raising, and speaking good news. But John is still in prison. The restoration is real, but not complete.
That is where Christian hope lives. Hope does not pretend that the prison is unreal or that faithful people never ask hard questions. Hope is being bound to the God who has acted, is acting, and will act. The burden of hope is to endure, but in Christ that burden is not crushing. Christ is not only the one who helps us wait for restoration; in him, restoration has already begun among us.
Paul names the same struggle in Romans: “When I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.” He knows the gap between the new life God has begun and the old patterns still clinging to us. “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” It is also the cry behind today’s collect: we can do no good thing apart from God.
Then comes the answer that might not feel like an answer: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” And then: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Baptism plunges us into that promise. We are joined to Christ, marked by his death and resurrection, and no longer defined by condemnation. The struggle does not disappear; it takes place in the presence of Christ, who gives us the Spirit to live according to God’s will.
That matters for those being baptized today and for all of us who remember our own baptism by watching water do its quiet work. We do not come because we understand everything or can make ourselves faithful by force of will. We come because grace comes before understanding, promise before performance, and the Spirit before we know how to obey.
When renunciations are spoken and trust in Christ is professed, we admit that this life cannot be lived apart from grace.
The water says what we need to hear: before you can hold on to God, God is holding on to you. Before you can answer every question, you are named beloved. Before you feel restored, you are claimed by the Restorer.
Baptism does not end our waiting; it gives our waiting a companion and a direction.
And the church makes promises too. We surround the baptized with faith, forgiveness, prayer, and witness. No one becomes a prisoner of hope alone. Hope is carried by a people who sing when one member cannot sing, believe when one member can only ask questions, and remember the promise together. That is part of what we are learning as a growing parish: not only making room for more people but becoming a people who can carry hope together.
Psalm 145 gives words for this shared hope: “The Lord upholds all who are falling,” and we are all at some point in time falling. Baptized life is not a life in which we never stumble. It is a life in which, when we fall, we fall into mercy.
That is the rest Jesus offers: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Not those who have figured everything out, or whose return already feels like restoration. The weary are invited. The burdened are invited. The ones carrying disappointment, fatigue, confusion, and hope.
Jesus does not explain every delay or remove every struggle. He says, “Come to me.” His rest is the gift of being yoked to him. In baptism, we are joined to Jesus and carried into his humility, mercy, peace, and trust. The yoke is still a yoke, but it is not carried apart from him.
That matters for Christ Church as we discern future space and who we are as a church. Growth is a gift, but it is also a weight. The question is whether we will carry that weight alone or yoked to Christ.
Perhaps the invitation today is not to pretend we are more restored than we are, either as people or as a parish. Perhaps it is to become honest prisoners of hope: with Israel, still waiting; with John, still asking; with Paul, still struggling; with the baptized, claimed by Christ and learning to live from that claim.
Hear the promise again: return to your stronghold. Return to the humble king. Return to the waters where God named you before you had words to name God. Return to the table where grace is given for the weary. Return, Christ Church, not because everything already feels restored, but because the Restorer is faithful.
This is what we proclaim over the waters today. When the water is poured and the Triune name is spoken, we are bound to a hope stronger than circumstance, disappointment, the old self, and death. When the cross is traced on the forehead, it is the sign that Christ has claimed this life and promised his presence before any of us knows what we will have to carry.
So, prisoners of hope, come with your weariness, your unfinished restoration, your questions, your longing. Come to the water blessed for this holy sign, and to the Table where the weary are fed. Come to the presence of Christ, given first in baptism and renewed whenever he says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
And because we cannot carry this hope apart from him, we pray: Grant us, O Lord, your Spirit for the waiting. Teach us to long without despair, to hope without pretending, to endure without hardening, and to do the good we cannot do apart from you. In our longing, keep us near Christ. In our baptism, remind us that we are already held by the one who carries the burden with us. Amen.
For the king has come. The kingdom has begun. The Spirit gives life. And even now, before everything feels restored, Christ is making us prisoners of hope: people called to endure and never left to endure alone. Amen.