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allsaintsjonesboro Sermons

The Birthday of Blessed Mary

The Nativity of the Virgin (detail). Tempera on Panel by Andrea di Bartolo (1389-1428)

Today, Christ’s holy Church celebrates the birthday of Saint Mary, the Blessed Theotokos. The Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, though, is not ultimately about Mary herself, but about God’s faithfulness in fulfilling His promises through her, culminating in the birth of Christ. From the first promise in Eden that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent, God’s people lived in expectant hope, even amid sin and unfaithfulness. Through generation after generation of flawed yet chosen people, God wove the golden thread of His promise, leading to Mary’s birth as a sign that salvation was near. In her womb, by the Holy Spirit, the promised Savior took on flesh to redeem the world. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection fulfilled God’s plan begun in Eden, and even now He continues to keep His promises through Word and Sacrament as we await His final return. Thus, celebrating Mary’s nativity is a way of rejoicing in God’s steadfast faithfulness and His work of salvation for us in Christ. Listen to Father Suelzle’s entire sermon below.

allsaintsjonesboro Sermons

Are You Right with God?

How are you made right before God? Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector to answer that question. While human reason assumes the Pharisee’s outwardly righteous life makes him justified, Jesus reveals that it is the humble tax collector who is declared righteous. The Pharisee’s prayer is full of self-congratulation, whereas the tax collector’s simple plea—“God, be merciful to me, a sinner”—is grounded in faith and dependence on God’s forgiveness alone. True humility is not a human achievement but a gift from God, worked through his Word. Ultimately, God answers our plea for mercy through Christ, who in humility bore our sin on the cross and in turn gives us his own righteousness. Christians daily make the tax collector’s prayer their own, trusting not in ourselves but in God’s promise to forgive and grant us Christ’s righteousness through his merciful means of grace. Listen to the whole of Fr. Suelzle’s sermon for Trinity +11 below.

allsaintsjonesboro Sermons

From Fig Tree to Martyrdom

From fig tree to martyrdom, Bartholomew’s life is a testimony that the power of faith rests not in us, but in Christ who calls and keeps us.

Saint Bartholomew—also called Nathanael in John’s Gospel—shows us what it means to be seen and known by Christ. At first he was skeptical when his brother Philip told him about Jesus. But when Jesus revealed that He already knew him, Bartholomew confessed with bold faith: “You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

That same pattern holds true for us. Left to ourselves, we remain under the shadow of sin and death. But when Christ calls us by His Word, when He joins us to Himself in Baptism and feeds us at His table, we are brought from shadow to light, from doubt to confession, from death to life. Like Bartholomew, we find that our faith does not rest on our own strength but on Christ who first knows us.

Tradition tells us Bartholomew carried the Gospel as far as India and Armenia, where he sealed his witness with his blood. He was not remembered for seeking his own greatness but for pointing always to the greatness of Jesus. His life and death remind us that the treasure we carry is Christ Himself, and that even in our weakness the Gospel is the power of God for salvation.

May God grant us, as we pray in the Collect for this day, to love what Bartholomew believed and to proclaim what he taught: that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, who still comes among us as the One who serves.

Listen to the entire sermon: