Trinity Church in the City of Boston
The Rev. Morgan S. Allen
February 15, 2026
Annual Parish Meeting
In you, O Lord, have we taken refuge; for the sake of your name, lead us and guide us.1From Psalm 31. Amen.
When Missy and I were preparing for marriage at Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Shreveport, Louisiana, the Dean – the Very Rev. M.L. Agnew, Jr, of whom I speak so often – invited me to join the staff of the Cathedral and the K3-8th Cathedral School. The position would afford me the opportunity to serve in full-time parish ministry while discerning whether I might be called to the priesthood. I would not be standing here were it not for M.L.’s mentorship and that remarkable experience at Saint Mark’s – almost 30 years ago now. I learned so much.
Not only did I learn the mechanics of lesson planning and hospital visits, I learned about the blessings and complexities of working with other human peoples. 23 at the time, as far as I knew, I knew most everything. Shockingly, not everyone agreed. That first fall, a senior colleague dressed me down in a staff meeting. Looking back now, I can appreciate a course-correction might have benefited me … but I can still feel the haughtiness of that delivery, their dismissal because of my age and education still crawling somewhere under my skin.
After the meeting, I asked M.L. if I could visit with him. He took me to a plate lunch place he liked [they did have good peach cobbler], and afterwards, I remember us sitting in his car, parked in the driveway outside his house. I shared about the offense I had taken, and I raised other occasions when this particular person had insulted me in front of staff members or parishioners. Wearing his black suit and collar on a hot summer day, he opened the car door, swung out one of his long legs, and with his foot set on the pavement and his knee pointed at the sun, he listened while I talked.
When I finished my tale of woe, M.L. took a breath and addressed me in his deep, Mississippi voice: “Morgan, you can come to me with anything. However [and man, he always landed those howevers with like seven syllables], do realize that if you come to me, you should be prepared for resolution.” And looking me in the eye, he continued, “Are you prepared for resolution today, in this situation, with this person?”
Naïve as I was, I could pick up what M.L. put down. Without saying it outright, he offered me a gift: tacit acknowledgement that yes, our colleague had behaved unfairly, unkindly. And if I really wanted, he would intervene on my behalf. He also offered me an implicit challenge: you can approach me about another member of our team, but not merely to commiserate – just because they’ve done something wrong to you, doesn’t mean you can triangulate with me. Come to me only when you are ready to address the situation and make it better for everyone.
“Thank you,” I managed. “I understand.”
Jesus follows the Sermon on the Mount’s beatitudes and affirmations with a series of demanding commissions.2Matthew 5:21-48. In a lengthy section of calls – “You have heard it said…” – and responses – “But I say to you …” – Jesus explains what fulfillment of the law, rather than mere adherence, will require of his disciples, will require of us.3Matthew 5:17-18, 20. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished … For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Today, we hear the final two of these calls:
You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ … [But I say to you,] if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek also… 4Matthew 5:38-39.
and,
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous …5Matthew 5:43-47.
and then the crescendo:
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.6Matthew 5:48.
The authors of Matthew take the familiar foundations of their covenant life, and they renew them by Jesus’ witness, establishing a new ethical standard that exceeds the letter of the Law. See, the sun rises and the rain falls on the evil and the good, righteous and unrighteous, alike – that is, the identity of our associations, even if grace-filled, do not grant us permission to forego our faithful responsibilities; likewise, the peculiarities of our circumstance, even if egregious, do not grant us permission to forego our faithful responsibilities. Specific to Jesus’ sermon, someone hitting us, does not justify our hitting them back. “Striking” – meanness, aggression, violence, however we want to cast it – remains wrong. Even persecution – that is, institutionalized mistreatment – does not grant us permission, in turn, to persecute others. Like mama always told us, two wrongs don’t make a right.
Intimidating as it is, we should hear this catalogue as illustrative, not exhaustive, and this same fulfillment standard applies to all the law, applies to all our lives. Thereby, in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, we can receive that final call to “perfection,”7Ibid. The Greek translated here as “perfection” – τέλειός – renders elsewhere as “mature,” as in “fully grown.” The word connotes “completion” (as in its close cousin, telos), or to provide symmetry with this section of Jesus’ sermon, “fulfillment.” as a call to constancy – a charge to do what is right “at all time and in all places,” and that unwavering fidelity distinguishes us as followers of Jesus. “For if you [only] love those who love you,” if you only manage faithfulness when convenient, “what reward do you have?”8Matthew 5:46. And because our fidelity is never about our individual purity alone, if we do the right and good thing only when that proves easy, then we become a people committed to comfort, rather than conversion.
This feels hard. Looking back on 2025 just passed and looking forward to the year ahead, it feels that the condition of our days demands a lot of the Church and her people. Yet Trinitarians, be sure: for all who aspire the fulfillment standard, the condition of the world has always demanded a lot of the Church and her people. And the same Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel who makes clear the difficulty of our charge does not make room for us to hedge the demands of righteousness, also encourages: “Get up and do not be afraid!”9Matthew 17:7, the exclamation point my own.
Facing this holy challenge, of course we can bring into this sanctuary our hopes and our hurts. Of course, we can bring our most authentic selves, and in the essential company of a Beloved Community who does the same, we can set our lives before the Lord of heaven and earth.
We can bring our fears about our personal health or the rise of AI, about social-media-driven depression or the pollution of “our earthly home.”
We can bring our optimisms about that work project nearly complete, about the Red Sox prospects as pitchers and catchers [finally] report.
We can bring our outrage about our neighbors dying in this nation’s streets, about our government’s cruel policies and officials’ preference for the powerful.
We can bring our joy about that baby so soon due, about that well-earned retirement finally approaching on a visible horizon.
We can bring them, our annoyances, our aspirations – we can bring ‘em all! Yet as we say of Communion, “This is not our table, this is God’s table,” and what we carry to this altar, we must bring for transfiguration10Matthew 17:2. …. transfiguration! – not for mere commiseration, not for solipsistic parochialism, not for malignant triangulation. We cannot weaponize authenticity and injure our companions with “our truth.” We cannot build partisan “dwellings”11Matthew 17:4. that memorialize our individual rightness at the cost of our collective righteousness. We cannot forego what is right and good for the base satisfaction of finger-pointing. No, we must come to this altar prepared for God to take hold of us and send us back down the mountain for the sake of the world’s salvation and not for our ease.
Lord, have mercy, I get it, man. I do. Feeling like a sucker for just taking it and taking it from “those” people [however defined], we decide we have no other cheeks to turn, that existential survival demands we fight fire with fire. In our hurt, we ask the Church to bless our anger and to ambassador our indignation. And I expect some churches are willing so to do – but not this one. When the Church prefers convenience and comeuppance … when the Church accepts the ethos of might-makes-right … when the Church ceases believing in the sufficiency of kindness and mercy, gratitude and grace … when the Church no longer has faith in the eternal power of a single, loving act, then we accept the terms of engagement that the sinners and the tax collectors have set, and we become complicit in the very horrors we intended to oppose.
As we at Trinity Church lean into 2026, we will make a difference for God’s reign, where we can, while we can: loving God and the people of this parish better than we loved ‘em last Sunday, and then – credibly, faithfully, collectively – bearing that love out in the world. By the model of Jesus, we will live every breath by the fulfillment standard for which Jesus gave his life, praying the familiar words: “Deliver us[, O Lord,] from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.”12From “Eucharistic Prayer C,” The Book Of Common Prayer (1979), p. 372. Indeed, that our “Communion [would make] us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name.”13Ibid.
We pray for grateful hearts and gracious lives,
Amen.