Sermon: Unraveling the Tale
Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley preached the following sermon on January 22, 2026 during the board meeting for the National Association of Episcopal Schools (NAES) in New York City. The Most Reverend Sean Rowe, presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church, was the celebrant of the service.
Unraveling the Tale
In recent weeks, I’ve been reminded how important it is to slow down.
Which is not something I’m especially good at.
That lesson came to me on pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Anyone who has hung around me knows I’m not what you’d call a leisurely person. But on pilgrimage, I had to adopt a new mantra: “proud to be vertical.” Not fast. Not efficient. Just upright—simply relieved not to be face-planting in the Holy Land. Humbling, to say the least.
The land itself insists on that kind of humility. You cannot move quickly there—not only because of geography, but because of history. Generations have walked those paths. Centuries of prayers have been offered there. If you want to understand anything at all, you have to pay attention. And attention takes time.
Returning home, I found myself needing that same discipline of slowing down.
The killing of Renée Good.
Occupation in our own country.
The bombing of a synagogue in the city where I grew up.
Talk—again—of taking land that is not our own.
These are not isolated events. Together they tell a story about the tale we are living inside.
If we move too fast, we miss that story. Slowing down—listening carefully, reading attentively, praying honestly—helps us notice what is being revealed beneath the headlines. And what is being revealed is strangely familiar. It’s the same story Jesus disrupts when he takes the scroll out to read from Isaiah.
He reads, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor…
to proclaim release to the captives…
to let the oppressed go free.”
Then he sits down. And he says, simply,
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Not someday.
Not when conditions improve.
Today.
Dr. King perceived the same urgency Jesus did: the need to act now, today, to expose and dismantle a story as old as time—that might makes right, that oppression can bring peace. Whether practiced by the Roman Empire, the white supremacist South, or the unchecked powers of a corrupt government, the story is the same.
Both men had studied the story in which they were living, slowly, carefully. And both came to the same conclusion: disrupting the story was a matter requiring urgent attention.
We are still living inside that story. It runs in direct contradiction to our baptismal covenant. It is the story that whispers: I can only be safe if you are diminished.
This story is the lie that is killing us.
Unraveling it is holy work—work that happens in beloved community.
Together, we practice a demanding moral vision grounded in truth, repentance, and courageous love. We begin where Jesus begins: with those who have borne the greatest weight of injustice, because they carry wisdom we cannot afford to ignore.
And yet, as Valarie Kaur reminds us, revolutionary love does not stop there. It insists that no one—not even the oppressor—is placed beyond the hope of transformation.
This is not softness.
It is strength shaped by the cross.
Our Baptismal Covenant speaks this truth with clarity: we promise to respect the dignity of every human being. Not selectively. Not conditionally. Every human being.
As Bishop Sean reminded us in a recent sermon—unfortunately for us, the baptismal covenant has no exception clause.
Love of the stranger, and love of our opponent, must be learned—and relearned—across a lifetime. This is why Episcopal schools matter so much.
Our schools are not only places of academic rigor; they are communities of moral formation—places where young people learn to slow down, to listen across difference, and to hold complexity without abandoning truth. They learn that dignity is not earned but received as gift, and that freedom is not for the few but the human birthright of all.
We have an urgent need in our society for the formation our Episcopal schools offer.
Which means, our work in NAES is urgent, too.
But, sometimes, responding to an urgent need begins with slowing down. So we can see. So we can understand. So we can find our resolve.
We have the sacred opportunity to help a next generation truly internalize the reality that until dignity is protected everywhere, security exists nowhere. Until freedom is real for all, bondage persists for every people.
This is not a time to rush past what is being revealed. It is a time for careful attention—and for the patient, demanding work of preparing the next generation to unravel the tale and to choose again the way of Jesus.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon us—today.
May we slow down enough to listen,
and be brave enough to respond with the urgency these times require of us.