Sunday Sermon: A Poor Church for the Poor

A Poor Church for the Poor

Epiphany 3 (Year A) • January 25, 2026 • By The Rev. Dr. Adam Shoemaker

Readings: Isaiah 9:1-4, Psalm 27:1, 5-13, 1 Corinthians 4:12-23, Matthew 4:12-23

The calling of the first disciples in the Gospel of Matthew can seem unrealistic or even fantastical. Jesus walks along the Sea of Galilee and calls two sets of brothers, Peter and Andrew, James and John, as they go about their daily routine as fishermen. In both instances, the response to Jesus’ call is immediate.

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

It does not take a reader long, however, to come to understand that the immediacy with which these four fishermen answer the call does not mean that life as a disciple of Jesus is any easier for them. The gospels repeatedly testify to the fact that, however readily the disciples initially respond to the call of Jesus, they are just as flawed, fallible, and full of fear as anyone else.

This dynamic is also lifted up in St. Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, as he writes to an early Christian community rife with division. Petty squabbles increasingly dominate the landscape. This, for St. Paul, diminishes not only the unity of the body of Christ but also the proclamation of the gospel of Christ crucified.

Amid these divisions within the church and the world, the answer must lie in the persistent call of the seemingly “foolish” message of the cross of Christ. What might it look like to embrace this cruciform faith amid the divisive landscape of today?

Pope Francis made a “poor church for the poor” a central theme at the outset of his papacy. A “poor church” is a church that does not exist to assert itself—not the grandeur of its sacred spaces, not the pomp and circumstance of its cherished ways of worship—but rather exists to proclaim the gospel. It means a willingness to sometimes even transgress long-held assumptions of who was welcome into the household of God.

The invitation is to repeatedly embody the good news of the gospels by claiming this calling not for our own sakes, but for the welfare and well-being of the world that God has made and loves so very much.

The Rev. Dr. Adam Shoemaker

Rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. Adam is an Egyptian American with Christian, Jewish, and Muslim roots in his family of origin.