A sermon preached by the Rev. Megan Allen-Miller at Christ Episcopal Church at the Commemoration of the Rev. Absalom Jones & the Consecration of the Rt. Rev. Barbara Clementine Harris, February 14, 2026.
May the words of my mouth and meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.
Most of us know this feeling.
That moment when something begins to feel off, kind of blah. We may not even be able to name it, but we know something needs to change. And so we do what many of us have done before.
We rearrange our furniture.
We slide the couch to another wall, turn the chair toward the window, move the bookshelf, a lamp, maybe swap out a throw pillow or two, convincing ourselves that a small adjustment can make a stale space feel brand new.
When we’re done, we stand back, hands on our hips, and say, “Yes! This feels so much better!” The room seems lighter, fresher. And, if we are honest, we hope others notice.
“Wow, did you redecorate?”
“This feels like a whole new room.”
“Did you do this yourself?”
But the truth is, nothing is really new.
The couch is the same. The TV, the bookshelves, the books on the shelves (some we’ve read, some we keep adding to the “read next” pile), they are all the same.
We haven’t replaced what was broken or removed what didn’t work. We’ve simply rearranged and told ourselves that was change.
The danger isn’t that shifting things is useless. It matters that we recognize when something no longer feels right. That we notice the discomfort, the ache for something different. I think that those instincts are a good thing.
The danger, however, is when moving things around convinces us we’ve changed, while the very things that caused the discomfort in the first place remain firmly in place.
As a recent first-time home-buyer, I can tell you, there is a difference between rearranging, renovating, and tearing it down to the studs.
Shifting furniture is the safest choice. It offers the satisfaction of motion without the risk of loss. We stay in control. Nothing truly challenges us. For those with enough stability, it’s low risk. If it doesn’t work, everything can just go back to where it was before.
Renovation is harder. It disrupts routines. It takes time and money. Some things are repaired, some replaced, and others left alone. Renovation requires access, resources, safety nets, and the ability to live through disruption with confidence that things will work out the way you envision in the end.
Tearing down to the studs is the hardest and costliest option. It demands that something actually dies. Nothing can remain. What we rely on must be removed entirely, not rearranged, not repaired, but gone.
All of these options require imagination, the ability to see what could be when what is no longer works. But even imagination itself can often be shaped by circumstance.
It’s easier to envision new life when we are not already fighting to survive. The freedom to risk true change is not equally shared.
Despite this, many of us settle for mere repositioning.
Even the well-intentioned, justice-minded, good-hearted people often take subtle forms of it.
We celebrate diversity without actually sharing power, uphold traditions that no longer give life to all people, and avoid conflict to preserve comfort rather than pursue truth.
The furniture shifts, the space seems brighter, yet the weight remains.
Often this comes from fear, fatigue, or the desire to survive without losing what we know, or what we believe defines who we are.
This pattern is far from new.
The women go to the tomb expecting the same old story: death contained, grief measured, loss final. They come to care for what is gone, to honor what they believe cannot be changed.
But what they find is something they did not anticipate: the stone is moved, the body is gone, the tomb can no longer hold what God has done.
Life has broken through the barriers they thought were unmovable.
Their first response is confusion and disorientation. And then the messengers ask a question that still confronts us: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
Why do we expect life to emerge from what has already been exhausted by death?
Why do we keep returning to what cannot save us?
The women, remembering Jesus’ words, go and tell the others. And, like so many throughout history, they are not believed. Their testimony dismissed as an idle tale.
Resurrection, it turns out, is not immediately persuasive. It disrupts too much. It threatens the furniture we’ve learned to depend on to survive.
But resurrection is not redecorating the tomb. Death is not made more comfortable. Resurrection is God’s refusal to let death define reality.
And throughout history, God’s witnesses to resurrection have sounded just as unbelievable.
Barbara Clementine Harris knew this.
When Harris became the first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion, she did not rearrange the Church’s furniture. She exposed that the walls the Church claimed were load-bearing were never God-ordained at all.
She bore witness to resurrection in a space designed to resist it, enduring racism, sexism, hostility, and isolation, not because she thought it would be easy, but because she trusted that God brings life where many institutions insist only death is possible.
So did Absalom Jones and Richard Allen.
They did not negotiate the terms of their dignity. They refused to keep rearranging a space that required their humiliation in order to function.
They walked out. I have no doubt they felt despair, anger, and frustration. But I also believe they walked out full of faith. Faith that God could build something truer once the lie they were told was left behind. Faith in the resurrection requires leaving the tomb behind in order to share the Gospel.
Removing their names, their plaques, their memory is an attempt by some to rearrange the furniture. To control the room by controlling the story. But we know their names and their legacy and memory is not so easily forgotten.
I shared this past Sunday that a question I’ve heard a lot recently is, “What do I do?” And a close second, whether we are saying it out loud or just to ourselves, is, “How did we get here?”
How did such cruelty become justified?
How did division become normalized?
How did histories and entire groups of people become something we could rewrite or erase?
Well, we got here because, generation after generation, we chose rearrangement over repentance and transformation.
Racism becomes the “I don’t see color” mindset, gentrification disguised as “urban renewal,” or “diversity initiatives.”
Sexism becomes “TradWife” culture, or that’s just “locker room talk.”
Homophobia becomes “don’t ask, don’t tell,” or pinkwashing when corporations celebrate Pride for profit while also using that profit to support policies that harm LGBTQ+ people.
Xenophobia becomes “build the border wall” or “we need to protect U.S culture and identity.”
Tokenism, symbolic gestures, and grand statements all promise change but leave the weight exactly where it always was. The space looks different, but the harm, injustice, and power imbalance remain.
In other words, we knew the couch was uncomfortable. We warned people, “Be careful where you sit.” We admitted it hurt, but we could not bring ourselves to throw it out.
So we slid it over, covered it with new language, told ourselves things were better, and encouraged everyone, even those most harmed, to agree.
Rearranging lets us say, “Look how much has changed,” without asking who still bears the weight.
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
Why do we expect justice without truth?
Why do we mistake grand gestures for true transformation?
Why do we believe rearranging can bring new life?
Honestly, I believe it’s because we are very tired and deeply afraid.
Because tearing things down to the studs requires us to look honestly at ourselves and our lives and trust God with what comes next, and we all know that is easier said than done.
And yet, despite all of our moving and shifting, resurrection meets us not with shame or condemnation, but with love and invitation.
The women came to the tomb carrying grief, and left proclaiming the Gospel, even when they were not believed, even when the world stayed the same.
Resurrection does not ask whether the space feels better. It asks whether what needed to die has actually been left behind.
If someone walked into the space of our common life today, would they encounter resurrection, or just better lighting? Would they find truth told, harm named, power relinquished, or the same old furniture carefully repositioned?
The tomb is empty, yet our room remains crowded with old habits, worn-out beliefs, tolerated relationships, and systems that no longer serve life for anyone. The women at the tomb, Barbara Clementine Harris, Absalom Jones, all pillars of courage, faith, and justice, remind us that no matter how scary or outlandish resurrection might seem, it is real, and it is possible.
But only if we are willing to leave the empty tomb behind, instead of readjusting the stone ever so slightly and telling ourselves we’ve only just arrived.
Amen.