What were you made to become?

Paul admits he isn't there yet, and tells us why he keeps running anyway: because Christ Jesus has already made him his own. In this sermon on Philippians 3:12–4:1, we follow Paul toward a prize that does not wilt, discover what it means to be a citizen of heaven, and hear the promise at the very centre of our inheritance: the risen Lord will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body.

Along the way: a crown of wild celery, an acorn and an oak, one small Greek word (telos) that runs through the whole passage, and the difference between heaven as where we are going and heaven as where our King is coming from.

"Held for Glory"
The Rev. Dr. Devin Hunt
Eternal Hope Anglican Church (ACNA), Carleton Place, Ontario
The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity · 4 October 2026
Part of our autumn series, "How Great an Inheritance"

PRAYER
If something behind you will not let go, you don't have to carry it alone. To arrange a time for private prayer, contact the Rector: rector@eternalhopechurch.org · (613) 324-8126

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Paul says that Jesus "emptied himself." Of what? Many of us assume he set
his divinity aside for a while and picked it up again at the ascension.
Paul says nothing of the kind — and what he does say is stranger, and far
better.

In this sermon on Philippians 2:1–13, we ask what God looks like when he
is most himself. Philippi assumed the answer was upward: power, conquest,
glory — a god who looked like Alexander, or Augustus, only larger. Paul's
answer is downward. And the descent to a slave's cross turns out not to be
an interruption of God's majesty, but the fullest disclosure of it.

Along the way:

- What "he emptied himself" (ekenosen) does and does not mean — and why
Calvin's "concealed, not lessened" matters
- Why Paul begins with four gifts before he asks for anything
- Which name is "the name above every name" — and why Paul's quotation of
Isaiah 45:23 is the boldest thing in the letter
- What "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" actually
asks of you, and why it is not works-righteousness
- "It is God who works in you, both to will and to work" — hope for those
praying for family who do not yet believe

Readings: Philippians 2:1–13 · Isaiah 45:22–23 · Matthew 21:23–32 ·
Isaiah 25:6–9

Preached by the Rev. Dr. Devin Hunt at Eternal Hope Anglican Church
(ACNA), Carleton Place, Ontario — Trinity 17, 27 September 2026.
Part of our autumn series, "How Great an Inheritance."

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Just before this passage, Jesus tells a story about a man who leaves ninety-nine sheep on a hillside and goes into the dark after the one that wandered off. Then he turns to the disciples and hands them the shepherd's own word: If your brother sins, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.

Go.

Matthew 18 is usually read as a procedure — the fine print on church discipline. It is something else. It is a search, and the one who sends us searching has just said he does not intend to lose anybody.

This sermon looks at what Jesus actually asks: the private conversation before the public one, the dignity left to the person who is in the wrong, and the uncomfortable fact that the one who must go is not the rector or the wardens but whoever happened to notice. It takes seriously the hardest sentence in the passage — let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector — and asks why the Lord who ate with tax collectors would use those words at all, and what the distance is finally for.

And it rests on the promise underneath the whole thing: where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Not a consolation at the end of a hard passage, but the reason underneath every word of it.

Scripture
Matthew 18:15–20 (ESV). Appointed lessons: Ezekiel 33:1–11 · Psalm 119:33–48 · Romans 12:9–21.

Series
Now and Not Yet: A Summer in Matthew — eleven Sundays through Matthew 10–18, Proper 8 to Proper 18, on the Kingdom of God as both present and still to come.

Preached by the Rev. Dr. Devin Hunt at Eternal Hope Anglican Church, Carleton Place, Ontario, on Sunday, 6 September 2026 — Proper 18, the eleventh and final Sunday of Now and Not Yet: A Summer in Matthew.

Eternal Hope is a small Anglican parish in Carleton Place, Ontario, in the Anglican Diocese of the Ottawa Valley (ACNA), worshipping from the 2019 Book of Common Prayer. Visitors are always welcome.

Full services are livestreamed each Sunday. Subscribe for weekly sermons.

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