The Rt. Rev. J. Scott Mayer Sermon at Opening Diocesan Convention Eucharist
St. James of Jerusalem
October 23, 2026

Today in the life of the Church we commemorate St James of Jerusalem. As always on the days we celebrate saints, I turn to the work of our former Canon to the Ordinary David Veal and his book, “The Calendar of Saints.” David writes: “James was, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and according to Paul, a brother of Jesus. Yet, he was not a believer during the Lord’s earthly ministry. Jesus appeared to him after the resurrection and he was converted.”

“He soon rose to prominence in the Church and became Bishop of Jerusalem. He presided over the important Council in Jerusalem which decided to permit Gentiles to join the Church. As the Church grew and prospered, he became less and less popular with the authorities. According to the highly reliable historian, Josephus, he was eventually stoned and clubbed to death by a mob.”

“James of Jerusalem is usually considered to be the author of the Epistle of James. If this is the case he certainly had a clear insight in to the Lord’s message and ministry and its relationship to the Old Covenant.”

I want to take a moment to look at the martyrdom of James. Several accounts of his martyrdom claim that the Sadducees found James’s message to be offensive and blasphemous. So, they took him to the pinnacle of the Temple where James was told to denounce Jesus. Instead, James proclaimed Jesus to be the Son of God. So they threw James off the pinnacle of the Temple. He survived the fall, and he prayed for his attackers as they stoned and clubbed him to death.

We can imagine the attackers saying, “See if Jesus saves you,” as the story harkens back to the temptations of Jesus. We hear some version of that story on the First Sunday of Lent. Jesus is baptized. The Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness for 40 days and nights, during which time Jesus faces three temptations by the devil.

The first temptation: “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” The second temptation, while showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, the devil says: “To you I will give all this glory and authority, if you will fall down and worship me.” And the third temptation, the devil takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple, and says: “Throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you.’”

The devil tempts Jesus with the power to change the basic elements of creation; tempts Jesus with political power over all the world; and tempts Jesus with the power to avoid death.

Ultimately, the devil tempts Jesus to take for himself super human powers – to be something other than human.

And Jesus is victorious. He chooses to live in day-by-day dependency upon God, rather than setting himself above and apart from such dependency. He chooses a life of vulnerability. Rather than the devil’s offer of power over the world, he chooses to be in solidarity with ordinary human beings. Jesus chooses US. Hold that thought.

The House of Bishops held one of its regularly scheduled meetings last month at Camp Allen near College Station. One of our speakers was the Bishop of Rhode Island, Bishop Nick Knisely. Bishop Knisely is also a scientist, a physicist, and he made a presentation on the hot topic of the day: Artificial Intelligence.

So, there are good things about Artificial Intelligence. For example, lives have been saved already through its contribution to the medical field. It helps with language translation, educational assistance, and administrative support.

And on the other hand, there is much controversy around the building of data centers, and especially there are concerns and even fears expressed by some of the same people who had a hand in its development. This is happening at warp speed, and feels out of control. We wonder, what is AI going to become?

Well that is not Bishop Knisely’s main question. His question is: given AI, what are we human beings becoming? Will we begin relating to one another as if we are machines? Will the machine serve us like a tool, or will we serve the machine?

I read an alarming article this week by Ezra Klein. Like Bishop Knisely, he doesn’t spill much ink addressing the worst-case scenarios. We all vote against the worst-case scenario that somehow AI kills us all. But would we vote for the best-case scenario, at least in the eyes of its inventors and investors? The title of Klein’s article is: “This is the GOOD scenario?”

The envisioned good scenario by AI architects is – in their minds – a future utopia. “The global economy booms, and Americans grow richer than ever before. We are given new cures and cheap energy and wondrous entertainments. Machines perform our labor and mood-enhancing drugs protect our psyches. We need not struggle – perhaps we need not even work – to live lives, long lives, of luxury and ease.” Klein says a vision like this – or variant of it – is common among AI companies.

Perhaps Bishop Knisely’s biggest concern is that AI promises frictionless living: instant answers, instant companionship, instant writing, instant planning, instant entertainment – everything frictionless. And as a physicist he says, “no movement happens without friction. It’s a principle of physics.” And as a bishop he says, “formation requires friction. Christian formation has never been frictionless.”

“The spiritual danger,” he says, “is that the habits needed for holiness are often the very things AI seeks to optimize away.”

Who wouldn’t want new cures and cheap energy? Who wouldn’t want machines to do back-breaking and seemingly meaningless work? Who wouldn’t want to never worry about money or health? These aren’t bad desires.

But what would we become in this utopian frictionless world with no challenge, no struggle, no purpose, no sacrifice? It sounds like one of CS Lewis’s descriptions of hell. Maybe we will all sit around on clouds and play harps.

To me it resonates with the devil’s temptations to Jesus. Hungry? No worries, turn stone into bread. You can feed the world. Worried about dying? No worries, the angels will save you.

I’m mindful of Graham Greene’s novel, “Monsignor Quixote.” The character Monsignor Quixote has a dream, a nightmare. It goes like this:

“He dreamed that Christ had been saved from the Cross by the legion of angels to which on an earlier occasion the devil had told him he could appeal. So there was no final agony, no heavy stone which had to be rolled away, no discovery of an empty tomb. Father Quixote stood there watching on Golgotha, as Christ stepped down from the Cross triumphant and acclaimed.”

“The Roman soldiers, even the centurion, knelt in his honor, and the people of Jerusalem poured up the hill to worship him. The disciples clustered happily around. His mother smiled through her teers of joy. There was no ambiguity, no room for doubt and no room for faith at all. The whole world knew with certainty that Christ was the Son of God.”

Greene continues: “It was only a dream … but nonetheless Father Quixote had felt on waking the chill of despair felt by a man who realizes suddenly that he has taken up a profession which is of use to no one, who must continue to live in a kind of Saharan Desert without doubt or faith, where everyone is certain that the same belief is true. He found himself whispering: God save me from such a belief.” God save us from such a story.

Of course, it’s not our story. At his baptism, Jesus had no reason to repent. He could have watched it all from the riverbank. He stepped into the water with the masses, because he chooses US. After the baptism, he is tempted by the devil. He chooses US. At the mountaintop, after the Transfiguration, Jesus travels down the mountain to Jerusalem, choosing US. Sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane; Jesus chooses US. Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus chooses US. From the Cross, Jesus dies as one of us.

And then on Easter night Jesus appears to the disciples. He shows them his scars, and invites them to touch them. Jesus is not a ghost or a spirit. He says, “see that it is I myself.” In the resurrection Jesus does not escape from being human, and neither do we. Rather, Jesus liberates us to be human.

Those scars in the very human hands and feet of Jesus are scars declaring that we are worth dying for; that each one of us is of such value to God. They are scars declaring that we are forgiven. They are scars declaring that what happens in this material physical world matters to Jesus. They are scars declaring that Jesus turns down superhuman powers, and chooses US – because it is good to human.

Annie Dillard (of blessed memory), a Pulitzer Prize winning storyteller-mystic, tells a story about her experience at a small, rural Catholic church. From “Teaching a Stone to Talk” she writes the following:

“It is the Second Sunday of Advent. For a year I have been attending Mass at this Catholic church. … [Today] no one, least of all the organist, could find the opening hymn. Then no one knew it. Then no one could sing anyway. There was no sermon, only announcements. The priest proudly introduced the rascally acolyte who was going to light the two Advent candles. As we could all plainly see, the acolyte had already lighted them.”

She says: “A high school staged play is more polished than this service we have been rehearsing since the year one. In two thousand years, we have not worked out the kinks. We positively glorify them. Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God is so mighty he can stifle his own laughter. … Week after week Christ washes the disciples’ dirty feet, handles their very toes, and repeats, It is all right – believe it or not – to be people.”

Pope Francis made a very astute observation. We are not simply in an era of change. We are in a change of era. We don’t have a crystal ball, nor can we see what lies on the horizon. Human dignity is at stake.

It’s not the first time. The liberation from the bondage of slavery in Egypt is about human dignity, as slaves were seen as means to an end – as tools. With the industrial revolution people worked like machines in assembly lines, means to an end. So, this isn’t new.

And the Church has something to say. You are more than what you do, more than what you accomplish, more than what you accumulate. You are created in the image of God. Everyone is. And it is all right, believe it or not, to be people.