Pentecost 13 2026

Pope Leo XIV spoke about music at his general audience this week in St. Peter's Basilica,

leaning on a principle often attributed to St. Augustine: singing belongs to those who love.

Music, the Pope said, isn't ornament on top of prayer. It is prayer — the place where love finds a

way to say what plain speech can't quite carry.

I've been thinking about that all week, because music itself makes St. Augustine's point

better than any sermon I could preach on two events we’re marking this morning: Suzanna

Laramee's 70th birthday, and Nellie Horvath's time with us as our Director of Music — before

we send Nellie off next Sunday on a new adventure with our love and blessings. Our music

today is love in the most literal sense — people who love this place and each other, gathered in

our shared bond of community. Suzanna, classically trained pianist and co-visionary in building

Emmanuel’s collaboration with Newport Classical — that's reshaped this building into a living

home for our whole community — playing alongside Randy Elkins, our beloved former Director

of Music. Nellie conducting and singing. Artist in Residence Caleb Dinger joining them, and

the whole Musicians' Circle — Randy's original vision, still thriving — adding their own musical

prayers.

We prayed in our collect this morning that we be gathered together in unity by the Holy

Spirit, and that's exactly what our musical prayers are, with all of us adding our own voices,

wherever we are. Each voice, each tone, and each instrument is entirely itself, braiding and

weaving together into something none of us could make alone. That's unity. Not unanimity —

Suzanna, Randy, Nellie, and Caleb aren't all playing the same note (and I’m pretty sure that Jere

Wells is not often in the same key), but it is unity, joining our different ages, genders,

backgrounds, life experiences, and identities, willing to sound different and still make and be in community together. It's the same unity that shows up every week in this community's ordinary

collaborations: Newport Classical and Emmanuel leaders working alongside the City of

Newport and RENEWport, Rhode Island Legal Services, the McKinney Men’s Shelter, Lucy’s

Hearth, Laundry Love, MLK Community Center, Newport Prevention Coalition, the Middle

Passage Project, Housing Hotline, Newport Mental Health, Rhode Island Outreach — none of us

doing the same work, none of us needing to, together building the same beloved community.

Which brings me to Pharaoh. As we read this morning, there came a Pharaoh who knew

not Joseph. That's the King James Version of our story from Exodus this morning, and its poetic

syntax makes it stick in my memory. As we read two weeks ago, Joseph’s 10 older brothers,

jealous for real reasons, sold him into slavery, and he’s dragged away in chains to Egypt. From

slavery in a strange land, Joseph rises to become Pharoah’s number 2, essentially the Chief

Operating Officer of the entire Egyptian economy. When the famine came as Joseph accurately

predicted in his financial forecast, Joseph's grain plan didn't just save Pharaoh’s household. It

saved the whole region, including his own brothers who'd sold him in the first place. That

Pharaoh — the one who did know Joseph — recognized effective, faithful governance when he

saw it, and treated Joseph as a son. Joseph — a foreigner, former slave, and interpreter of

dreams with a super-complicated family history — could not have been more kinds of different

from Pharaoh and the Egyptians around him, but they recognized and celebrated each other’s

gifts and formed a thriving community. Then a new Pharaoh came into power who did not know

Joseph.

You know I love words, so I hope you’ll indulge my close focus on the verb here. In

Hebrew, the language of the Hebrew Bible, the word for know is yada [ya DAH], which has a

broader meaning than our English word. Yada is relational knowing, intimate knowing, the kind of knowing that changes how you treat somebody. It's the same verb in Genesis when we read

that Adam "knew" Eve. This new Pharaoh didn’t just fail to read the briefing materials about

Joseph and his role at the palace. New Pharaoh has no relationship, no regard, no ongoing

memory of what Joseph's gifts in community even meant for the survival, thriving, and joy of his

own nation. It’s the worst kind of cultural and historical amnesia.

Spanish philosopher George Santayana warned that those who cannot remember the past

are condemned to repeat it. We remember Winston Churchill also riffed on this theme in his

comments on political and military strategy. This saying encourages us to remember that we

know each other — in the yada kind of way — that is, the kind of relational knowing that

changes how you treat somebody. Forgetting our yada — that Pharaoh’s Amnesia we were

talking about — leads to suspicion and fear of each other and our differences, and fear is what

drives the rest of New Pharaoh’s story. New Pharaoh takes one look at the thriving Israelites and

fears loss of control instead of gratitude for abundant community. He orders forced labor, and

when that doesn't work, escalates all the way to attempted genocide.

Relational knowing — community — is the antidote to New Pharaoh's amnesia. Watch

how New Pharaoh’s plan is thwarted — not by political power, not by force or armies, but by

relationship, curiosity, and love. That’s why it's the women who save the future, one act of quiet,

loving, God-fearing insubordination at a time. Midwives Shiphrah and Puah simply refuse New

Pharaoh’s order to kill baby boys at birth, telling him that these hardy Hebrew women simply

gave birth on the job and went on about their work. When the frustrated Pharaoh escalates again,

ordering every Hebrew boy thrown in the Nile, Moses's mother obeys — sort of, and technically

— sealing her son into a watertight basket and setting it gently among the reeds, right where Pharaoh's own daughter bathed, while Moses’s older sister Miriam kept watch, ready to step in at the right moment.

New Pharaoh's daughter’s yada — relational knowing — breaks through the clouds of

Pharaoh’s Amnesia hanging over Egypt to feel compassion for a baby. Moses's own mother is

hired back to nurse her child. An Egyptian princess and Hebrew slave woman cooperate without

any kind of agenda. None of them is unanimous about anything — different languages, different

backgrounds, different life experiences — and a shared compassion for a baby. New Pharaoh’s

daughter raises Moses as her own son, and an “outsider” is once again a prince of Egypt. That’s

what unity actually looks like — remembered and retained relationship and community, formed

of difference and held together by curiosity and love. It takes effort, curiosity, and to fend off

the fear of difference that can thwart community.

I took a lot of Latin in college and have sung in many Latin masses. But still it’s easier

for me to hear, and remember, that music is the place where love finds a way to say what plain

speech can’t quite carry when St. Augustine’s Latin words are restated in my own native

language — by the first American pope. And this is exactly why we keep Saints' Days and Feast

Days on our calendar — not as quaint customs that make it difficult for newcomers to feel at

home, but as spiritual defense against Pharaoh’s Amnesia. This Sunday’s Saints Days — the

Feast of Suzanna's Birthday and the Celebration of Nellie's Faithful Awesomeness Among Us —

are doing the same holy work as midwives Shiphrah and Puah, New Pharaoh’s daughter, and

Miriam at the riverbank. They make us stop, on purpose, and remember — out loud, in music,

with joy — how our love, our collaboration, and our unity — not our unanimity — made this

house of God our home. Amen