St. John’s Episcopal Church
Wednesday Service – Feast of Charles Simeon
Ephesians 3:7-12
Matthew 22:1-14
There’s a line tucked inside today’s epistle
that could have summed up
the whole life of Charles Simeon,
a seventeenth century British priest
whom we remember today.
In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul says,
“Of this gospel I have become a servant
according to the gift of God’s grace.”
That’s it.
That’s the heart of it.
“A servant of the gospel,”
not by personal achievement or ambition,
but “according to the gift of God’s grace.”
The truth is, as a priest,
Charles Simeon was not always beloved.
In fact, when he was first appointed
as rector of Holy Trinity, Cambridge,
the parishioners locked their pews
so no one could sit and hear him preach.
In fact, they heckled him, mocked him,
and froze him out for years
because they wanted a more fashionable,
less, shall we say, “enthusiastic” preacher.
But Charles Simeon stayed.
He stayed because he believed
that grace had made him a servant,
and that the gospel he preached
was not his to give up.
He kept opening the Scriptures—
line by line, verse by verse—
believing that the plain and faithful
exposition of God’s Word
was the surest path to renewal.
He trusted that if the Word were truly preached,
the Spirit would do the rest.
Maybe you’ve heard the terms
“high church” and “low church.”
Charles Simeon was a low churchman,
meaning that instead of placing emphasis
on Sacrament and symbol,
he looked first to Scripture:
the Word read,
the Word spoken,
the Word preached,
and the Word heard.
In time,
the very church that had spurned him
became a wellspring of renewal and faith.
That is what grace—
and the Word well preached—
can do.
It makes endurance out of rejection.
It makes invitation out of injury.
It makes servants out of sinners.
* * *
Jesus’ parable today paints the same picture
in grander tones.
A king gives a banquet for his son—
a feast of joy, abundance, and love—
but those first invited
make light of it.
They turn away.
They miss the party.
And so the king opens wide the doors.
He sends servants into the streets,
gathering “all whom they found, both good and bad,”
until the hall is full.
That, too, is the gospel the Charles Simeon preached:
that God’s grace is not for the select few
but for the whole crowd of humanity—
for the well-robed and rag-tag alike—
for any who will come
and receive the garment of Christ.
* * *
It is easy, over time,
to forget that this whole thing
is a wedding feast.
It is easy to make the church
a battleground instead of a banquet hall,
a classroom instead of a communion.
But the purpose of the Church, Paul says,
is to make known “the wisdom of God
in its rich variety” . . .
a phrase Charles Simeon would have loved.
For him,
the pulpit was not a platform for opinion,
but a window onto grace—
so that, through preaching,
through prayer,
through the life of the Church,
the world might glimpse
the manifold mercy of God.
And beneath it all,
Charles Simeon’s life was anchored
in the quiet disciplines of prayer and trust—
what he called “cheerful patience
under the hand of God.”
It was not triumph that made his ministry fruitful,
but faithfulness—
day after day,
decade after decade—
to the God who first called him.
* * *
So today, we give thanks
for this patient, faithful priest,
a man who saw himself as nothing more
than a servant of the gospel
according to the gift of grace.
And we remember,
with Paul and Simeon alike,
that we, too, have been called
to proclaim the boundless riches of Christ—
to invite the world to the feast—
and to do so
with boldness,
confidence,
and cheerful patience
through faith in him.
Amen.