Miguel Castilleja Escobar

This sermon was preached at San Andrés Episcopal on April 26, 2026. It was originally written and preached in Spanish, and the Spanish version is available below (la versión en español es disponible abajo).  What is God like? What can we compare God to? In every age and in every place, images of God arise that become popular and take on their own power over people’s imagination and faith. I remember when I lived in Spain and would enter very old churches, many of them from the Middle Ages. Frequently, in those churches, one would see large images of Jesus as judge. In those representations, Jesus had large eyes—all the better to observe us—and a serious, stern face. And in contemplating them, one understands that the idea of Jesus as judge, along with the promise of heaven and the fear of hell, occupied a central place in the Church’s symbolism and in the spiritual life of the people at that time.  What is God like? What can we compare God to? Is God a Father? A king? A judge ...

The Tribute Money , by Rubens (1610–1615) In a blog post for Church Anew , I reflect on Tax Day through the lens of Jesus’ well-known line: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” This somewhat enigmatic reply comes in response to a question about whether his disciples should pay taxes. In the post, I explore the context of this exchange, the history of the tax in question, and the intriguing implications of what Jesus did not say in that moment. I conclude by offering my own interpretation and reflecting on what it might mean in the context in which I find myself today. Click here to read the full post. “The question posed to Jesus—should people pay taxes to Caesar?—and his enigmatic reply raise profound questions that Christians still wrestle with today. How should Christians relate to civil society? What does it mean to balance religious identity with loyalty to a nation? And when, if ever, should believers practice tax resistance...

Dante speaks to Pope Nicholas III, committed to the Inferno for simony.  I recently wrote a blog post for Church Anew about Simony, the buying and selling of sacred things. It's a reflection about one of the most ancient limits the church has placed on commerce, a prohibition that is occasionally forgotten in our marketbased society.  "In 2023, the Washington National Cathedral caused a social media uproar when it announced that it was selling tickets for its Christmas Eve Eucharist. Though the decision was quickly retracted, the initial sale ended up stoking a passionate—and for me, highly interesting—debate about the moral and theological question of whether a church should ever charge people for the Eucharist, or for any sacrament, really." Click here to read the full post. 

This sermon was preached on Easter morning at San Andrés on April 6, 2026. It was originally written in Spanish, and the Spanish version can be found below the following English translation.  Este sermón fue predicado para el servicio de Pascua en San Andrés Episcopal, 6 de abril de 2026. Fue escrito originalmente en español y luego traducido. La versión español esta abajo el inglés.  Resucitó, resucitó, resucitó Aleluya, aleluya, aleluya Jesús resucitó. He is risen, he is risen, he is risen. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Jesus is risen. This is how one of my favorite hymns begins, proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is not an ancient hymn—in fact, it was written in Spain in the 1980s—and its words are very simple. It has only four verses. But to me, the refrain sounds like what the first disciples might have shouted when they discovered the empty tomb and saw the risen Jesus for the first time. Surely they proclaimed something like this: Resucitó, resucitó, resuc...

El Greco's Jesus Cleansing of the Temple I recently wrote a short essay for Church Anew about the theme of corruption in Holy Week. I've included a quote just below and the full post is available here . "In light of this, is there anything our faith tradition has to say about what some are describing as this new Golden Age of Corruption? As a matter of fact, corruption comes up often in the New Testament, from mentions of bribes and extortion to critiques of officials who use their positions to exploit the poor. But perhaps nowhere does this theme appear more insistently than in the stories surrounding the last week of Jesus’ life."  

This sermon was preached in Spanish at San Andrés Episcopal Church on March 22, 2026. The Spanish is below the English translation / El español es abajo del inglés.  One summer when I was a teenager, I read and reread Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. Summers were long, and I was already a nerd - a solitary kid who liked to read. This novel is about the death of a man’s soul: Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov was a proud, highly intellectual young man, a former student, and poor — actually destitute. At the same time, he held himself in such high regard that he believed society’s rules didn’t apply to him. He concluded that he was a great man — like Napoleon Bonaparte or other leaders who shape history — even though no one recognized his greatness at the moment. He thought that, like those leaders, he was above the law of morality, and he could even kill to achieve his great goals. Such was his poverty that, in order to start his great career, he decided that he needed to kill...

La versión en español aparece debajo de la versión en inglés. Some time ago I began following someone on Instagram. His name is Pepe Flores ( @viendolavidacomo_pepe ), and he is a young Mexican from Yucatán. He is one of those people with many talents: he is a classical pianist, an athlete who runs in competitions, and he is also blind. Part of what he does on social media is advocate for inclusion and accessibility in general for people who are blind. Sometimes he also responds to questions that people send him about what life is like for a blind person. He has a general message that he repeats often. He says that being blind is certainly a disability, but not necessarily what many people imagine. And he notes that there are many people with perfect eyesight who are actually lost - people who can look but who do not perceive the world before them. In other words, he points out that there is a difference between having sight and having vision. And that difference brings us directly to ...