Engineering My Faith: Recent Episodes

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Preached on July 26, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Genesis 29:15-28.

Today, we’re continuing the story of Jacob that I was also in last week. To refresh your memory: Isaac and Rebekah had twin sons, Esau the elder and Jacob the younger. Isaac loved Esau but Rebekah loved Jacob. Jacob was a trickster, a striver, a deceiver. He took advantage of Esau’s hunger after a long hunt and convinced him to trade his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew. Then Jacob tricked his father into giving him the blessing that would rightfully belong to the elder son. After this trickery, Esau was intent on killing Jacob, who ran for the hills.

His first stop was a town then called Luz. After his mystical encounter, Jacob renamed it Bethel, the House of God. Encouraged by God’s presence, Jacob continued on to Haran.

In the parts that the lectionary skips, Jacob makes it to Haran, the land of his mother’s family. He meets Rachel at the well and learns that she is the daughter of Rebekah’s brother Laban. She brings Jacob home, where Laban welcomes him.

Now, remember what started this all: Jacob is running for his life. Laban knows this. Eventually, Jacob establishes himself as a semi-permanent fixture in Laban’s household, but throughout the story, Laban clearly knows that Jacob has limited options. Jacob cannot simply return to Canaan, for fear of his brother. So Laban has him cornered.

This is true of so many refugees. When war breaks out, innocent people are displaced. They can’t stay where they are, for fear of being caught up in the violence between factions. So they run for the hills, or to be more precise, they escape the war zone and seek a place on the other side of the border. For example, in Sudan, a civil war broke out in April 2023. By the end of 2025, nearly 12 million people had been displaced, including more than 4 million who crossed the border into Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, and other neighboring countries. This is the largest active refugee situation in the world today, though there are many others.

Now, what do you do if you are one of those millions of people seeking safety? You take what you can get. Egypt doesn’t have formal refugee camps, which means freedom of movement, but also means that nobody is actively taking care of the refugees. Instead, they have to find what work they can. They endure whatever living and working conditions they must, because the alternative is a return to their violent homeland.

In other nations, refugees are housed in camps with limited facilities and supplies. It’s just too many people for those nations to support. In Uganda, some refugees have to live on 500 calories a day. Keep in mind that the average American consumes 3600 calories a day, though we would probably be healthier with about 2000. But again, refugees have to take what they can get.

And those are refugees who have done nothing wrong. Jacob was no saint. He wasn’t fleeing a famine or a war. He was fleeing the consequences of his actions. I’m reminded of Lee, one of the Magnificent Seven in the original movie with Yul Brynner. Lee was a dapper gunfighter and vicious killer. He had killed his enemies, but that meant he was a wanted man and had to pay much more for much worse accommodations. He said, “I have the most stylish corner of the filthy storeroom out back. That, and one plate of beans. Ten dollars a day.” When you act without integrity, in violation of God’s plan for universal human flourishing, you place yourself at the mercy of those who would exploit your vulnerability like Laban did to Jacob.

The solution is to always act with integrity. Simple, right? I’m working through a book titled The Way of Integrity. In fact, I’m planning on a deep dive with it when I go on my annual silent retreat next weekend. “Integrity” has a certain judgmental connotation, but the book uses the more faithful definition of it: intact, one thing, united and whole, functioning correctly. I hope the plane I take to Dallas tomorrow has integrity—everything working together the way it should, the way its designers intended.

The Way of Integrity is about achieving complete alignment of body, heart, mind, and soul. This isn’t a moral judgment so much as an honest accounting of who you really are and what you are really supposed to do.

The problem we all face is culture. None of us were raised by wolves in the wilderness, right? We all grew up surrounded by people who had certain beliefs. Our family of origin is the strongest influence, but certainly not the only one. We continue to absorb messages from the media, from our friends, from our extended family, from the groups to which we belong. These messages shape our beliefs about ourselves and what we should do.

A great example from the book: The author describes a man who worked as an advertising executive. He was raised with the belief that a man is obligated to make the most money possible to provide for his family. But he was miserable, absolutely miserable. He was stuck between the beliefs drilled into him as a child and the truth of who he really was. That internal conflict affected his health and his relationships. Eventually, he quit the advertising job and opened a martial arts studio for disadvantaged kids—much less lucrative, but far more rewarding.

That’s integrity. Listening to your personal truth about who you are and what you are called to do, rather than cultural norms, family expectations, and so forth. And it applies to organizations as much as to individuals. A whole organization can buy into a certain set of expectations and ruin itself, rather than staying aligned with its own truth and calling. My dad worked for Westinghouse during an era where they abandoned their core engineering principles and instead followed investors’ desires that they develop a real estate financial division. That eventually led to near bankruptcy and the downfall of an industrial giant. They abandoned their own truth and paid the price.

But what is truth? What is your truth? Ah, that’s the hard part. How can you tell when that voice in your head is God, or your parents, or the guy on TV? Obviously, you should listen to God more than the others, but how can you tell?

Without giving away the whole book, which I couldn’t do in a short sermon anyway, I’ll just point to a few things that help you to know when you are not following your truth. The first is feeling purposeless. Everything seems meaningless. Take the ad executive. The purpose of his job was to make money, but he just didn’t care about the work itself.

The second is emotional misery. You might feel sad, or angry, or fearful, or anxious. You might even have a panic attack. You might spiral into depression.

The third symptom is physical deterioration. That’s a symptom of depression, too. Even without depression, though, just suppressing your inner truth can lead to chronic illness. Interestingly, secret-keeping is linked to higher heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose levels.

The fourth symptom is consistent relationship failures. You end up in relationships of all sorts that don’t really fit because you are not living your truth. So the relationships don’t last. You end up disconnected and lonely, even in a crowd.

The fifth symptom is consistent career failures. You can “fake it ‘til you make it” up to a certain point, but eventually, if your heart isn’t in your work, you will not succeed. Simple tasks will become major challenges. You might know what you should do, but you just can’t force yourself to do it.

And finally, the sixth symptom is bad habits you can’t break. Maybe it’s drugs or alcohol, maybe it’s Candy Crush or Facebook, maybe it’s games or gambling. I heard a fantastic podcast about addiction where a psychologist confessed to an addiction to romance novels. These bad habits give you temporary release from the internal struggle that comes from not living your truth, and eventually take on a life of their own that consumes you.

The worst lies are the lies you tell yourself. And so, you need to be honest about who you are. Inevitably, that means being honest in all things. As Mark Twain said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” You don’t have to remember which lie you told to get ahead if you live from a place of integrity. Simple, not easy.

Our society, and all human societies, are lubricated by little white lies. When someone says, “How are you?” how do you respond? Do you say, “I’m fine”? Are you really fine? Maybe, maybe not, but that’s the social convention. If you disagree with your boss, or your spouse, or your friend, do you say so bluntly, or do you claim that you mostly agree and put off the conflict to another day?

Fortunately, Jacob isn’t subtle in his deception. He’s blatant, so we can see the cost of his deceit. He was acting from a belief that he inherited from his culture. He thought that the most important thing was material wealth, so he should do whatever was necessary to get it. He paid the price for following this belief, rather than following God’s plan.

Again, the worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. Last week, the Way Forward committee held a meeting. I haven’t discussed it with anyone, but I hope it went well and the process goes well in the coming weeks, months, and years. The key to its success is embracing the Stockdale Paradox. I’ve probably mentioned that before. Admiral Stockdale was a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam. He was once discussing his ordeal with author Jim Collins and said, “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

We can and must have faith in the central message of the book of Revelation: in the end, God wins. But we must also be truly honest about the facts of our current reality. Today’s congregation is far removed from the one I joined eighteen years ago. Many members have left us, due to death, illness, moving to another city, or simply moving on in their faith journeys. Those of us who are still here are eighteen years older. Ignoring this reality will surely lead to poor decisions about our future together.

The good news is that it’s never too late to acknowledge your truth. Eventually, Jacob realized that he had strayed from the path that God had laid out for him. Eventually, Jacob found his own truth, the truth that he needed to reconcile with Esau and return to the Promised Land. When he did, he became the father of a great nation. God did not intend for Laban’s actions, but worked through them for good. Leah, the unloved elder sister who was betrayed by both her father and her unwilling husband, was the mother of six of Jacob’s sons, including Judah, patriarch of the southern kingdom, and Levi, patriarch of the priestly tribe. Jacob returned home with many livestock, ready to establish himself without needing his ill-gotten gains. His time away, including an extra seven years that Laban tricked him into, gave Esau time to establish himself and forgive Jacob for what he had done.

We too can turn our lives around. We can acknowledge the ways we are living out of alignment with our true selves. We can discern God’s voice among all the other voices in our heads telling us what to do. We can speak the truth in our families, in our church and other organizations, in our communities, and in our workplaces, and lead everyone to a life more aligned with God’s will. In so doing, we can find meaning in any suffering, shed the emotional baggage of cultural expectations, and pursue a life of flourishing. May each of us individually, and all of us as God’s people, discern our truth and have the courage to live into it. Amen.

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Preached on July 19, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Genesis 28:10-19a.

Have you ever had a strange dream? Back in July 2020, there was a FoxTrot comic strip in which the Mom and Dad both had crazy dreams. Dad says, “I dreamed Lin-Manuel Miranda and Bruce Springsteen were writing a musical based on my life. So they flew to Texas to watch me give quarterback lessons to a young Patrick Mahomes. Then we all went to Whataburger, where I discovered if I ate patty melts left-handed, I’d lose weight. What was yours?” Mom says, “I dreamed I had a civil and informed political discussion on Facebook.” Dad says, “OK, that’s way beyond crazy. You win.” Mom says, “I’m kinda bummed I woke up.”

Strange things can happen in dreams. Yet throughout scripture, we read about times when God or an angel appears in a dream. Earlier in Genesis, Abraham meets God in a dream. In Matthew, an angel appears to Joseph in a dream to encourage him to stay with Mary. God chooses to appear when someone is in need of direction or encouragement.

Let’s back up to see why Jacob is in this particular place anyway. Isaac married Rebekah, who gave birth to twins. They fought in the womb, and the second baby—Jacob—grabbed the heel of the first one, Esau. From the moment of their births, Jacob and Esau were competitors for their parents’ love. Esau was favored by Isaac while Jacob was favored by Rebekah.

In the first major event, Esau trades away his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew. As the elder son, he should have received a double share of the inheritance, but Jacob tricks him out of it. Later, Jacob dresses like Esau and deceives his father, stealing Isaac’s blessing that should rightfully have gone to Esau.

Honestly, Jacob comes off as almost an anti-hero. There is very little that he does “correctly.” He is a striver and a deceiver, and now because of it, he’s on the run. Esau is angry over losing his birthright and his father’s blessing, and is angling to kill Jacob. It seems that all of Jacob’s deception will come to naught.

So Jacob, fearing for his life, stops for the night near a town called Luz. He puts a stone by his head and goes to sleep. Then the most amazing dream! This is the first apocalypse in the Bible, that is, a revelation, when the veil that separates the seen from the unseen is lifted. In his dream, he sees the true reality, God’s presence in that place along with the host of heaven ascending and descending as they serve God’s purposes in the world. In the dream, he is reminded of the covenant that God once made with Abraham, and through him to Isaac, and now to Jacob. Indeed, despite Ishmael’s birth preceding Isaac, and despite Esau’s birth preceding Jacob, and despite Jacob’s questionable character that included tricking his elder brother and his father, Jacob has inherited the promise that God once made to Abraham: to make him a father of a nation as plentiful as the stars in the sky or the dust of the earth.

Wow! What a dream! Jacob awakes with the knowledge that he has truly encountered the Lord, the God of his father Isaac and his father Abraham, the God of all Creation who will fulfill the covenant through him.

Jacob has this dream, this vision, in a particular place. And so, he believes that the place is special. He renames it Bethel and sets up the stone by his head as a monument to his special encounter. Bethel was already a special place due to Abraham’s actions there, and later it would become the primary place of worship during the era of the judges, and again in the era of the divided monarchy.

In antiquity, the basic belief was that a god—any god—lived in a particular place. In Jacob’s time, they did not yet conceive of a god who could be in many places at the same time, or as I believe, a god who could be everywhere in all things at all times. So this vision and the Lord’s words to him were necessary to convince Jacob that God would travel with him to Haran and back again.

Why then? God draws near to the brokenhearted. Mystical encounters are often associated with a particular state of mind. I had one—a feeling rather than a vision—when Rhonda was fighting her facial pain and I felt like my life was coming apart. I have a friend who had a clear vision when he was facing some serious life challenges. Julian of Norwich had her visions when she was near death due to illness. This isn’t always the case, but often, something happens when you are suffering to the point of despair. When you feel like you have lost everything else, you become more aware of God’s presence in your troubles. Jacob thought that he had lost everything and feared for his life, and so he was more open to God.

He was also in a particular place. Nowhere is Bethel really described, but presumably it was a “thin place.” That’s a term from Celtic spirituality. The Celts believed that there were certain places where the veil that separates this world from the spirit world was thinner. I read a story by Carrie Knowles about such a place in Brittany, France. She said:

Our family was … looking for a picnic spot. When we pulled into the parking lot of a state park, a sign at the trailhead announced that we had entered a sacred Druid Forest and were welcome to hike and picnic if we did so in silence.

After a short discussion, we all agreed to give it a try.

The trail was narrow and the woods on either side of the trail were dense with vegetation; we hiked single file for about 20 minutes along the shaded trail, until we crested a hill and found ourselves in a large sun-drenched clearing where there wasn’t a tree or bush in sight. In the middle of the clearing was a circular outcropping of large flat rocks.

We sat on the rocks and ate in silence.

On returning to our car, we felt as though we had, for that moment on those rocks, entered a sacred space. It was a place and a moment I don’t think I will ever forget.

There are many “thin places” where it is easier to sense God’s presence. Iona, an island off Scotland, is a famous one. Another is Lourdes, the site where a girl had visions of the Virgin Mary, which is now a pilgrimage site. I have heard that St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is one, and that there are many in the Holy Land.

But you don’t have to go that far to find a special place, a holy place. At the end of the month, I’m going to the White House Jesuit Retreat House in St. Louis for a three-day silent retreat. That, to me, is a thin place. Partly, it’s because of the location and fantastic facilities, including a replica of the grotto from Lourdes. Partly, it’s because of the silence and separation from the noise of modern society, complemented by a prevailing attitude of prayer and worship. I am intentionally seeking God’s presence, and I’m in the company of others on the same search, so it’s easier to sense it.

Another thin place, for me, is where I go elk hunting each fall. One time, I was walking along a hillside in the woods, east of where I was planning to spend the late afternoon. In the middle of the day, I move slowly and quietly, kind of like a walking meditation, as I look for tracks and sign and generally take in my surroundings. Suddenly, a herd of elk came through the forest. They were probably 30 or 40 yards down the hill from me. They moved in quickly, then slowed down to a walk. There were maybe as many as 20 elk, both cows and calves—no bulls. As they walked, they would call to each other, just little “mew” sounds, to stay together, chit-chat. It was amazing.

That was a thin place. That was a special place and time when I had an encounter with something transcendent. But as soon as it began, it was over. The herd moved more quickly than I did, and it was gone. I can go back to that exact spot again, but I’ll never have the same experience.

We cannot stay on the mountaintop. Jacob could not stay at Bethel. Those of us with work and families and other commitments can go visit Iona or White House or another retreat center or go on a pilgrimage, but eventually, we must return to our normal lives. So, what’s the point?

Jacob was on the run, and he had a vision. God told him not only that God was with him right then, but also that God would accompany him wherever he went and would bring Jacob back to the Promised Land, where God would fulfill the covenant. Jacob was in dire straits and needed that assurance to carry on.

Similarly, I had my God experience when I was suffering. I had despaired of ever finding an answer to Rhonda’s facial pain, and I feared what our future would be. In the midst of that suffering, I had an overwhelming sense that everything was going to be OK. That sense of comfort, of God’s ultimate providence, was what I needed to carry on that day and for the days, weeks, months, years, and decades to come.

But not all visions or God moments come when we’re in despair. Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, had a mystical vision in 1958. He wrote this about it:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

It cannot be explained, only experienced. This experience was pivotal in Merton’s growth. He was already a best-selling author of a book on contemplative spirituality, but his earlier epiphanies, in foreign locales and on pilgrimage, had not dislodged his connection to old theological understandings. Instead, they had spurred him to seek escape from this world, into God’s more perfect world. After his mystical encounter in an ordinary place, Merton became one of the great mystics of history, listed beside Gregory of Nyssa, John of the Cross, and the anonymous author of Cloud of Unknowing. After the Louisville vision, Merton embraced the immanence of God—that is, God is here, right here among us and within us. God is transcendent, yes—greater than anything we can imagine—but we do not have to go anywhere or do anything special to find God. All we need is awareness, for God is close at hand. The veil may seem thinner in some places, or when your heart has been broken open, but it is just a veil, not an impenetrable wall.

These visions, these encounters, are gifts from God who knows what we need. Merton needed an expanded vision of God’s presence. I needed comfort and strength to endure Rhonda’s search for healing. Jacob needed assurance that he hadn’t completely ruined his chance to inherit the covenant God had made with his father and grandfather.

But mystical encounters are brief. The lessons may last a lifetime, but the encounters themselves are often just a few moments. And then, we must return to life. Like Jacob, we must continue our journey and follow God’s calling. We all must honor the claim God has on our lives, seeking always to do God’s will. Yet experiences like Jacob had are proof that God is always close at hand. God is in all things, just waiting for our awareness. Go forth now with the confidence that just like Jacob, God will be with you, wherever you go and whatever you do. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on June 28, 2026. Based on Genesis 22:1-14.

Back in December, I decided to preach primarily on the Old Testament passages from the lectionary. Seemed like a good idea at the time, before I realized I would have to preach about the Binding of Isaac.

Let’s situate the story in the narrative arc, and then see if we can redeem it. When last I spoke, Abraham and Sarah welcomed three travelers who turned out to be angels. The LORD once again promised that Abraham would father a great nation, and that Sarah would be the mother of the son who carried that legacy. In due time, Sarah conceives and bears Isaac.

There’s a problem, though. Back when Sarah was barren, she contrived to have her slave Hagar bear Abraham’s son, Ishmael. Now that she’s a mother, Sarah cannot bear the presence of a rival, so she has Hagar and Ishmael sent away. God rescues them, and Hagar gives God the name “El-roi,” the God Who Sees. Abraham and Sarah meant harm, but God worked through it for good.

Next, Abraham and his household move to Gerar and he has some conflict with Abimelech over Sarah and over access to wells. To resolve the conflict, Abraham enters a covenant of loyalty to Abimelech.

Now wait a minute. A few chapters back, Abraham entered a covenant with the LORD! He isn’t supposed to serve two masters. He is supposed to serve God alone!

All in all, these couple of chapters don’t paint Abraham in the best light. He sends his slave and the son that he fathered with her off into the wilderness to die. He acts deceitfully, and then enters a covenant with a worldly king. Is this really the kind of man who could father a great nation, a priestly nation?

So as the opening verse of today’s reading says, God decides to test him. God needs to make sure Abraham has the right stuff to carry forward the covenant.

There are two questions in this story. The first is, what kind of man is Abraham? But the second, more important one, is, what kind of God do we worship? What kind of God promises, and promises, and promises that Abraham will have a son to carry on his legacy, and then as soon as the son is born, asks Abraham to sacrifice him? What kind of God asks for human sacrifice at all?

I am not the only person who struggles with this story. It has been discussed and debated for millennia. It’s tempting to just skip it, to just turn our attention to the New Testament instead. But I think it’s important to read the whole Bible. I think the whole Bible has something to teach us, if we approach it with the right lens.

Zach Lambert wrote an excellent book called Better Ways to Read the Bible. I highly recommend it, and also, he’s leading an online study of it in July. I’m happy to tell you more about it after worship. At any rate, he identifies four harmful lenses that many people use, and then four better lenses. Let’s skip the harmful ones.

The first helpful lens is context. We tend to focus on the ancient Israelites as if they were the only culture, but they were just a small part of a big world. Throughout the ancient Near East, there were many cultures that worshiped many gods. The Israelite understanding of God was colored and shaped by their interactions with these other cultures. We know that at least two of the regional gods demanded human sacrifice, Molech and Chemosh. In fact, human sacrifice, including child sacrifice, is well-attested throughout the ancient world, not only in the Near East but also in far-flung cultures like the Celts, Mongols, and Aztecs. So when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, it fit his understanding of the kinds of things that gods would demand. Abraham probably didn’t understand why he had to do this horrible thing, but it fit his worldview at least.

In the end, God did not require human sacrifice of any kind. God prevented it in dramatic fashion, thereby establishing that kings should not sacrifice their sons, and indeed no human should ever be sacrificed to satisfy the God that we worship and hold dear.

Which leads to our second lens, fruitfulness. The interpretation of a scripture shall be judged by its fruits, which should be fruits of the Spirit. Well, one fruit of this story is that untold thousands of humans were not sacrificed. Isaac was not, and so he had two sons, Jacob and Esau, who became patriarchs of Israel and Edom, respectively.

The fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Through this encounter, Abraham learned what true faithfulness is. He learned to trust God entirely. He learned to put his trust in God’s promises, rather than substituting his own plans. Throughout the Abraham story, we see that he is learning patience—a lesson that we all need. God’s promise is deferred, again and again. Abraham needed to learn patience, that God will provide. This episode reinforced his need for patience, as he took a three-day journey not knowing how it would work out.

As a result, maybe we all can learn patience. We can learn to wait on God’s time, rather than human time. Humans operate on chronos time, the kind of time you measure with a clock and a calendar. We want things to happen “on schedule.” There is a social schedule in every culture: you should get married by a certain age, have kids by a certain age, buy a house by a certain age, retire at a certain age, and so forth. But Abraham was WAY behind schedule. By maybe sixty or seventy years. People who don’t follow society’s plan can be reassured by the Abraham story that God will provide. God operates on kairos time, acting when the time is right, never early, never late. We usually don’t understand God’s sense of time, but we aren’t supposed to—we’re just supposed to accept God’s timeline and rely on the Spirit’s gift of patience.

The third lens is flourishing. Admittedly, this is my favorite lens, through which I read all scripture and view the world around me. I believe that the core of the Gospel is that the kingdom of God is at hand! And that God’s kingdom is universal human flourishing.

So how does this story guide us towards flourishing? Well, throughout his life, Abraham tried to do God’s will. He messed up a few times along the way, though. He was deceitful with Pharoah, and again with Abimelech. Both times, he claimed Sarah was his sister, which was a half-truth that disguised their marriage. He tried to name one of his servants as his heir, against God’s plan. Then he and Sarah contrived for him to father a child by his slave. That’s all kinds of wrong. He exploited Hagar, he didn’t trust God’s promise, and then he cast out Hagar and Ishmael—his own flesh and blood—to die in the wilderness. The fact that God rescued them only accentuates how wrong Abraham was to cast them out.

God promised that Abraham would father a great nation, if only he would fulfill his covenant and obey God. After all these times when he went against God’s will, Abraham faced the ultimate test—and passed!

As they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. In each of these examples, Abraham did what he thought was the right thing to do. He thought that deceiving Pharoah and Abimelech would save himself and Sarah. He thought that fathering a child through Hagar would cement his legacy. And yet in all these ways, he was drifting further and further from God’s plan.

That’s the way evil triumphs. Hannah Arendt wrote about “the banality of evil.” She particularly noticed it in the trial of Adolf Eichmann. He was ultimately responsible for a great many atrocities. However, he was no psychopath or sociopath or fanatic. Rather, he was an ordinary bureaucrat, following his orders, obeying the law. He didn’t think for himself but instead relied on clichés and talking points given to him by his superiors. His motivation was professional promotion, not Nazi ideology.

Abraham didn’t go far down that road, but was taking a few steps along it. We see the same thing with King Solomon later, as he gradually introduces foreign gods into Temple worship under the influence of his foreign wives. Each step we take seems innocuous, but you look up one day and realize how far you’ve gone. A key piece of advice my dad once gave me was, “Beware of making a series of small decisions that add up to a large one.”

And so, God put Abraham to a test. This was one of those times in his life when everything coalesced. There was no nuance. There was only the stark choice: Would he obey God? Or would he choose the comfort of his wealth, his wife, and his son who had finally been born? Choose this day whom you will serve. He finally realized that he was making bad choices, and that he had to love the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

We too need to make that decision. We should always choose to follow God, but it’s easy to make little decisions that gradually lead us away from the narrow path. Then one day, you’re faced with a choice. Will you choose the comfortable life you’ve built, or will you choose to follow God’s calling? Will you accept God’s claim on your life? Abraham confronted that choice, chose correctly, and was rewarded with a legacy that still lives on today. Through this dramatic test, Abraham re-calibrated his commitment to a path that led to his flourishing and ours.

Last but certainly not least, we can read the Bible through the Jesus lens. That’s the principle that the entirety of scripture reveals something important about the Messiah. Jesus was the fullest expression of God’s nature, but God was revealed throughout the millennia that preceded Jesus’s birth and is still revealed in people’s encounters today.

One term that comes up when you read the Bible is “type.” A type is an Old Testament person or thing that foreshadows a person or thing in the New Testament. Most significantly, some types foreshadow Jesus Christ.

I think we can see Isaac as a type of Jesus. Both of them were specially designated to fulfill God’s plan for humanity. Both of them carried the means of their own deaths—Isaac carried the wood for the fire, and Jesus carried his cross.

In the Isaac story, we learn that God does not desire human sacrifice. We learn that God’s plan centers on life, not death. Isaac was apparently destined for death on the altar, yet was rescued and replaced by a ram that God provided.

I’d like to give you two possible interpretations, and maybe both of them are right. First, we can consider this a demonstration of God’s power over death. Isaac was just a man; Jesus was both human and divine. Jesus demonstrated that death has no ultimate power, that our triune God conquers death in all its forms. Jesus demonstrated that physical death leads to physical absence, and yet spiritual presence remains. We have confidence that through Christ, we have all received eternal life. There is still sadness when we lose someone we love—not sadness about the finality of death, but an extreme version of the sadness we feel when we are separated from our loved ones. We know that just as Jesus still lives, all the departed saints still live as well and will be together in God’s eternal kingdom.

At the same time, there is real value to our time here on earth. Isaac had work to do. He was needed to father Jacob and Esau so that God could have a priestly nation to carry God’s message down through the ages. So death has real meaning, real impact, but is not the end.

There’s another way to see this story, though. God demanded Isaac as a sacrifice. Throughout the Torah, there are rules about substitutions that can be made in sacrifices. For example, God took the tribe of Levi in place of the firstborn of the Israelites. Here we see God providing a ram in place of Isaac. In the same way, God provided Jesus as a sacrifice in place of the entire sacrificial system. As it says in the book of Hebrews, the high priest enters the holy place year after year with blood that is not his own, but Christ appeared once for all at the end of the ages to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself. And so, the entire sacrificial system has come to an end.

Hosea said, and Jesus quoted, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” From the beginnings of Israelite culture until the destruction of the Second Temple, sacrifices were the central act of worship. But the essence of the Gospel, and the lesson of the cross, and the lesson that Abraham learned, is that sacrifice is not ultimately what God demands of us. What God has ordained is that the world would be transformed into an existence of universal human flourishing. God desires reconciliation, of each of us to God and of each of us to one another. God desires strong, loving relationships. God desires that humans would support one another, in word and deed. God desires mercy: restorative justice, not retribution.

This story from ancient Israelite traditions is one that people have struggled with for millennia. I know I have. But in it, we find the true character of God, the character of Abraham, and an inspiration for how we should live. God desires mercy, not sacrifice. God desires human flourishing. God has abolished the old sacrificial system. Jesus Christ instituted a new age, one marked by reconciliation and restoration and relationship. Let us seek ways to live in God’s kingdom, a way of life dedicated to loving God by loving our neighbors. Amen.

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Preached on June 14, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m trying to preach other parts of the Bible outside of the Gospels this year. Today, we’re in Genesis, which covers the huge span of time from Creation up to the time when the patriarchs for the Twelve Tribes find themselves in Egypt. Today’s selection is in the Abraham cycle, which traces Abraham’s call, covenant with God, and ultimate establishment as the father of a great nation.

Abram starts life in Ur of the Chaldeans, probably in southeast Iraq, and then travels with his father to Haran, probably in far northwest Iraq. At the age of 75, after his father has died, God calls to Abram and proclaims that he will be the father of a great nation, if only he will go where God tells him. He traveled by stages, ultimately to Egypt. After a little trouble there, he goes back up to the Negeb in southern Israel, and then to Bethel, a city near Jerusalem that figures prominently in the early history of the Israelites. There, the LORD promises Abram all the land that he sees, and offspring like the dust of the earth.

At that point, there is a little skirmish among the kings of several cities. In the process, Abram’s nephew Lot is taken captive, so Abram leads a counterattack that is victorious. In return, he is blessed by the king of Salem, Melchizedek, a priest of El Elyon, God Most High, a priest-king who prefigures Christ.

Up to this point, Abram has been gaining wealth, including slaves and livestock, but his wife Sarai is still barren. A second time, God makes a promise to him that he will have offspring like the stars in the sky. God and Abram enter a covenant, the foundation of Israel’s role as a priestly nation.

Yet Sarai is still barren, so how will Abram father a great nation? They decide that it’s time to take things into their own hands. Sarai has a slave, Hagar, and arranges for Abram to father her child, Ishmael. This does not go well. It was Sarai and Abram’s plan, not God’s plan. Ishmael turns out to be a patriarch, but not of the priestly nation that God has in mind.

Yet again, at the age of 99, Abram receives a promise from God that he will be the father of a great nation. His name is changed from Abram, which means “high father,” to Abraham, “father of multitudes.” God promises and promises and promises, three times, and yet Abraham is still waiting.

And what about poor Sarah? Even if things had turned out OK with Ishmael, he would have been Hagar’s son, not Sarah’s. She would still have mourned her inability to be a mother, which would have been a great source of shame in that culture. God had deferred the promise so long that Sarah went through menopause and still hadn’t given birth. So in today’s story, when she hears yet another promise that she’ll have a son, she laughs ruefully. She’s too old! She can’t do anything new at her age! Whatever she might accomplish in life is behind her. Having a child wasn’t her destiny, so she’ll just have to accept her role as life companion to Abraham.

But nothing is impossible for God! It’s as if God purposely waited until it seemed to be impossible in order to demonstrate the miraculous nature of her son, Isaac, in a way that foreshadows Mary’s virgin motherhood. Never doubt that God can do great things through you, whether you are too young and inexperienced or too old and worn out. God is moving in you, in me, in all of us.

I’ve been thinking these last couple of weeks about legacy. Sarah thought that she would leave no legacy. In that time and place, the only legacy a woman could leave was her children, and she was barren. After God blessed her, she gave birth to Isaac, the inheritor of the covenant who carried forward the lineage of Abraham into the nation of Israel. Sarah did leave a legacy.

What is my legacy? It’s too easy to say that my kids are my legacy, and anyway, it’s not fair to burden them with all of my expectations. I think about my work. Recently, I was named IEEE Fellow, which essentially recognizes researchers who have left a legacy. I did a couple of things fifteen years ago that had some impact on the field. Realistically, though, in twenty or fifty years, nobody will remember them.

So if my research accomplishments aren’t my legacy, what about my leadership as department chair? Probably not. In fifty years, I’ll be a picture on the wall. My accomplishments as an instructor? Maybe. I’ve influenced hundreds of students, probably more than a thousand. Some of them may remember me; some of them may be different people because of something I taught them. I think I influenced a few of my grad students dramatically. A handful.

When I really think about it, though, the one thing I’ve done that will leave a legacy is LGBTQ+ Rolla. Six years ago, it was just an idea. Now we have an annual Pride celebration and a community center. Even if we shut down tomorrow, the impact we have had together will carry on for years and decades. Being in a university town, we have impacted people who are now scattered around the nation and the world. For example, I had a meaningful impact on a student who returned to Taiwan recently.

How did we do it? How did I do it? Well, I looked around and said, “Someone should do something!” Then I thought, “I’m someone!” So I found some like-minded people and away we went. Nobody does anything great on their own, but someone needs to get the ball rolling.

My dear friend Lucy has already established a legacy. A little over a year ago, a group of people got together because they were upset about the plight of ICE detainees in Phelps County Jail. Someone should do something to help these people! So Abide in Love was formed. Lucy ultimately became the president. Some of the detainees have been deported, others returned to their communities as they seek asylum. But all of them have known God’s love through the efforts of Abide in Love. All of them have had their humanity embraced at a time when they felt hopeless and alone.

Several years ago, the pastor and members of the Vineyard saw a need in the community: homeless people who had dirty bodies and dirty clothes. They installed a shower and some washing machines and dryers in their basement and invited people in to use them. It turned out that they were just scratching the surface of the need in the community. Over time, they added more services to care for the whole person. What started as a ministry of the Vineyard became an independent organization, The Rolla Mission. My dear friend Ashley was a volunteer there, and one day she realized that she was called to lead The Mission. She became their first paid employee in 2018, and they have skyrocketed since then. They have 24/7 operations now and work hard to get people into permanent housing. Unfortunately, while The Rolla Mission was growing, Vineyard was shrinking. COVID was probably the last straw. By 2021, they could no longer sustain operations.

Yet out of that death came new birth. Around that same time, Patrick Wilson was starting a new church that needed a home. CrossRoads ultimately moved into the space vacated by the Vineyard and has embraced The Rolla Mission. The Vineyard of Rolla may be no more, but their legacy lives on, in The Rolla Mission and, in a sense, in CrossRoads.

What do these all have in common? First, a need. Someone recognized a need in the community, and decided to fulfill it. Second, a team. I didn’t start LGBTQ+ Rolla on my own, Lucy didn’t start Abide in Love on her own, Ashley didn’t start the Rolla Mission on her own and wasn’t even there at the very beginning, Patrick didn’t start CrossRoads on his own. Each of us was part of a larger group, leaders but not loners. Third, a willingness to learn. As a straight ally who is an engineer, I know literally nothing about leading an LGBTQ+ nonprofit. Lucy will be the first to tell you she doesn’t know what she’s doing, or at least she didn’t when she started. Ashley has grown tremendously, right along with the Mission. Patrick has a DMin and years of experience as a pastor, but knew nothing about church planting when he started CrossRoads.

Most importantly, in every case, the timing was right. How do I know? Well, you can’t see it while it’s happening, but you can see it as you reflect on what has happened. Starting a social organization in the midst of a pandemic turned out to be the perfect time, as people realized the deep need for human connection. Starting Abide in Love just as ICE activities were ramping up allowed them to learn and grow while policies and processes were established.

My first question to you is, what is YOUR legacy? Sure, if you’re a parent, you can say it’s your kids, but that’s too easy. What else have you done, or are you doing, or will you do that will make a change in the world? Think about that for a minute. What are you proud of? What accomplishment, whether in your past or in your future, will have a lasting impact?

Now let’s broaden our perspective a bit. What is OUR legacy, together? Someday, the people in this room will no longer be worshiping here. It’s possible that this congregation of PC(USA) will cease to exist. What have we done, or what will we have done, that will leave a legacy?

Let me tell you what I think our legacy is: the preschool. In 1993, as I understand the story, Carol Jessop saw a need and worked to establish a preschool to fill it. Some years later, due to staffing issues, the preschool was no longer able to operate. After a short hiatus, we hired a new director who has revolutionized its operations. The preschool has extended their hours, expanded their capacity both in number of children and in age range, and expanded from an academic calendar to year-round operations. Because of Tracy’s efforts, as well as so many others who are committed to its success, the preschool has an enormous impact on the community.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians,

6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and each will receive wages according to their own labor. 9 For we are God’s coworkers, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Our legacy is the result of God’s grace flowing into the world. Again and again, throughout the Bible and throughout history, we see that God’s grace flows through God’s people. Salvation doesn’t happen to us so much as through us. In Corinth, God gave the growth, but only because Paul planted and Apollos watered. In the same way, God gave the growth to LGBTQ+ Rolla, to Abide in Love, to The Rolla Mission, and to CrossRoads, but only because people looked at the world and saw a need that God could fill through their efforts.

The promise, though, is that God’s grace WILL flow through us, if we are open to it. Abraham and Sarah said “yes” to God’s call. In the end, the promise was fulfilled. Sarah conceived and bore Isaac, who fathered Jacob, who fathered the patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

We are inheritors of that promise. We may not be blood descendants of Abraham, but we have inherited the promise through the Spirit. We Gentiles have been made a part of God’s family. And so, we are called to be part of the priestly nation that Abraham fathered.

How will we respond to that calling? How will each of us leave a legacy, and how will this church leave a legacy of love, of God’s grace poured out on our community?

I leave you now with a famous Greek proverb: A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit. May God bless whatever you plant and give it growth so that it may sustain God’s kingdom long into the future. Amen.

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Preached on May 24, 2026, Day of Pentecost, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Acts 2:1-21.

Happy birthday! Today we celebrate Pentecost, which is traditionally recognized as the birthday of the Christian church. It was the Big Bang, the singular moment when a new Creation began. Today’s reading is from Acts of the Apostles, which is best understood as volume 2 of a two-book set starting with the Gospel According to Luke. Acts 2 serves as the hinge point between the events of Jesus’s life and the events of the church’s post-resurrection life.

The Gospel of Luke starts with the birth of John the Baptist, the forerunner who will prepare the way for the Messiah, and then the birth of Jesus. At this point, there was no messianic movement, but a few shepherds were attracted to Jesus the Messiah. By the fourth chapter of Luke, John’s ministry was established, Jesus had been baptized and tested, and Jesus starts preaching. In his home synagogue, he declares his mission statement:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Now Jesus’s ministry starts in earnest. Soon enough, he has twelve disciples, who are sent out to spread the good news of God’s kingdom. A few chapters later, there are seventy-two followers who are sent out to spread the gospel. The movement grows and grows, but then tragedy strikes: Jesus is arrested and crucified. Is that the end?

No. As Luke narrates, Jesus is resurrected and ascends to heaven. Judas Iscariot dies, but the other Eleven choose a twelfth disciple to re-constitute the core. They lead a group of 120. On Pentecost, another 3000 Jews and proselytes join the movement, and then throughout Acts, the circle keeps growing bigger and bigger. They welcome an Ethiopian eunuch, a Roman centurion, and Gentiles throughout the known world.

The overarching theme of Acts is the explosive growth of the boundary of the Church. What was once a small group of Jews becomes a huge, multi-ethnic movement with new ideas, new ways to understand God’s message to humanity.

We see Jesus’s first followers, and then early converts, fulfilling the Great Commission and pursuing the first, foundational Great End of the Church: The Proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind. If there is no Gospel, there is no church. If there is no proclamation, the church will wither and die. As Paul wrote in Romans 10, “14 But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed?[e] And how are they to believe[f] in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? 15 And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!””

It all started on Pentecost. The Twelve were afraid. They had been promised an Advocate, a helper, but they didn’t really know what that meant. They had a reasonably-sized body of followers—I think we’d be happy with 120 members in our church! But they were not public with their faith.

Then woosh! In comes the Holy Spirit to dislodge them from their fear and empower them to preach boldly. The miracle is not so much that they could speak in different languages, but that the gathered crowd heard them, understood them, and listened to them. We get street preachers on campus from time to time. Hardly anyone really listens to them. Oh, some students will heckle them or argue with them, but I doubt anyone comes to believe in Jesus Christ because of someone preaching in front of the library. On Pentecost, though, the crowd did listen. They were so astonished by the power of the Holy Spirit that they were ready to receive the Word of God.

Really, that’s the only way evangelism works. Whatever we do or say, only the power of the Holy Spirit can change hearts. And yet, we have learned through thousands of years of people’s relationships with God that God works through people. Prophets who hear directly from God are rare. Usually, we learn about God’s desire for universal human flourishing and for our personal flourishing through other people, whether in personal relationships or through books and podcasts and other media. And then, the Holy Spirit kindles our hearts and turns us towards God so that we may flourish, individually and as a community and a society and a species.

Again, what made Pentecost special is that the gathered crowd heard, understood, and listened to Christ’s people. What does it mean to “understand” God’s message? Well, a big part of it is language. That’s the main focus of the story I read, and it’s reflected in our Bible and our congregation. The Bible was written primarily in Hebrew and Greek, so it needs to be translated into the language of the reader. In our congregation, we have at least three native languages: English, Spanish, and Mandarin. But beyond those macro differences, there are also subtleties.

For example, salvation. What does that word really mean? Obviously, it means being saved, but saved from what? The Greek word for it, soter, includes restoration to a state of safety, soundness, health, and well-being, as well as preservation from the danger of destruction. It can also mean deliverance or preservation.

To me, that sounds like a description of something that happens in this life. When Paul’s jailer asked, “What must I do to be saved?” he had in mind the fact that he was in trouble with his commander. He might be fired, jailed, or killed for what happened. Too often, Christians worry about salvation for the next life, and ignore the real dangers and struggles of this life. What good does it do to tell someone they will be saved in the next life when they are homeless, or abused, or unjustly imprisoned, or sick, or starving? They need to be saved now. And anyway, convincing someone that they need to be saved in the afterlife means first convincing them that there is an afterlife, and then that our actions in this life determine what happens when we get there, and then that one possibility is suffering at the hands of an angry God, and only then that Jesus offers a way out of that possibility. So “salvation” may not mean the same thing to someone outside the church as it does to us.

OK, but God sanctifies us, too. Sanctification is the act of becoming holy. But what does it mean to be holy? To the average non-Christian, it means becoming extra judgmental. It means being “holier than thou,” feeling closer to God so that you can look down on people who are farther from God. Maybe not such a good term to throw around.

In evangelical circles, they talk about “backsliding” a lot. The implication is that a person’s actions can make God love them less and can get them put out of the church. Totally fear-based. A lot of churches also talk about being “Bible-based.” Who cares? Again, to convince a non-Christian that being Bible-based is of value requires first convincing them that a book written two to three millennia ago by pre-modern men in a patriarchal society with a totally different material environment is still relevant in their lives today. YOU may believe that, and I do, but why should they?

See, what has happened over the past century is the unraveling of the Modern era and a transition to postmodernism. In the pre-modern era, knowledge about how a society should be organized, how God interacts with humanity, and so forth was determined entirely by your community and culture. People grew up Christian, not because they had studied the Bible deeply and believed in its truth, but because they were part of a community and culture that didn’t really give them any option but to be a Christian. The village priest was the most learnèd person around, so why not believe what he taught? Then in the early modern period, the printing press was invented, literacy spread to the middle and lower classes, the Bible was translated into the vernacular, and attitudes towards religion changed.

Some of the core concepts of modernity are the importance of the individual and the use of rationality. Basically, rather than receiving the wisdom of your forefathers or what was taught by church leaders, the individual had the authority to determine Truth and derive their own wisdom. All they needed were some basic axioms and rational logic, and all knowledge could be derived with absolute certainty. René Descartes’ famous dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” was one of those axioms from which he believed he could derive Christianity.

One problem with the modern approach is that there is so much in the universe that is fundamentally unknowable. We don’t have pictures of Jesus rising from the dead, for example. We cannot know with certainty what happened two thousand years ago. Also, the conclusions you reach depend on the axioms and values you choose. Utilitarians draw conclusions by pursuing the greatest good for the greatest number. Deontologists draw conclusions by acknowledging the infinite worth of each individual human and our duty to one another. Marxists and fascists both have highly logical, rational systems built on different principles.

And so now, we have postmodernism. World War II was the death-knell for what philosophers call Modernism. Everyone could see that the absolute certainty of belief systems that were created logically could lead to unfathomable atrocities. Once you have logically determined that Jews are subhuman, why not exterminate them all? The postwar period saw the birth of postmodernism, which is hard to define precisely but fundamentally refutes the idea of absolute, objective Truth, or at least our ability to ever find it. Objective Truth has been replaced by my truth, your truth, their truth, many subjective truths.

Along with postmodernism has come deconstruction. Again, deconstruction is hard to pin down, but it essentially means re-examining your belief system and removing the things that are broken within it. Deconstruction is common among ex-evangelicals. Much of evangelical Christianity is built on absolute certainty: the Bible is the literal Word of God, and all knowledge can be logically derived from it. There are many problems with that approach. First off, as I have said so often, the Bible is a thick book with lots of stuff in it that you can use to justify almost any position. Second, who does the analysis to determine how the self-contradictory writings of pre-modern men in a foreign culture apply to modern society?

So some evangelical Christians start asking questions. If Paul sent Phoebe, a woman, to read his letter to the Romans, why can’t women preach? If we’re supposed to follow all of the teachings in the Bible, why aren’t we welcoming foreigners or practicing Jubilee? The questions compound, and eventually, they are left with nothing to believe in.

Lest we think we’re any better, let me point out that much of evangelical theology is built on Calvinist thought, just like our doctrines are. Let me also say that I have real trouble with double predestination, the idea that God would choose ahead of time that some people would suffer eternal conscious torment. There are lots of historical beliefs that are in the Book of Confessions that I cannot accept, but that I’m sure some Presbyterians still do.

This process of deconstruction, within the stream of postmodern thought that rejects institutional authority, has been going on for longer than I have been alive. Therefore, many Americans are one or two or three generations removed from Christianity. I grew up in a church, and although I left it, I came back when I quit drinking. For many of my peers, and certainly many of my kids’ peers, there is no “back” because they never were a part of any church.

So we have some people who have rejected the language of the church because they have deconstructed their beliefs, and others who never learned to speak Christianese and would not be receptive to a message based on the Bible or on words like salvation and sanctification. What should we do?

Well, the best place to start, always, is with a relationship. Like I said, the street preachers who yell at students achieve nothing except perhaps to turn students away from the Gospel. Instead, get to know people. I consider my barber to be part of my ministry. I avoid religion in the classroom, but I do seek to foster students’ flourishing.

Part of getting to know people is learning what matters to them. Ask them how they find meaning in their lives. Ask them what they think about the future. Ask them what they think happens when they die. Be a caring presence when they are struggling.

I believe in universal reconciliation. That means there is nothing I can do to change our destination at the end of the age. Therefore, I believe the most important thing I can do is to help people flourish now, not to help them get to heaven when they die. I believe that flourishing requires that they satisfy all of their needs: physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual. I believe that flourishing requires participation in a community.

The challenge of Pentecost is to learn how to be a bridge between the people you meet and the God you know and love. The challenge of Pentecost is to speak in a way that you are heard, understood, and listened to. And yet the promise of Pentecost is that we have an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, flowing through us, empowering us, guiding us each step of the way. Amen.

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Sermon for May 10, 2026, Sixth Sunday of Easter, preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Acts 17:16-34.

Today’s lesson finds Paul in Athens, first in the agora and then on trial before the Areopagus. Let’s broaden our view just a bit to get into the story. Saul of Tarsus was a persecutor of the early Christians, then had a vision on the road to Damascus. He was ultimately converted into a follower of the Way and began a series of missionary journeys. For the most part, when he arrived in a new city, he would go to the synagogue and teach the Jews and the God-fearers, who were Gentiles who worshiped our God but did not get circumcised and actually become Jews.

Paul’s teachings in the synagogues were mostly rejected, but not entirely. Mostly, Jews could not accept the concept of a Messiah who had been crucified. That just didn’t fit their view of what a Messiah would be and do. A few Jews and God-fearers did become followers of Jesus Christ, though, and would start house churches.

Paul was also a tentmaker and would work in the market, having conversations with people who happened by his booth. Today’s story finds him in the agora, the central market in Athens. This wasn’t just a place to do business. It was also the social hub of the city, the place where locals and foreigners alike would gather to converse. Paul took advantage of this opportunity to spread the message of Jesus Christ, the crucified and resurrected Savior of humanity.

The Jews could not accept a Messiah who was crucified. Gentiles could not accept a human who was resurrected. The prevailing beliefs in Greek society did not align with the possibility of resurrection. Some believed that when we die, our bodies become part of the universe and lose their distinctive identity as a person. Others believed that our souls shed the imperfections of the material world and become perfect. Yet others believed in Hades, a shadowy realm where souls dwelt and perhaps were punished for their earthly wrongdoing. In any case, they did not believe that the souls of the departed could return to this life.

So when Paul started his babbling, the philosophers rejected him and the common people rejected him. It sounded like he was proclaiming a foreign god, which was illegal. So he was hauled before the Areopagus.

The actual Areopagus was a hill overlooking the city. Its name means “Mars Hill.” It became a gathering place for a group of elders whose role was not much different from the House of Lords in England or the Supreme Court in America. They were responsible for making sure laws were properly formulated. They were also the court for murder trials. More importantly for today’s story, they were responsible for determining which religions and gods were appropriate for Athenians to worship. So this wasn’t just some grand debating society. This was a tribunal established to stamp out heresy.

And indeed, heresy was exactly what Paul was preaching in the agora. People across the ancient world truly believed that their idols served as conduits to the gods that they represented. They believed in the reality of the gods that they worshiped, and the truth of the myths that we read now as literature. If the gods were not worshiped, then the city would not be blessed by them. Religion was a civic duty.

Idolatry was common throughout the ancient world, and yet was rejected by those who worshiped our God. The Second Commandment explicitly forbids the worship of idols, representations of anything from the created universe. Idols have psychological value: they serve as tangible focal points for worship. But that is their inherent weakness. An idol consumes the worshiper’s focus. Rather than serving as a gateway to understanding the god it represents, an idol serves as an end in itself. God commanded the ancient Israelites to separate themselves from this form of worship, and commands us still. God understood that if humans have a visible, tangible idol to serve, they will not turn to an invisible God in times of joy or sorrow. They will worship the created rather than the Creator, the giver of life.

It is tempting to think that we, as a society, have outgrown this need for idols, but in fact, we have more idols today than ever before. I could start listing and explaining everything we modern Americans treat as idols, but I know you all want to get home before sunset. Fundamentally, an idol is anything that consumes our focus, rather than serving as a window or a lens that helps us see the world more clearly. An idol is anything that is an end in itself, rather than a means to pursuing the Great Commandment to love God and love our neighbors. An idol is anything that obstructs our ability to pursue the Gospel promise of universal human flourishing. As Martin Luther said, “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God, your functional savior.” An idol is whatever you cling to that is not God but that you treat as if it were your savior.

Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God, your functional savior.

Martin Luther

The most obvious idol is money. As Paul wrote, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. As Jesus said, you cannot worship both God and wealth. Jesus even personified wealth as Mammon, reflecting its immense spiritual power over us.

Now, I am not saying that we should all pursue lives of poverty. Money is useful. Money enables us to function in the world without bartering. Modern society would be impossible without money, whether physical coins and bills or money that exists only as numbers in a database somewhere.

The problem isn’t money per se, but the pursuit of money as an end in itself. That pursuit creates barriers that convert people who should be friends into competitors, and ultimately enemies. The pursuit destroys families. The pursuit of money and the desire to protect wealth drives decisions at all levels of government, from the harassment directed at the homeless population of Rolla to the unfair and corrupt tax code at the federal level. The pursuit of money drives corruption that exploits the powerless and rewards those without integrity. Indeed, the desire for wealth has a corrosive effect on integrity.

This is the fundamental reason why giving to the church is so important. Yes, the church needs income to cover expenses, as do all charitable organizations. However, the spiritual value of giving is to reduce a person’s anxious attachment to wealth and to encourage a healthier relationship with money, and therefore healthier relationships with God and the people in your lives.

Money is the most obvious idol, but let’s talk about another one: weapons, violence, and military might. Now, I fundamentally support the military and believe that defense is important. I am not a pacifist. Rather, I am adherent of just war theory, the belief that some wars are just, but some wars are not. I recently listened to a podcast about just war theory, and was reminded that even in a just war, the participants are sinning. When they return from battle, they are obligated to confess, repent, and perhaps do penance. If the war is truly just, such as in World War II when we were trying to bring the Holocaust to an end or in the first Gulf War when we were defending Kuwait from Iraqi aggression, then the sinfulness of war is the lesser evil—but still evil.

Where we go awry is when we put our trust in the power of the military to change the world, rather than the power of God. Guns and bombs lead only to destruction, never to healing and wholeness. We are witnessing the limits of military might in the Middle East right now. First, Israel’s war in Gaza achieved significant destruction, but left the Palestinian people even more opposed to peace and reconciliation with the Israeli government. Now, our attacks on Iran have led only to destruction and worldwide economic blight. Even if we somehow win the war, we will have turned moderate Iranians into anti-American supporters of the Iranian regime.

Yet we continue to believe that the solution is even more military might, more weapons, more destruction. The lessons of the last eight decades seem to never be learned. Our military solution to the situation in Afghanistan fell apart even before we finished our withdrawal. Our military solution to the situation in Vietnam never achieved any stability. Our military solution to the situation in Korea has resulted in a lifetime of balancing on a knife’s edge, always one misstep away from a brutal resumption of hostility between two opposing governments.

Ultimately, as the psalmist wrote, we should not put our trust in princes, in human beings. We are instead blessed if our help is in the LORD our God.

Let’s talk about one more form of idolatry: bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible. Now, you might think, How can giving respect to the Bible be a bad thing? And I would say that giving it due respect is good, not bad. But we are called Christians, not Biblians. We worship the triune God, not the Bible.

We Presbyterians tend to do pretty well about giving the Bible the proper amount of respect and no more. But we are inheritors of the Calvinist tradition of sola scriptura, that is, only scripture. Some traditions take that to its logical conclusion: if it’s not in the Bible, it isn’t true; if it is in the Bible, it is absolutely, perfectly true.

I grew up Methodist in the Wesleyan tradition. The Bible is just one leg of the Wesleyan quadrilateral along with tradition, reason, and experience. The reality is that everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, uses all four legs of the quadrilateral to understand God. They just don’t all admit it.

Too often, people cling to their particular translation and interpretation of the Bible to the exclusion of other perspectives. They will claim objectivity, but in reality, they have built their understanding upon the teachings of their leaders. The Bible is a thick book written in ancient languages for ancient cultures, so it cannot be read without translation and interpretation. Who does the translating? Who does the interpreting? That’s who controls the message. If you only listen to one person’s interpretation of one translation of the ancient texts, you aren’t a Christian—you’re in a Bible-worshiping cult.

So, how do we escape bibliolatry? The same way we escape all forms of idolatry. The Bible isn’t inherently bad. Guns are not inherently bad. Money isn’t inherently bad. What makes any of these into an idol is when we elevate its status above God’s status in our lives. And the way to reduce their status as an idol is to remove them from your life, at least in part, at least temporarily.

So if money is your idol, do as Jesus suggested to the rich young ruler: Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Well, perhaps you don’t need to sell all your possessions and give all the money to the poor, but start by giving some to the service of the Great Commandment—that is, to God and to your suffering neighbor. Give until you feel a release from the worship of money.

Or if guns and weapons and military might are your idol, spend some time studying just war theory, or perhaps even try being a pacifist. At least, read about pacifism or spend time talking with pacifists. Not to argue with them, but to understand them. Broaden your perspective. Learn from victims of violence, whether at home or abroad, whether current or historical.

Or if bibliolatry is standing between you and God, try reading the Bible through a different lens. Or try different translations. Maybe you’re a King James Version purist, or maybe you’re committed to the NRSVue that we read here in worship. Either way, read other versions—NIV, The Message, whatever. Read a little about how we got the Bible in its present form and the translation principles that resulted in the different versions. Read it through one of the four helpful lenses that Zach Lambert talks about in Better Ways to Read the Bible: the Jesus lens, the context lens, the fruitfulness lens, or the flourishing lens. Read it as a path towards a relationship with the living God, rather than as dead words on the page that must be obeyed.

Because ultimately, that’s our goal as Christians: an ongoing relationship with the living God, in whom we live and move and have our being. Our first and most important task as evangelists is to model a way of living with God in our hearts and minds, so that others will see life with God as a path to flourishing in their lives. And as Paul taught, let us reject the idols of every age, idols who are made by and served by human hands, created objects. Let us instead worship the Creator always, the loving God who empowers us by the Holy Spirit to flourish as God’s most beloved creations. Amen.

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“The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” Perhaps you have encountered people with this attitude. Perhaps you are one of them. Perhaps you believe that every word in the Bible is divinely inspired—after all, Paul says that scripture is God-breathed and effectual for teaching.

The thing is, the Bible is a thick book filled with stories. Stories are essential to our faith formation. Stories have a richness of meaning that no simple commandment can contain. They are like gems that gleam differently as you turn them in the light.

In Acts 8, we read of an encounter between Philip and an Ethiopian eunuch. The Spirit drives Philip to approach the eunuch and teach him about Jesus Christ. They come to some water and the eunuch is baptized.

Perhaps the story is about baptism. I learned recently that in many traditions, this story is used to prove that only immersion is effectual for salvation. Coming from a tradition that practices infant baptism by sprinkling, I had never heard that interpretation. Perhaps that is one lesson we can draw from it.

Perhaps the story is about Philip. He responded to the call of the Spirit. He was driven to evangelize, to spread the good news that Jesus was the Messiah, to teach people from all nations. Perhaps the story reinforces the importance of approaching people of high status—the eunuch was an important person in the royal household of the Kandake, queen of Ethiopia, so winning him as a convert would have an outsize importance.

But let’s consider the larger context of the story. Earlier in Acts 8, the apostles are converting the hated Samaritans and welcoming them into Christ’s family. They offer forgiveness and acceptance to a sorcerer, who would have been condemned under laws found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. In Acts 9, Saul, a persecutor of Christians, is converted and welcomed. In Acts 10, Peter has a vision indicating that nothing is unclean, and then he welcomes Cornelius the Roman centurion into God’s family.

In the middle of this sequence, we read about an Ethiopian eunuch being welcomed. The Law in Deuteronomy forbids eunuchs from entering the Temple. Eunuchs were sexual and gender minorities in the ancient world. Most simply, eunuchs could not procreate. As Jesus said, some were born that way, some were made that way by others, and some chose to live like eunuchs. They were outside the norm: they did not marry women and have children. We should avoid imposing modern interpretations on just what that meant, but regardless, their sexual and/or gender minority status kept them on the margins of society.

The eunuch had traveled to Jerusalem as a Jewish proselyte but was forbidden from worshipping God in the Temple. Yet Christ came to break down barriers. He came to welcome everyone into His eternal kingdom. Throughout Acts, we read of people who were thought to be unclean or unworthy being welcomed as equals: Samaritans, sorcerers, Romans, and yes, eunuchs.

There is nothing that makes a person unlovable by God. There is nothing that prevents a person from joining Christ’s eternal family. No aspect of your identity blocks God’s love. No matter what you have been taught, Christ welcomes you as a beloved sibling, as someone of infinite worth in His family.

That’s what the Bible says. And that’s what I believe.

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Preached on April 19, 2026, Third Sunday of Easter, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Acts 2:14a, 36-41.

This year, I’m making an effort to preach texts other than the Gospel selection in the lectionary. During the season of Easter, the Gospel selections are largely the same every year. Last week was the story of Doubting Thomas, who I personally think gets a bad rap, and this week is the story of the road to Emmaus.

During most of the year, there is a complementary Old Testament reading, but in the season of Easter, the first lesson comes from the Acts of the Apostles. This helps us move beyond the empty tomb. Instead of just the fact of Jesus’s resurrection, as reported in the Gospel lessons, we have the story of the early church’s reaction to it. Initially, the twelve disciples and others who were close to the center of the movement stayed hidden for fear of the religious and civil authorities. But then on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came upon them, like the rush of a violent wind, like tongues of fire. They were empowered by the Holy Spirit and broke free of their fear.

As the Twelve spoke in diverse languages to those who were gathered outside, the crowd accused them of drunkenness. Then Peter, who seems so clueless throughout the Gospel accounts, preaches boldly. He opens the scriptures to the crowd. He quotes from the prophet Joel and from two Psalms of David to connect Jesus to the long history of God’s message to God’s people. He addresses Judeans, then all Israelites, then his brothers—an expansion of the notion of God’s family to encompass all humanity. This is the start of the great expansion of the church, from a dozen fearful Jewish men to a worldwide religion with all ethnicities and genders. Peter’s message is to those who are near, and those who are far away, both in space and in time.

Peter modeled his message on Jesus’s teaching on the road to Emmaus. As two followers of the Way were walking, a stranger joined them. But it turns out he wasn’t really a stranger, but Jesus. They didn’t recognize him—and how often do we fail to recognize Jesus when he shows up in our lives? “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.”

Jesus spoke to the disciples on the road in a way that they could understand. They were Jews hoping for a Messiah to lead their nation to freedom. Jesus was not that kind of Messiah, but was indeed anointed by God to institute God’s kingdom, which is different from earthly kingdoms. So, he had to speak to the disciples in a way that connected his life to the national story of the Jewish people.

In the same way, Peter spoke to the crowd that had gathered for the Day of Pentecost. That’s the Greek name for the festival known in Hebrew as Shavuot. It is one of the three pilgrimage festivals, along with Pesach (Passover) and Sukkot (the festival of booths). So observant Jews had come from all over the known world to celebrate at the Temple. We need to put ourselves in their frame of mind. They clung to the Temple as the literal dwelling place of God, the holiest place on earth. They hoped for a day when their nation would be restored. Into that hope, Peter preached about the last days, convincing them all that in fact the end of the age was upon them—and they missed it. That’s what led to their sorrow. That’s what cut them to their heart. They had been hoping for so long, and when the Messiah came, they missed it.

But the point I want to return to is that Peter spoke to them in a way that the crowd could understand. They needed to hear that God still treasured them as God’s beloved people. Peter had to connect Jesus’s Lordship to the prophets and the psalms so that they could accept his message of hope.

Modern society is not looking for a Messiah to re-establish God’s kingdom. And so, we need to speak to the needs of the people. We need to preach a message of hope to the hopeless, a message of GOOD NEWS, for that is what the Gospel is: good news.

So, what are the problems confronting Gen Xers like me, Millennials, and Gen Z like my kids? There are so many. Some of them, the church can do very little about, like the generational differences in wealth and home ownership. Some of them, we could perhaps influence through activism, like protection of the environment and reversal of climate change and habitat destruction.

But then there are the mental, emotional, and spiritual challenges that younger generations face. They have lost trust: trust in institutions, trust in leaders, trust in neighbors. One institution after another has failed them. Churches—not ours, thankfully, but enough other churches—have been harboring predators, or getting rich off their supporters, or both. Hypocrisy is rampant. Political leaders seem to think that rules are for the little people. Witness two congressmen, Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales, one Democrat and one Republican, who resigned this week due to accusations of sexual misconduct toward staff members.

When you don’t trust institutions and don’t trust leaders, it becomes harder to trust your neighbor. I barely know the people who live directly next to me, and really only know a couple of people in my neighborhood.

This social isolation leads to the next crisis: loneliness. The internet keeps us more connected than ever, but at the same time, we are more lonely than ever. In 2023, the Surgeon General issued a report indicating that half of all Americans are lonely. Loneliness leads to all sorts of negative health outcomes—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual ailments.

One factor in loneliness is that people move more often and further away than ever before. Among my dad’s siblings, one stayed in his hometown, two moved about 80 miles away, and my dad moved across the country. But then in my generation, we all scattered to the winds—North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma. My kids are continuing the trend—Sam is in Rhode Island and Jesse is planning to move to Cleveland this summer. For the most part, we’ve all moved for the sake of our careers. In a changing world, you can either stay where you are and stagnate, or move away and thrive economically while suffering disconnection.

Honestly, there is a lot that the church can and should do about these challenges that younger generations face. Instead of preaching just about salvation and righteousness and sanctification, we should be preaching about community and connections. We should be telling the world that God’s family is characterized by deep relationships, the only antidote to loneliness.

So Peter gave his sermon, explaining that Jesus was the Messiah and connecting him to the prophets and the psalms. When the people realized that they had missed their chance to follow the Messiah, Peter gave the first altar call: Come forward and be baptized, and you will become part of Christ’s family.

According to the PC(USA) website:

In the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition, baptism is a sign and seal of God’s gift of salvation — the saving work already done for us in Jesus Christ. Through baptism, we respond to God’s gracious gift, offering our lives to God in service and entering into a covenant relationship with God as members of the body of Christ. Ordinarily, the sacrament of baptism takes place at the time of profession of faith, whether by oneself or by one’s parents or guardians. Either way, God chooses, calls, and claims us long before we can articulate our faith on our own.

We understand baptism to be an outward sign of something that has already happened to us. God has already claimed us, but baptism is an outward sign that we accept that claim.

Not only that, but also, through baptism, we connect to a specific community. Baptism is not supposed to be performed in a private service, except in extreme circumstances. Rather, it is supposed to be performed in the context of congregational worship. Just as the first Christians did, we are baptized because we have chosen to turn towards God. And in turning towards God, we turn towards one another.

That’s what repentance truly means. Usually, people associate repentance with people like Brother Jed. He has passed away, but his followers have continued his ministry. Basically, they travel to college campuses, set up in a public place such as the area in front of the library, and yell at passersby. “Repent!” they say. “You’re a bunch of filthy sinners! Stop sinning and accept Jesus into your heart!” Apparently, they believe that if they insult people enough, they will win converts. A ministry colleague once described that as inoculating people against the Gospel. If that’s what you think Christianity is, if that’s what you think the Gospel message is, if that’s what you think repentance is, why would you ever become part of a Christian community?

I believe that repentance is not a wholesale rejection of a former way of life. Rather, it’s a commitment to turn towards God, while simultaneously turning towards God’s people. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. That is repentance. And love should feel like love. It shouldn’t feel like someone yelling at you for being a sinner. It should feel like someone accompanying you as you grow into a better person. It should feel like someone welcoming you into a loving community.

We had an interesting discussion at Sacred Paths on Thursday. The topic of the day was Tiger Woods’s recent arrest for a DUI. We talked about addiction and sin. Addiction is terrible. The question is, what do you do when someone is suffering from it? We didn’t come to any conclusion, but let me tell you what I think. You allow natural consequences. You don’t punish someone, you don’t chastise them, you don’t tell them what to do with their lives. You simply love them, but without rescuing them from the consequences of their actions. Forgiving past harms does not mean tolerating present and ongoing harm. Sometimes the most loving thing to do is to do nothing.

But then sometimes, what someone needs is material support. Sometimes, someone needs to go to a place like The Mission. By the way, there is an event Thursday night at 5:30 at CrossRoads, a community conversation about homelessness and The Mission. Everyone is welcome. The Mission is a place where people learn how to thrive, and in that way, it is an expression of God’s kingdom. They don’t tolerate active addiction, but when someone is ready to get their life back on track, the Mission will help them on their path.

Or sometimes, someone needs a place like Russell House. It’s a place for women who have nowhere else to go when they are escaping a bad situation. They go and find community: people who will help them build a new and better life.

The story of the book of Acts is that when people come together and support one another, amazing things happen! The following chapters of Acts describe miracles and explosive growth. By turning towards one another and turning towards God, their lives were changed into something new and wonderful. This same potential is within us today, and within every group that seeks wholeness and loving community.

Our task is to call others to this kind of repentance. Christianity is not a list of rules that we use to chastise or shame or exclude others. It’s an attitude of love. It’s a call to turn towards God and find what is missing in your life. It’s a call to provide what’s missing in one another’s lives through a loving community.

One of the Great Ends of the Church is the proclamation of the Gospel for the salvation of humankind. My understanding of the Gospel is the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand, and that kingdom is universal human flourishing. My understanding of salvation is being made whole, so that you can flourish. So repent and be saved! Turn towards God and towards loving God’s people, and you will be made whole so that you can flourish. Share the Good News that God’s family is for everyone who desires a better life. Amen.

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Preached on March 29, 2026, Palm/Passion Sunday, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Matthew 27:11-54.

Today and this week, we reflect on the most political events of Jesus’s life. Jesus was, above all, a political figure. He was the Christ, the Messiah, the One Anointed to lead the nation of Israel. This was a royal title, which therefore means a political title. Centuries of democracy have made us ignorant of the true meaning of the word “Lord,” or in Greek “Kyrios.” Kyrie eleison – Lord have mercy. “Lord” was used in place of God’s name because of the similarity between God and a human lord. In antiquity, if someone was your lord, they had complete authority over you, and so you sought their favor and their mercy. Proclaiming Jesus as Lord is to say that Caesar is not our lord. Proclaiming Jesus as Lord is to reject the Empire’s authority over us.

On Palm Sunday, the crowd shouts, “Hosanna!” while waiving palm fronds. We often treat “hosanna” as a synonym of “hallelujah,” but it’s quite different. “Hosanna” means “save us, please save us!” The crowds waved palm fronds for Jesus just as they did for the Maccabees when their rebellion was victorious. They shouted “hosanna” as they sought the favor of the Messiah who came to establish his kingdom and triumph over the Romans.

Meanwhile, Pontius Pilate was entering Jerusalem from the other side, riding a war horse instead of a donkey. Palm Sunday establishes the broad outlines of the conflict to come: the Romans coming in violent domination, Jesus coming in…well, we’ll see how he approaches the conflict.

The Roman governor always entered Jerusalem in a triumphal procession a few days ahead of Passover. Remember what Passover celebrates: the victory of the oppressed Israelites over their captors, the Egyptians. This festival aroused nationalistic fervor. The people of Judea remembered the time when God rescued them from slavery in Egypt. They remembered the time when they were an independent kingdom, united under Saul, David, and Solomon, worshipping together at the Temple Solomon built. They remembered the time when the Maccabees rose up and threw off their Greek overlords to re-establish an independent kingdom. What better time than Passover to rise up again and throw off their Roman overlords? So, the Roman governor marched in to remind them that they were most assuredly a conquered people.

Into this volatile situation came Jesus of Nazareth. For the previous few years, he had been a traveling preacher in Judea, Galilee, and even surrounding non-Jewish areas like the Decapolis, Samaria, and Phoenicia. Now, he brought his revolutionary message to the heart of Judaism: the Temple.

Lots happens in the Gospel of Matthew between the Palm Sunday reading in chapter 21 and the Passion Sunday reading in chapter 27. Those six chapters describe both critical teachings and important incidents that led to Jesus’s arrest and crucifixion. The first major incident was the cleansing of the Temple. Jesus came into town like a conquering hero, and what did he do? He attacked the Temple’s systematic exclusion of foreigners and exploitation of pilgrims by driving the vendors out of the Court of the Gentiles. This prophetic action put him directly at odds with the chief priests. He then continues his feud with the Pharisees and spends several chapters inflaming tensions between his followers and other Jewish leaders. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” he cries.

Jesus was a political leader. Not in the way we understand politics, where decisions are made at the ballot box and in legislatures and in courtrooms. He was a political leader in the ancient sense: the charismatic leader of a faction who proclaimed a different way of life that was at odds with the prevailing power structures of the day.

And so, his life ended as so many other political leaders’ lives did: a violent death at the hands of the ruling empire. We can theologize all we want about why Jesus died. The simple explanation, though, is that he was crucified by an empire that established peace through strength. He was a victim of the Pax Romana, a peace that prevailed only as long as the Roman military could suppress enemies both at the frontier and within their conquered territory. He was killed in a gruesome public display as an example of what would happen to anyone who dared oppose the Roman authorities. He was killed for proclaiming himself king of the Jews, for Rome declared that the Jews shall have no king but Caesar.

Jesus was killed at this particular time and place because he was betrayed by one of his closest companions, Judas Iscariot. Now, just as we can debate why Jesus was crucified, there are many theories as to why Judas did what he did. My personal favorite theory is that he was trying to force Jesus’s hand. Throughout his ministry, people tried to make Jesus into a king. They tried to make him act like the others who claimed the title of messiah. Through it all, though, Jesus resisted. He said over and over that he wasn’t that kind of messiah. I think Judas really believed that once Jesus was confronted with the reality of a threat to his life by the Roman authorities, he would call down legions of angels who would defend him and establish his kingdom by force.

But that’s the exact opposite of what Jesus did. He accepted the title of Messiah. He accepted the accusation that he was claiming the crown of Israel. But he did not react when his disciples, the crowd, and even the other bandits said he should save himself and prove his standing as the Son of God. He died the way he lived: faithful to his nonviolent calling.

So here we have the literal Son of God proclaiming the good news that his kingdom is at hand, and yet willingly dying on the cross rather than establishing his kingdom by force. What could that mean to us today?

Well, first we need to consider what he meant by the kingdom of God. I describe God’s kingdom as universal human flourishing. Violence never promotes flourishing. Violence only begets violence. Violence only harms relationships and deprives both parties of the healing and wholeness necessary for flourishing. Just War theory would say that a war of defense, or protecting the defenseless, is acceptable. Maybe. But never a war of offense. Never a war of conquest. And when given the chance, Jesus did not fight the Romans to protect his subjugated people. Jesus did not respond to Roman violence with his own violence. Instead, “he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

A century or so later, early Christians were trying to make sense of things and a belief arose that Jesus would come back and do it right the next time. They built a theology of conquest, that Christ would ride in on clouds of glory and destroy their enemies. They took Revelation, which is a wild book full of imagery and cultural allusions that have been lost to us, and made it into a literal description of what would come to pass.

Then the greatest tragedy in Christian history occurred: we became the official religion of Empire. Instead of being the counter-cultural force that fostered flourishing among the downtrodden and marginalized, we became entrenched in the halls of power. Instead of obeying our one true Lord in heaven, we were taught to obey the men who ruled us in God’s name.

A millennium or so later, the early American settlers adopted this sentiment and declared that this nation would be specially blessed by God to be a shining city on a hill. The seeds of Christian nationalism that were sown by Constantine kept popping up as weeds in our government and our church. The denominations now called “mainline” earned that title by aligning themselves with political and cultural power. I think that’s a big part of the explanation for our decline over the past century. We took our position at the top of the cultural heap for granted and lost sight of the truth of the Gospel.

These days, Christian nationalism has again infiltrated the halls of power, to the detriment of both Christianity and government. Too often, the general public equates “Christian” with “Republican,” when we are supposed to hold our love of God closer than our love of any one political party. Meanwhile, we have drifted into a war in Iran that may herald the unraveling of the world order that has prevailed for half a century. We have embarked on a war of choice with religious overtones. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently quoted Psalm 144 in a briefing where he talked about the total destruction of Iran’s military capacity in the context of our soldiers’ sacrifices. Several military commanders have been accused of using “end times” rhetoric to justify involvement in the war in Iran, saying that it was “all part of God’s divine plan” to initiate Armageddon and bring about the return of Jesus Christ. Many of our nation’s leaders subscribe to dominion theology or Christian reconstructionism, the belief that so-called biblical Christianity, meaning all of the moral laws in the Old Testament, should and will rule all areas of society, whether by evangelism or by force.

But that’s exactly what Judas Iscariot did. He thought that Jesus was a military conqueror and sought to initiate the revolution. But Jesus was not that kind of Messiah, and God’s Kingdom is not one of domination. Basically, dominion theology is the belief that Jesus screwed up. It’s the belief that Jesus should have called down legions of angels to rescue him from the cross. It’s the belief that we are tasked with establishing God’s rule by force, even though Jesus sought to establish God’s kingdom through love.

When I say that God’s Kingdom is not of this world, I don’t mean that it comes after we die and this world passes away. I mean instead that God’s Kingdom does not play by this world’s rules. How does this world establish power and authority? Sometimes by brute strength. Sometimes by the will of the majority of people as determined at the ballot box. Sometimes by wealth, or relational influence, or fame, or persuasiveness. It would be nice to think that we are governed by leaders who obey the will of the people, but I think it’s more accurate to say that we are governed by people who worship the almighty dollar and will do whatever will benefit those who give them financial support. You know, the golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules.

Dominion theology, Christian reconstructionism, Christian nationalism, Christian Zionism—it goes by many names, but at its root, this theology believes that we are obliged to establish God’s reign by taking charge of the levers of power, the Seven Mountains: Education, Religion, Family, Business, Government, Arts, and the Media. This theology is the logical consequence of our alliance with Empire made under Constantine, and is directly in conflict with Jesus’s plain teaching.

Again, there are many ways to interpret Jesus’s crucifixion, but the simplest truth is that when Jesus was arrested on accusation of sedition and rebellion, he had the choice to establish God’s reign by force, but chose instead prophetic self-sacrifice. He acknowledged the truth in Pilate’s accusation—“You say so” means something like, “Those words are true, but you don’t really understand what I mean by them.” Jesus acknowledged that he claimed the title of King, and accepted the punishment that ensued.

Jesus’s message to his disciples: Follow me. Do likewise. Do not seek to rule by force. Proclaim a gospel of love, the divine Truth that all people are beloved children of God. Welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, free the prisoner, and foster universal human flourishing. This will put you—us—at odds with the powers and principalities that govern this world. This will lead to suffering, to rejection, to conflict with those who benefit from the injustice baked into every human society. But don’t worry: I will be with you always, even unto the end of the age.

Jesus calls us to follow him this week, for he knows that we will reach the same destination. Follow his path of challenging the status quo, rejecting unjust rule, and embracing the outsider. This sacred path will lead to the cross, but through the cross, you will reach his glorious kingdom. May we all have the courage to walk the path Jesus has laid out for us, knowing that He will be with us always by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Preached on the Third Sunday in Lent, March 8, 2026, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on John 4:5-42.

Let’s review where we are in the story of Israel, and the story of Jesus. Under David and Solomon, the northern and southern kingdoms were united. They split, and then the northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians. You may remember me talking about Isaiah, who was an active prophet during the Assyrian invasion. Both Samaria and Galilee were part of the old northern kingdom. Somehow, Galilee maintained a religious connection to Jerusalem and Judea, but Samaria adopted other religious practices even though they maintained a connection to the patriarchs. In fact, there are still Samaritans today, and they still have a Pentateuch that is parallel to our Bible but with different details.

One difference is the specification of the holy mountain. Our Bible specifies Mount Zion in Jerusalem, but the Samaritan Pentateuch specifies Mount Gerizim, near the location of the encounter that we read about in this story.

I think it’s important to always look at the larger story arc when considering any passage. The previous chapter of John opens with Nicodemus coming to Jesus by night. Although he is a Pharisee, he is seeking Jesus’s wisdom and insight. And yet, although he is a Pharisee and a teacher of the Law, he cannot understand Jesus’s teachings. Or perhaps his preconceived notions of who God is and how God acts in the world block his ability to perceive God’s presence through Jesus. And so, Nicodemus visits by night, and leaves unenlightened.

After that encounter, Jesus’s disciples have some squabbles with John the Baptist’s disciples. Who has the greater authority? Who is following the right practices? John ultimately says, “I told you, I’m not the Messiah! Follow Jesus!”

There is a bit of additional conflict with other Pharisees, so Jesus decides to go home to Galilee. Now, he could have gone around, but the shortest path from Judea to Galilee goes right through Samaria. Right through enemy territory.

Well, it’s a long walk, so at midday, Jesus needs a break and a drink of water, so he stops at the well. Not just any well: Jacob’s well, one with a long history. Jacob lived more than a thousand years before Jesus, yet this region retains a memory of his life and travels. They remember that this well was the one mentioned in Genesis, the one where Jacob settled with his twelve sons who fathered the twelve tribes. An auspicious place to have an encounter with history-making ramifications.

It’s midday, and yet there is a woman out fetching water. This is a chore normally done at daybreak, not the hottest part of the day. All of the other village women would have come early in the day, so why does this one come at noon? Well, we find out pretty soon that this unnamed woman has had five husbands and is now living with a man who is not her husband.

I’ve given that some thought. Why would a woman in first-century Samaria have been married five times? Divorce was expensive. Basically, if a man wanted to divorce his wife, he had to return her dowry, except in the case of adultery. So perhaps, she had committed adultery and been divorced on that account. Another possibility is that she was barren. The main duty of a woman in that time and place was to bear children, so perhaps she was divorced because of her failure to produce heirs for her husband. Yet another possibility is that some of those marriages ended with her as a widow. Needing some source of support, she would have found a man who was willing to take her in.

We don’t really know why she had been married five times. Any of the reasons I can think of, though, would have made her an outcast. Perhaps she was adulterous, perhaps she was barren and therefore perhaps cursed by God, or perhaps she was bad luck and led to her husbands’ deaths. Not the kind of woman that other women would want to hang around with. Instead, they would shun her. They wouldn’t want her around their husbands, and they wouldn’t want to be associated with her bad luck or her curse. And so, here she is, high noon, fetching water alone.

That explains the woman, but why does Jesus speak to her? Why does Jesus choose her to receive his message? The first reason is convenience. He has a mission, to spread the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand, and that eternal life is available to us all. He sees someone who needs to hear this message, so he starts up a conversation.

But doing so transgresses a number of social norms. First, there is the fact that he is a Jew and she is a Samaritan. Jews believed that Samaritans were ritually unclean, and therefore contact would make them unclean, too. This is certainly not the only time Jesus welcomed contact with someone unclean! He crosses that boundary so many times that it seems like he does not acknowledge uncleanness as a real thing. Second, there is the fact that he is a man and she is a woman. Men did not speak to women as equals at that time. Are you familiar with the Billy Graham Rule? That was his policy not to be alone with a woman other than his wife. In the ancient Near East, there was a similar social convention. Plus, there are stories in the Bible where a man encounters a woman at a well and it ultimately leads to marriage—including Jacob, who met his wife, Rachel, at a well.

So there were plenty of reasons why Jesus would not, should not speak to this person. Regardless, Jesus did. Jesus did not see her ethnicity, gender, or religion as barriers between them. He saw her as a sibling in his eternal family, someone also made in God’s image, someone also worthy of his attention.

Why else did Jesus choose to speak to her? Her receptivity, perhaps? When he asked her for water, she could have just said no and gone about her business, or said yes, given him a drink, and been done with it. Instead, she was willing to engage in conversation with him. She let him draw her out of her shame-covered shell.

Shame is a powerful force. Shame is different from guilt. Guilt says, I did something wrong and need to pay a proportional penalty for my transgression. Shame says, I did something wrong and therefore I am a bad person. Shame says, my very inner being and character are corrupted. This woman was covered in shame, due to her marital history. Maybe she didn’t even do anything wrong, but the results were shameful, so much so that she could not associate with the other women of the village.

I bet everyone here has things in their past that cause them shame. Maybe it was the way you treated someone close to you. Maybe it was an episode in your career. Maybe it was a time when you should have spoken up in defense of the defenseless, but you didn’t. Maybe it was a time when you supported a person, a movement, or an institution, only to find out that they weren’t who you thought they were.

Shame reflects our deepest need to belong. We fear that our shame will lead to isolation, a loss of status or community that in our prehistoric days would have led to banishment and death. That’s not how modern society works, but that is how our brains still think it works. We still think that if our shame is revealed, we will lose everything, perhaps even our lives.

And so we hide our shame. We hide it from our colleagues. We hide it from our friends. We hide it from our family. We hide it from God. We even hide it from ourselves, not acknowledging the shame that is tearing us apart from the inside out.

Jesus knew the woman’s shame, and saw beyond it. Our deepest need is to belong, and true belonging requires us to be truly known. Otherwise, we cannot really feel safe in that belonging. We live in fear that one day, we will be found out, and then we won’t be welcome anymore.

I watched a TEDx talk by Kenji Yoshino called “Uncovering Talent: The Power of Authenticity.” He talks about three phases. First, conversion: we try to be something we are not. Second: passing. You fit your community’s norms well enough that nobody questions whether you belong. Third: covering. You know that you are different, that you don’t really belong, so you disguise your identity or some core attribute. You are ashamed of some aspect of yourself, so you hide it.

True authenticity means transcending shame. True authenticity means that you don’t have to cover any aspect of yourself. Covering will never end well. You can do almost anything for a day or a week, but over time, the fundamental disconnect between your inner and outer selves will lead to anxiety, depression, anger, or other negative emotions. It’s unsustainable. Maybe you hide something you’re ashamed of so that you can get through Thanksgiving dinner, but then Christmas comes, and then the next family gathering, and over time, hiding your shame wears you down.

The question is, where can someone experience enough psychological safety that they don’t have to engage in covering? How can we create communities where authenticity is valued? Jesus knew how. He named the woman’s shameful past, without judgment. It was a simple statement of fact, an affirmation that she was an honest person, and an acknowledgment of reality. But he didn’t stop there. He continued to engage with her in a serious discussion.

In fact, the discussion deepened then. They went beyond a surface-level exchange about the well and living water, and went on to a theological and religious discussion. I have found this to be true in my life, too: when two people can be their authentic selves, they transcend the mundane and are able to talk about the things that really matter. Rather than worrying about hiding something from each other, they can relax and enter into a deeper friendship.

I know how wonderful it feels to be truly seen and known and accepted for who I am, all the good, the bad, and the ugly within my soul. I know how it feels to have a friend with whom I can be truly authentic. And that’s just an ordinary human! Imagine encountering the Son of the Living God, whose very presence radiated God’s love, and being seen and known and accepted! The Samaritan woman had that experience, and so she became an apostle.

She believed in Jesus Christ and then ran to bring others to Him, just as Andrew brought his brother Simon Peter to Jesus. She was so overjoyed at her encounter with the Messiah that she could not contain herself. She set aside the shame and the ostracism she had experienced from her village, and went to share the good news that Jesus was the one who would bring eternal life. Her exuberant response prompted Jesus to remind his disciples: the fruit is ready for the harvest. The time is NOW to go spread the message of God’s love. He says, “You might think there’s plenty of time before the harvest, but there isn’t. People are ready to hear this message NOW, today.”

Everywhere, people hunger and thirst for righteousness. Everywhere, people are alone in their shame. Everywhere, people are afraid to share their authentic selves. They fear losing friends, family, the people closest to them. They fear losing their community, their support networks. They fear losing everything if they live their Truth. And so, they suffer in silence, lives of quiet desperation.

But into that desperation steps our Lord and Savior. Christ sees us completely. He knows our greatest triumphs as well as our greatest sins and greatest shame. Yet as Paul wrote in Romans, I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Too often, the church is a source of shame rather than a place of healing. Too often, we Christians expound on the ways that people fall short of what we believe to be God’s will, leaving those outside the church to feel that they would never be welcome, that they would never be worthy to enter into our fellowship. But if Jesus does not condemn them, neither should we. Jesus is like a physician, sent not to the healthy but to the sick. We too are sent to those who hunger for membership in God’s family. We too are sent to those who are isolated by shame, who need to connect to a community.

Jesus said that he would provide living water, an eternal well springing up within those who believe in him. Let us go forth from here and share that living water with everyone who thirsts, everyone who needs to be connected to the infinitely loving God that we know through Christ. Amen.

The post Kingdom of No Shame first appeared on Thriving Sherpa.

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Sermon on October 5, 2025, 17th Sunday After Pentecost. Based on Luke 17:5-10.

During this part of the year, the lectionary marches through the Gospel of Luke. I like that. You get a different sense of the Gospels when you read them straight through, rather than picking out a verse or short passage.

Today’s lesson comes after a few hard teachings. A couple of weeks ago, Susan preached about the shrewd manager, which is pretty tricky to interpret. Last week, I preached about poor man Lazarus and the rich man. That’s a difficult teaching about wealth and privilege. The lectionary skips over the next little passage where Jesus tells the disciples that if anyone sins against them, they must forgive—up to seven times a day! Boy, Jesus just doesn’t let up, does he?

In desperation, the disciples cry out to Jesus, “Help us! We can’t do it! Increase our faith!” The Gospel message is hard. For chapter after chapter, Jesus tells his disciples how hard it is to live in this world as if the kingdom of God were already present, and then he demonstrates what happens when you take God’s commands seriously by picking up his cross. Our only hope is that God would give us the strength we need to carry on.

Jesus’s retort is a bit of a challenge to his disciples. A mustard seed is tiny, proverbially small. Maybe it wasn’t actually the smallest seed, but it was used symbolically to represent something unreasonably small. Jesus is almost saying that the disciples have no faith. He is saying that even a tiny bit of faith is enough, so if the disciples are struggling, their faith must be almost unmeasurable.

But wait—these were the people closest to Jesus, the ones who followed him all around Galilee and Judea and the surrounding regions. Surely they had some faith! They left their families, their homes, their jobs, everything for the sake of following the man they thought was the Messiah.

So how are we to understand Jesus’s implicit criticism of his disciples? If the disciples did not even have a mustard seed of faith, what hope do we have?

I’ve probably said this before, but the way we use the word “faith” is perhaps not exactly what is meant by the Greek word in the New Testament. We typically use it to mean an intellectual belief in something that we cannot prove empirically. Like, when we say we have faith in God, we usually mean that we believe that God exists even though we have no tangible evidence. That’s a good Enlightenment way of thinking rationally about the divine and transcendent mystery.

But a better way to think about “faith” in the New Testament is something like “fidelity” or “faithfulness.” It’s less about intellectual assent and more about action. If I say I’m faithful to my wife, I’m not saying that I believe intellectually that we love each other. I’m saying that my actions are consistent with my words of love. In the same way, Christian faithfulness is acting in a way that matches your professed beliefs about God’s Word, Jesus Christ.

Bo McGuffee is an ordained PC(USA) Minister of Word & Sacrament. He writes on Substack about a new way of following God. In a paywalled article titled “Alchemy of Belief,” he wrote:

Personal beliefs are what we actually believe, and they have a direct effect on our behavior. For example, if you believe that political protests make a difference, then you are more likely to attend or support them. If you believe that political protests don’t matter, then you are less likely to attend or support them. So, personal beliefs manifest themselves in our behavior.

Inherited beliefs come from our community, and they function primarily as virtue signals. By saying “I believe” in that which my community believes in, I assert that I belong to the tribe. Sharing inherited beliefs is to share an identity. The problem is that people often don’t realize the difference. They often think that they personally believe certain inherited beliefs when they don’t.

Bo McGuffee, The Alchemy of Belief

Simply put, McGuffee is pointing out the difference between beliefs that we profess and beliefs that impact our behavior. I can say that I believe that Jesus Christ was raised on the third day, but if I don’t live like death has lost its sting, do I really believe it? I can say that I believe in the Holy Spirit, but if I never listen for Her leading, what difference does that belief make in my life?

Too often, we fall back into “functional atheism.” That is, we say that we believe in God, we say that we believe God will make a way, we say that God will provide, but then we live like everything depends on our own will and our own work.

I think that’s what Jesus was getting at. The disciples professed that Jesus was the Messiah, but they didn’t really understand what they were saying. They didn’t truly believe that Jesus had come to conquer sin and death. Instead, they thought that Jesus had come to lead an army to vanquish the Romans, or perhaps that he had come to overturn the Temple hierarchy, and that the disciples were needed to support his revolution and help him rule a re-established nation of Israel.

But Jesus came for a different kind of revolution, one filled with LOVE. Jesus challenged his disciples to trust that His love, God’s love, the Holy Spirit’s love would empower them. They would not have to act on their own. They could trust that God would enable them to change the world.

Trusting in that way is really hard. I mean, really hard. For most of us, it goes against what our experience has taught us. In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt says that our brain is like a rider on an elephant. The rider is our conscious awareness, the part of our brain that intellectually believes and decides and reasons through decisions. But most of our brain is the elephant. It takes in information and guides our actions. Now, how much influence does a rider really have on an elephant? Mostly, elephants go where they think they should, based on their experiences in the world. The rider can cajole them to go a certain way, or can train them to behave in certain ways, but at the end of the day, the elephant is really in charge.

Usually, when confronted with a problem, our subconscious mind makes a decision, and then our conscious mind figures out why we chose what we chose. Psychologists call this “confabulation,” because the reason we give may have little or nothing to do with the real reason. Maybe the real reason has to do with a habit we’ve developed, or an experience deep in our memory that was triggered by a new situation, or whatever.

My point is that our real beliefs live in the elephant, not the rider. That’s why we can say we believe certain things, but our actions have no relation to those beliefs. We may say that all people are equal in God’s eyes, but then we make snap decisions and exclude someone based on the way they look or talk or act. We may say we believe that God will provide, but then anxiously check how the stock market is performing.

So what can we do? We need to train the elephant. If you want your actions to match your beliefs, you need to embed those beliefs down in your subconscious. Let me tell you about what I’ve been doing for the last couple of months.

I read a book called Miracle Morning. In it, the author describes a set of practices that he does each morning so that his day goes well. The acronym he uses is SAVERS: silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, scribing. For silence, I pray. Scribing is a word for journaling that makes the acronym work.

I want to focus on affirmations and visualization. These are not things like saying, “I am rich,” or “I will be famous.” These are ways of setting an intention for how you will live your life. By repeating the same words that commit yourself to a certain path, and then visualizing where that path will lead, you slowly train your subconscious to make choices that lead where you want your life to go.

One of my current affirmations is this: “I am committed to becoming strong and fit and to losing weight, no matter what. There is no other option.” I say a few other things to flesh that out, and then I visualize myself hiking confidently up the mountain with my 70-pound pack on as I head to spike camp, or with a hindquarter of elk in my pack. In this way, I increase the probability that I will choose to be active and to eat right.

My other current affirmation is this: “I am committed to starting an LGBTQ ministry in Rolla, no matter what. There is no other option. This is how God has called me to serve Their kingdom. Now is the right time: all of the conditions are right.” After I say a few other things, I visualize the LGBTQ+ Rolla Community Center filled with faithful people talking about how God is moving in their lives.

Now, am I certain that this will be successful? No. But I am training myself to keep this goal in focus and to make the choices that are more likely to lead to its success. The reason I can commit to this path is that I believe God will amplify my efforts. I know that alone, I can do little more than plant seeds, but that God will give the growth.

This is faith like a mustard seed. A lifetime of experiences has demonstrated that nothing succeeds without my planning and execution, but I know that God has called me to this ministry, so I know that God will give me what I need to succeed. I can read the Bible and see examples of God giving the growth. Anxiety can kill my initiative, but through prayer, affirmation, and visualization, God will give me the courage to act.

There is only one way to ensure failure, and that is to not even try. With God’s help, anything is possible. What is God calling you to do? May God bless you with a vision of how you can contribute to the flourishing of Their kingdom, wisdom to see the path, and courage to put your faith into action. Amen.

The post Faith in Action first appeared on Engineering My Faith.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on September 28, 2025. Based on Luke 16:19-31.

Consider the scene in A Christmas Carol when Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Jacob Marley. Marley says to him, “I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it, link by link, and of my own free will I wore it. Would you know the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it since. It is a ponderous chain!”

Scrooge asks for comfort, but Jacob says, “I have none to give. Mark me! In life, my Spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our moneychanging hole. I never knew that any earthly Spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Yet Oh! Such was I! I cannot rest. I cannot stay. I cannot linger anywhere.” Scrooge asks, “Seven years dead. And travelling all the time?” Marley replies, “The whole time. No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.

“Oh! Captive, bound and double-ironed, I never knew that no space of regret can make amends for one’s life’s opportunity misused!!”

Scrooge says, “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob.” “Business!” says Marley. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business! At this time of the year, I suffer the most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me? Hear me! My time is nearly gone!”

Poor Marley lived his whole life committed to building his wealth. Only at the end, when he was confronted with the impact of his choices on the people around him, did he realize how far he had gone wrong. He sought to keep Scrooge from making the same mistakes with his life.

In our reading today, we meet another character who must bear the remorse of a life wasted. In tradition, the rich man is often called “Dives,” which is just Latin for “a rich man.” He is unnamed in the parable, like almost every character in almost every parable in the Gospels. The rich man lived very well. It is said that he feasted sumptuously every day, that he celebrated ostentatiously. A feast for one person isn’t much fun, so presumably he had guests coming and going every day. Did he not celebrate the Sabbath? Why interrupt the fun? Keep the party going! He dressed in purple, a sign of royalty because of the extremely high cost of purple dye. Conspicuous consumption, demonstrating his wealth and standing in the community. He was like the men cursed by Amos: “Woe to those who … lounge on their couches …, who sing idle songs …, who drink wine from bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!”

For at his gate lay Lazarus. Poor man Lazarus, sick and disabled. He is the only named character in any of Jesus’s parables. His name means “God has helped,” or perhaps “God will help.” Gee, it doesn’t seem like God has helped him. He lay at the gate nursing his sores. Our translation says, “Even the dogs licked him.” Another translation I read says, “BUT the dogs licked him.” It may seem strange to us, but having dogs lick your wounds was actually considered a healing treatment. Dog saliva has antibiotic and other healing properties, and archaeologists have found evidence of healing cults with packs of dogs from Mesopotamia to Greece. So perhaps that’s how God helped poor Lazarus, by sending wild dogs to care for him when the rich man would not.

Every day, the rich man held sumptuous feasts. His guests would come and go from his palatial estate, stepping over Lazarus each time. They couldn’t be bothered to rescue him. Maybe they gave him some alms, maybe he was able to get some leftovers from the rich man’s table, but mostly, he starved and suffered.

Honestly, most of us are not much different from them most of the time. When I’m in a strange town and a panhandler asks me for help, I usually ignore them. Here in Rolla, I help the homeless at the Mission, but realistically, I’m helping an organization that serves people rather than helping people directly and individually. I do my best to engage with the patrons, but focus primarily on cooking and serving rather than on chatting or providing any other help. When I encounter a homeless person at the Mission, I see their inherent worth as a beloved child of God. When I encounter a homeless person on the streets, I do my best to avoid eye contact and get on with my day.

So anyway, the rich man and Lazarus both die and are in the afterlife. God helps Lazarus: he is accompanied by Abraham and welcomed into God’s family. But the rich man received his reward in this life and suffers in the age to come. I think it’s unwise to read too much into this parable—I don’t think Jesus was trying to describe every aspect of the afterlife and its eternal nature. But he did explain to the Pharisees and his other opponents that our actions in this life have consequences.

Did the rich man learn from his mistakes? Was he like Jacob Marley, filled with remorse and seeking to change his ways? Not really. He wishes he wasn’t suffering, but he hasn’t really changed.

The rich man spies Lazarus with Abraham. He calls out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.’ Hmm. Here he is, tormented for some reason having to do with the way he lived his life, and what does he do? Start giving orders. He knows Lazarus by name, so he admits that he saw Lazarus lying day after day at his gate. Rather than acknowledge Lazarus’s inherent dignity and obvious value in God’s kingdom, he asks Abraham to send Lazarus over to help him out. He wants Lazarus to do for him in Hades what he would never do for Lazarus in this life. He never offered food or money or healing to ease Lazarus’s suffering, and yet he commands Lazarus to help him! When Abraham says that’s impossible, the rich man doesn’t relent. He keeps going, telling Abraham to send Lazarus on an errand like Marley’s visit to Scrooge.

But Abraham knows better. He knows that Lazarus isn’t an errand boy, but instead is a beloved child of God and a citizen of God’s kingdom. God has been speaking to humanity for thousands of years, from strolling in the garden of Eden to visiting Abraham to leading the Israelites out of Egypt to guiding the prophets down through the centuries. Every Israelite should know God’s Truth, God’s guidance for building a just and loving society. If they don’t, no apparition will save them.

Jesus was perhaps referring prospectively to himself. He came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. He stood in the tradition of the prophets, reinterpreting the Torah for a new generation. The whole Bible teaches us how to build a just and loving society; Jesus boiled it down to the Great Commandment: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus is reminding the Pharisees, who were devoted to the study of the Law, that they already know what they should do. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Did the rich man act as Lazarus’s neighbor in life? No. Did he act as Lazarus’s neighbor in the afterlife? Still no. He simply refused to learn. He refused to acknowledge that Lazarus was indeed his neighbor.

Abraham demonstrates the upside-down nature of God’s kingdom. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, the persistent message is that the first shall be last, the last shall be first, the lowly will be lifted up, and the mighty will be torn down.

The challenge before us is to live now as if God’s kingdom is already here. In our epistle reading today, Paul tells Timothy, “Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.” Neither Jesus nor Paul, nor James nor Peter nor any other New Testament author, had many positive things to say about wealth. Partly that reflected the Roman society at the time, in which wealth was almost universally the product of extortion and exploitation of the poor. But partly, these authors recognized that wealth is a trap. First we want enough to eat, and then we want better food, and then we want to eat in nicer places with people serving us.

We get on the hedonic treadmill. That’s a term coined in 1971 to describe the fact that most people’s level of happiness is fairly stable despite external events. We are sensitive to changes in wealth, but quickly adapt to the change. We buy a nicer car, but after a month or two, we hardly notice the fancy features that seemed so important when we were shopping for it. So we strive for something else to fill that void, that yearning for good things in life.

Now, my grampa always used to say that it’s better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick, and that’s basically true. Up to a certain level, maybe four or five times the poverty level, increasing income does make a significant difference in lifestyle and contentment. But eventually, you reach the point where your needs are being met and increasing wealth doesn’t really affect your emotional state.

What we often observe is that people want more money to show that they’re “winners.” They use income or wealth as a way of keeping score. Consider billionaires like Elon Musk: there is no way he could ever spend his fortune, and yet he is driven to make more and more and more. Indeed, that’s the hallmark of the hedonic treadmill: the desire for more.

The rich man of our parable seems to fall into this category. It’s not enough for him to have good food and nice clothes. He must feast sumptuously and wear royal purple clothing. Not only is he comfortable in his wealth, but he is extravagant in spending it to demonstrate that he’s a winner.

And what do winners do? They step on those they believe to be losers. This was the rich man’s real sin. Rather than seeing his situation and Lazarus’s situation as the result of the whims of fate, he puffs himself up and ignores the needy man who is literally at his gate. He physically blocks Lazarus out of the party, while emotionally blocking Lazarus out of his heart. Not even the fires of Hades can demonstrate to him that Lazarus is beloved by God and should be treasured by all of God’s people.

In every human society, there are two ways people are organized. One is nearness of relationships—your innermost circle such as your nuclear family, then ever-widening circles of family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and fellow citizens of your community, nation, and world. The other is hierarchy—who has higher status due to wealth, education, power, race, gender, and so forth. The rich man was deeply embedded in this perspective. But Jesus teaches us that there is a third way to organize people—nearness to God. We more nearly approach the divine as we prioritize caring for one another.

So I don’t believe that money is the root of all evil, as today’s epistle is sometimes interpreted. Rather, the love of money instead of the love of God and God’s people can corrupt your desires and blind you to the divine spark residing within each person, each child of God. Let us seek to invite all of God’s people to participate in a foretaste of the heavenly banquet for which we all are bound. Let us seek to see Lazarus and his kindred at our own gates, and in serving them, draw nearer to God. Amen.

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Article published in the Phelps County Focus on September 18, 2025. This is an abridged and re-focused version of my sermon by the same name.

In Luke 15, Jesus preached about a shepherd leaving 99 sheep to go look for the one he had lost. Sheep are almost too stupid to live. They don’t run away. They go where they are guided to go. If a sheep is lost, it’s because it was left behind when the shepherd moved the rest of the flock along.

Sheep are like …

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Preached on September 14, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 15:1-10.

Chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel could perhaps be titled the Book of the Lost. We have a trilogy of parables. First, there is the parable of the Lost Sheep. Then there is the parable of the Lost Coin. I read both of those today. Then the third parable is variously called the parable of the Lost Son, the Prodigal Son, the Two Sons, the Prodigal and His Brother, or the Forgiving Father. That third one is too complex to study along with the other two, so the lectionary creators leave it out of today’s lesson and instead put it back in Lent. Remember that these two parables build up to that famous story.

For today, let’s focus on the first two parables. First, the Lost Sheep. Obviously, the original audience for Jesus’s preaching and Luke’s writing would have known a whole lot more about sheep and shepherds than most of us do. I’ll tell you what I know, though. Sheep are almost too stupid to live. For millennia, they have been bred to be docile. They don’t just wander around. They go where they are guided to go. So if a sheep is lost, it’s because it was left behind when the shepherd moved the rest of the flock along.

A friend of mine told me a story about her son’s cat getting out. This cat figured out how to bypass a locked pet door, climb over a 6’ fence, and go down the street and into a storm sewer. That was an animal with some agency, an animal who wanted to be somewhere else and purposefully escaped from its owners.

Sheep aren’t like that. They’re more like our old dog Gypsy. She was about half-blind and half-deaf, so when we visited my in-laws, she would just wander around following her nose. She didn’t move fast, and she didn’t try to run away. She just kinda wandered. We weren’t paying attention, and she couldn’t hear us when we called, so she ended up across the street and down by a neighbor’s house.

That’s how sheep are. They don’t run away. They just eat tasty grass and follow it where it goes. Slowly, with no real direction. So if a sheep is lost, it’s not the sheep’s fault—it’s the shepherd’s fault for not paying attention.

Here we have a shepherd who messed up. Or maybe there were a bunch of shepherds tending the flock, and they all thought someone else was taking care of this one particular sheep. So the one sheep gets left behind when they move the flock along. The good shepherd cares about all of his sheep, so he pursues the one who was lost. When he gets back, he’s relieved and overjoyed that he has found it!

In the same way, the second parable describes a situation where the woman screwed up. She had ten coins, each worth about $100 today. Now, a coin doesn’t just wander off. Clearly if she lost it, it was her fault, even more so than the lost sheep. I know that if I had ten $100 bills in a drawer, then checked and saw that there were only nine, I’d go looking around the house to see where I might have left the other one! Or I might wonder if it was stolen. I might even panic a little. But when I found it, I’d be relieved and thankful.

The setup for these parables is that the scribes and Pharisees are grumbling that Jesus welcomes tax collectors and sinners. Jesus is teaching that he was sent to the lost sheep of Israel, that he was sent as a physician to the ill, and that he is the bridegroom of a marvelous wedding feast. Where the scribes and Pharisees want to erect barriers, Jesus seeks a bigger Table.

So Jesus is seeking the lost, as the Good Shepherd or as a woman seeking what is valuable. Jesus seeks lost people, though, not sheep or coins. But by telling these parables, he is reminding his audience that agency resides not in the people who are lost, but in the community that has lost them.

When we read these parables, we are tempted to think that the shepherd or the woman is analogous to God. That gets problematic when you think, Did God lose people? I thought God loved everybody and was everywhere! To which I say, Amen! God never loses anyone and is always available. The kingdom of God is at hand! God is right here, right among us, waiting for our awareness.

No, I think the shepherd or the woman is analogous to the Church (with a capital C). Jesus would have been referring to the Jewish establishment, but the same holds true for the Christian Church. We are supposed to be Christ’s body, but we frequently fall short of our calling. One way that we fall short is that we fail to serve as God’s ambassadors to the world, and we fail to tend our sheep and treasure each member of God’s family.

And I want to be clear here that I’m not talking about this particular congregation, or anyone in particular within this congregation. The truth is that the big-C Church has lost at least one and probably two or three generations. In the 1950s and ‘60s, there were tremendous cultural tailwinds propelling churches of all types. Nowadays, there are huge cultural headwinds that we are fighting against.

Everyone has a theory about why we have lost succeeding generations. Let me tell you mine. At some point before I came of age—perhaps in the 1970s—an idea took root among American Christians. Parents were taught Proverbs 22:6, “Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray.” So, the emphasis was on getting children into Sunday school and keeping them on track until they were confirmed or baptized as teenagers. Then, job done. As a result, most kids drifted away from the church just as soon as their parents stopped forcing them. They were left with a childish faith—not child-like and innocent, but poorly formed, like if you dropped out of school after sixth grade. As I recall, there were about a dozen kids in my confirmation class in 1986, and by the time I graduated high school in 1991, I was the only one still attending worship. Some of that dozen eventually made it back to church, if Facebook is any indication. But not all of them.

So succeeding generations over the past fifty years have placed less and less emphasis on developing a mature, adult faith. As a result, we have lost a lot of sheep and a lot of coins. It’s not that they were raised in the church, drifted away, and will come back when they have kids. Instead, they were never raised in a church at all, so there is no “back.”

Meanwhile, around that same time, the Church bifurcated into liberal and conservative branches. I’m speaking theologically more than politically, although there is some correlation. The old mainline churches—PC(USA), Episcopal, United Methodist, ELCA Lutheran, and so forth—are in the liberal theological tradition. Too many mainline churches are afraid to stand for anything. They’re milquetoast and tepid, like Laodicea in Revelation—neither hot nor cold. Meanwhile, the conservative branch—Southern Baptist, Church of Christ, Assembly of God, and so forth—are increasingly vocal, in ways that are frankly offensive to a broad swath of the younger generations. So, many Millennials and Gen Z adults reject all of Christianity based on the vocal part that they disagree with, never hear about the mainline traditions, and have never gone to church, so they figure it’s all irrelevant to their lives.

That’s what I mean by cultural headwinds. Again, I’m not necessarily talking about anyone in this church. I mean, no matter what choices my kids make about attending church, it wouldn’t matter to us, because they live in Providence and Chicago. Rather, we need to be concerned about the Millennials and Gen Z adults in Rolla. What message have they heard about Christianity? Mostly, it sounds a lot like the scribes and Pharisees. Mostly, it sounds like, “You must do XYZ in order to be acceptable to God as we understand Him.” Mostly, it sounds like, “Everything that matters to you is unacceptable in God’s eyes.” Mostly, it sounds like, “We have exclusive access to God’s Truth, so you need to do exactly what we say or you’re doomed to eternal conscious torment in a lake of fire.” Rarely does it sound like, “God loves you, come on in!” Rarely does it sound like, “Tell us about yourself and help us learn about God from your life experiences.” Rarely does it sound like, “God forgives you, no matter what, and has chosen YOU to be a part of our family.” Rarely does it sound like, “We don’t know all the answers, but we’ll help you find your own path as we tell you about ours.”

Wouldn’t it be great if someone outside the church heard those messages, and could really, truly believe them? Wouldn’t it be great if someone who has never experienced Christ’s love in their life could feel it through us? Wouldn’t it be great if someone could receive new life, abundant life, through a loving, supportive community that helps them navigate the spiritual challenges they face?

Let me tell you about a few encounters I had in the past week. First, Wednesday night, I had my first youth Bible study over at the LGBTQ+ Rolla Community Center. The story there is that a teenage girl asked her mom to find her a Bible study. The mom reached out to our organization, and I said, “Sign me up!” Well, so far, she’s the only one who has come. But that’s OK. I’m sowing seeds in the world. I’m giving her tools to defend herself against people who use the Bible as a weapon. I’m helping her to grow into an adult faith, a deeper faith with stronger roots. And maybe, the ideas and Christian love that I sow in her will bloom into something great among her friends and more broadly in the community.

Thursday, we had Sacred Paths, our campus ministry. I’m concerned about its future because some key members have already graduated and a few others are graduating soon. But one freshman came for her third time, and two sophomores came for their first time. We had a great conversation—everyone was engaged and listening to one another. We’re all in very different places on our spiritual walk, and that’s OK. I don’t think we could come up with a clear statement of faith that we all agree on. Some believe 100% in the divinity of Christ and that our God is THE God. Others are something like agnostic, but find meaning in following Christ’s teachings. And maybe someday, the seeds we plant, the openness we share about our different life experiences, will blossom into God’s presence in their lives.

Then later Thursday night, I had a Zoom chat with Michele White. She attended this church for a short time right before the pandemic shut everything down. She was one of my graduate students who came to Common Call and now lives in Denver. She was really struggling, spiritually. The murder of Charlie Kirk troubled her—not so much that he is dead, but the conflicting emotions she had over his killing. As we talked, it was clear that she has a great circle of friends, a chosen family, but doesn’t really have a spiritual community. True flourishing requires a connection to God, and even though I feel God’s presence when I pray and when I’m out in nature, I mostly experience God through community. We talked for a while, and I counseled her on finding a way to connect to spiritual community.

So, all good, right? Well, one other thing happened. I had posted on Facebook that I was hosting a Bible study at the LGBTQ+ Rolla Community Center, and that sent one person into a tailspin. He has clearly been hurt, deeply, by the Christian church. Just the fact that other members of our community might want a place where they can pursue God’s kingdom brought up all sorts of negative emotions. That’s a huge part of what we’re fighting against here. If someone has been hurt deeply by any Christian church, they paint all of Christianity the same way. Saying “I’m not like that” isn’t sufficient. Only positive, deep relationships can heal the hurt, if ever it can be healed.

So that’s where I am. I recognize that there are many people who have been cast out of the church, or whose only experience of Christianity is negative, or who know that there is Something More out there that they feel drawn to and need help figuring things out. If I can help just a few people flourish who otherwise would have turned their backs on God and would have floundered in despair, I will be a success.

So my challenge to you is, Who do YOU care about? Who will YOU find and welcome in? Where will YOU go to seek the lost, to share God’s love with them, and bring them into Christian fellowship? Where will you proclaim the Gospel for the salvation of humankind? How will you exhibit the kingdom of heaven to the world? And what will you do to heal the damage that has been done in Christ’s name, to demonstrate the relevance of Christianity, and to guide people into a healthy relationship with one another and with the God who loves them?

That’s my challenge to you today, and every day. May God bless your seeking, that in seeking, you may find. Amen.

The post Seeking the Lost first appeared on Engineering My Faith.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on August 31, 2025. Based on Luke 14: 1, 7-14.

Recently, Vicki and Lloyd turned me onto a great book called Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth E. Bailey. He was from Bloomington, IL, attended Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and was an ordained PC(USA) pastor. However, he spent most of his career in the Middle East—Egypt, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Israel. Being immersed in Middle Eastern culture but educated in the West, he had a unique ability to analyze parables and other scriptural lessons that rely on their original culture and to translate them to our culture.

One takeaway is that Jewish writings are replete with a certain rhetorical form that he calls a “ring” structure. It’s a seven-part structure with symmetry, A-B-C-D-C-B-A, that emphasizes the middle of the passage. We’re used to focusing on the end, the conclusion of the passage, but common Biblical rhetoric emphasizes the middle.

Today’s lectionary reading has two short parables. The first one is about choosing your place at the table. The center of the ring structure is this: “when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place.” Huh, that’s odd. Why is that so important?

Well, let’s consider the setup. Jesus is dining at the house of a Pharisee on the Sabbath, and “they were watching him closely.” There is a short story that the lectionary skips over that is almost the same as last week’s reading: a man is suffering and Jesus heals him on the Sabbath, to the consternation of those who are gathered. These particular Pharisees have invited Jesus to dine with them not because they wanted to honor him, but because they wanted to catch him doing something wrong, something they could attack. So what does he do? He tells a story that reflects back their dishonor. He points out their obsession with honor and status, their self-righteousness, their self-centeredness.

Then he tells another short parable, which has an abbreviated ring structure that still puts emphasis on the middle statement: “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Where the first short parable talks about the proper behavior of guests, this one addresses the proper behavior of a host. In a world built on reciprocity, Jesus says, Don’t worry about being repaid, just do what’s right.

OK, maybe Jesus was just talking about the best way to throw a good party, but I doubt it. If that was all, nobody would have written these stories down, let alone put them in the Bible. Instead, I think Jesus was talking about THE Party, the glorious banquet that awaits us in the eschaton, at the end of history. From Isaiah:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples

a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,

of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

And he will destroy on this mountain

the shroud that is cast over all peoples,

the covering that is spread over all nations;

he will swallow up death forever.

Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,

and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,

for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day,

“See, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.

This is the Lord for whom we have waited;

let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

Isaiah 25:6-9

You know me—I always preach about the kingdom of God, which is universal flourishing. But you know what else God’s kingdom is? It’s a party! It’s a wonderful banquet that awaits us, a joyful banquet where Christ is our host!

So when you read parables about wedding banquets, you should always be thinking of what Jesus is teaching about His kingdom. In the first parable, the central teaching is: humble thyself. Do not take a seat of honor, lest you be demoted. Instead, take a low place and let Christ raise you. I am resisting the urge to sing “Humble Thyself,” but many of you know that song. Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

There are many, many problems in the modern Christian church, but I would say chief among them is hypocrisy, which is bound up with self-righteousness. The hypocrite says, You need to follow rule X, but I don’t really need to because I’m already holier than thou. We see it in politics—Christians holding members of their own party to lower standards than the other party, simply because the politician tells them what they want to hear. We see it in sports—fans tolerating behavior from star players on their team that they criticize from opposing players. And of course we see it in church governance—witness the many cases of sexual misconduct and abusive, exploitative behavior that church authorities have covered up in order to protect one of their own.

The truth is, we all need to pursue God’s righteousness, but we all need to recognize that we are no more or less worthy of membership in God’s kingdom than anyone else. Jesus didn’t tell the Pharisees that they shouldn’t go to a banquet, only that they should not think themselves better than other guests. Christ invites everyone to His Table. We have not earned the right to join Him. We come as guests invited.

And that’s a message for everyone, myself included. Maybe especially me, and people like me. I have a title and a role. On campus, I’m Dr. Kimball, professor and department chair. Here, I’m commissioned ruling elder or lay pastor. But in God’s kingdom, I’m just Jonathan. Those titles and roles mark me as someone who has certain training and is called to serve in a certain way, but the Lord does not look on our outward appearance. The Lord looks at the heart.

And the same goes for everyone here. Each of you has been given certain gifts and certain roles, in the church and in your life. A huge fraction of the congregation has at some point in time served as a deacon, an elder, or both. When you are ordained, you are marked as someone who the congregation recognizes, through the Holy Spirit, as capable of fulfilling an important part of our church’s ministry. When you are installed, you are marked as someone who is important to our church’s ministry at that particular time. But that does not make you any more worthy of honor in God’s kingdom than the others in the congregation.

Nor, for that matter, does it make you any more worthy of honor in God’s kingdom than those outside the church. That’s part of the hypocrisy and self-righteousness that is so pervasive in American Christianity. The belief that insiders, people who go to church—as long as it’s the right kind of church—are somehow better in God’s eyes than outsiders. We’re not.

What sets us apart from church outsiders is not worthiness, but spiritual enrichment. We come to church on Sundays, and read, and pray, and join in Christian fellowship, and engage in a wide range of spiritual practices, so that we can fill our faith cups. You can’t pour from an empty cup, so it is essential to find a way to recharge, to abide in Christ so that Christ can abide in you. We all have different needs, but I hope that worshipping together satisfies some of your spiritual hunger. I am spiritually restored in many other ways. I read the Bible, I pray, I run, I serve at the Mission, and I have some dear friends who nourish my soul. Each of us needs to find the combination of spiritual disciplines that will fill us.

But the point of spiritual enrichment is not personal satisfaction. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has physiological and safety needs at the bottom, followed by love & belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. The baseline need that a church should fulfill is love & belonging. Everyone should be able to find a church that will embrace them just as they are and will love them as a fellow sibling in Christ. If a person can find such a place, they can begin to flourish and hopefully have their esteem needs fulfilled and pursue self-actualization.

But the pinnacle of Maslow’s hierarchy is something more: self-transcendence. The goal of the spiritual journey is to be able to share the abundant life that God gives each of us. Our faith cup shouldn’t just have some dregs in the bottom. It should be overflowing, so that we have spiritual food to share.

I’m often reminded of the dark valley of my life back in 2013, when Rhonda was battling facial pain. I was empty. I was drained. I was hopeless. Into that dark place stepped so many people who were filled with God’s light—deacons, friends, and others who could share from their abundance. I don’t mean time or money, I mean spiritual abundance. You all helped me through that dark time and helped me become the man I am today. In the same way, I strive to fill my faith cup, through worship, study, prayer, and fellowship, so that I have spiritual resources to share with those who are struggling.

The second short parable centers on the admonition to “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Now, I believe in God’s preferential option for the poor. I do believe that Jesus was telling the rich Pharisees to share their material abundance with those who were in need. In that time and place, being crippled, lame, or blind meant being a beggar, so in all of those ways, Jesus is saying that we should share from our material wealth. But remember, he is also teaching us something about the kingdom of God. He is telling us to include those who the world deems unworthy. He is telling us to welcome the outcast, those who are spiritually hungry, those who are treated as unworthy of receiving God’s abundant life, and bring them into our fellowship. As United Methodist pastor Rev. Eston Williams said, “At the end of the day, I’d rather be excluded for who I include than included for who I exclude.” Jesus is telling the religious traditionalists that on the Last Day, at the end of history, everyone will be welcome in His heavenly banquet.

But the kingdom of God is at hand! The kingdom of God doesn’t only come at the end of history. It comes here and now. We can experience a foretaste of the heavenly kingdom whenever we live as Jesus taught us to live: with open hearts, minds, and doors, welcoming the stranger, comforting the broken-hearted.

You may recall that last year around this time, I asked you all to evaluate this church against the six Great Ends of the Church. I was surprised to see that by and large, everyone rated us pretty high on all measures. I would say that we do pretty well on some, and less well on others. But the one that really matters to me is the last one listed in the Book of Order: The exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world. To me, that is the core of the Gospel: living into the kingdom of heaven now, not when we die, not at the end of history when all things are reconciled to God. Now.

But how do we do that? The other Great Ends build up to it. The shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God, along with the maintenance of divine worship, helps us all individually and as a congregation to build up spiritual riches that we can share. We leave on Sunday, or on Wednesday after Bible study or choir practice, or on Friday after First Friday Out, filled with the Spirit, refreshed and renewed in our commitment to God. That empowers us to proclaim the gospel for the salvation of humankind and promote social righteousness.

For as long as I’ve been in this church, we have talked about the importance of reaching the community. The key is human connection. The key is relationships. We don’t need a program or a media blitz. We need to love those who are spiritually hungry, in word and deed. Not by telling them about God’s love, but by showing them love. Entering into relationships of mutual respect and love, not from a position of superiority or special blessedness, but as a channel of the Holy Spirit. Embracing those outside the church as beloved children of God, equally worthy of honor at God’s Table.

We have been given a great gift: each other. Let us be united in our commitment to the divine Truth that all are worthy of full participation in God’s kingdom, which is universal flourishing. Let us lean on each other to be filled with the Spirit, and then share our spiritual bounty with our community. Amen.

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Humans are meant to flourish and thrive. Abraham Maslow developed a “hierarchy of needs” that encapsulate everything a person needs to flourish. The foundation levels are physiological and safety needs. Everyone needs water, food, shelter, and security.

Once those needs are fulfilled at some minimal level, though, each person needs to satisfy higher psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs. Love and belonging: we are meant to be in loving relationships with one another, whether friends, family, chosen family, or a larger community. Esteem: we all need both self-esteem and status and recognition in our community, however that is defined. Self-actualization: we are driven to make the most of our capabilities, achieve our potential.

Later, Maslow and other researchers added a sixth need: self-transcendence. We all have a desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. That can be a community, a religion, an organization, a nation, or something more spiritual. The ultimate self-transcendence is to feel a part of the Universe, connected to and united with all people and all things, everywhere and throughout time. Few people reach that level of self-transcendence, except Jesus and the Buddha. But it is a goal towards which we can all strive.

Aside from the physiological and safety needs, a connection to God as you understand Them is important at all of the higher levels. People have different names for God: Adonai, the Trinity, Allah; the pantheon of Hindu gods; the Universe, the Source; and so forth. These are all ways of describing Something that transcends our ordinary experience. I am personally a Trinitarian Christian, but acknowledge the possibility, even the high likelihood, that most or all spiritual traditions are describing different aspects of the same ultimate Reality.

The problem is that we fight over different interpretations of that ultimate reality. We try to convince others either that they MUST subscribe to our interpretation in order to be in our community, or that they are forbidden from approaching our God because of some inherent quality of theirs. The pursuit of a connection to ultimate reality becomes a solitary journey, then, or people give up on the pursuit because they think it is blocked.

But it’s not. Nobody has the right to tell you that you are unworthy in God’s sight, except for God. Nobody has exclusive access to Truth. St. Augustine once said, “Si comprehendus, non est Deus,” which means “If you understand, it is not God.” Joy, peace, transcendence, and connection are found in the pursuit, not in any particular doctrine or definition.

Si comprehendus, non est Deus.
If you understand, it is not God.

St. Augustine

Pastor? Mentor? Teacher? Sherpa!In the Christian tradition, leaders are normally called “pastor,” which derives from the Latin for shepherd. The implication is that the pastor knows where to go and guides the flock in that direction, like lost sheep being prodded and pushed and herded. The reality is that pastors know more about scripture and theology, and guide their flocks with love and care, but have no more direct access to the ultimate Truth than anyone else.

In many life settings and philosophical traditions, “mentors” lead protégés. The original model is Mentor, a character in the Odyssey who was entrusted with raising and guiding Odysseus’s son, Telemachus. There are many positive examples of mentorship. However, in its worst form, the relationship can be quite paternalistic as in the Odyssey, where the mentor claims superior knowledge, skill, and wisdom, and seeks to form the protégé into a copy, a “Mini-Me.” I often serve as a mentor within my limited sphere of engineering and academia, but would never claim such authority in the spiritual realm.

Jewish leaders are termed “rabbis,” or teachers. Any teacher has an area where they are experts and other areas where they are learners. I can accept being called “teacher” in my profession as an engineer. There are also specific topics within scripture and theology where I have enough expertise to guide others. When it comes to the broad outlines of the spiritual journey, though, what I know from my own journey can provide just one limited perspective. Oscar Wilde said, “Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” Developing spiritual depth and wisdom must come from experience, not knowledge transfer.

The Sherpas are an ethnic group in Nepal, India, and Tibet who live high in the Himalayas. Because of their extensive lived experience in that mountainous terrain, many mountain guides and bearers on Himalayan expeditions are Sherpas. As a result, “sherpa” has come to mean a person who helps you on your mountain journey. They may help carry burdens that you cannot. They may help you in an emergency, or go get help for you. They may know the right path to take, or they may rely on their instincts developed over years in the mountains to help you identify better and worse paths.

I see myself as a Thriving Sherpa. I cannot tell you how to thrive. I cannot tell you what to believe or how to behave. I can tell you what I know from my own study and experience, and help you figure out your own path. I can help you carry burdens—emotional, spiritual, relational—as you pursue self-actualization and self-transcendence. And like Tenzing Norgay, who accompanied Edmund Hillary on the first successful summit of Mount Everest, my reward is being a part of your triumph, your flourishing, your emergence as the best version of yourself who helps fill the world with love.

Queer SpiritualityI feel called to be a Thriving Sherpa for the LGBTQ+ community and their allies. For too long, gay and transgender individuals have been told that they are inherently sinful and unworthy of God’s love. THIS IS CATEGORICALLY FALSE. There is nobody who is unworthy. Everyone is pure and holy at their center.

There are some relationships that are beautiful, joyful, and life-giving, and should be celebrated and affirmed.

There are some relationships that are abusive, exploitative, and life-denying, and should be ended.

The gender(s) of the participants is only incidental to whether a relationship is life-giving or life-denying. In fact, heterosexual relationships are more likely to be corrupted by gender dynamics inherited from patriarchy than same-sex relationships. I reject any theology or social framework that elevates and affirms a marriage in which the husband abuses the wife while denying or castigating a marriage between two loving men or two loving women.

The Divine Spark dwells in each person’s innermost being. There, with all of the externalities removed, we are all pure and good. At STL Pride 2015, a rabbi led a chant, “Elohai neshamah shenatata bi tehorah hi.” “My God, the soul you breathe in me is pure and good.” That soul dwells within our human flesh. In some cases, there is a mismatch between the form of that perfect and beautiful soul and the outermost form of the flesh containing it. In some cases, we lack language to really describe the form of that soul. The closest terms we can come up with are things like “non-binary,” “genderfluid,” and “genderqueer.” These are all failings of our language and culture, not of the perfect and beautiful soul.

To be absolutely clear: I believe that same-sex and opposite-sex relationships are equal before God. I believe that people of all genders are equal before God. It is our task to build a society in which healthy relationships can flourish, and people of all genders can flourish.

Patriarchy Is Bad. God Is Good.I recognize that I write this all from a place of extreme privilege. I am a straight, cisgender, white man. I have never needed to contend with minority status due to my race, gender, or sexual orientation. It is incumbent on me to learn about the challenges that minorities of all kinds face in our society, and to work to alleviate them. Rather than forsaking my privilege, I strive to use it to elevate those who are on the margins because of their identity.

I believe, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He was speaking of the ultimate end of history when we all know the Truth, the infinite Love that awaits us when all things are reconciled. God is good. The Universe is good. But MLK also recognized, as I do, that the moral arc does not bend on its own. It bends towards justice when those of us who have the ability to make a change in the world pursue justice, righteousness, and reconciliation.

So my calling is to help people wherever they are on their journey. For many years, I have sought to create an organization and a place where everyone can fulfill their love and belonging needs, LGBTQ+ Rolla. At the same time, I have been exploring the spiritual terrain and growing closer to God as I understand Them. Now I am stepping out to create a space where I can walk alongside people who are striving to fulfill their higher needs, as they recognize a need to be a part of something bigger than themselves, as big as the whole Universe.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on August 10, 2025. Based on Luke 12:32-40.

Last week, Susan talked about being rich towards God. Today’s passage continues the theme. But here, Luke writes that we are to lay up treasure in heaven, which is just a little bit different. Let’s see if we can figure out what Jesus was trying to teach his disciples.

How do we lay up heavenly treasure? One way is to worship God. I mean, that’s kind of why we’re here, right? To earn our Jesus Points? Oh, but wait a minute, Jesus Points aren’t real! Under the old Temple sacrificial system, people would bring animals and other items to sacrifice as a way of getting in God’s good graces, earning Adonai Points so to speak. In about 760 BCE, during a time of great prosperity for the Israelites, Amos was chosen as a prophet and sent to God’s people with these words (Amos 5:21-24):

21 I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them,
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
24 But let justice roll down like water
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Now, Amos isn’t saying that worship is pointless. Rather, he is saying that worship is not the real goal. The real goal is justice and righteousness. We come to worship God so that we are empowered and inspired to pursue justice and righteousness in our daily lives outside these four walls. Here, justice doesn’t mean tit-for-tat punishment and revenge, and righteousness doesn’t mean being completely pure of heart. Justice is restoring wholeness where there has been harm, and righteousness means the pursuit of that which is right in God’s eyes, rather than what seems good to our selfish desires.

Jesus’s guidance to his followers is to allocate our resources in accordance with God’s justice and righteousness, that is, to allocate our resources in the pursuit of God’s kingdom, which is universal flourishing. As we allocate our resources, so also we will believe and behave. This is a reminder that a church budget is a theological statement, and a personal budget reflects a person’s true values.

In preparation for this sermon, I ran a report of my last twelve months of spending. I was pleasantly surprised that the single biggest category was charitable giving. Next was the cost of our accessible van, including both the loan payments and the major repair we did in January. Then comes the mortgage, then vacations including the cruise we just took, then retirement savings, then groceries. I was a little surprised to find that hunting is less than 2% of my annual budget, about half of what we spend on eating out. So then I asked myself: Is this appropriate? Well, let’s see. Putting God first by giving to charity: check. Van and house for the sake of Rhonda’s quality of life: check. Vacations while Rhonda is still capable of enjoying them, and so that I can recharge, and so that we can keep our relationship refreshed: check. Food: check. That all adds up to about 2/3 of the total. I’m less certain about the relative importance of the smaller buckets, but overall, I’m satisfied.

Then I took a look at the church budget. Now I will say that our expenditures do not necessarily track the budget exactly, but the budget gives us a starting point for discussion. Over the past year, I’ve met with most of the people in the congregation, and it seems like everyone’s priority is worship. The total budget allocation to worship, including Jeff, Lorie, Susan, and me, plus things like organ and piano maintenance, is 17.5% of the annual budget. The two larger categories are the building, at 18.2%, and the non-worship personnel, at 37.8%. Our per capita obligation to the presbytery is 1.9%, and what we allocate to ministries other than worship such as fellowship, education, and the deacons’ activities total less than 1%.

So in effect, the largest portion of our annual budget is to maintain the building and our daily operations, not our worship. Hmm. I don’t think this is what we would choose if we were making a conscious allocation of resources based on the congregation that we have today. Rather, it is the result of decades of cutting back anything deemed non-essential, including a full-time pastor, coupled with a building that was constructed for a very different congregation 60 years ago. I am pleased that we still allocate a significant portion to missions, 3.5%.

Another resource that we all have, some would say our most valuable resource, is time. I looked at my “typical” schedule from last spring. In a given week, I spend roughly equal time on teaching my class and leading this church. I spend more than twice that amount in various meetings related to being department chair. In April and May, my daytime calendar was basically filled with meetings and events almost every weekday. I try to allocate half an hour or more to spiritual development every day, and half an hour or more to running every day. I feel reasonably good about the allocation of my calendar even though it can be a real grind sometimes. I’m naturally an introvert, so even though I recognize the value in having meetings both to get things done and to foster relationships, they can be really draining for me.

Am I “laying up treasure in heaven” with the way I spend my time? Well, I spend roughly one-seventh of my waking hours on commitments to God, whether serving the church or working at the Mission or focusing on my own spiritual development. I’d say that’s not bad. I would recommend that everyone does an assessment of how you allocate your time and your money and see if it aligns with your values.

The point is to pay attention to the right things, and to act in pursuit of justice and righteousness. People often comment on how much I do. One way I can do so many different things is that I see everything I do as part of the same goal. What is the core message of the Gospel? The kingdom of God is at hand! God’s kingdom is universal human flourishing. Whether I am preaching, or teaching engineering, or meeting with my colleagues, or working in the community, my goal is to foster human flourishing. When I’m running or studying, I’m working towards my own flourishing.

The second part of today’s lesson is all about being ready. Jesus said, “Be dressed for action…like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet. … You…must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” This is an echo of Matthew 25, which tells us to keep our lamps lit like the maidens at the wedding waiting for the bridegroom, and also to watch for Jesus to show up in the form of the hungry, the naked, the prisoner—the least of these children of God. We stay ready by paying attention to the right things. We stay ready by spending our time and money in ways that are in accord with God’s claim on our lives. We stay ready by keeping informed about world events like wars, famine, and disease. We stay ready by staying engaged with our community and aware of the needs of our neighbors. We stay ready by learning about the lived experiences of those who are different from us, different by age or class or race or gender or education or socioeconomic status. We stay ready by fulfilling our own spiritual needs, as well as our own material and emotional and relational needs, so that we have resources to help others fulfill their needs. And I want to emphasize that word: our needs.

Unfortunately, most of us put our trust in the wrong things. Rather than stepping out in faith and relying on God to provide, we trust on our own ability to provide. We cling to more than we need. We trust in people and systems that claim to offer security in exchange for our obedience. Why? Fear. Walter Brueggemann wrote,

“The truth is that frightened people will never turn the world, because they use too much energy on protection of self. It is the vocation of the baptized, the known and named and unafraid, to make the world whole. The unafraid are open to the neighbor, while the frightened are defending themselves from the neighbor. The unafraid are generous in the community, while the frightened, in their anxiety, must keep and store and accumulate, to make themselves safe. The unafraid commit acts of compassion and mercy, while the frightened do not notice those in need. The unafraid are committed to justice for the weak and the poor, while the frightened see them only as threats. The unafraid pray in the morning, care through the day, and rejoice at night in thanks and praise, while the frightened are endlessly restless and dissatisfied. So dear people, each of you: Do not fear! I have called you by name; you are mine!” says the Lord.

Throughout the Bible, God’s message is clear, as it is in the opening of today’s passage: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Now, that doesn’t mean that you should be irrational and wasteful. It means that you should focus on God’s kingdom, on helping other people to flourish, on building strong relationships. If you are doing God’s work, people will want to be a part of it.

Take The Rolla Mission for example. They are not a Christian organization, although they were started by a church. However, they are clearly following Jesus’s command to care for the least of his siblings. They have done a phenomenal job for many years. Sara Buell gave a great presentation to the city council this past Monday. Some sample statistics over the last year: 92 jobs secured, 136 people into housing, almost 33,000 meals served and more than 16,000 loads of laundry, and furnishing for 208 new homes.

Any time I’ve spoken with Ashley Brooks about the Mission’s funding, she has been unconcerned. In her early days as their only employee, she would worry about it a lot, but she soon realized that all she needed to do was to tell people about the Mission’s good work, and they would want to be a part of it. Now, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t keep working on keeping the funding flowing—far from it. Sara, who gave the presentation, is a full-time staff member dedicated to donor relations. Ashley frequently submits grant applications. The organization is committed to responsible fiscal management; for example, they didn’t replace one staff member who left because of the federal funding uncertainties. But the Mission doesn’t worry about the future. They just keep looking for ways to help the community, knowing that if they are doing good work, the resources will come.

We too are called to live that way, as individuals and as an organization. Rather than hoarding our time and money, being stingy with our resources out of fear, we are called to be generous as God is generous. We are called to build strong relationships and foster the flourishing of our neighbors, our community, and the world. We are called to step out in faith, to proclaim the gospel for the salvation of humankind, to promote social righteousness, and to exhibit the kingdom of heaven to the world, even as we continue to maintain divine worship and to shelter and nurture the children of God in spiritual fellowship. In these ways, we preserve the Truth that is God’s love for us all. We preserve the Truth that God will make a way for us. And we lay up treasure in heaven, God’s eternal provision that will sustain us always. Amen.

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Preached on July 20, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Colossians 1:11-28. Please note that I say “Paul wrote…” even though many scholars believe that Colossians is not an authentic letter. That is not relevant to my main thesis, though, so I didn’t bring it up.

Today’s epistle lesson is a continuation of the opening of Paul’s letter to Colossae. Here, he is laying out who he is and why he’s writing. Paul did not start the church in Colossae, and as far as we know, he never visited them. He is writing because he has heard good things about them and wants to encourage them.

Near the end of today’s passage, we hear a bit about how Paul sees himself. He says, “I became [the church’s] minister according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages…but has now been revealed to his saints.” Paul was once a persecutor of the church, and then had a divine encounter that revealed the mystery of Christ to him. He interpreted this encounter as a divine commission to spread God’s word.

I see some parallels in my life, and I think every preacher would, too. OK, I’m not Paul, but I do feel like something important about God has been revealed to me and I do feel compelled to share it with you all, and with the world. I’ve been meditating on that calling a bit over the past few weeks and especially last weekend when I was on retreat. You may recall that I was formally commissioned almost a year ago, August 11, 2024. Like Paul, I am trying to live into that commission by sharing my thoughts on the divine mystery with you all. So let’s see what we can glean from Paul’s letter.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

That beautiful poem that opens the Gospel of John teaches us that Christ was there at Creation. Paul echoes this when he says, “In him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible.” In both John’s Gospel and Colossians, we see a vision of Christ that transcends the person of Jesus of Nazareth. As our creeds say, Christ is eternally begotten of the Father. Christ was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, but is something more than just a human being. Christ is God. Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity.

Now don’t worry, I’m not going to try to explain the Trinity again. Suffice it to say that the first Jesus-followers, like Peter, saw him as merely human, but anointed by God to lead the Jewish nation. After his death and resurrection, the more insightful or inspired followers of the Way realized that Jesus was fully human, yes, but also maybe divine. Eventually they realized that he was also fully divine, a part of the Godhead who was present at Creation and will be present at the end of time, the eschaton, the fulfillment of history. Through Christ, all things came into being.

So let’s go back to Genesis. For six days, God created the cosmos through Christ. God created humans in God’s image, breathed life into us, and blessed us. Then God saw everything that had been created and declared it to be VERY GOOD.

Then, the Fall. Through Christ, all things were made perfect, but something terrible happened. The only way humans can truly love is if they are truly free, which means that we are also created with freewill that enables us to choose evil. Despite being created VERY GOOD and having the opportunity to dwell forever in God’s presence, we chose to go our own way and mess things up.

And so, we look around and realize that the world is broken. So very broken. We have terrible diseases like multiple sclerosis—nobody really knows what causes it and nothing can really stop it from progressing. The most we can hope for is to slow it down. And that’s certainly not the only chronic disease that people in this congregation suffer from, just the one that I encounter daily.

Wars continue to rage around the world. One news item this past week is that the US will ramp up its supply of weapons to Ukraine, in an acknowledgement that Russia is the aggressor who illegally seized Crimea and then invaded in an effort to capture more territory, breaking an agreement made back in 1994 during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The people of Ukraine have rallied around their charismatic leader and continue to hold off Russian aggression, but at the expense of perhaps 100,000 lives lost and many more wounded, plus widespread devastation. Russia has paid for its leaders’ ambitions with 1 million casualties. And there’s no end in sight, not really. I don’t see a way out of this where both sides can be satisfied, unless somehow Putin is removed from power.

Meanwhile, war rages across the Middle East. Did you know that there is war in Syria? There was a civil war that resulted in the end of the previous regime, which I thought had then settled down. But this week, I saw that there was a cease-fire between the Sunni and Druze factions in the wake of Israeli airstrikes in Damascus. Meanwhile, Gaza remains a humanitarian catastrophe. On Wednesday, twenty Palestinians were killed at a food distribution center, mostly by being trampled. On the same day, Israeli strikes killed at least 54 others across Gaza. While I’m pretty clear that Russia is the aggressor against Ukraine, the war between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza is far murkier. There has been conflict between Israel and the Palestinians since 1948, conflict that both sides have kept alive for various reasons, mostly related to political power. The latest hot war started because of an incursion by Hamas into Israel, but it is far from clear to me whether Israel’s response has been appropriate—probably not. In both cases, Ukraine and Gaza, the people who really suffer are the powerless, the civilians forced to live in a war zone while great powers fight around them.

Closer to home, we look around and see plenty of poverty and homelessness. Many times, when I learn the back story for a patron at the Mission, I realize that they never had a chance. They didn’t have positive role models in life or a stable home to grow up in. Many of them bear some responsibility for their choices, but others were entirely victims of circumstance. We live in a nation where a serious medical condition can result in debt that leads to homelessness. I mean, if I didn’t have such a good job with such good insurance, Rhonda would be in dire straits.

Even without sickness or poverty, relationships are difficult. In the daily prayer app I use, one of the prompts is to pray for those from whom we are estranged. I have five siblings. I’m close to two of them, have a positive relationship with one, and haven’t actually spoken to the other two in decades. I don’t think that’s too unusual. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of you had similar stories. Maybe not about siblings, but others in your extended family. Things happen, relationships fall apart, and if you’re lucky, you reconcile at someone else’s funeral.

Which of course brings us to the root of all brokenness. Death lingers for us all. Sometimes we know when it is coming, such as when you receive a cancer diagnosis and doctors can predict how long you have. But other times, it comes like a thief in the night. My good friend Wayne had a close encounter two years ago. He had what’s called a widowmaker heart attack in his workshop at home. He was among the fortunate 12% of people who have that kind of heart attack outside a hospital and survive. But if his wife had waited just a few minutes more to check on him, who knows?

Nations can die, just as the Roman Empire did and so many other empires throughout history. I saw this Mark Twain quote recently:

Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.

Institutions can die, too. There’s a forum that I visit where one of the discussion threads chronicles the institutions of higher education that are dying or have closed. Recently, there have been announcements of Siena Heights University, Limestone University, and The King’s College (NYC) all closing, and several others showing signs that the end is near, most of which I’ve never heard of. At the last presbytery meeting, we voted to sell one church building and dissolve another congregation.

But of course, that’s nothing new, really. The New Testament was written in the context of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, which radically transformed Judaism. The church in Colossae to which Paul wrote his letter disappeared after an earthquake hit the city. Everything has a life cycle—birth, life, flourishing, decline, and death.

But death is not the end! Let’s read on: Christ is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. So the correct life cycle is: birth, life, flourishing, decline, death, and resurrection. This life we see is not the end. It is a preparation for the glory that is to come. It is the life we learn with, so that we may fully enter a glorious life in Christ’s eternal kingdom.

We have the hope of ultimate reconciliation in the eschaton. I casually dropped that word in a conversation with my friend Sharon recently and she didn’t recognize it, so maybe you all don’t, either. In ancient thought, there were three basic perspectives on history. One perspective is that everything is random and undirected. The universe just wanders where it will, and chaos reigns. Ugh, what a terrible vision. The second perspective, popular in Greek thought and also in many other civilizations throughout history, is that everything is cyclical. Things get better, then things get worse, but nothing ever really changes. What comes around, goes around. Well, maybe that’s a little more comforting.

But the third perspective is the one that I cling to. It’s the Jewish and Christian belief that history has a purpose. History is going somewhere. As Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And that destination, that ultimate end of history, is the eschaton. Someday, all will be made new. Everything will be reconciled to God.

We have hope that someday, pain and suffering will come to an end. We have hope that someday, wars will end, replaced by shalom—peace, wholeness, and unity. We have hope that someday, we will be reconciled to one another just as we are reconciled to God. And we have hope that someday, this broken world will be refreshed and renewed, transformed into Christ’s eternal kingdom.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds. I do know that I can look back on all the good that I have done, as a husband, father, and engineer, and as a leader in my church, campus, and community. I am proud of what I have accomplished, even if it all comes to an end someday. I also know that I can look forward to a glorious future—if not in this world, then in the next. I can’t promise peace in Europe or the Middle East. I can’t promise that this church will return to the attendance and spiritual energy that it once enjoyed. But I can promise that someday, Christ’s reign will be complete. On that day, peace will triumph over war, love will triumph over hate, and eternal life will triumph over death itself. Amen.

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Article published in the Phelps County Focus on July 3, 2025. Here’s a teaser:

What happens when we die?

Many, probably most, modern Christians believe that humanity is split between the saved and the damned. They differ on how someone gets saved—whether predestined or by freely accepting Jesus, for example. They differ on what happens to the damned—whether they are annihilated and cease to exist, or are kept alive in eternal conscious torment in a fiery hell. All of these variations are well-supported by scripture.

But I believe in an all-loving God, a just God, a forgiving God. I cannot accept a doctrine that assigns eternal, infinite consequences to our finite time on earth. If you believe in forever, then life is just a blink of an eye. There’s another option, …

Keep reading…

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Preached on July 6, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Galatians 6:1-16.

Before I get into today’s text, I want to back up and give a little context. Galatians is one of the earliest of Paul’s letters—perhaps his first, perhaps written after Thessalonians. None of Paul’s letters were written to us. They were written for particular communities experiencing particular circumstances. In the case of Galatians, Paul was addressing a church community that he had founded, but that was being led astray by so-called “Judaizers.” These were followers of the Way, what we would now call Christians, who taught that to follow Christ required first becoming Jewish. They told the Galatians that they needed to be circumcised and complete all of the other rituals expected of proselytes to Judaism.

Paul countered this argument by saying, in essence, God is doing a new thing here. Sure, Christ came first to the Jews, but not exclusively. If you are already Jewish, as Paul was, then you should continue observing Jewish practices. But if you are not, then following Christ is sufficient. There is no need for circumcision or any other outer markings of Judaism. This was not a conflict between Jews and Christians. This was a conflict between religious traditionalists insisting on maintaining the old ways and a reformer leading people into a new way of being faithful to God.

This was the context for Paul’s dualistic teachings about the spirit and the flesh. He used “the flesh” as a proxy for all sorts of things that are contrary to God’s will, including concerns about religious rituals and traditions. He used “the spirit” as a proxy for the teachings of Jesus and the new life, the new creation that we can each experience through Christ. As Susan discussed last week, living by the spirit with a new life in Christ bears much fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

So now we’re in chapter 6 and Paul is wrapping things up. Today’s text starts with a self-contradictory teaching. First he says to bear one another’s burdens, and then that each person should carry their own load. Well, which is it, Paul? Make up your mind!

When I read this, I immediately thought of elk hunting. As most of you know, I go to Colorado each fall to hunt elk with a group of guys led by Wayne Huebner. We set up a base camp at the end of the road, then hike in to set up a spike camp. When we’re on the mountain, both of Paul’s teachings are appropriate: bear one another’s burdens, but carry your own load.

See, we spend most of the day on our own, searching for elk sign or tracks. In the late afternoon, everyone finds a good blind to hunt from; the best blind, which we call Bull Meadow, usually has two hunters. After dark, everyone heads back to camp. Well, one year, someone in Bull Meadow got an elk. The two guys in the blind field-dressed it and then headed back to spike camp. It was very late by the time they made it, and one guy, Ryan, was really struggling. We hunt at about 11,000’ and he got altitude sickness, aggravated by all of the exertion. Ultimately, around 2 am, he had to get off the mountain. Wayne and another guy, Greg, helped him break camp and hike down to the truck. They took turns carrying his pack and helping him to make sure he could keep moving. Once they got to the truck, Ryan took off and drove down to a lower elevation, where he recovered.

The point is that we all have to be self-sufficient as much as possible, but when someone is in trouble, we help them out. That’s what Paul is teaching. Everyone should do the best they can, but when someone’s burdens get too heavy, the community should help them out. This church helped our family when Rhonda was going through her medical issues twelve years ago, and many of you can probably attest to the support you have received from the deacons and others in the church.

But medical issues are not the only burdens that can get to be too much. Paul goes on to write, “Do not grow weary in doing good.” Weariness is not tiredness. When I go running, I get tired, and then I rest and recover. No problem. When I work on a research project or other tasks on campus, I get brain-tired, but I feel a sense of accomplishment that feeds my soul once I’ve had a nap or a good night’s sleep. At the end of the semester, I’m tired from the marathon of meetings and grading and whatnot, but by midsummer, I’m feeling refreshed and ready for another academic year.

Weariness is a form of tiredness that can’t be resolved with rest. Weariness comes from discouragement. Weariness comes from hopelessness. Weariness comes when your passion is gone. I had two faculty in my department retire at the end of the semester. One of them said to me that about halfway through the semester, he asked himself, Why am I still doing this? He still enjoyed the time in the classroom, but not the grading or dealing with student problems or any of the myriad other things that go into running a class. He had grown weary.

I grew weary myself a few years ago. I was the director of a research center called CREE starting in September 2019. The main goal of a research center is to foster collaboration, which means bringing people together. Well, soon after I took over, COVID-19 hit and we couldn’t gather. For almost three years, I tried to get people to show up to research showcases or other meetings or events. Out of 70 faculty affiliated with the center, I could only get a dozen to show up at all. It was very discouraging. I grew weary of even trying. Fortunately, along came the opportunity to be department chair. I wouldn’t say that this job is easier—in fact, it’s much more work and much more responsibility. And yet, I also find it to be much more rewarding. I can see the impact of what I do, and being chair doesn’t sap my energy the way directing CREE did.

Paul counsels the Galatians not to grow weary in doing good. I serve lunch once a week at the Mission. I have found that to be my limit so that I won’t grow weary. I started volunteering there in 2018 when Ashley Brooks was their only employee. I’ve seen many staff members come and go. In most cases, they reached the limit of the emotional toll that they could handle. Everyone who works with the homeless needs to find a way to manage the inevitable failures, the second-hand trauma, the interpersonal conflicts, and so much more. Some people do not have an adequate support system or have other challenges in their personal lives that cause them to buckle under the stress.

And yet, the Mission continues. They have a great team now, and great programs. Recently, Ashley told me that this year, Rolla has seen a 75% reduction in drug overdoses, a 40% reduction in the population of encampments, and a 20% reduction in crime. Results like this take time. The staff and volunteers of the Mission have been working for YEARS to build trust with the homeless population of Phelps County so that they can help people deal with substance abuse, cope with unresolved trauma in their past, build healthy relationships, and find a way to function in our community. I am honored to play a small part—a very small part, just one meal a week—in their goal of fostering human flourishing.

How has the Mission succeeded? How has Ashley been able to stay in her leadership role? How do the staff keep up the hard work of helping people who are in dire circumstances? Because they lean on each other. Ashley has assembled a team of staff and volunteers who have great emotional regulation, and who carry their own loads but are willing to bear one another’s burdens when they need to. And above all, everyone cares deeply for the people that they serve, individually and as a community. That deep love and caring feeds each person’s soul so that they can persist in doing good. Together they have built a place where God truly dwells, even if nobody ever discusses it. The Mission is a place where everyone strives to see Jesus in each person they meet, without ever mentioning his name.

And that, my friends, is the essence of our calling to exhibit the kingdom of heaven. As I’ve said so often, God’s realm is universal human flourishing. We seek God’s realm by living out the Matthew 25 principles. When King Jesus comes in his glory, he will say to his sheep, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these siblings of mine, you did for me.” We are all Christ’s siblings, all made in the image of God, all welcome in God’s family. Jesus did what he could to care for His siblings while he walked the earth, and now asks us to carry on the work.

I wish I could feed ALL of the hungry, welcome ALL of the strangers, clothe ALL of the naked, care for ALL of the sick, and visit ALL of the prisoners. But I can’t, and if I tried, I’d be burned out in a week. The fastest way to become weary of doing good is to try to do too much. Fortunately, God doesn’t ask us to solve ALL of the world’s problems, only what we are capable of. We are asked not to be burdened, but only to carry our own load. God asks each one of us to exhibit the kingdom of heaven in our own particular way.

So the question is, Where is your heart? What is God calling YOU to do? I know what my calling is. It culminated last Monday in opening a community center that I would be happy to discuss with you sometime. But what is YOUR calling? Who do YOU want to serve?

Usually, when we talk about missions and serving the community, discussions go one of two ways. The first is to raise money or collect items. This is wonderful, and is the only gift some people have to offer. It will mean so much to the children of our community for them to receive toys or to have crayons when they go Back to School. It means so much when we collect the four PC(USA) special offerings. I don’t want to cast any aspersions on that.

At the same time, giving our money isn’t enough. God asks us to give our whole selves. So the other direction conversations often take is to say, “Well, we could serve a meal, but we don’t have people who can work in a kitchen anymore. We don’t have people who can help build a house. We can’t do XYZ.” And then those conversations fizzle out.

But the reality is that there are a lot of spiritual needs that are going unfulfilled in our community. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs starts with physiological and safety needs, but doesn’t stop there. Everyone needs to experience love and belonging. Everyone needs respect and recognition. Everyone needs to have a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

Let me tell you once again about an amazing organization that is striving to satisfy these needs. A few months ago, ICE signed a contract with Phelps County to house detainees here. Some people heard about the detainees and were moved with compassion, and so they created an organization called Abide in Love. Phelps County Jail has a lot of onerous restrictions, so nobody can actually visit the detainees as Jesus commanded. But Abide in Love is doing the next best thing. They are communicating with the detainees via the app that the jail allows. They are providing basic hygiene items through the jail commissary. They are enabling the detainees to communicate with their families. In most cases, Abide in Love has little to no impact on the ultimate resolution of the detainees’ cases—that’s up to the government and immigration attorneys and the judicial system. But they are having a tremendous impact on the hearts and souls of the detainees. I’ve seen posts of messages that they have received, such as, “Thank you for the good work you are doing for us immigrants. God will help you greatly. There are very few people who offer this support.” Or another one: “With the three dollars you gave me, I was able to call my mom in Honduras. I hadn’t spoken to her in almost 40 days because I didn’t have any funds. Thank you again.” Or: “Thank you, it is appreciated. And if there’s a possibility you could give us underwear, I would be very grateful because I don’t know if you know that here we all enter without underwear because they take it away from us, and they only give us two jumpsuits. Sorry for my boldness, I say this because I am one of many who don’t have money here inside, nor do I have anyone outside who can send me some.”

The point is, the detainees are people who God loves, and so there are people in our community who have been moved with compassion to find out what their actual needs are and to help meet them. It’s not about the money, it’s about human connection and meeting people where they are in their time of need.

Maybe you too are moved by the conditions of the ICE detainees and want to help with the work that Abide in Love is doing. In that case, they have a Facebook Page, or I can get you connected. But my point is that maybe there are other needs in Rolla or Phelps County or rural Missouri, other people who have spiritual needs that you feel called to fulfill. If so, I’m here to help. My role is to facilitate your response to God’s claim on your life. Nothing great can ever be done alone, so I can help you find people with that same calling, whether they are in this church or not.

So let us not become weary in doing good. Let’s help one another find a way to respond to God’s unique call on each of our lives, and support each other so we can all persist until we reap a harvest of spiritual fruits. Amen.

The post Do Not Grow Weary first appeared on Engineering My Faith.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on September 22, 2024. Loosely based on Mark 9:30-37. This message was particularly intended for FPC Rolla at this stage of its life. I am providing it here both for our own members’ reference and as potential inspiration for other churches who seek renewal.

In today’s Gospel lesson, we get a little insight into the kind of society Jesus wanted his disciples to create. First, he reminds them that he will be going away sometime soon. Remember, Jews were anticipating a Messiah who would return Israel to its former glory. They were expecting a priest-king who would re-establish the independence of their nation, who would kick out the Romans and purify the Temple. Jesus’s disciples thought that he was this Messiah who was getting ready to march triumphantly into Jerusalem to establish his reign.

So of course, they wondered who would reign with him. Who would help Jesus govern the nation? Who would have power and authority? Who would receive the honors and accolades that come with being close to the King?

Well, Jesus wasn’t that kind of Messiah. Jesus told the disciples that he was headed not towards a worldly victory, but towards an ignominious death. He was headed towards glory, but of a sort that the disciples didn’t understand. Boy, they were thick-headed, weren’t they? Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. They simply reflected their cultural understanding, and we have the benefit of hindsight, knowing how the story will end.

But at this point in the story, the disciples didn’t get it. They didn’t understand what it meant for Jesus to be the Messiah, and they didn’t understand what kind of kingdom he would institute. He tried to tell them, again and again, but they didn’t get it. Here he says that rather than seeking power and authority, they should strive to welcome children. They should welcome anyone into God’s kingdom.

After Jesus ascended, he left his disciples to carry on his vision. He set out a bold vision of what human society could be, and the disciples sought to bring it to reality. While God’s goal is a total transformation of the world, our task is just to transform our little corner of it. Eventually, God’s vision of total transformation will be realized, but in the meantime, we are called to do what we can to make Rolla, or at least our church, a hazy, imperfect image of things to come.

Imagine if you will First Presbyterian Church of Rolla at some point in the distant future. I’m going to describe this future church that perhaps none of us will see, just like the Israelites who fled Egypt did not see the Promised Land. But let’s imagine that at some point in the future, we truly meet the Great Ends of the Church. As a reminder, about a century ago, the Presbyterian Church developed these Great Ends:

• the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind;
• the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God;
• the maintenance of divine worship;
• the preservation of the truth;
• the promotion of social righteousness;
• and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.

The kingdom of heaven is a place where all people, all people, have what they need to flourish and thrive. That means they all have their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs fulfilled. So let’s start by thinking about who “all” might be.

The demographics of the kingdom of heaven ought to mirror the demographics of the broader community. The median age of Phelps County residents is 36 years old. This is skewed a bit from the statewide median, 39 years old, because of the university’s huge population of 18-to-24-year-olds. At any rate, this church as we are imagining it is filled with people of all ages, from newborn to ninety. There are children, college students, young families, empty-nesters, and people in their twilight years.

Church members are predominantly white, but with a significant Asian contingent and a smaller number of people of other races and ethnicities. One in twenty would live in a household that has a primary language other than English—some speak Spanish, many speak Mandarin and other Asian languages. A significant fraction, perhaps 10%, would have moved to Rolla in the past year, including those who have come here to attend or teach at Missouri S&T. Maybe as many as 10% are veterans.

No matter who they are, everyone is bound by a desire to connect to God and one another. We are a truly intergenerational organization, one where any given group that is working or studying together has a mix of people of all ages. These groups benefit from the wisdom of differing perspectives and experiences. Most members worship on most Sundays, although some participate online instead of in person.

The highlight of the church week is Sunday. We have two services, traditional and contemporary. The traditional service is smaller and skews older, perhaps 150 people with a median age in the 50s. Some younger people too, though, who enjoy the liturgy. A choir that has at least four basses and four tenors, plus a larger number of altos and sopranos, to give us good, full, four-part harmony, occasionally splitting out to eight-part. We continue to include both piano and organ in the service, with occasionally other instruments like brass, woodwinds, or strings. We have a bell choir that participates in worship quarterly.

Between the two services, we have a time of fellowship and Christian education. We have six classes: up to kindergarten, first through fourth grade, fifth and sixth grades, seventh and eighth grades, ninth through twelfth grades, and adult. There’s also a group that gathers in the chapel between services for contemplative prayer.

During the fellowship time, various small groups meet up to make their plans for the week. The associate pastor, who works full-time as a chaplain and part-time for us, connects with the deacons to plan visits to shut-ins. Presby Politics decides what their topic of the week is. This is a mixed group of Democrats and Republicans who meet not to argue or convince, but to seek nuance and understanding. A Bible Newbie group makes sure everyone knows the topic for the week, too. These are folks who did not grow up studying the Bible and need to learn the basics, like the core story of the Exodus and the relationship between the Gospels and Epistles. Another group plans an outing to meditate at Lane Springs, and another talks about a project they are doing for the Mission, and other people are talking about opportunities to serve at GRACE and Russell House and so forth, or just coordinating lunch plans.

After fellowship and Sunday School comes the contemporary service. This is the bigger and younger group, perhaps 250 people with a median age in the early 30s. There’s a band that leads the music, but it’s not a performance—the sanctuary is filled with the full-throated singing of the congregation. Whether they attend the traditional or contemporary service, everyone leaves worship energized and renewed for the week.

Monday through Friday, the preschool is in full swing. As hard as it may be to imagine, they’re doing an even better job than today. Spots are in high demand because of the quality of their programs, which run year-round. The preschool regularly receives national awards for the impact they have on children and the community.

Monday evening, we host a grief support group. Tuesday evening, we host a cancer support group.

Wednesday is for music. The bell choir practices first, and then the chancel choir, and finally the band.

Thursday is for campus ministry. We have a youth leader slash campus minister who was a stay-at-home mom until her kids went off to college. She coordinates a group of about 30 college students who are growing into an adult faith.

One Friday a month, we have a Parents Night Out, where we provide childcare to enable parents to enjoy some adult time together. On other Fridays, we encourage small groups to gather, whether at restaurants or each other’s homes.

Saturday night is for youth group. Our youth leader leads a group of about 20 high school students, most of whom have completed confirmation and seek continued growth in their faith.

All of this is coordinated by our senior pastor, a dynamic preacher dedicated to Reformed theology and the faith formation of the members. The senior pastor is an effective administrator who supervises the youth leader and the associate pastor, as well as three office staff and the music director. This team collectively has all of the skills and knowledge needed to lead this vibrant faith community. They all recognize where their strengths and weaknesses are, and defer to others as appropriate.

The senior pastor also moderates the session, a group of earnest, faithful elders who consistently evaluate our ministries. They consider which ones need more investment—in time, people, space, or funding—and which ones have outlived their purpose. They keep an eye out for conflict, which will naturally occur in a group of 400 or so imperfect humans that might have 10% or more turnover annually due to people moving into and out of the area. The session considers proposals for new ministries, and each elder is typically involved in one or two of our major ministries. One leads the Bible Newbies class, for example, and another leads the outdoor contemplative prayer group.

How does this sound? Does this sound like the kingdom of God? Does this sound like a place where you could thrive? Does this sound like a place that has a significant impact on the community?

I believe that this could describe our church, not next year, maybe not even next decade, but someday. In fact, when I’ve heard descriptions of this church from several decades ago, they sound something like what I described. There is no fundamental reason we cannot achieve this vision. With God, all things are possible.

However, this vision cannot be wished into existence. We must pray for God’s help, but we also need to do our part. A spiritual advisor once told me that we do perhaps 2% of the work and God does 98%, but we absolutely must do our 2% to unlock God’s providence. The kingdom of God is not for spectators. It calls for our total commitment, the dedication of our whole selves.

Right now, today, our church has neither the people nor the resources to make this vision a reality anytime soon. But if we hold out this vision, or something like it, as a possible future, we can find a path to it. Perhaps we start with a cancer support group or a grief support group. Or perhaps we put together a Parents Night Out. Nora has already discussed that with the preschool committee and is working on a version of my vague idea that better fits their families’ needs. Or perhaps we start a contemplative prayer group, whether in the chapel or out in nature.

We can do this. Together. What in this vision resonates for you? What do you feel called to do?

Something I have learned about myself over the past few years is that I am good at providing logistical and emotional and spiritual support to whatever initiative someone else wants to lead. Maybe there’s some part of this you’re willing to lead, but you don’t know how to advertise it or organize it, and I can help. I also recognize that we have diverse skills and talents across the congregation, and I’m starting to learn what they all are. Individually, it’s hard to do anything, but drawn together and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we can accomplish much for the kingdom of God. Let’s get started!

The post A Vision of Who We Could Be first appeared on Engineering My Faith.

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Preached on September 8, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Mark 7:24-37.

Let’s start by asking, Why was Jesus in Tyre? Last week, Susan preached on the first part of Mark 7. Jesus had done some amazing things reported in Mark 6. He fed 5000 men, walked on water, and after landing at Gennesaret, he healed many people. Of course, the scribes and Pharisees couldn’t stand for that sort of thing. So they challenged him. The first half of this chapter describes Jesus sparring with his fellow Jews about what is proper behavior in God’s eyes. They argued about ritual purity and interpretations of Mosaic Law.

One of the students who attends Sacred Paths, our campus ministry, commented that she gets the most criticism from other Christians. Just the fact that she attends our meetings while also attending other ministries must mean that she has ideas that are “wrong” in the eyes of those other ministries. And of course, in many Christian traditions, certainty and having the right answers and right beliefs are essential to salvation. They are right and we are wrong, of course. If you argue about certain doctrines, they will either appeal to the authority of the Pope or some other human leader, or cite some scripture that they believe settles things.

This kind of argument is tiring. We are all children of God, all trying to do our best to understand God’s will for our lives. Some beliefs may be more or less life-giving, but it’s hard to say who is right and who is wrong. The stressful nature of discussing matters that are so close to the heart is probably why there is a taboo about discussing religion in polite company. The self-righteous nature of those who think they have exclusive access to the Truth shuts down a healthy exploration of faith that allows for different perspectives and different ways of following God.

Jesus was embroiled in these arguments, had enough, and decided to escape to Tyre for a little break. He probably figured that the scribes and Pharisees wouldn’t chase him that far. Tyre is a good distance from Gennesaret, about 35 miles, probably two or even three days’ journey, and Gennesaret is already a good distance from Jerusalem, about 80 miles. So Jesus could perhaps count on some downtime where he didn’t have to spar with other Jews about the interpretation of written and oral Law.

Tyre was an old and prosperous city. It was the main source of Tyrian purple, an extremely valuable dye that they started producing about 1200 BC. Tyrian purple is extracted from the mucus produced by the Murex family of sea snails. Its production is difficult and time-consuming, and so the dye was literally worth its weight in gold. It was a leading commodity of the Phoenicians that was exported around the Mediterranean and because of its expense, it became associated with royalty.

In the Roman era, Tyre began producing another valuable commodity called garum, which was a sauce created by fermenting fish innards. One source I read compared garum to caviar, because it was so highly prized. The fact that Tyre produced these two commodities by processing fish and sea snails probably made the whole city smell bad, but also made it an extremely wealthy city. On top of these industries, Tyre was also a major port that connected the Mediterranean to the Silk Road and East Asia. Tyrian shekels were almost pure silver so they were the currency used to pay the Temple tax.

So when you hear that Jesus went away to Tyre, maybe it was like going away to Silicon Valley today. Sure, there are poor people in Silicon Valley like everywhere else, but you might expect the random person you meet to be relatively well-off.

The story of Jesus’s encounter with a Syrophoenician woman doesn’t look good at first. A woman comes to Jesus asking for what he has already done so many times before, to heal her daughter. Does he do it? No. He compares her to a dog and seems ready to send her away. I’ve read several perspectives on this story, but the one that makes the most sense to me is that he was implicitly criticizing the wealth of Tyre. As a wealthy commercial center, its residents would have naturally felt superior to a Galilean country bumpkin. So Jesus is essentially saying, You have all that wealth that has been extracted from people like me. Let my people at least have these gifts from God to themselves. Use your wealth to take care of your daughter, and I will share God’s grace with those who have nothing.

In response, the woman asks for the crumbs from God’s table. We have already seen, a chapter earlier, that when Jesus feeds the multitude, the crumbs fill a dozen baskets. Shortly after this story, Jesus feeds another multitude, and the crumbs fill seven baskets. God’s providence is so abundant that no matter how much is showered upon the lost sheep of Israel, there will always be more left for the Gentiles.

So here we have the contrast between the people to whom Jesus was sent and the people who were outside the covenant that God had made with Abraham. The covenant established an eternal relationship between God and Israel in which God would shower blessings upon Israel in return for their love of both God and neighbor. The story of Abraham actually has two covenants within it, first one of unconditional love and grace from God to humanity, and then one that is conditional. My interpretation is that God’s unconditional love and grace are always available to us, but that the conditions of the Law guide us as we strive to build a society that lives as God’s kingdom now.

The scribes and Pharisees in Jesus’s time, as well as many Christians today, put the emphasis on the conditions. You must earn your place in God’s kingdom by following these nitpicky rules as interpreted by someone in authority. Only those who embrace the church’s rules are worthy of a place in the earthly expression of God’s kingdom. But they forget that the rules are built on top of the unconditional love and grace of the original covenant. They forget that no human can limit God.

The Syrophoenician woman, though, focused on what actually matters. She loved her daughter. No amount of wealth or social privilege could heal her daughter. She may have thought that this country bumpkin from Galilee was beneath her station and not worthy of her attention, just as Jews thought that Gentiles were outside the covenant and not worthy of approaching God in the Temple. But one thing was more powerful than any hierarchy of wealth, culture, or ethnicity: love. Her love of her daughter drove her to seek any solution, no matter the cost to her dignity.

I am reminded of the time Rhonda was fighting her facial pain. We have very good health insurance. I wouldn’t say that I’m wealthy exactly, but I certainly have more financial resources and job flexibility than many people. We visited numerous doctors, in St. Louis and at Mayo Clinic and at Cleveland Clinic. But at the end of the day, none of it mattered. Money can’t buy a cure. The only way we were able to get her pain under control was by working with one doctor over a period of nearly two years to find the solution together. My love for her kept me searching for a solution, and our relationship with her neurologist enabled us to find the solution together.

In the same way, the woman’s wealth did not enable her to cure her daughter. Her wealth did not make her worthy to enter Jesus’s presence. Yet her ethnicity did not make her unworthy, either. The disciples may have thought that she had no place asking Jesus for help, but she was bold to ask anyway.

Have you ever been made to feel unworthy of God? Maybe you were too young or too old, or of the wrong social status, or had said or done something outside the norm or contrary to doctrine, or you weren’t dressed properly. People have a way of making outsiders feel uncomfortable and unworthy, and church members are sinful people. We try our best, but sometimes we can’t help but allow our cultural attitudes overwhelm our calling as Christians. Perhaps this woman felt the same way. She went to a house full of Galilean Jews, probably mostly men, and felt excluded because of her gender and ethnicity.

Yet she persisted. She knew that none of it mattered. It didn’t matter that she was a Gentile. It didn’t matter what her wealth or social status were. It didn’t matter if she was ritually unclean. All that mattered was that she loved her daughter, and Jesus could heal her. She needed God’s grace in her life, and nothing would prevent her from seeking it.

Jesus first reminded her of her status, perhaps as a social critique. Perhaps he knew how his disciples would react if he left their fellowship to care for the child of a wealthy foreigner. She could have responded by demanding that Jesus do her bidding, as she had probably done before to many other men she considered beneath her. She could have responded by promising him wealth or power, just as Satan tempted Jesus after his baptism. Yet she knew that Jesus was no ordinary man, able to be bribed or cajoled.

The sacrifice that God desires is a contrite heart. The woman knew that she needed God’s grace and that nothing she could do would make her worthy of Jesus’s service. But Jesus’s response reminds us that nothing she could do would make her unworthy, either. She was in need, and God’s abundant grace overflowed onto her.

In the same way, no matter how worthy or unworthy you feel, you may be bold to approach God with your needs. God cannot be cajoled or bribed. God cannot be argued into doing your will. But if you approach God with a contrite heart as the Syrophoenician woman did, God’s grace will flow over and through you. Even the crumbs of God’s blessings are abundant and life-giving.

You too may be wealthy or poor, an insider or an outsider, a person of high standing in the community or one of the lowly and forgotten. None of that matters. All of us stand in need of prayer. All of us need God’s grace in our lives—unearned and unearnable, a free gift through Christ. All of us need healing in our bodies, minds, and souls. All of us need to be connected to the infinite love of God that transcends the pains and struggles of the world. And all of us may be bold to approach God through Christ who came to demonstrate that God’s love is for everyone. Amen.

The post Standing in the Need of Prayer first appeared on Engineering My Faith.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on August 25, 2024. Based on John 6:56-69.

Who here is familiar with the book Good to Great by Jim Collins? It’s a famous book about companies that somehow emerged from mediocrity to become great. One that they talk about that has a nexus with S&T is Nucor. Nucor was a mediocre company that provided services and equipment for the nuclear industry, but somehow emerged as the leading steel producer in America.

I’d like to share with you one of the principles discussed in the book: the Stockdale Paradox. Admiral Jim Stockdale was a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton, the highest-ranking US military officer there. Collins had the opportunity to interview Stockdale and ask him how he survived and who didn’t survive. He said, “I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.” Stockdale was convinced that he would eventually be victorious.

But who didn’t survive? The optimists. As Stockdale related, “They were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.” The Stockdale Paradox is summed up in his statement: You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—a faith that you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.

When Rhonda was going through her face pain, I was one of those optimists. I would think, The next doctor will fix this. Or the next drug, or whatever. While Rhonda was having a surgery that was ultimately unsuccessful, I talked with my friend Sharon for some moral support, and she reminded me how many times I had thought that we were about to solve the problem. That helped to prepare me for the eventual let-down when Rhonda’s pain returned.

On the flip side, we Americans are notorious for seeking instant gratification and easy answers. When those aren’t available, we just give up and stay in our comfort zone. We think, Oh well, that didn’t work out, so why bother trying? Things are fine the way they are. We stay in the comfort zone. Well, the comfort zone is one of the most dangerous places to be.

Think about it: comfort foods are some of the worst foods for your health. Things like, pasta served in a bread bowl. Or grilled cheese. When I go elk hunting, while I’m at base camp, I eat a lot of grilled cheese because I’m so mentally and emotionally and physically drained from hunting. That’s fine for a week, but if I ate grilled cheese for dinner every day, I definitely wouldn’t be as thin as I am!

Couches are comfortable, too. I try to run every morning, although I’ve been struggling lately due to travel and injury. The reason I run is because if I don’t, my lifestyle is basically sedentary, and that’s terrible for your health. I know some of you are not able to be as active as you once were, but it’s best for your health if you stay as active as you are physically able. Otherwise, what you don’t use, you lose.

So those are two of the ways you can fail. On the one hand, you can live with false hope that everything will be fixed tomorrow. We just have to do this one thing and our problem will be solved. Or on the other hand, you can give up, accept your current reality as the best it can be, and slowly decay instead of reaching your potential.

I’ve read a couple of books by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels. In The Tools, they describe a visualization tool for escaping the comfort zone. It’s a little bit like the image I walked through two weeks ago, where we are drawn to God through the cross. The tool that Stutz and Michels describe goes like this:

1. Imagine the pain that you are avoiding as a black cloud in front of you. Silently scream at it, “Bring it on!”
2. Imagine yourself entering that black cloud and feeling that pain. Silently scream, “I love pain!”
3. Imagine yourself being propelled out the other side. Silently scream, “Pain sets me free!”

There’s a lot more to the book, which I highly recommend. But the basic idea is that you succeed by being willing to confront the pain head-on and blow through it. It’s like a running back breaking a tackle. I had a wonderful clip, but the NFL blocked it from playing. So just imagine it: an amazing running back who runs straight into a defender, keeps pushing, keeps pushing, and finally breaks through for a touchdown. He is courageous—maybe not fearless, but willing to confront his fear and blow through it. Now, the reason these kinds of plays are on YouTube is that nine times out of ten, this kind of play results in a tackle for a loss. But once in a while, the running back succeeds. Do that often enough, and you win games, you win championships, and you end up in the Hall of Fame.

The key is to be willing to endure temporary pain for the promise of eventual success. Now, I’m not talking about being a masochist. Not all pain is redemptive, and I certainly didn’t see anything positive in the misery that Rhonda went through fighting her facial pain. Sometimes, life just sucks. But sometimes, the pain, or discomfort, or embarrassment, or fear, or whatever else is holding you back is just temporary, and if you power through that, you’ll come out the other side stronger, better, and victorious.

Coming back to our Gospel lesson, we hear John again and again talking about consuming Jesus, which we are supposed to take metaphorically. Maybe it’s the Eucharist, or maybe it’s a reference to integrating Jesus’s teachings in our lives. Either way, we are called to abide in Christ so that he may abide in us. We are called to dedicate our whole selves to Christ—not just our Sunday mornings, but every waking hour, all that we have and all that we are. And in return, Christ will strengthen us and bring us abundant life. Not a life of abundance—this isn’t the Prosperity Gospel. Abundant life—love, and joy, and hope, and life-giving relationships. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the Way—following him is the only way to enter God’s kingdom. He is the Truth—the hard truth, the challenging truth, but the divine truth that reveals our true potential as beings made in the image of God and a church that is Christ’s body. And He is the Life—the source of abundant blessings that we enjoy when we are connected to each other and to God through Christ, and the source of strength when we are weak, of courage when we are fearful, of wisdom when we are filled with doubt.

But if we really want to know Jesus as the Way, Truth, and Life, we must be willing to confront the facts before us. We can’t ignore the problems that plague us, individually and as a church, and hope that they will just go away. We can’t be afraid that knowing the Truth will mean more work, or sacrificing something good for the sake of something better. We need to turn away from pleasant lies and accept the uncomfortable truths.

At my commissioning service two weeks ago, the congregation affirmed the Great Ends of the Church:

• the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind;
• the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God;
• the maintenance of divine worship;
• the preservation of the truth;
• the promotion of social righteousness;
• and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.

These are in our Book of Order, and I think we can all agree that they are all important for truly fulfilling our calling as the body of Christ. I’d like to ask the ushers now to distribute the papers. On the paper, I want you to rate First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on how well we are fulfilling these Great Ends. On the right end, I want you to imagine the nearly perfect church—perfect for you. The church as you think it should be, as closely following God’s will as imperfect humans possibly can. On the left end, I want you to imagine that this church is gone, shut down, the people all dispersed to the community or across the country. On that scale, how are we doing? Are we proclaiming the Gospel? Are we promoting social righteousness? At the end of the service, please place the papers in the basket provided for the purpose. NOT the offering plate! The basket.

We need to know. We need to take a hard look at ourselves and evaluate just who we are, or else we will never know how to become who we could be. Then once we know where we are, we can plot a course towards a better future. And when I say “we,” I mean everyone who is worshipping here today. Whether this is your first time or you’ve been coming for months or years or decades, you matter to God, so you matter to me. I want to know what you think of our church.

There are many paths that we can take, but let’s focus on just two options. One is the easy path: stay in the comfort zone, don’t push ourselves too hard, keep doing what we’re doing and hope for the best. That is the wide path that leads to destruction. The other is the hard path: follow Christ. Follow wherever he leads, even if it means following him to his crucifixion, because we know that the Way of the Cross leads to eternal life.

Jesus’s teachings in this chapter of John are hard. They turned a lot of people away. It’s like he was trying to weed them out: every paragraph gets a little more graphic, a little more demanding. Eventually, he is left with just the Twelve, and Peter says those fateful words: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Do you believe? Do you believe that Christ is the Holy One of God? As they entered the Promised Land, Joshua challenged the people. He said that the future was uncertain, the path was hard, but if they stayed on it, they would be victorious. Then he said, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Jesus Christ has the words of eternal life. Will you serve the Lord? Let us choose each day to take the hard path, the narrow path, knowing that Christ will sustain us and strengthen us, and knowing that the challenges are temporary, but the glory is eternal. Amen.

The post Don’t Fear the Truth first appeared on Engineering My Faith.

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Article published in the Phelps County Focus on August 1, 2024. Here’s just the start of it; please visit and support my publisher!

Gatekeeping. If you poke around on the internet, you’ll see plenty of examples, where someone tries to determine when someone else’s accomplishments or tastes or interests or suffering are “sufficient” or “authentic.”

Statements like, “Stop claiming you love sushi when all you do is eat a California roll with a fork!”

There’s something fundamental in human nature that wants to draw boundaries between who is in and who is out. Many of the “gatekeeping fails” memes are updated versions of the old joke, “You think you have it so hard? I had to walk 10 miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways!”

As if one person’s likes, dislikes, challenges, pain or desires are only valid if they are more extreme or more authentic than someone else’s.

Unfortunately, gatekeeping is well-known in the church, too.

We simply cannot resist the urge to make rules, formal and informal, about who is worthy. We have hundreds of denominations in America, thousands worldwide, because of disagreements over those rules.

Keep reading…

The post For I Am Convinced… first appeared on Engineering My Faith.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on August 11, 2024. Based on John 6:35, 41-51.

Let’s back up a couple of weeks and paragraphs. At the beginning of chapter 6 in the Gospel According to John, we hear of one of the few miracles that are reported in all four Gospels. Jesus is in a deserted place, preaching and teaching a huge crowd. Five thousand men! Assuming there were some women and children among them, we’re talking about roughly the number of students who attend S&T. Jesus is moved by their need and feeds them. He feeds them with bread and fish. All ate and were satisfied, and the leftovers filled twelve baskets.

This establishes Jesus’s bona fides. Water into wine is nice, healing a leper or blind man is nice, but how does that help me? What has Jesus done for me? Well, here’s what he did for you: he fed you. In a deserted place, like the Sinai desert, he fed a vast multitude who he was leading to the Promised Land of God’s kingdom.

In case the Exodus symbolism is too subtle, he followed up with crossing the sea. He didn’t split it like God did for Moses, but he did walk over it. So clearly, Jesus is no ordinary man.

The problem with feeding people that day is that the next day, they would still be hungry. In fact, the people he fed track him down in Capernaum so that he can feed them again. But you know the old aphorism, If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Right now, they have Jesus with them, but they won’t always. He can feed them now, and so he did. But he needs to teach them how to survive after he’s gone.

Thus begins Jesus’s teachings on the bread of life. We only read a snippet today, but most of chapter 6 of John’s Gospel, starting from verse 25 that Susan read last week, is about the bread of life that doesn’t spoil, but instead lasts to eternal life. We will discuss how the story ends in a couple of weeks, but for now, let’s stay focused on this basic teaching: Jesus IS the bread of life.

What can that possibly mean? Right after this passage comes what I call the cannibalism verse: Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” We read this from our comfortable seats in 21st-century America with two millennia of associating Jesus’s body and blood with the Eucharist. But if you put yourself back in first-century Judea or Galilee and imagine hearing this statement, you couldn’t help but be repulsed. This is outrageous! How could a man offer his literal body and blood as food and drink for a whole crowd?

Obviously, he can’t. Obviously, Jesus was speaking metaphorically. Perhaps this is a reference to the Eucharist. Even if it isn’t, though, we need to understand his statement as a metaphor that somehow extends the life-giving sustenance that he offered to those five thousand men into all of eternity.

Each week, after the scripture lessons, the preacher says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of the Lord is forever.” Variations of this statement appear in the three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John’s Gospel is less explicit and more metaphorical.

The first chapter of John says that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Then the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus was the incarnation of the Logos, the divine Word, the organizing principle of the universe, the absolute Truth. The Word became flesh, and Jesus told his disciples that they had to “eat” the flesh. That is, they needed to, and now we need to, consume the Word, the true Word that transcends the words about God that we read in the Bible, the divine Truth that stands within and behind the Gospels and other teachings that have been passed down to us. We are not supposed to just hear the words read, but also internalize their message. We are supposed to make Jesus’s teachings a core part of our lives, of our very being.

This is a challenge. First of all, we don’t have Jesus here with us to teach us. What we have instead are some stories and teachings that his followers shared and someone eventually wrote down, in Greek, which were eventually translated into English. Jesus taught people in first-century Judea and Galilee, so there is a cultural barrier that we need to transcend in addition to the language barrier. But if we try hard enough, we can receive the message that stands behind the words in our Bible.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” If Christ is the bread of life, then maybe we ought to turn to Christ every day. Think about it: Can you eat a big meal on Sunday afternoon and then fast for the rest of the week? No. So why would we think that we can study the Word of God on Sunday and ignore it the rest of the week? Every day, we need to turn to Christ and receive his nourishing words of life.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to study scripture every day. We are also nourished when we pray. Through prayer, we are connected to our Triune God, if we take the time to listen for God’s message to us.

There are other spiritual disciplines that I’ve talked about before. The point is, every day, we need to do something to re-center our lives in Christ. And then, we need to connect our hearts and minds to our feet and hands and mouths. We need to put Christ’s teachings into practice to further God’s kingdom.

Throughout the Old Testament, God appears to Israelites in various forms—in dreams and visions, as a pillar of fire or smoke, as a burning bush, and so forth. At some point, God realized that wasn’t getting the job done. In order to truly transform the world, God had to enter it as a human being. Only a human can teach other humans how to meet their true potential as God’s image-bearers. And so we have the Incarnation, God Made Flesh, Jesus Christ, who came to really show us how to live.

By truly living into Jesus’s teachings, we too incarnate the Word. Incarnate—that’s kind of a strange word. It means to make something into flesh and blood. It’s not just words and thoughts and ideas and such, but actually living people. We are the incarnation, when we do God’s will. When we connect with Jesus’s teachings, when we allow Christ to dwell in us, when we work for a better world that more nearly approaches God’s vision for a perfect humanity.

Later in John 6, we hear that lots of Jesus’s followers fell away because of this teaching. The truth is that following Christ is hard. It’s painful. Sometimes, it means turning from things that bring instant gratification towards things that you know will be good in the long run, but are unpleasant now. Sometimes, it means giving up the good for something better. Always, it means leaving the comfort zone. But growth never happens in the comfort zone, only when we strive to go beyond it.

Let me give you an example from my career. In 2018, I was promoted to full professor. In truth, there are few positions at a university that are objectively better than being a tenured full professor. I could have just stayed the course, taught a couple classes per year, kept my research program cranking along, and so forth. That would have been staying in the comfort zone. But I knew that I had the potential to have more impact on the university if I chose a leadership path. First I was a research center director and then became department chair. Now, being department chair is a little bit more pay for a whole lot more work and a whole lot more stress, with the added benefit of the opportunity to make lots of enemies. But I was willing to make that sacrifice because I knew that I could make my department better. A similar motivation drove me to become your commissioned ruling elder, effective this afternoon. I know that I’ll do things that make some people angry at me, but I also know that something needs to be done and someone needs to do it, so I’ll be that someone. Lord willing, something better awaits us all.

Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.” The word translated as “drawn” is maybe a bit more like “dragged.” When I read this, an image came to mind. Look at this cross on the Table. It’s a variation on a Celtic cross, with a ring around the crossing point. I want you to imagine that ring is a halo, which is a feature that appears in the sky when there are ice crystals dispersed in the atmosphere. Under the right conditions, a circular halo appears around the sun. Sometimes the halo is just white, but other times you can see the colors of a rainbow. Anyway, even if you just see the halo, you know the sun is there in the center, too.

So I want you to imagine that this ring is a halo, meaning that the sun must be back behind the cross creating the halo. But you can’t see it, because the cross is in the way. The sun is the light of God’s heavenly kingdom. You feel an irresistible pull towards the sun, like gravity, a gentle force but one that you can’t ignore or escape. God is dragging you towards God’s eternal kingdom, but to get there, you have to go through the cross. There is no way to get there except through Christ, and Christ’s way is the way of the cross. You know that the cross is a place of extreme pain, torture, agony. But you also know that it’s temporary. Everything is temporary, everything except the kingdom of God. And so you let yourself be pulled towards the cross. You get to the cross, and the pain is almost unbearable, but Jesus is right there with you. He too is suffering, but he helps you to bear the pain. And then, you’re through. You emerge on the other side of the cross in the blazing light of God’s glory. All of the pain is gone, and you know that it was worth it.

That’s the Way of the Cross. Jesus was willing to give his life for us all, because he knew that the pain and suffering were temporary, but the glory is eternal. In the same way, we can be confident that any suffering or loss we incur as we help to build God’s kingdom here in Rolla will be temporary, it will be bearable because Christ is with us, and in the end, it will be worth it for the glory on the other side.

This too is a daily need. Elsewhere, Jesus said, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” We must each take up our cross daily. This is hard. Some days, I just don’t want to. I want to take the easy path, just once. But the easy path slowly becomes a path away from God. So I do my best to choose the hard path, the painful path. I am empowered to take the hard path because I am nourished and strengthened by Christ’s flesh, his words of life, his love that continually flows over me. May God grant you the courage to also choose the hard path as you are drawn through the cross into God’s eternal glory, knowing that you are nourished and strengthened for the journey by Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life. Amen.

The post Food for the Journey first appeared on Engineering My Faith.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on July 21, 2024. Based on Ephesians 2:11-22.

In this passage of Ephesians, Paul talks about a dividing wall of hostility that separated Gentiles and Jews. Why? What caused this division? Well, it all went back to the Law of Moses as it was understood and practiced. I’m going to assume that you are all aware of kosher laws in some general way but not in the particulars. There are obvious and easy rules like no pork or shellfish. But truly keeping kosher requires a whole lot more effort than that.

For example, there is a verse in Exodus, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” I don’t think anyone knows where that rule really comes from. Maybe it was some pagan ritual that God outlawed through Moses. Whatever the origin, this is an important part of the kosher laws. It’s hard to know what cow provided the milk you drink, or that you used to make a particular block of cheese. So, to be safe, Jews never boil any meat in any milk, or otherwise allow dairy products to contact their meat. OK, fair enough, no cheeseburgers. Well, how clean do you get your pots and plates and silverware? Is it possible that a little bit of meat residue remains, or a little bit of dairy residue remains? Well, we don’t want to take a chance. So, a fully observant orthodox Jew will have completely separate kitchen items, maybe even a completely separate kitchen. They’ll have pots and pans and plates and silverware that they use for meat dishes, and a completely other set that they use for anything that has dairy.

This is just one of the many rules that cover both the letter of the Law as reported in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and the “fence around the Law” that rabbis developed over the centuries. So let’s imagine you’re an observant Jew in Paul’s time who is striving to follow all of the rules in every circumstance. Suppose a Gentile invites you over for dinner in a show of hospitality. You get there, and first you see that there is meat and cheese on the table. Whoa, hold on. We can’t be eating those together. Then you ask your host how the animal was killed. The kosher laws include lots of details on how animals should be butchered. Your host says, Oh, I don’t know, they took care of it down at the Temple of Artemis. Now hold on. You can’t be eating meat that was sacrificed to some other god. It just keeps going from bad to worse.

So what do you do? You don’t eat anything you’re served. You can’t be sure it was prepared properly, so instead of taking a chance, you refuse the hospitality that is offered to you. You think to yourself, These God-forsaken pagans can never know my Lord if they won’t try to learn God’s rules. Now, not every Jew had this reaction, and there were and are a diversity of ways that Jews observe the Torah, but at least some Jews would have reacted this way.

Now imagine you are that Gentile host. You went to a lot of trouble and expense to offer the best you have to a potential new friend. And what do you get in return? They turn up their nose, say that your food isn’t good enough for them, refuse your hospitality. Well fine. Let them keep to themselves and we’ll keep to ourselves.

This scene played out enough times to establish that Jews and Gentiles just aren’t compatible. In addition to not eating together, which of course is kind of a big deal for hospitality, Jews and Gentiles would not mingle in the same social circles. They maintained completely separate cultures. The separation between Jews and other religions persists to today.

But Paul said, “In his flesh [Jesus Christ] has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” How can the dividing wall be broken down? Only by breaking down the Law of Moses. As long as the Law remains, there will always be a reason for Jews and Gentiles to stay separate. There will always be conflict and resentment. So Paul said that through Christ, the Law has been made ineffective, allowing Jews to freely mingle with Gentiles as one people, members of God’s household.

Before Christ, there was an “inside” and an “outside”—Jews were insiders and Gentiles were outsiders. Now that Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, there is only “inside.” Jews and Gentiles alike are part of God’s family with equal access through the Holy Spirit. Easy to say, hard to do. After centuries of living separate lives and developing separate cultures, simply saying, “The distinctions don’t matter anymore,” isn’t sufficient to bring people together. Our natural inclination is to develop factions. We tend to congregate with people who think alike, who look alike, who act alike.

What divides people today? In Paul’s context, the important division was between Jew and Gentile—a religious and cultural difference. Those divisions exist still today. There is hostility between Christians and atheists. There is hostility between different kinds of Christians, whether Presbyterian or Catholic or Baptist or whatever. There is hostility between American Christians and Christians in Africa and the Global South.

But looking beyond the church, there are lots of other ways we divide ourselves. It seems like politics is the strong undercurrent that drives so many disagreements, especially in a presidential election year. Things have gotten particularly heated and even violent last week with the assassination attempt. Violence is never acceptable, but is the natural result of the apocalyptic rhetoric and our culture of glorifying violence. We don’t really know what drove the shooter, but perhaps a desire for fame or notoriety. Regardless, I’m not looking forward to the next six months of campaigns and election aftermath. Whoever wins, it’s going to be ugly, potentially violent, and relationships will certainly be damaged or broken.

What else? What other ways do we find to divide ourselves? Ethnicity. Language. Gender. Age. Class. Wealth. The list goes on and on. In some cases, the formal divisions have ended, but the damage persists because, like the Jews and Gentiles, simply saying “there is no reason for conflict” doesn’t eliminate it. For example, it was IN MY LIFETIME that women were given the right to get loans in their own names. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed in 1974 and prohibited discrimination against a loan or credit applicant for reasons related to sex, marital status or familial status (as well as race, religion, and other reasons). I suspect that there are people here today whose lives would have been different if the rules had changed earlier. I also know that a decade later, probably two or three decades later, probably even today a half-century later, women still had and have trouble getting salesmen to respect them as individuals capable of making independent financial decisions. This is just one of the many ways that artificial divisions exist in our society and persist even after laws change.

We may be Presbyterians, but we are also Americans. We spend an hour or two each week focused on our church family, but the other 160+ hours living in American culture. We cannot help but inject our American attitudes into our church life. We cannot help but develop a church culture that looks an awful lot like American culture, but hopefully with more love of God and love of neighbor than most people.

So the question I would put to you is this: What aspects of our American culture and congregational culture have we imported into God’s kingdom, that inadvertently create barriers that keep people out? I believe that God’s realm is a state of universal human flourishing—universal, not just for a few people, but for everyone. God’s love is on offer to everyone who seeks it. What do we do that creates barriers? Do we actually have “open doors”?

When I look out at this congregation, I mostly see middle-class, educated Baby Boomers. That’s not a value assessment—that’s just a factual statement of who we are. Problems arise when we take our perspectives as the norm and expect others to conform to us. For example, in 2016, we had our Christmas Eve service at 5:00 pm. I didn’t think much about it, because I have never had to work past noon on Christmas Eve. Schools are closed, so teachers and other staff are off. Of course, if you’re retired, then you’re not tied to a work schedule. But there are plenty of jobs for which Christmas DAY is a holiday, but Christmas EVE is not. This was a decision that was made without any malice or exclusionary impulse, but that did in fact exclude certain people from attending worship.

In what other ways do we take our own lifestyles, attitudes, and family situations as normative? On the one hand, we should adapt to the people who show up, but on the other hand, we should meet people where they are. We all have a particular vision of what it means to worship God, and what a sanctuary should look like, and how the liturgy and music should flow, and so forth. For most of us, that vision has been shaped by many years or decades of worshipping in this church, or perhaps in other similar churches. But none of what we do is the One True Way to Worship God. In talking with my family members and friends who attend other churches, there is a ton of diversity, a wide range of ways that people can authentically worship the same God that we do.

Now, you might say that having a worship service that looks like the broader culture is giving in and abandoning our principles. But again I’ll say, none of what we do is the One True Way to Worship God, and we are called to meet people where they are and invite them into God’s family, not to force them to become like us first.

Once we meet people where they are, our goal should be to enable them to connect to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and to live in shalom, just like the banner says. Paul repeatedly uses the word “peace” in this passage: For Christ is our peace, who proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, but it means far more than the absence of violence. In the book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, Christian author Cornelius Plantinga described the biblical concept of shalom:

The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight – a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.

Think about that: shalom is the way things ought to be. Life in Christ is universal flourishing, wholeness, the way God intended for life to be. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that something you want everyone to experience? The promise of the Gospel is that shalom is available to everyone if they choose to participate. But how can they choose to participate if nobody offers them that choice? If a person thinks that they are unworthy of God, or thinks that all churches are full of hypocrites who can’t possibly point them to God, or wants to participate but doesn’t know how or where to start, then it is incumbent on us to reach out to them, meet them where they are, identify whatever barriers they are encountering, and break them down.

In a recent discussion about spirituality that I attended, we talked about challenges on the spiritual journey. The biggest one that came up was fear. Too many people who were raised in a church were raised to fear God’s wrath, rather than welcoming God’s love. They were raised to fear that if they do something wrong, they’ll burn in Hell in eternal conscious torment. This fear is reinforced by cultural messages that seem to say that all Christian churches preach “fire and brimstone.” But I saw this Justin Buzzard quote circulating on the internet: “Christianity should feel like ‘My chains fell off’ not ‘I better not screw up.’” There is reconciliation through Christ, forgiveness and love and healing and wholeness. We should radiate that love to all who enter our doors.

Another challenge that came up is one that I struggled with for many years. I thought that I was self-sufficient and that I didn’t need God. This whole Christianity thing didn’t make much sense anyway, so why bother? I know there are lots of young people out there, by which I mean people younger than me, who feel the same way. But someday, they may have a life event that shows them that no, they really aren’t self-sufficient and they need something else in their lives. How can we be that something, a hospital for the spiritually sick, a place where people can turn when they have nowhere else to go?

The core of the Gospel is this: The kingdom of God is at hand! Shalom, peace, healing, wholeness, and flourishing are all available to everyone. Let us seek God’s guidance and wisdom to see the barriers that people encounter and then do our part to remove those barriers, to enable them to welcome Christ’s reign in their lives. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on July 7, 2024. Based on Mark 6:1-13.

Carol Dweck is a psychologist whose 2006 book, called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, brought her work into popular culture. To oversimplify, she categorized people as having one of two mindsets: fixed or growth. With a fixed mindset, you believe that intelligence or abilities are fixed and not worth trying to change. Here are some example statements:

• I believe that people are born smart or dumb and can never change.
• I think it is too late for most people to learn and gain a new perspective.
• I am who I am, and there is nothing I can do to change that.

By contrast, someone with a growth mindset recognizes that nothing is carved in stone. Sure, some people have more ability in some areas than others, but everyone is able to change and grow in some way. Typical statements include:

• I believe that everyone can learn something new and become good at it over time.
• I always try, even if I think I will fail—failure is just another opportunity to learn, which can help me succeed the next time.
• I think that every opportunity is a chance to grow my knowledge; I can always learn something new.

Now, the reality is that everyone has both fixed and growth mindsets in different parts of their lives. For example, I generally believe that I can’t dance and won’t ever be able to dance. Now, is that really true? Probably not. I took dance lessons as a kid and have decent rhythm. Mostly, I don’t want to change, so I convince myself that I can’t change.

This concept has escaped from academic discourse into pop science or even pseudo-science, so I need to be careful here. Just because you believe you can change doesn’t mean that you can do anything you want. I’m pretty sure that I’ll never play in the NBA, no matter how much I believe I can become a better basketball player. But I can say that if you don’t believe that you can change, you almost certainly won’t change. If you don’t believe that you can ever understand the Bible, you won’t take up the practices that would enable you to understand it. If you don’t believe that you can learn how to sing, you won’t try to sing along with the congregation or join the choir or do anything else that would enable you to become a good singer.

A particularly dangerous form of a fixed mindset is one that is applied to other people. You might believe that, say, a homeless person can never become a stable, productive member of the community. You might believe that people of a certain gender or age or race or ethnicity are incapable of achieving some goal. That belief is thankfully less prevalent now than it was a generation or two ago, but it still lurks beneath the surface of discussions about immigration, for example. Every parent has probably closed off one dream or another of their children because they didn’t believe their child was capable of succeeding in that particular field. Many friendships and family relationships are broken and never heal because neither person thinks that the other one can change.

The people of Nazareth suffered from this form of fixed mindset. They knew Jesus when he was a little kid, and when he grew up and apprenticed as a carpenter with his father. They could imagine him as a good carpenter, but they couldn’t imagine him as a prophet, let alone the Messiah.

I think I’ve mentioned before that my sister is a United Methodist pastor. In the United Methodist Church, the bishop assigns pastors to churches, in consultation with the individual churches as well as district superintendents. One basic principle they follow, though, is that pastors are not assigned to the church where they grew up. See, when my sister was ordained, she became Pastor Jennifer, and she has been an acknowledged pastoral leader in every church she has served. But if she had been assigned to the church where she grew up, there would have been at least some people who couldn’t get past seeing her as little Jennie, the six-year-old girl with pigtails, instead of Pastor Jennifer, the dynamic preacher and leader she grew into.

In the same way, those who knew Jesus, the little boy, couldn’t accept Jesus the Messiah. As a result, they missed out on the glorious life that is available through Christ and in Christ. He was unable to do any deeds of power, so the Nazarenes did not get to witness the inbreaking of God’s kingdom.

The apostles, though, embraced Jesus. These were just ordinary men. We know most of them were fishermen, simple folk trying to eke out a living. One was a tax collector, an outcast that nobody would respect. And yet, they all embraced the possibility of growth. They trusted that Jesus could help them become something more, and become a part of something bigger than themselves. Throughout the Gospels, they all seem kind of obtuse, which I suppose makes sense since they were fishermen, not theologians. But they kept trying and eventually learned what Jesus was trying to teach them, and when the Holy Spirit energized them, they were transformed into the leaders of what became a new religion.

In the same way, God can change each one of us, if we are willing to embrace the opportunity. Through Christ, God’s kingdom is available to everyone. God’s realm is a state of being in which everyone can thrive and flourish and grow. Through Christ, everyone can experience God’s power, but not everyone chooses to do so. The people of Nazareth chose not to, and so they did not experience any of Jesus’s deeds of power. The apostles chose to live into Christ, and so they grew into spiritual leaders. I made that choice, too. It was a little trickier for me, given that Jesus was not physically standing there calling to me like he did on the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee. I had to listen a little more closely to hear his voice. Yet I was willing to change and grow. Down deep in my core, I’m the same person that I’ve always been, a beloved child of God. Yet the way my deepest self is expressed has changed dramatically. If you knew me twenty years ago, you would not have ever expected to see me in a pulpit. Even five years ago, I had a lot to learn about leading and interacting with people, and I still do. But compared to where I was before committing to a life in Christ, I have grown tremendously.

You too can change and grow. You might think you’re too old or too set in your ways or what have you, but as long as you have breath, you can grow. In fact, you probably wouldn’t be here today if you didn’t believe that you could still grow in Christ. We will never become perfect in this life, but we can always improve. We can always more nearly approach God’s will and God’s vision for us.

In a lot of ways, an organization is like a person. Just as a person can have a fixed or growth mindset, an organization can have a certain mindset as well. You may think that you can personally change, but that the church never will. But that’s wrong. We CAN change. In fact, if you think about who we were a decade ago, you will realize that we have grown tremendously. From time to time, as our affirmation of faith, we use the Prayer for Listening and Speaking that the session composed while John Oerter was our pastor. It’s easy to forget how urgently we needed that prayer, how urgently we needed to heal the ways we were communicating and interacting with one another. We have healed and grown, and are a much more unified congregation than we were back then.

We can continue to grow and change if we choose to do so. If we simply accept that the church we are today is who we will always be, we will slowly decline. We will cease to represent God’s kingdom. We will prop each other up, but we won’t really have any impact on the community. But if instead, we believe that God is still at work in the world, and specifically that God is still at work among us, we can continue to grow and change. God’s grace will fall like rain, flowing over and through us, empowering us to become the church God intends for us to be.

I believe that God still has a plan for us. I believe that we have a message of love that people in Rolla need to hear. I believe that we have a vision of Christian community that people in Rolla need to participate in. Yet too often, we are held back by our self-image as an unchanging and unchangeable institution.

Jesus encountered plenty of people with a fixed mindset. Besides the people of Nazareth, he had to deal with the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees who all had an understanding of God that they had inherited from their forefathers and that they could not imagine changing. Sometimes, Jesus would verbally spar with his opponents, trying to get them to understand who God is and what God’s kingdom is like. Yet their fixed mindset was a barrier to them accepting this new teaching.

So for the most part, Jesus moved on. Rather than spending all of his time trying to get inflexible people to open their minds to a new teaching, he went where the seeds of his message found fertile soil. He told his apostles to do the same—if they were not welcomed, they were supposed to just move on to the next village. Yet when Jesus was welcomed, and when his apostles were welcomed, the world changed. The blind would receive sight, the lame would walk, the sick would be healed, and the outsider would become a part of the community again.

This same opportunity and this same choice come to us today, and every day. Each day, we can choose to cling to the received wisdom of our forerunners, cling to our old ways of being the church, and accept our current reality as the only reality. OR, we can choose to embrace change, embrace the possibility of new life in Christ, and allow God’s grace to flow down on us and out through us. Let us seek now to choose new life, to embrace the possibilities that are available to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The post Change Your Mindset first appeared on Engineering My Faith.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Mark 4:26-34.

Most of you know that I hunt elk and deer. But that’s not all. I hunt squirrels and doves, too. Doves are an entirely different form of hunting because you shoot them as they are flying by. It’s a very active experience. I’m not a very good shooter, so I average two or three doves per box of 25 shotgun shells. To have any chance at all, you need a reasonably sized field with appropriate food for them, and multiple hunters to keep things moving.

A typical dove field is at least two acres, sometimes five or ten or even larger. Sunflowers are the most common crop, but I’ve seen corn, millet, and buckwheat. The idea is for the crop to mature to the point of producing seeds a couple of weeks before the season opens on September 1, so that the doves have time to find the field. Actually, it takes a couple of years before the doves reliably come back to the field, but they’ll only start coming if you do things right in the first place. Anyway, when the time is right, you bush-hog the field in strips so that there is food on the ground for the doves, then hope for the best.

Several times, I have gone hunting on public land in Missouri. The last couple of years, though, Missouri Department of Conservation hasn’t had funding to plant, so I haven’t been able to go here. Instead, I’ve gone up to my father-in-law’s house near Effingham. Ron has been trying for a few years now to get a dove field going, with little to show for it so far.

First off, his field is just a little too small. It’s more like one-and-a-half acres instead of two. He’s also in the middle of farmland, so his field needs to be extremely attractive to really draw doves in.

Secondly, he has tried different crops and different planting schemes. One year, he used too much seed for the space. The seeds all sprouted, but they didn’t mature and produce a good harvest. Another year, he got the crop planted too late for it to mature in time. Yet another year, his crops matured too early, so the doves had come and gone before the season started.

This year, he’s going to try again one last time to see if he can get it right. As I mentioned, doves actually take a few years to reliably return to a given field. So perhaps he has done enough over the past few years that if he gets a good crop with the right timing, he’ll have success.

I’m not much of a farmer myself. I’m not even much of a gardener, but Rhonda is. It’s too hard for her to get down to plants on the ground, so I built her a couple of containers like the church used to have. We have had varying levels of success with them. Like her dad sowing too much seed in his dove field, Rhonda sometimes plants too many plants in a single container. Also, we have had to experiment with different kinds of plants. Tomatoes seem to do pretty well, as long as you keep them watered. You would think that pepper plants would be about like tomatoes, but you would be wrong. We haven’t had any success growing peppers of any kind in containers, so this year, I planted some down on the ground. Similarly, cucumbers need to be planted in the ground and need a lot of space and the right conditions. Last year, we tried them in a spot that isn’t really sunny enough, and only harvested a few small, misshapen cucumbers. We moved to a different area this year, and so far things look OK, but we have a long way to go.

Jesus was talking to an audience who was intimately familiar with all of this and much, much more. Many of them would have been subsistence farmers, whose life depended on knowing as much as possible about growing crops. They had to know when to plant, what kinds of crops thrived on the land that they could use, how to prepare the soil, how to care for the seedlings, and more. Yet Jesus said, “The seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.” As much as ancient farmers knew, they were still ignorant of many of the most basic agricultural concepts that have enabled modern society to enjoy plentiful food.

If someone mentions a parable about sowing seeds, your first thought is probably a totally different parable that Jesus told about different kinds of soil where the seeds landed—on the path, rocky soil, among weeds, and good soil that produced a hundredfold. In that parable, Jesus was talking about evangelism. If you want to spread the Gospel, your best bet is to sow love as broadly as possible. Love is a limitless resource, and in fact, the more you give, the more you have to give. Especially if you let God’s love channel through you, to continually renew you.

But we have other limits that we need to be aware of. Time, first and foremost. Ming alluded to that last week during our informational meeting—how can I possibly have time to do more? Well, I’ll just need to be efficient. But even at maximum efficiency, there are only so many hours in the day, so there’s only so much that I personally can do. Each one of us has limits on our time, and commitments that we cannot avoid or abandon. Plus, there are only so many people who are available to serve our church right now.

Energy is another one. As we age, we have less and less energy and can’t accomplish everything we used to. Oh, we gain wisdom, so that we can work smarter, but that only partially compensates for the fact that our muscles and joints are declining. Another aspect is that some activities revive us, and some drain us. I am naturally an introvert, so spending time in a crowd is sometimes very draining for me. Other people are extraverts and are energized by spending time with friends. Everyone has tasks in their lives that drain them spiritually or emotionally, much more than just the physical effort. And sometimes it’s not the task itself, but the amount. If I volunteer at the Mission to serve one meal a week, I leave feeling energized from having accomplished a good deed. If I do two meals in a week, or try to serve in some other way, it drains me. It shifts from being a joy to being an obligation. It’s important to be cognizant of those things that bring you joy and energy and those things that drain you, and manage your energy level accordingly.

Money is another limitation. It would be wonderful if we could replace our sanctuary doors, upgrade our sound system, and make many other improvements to our church building. It would be wonderful if we could hire a full-time pastor plus a full-time youth or campus minister. Give me a few minutes and I’ll think of lots of ways we could spend more money. But the reality is that we have limited financial resources that we need to manage and allocate for our operations and for new ministries.

So given all of these limitations, we need to be strategic. We cannot be all things to all people, but we can meet some people where they are and help them enter the kingdom of God. We should never turn anyone away, but if we try to do everything, we’ll accomplish nothing.

For example, Fort Leonard Wood is a substantial mission field for Rolla area churches. I don’t know how many people come through the fort on an annual basis, but I know it’s a lot. Some are only here for a few weeks, others for months or years, and still others retire from the military and stay around for decades, working as civilians. These are people who are hungry for interpersonal connections, since each time they move, their lives are disrupted. We could figure out how to reach them and invite them into our Christian fellowship.

It’s a great idea—not mine, one that came up in a discussion with session. But the question is, how do we make it happen? Who has the burning desire to serve that population, enough so that they will learn their needs, determine the best way to connect with them, and coordinate a group of our members to surround them with love? If we do it half-heartedly, we can do more harm than good. Growing the kingdom of God is not the work of a month or a season, but of a lifetime. If we start some outreach and then fade away, people at the fort who stick around will remember us as a flaky church that can’t be trusted.

So, maybe that’s a great idea that we don’t have the bandwidth for. Or, maybe it’s a great idea that we need to talk about more broadly and find a little group who has the passion to make it happen. The effort needs to grow from a sincere, heartfelt desire.

Assuming that all goes well with my commissioning process, my plan is to start learning all of the great ideas that I know are lingering out there in the congregation, and then try to find some commonalities. I’ll try to find two or three or four people who have a shared vision, and then try to give them the tools and support they need to succeed. That’s something that I think I have learned how to do over the past four years of leadership on campus and in the community—not so much to execute my own vision, but to enable other people to pursue their vision. To provide behind-the-scenes support so that others can do the work that suits their particular skills the best.

As we go, there’s another important agricultural practice we need to keep on our list: pruning. If you are growing grapes or berries, it’s important to prune the vine so that the plant has enough resources to produce good fruit. If you don’t prune it, the plant needs to put too much of its energy into growing the vine and not enough into the fruit. In fact, Rhonda has been doing this with her tomato plants. She prunes off some of the branches so that the remaining branches are stronger and healthier.

Pruning your life or the life of a church or other organization is much harder. Pruning a church’s ministries means ending something that you care deeply about, but that has become more of a drain on your resources than a source of life. My friend Sharon starts Vacation Bible School tomorrow. Her church is part of a coalition that works together on several activities, VBS chief among them. They have struggled just a bit since the pandemic, but they still have the people and the energy to make VBS happen. We stopped doing VBS even before the pandemic because it became just too much work, falling on too few people, for the limited impact that we had. Of course, now, it would be hard to have VBS without severely disrupting the preschool’s operations. None of this means that VBS is a bad thing to do in the abstract; it was just something that we needed to prune so that we could put our time, energy, and other resources to work elsewhere for the good of the kingdom of God. It was something that didn’t work during this season of the church’s life.

Fired Up! falls into that category, too. I dearly loved leading Fired Up! and valued the time we spent in that form of worship with a smaller, more intimate group. But there’s NO WAY that I could lead Fired Up! and be preaching here today, or doing any of the myriad other things I do for the church. So, it had to be pruned.

As we move forward, there will likely be other things that we have to prune away. We may start some things that don’t work out. We may start something that ends up crowding out something else that we’re doing. We may find that some things that we thought were essential, are actually vestiges of a different era that are no longer life-giving.

The promise of the Gospel, though, is that the kingdom of God is at hand! If we follow the Spirit’s leading, if we plant the right seeds, if we commit ourselves to channeling God’s love, Jesus taught that God will give the growth. A spiritual advisor once told me that God does 98% of the work. We have to do our 2%—we have to sow the right seeds in the right soil—but if we do, God will do the rest. We have limited time, energy, money, and people, but our infinite Lord will give us the growth. With that growth will come more resources, more ideas, more love to share, more abundant life. Now may God bless us with the wisdom to choose the right seeds and the energy and courage to do our part in growing God’s kingdom. Amen.

The post God Gives the Growth first appeared on Engineering My Faith.

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Sermon preached June 9, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Mark 3:20-35.

A few times in the Gospel of Mark, and a few other places in the Bible, we encounter a rhetorical figure known as an inclusio. One of the most famous examples is the story about the woman who had a hemorrhage. In that story, Jesus starts off towards the home of Jairus, a leader of the synagogue whose daughter is dying. On the way, a woman with a hemorrhage touches his garment and is healed. Then Jesus gets to Jairus’s home and heals the daughter. So an inclusio is where one story is inserted in the middle of another one, like meat in a sandwich.

In today’s lesson, we start out with Jesus going into a house that was extremely crowded, so much that his family was worried about him. Then we have some interchange between Jesus and the scribes about casting out demons. Finally, we wrap up the story about Jesus and his family.

Whenever you encounter an inclusio, you should ask yourself, what do these two stories have to do with one another? I mean, Mark could have told the story in a totally different way. He could have told the story about Jesus’s family, and then told the story of the exchange with the scribes. You might say, Well, Mark was just telling things in the order that they happened. Wrong. That’s not how ancient authors told stories, or modern authors for that matter. When I’m telling a hunting story or a story about my childhood or college or whatever, the details are mostly correct, but seldom in the right order. I arrange the details to suit the purposes of the moment. In the same way, Mark constructs these inclusios to point us towards the connections between the two interwoven stories.

So first, let’s talk about the meat. The scribes are so incensed at what Jesus is doing that they travel from Jerusalem to wherever Jesus is calling home right now, probably Capernaum. They were upset at what Jesus was preaching, and at the signs he was performing, so they made up a story that he was himself possessed by a demon. Jesus points out the foolishness of this assertion. If he were working by the power of Beelzebul, wouldn’t he want his demons to keep causing mischief and misery? Why would he be casting them out from the people they had possessed?

In our post-Enlightenment way of thinking, we imagine that the people that Jesus healed were epileptic or had schizophrenia or something like that. But to the people that Jesus spoke to, the demons were very real. This was spiritual warfare, and Jesus was winning. The scribes were proposing that Jesus wasn’t on God’s side and defeating evil, but instead was like a general on the devil’s side telling his demonic troops to retreat. How ridiculous! A house divided cannot stand. If Beelzebul is telling his demons to retreat, then he has lost already. But if Jesus was who he said he was, he had Beelzebul on the run.

There is a larger message here, though. Not only is Jesus defending himself against ridiculous accusations, but also, he is telling us how important unity is. A kingdom divided cannot stand, and neither can the Church, which is Christ’s body. If Christ’s body is divided, where is its strength?

The last time the Jesus movement was really unified was probably during the Last Supper. Then Judas slipped out and splintered off from the movement, Jesus and the rest of the disciples went to the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was arrested, and everyone scattered. After his resurrection, the movement lived on and there was apparent unity in the early part of Acts, but we can see signs of disunity later in Acts, in Paul’s letters, and in other New Testament writings. In the two millennia since then, the situation has gotten worse and worse: we have perhaps 200 denominations in America and 45,000 worldwide. At first, the divisions were largely about whether Christians needed to be Jews, too. Then there were a bunch of theological divisions, for example, Marcion’s followers being cast out, and Gnosticism being declared heretical. At some point, the Oriental Orthodox Church split off from the Chalcedonian church, and then later the Roman Catholic Church split from the Eastern Orthodox Church, partly over theological disputes and partly over power and authority.

In the centuries that followed, some of the controversies that led to division were about theology, some were about power, and some were about social issues. Often, all three were at work, such as a theological justification for what was really a power struggle between two groups with different cultural backgrounds. Lately, it seems that most of the splits are related to social issues. There is a great sorting going on, where denominations are becoming increasingly extreme—the liberal churches are getting more liberal while the conservative churches are getting more conservative. Few have managed to maintain a middle position. Most of the time, theological or social moderates simply opt out altogether.

We are all the worse for it. We are all better off when we recognize that each of us is just trying to follow God as best we understand.

Most of the differences among churches come down to orthodoxy: we believe different things about God, salvation, relationships, authority, the Bible, and so forth. Orthodoxy is a great way to sow division, since so much of theology is so difficult to understand anyway and it can be twisted to appear to support almost any position. I think it’s more important to focus on orthopraxy, which is to say, we should focus on how we act, not what we think. CrossRoads is an excellent example of a church built on orthopraxy. That’s the congregation that meets above the Mission, where the Vineyard used to be. CrossRoads is clearly Christian, but they have no faith statement that one member could use against another or that they could use against outsiders. Instead, they have core values: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love, unity. These aren’t exactly the same as Paul’s list of fruits of the spirit, but there is some overlap. What I want to highlight, though, is that while their pastor, Patrick, preaches the Gospel, none of these core values rest on believing in, say, an inerrant Bible or a particular understanding of the Trinity. None of them rest on saying the sinner’s prayer or reciting the Nicene Creed, as we will do shortly. Yet all of them are core attributes of the kingdom of God. All of them are ways that we should treat each other if we desire to live as one big family, God’s family, God’s kin.

Which brings us back to the “bread” of the inclusio sandwich. The passage today starts with people saying that Jesus is out of his mind and asking his family to come talk to him about it. This is classic triangulation. Do you remember John Oerter talking about triangulation? That’s where person A has a problem with person B, but instead of going to person B, they tell person C to “do something.” Here the scribes enlist Jesus’s family to “do something” about this crazy guy who is messing up their plans. What does the family actually think? We don’t know. It appears to me that the family has been manipulated by gossip to serve as tools of the scribes. The scribes couldn’t get to Jesus any other way, so they use his family against him.

We don’t really know much about Jesus’s family or their relationships with him during his ministry. We know that after his resurrection and ascension, his brother James became a central figure in the early church. We know that his mother Mary was around at the start of his ministry, the wedding at Cana, and she appears periodically throughout the story, including at the foot of the cross. But we don’t know if they followed him during his lifetime. In fact, their absence from the narrative speaks volumes. Here he is, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, with a dozen close companions and perhaps thousands of followers, but his own family isn’t among them. In Luke, when Jesus makes his first speech in his hometown of Nazareth, did his family step up to protect him from the crowd? No.

It seems to me that Jesus had kind of a difficult relationship with his family. In that way, he was quintessentially human. Many people have strained relationships with their family of origin. Some of us are blessed to have positive relationships with at least some portion of our family, but there is always a little bit of pain, too. Relationships are hard and people are inflexible at times, so the people who we love the most are the most likely to hurt us in some way. This is no criticism of anyone; this is just the way human relationships work.

We all bear the marks of our families of origin, good or bad. My mom always says, “We are destined to be like our parents,” and I definitely see both of my parents in myself and in my siblings. I definitely see both Rhonda and me in both of our kids. For good or for bad, families leave their marks on us. They form us into who we are, in ways that we can never truly transcend.

But then Jesus closes this scene by saying, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” I will always be a part of the family that raised me, but I can also choose to become part of God’s family. Jesus has given us an invitation. We are already welcome in God’s family, just as we are. All that Jesus asks is that we choose to join it.

In a sense, the traditions that say you must invite Jesus into your heart are right about something: Jesus is ready to enter each person’s life, to transform each person’s heart, but he won’t force his way in. Just as soon as we choose to do the will of God, we become an active part of Christ’s family. We don’t have to change who we are, but we do have to change our actions, our attitudes, our behaviors. We do have to practice compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love, and unity.

In so doing, we become a part of Christ’s family, and more than that, we become a part of Christ’s body, which is the Church. Whether we call ourselves Presbyterian or Episcopalian or Catholic or Christian or none of the above, if we do God’s will, we become a part of Christ’s family. And what is God’s will? To spread the message of love, peace, and reconciliation that is at the heart of the Gospel. To spread this message in words and deeds. To spread this message through healing—healing the sick, healing the brokenhearted, healing the community, healing relationships.

As the Spirit works through us, healing the world, spreading God’s love, we become a part of Christ’s family, the kin-dom of God. We become an exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world. We continue the process of transformation that has been at work for thousands of years and that begins anew as each generation once again seeks the unity of the Holy Spirit that is at the root of a healthy community.

Who is my family? You. Each one of you, who are all striving to do God’s will. We all fall short, and yet Christ’s continual forgiveness enables us to remain connected to Him throughout our spiritual journey. Now may Christ continue to walk with each of us and with all of us together as we strive to build Christ’s family throughout the community and around the world. Amen.

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Sermon preached June 2, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on 2 Corinthians 4:1-12. If you listen to the podcast, the meditation begins at 20:24.

We have this treasure in jars of clay. Hmmm. What exactly is meant by “jars of clay”? Well, in Paul’s time, clay jars were the most common storage unit. Anything that had to be ceremonially clean, like water for the mikveh, used stone jars since clay jars could have unclean residue. Most of the vessels used at the Temple were gold, silver, or bronze. But for day-to-day use, clay jars were the common choice. Fragile, common, unassuming.

When I read this passage, I thought of this teapot. (bring it out) Rhonda has had this teapot longer than I’ve known her. It originally belonged to her great-grandmother. She said that almost immediately, she broke the lid, but then repaired it. Clay pottery is fragile like that! She started putting coins in it, and eventually, it became a repository for lots of interesting money. (Pull out a few coins/bills/etc.)

Teapot and clay jar, along with some unusual currency we store in the teapot.Then the other day, I noticed this on the dresser. This is a clay jar that one of our kids made in elementary school. Rhonda uses it to store jewelry. Now, anything really valuable, we keep in a safe or in the bank. But for general storage, for items of curiosity or items we might use regularly, this pot or this jar are perfectly fine.

If Paul were writing to modern Americans, instead of clay jars, he might say that we have this treasure in Tupperware. Can you imagine keeping your most prized possessions in some cheap Walmart Tupperware?

Yet that’s exactly what Paul is likening us to. We are just simple clay jars or Tupperware, or maybe old margarine containers, but we are entrusted with the most valuable treasure in the universe: God’s love. Modern spirituality focuses mainly on self-improvement and connecting with God, which is to say, it focuses mainly on either making ourselves into fancier clay jars or filling ourselves with more treasure.

Each summer—well, I’ve done it twice now, and I’m signed up to go again this year—each summer, I go on retreat at the White House Retreat Center. Over the course of three days of silence, I listen to preaching, I pray, I read, I go on spiritual walks, that sort of thing. It’s a Jesuit center, so of course the worship is Roman Catholic, but that’s OK. We all pray to the same God. Anyway, the purpose of the retreat is spiritual formation. I come home refreshed, renewed, re-connected to God, and with a new perspective. I’m filled with the Spirit. The treasure in my clay jar has been topped off.

Other people meditate, or go on nature walks, or otherwise try to step away from the world. Now, this is great! As far as it goes. In fact, I remember encouraging spiritual practices on several occasions, things like reading the Bible, or prayer, or whatever. All of these practices and experiences help to make us better pottery or fill us with more spiritual treasure. But at the end of the day, we still hold this treasure in jars of clay. Making ourselves better people is a good thing, but is not truly the Gospel.

What is the Gospel? The kingdom of God is at hand! We go forth into the world spreading this good news, not to draw attention to ourselves, but to direct attention to God. Once, Mary properly chastised me for wearing beard ornaments in the pulpit. I like to be festive, but when I’m preaching, the focus should not be on me, not even on the words that I say, but on the Word Made Flesh that my words point to. In the same way, each time we proclaim the Gospel, we should point not to ourselves, but to the kingdom of God.

Evangelism is kind of a dirty word to many people, largely because of the awful ways some people do it. The very worst are the people who come to campus and shout at students about how terrible and sinful they are. But there are plenty of other examples of bad evangelism. Usually, the end goal of the evangelizer is to make you join them. They want you to believe exactly what they believe, pray exactly as they pray, and so forth. I’ve seen memes about “winning souls.” They want to conquer you and make you a part of their team.

Paul’s message here, though, is that we should not be proclaiming ourselves, but Christ. Now, I do appreciate being recognized on the street, and being connected to the message that I strive to proclaim. The other day, when I was running, I passed a guy I’ve never met but who I’ve seen on the street before. We said hello, and then he said, “I really appreciate your articles in the paper!” I take that as a good sign that my words are reaching beyond this congregation and maybe helping people connect with the God I know and love. The fact that he recognizes me and connects me with my writing means that someday, perhaps, we can have a more substantial conversation than a cordial “Good morning!” Perhaps someday, he’ll share his perspective with me as well, and we can learn from each other.

I would love it if he were to also connect my message with this congregation and come worship with us, but that’s not really the point. Our task is not so much to build this congregation as it is to build the kingdom of God. I believe that if we keep our focus on preaching Christ, preaching a loving God, preaching about a world of universal human flourishing, that other people will want to be a part of what we’re doing here. That’s how we will grow—by being a church that is doing something that people want to participate in.

But as Paul said, we proclaim not ourselves, but Christ. If people join us in worship, it won’t be because of who we are, but because this is a place where they can encounter God. In modern America, people are hungry for connection and for being a part of something bigger than themselves. There is nothing bigger than the kingdom of God! We should strive to make our congregation a visible manifestation of God’s realm, just one among many.

In our creeds, especially the Nicene and Apostles Creeds, we confess to one holy, catholic, apostolic Church. Holy: we are set apart to belong to God. Catholic: not in the sense that Jesuits are Roman Catholics, but universal. We are one Church who worship one God. We should pursue unity in the Church, while recognizing diversity.

We are also an apostolic Church. An apostle is one who is sent out into the world. A disciple is a follower of a teacher, such as Jesus of Nazareth. An apostle is one who is sent out to carry the teacher’s message to others. We are like ambassadors of God’s kingdom, striving to establish diplomatic relations with the world and encourage others to join in.

Indeed, being an apostle, or an evangelizer, encompasses roughly half of the Great Ends of the Church, which are: The proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; The shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; The maintenance of divine worship; The preservation of the truth; The promotion of social righteousness; and The exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world. As the Church, we are called to proclaim the gospel, promote social righteousness, and exhibit the kingdom of heaven. These are apostolic callings. We have this treasure from God, and are called to put it to good use in the world.

Being an apostle, or an evangelizer, is hard. Look at Paul: afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed. Why was he able to endure? Because he had Christ to support him. He knew that the treasure he had received only had value if he shared it, and he knew that Christ’s love is an endless fountain of blessing welling up within him.

I’d like to share a couple of practices with you, ways that you can be strengthened and emboldened to continue proclaiming the Gospel and exhibiting the kingdom of heaven. The first comes to me from Lindy Hardwick. Many of you know Lindy; among other things, she has preached here a few times. She has spent a lot of her career as a chaplain. When I mentioned that I struggle sometimes with pastoral care, this is what she told me to do. Imagine that there is a hole in the top of your head and that light from God is flowing down through it into you. Then imagine that there is a hole in your chest that channels that light out to the person you are speaking to, who is hurting and needs to feel God’s love. At the same time, if they are pouring out their pain, their anxiety, their anger, or their fear on you, imagine taking it in through your chest and passing it straight up to God.

In this way, instead of trying to store up the treasure of God’s love and dole it out, you become a conduit for love. Instead of relying on yourself and your own wisdom and strength to care for someone, rely on God through the power of the Holy Spirit flowing in and through you to be their ultimate Comforter.

Now, before we turn to the Lord’s Table for holy spiritual sustenance, I’d like to do an exercise with you. I receive a daily message from the Center for Action and Contemplation, and a couple of months ago, they had this exercise led by Brian McLaren and Carmen Acevedo Butcher, which I have edited just slightly. As a background, this “Peace and Light” meditation came at the conclusion of a week reviewing seven stories. The first six stories are ways that community fails to work for everyone: the domination story, the revolution story, the isolation story, the purification story, the accumulation story, and the victimization story. The seventh story is the story of reconciliation. In the Seventh Story, human beings are not the protagonists of the world. Love is.

So now, the practice. You may be a jar of clay, but you are capable of being a conduit, a vessel, for the glorious treasure of the Light of the World.Take a few deep breaths, and let your body come to rest for a moment. Imagine the seventh story, the story of reconciliation, as a tiny point of light. The story comes through your ears or you see it lived out in someone’s life. It enters who you are. It’s a story of peace, whose hero is love. It’s a story of justice and equity and safety and joy. Imagine that story as a little point of light that comes to rest in the center of your being. Then imagine that little point of light becoming a pool of light and a spring or a fountain of light. Just for the next few moments, picture that point of light growing within you.

Imagine yourself becoming full of that light. Now imagine that light filling you and that light shining out through you. Imagine now that this light coming out from you touches those around you, those in your pew, everyone else in the sanctuary, those in your family, your neighbors, others in your neighborhood, those in your workplace, people throughout Rolla and Phelps County, and all others you meet. Imagine that this light embraces them and also that it fills them.

We all know that there are many other stories at work in the world, stories that are wounding people, stories that maybe wounded each of us. Let’s realize that we can be tempted to respond to those stories that wound in a way that continues that wounding story. For a few moments, let’s hold in our heart a prayer, a request, a plea for help, that our lives would not be sucked into the stories that wound, but that we would live on a steady course of a story that heals.

Holy God, May I live in the story of peace, whose hero is love. May that story live in me. May the story of Your peace bring healing to us and to the world. And may the story of Your love bring healing to us and to the world. Amen.

The post Clay Vessels first appeared on Engineering My Faith.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on May 5, 2024. Based on John 15:9-17. I deviated from my script more than usual this week, so you may notice some differences with the podcast or video.

The first time I went elk hunting, I did what I thought was a lot of preparation to get in shape. It turned out to be woefully inadequate. Over the following few years, I set about getting in better shape, primarily focusing on improving my endurance by running. In addition, I realized that I needed to lose weight. Trimming down the weight you carry in gear is good, but trimming down the weight you carry in fat is much better. So, I joined Weight Watchers. I’m sure there are many other current or former Weight Watchers members among us.

Why is Weight Watchers so successful? To my mind, there are three main aspects. First is awareness and intentionality. The cornerstone of the program is tracking what you eat. Each year, they change the formula a little bit, in part to get you to renew your membership but in part to trigger you to pay attention again for a little while. Truthfully, if all you do is track your points, even if you don’t pay much attention to how many points you’re allowed to consume, you’ll start developing a healthier relationship with food. Instead of mindlessly consuming a whole bag of chips, you’ll start thinking about how many chips you really want to eat. Or perhaps you’ll decide that actually, chips have a lot of points in them, and you would be better off eating carrots or grapes or something.

The second pillar is habits. The foundational habit is tracking, but Weight Watchers helps you to develop other habits, too. Habits like planning your grocery shopping ahead of time, or reading restaurant menus before you go so that you have a plan, or grabbing fruit when you’re hungry. They also encourage you to develop habits related to exercise and mindfulness.

The third pillar is community. Back in the “before” times, I went to meetings every week. At a typical meeting, everyone had to weigh in, and then we had a somewhat freeform discussion about progress and challenges in the past week. We would acknowledge milestones and sometimes talk about stuff coming up in the following week. Finally, there was a lesson of some sort. Often, the lesson would be about habits—either how to develop them or which ones would be good.

Intentionality, habits, and community. Honestly, this is a good model of the church. Community is essential to what we do. It’s possible to read the Bible or pursue other spiritual practices on your own, but a community helps you to learn and grow. The community supports you when you need it, and in return, you support others when they need you. Community is why we worship in person, why we have First Friday Out or game night or other gatherings, and why we have deacons to visit people who are sick or grieving or shut-in. Community is why we attend memorial services.

Habits. Habits control our lives. Now, it’s easy for a habit to become a rut, something you do for no good reason except that it’s what you always do. That’s a risk for an individual, and a serious risk for an organization. So, it’s important to shake up your habits once in a while, just like Weight Watchers changes their program almost every year.

Which is to say, intentionality is important. Habits enable you to act without thinking, and so they make life easier. But periodically, it’s important to bring your habits out to the forefront and decide if they are serving you or if you are serving them. Once in a while, we need to ask, Are we doing XYZ because it’s the right thing to do, or because we’ve always done it? Whatever the answer, just asking the question is important.

I’d like you to think for a moment about your morning routine. Everyone has one. Here’s mine. My first alarm goes off at 5:45, at which point I usually lay in bed and check Facebook and such. At 6:00, I get my daily alert from the Washington Post and read the most critical news stories. By 6:15, I’m up and I’ve made coffee. I check my email and read my daily comics while I bathe my brain in caffeine. When I’m awake enough, I do my daily devotion from Common Prayer that I think I’ve mentioned before. Then I go run, usually three or four miles, at least on days when I have time.

Last weekend, Rhonda and I were gone because Jesse graduated from Pitt. It was a great trip. We got to see Jesse and Sam, and Jesse’s boyfriend Howard, and Howard’s parents. On our way east, we visited my old high school friend Sharon and her family, and then on our way west, we met my mom, sister, and brother. Going both directions, we stayed with Rhonda’s parents. It was great seeing everyone, seeing Jesse and Howard graduate, meeting Howard’s parents, everything.

But you know what wasn’t great? My morning routine. Most days, I didn’t get a chance to just be when I got up, but instead had to get moving right away. If I did my devotion, I was just going through the motions instead of taking it seriously. I didn’t run. I wasn’t able to do the habits that recharge me. They refill my spiritual and emotional reserves so that I have love to give others.

As much as possible, I try to follow the Great Commandment. When Jesus was asked which commandment in the Law was the greatest, he said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” My morning routine, especially my morning devotion, is a way I can love the Lord my God and prepare myself to love my neighbor.

Several years ago, I read Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s a phenomenal book that I highly recommend. Basically, the book teaches you how to harness one of the most powerful forces available: the power of compound interest. Except instead of money, he applies it to life. If you do push-ups on one day, you’ll mostly just tire yourself out, but maybe you’ll become a tiny bit stronger. If you do push-ups every day, you’ll become that little bit stronger every day, and by improving on your improvements, by the end of the year, you’ll be much stronger. Small changes made on their own have small effects, but small changes made in the same direction repeatedly can change your life.

Many times, people say that the key to success is setting goals. In fact, when you sign up for Weight Watchers, one of the first things you do is to set your target weight. Setting goals is a good thing, I suppose, but it is clearly insufficient. When I became department chair, we did some strategic planning and identified some goals. I have been measuring our progress against them, but they aren’t directly tied to actions. For example, one goal is to increase enrollment. But what will we actually do to achieve that goal?

That’s where Atomic Habits come in. The key to success isn’t having a goal, but having a good system. Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results. Every coach has the same goal: to win a championship. Which team wins? The one with the best system to recruit and develop and exploit their talent. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Good systems are composed of good habits. Find a habit that achieves, say, a 1% improvement, and do it every day. Then find another. And another. And eventually, they all add up, and the power of compound interest changes your life.

So, why am I talking about habits and systems and performance improvements? Let me return to today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” He says to abide. He doesn’t say that we should visit his love once in a while. He says we should abide in it. That means being immersed in a loving system. That means having a set of habits that all revolve around doing as Jesus commanded: acting on a self-sacrificing love for everyone that God loves, which is everyone.

A habit has three main components: a cue, a routine, and a reward. For example, let’s say you want to develop a habit of going to the gym every day. As a cue, perhaps you set your gym bag by your car, so that whenever you see it, you remember to drive to the gym and do your workout. The reward, then, isn’t getting a donut afterwards. It’s the feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment you get from the workout itself.

Here’s a habit I’m developing for love. I’m an engineer, which means my natural inclination is to solve problems. That’s great if I’m confronted with a technical problem, but often, that’s the wrong instinct for people problems. So, here’s my habit. The cue is when someone opens up a little and expresses a problem they are having in their life, like something that is causing them sorrow or anxiety. My routine is to attempt to see things through their eyes and seek understanding first, and then affirm the validity of their emotions. If things veer too negative, I gently nudge them back towards the positive, for example, trying to help them avoid comparisons. The reward, then, is a deeper, more meaningful conversation than I might have otherwise had.

As an example, I was talking to someone who said they had seen me on the street while they were going to a grief support group. Rather than take over the conversation and try to “solve” their grief—which is totally impossible—I let them talk about their situation and what’s going on in their heart right now. They started to veer into comparisons with other people’s grief and how their situation is worse, and I gently counseled them that such comparisons are fruitless, because every grief is different. I expressed my opinion on the Kubler-Ross stages of grief—that they are better understood as modes of grief, with no sequence and no timeline—and affirmed that where they are right now is perfectly understandable and a step along the path to healing. When I left them, I prayed for their comfort. Overall, it was a deeply meaningful encounter that I probably wouldn’t have had a few years ago.

So that’s one habit I’m trying to develop. I need to think of another habit to add, something to do with initiating meaningful conversations. I’m not sure how I’ll do that exactly, but a workshop I attended a couple of weeks ago gave me some ideas.

Here’s a habit that we have as a congregation: When someone experiences loss or is in crisis, we feed them. This is great “spiritual first aid.” Everyone needs to eat, and often, preparing food is challenging when you are grieving or under stress. Both the giving and receiving of meals reminds people that we are a loving community, one that will help lift each other up.

My challenge for you all today is this: Find a way to abide in God’s love by adding loving habits to your life and our congregation’s life together. I have seen how much love you all have for one another and for others in the community and the world. Let’s find ways, individually and as a congregation, to put that love into action by developing habits that will let God’s love flow through us and into the community. And I am certain that if we do that, we will experience the flourishing that comes from living into the kingdom of God. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on 1 John 3:16-24.

Are you familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? It was first proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943 and has undergone some revisions over the years. It describes the things that each human being needs to survive and to thrive. At the bottom-most level are physiological needs: food, water, shelter, warmth, sleep, that sort of thing. Next is safety and security: protection, stability, freedom from fear. Both of those are considered “deficiency” needs. Basically, if you lack one or more of those needs, the drive to fill that lack becomes your primary motivation. Filling your deficiency needs is essential to survival.

Then come higher-level needs, categorized as “growth” needs. These are things that are not necessary to just survive, but allow a person to thrive. The next level is love and belonging: friendship, family, intimacy, and a sense of connection. In Genesis, God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” and so God created Eve. We are made to be in relationships with each other. We are made to be a part of a healthy family, whether by blood or by choice. We are made to be a part of a community. Our lives are defined by expanding circles of relationships: family, close friends, organizations, community, nation, and world. Although Maslow implied that we need to first satisfy our “deficiency” needs before pursuing this growth need, we can actually see many communities around the world that are living in abject poverty, who suffer from hunger and inadequate shelter, whose lives are continually threatened by violence, and yet who live fulfilling lives that are enriched by communal living. It isn’t essential to fulfill all of your physiological needs before pursuing love and building friendships, as humans are driven by this need for connection.

Next up the hierarchy are esteem needs: self-esteem like dignity, independence, and positive self-image, and a need for respect from others in the form of status and prestige. Often, the respect of others is a prerequisite for self-esteem. If you aren’t valued by others, it is difficult to value yourself.

Continuing up the ladder, there is self-actualization. That is the desire to realize your personal potential. Self-actualization needs drive people to pursue a college degree at an advanced age. They drive people to produce artworks that nobody else will ever see and music that nobody else will ever hear. They drive people to join religious orders that are focused on the inner self and spiritual growth.

That’s where Maslow stopped in 1943. Later on, Maslow and others expanded the hierarchy. They added a few needs in the middle of the hierarchy that are not terribly relevant for us. But then they also added a need at the top: transcendence. We all have a yearning to be part of something greater than ourselves. Whereas self-actualization may drive a person to become a solitary monk who studies in private, self-transcendence drives a person to service in God’s name. Jesus modeled the perfect self-transcendence, as captured in the kenosis hymn in Philippians:

5 Let the same mind be in you that was[a] in Christ Jesus,

6 who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

9 Therefore God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,
10 so that at the name given to Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

This is the self-transcendence referenced in our epistle lesson today, when John wrote, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for each other.” Jesus modeled self-transcendence and calls us to strive for it.

Later in the epistle, John wrote, “Let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.” Love in deed means putting our words into action. Often, this is interpreted as meaning that we should satisfy the deficiency needs of those who are suffering. That’s how The Mission started. Someone recognized a couple of deficiency needs: laundry and showers. When people started taking advantage of the opportunity for clean clothes and bodies, the leaders realized that people had lots of other needs as well, food and shelter being foremost among them.

If that’s where they stopped, then some of the criticisms leveled at the Mission might be justified. But in the past five years that I have been volunteering there, I have seen the scope of their services grow and climb Maslow’s hierarchy. They have mechanisms to supply every deficiency need that the patrons have, including providing a safe place to stay. But beyond that, they provide a sense of community—a place where everyone belongs, no matter what happened in their past. That love and acceptance has enabled many patrons to escape chronic homelessness. Along with love and acceptance has been teaching and other supports so that patrons can move towards self-actualization. They help people cope with addictions and help people develop independent living skills. All in pursuit of satisfying all of the needs that the patrons have.

In the past, whenever someone has mentioned that we should be doing more active missions, the response has usually been some variation on, “I’m not able to work in a kitchen any more like I used to.” As The Mission demonstrates, though, there are lots of other ways to help people satisfy their needs for surviving and thriving. For those who aren’t homeless, there are other organizations in town that provide food and other basic needs, such as GRACE and the Dream Center.

But what about the higher needs on the hierarchy? Let’s look beyond the homeless and the working poor. Our society is wealthier than ever. Between the time Maslow wrote in 1943 and the late 1970s, the average family’s standard of living doubled. If you consider the way we live now compared to, say, the time of the American Revolution, you can see that today’s working poor have material lives that are much better than some of the wealthiest people 250 years ago. Here in the US, more than 80% of people have their deficiency needs fully satisfied.

And yet, we are lonelier than ever. The fraction of US households comprising only a single person has grown from 13% in 1960 to 29% in 2022. Since 2003, the average time spent in social isolation increased by 24 hours per month while time spent in social engagement with family, friends, and others decreased by a total of more than 40 hours per month. And I wouldn’t say that 2003 was necessarily a time when we had healthy social interactions. There was a famous book about social engagement called Bowling Alone that pointed to the stark decline in social structures like bowling leagues, PTA, and other civic organizations. It was published in 2000, before the stark decline over the first part of the 21st century and before the catastrophic decline due to COVID.

Let me tell you a little personal story about that. From 1998 to 2003, Rhonda and I live in Greenwood, Arkansas, a little town outside of Fort Smith. After five years, we had few enough friends living locally that I can count them: Tony & Becky, Ricky & Cissy, and Jason. That’s it. There were a few people at work that I was friendly with, but the family we really connected with moved in 2001, I think. It was a very closed community. Everybody already had their social networks, so there was no way for us to really break into them. People were friendly enough, but only at the level of being acquaintances.

Here in Rolla, we have a fluid enough community that it’s much easier to make friends. However, if it weren’t for joining this church, we would have struggled to form deep, meaningful relationships. Only in the past five years or so have I really ventured out to form friendships with a broader cross-section of the community.

And yet, forming these relationships is vital to human thriving. I believe that the core message of the Gospel is that the kingdom of God is at hand! The kingdom of God is a state of being where everyone’s needs are fulfilled and where we love one another, in word and in deed. There are many ways we can show love for someone. You’ve probably heard of the Five Love Languages. The book and methodology are basically pseudo-science, but at least it is descriptive of the ways a person can receive love. The five love languages are: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch. I would say that as a congregation, we do pretty well on loving people with the language of gifts, with our financial and material support of The Mission, GRACE, and Russell House and our giving to the four PC(USA) special offerings. We do a much poorer job on the other love languages. We love each other in all of these ways, but we don’t love our community in these ways. We preach the good news. We spend time in fellowship, and deacons spend time with shut-ins. We pass the peace. But we don’t reach out into the community in these ways.

So let me ask you: How can we, as a congregation, show love to our neighbors in the community? How can we help them to satisfy their needs somewhere on Maslow’s hierarchy? How can we speak all of the love languages into their hearts and their lives?

For the moment, let’s set aside the deficiency needs. As I said, we do pretty well as a congregation supplying financial and material support to organizations that seek to provide food, shelter, and security for people in our community. But what are we doing to supply love and belonging?

Over these past five years as I’ve tried to grow my friend circle, I have connected with some people who have deep faith, some who have some vaguely spiritual beliefs, and some who reject organized religion altogether. In some cases, the friendships are kind of thin and just based on one particular shared interest. But in the cases where the friendships have grown deeper, both of us have been willing to share authentically from our hearts. Both of us have been open and honest with each other. And in that openness, Christ has been present by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In my morning devotion recently, I read this quote by Jack Bernard, a co-founder of the Church of the Sojourners in San Francisco.

The key element in beginning to learn to embody the love of God is not heroic faith and determination. It has to do with whether or not we can take hold of the love of God as a power that includes us within it. The difference is between seeing life from the inside of God versus seeing it from within my own sensibilities and capacities. From inside the love of God, suffering becomes not only bearable, but a privilege of participating with Christ in his love for the world. This cannot be rationally explained or justified, but it is the fruit of a life trustingly lived in and for God who is all love.

Jack Bernard, quoted in Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

This is the core of our calling. See life from the inside of God. Let God’s love dwell in you and surround you and empower you to reach out to others. If you do that, you may get hurt. You may be rejected. You may be told things that you don’t want to hear, such as ways in which your actions have been hurtful to someone you were trying to love. You have to be willing to work through that and rely on Christ’s promise to be with you always, even to the end of the age. You have to be willing to be vulnerable while knowing that God protects you.

This is hard, but it’s easier when you are connected to Christ through His body, the church. If you’re strong enough to start a ministry to a new group on your own, that’s great! But if not, know that you are surrounded by a group of people who share God’s love, who love you and who will support you with their prayers. But even better, try to find others who will support you with their presence and their talents. And Christ’s love flowing through you will strengthen you and amplify everything you do.

In my job as department chair, I see my mission as serving future alumni. This is a goal aimed at self-actualization needs. I believe that all students who make it to their sophomore year in electrical or computer engineering are capable of becoming successful alumni of our program. I am trying to also satisfy some of the students’ love and belonging needs that are so essential to persisting through the hard times that inevitably come along as they progress through their studies.

So who do we serve? I suggest that we strive to serve Millennials who are satisfied materially, but yearning for love and belonging. People who came of age in a time of scarcity and have focused all of their energy on establishing successful careers, only to find that a career only fulfills part of their needs. How can we do that? I don’t know, but I’m working on it, and I would ask that everyone think and pray and work together to determine how best we can share our message with the community, the message that this is a place and a community where everyone belongs, everyone is welcome at our Lord’s Table, and everyone can know the love of God. Amen.

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This article appeared in the Phelps County Focus print edition on April 18, 2024.

Have you read the Bible? There’s some strange stuff in there. In Numbers 21, the LORD sends poisonous serpents among the Israelites, and then commands Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. Anyone bitten by a poisonous serpent was healed by simply looking at the bronze serpent. Huh. I missed that first aid lesson in my Boy Scout training.

The Bible is also full of factual contradictions. Who killed Goliath? Well, in 1 Samuel 17, David did. That’s the story we all know. But in 2 Samuel 21, Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim did. Huh.

The more I read the Bible, the more strange stuff and contradictions I find. I grew up in the church, but then as I reached adulthood, my doubts began to grow. How could the sun stand still for Joshua? How could Elijah call down fire from heaven? How could a dead man come back to life? Doubts upon doubts upon doubts. The Gospel seemed like a house of cards. Some of those cards were pretty flimsy—concepts and events that I just couldn’t accept—and so the whole thing collapsed.

A lot of people have a faith like that. Some people claim that there are only two choices: take the Bible literally and accept everything in it as factually true, or take the Bible literally and reject it in its entirety because of its internal contradictions and its contradictions with science and known historical facts. Yet there is a third option.

Doubts are real, and are the natural result of taking the Bible seriously. If you start with a literal reading and use the inherent contradictions to reject it all, then you don’t have to seriously consider its teachings and its insights into the way to live with one another. But if you do take it seriously, you can see that God pervades the text from Genesis right through to Revelation. You can see that God’s messengers taught the Israelites what they needed to know in order to become a priestly nation. You can see that the major and minor prophets gave piercing commentaries on their own societies that still ring true today. And you can see that Jesus revealed the best way to live.

You can accept all of that without believing that Jesus was raised from the dead. I’ve heard people say that Jesus was a great prophet, or their role model. But he was more than that. He was the Son of the living God, the Source of our being, the Word made flesh. He showed us how to live, and how to die. He showed us that there is always hope. He showed us that he has conquered sin and death forever, and he invited us to live into his eternal kingdom now.

It’s OK to doubt what you have been taught. God can handle it. God is strong enough. In doubting, we find the flaws in our house of cards, and in seeking answers to our questions, we end up with a more flexible and resilient relationship with our risen Lord.

The Greek word in the Bible we translate as “faith” means something more like faithfulness or fidelity. Jesus doesn’t ask us to abandon our intellect or to stop seeking answers. Rather, he asks us to stay faithful to our calling despite our doubts. And that calling is to build God’s kingdom, to live into God’s kingdom, to forgive and to be forgiven, to work for the reconciliation of all, to create a community where everyone can thrive.

Doubt your beliefs. Doubt what you’ve been taught. Doubt the Bible, doubt all of the creeds from throughout the centuries, doubt everything. But never doubt that God loves you—you personally, each person, all of us together. Never doubt that God seeks a future where we can all bask in the glory of his love. And go and live as if you and everyone you meet are on a path that leads to that glory in Christ’s eternal kingdom. Amen.

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Preached on April 7, 2024, the Second Sunday of Easter, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on John 20:19-31.

Today, we pick up the story where we left off last week. Let’s review. Friday, Jesus was crucified, and shortly before sunset, he was buried. Saturday, the disciples presumably honored the Sabbath, while hiding from the authorities. Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, intending to care for the body of her Lord. She arrived and saw the tomb opened and empty. So she ran away in fear, thinking that someone had stolen the body, and told the disciples. Two of them listened to her, Peter and “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” which we think was probably John. John got to the tomb first, looked in, and saw nothing. Peter got to the tomb and went in, seeing only the unrolled linen cloths. John also went in, then, and the Gospel writer says that “he saw and believed.” What exactly did he believe? The author also says that they did not yet understand that Jesus had to die and be raised, so I guess John believed that Jesus’s body was really gone. But neither John nor Peter had any idea yet that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Mary Magdalene stayed at the tomb and wept. She had lost hope, but still had faith and love. For her faithfulness, she was rewarded by a visit from her risen Lord. She ran and told the disciples.

But did they believe her? Probably not. After all, Peter and John had just been at the tomb and they didn’t see anyone, so they probably chalked it up to some hysterical woman making things up. They gathered together and locked the doors because of their fears. If they had really believed that Jesus had conquered death, they would no longer have any fear. But they didn’t. Seeing is believing, and they hadn’t seen.

But suddenly, there is Jesus among them! I bet he caused quite a commotion! Whenever God breaks into our daily lives, a natural reaction is fear and astonishment. Angels always say, “Do not be afraid!” So Jesus’s first message is, “Peace be with you.” Christ is the source of divine peace and love, so whenever he shows up, we can cast our fears upon him and be filled with his peace.

He doesn’t stop there, though. He commands his disciples to go and do likewise. That’s why each Sunday, after the declaration of pardon, we share Christ’s peace with one another. The peace comes not from us, but from God. We are just the messengers who can help each other connect to the divine peace that passes understanding.

Jesus tells them, “Just as the Father has sent me, I also send you.” Jesus had a mission: to share the good news of God’s kingdom. He knew where that mission would take him: the cross, and then the grave. Yet in dying, he conquered death, as another step in establishing God’s eternal kingdom where we all live in peace and in right relationships with God and with each other. That reconciliation is a process, not an event, though. We are still striving to live into God’s kingdom, to heal our broken relationships, to bring peace to all of God’s people. And so Jesus sent his disciples to carry on, and by extension, he sends all of us to continue the mission.

The commission Jesus gave in John’s Gospel was first to go: Jesus was sent to Galilee and Judea; his disciples were sent to all the world. And then to forgive: “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you retain anyone’s sins, they are retained.” Some people read this as a command to judge the world, to determine whose sins are worthy of forgiveness. But when you think about it, Jesus hardly ever judged someone unworthy of forgiveness, except possibly people who were self-righteous. No, I read this as commanding the disciples to build God’s kingdom, an existence where everyone is reconciled to God and to each other. He was encouraging them to forgive one another for the sake of the beloved community, and cautioning them that if they failed to forgive one another, the brokenness would remain in the world.

This is hard work. Going forth, preaching the good news, forgiving people who sin against you: that can be very draining. But Jesus had a gift for the disciples: the breath of life. Like the wind that swept over the face of the waters at the dawn of Creation, or the breath of life that turned dust into Adam, or the breath that brought life to the dry bones that Ezekiel prophesied to, Jesus’s breath filled the disciples with new life. They thought their messianic movement had ended and their lives were in peril, but Jesus brought them back to life. He filled them with the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that moves among us today and empowers us to continue the work that the disciples began.

Well, Jesus gave the gift of the Holy Spirit to most of the disciples, anyway. I guess Thomas had stepped out to get dinner or something, and he missed it. Now, Thomas gets a bad rap, but the reality is that nobody believed that Jesus had risen until they saw him. Not Mary—she wept until Jesus spoke her name. Not Peter or John—they saw the empty tomb and ran away, and were only convinced when Jesus came to their room and showed himself. Well, poor Thomas missed out.

Do you ever feel like you’ve missed out on God? I have had some God encounters, but they were very subtle. I have a friend who had a vision that changed his life. We probably all know people who were “saved” at a Pentecostal service, who felt the power of the Holy Spirit move within them. I haven’t had visions or dramatic gifts of the Spirit. But I don’t need those to believe that Christ has risen! (He is risen indeed!) Some people do. Presbyterians are by-and-large process Christians, meaning that we grew up in the faith or we reasoned our way into faith, and that’s fine. Some people can’t access God that way and need a more tangible encounter. Christ meets us where we need him. Thomas needed to touch Jesus’s wounds in order to truly believe.

Jesus says to Thomas, Do not doubt, but believe! That’s a hard teaching, the way most people interpret it. Like many of you, I grew up in the church. Then like so many young people, I started to have my doubts. Have you read the Bible? There’s some strange stuff in there. How could Jesus turn water into wine? How could Elijah call down fire from heaven? How could the Red Sea part for the Israelites? And of course, the biggie: How could a dead man come back to life? I had doubts. I had doubts upon doubts upon doubts. The Gospel seemed like a house of cards. There were a few cards that seemed pretty flimsy, some concepts and events that I couldn’t get behind, and so the whole thing collapsed.

A lot of people’s faiths are something like that. If you subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Bible, you have basically two options. One, you could reject it all, because there are too many internal contradictions and contradictions with science and known historical facts. This is the atheist’s path. Or two, you could embrace it all and close your mind to all possible examples of errors or contradictions, concocting tortuous explanations of why two seemingly opposite statements are both true. This is the path of the fundamentalist, who would deny that it’s even a choice. They would say that of course it’s literally true—how could you think otherwise? They would say that if you doubt any part of it—if you doubt that the heavens and the earth were created in six days, roughly 4000 years ago, and that a man named Moses led 600,000 men out of slavery from Egypt, and everything else in the Old Testament, and everything in the Gospel accounts, then you cannot be a Christian and cannot be welcomed into the kingdom of God.

Well, eventually, I discovered that there is a different path. Doubts are real, and are the natural result of taking the Bible seriously. If you start with a literal reading and use the inherent contradictions to reject it all, then you don’t have to seriously consider its teachings and its insights into the way to live with one another. But if you do take it seriously, you can see that God pervades the text from Genesis right through to Revelation. You can see that God’s messengers taught the people what they needed to know in order to become a priestly nation. You can see that the major and minor prophets had piercing commentaries on their own societies that still ring true today. And you can see that Jesus revealed the best way to live.

You can accept all of that without believing that Jesus was raised from the dead. I’ve heard people say that Jesus was a great prophet, or their role model. But he was more than that. He was the Son of the living God, the Source of our being, the Word made flesh. He showed us how to live, and how to die. He showed us that there is always hope. He showed us that he has conquered sin and death forever, and he invited us to live into his eternal kingdom now.

But still, we doubt. I can proclaim Christ crucified and risen, and yet have reservations about the whole story. There is precious little in the historical record to corroborate the Gospel accounts, which themselves were written decades after the fact. Did John, or whoever wrote in John’s name, really get the story right? Why are there so many differences between the four Gospel accounts? These doubts and many more can nag at me and undermine my beliefs.

But that’s OK. Doubts are natural. They drive us to keep searching for answers, though each answer usually leads to more questions. We see as through a glass darkly, so there is much that we cannot comprehend. Like Thomas on Easter night, we hear the testimony of those whose faith is deep and certain. Yet like Thomas, we can stay in community and wait for Christ to appear. We can keep our eyes open for his presence in our friends, in our enemies, in the needy stranger.

Doubt everything you have been taught. In doubting, we find the flaws in our house of cards, and in seeking answers to our questions, we end up with a more flexible and resilient relationship with our risen Lord.

The Greek word in the Bible we translate as “faith” means something more like faithfulness or fidelity. Jesus doesn’t ask us to abandon our intellect or stop seeking answers. Rather, he asks us to stay faithful to our calling despite our doubts.

And what is that calling? To go. Just as Jesus was sent to ancient Galilee and Judea to proclaim his coming kingdom, we are also sent into all the world. We are sent to proclaim that God is alive, that Christ is alive, that the Holy Spirit flows in and through us all. We are sent to proclaim a coming kingdom where all people are welcome and equal before Christ’s throne. We are sent to build a community of peace and reconciliation where we all share God’s love. We are sent to forgive and to be forgiven.

Doubt your beliefs. Doubt what you’ve been taught. Doubt the Bible, doubt the Book of Confessions, doubt everything. But never doubt that God loves you—you personally, you all collectively, each person. Never doubt that God seeks a future where we can all bask in the glory of his love. And now go and live as if each one of you, all of you together, and everyone you meet are on a path that leads to that glory in Christ’s eternal kingdom. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on March 31, 2024, Easter Sunday. Based on John 20:1-18.

I want to start by backing up a week. You may recall that last week was Palm Sunday. Jesus borrowed a donkey and rode into Jerusalem triumphantly. What exactly his triumph was at that point, I don’t know. But the people loved him and cheered for him as he rode into town as if he were a conquering hero. They waved palm branches and shouted, “Hosanna!” That’s a Hebrew word that basically means, “Save us!” It’s an expression of praise for a coming savior who is deserving of special respect. They shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” The crowd clearly thought that Jesus was coming to up-end society and save them all in God’s name. This was essentially a political demonstration in support of Jesus and in opposition to Rome.

Next, either Sunday afternoon or Monday, Jesus committed his most openly rebellious act: the cleansing of the Temple. He came into the Court of the Gentiles, which was a big outer courtyard where people of every background could gather. It was a festival season, so there were lots of people from all around the Mediterranean. The Temple leaders had allowed vendors to set up in the Court of the Gentiles to sell sacrificial animals and currency that would be acceptable in the Temple. Jesus said, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” He drove out all the animals and flipped the moneychangers’ tables. Arguably, this was the critical event that set things in motion, leading ultimately to the events at the end of the week.

Over the next couple of days, Jesus and the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and priests sparred verbally. They all tried to trap him into saying something that would either turn the crowd against him or enable them to convince the Romans to kill him. But Jesus foiled their every effort. When they challenged his authority, he lifted up John the Baptist, whose followers filled the crowd, as his forerunner. When they tried to use tax law to force him to choose a side, he chose neither the crowd nor the Romans, but God alone. Stymied at every turn, the chief priests decided to use trickery and bribed Judas Iscariot.

When Thursday came around, Jesus knew that things were getting serious. He knew that he didn’t have much time left with his disciples. He knew that if he had anything important to tell them, now was his last chance. He said a lot that evening, about who he was, where he was going, and what would happen. It all came together, though, in a simple phrase: Remember me. He took bread, broke it, and said, “As often as you do this, remember me.” Not just when we have communion, but each time we eat, we should remember Jesus, our great teacher, the Son of God.

All week, and indeed before they ever came to Jerusalem, Jesus told his disciples that he would die. He told them that “the Son of Man will be lifted up,” a euphemism for the crucifixion that he knew awaited him, just as it awaited everyone that Rome perceived as a rebel and a threat. He kept saying it and saying it, but nobody really believed him. But indeed, on Friday, it happened, just as he predicted. And as he predicted, his followers all fell away.

See, if Jesus was a threat to the Roman occupiers, so were his disciples. So of course they ran and hid. I think there was more to it, though. They had placed all of their hopes and dreams on the movement that Jesus led, and here it was coming to an end. They couldn’t bear to see the ignominious death of their leader, which they knew would lead to the death of the movement, too. Some of them probably held out hope that Jesus would bring himself down from the cross, or call down legions of angels to defeat the Romans.

But that was not to be. Jesus died the death of a rebel, the death of a criminal. All four Gospels report the Roman soldiers and centurion and governor making absolutely sure that Jesus was dead. He wasn’t just comatose or something, but truly dead.

The disciples had all fallen away. They were all in hiding. But one person held true through all of this turmoil: Mary. That was an extremely common name in Jesus’s time, and so there is some confusion about which Mary is which, plus there are some anonymous women in the various stories. But I’ve read and listened to some recent research, and here’s what I think. The one key person who moves from the background to the foreground is Mary Magdalene. I believe that she was the sister of Lazarus, and in gratitude for Jesus’s miraculous restoration of her brother whom she had lost, she anointed Jesus with expensive perfumed ointment. She stayed true to Jesus, her Lord, who she believed to be the Messiah, the Son of the living God. She stood by the cross. When all the disciples fell away, only the women stayed true, and the only woman besides Jesus’s mother that is repeatedly identified among them was Mary Magdalene. She held on through the pain and grief of Jesus’ crucifixion, with the devotion of a sister who would do anything for her spiritual brother and Lord.

Friday evening, all hope had died. The movement that Jesus had started died with him. All that was left was mourning and sorrow. You’ve probably heard of the five stages of grief. I think it’s better to describe them as five modes of grief, five different ways that grief takes hold of you. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We see bargaining in the story of Lazarus: “Jesus, if only you had been here, you could have saved my brother.” Now, after her brother had been raised, her Savior was taken from her. She was perhaps in denial. She was holding on to some thin sliver of hope that maybe this wasn’t real.

But it was real, and Jesus was truly dead. Come Sunday, Mary did the only thing she could think of: she wanted to see and care for the body of her Lord, her brother, her friend, her teacher, the man who meant everything in the world to her. Now it was time for anger: not only was she deprived of the life of her teacher, but now she was also deprived of his body. She went to the garden seeking to show her devotion by caring for the body, and it was gone! Where could it be? Why would someone have unwrapped the graveclothes? What could possibly have happened?

The waves of grief came at her as depression. Deprived of her opportunity to perform funeral rites, she did the only thing she could do: she wept. Just as Jesus had wept when he learned that Lazarus was dead, Mary wept.

What kept her in the garden? Love. The only thing stronger than death is love. When someone passes away, our love for them doesn’t die, it just transforms. Mary stayed to show her love in the only way she knew how, with her simple presence. She stayed true to the end, and even beyond the end.

For her faith, for her love, for her fidelity and commitment to her Lord, Mary in turn was blessed. Though blinded by grief, she continued to seek her Lord. And because of her love, she found Him.

And yet, Jesus appeared at a time of his choosing. He waited until the time was right. How did he know? God knows! Indeed, often God knows exactly the right time to reveal his Truth to us. Sometimes, God comes to us in our joy, in those times of our greatest fulfillment, like at a wedding or the birth of a child or a reunion with someone you love. Often, though, God comes to us when all hope is lost. When we have nothing left, when emptiness seems to reach down to our very soul, there is Christ waiting for us.

Faith, hope, and love, these three remain; and the greatest is love. Mary had only the tiniest sliver of hope, but her faith was strong. Now, we often use “faith” to mean “treating something as if it were true despite the lack of evidence for it.” But that’s a fairly modern meaning of the word. “Faith” as Paul meant it, and as it is meant throughout the New Testament, is more like fidelity and commitment and staying true to your relationship with God. Mary had faith in that sense. She believed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God, and she acted on that understanding. But even more than faith, she acted out of love. She clung to a love that is greater than death, and through that love, she found her risen Lord.

In the same way, we are challenged to love through grief, to love through fear, to love our God who sometimes seems absent. And if we do, we know that Christ will reveal himself when we most need Him. Just as Jesus revealed himself to Mary when he knew she was ready, Christ comes to us when we are ready to receive him. He shows up in the needy, the homeless, and the imprisoned when we have something to give, and he shows up as our comforter, our guide, and our Savior when our pain has opened us to his healing touch.

On that first Easter, nobody really knew what would happen. In retrospect, the disciples understood what Jesus had been saying to them. In the moment, though, his promise seemed too far-fetched. They thought, sure, Jesus will rise in the great resurrection on the Last Day, along with the rest of us. They didn’t understand that Jesus meant that his resurrection would come now, and that he truly is the resurrection. With two thousand years of history, we might think we would have acted more like Mary than Peter. But at the time, Peter was running scared. He had good reasons to fear the Romans and the Temple authorities. Mary may have, too, but her yearning for her Lord overcame her fears. Both of them were trying to do their best in a bad situation.

Maya Angelou once said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” Unlike Peter, unlike Mary, unlike all of Jesus’s followers on that fateful day, we know that Christ has risen. We know that he has conquered death and brought us into a right relationship with God. We know that his love transcends all of the pain and struggles of this world. We know that Christ is in each person we meet, and that actually, we, the Church, are Christ’s body. We are Christ.

So now that we know better, let’s do better. Peter fled in fear, both at the time of Jesus’s arrest and after discovering an empty tomb. Mary did better: she stayed as close as she could to her Lord, with no real hope, only grief. We can do even better than that. We can stay true to our calling, stay true to our role as members of the body of Christ, and watch expectantly for Christ to show up in each other. We can watch for Christ, confident that he will reveal himself to share our greatest joys and our deepest sorrows.

Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed!) We know that Christ’s love transcends pain, and grief, and even death. We know that we have been promised life in His name. Let us demonstrate that knowledge by following Christ, by expecting his presence in our lives, and by participating as a part of His body, the Church universal. Amen.

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Sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on March 3, 2024, the Third Sunday in Lent. Based on John 2:13-22.

I’m going to start this morning with a little bit of history. In the earliest part of the Bible, Genesis, we read about the ancient Israelites worshipping God in a variety of places, places that seem holy like Bethel where Jacob had his dream of a ladder reaching to heaven. In Exodus, God and Moses instituted a sacrificial system based around the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting. This was a sanctified tent, or rather, three tents nested like a Russian doll, and sacrifices to God could only be made there. After the Israelites settled in what was originally Canaan, they set up several shrines where sacrifices were made, but eventually, the Tabernacle was moved to Jerusalem and worship was centralized there. Solomon built the first Temple, and all of the rural shrines were destroyed.

A few centuries later, Judah was conquered by Babylon, the Temple was destroyed, and the Israelites had a crisis of sorts. How would their worship continue when they were exiled and there was no temple? When the exile ended, they rebuilt the Temple and doubled down on its centralized sacrificial system. What had gone wrong? Why were they conquered and exiled? Obviously, their worship of God had not been pure enough. The priests made sure that all Jews knew that worship could only happen at the Temple, which needed to stay pure.

One aspect of that purity was a set of concentric walls, with rules about who could pass which ones. The outermost Court of the Gentiles was open to everyone. In part, this reflected Isaiah’s prophecy:

the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the Sabbath and do not profane it
and hold fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar,
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.

Isaiah 56:6-7

This outermost court was 35 acres—a pretty big space in a crowded city.

Next came the Court of Women, where Gentiles were excluded but all Jews, male and female, were welcome. Next was the Court of Israel, where only male Jews were welcome. This is where the priests would perform their typical sacrifices. Next was the Holy Place where certain elements were contained like the incense altar and showbread. Finally, the innermost area was the Holy of Holies, where only the high priest could enter, and only once a year on Yom Kippur.

This elaborate system ensured that the holy places stayed “clean.” Only people who were chosen by God could approach, and how close depended on their chosen status. It seems a little strange from our modern perspective, but it worked for them.

The Temple was the center of the sacrificial system that was spelled out in the Torah and the destination of several annual festivals. There was an expectation that all male Jews would visit the Temple on the high holy days: Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot, and Yom Kippur. My guess is that only the wealthy would visit from far off places on a regular basis, but there was an expectation that those who had the means would make a pilgrimage. It reminds me a little bit of the hajj, the annual festival that Muslims celebrate in Mecca. There are very strict rules around the hajj, regarding who is allowed to come and what they are allowed to do. Similarly, there were strict rules for celebrating Passover at the Temple.

One of those rules was that certain sacrifices needed to be made with unblemished animals. Another was that an annual Temple tax was due and could only be paid using certain coins that did not have any graven images on them. Let’s suppose you’re a Jew who lived far away, say, in Corinth. How would you get to Jerusalem for Passover? Probably by ship first, and then by foot, walking a long way through various Greek-speaking Roman provinces. If you were going to Passover, you needed a lamb. If you had to make a purification offering or some other sacrificial offering, maybe you needed some other animal like a dove or an ox. Would you really bring an animal all the way from Corinth on the ship? Probably not. Too many things could go wrong along the way. Oh, and you would probably be using whatever currency was in regular use in your hometown or in the provinces you passed through.

So now you’re at the Temple and need to come up with an unblemished lamb and some currency to pay your Temple tax. Wouldn’t it be convenient if someone was selling lambs right there where you needed one? Wouldn’t it be convenient if someone would change your bad currency into something you could use at the Temple?

So that’s why there were people who set up shop in the Temple to sell animals and change money. That wasn’t a problem per se. I read somewhere that during Passover in this era, they might sacrifice 277,000 lambs. That’s a lot of animals, and a lot of logistics to deal with. I can’t fault the priests and Levites for working out a system where vendors would provide them right where they were needed.

The problem was that they filled the Court of the Gentiles. Remember those concentric courtyards where only certain people could proceed inwards towards God? The Court of the Gentiles was the only one that was truly open. If you were a God-fearer, that is, someone who embraced Judaism but was not actually Jewish, you would want to be where the action was just to soak up the spiritual energy of that place. But what if you couldn’t get in because there was a bazaar going on?

As we read the Gospels, we see that Jesus was in conflict with the religious establishment and local government throughout his ministry. Yet whenever the conflict got too acute, he would fade away and avoid escalation. His one exception was the cleansing of the Temple. This was the one time he actively sought confrontation with the establishment. He went straight to the heart of the system and challenged them. It would be like someone protesting against the Catholic church at the Vatican. The authorities would see it as something more than a protest—the start of a revolution. This was the one time when Jesus publicly embraced his messianic calling to literally overturn the systems that were oppressing His people. And it had predictable results: cleansing the Temple started a chain of events that ended on Calvary with Jesus’s ignominious death at the hands of an oppressive occupying government that sought to crush the hopes of the movement he had started.

Why did Jesus die? That’s a huge theological question that we can discuss some other time. The literal reason, though, was that he was perceived as a threat to the stability of Roman rule in Judea and the relationship that the priests had established with their occupiers. And the most obvious act Jesus made was to remove barriers between people and God.

The history of the Christian church has been one of cycles of inclusion and exclusion. In the early days, we expanded beyond Jews to include Gentiles. As the church grew, various heresies were denounced, and their adherents were excommunicated. The Reformation was marked by attempts both to make God more accessible, such as translating the Bible into everyday languages, and to control who “counts” as Christian, such as the Anabaptist movement. The tension continues to this day. Yet Jesus demonstrated what was most critical to him: removing barriers that kept people from worshipping God.

I’d like you to think about people who are either unchurched or have been hurt by the church, and what barriers we might put up that keep them from worshipping with us. For starters, we have this beautiful church on a hill that looks a little bit intimidating. Worship spaces are intended to fill us with awe at our transcendent Lord, but awe can lead to fear.

Beyond the look and feel of the church building, what about our schedule? When I moved to Rolla, I made a concerted effort to keep my Sunday mornings clear and dedicated to worship. Previously, we would often travel on the weekend, or do yard work or other home projects, or whatever. Truthfully, in those days, 9:45 was a little late for us. We would have preferred to be done with church by 9:00 so we could get on with the rest of the day. My kids were never hard-core athletes, but I know many kids are, and have games on Sundays.

Let’s think about what happens in here each Sunday. It’s a very traditional service. I wouldn’t say that it’s “high church” exactly, but there is a definite formal feel to the service. That can make people very uncomfortable. It’s like going to a fine restaurant and not knowing which fork to use. Is it appropriate to shout an “amen”? What is appropriate to say when the worship leader asks for prayer requests? Oh, and what should you wear?

I don’t have good answers to all of this. I personally like worshipping at 9:45 am on Sundays, dressing nice, and following a traditional worship format. I’m just saying that perhaps some aspects of what we do are barriers that are keeping people out.

Another problem we face is that we are Christians, and therefore inherit all of the good and bad of our colleagues in ministry. Christians are known for being judgmental. Suppose you were hurt by some church because, say, you got divorced or dared to challenge the pastor. Or perhaps you or someone you know were exploited in some way by a church leader and the congregation chose the perpetrator or the institution over the victim. Or perhaps you consider yourself a “sinner” and don’t think you would fit in with good church folks. There’s a sign at the church down the hill that says, “Come as you are; you can change inside.” I’m sure they intend it to be welcoming, but I read it as exclusionary. I read it as saying, The person you are right now is not good enough to belong with us. You can come worship here, but only if you agree to change into the kind of person we think you should be.

Or maybe, someone thinks they can’t afford to join a church. Yes, it’s important to financially support your spiritual home, but we should never give the impression that people who are too poor to give are not welcome here. The ancient Jewish sacrificial system had options: if you couldn’t afford a lamb, you could buy two doves instead. I could imagine someone making their pilgrimage to Jerusalem, then seeing the prices on all of the animals and thinking, Wow, I guess I can’t really participate like I thought. That’s at least part of what Jesus protested against.

I’m going to give you all homework again. I want you to seriously look at and think about and pray about our church and the people who we would like to have worshipping with us, and what ways we are creating barriers that keep them out. I want you to think about ways we can tell people that it’s OK: God loves you for who you are, and so do we. I want you to think about ways we can meet people where they are and accommodate their needs. I want you to think about ways we can help people experience the loving God that we know, and ways that we can truly and actively love our neighbors.

Jesus flipped tables as a prophetic indictment of the way the priests and Levites were keeping people out of the Temple and keeping them away from God. A few decades later, the Temple building was destroyed. But more importantly, a few days later, Jesus laid down his life so that God could break free of a system that tried to tame God, so that we can all be a part of God’s family. Let us seek ways to welcome more of our siblings so that they can experience the love of our risen Lord through His body, which is the Church. Amen.

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Below is a lightly edited announcement that I made at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on February 11, 2024, regarding our Ash Wednesday service.

The Stoics have a saying, “Memento mori,” which means, “Remember death.” It’s their way of remembering that death is inevitable, so we need to appreciate the present. This week, Lent begins with Ash Wednesday. We will have a short service in the back of the sanctuary where I will impose ashes with words drawn from Genesis, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.” This is our way of remembering that death is inevitable and to spend the next six weeks in penitence and prayer. We’ve had a few reminders of death lately. Last week, we learned that the Reads lost their daughter, Karen. Then on Friday two days ago, we learned that the Looks lost DC. Yesterday, I found out that my aunt passed away. I won’t pretend to remember or even know all of the loved ones that we have all lost recently, and nobody can ever truly know the grief another person is experiencing.

However, we end this season of Epiphany with a vision of Jesus glorified, shining radiantly on a mountaintop. We will also end the season of Lent with an even more glorious vision, of our risen Lord who conquered sin and death. Unlike the Stoics, we have faith that this world is not the end. We have a hope that in this life we see as through a glass darkly, but one day, we will see God face to face.

So join us this Wednesday to enter the season of Lent with the proper respect for the sinfulness, brokenness, and pain of this world, and our own sinfulness. But at the same time, remember that the things of this world are passing away as God reconciles and restores all things. And remember that we can experience a foretaste of the kingdom of God right here and now, but will one day enjoy God’s reign in all of its fullness.

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Sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on Transfiguration Sunday, February 11, 2024. Based on Mark 9:2-9.

Let’s start today by talking about the characters in the story. Jesus, obviously. We’ll get to him in a little while. James and John were the sons of Zebedee, sometimes called the Sons of Thunder. They were the ones who, in the next chapter, will ask to sit at Jesus’s right and left hands when he comes to reign. Bold, brazen even, full of fiery zeal.

Simon Peter is often seen as the chief disciple. Simon was his birth name, but Jesus said that he would be known as Peter, for on this rock will his church be founded. I sometimes call him Rocky, which is a more literal translation. And sometimes he acts like Rocky, a little obtuse. In the previous chapter, Peter first declares that Jesus is the Messiah, and then immediately demonstrates that he has NO IDEA what that means. And on it goes throughout the Gospels.

Moses we probably all know well. He led the Israelites out of Egypt. He was the one to make a covenant with God that turned this group of loosely-organized clans into a mighty nation. Four of the first five books of the Bible are basically about Moses’s life, which ended shortly before the Israelites entered the Promised Land.

Elijah is someone that we don’t talk about too much. He was a great prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel after it split off from Judah, in the time of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. He is a major character in the book of 1 Kings. Although he was one of the greatest prophets, he didn’t leave a book of teachings behind like Isaiah or Jeremiah or even the minor prophets like Obadiah. Instead, he taught with his actions: he challenged the cult of Baal and proclaimed that Israel should worship only God. He proclaimed that Baal was in fact not a god at all and vanquished Baal’s prophets. Unfortunately, that put him at odds with Ahab and, especially, Jezebel, who sought to kill him.

Elijah fled from Israel and sat down beside a broom tree to die. Fortunately, God sent an angel, and after a nap and a snack, he was revived and moved on to Mount Horeb, another name for Mount Sinai where Moses received the Law. On Mount Horeb, Elijah had a vivid encounter with God. In 1 Kings 19, we read:

‘God said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”’

1 Kings 19:11-18

God went on to give Elijah instructions for how he was to carry on the work he had begun, and how he should recruit his successor, Elisha. We heard in the first reading this morning that Elisha accompanied Elijah to the very end, until Elijah was swept up into heaven.

But remember, Elijah heard all of the craziness of a world coming apart, like we do every day. We hear of wars and storms and earthquakes and volcanoes and all sorts of violence and strife in the world. But God is not in the noise and terror. God is in the silence. God is a still, small voice speaking to us when we can shut out all the noise in our lives.

I receive a daily email from the Center for Action and Contemplation, which was founded by Father Richard Rohr. The basic premise of the CAC is that our action emerges from our contemplation. We can best hear God speaking to us when we are contemplative, engaged in prayer as a dialogue with God instead of just telling God what’s on our mind. Like Elijah, we need to shut out the noise of a world gone mad so that we can hear God whispering to us, calling to us, telling us how to live and how to build God’s kingdom.

Let me return now to Moses. Where Elijah was pretty much a solitary figure through most of his ministry, Moses was a part of a community. In fact, he led a nation of supposedly 600,000 Israelites who escaped from the Egyptians and wandered in the desert for 40 years. One problem was that the people refused to encounter God directly. They said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” So Moses went up on Mount Sinai and entered a cloud full of fire and lightning and thunder and smoke. Moses encountered God face to face, and then brought God’s word back down to the people.

This event is best known for the Ten Commandments, the fundamental rules of the covenant between God and the Israelites that would make them a priestly people. Moses went on to dictate hundreds of other laws that governed their worship, their family lives, their business practices, and a host of other day-to-day activities. He told them what to do. But then in Deuteronomy, he promised that one day another prophet would come to tell the people more.

Well, that happened. Throughout Israel’s history, God sent prophets with messages for God’s people in Judah and Israel, or in exile in Babylon, or as subjugated people in a province of the Persian Empire. God kept sending prophets that the people would mostly ignore, imprison, or kill. Finally, God sent His Son.

So here we are back on a mountain, and Peter, John, and James have a vivid encounter with God. This is a sign of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom. Elijah had been taken up to heaven without dying; Moses had died on the border of ancient Canaan. Yet here they were alive and well and talking with Jesus. Suddenly, the glory of the Lord shone all around them. This was the same cloud that alighted on Mount Sinai and made Moses’s face glow so brightly that he had to wear a veil to talk to the people. This was the same cloud that filled the Tabernacle that first housed the Ark of the Covenant, and the same cloud that filled the Temple when it was consecrated. This is the tangible presence of God shining all around the three disciples.

And then a voice: “LISTEN TO HIM!” Now, this wasn’t a suggestion like, Hey, please be quiet because that guy is going to read a story to you. No, this was a command like a parent gives a child or a boss gives an employee. When your boss says, “LISTEN UP!” you know that means you need to listen to what they say, and then do it. Pay attention! I’m telling you something important, so listen to what I say, then get to work doing it! That was the force of the language God used with the disciples. Jesus is in charge here, so listen to what he has to say, and then act on it.

So, what did Jesus have to say to the disciples? Well, first he tells them to keep this all a secret until after he is raised from the dead. Kinda strange. But I think Jesus wanted to make sure that when they started telling people about Jesus’s message, it had some strength behind it, the strength that comes with conquering sin and death.

But the rest of Jesus’s message was something like this: The kingdom of God is at hand! That is, heaven is breaking through. It’s close to us in time and in space. It’s right here among us, ready to embrace our open hearts. And God’s kingdom is marked first and foremost by love. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love one another with a self-sacrificing love like Jesus demonstrated. Let your love be more than an emotion, but an action, a commitment of your whole self to actively care for your neighbor. Just as you do to the least of these, so you do to Jesus.

Jesus asked for our devotion. He asked us to follow him. The words “belief” and “faith” have shifted meaning over the years, but if you go back to the original language of the Bible, Jesus did not ask us to intellectually agree with some orthodoxy or accept something unprovable as fact. No, he asked us to commit to walking the path that he walked, doing what he did, loving as he loved. Jesus demonstrated that his way of love is the way of the servant and the way of the cross.

The Brief Statement of Faith that I’m sure you have all been seriously studying starts out with, “In life and in death we belong to God.” That’s the first principle: belonging. Jesus asked us to belong to Him and his community. We should identify not as Missourians or Americans or Presbyterians, but as members of Jesus’s family that transcends all labels. Then each section starts with, “We trust”: We trust in Jesus Christ, we trust in God whom Jesus called Abba, Father, and we trust in God the Holy Spirit. Faith is an action, a reliance on our triune God who we can trust every day with our eternal lives.

So I asked you last week to internalize perhaps three or four main ideas within the Brief Statement of Faith. There’s a lot in it, and whatever resonates with you is right for you. One thing that is right for me is this: “The Spirit … sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor, and binds us together with all believers in the one body of Christ, the Church.” We are one in the Spirit, yet we cannot see that oneness because of our brokenness. Our task is to seek each day to see that unity among the diversity of God’s people.

Here’s another one, near the end and lifted from Romans: “With believers in every time and place, we rejoice that nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing can separate us. Nothing. God’s love is right here among us. God is close at hand, ready to give us that love if we will only be willing to receive it.

And yet, God is also transcendent. In Jesus’s transfiguration, the disciples got a glimpse of his transcendent divine nature. Jesus was a man who looked like any other man, and yet he was also fully divine and glorious. We can experience Christ’s presence in each person we meet. We get closer to God as we get closer to one another. Jesus chose to reveal his divine transcendence only to those who knew him best. Similarly, it is the people we are closest to who reveal God to us. We all have a hidden self that we only share with certain people. In sharing ourselves, we reveal God as well. And in forging these close, loving relationships with one another, with God at the center, we encounter God’s transcendent love that permeates the cosmos.

So listen up! Jesus taught his disciples that the kingdom of God is at hand! God’s reign is close to us in time and in space, just waiting for us. Jesus taught that the way into his kingdom is a sacrificial love that values each person for the divine spark dwelling within them. Let’s get to work now doing what Jesus commands us: committing ourselves to a life of service to God’s people through whom we encounter the glory of God. Amen.

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Sermon preached on February 4, 2024, Fifth Sunday After Epiphany, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 and Mark 1:29-39.

Richard Bach is the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which was incidentally the source of my name. It was his first novel and a breakout hit. He is a pilot by nature and training, though, so after its success, Bach turned back to flying as a career. Eventually, he wrote another novel, Illusions. In its preface, he wrote, “I do not enjoy writing at all. If I can turn my back on an idea, out there in the dark, if I can avoid opening the door to it, I won’t even reach for a pencil. But once in a while there’s a great dynamite-burst of flying glass and brick and splinters through the front wall and somebody stalks over the rubble, seizes me by the throat and gently says, ‘I will not let you go until you set me, in words, on paper.’ That’s how I met Illusions.”

When we speak about a calling, that’s usually what we have in mind. God calls you to do something in particular and won’t let you go. You feel a sense of urgency about it, and it becomes all-consuming. Maybe, like Jonah, you try to avoid your calling, and life falls apart. You find yourself metaphorically swallowed by a great fish, and decide, OK, I’ll do it, I’ll follow my calling.

That’s not the only type of calling, though. A more common form is where you have just a subtle feeling of being on the right path. You feel a little urge to do something, and it feels right. So you do it some more, and it feels even more right. Eventually, you find yourself on a path that is just so natural, you can’t imagine your life any differently. That’s more or less the way I would describe my calling to church leadership. I didn’t have a great vision or anything like that. I just started doing things, and they felt right, so I did some more, and now here I am.

There is a third form of calling, too, similar to what we read in Mark this morning. Jesus did some amazing things, healing Simon’s mother-in-law and many other people. So, people wanted to follow him. Simon and the others who sought Jesus didn’t really know what they were getting themselves into. All they knew was that they wanted to be a part of whatever Jesus was doing.

Whatever form your calling takes, the important thing is to act on it. Grow into it. If you don’t know what God is asking you to do, perhaps a little time encountering the scripture together this morning could help.

Paul’s calling was of the first type. He had a dramatic encounter on the road to Damascus. It took him a little while to decipher its meaning, but once he did, he knew he had to act on it. He was called to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles around the Greek-speaking Roman Empire. This was a transformational message in many ways. First, he had to transform Judaism itself. In Judea, the dominant schools of thought within Judaism were fundamentally nationalistic to varying degrees. Most Jews in Judea thought that Jerusalem was the very center of the cosmos, that historical Israel was the essential homeland, and that “real” Jews were descendants of Abraham. Out in the Diaspora, though, Hellenized Jews had a more flexible understanding. Jerusalem and historical Israel still figured largely in their belief system, but so did the local synagogue. Proselytes, that is, Gentiles who converted to Judaism, were somewhat common.

Paul was born in that Hellenized Jewish environment. His encounter with our risen Lord transformed his beliefs even further. Now, he realized that proselytes did not need to become Jewish to become a part of God’s family. Greeks did not need to be circumcised and initiated into Judaism. They just needed to be baptized and welcomed into Christ’s family, which transcends Abraham’s earthly descendants.

So, as Paul wrote in today’s passage, he lived as a Jew among Jews and as a Greek among Greeks. Between his encounter on the road to Damascus and his travels to Corinth and Ephesus and other cities around the Roman Empire, he spent years in study to determine what was essential to participating in God’s kingdom and what was only culturally relevant to being a Jew.

We could read this passage and think, Paul just goes along with whatever people want to do. He’s just some easygoing, you-do-you kind of guy, right? WRONG! Paul never held back when people were violating some important tenet of this newly-developing religion. I would not characterize any of his writings as “gentle.” He was more of a firebrand, never afraid of a confrontation.

Instead, we should see this as encouraging relational evangelism, rather than colonial evangelism. Pastor Dennis talked about relational evangelism a couple of weeks ago. Colonial evangelism is what a lot of Christians did over the past few centuries. Colonial evangelism emerges from a belief that our God is the True God, and the way we understand God is the only way to understand God, and the way we live is the only right way to live in God’s kingdom. There were some great successes over the centuries. One article I read concluded that there was a positive correlation between Christian missionary activity and the strength of democracy among colonized peoples in the Pacific. Missionaries also brought medicine and hygiene practices and many other benefits to primitive societies, and dismantled evil practices like cannibalism and human sacrifice. But along the way, some of them also destroyed local cultures that were supremely life-giving. They destroyed inherited knowledge about the best way to live in that place and ecosystem. They disrupted and destroyed the lives of children. And they paved the way for military conquest that ultimately led to the loss of freedom for millions of people.

Many forms of evangelism in America today are colonial in some sense. They imagine that there is only one right way to live and only one right way to believe and only one right way to follow God, and they insist that everyone join in. This is a major election year, so I feel compelled to remind everyone that Jesus was not a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or anything else. No political party can claim to follow God’s law perfectly. No nation has been specially chosen by God—not the modern state of Israel, not America, none. We have all been chosen to be a part of God’s kingdom. We all have different ways of doing God’s will.

The task before us, then, is to determine what is essential and what is not. Many of the members of this congregation have at some time been ordained an elder or deacon and pledged to be guided by the Book of Confessions and Book of Order. Well, the first chapter of the Book of Order states that “Human beings have no higher goal in life than to glorify and enjoy God now and forever, living in covenant fellowship with God and participating in God’s mission.” It goes on to say that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church, who calls the Church into Being. This is essential. The portion of the Book of Order that relates to worship lays out a fourfold ordo, saying that our worship should be structured as Gathering, the Word, the Sacraments, and Sending.

But elsewhere it says, “We acknowledge that all forms of worship are provisional and subject to reformation according to the Word of God.” What that means is, we don’t have to worship in a sanctuary on Sunday mornings at 9:45 am with a piano and organ. We don’t have to center the worship on a sermon where one person talks and everyone else just sits and listens. We don’t need to have a choir. We don’t have to wear robes, or use liturgical colors for our vestments and paraments, or anything else. These are all choices that we have made. They are good choices, and they are meaningful to me as they probably are to most of you gathered here today, but they are not essential.

You know what else is not essential? “Christianese.” That’s the special language we use that marks us as insiders. I just used a bunch of it. What is a sanctuary? Well, the name means someplace holy, but we have taken it to mean a large room marked with symbols of our faith where we gather to worship. What really is the difference between a sanctuary and a chapel? We could use other words, like auditorium. What are paraments and liturgical colors? Paraments are these cloths that we put on the pulpit and table. Oh, a pulpit could just as well be called a podium, I suppose. Liturgy is literally the work of the people, but it has come to mean the words we say in our worship and the seasons of the church and things like that.

OK, those are all churchy words that you probably wouldn’t use in casual conversation. But there are others that have slippery meanings and can push people away from church. Next Monday, a campus group is having a sort of interfaith dialogue. We were trying to decide what topics would be meaningful to people from a wide range of faith traditions—Christian, Muslim, Hindu, secular humanist. One guy suggested “salvation.” I pushed back against that because there are a LOT of assumptions built into the word. “Salvation” means being saved—but from what? If a person doesn’t come from a specifically Christian background, or doesn’t accept the doctrine of Hell, then “salvation” becomes meaningless. What about “grace”? It’s hard enough to explain what grace is to another Christian, let alone someone outside of a Christian context.

Again in the Book of Order, we find that, “The Church is to be a community of witness, pointing beyond itself through word and work to the good news of God’s transforming grace in Christ Jesus its Lord.” If we want to witness to and transform THE WORLD, then we need to meet people where they are. We cannot simply serve people who are just like us. We need to serve people who need to know the God of love that we know. That means learning to see life from their perspective and speaking to their needs.

I’m a professor, so I’m going to give you homework, but I won’t be collecting it or grading it. I still want you to do it, and yes, it will be on the test, the test that our Lord will give you when the race is run. If you have a specific calling—specific people that you want to serve and with whom you want to share the Gospel—your task this week is to learn as much as you can about their perspective. If you do NOT have a specific calling in mind and you’re still searching for one, choose Millennials in central Missouri. Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996, so they are right now between 28 and 43 years old. Probably beyond college and into raising families, if they followed the traditional path. Learn all that you can about what they’ve been through in the past decade and what their needs are today. Do not assume that their life at age 40 is like your life was at age 40. If you have kids or grandkids in this age group, do not assume that everyone in that group is like your family. Read articles online. If there’s a good book that you find, tell people about it. Learn all that you can.

And then there’s a second part of your homework. Once you see life through their eyes, the task before you, and the task before all of us, is to show them a path to the God that we know. The path should start where they are, and lead to a life of love and community. Just as you need to know where they are coming from, you need to know what you believe so you know where to lead them. So the second task I’m giving you is to read the Brief Statement of Faith that you should have received on the way in. This was added to our Book of Confessions when the historically northern and southern halves of what is now PC(USA) merged in 1983. It has some great stuff in it. You might not 100% agree with it all, or even understand it all. But I want you to spend some time with it and internalize those tenets of our faith that really resonate with you, the things that reflect your understanding of God, of Christ, of the Church, and of our place in the world. Maybe three or four things that are really, truly meaningful to you.

It’s time now to turn to the Lord’s Table to celebrate the Eucharist. That’s some more Christianese. If you really think about what it is we are about to do, it’s hard to understand, and even harder to explain to an outsider. I’m not sure that anyone really knows what happens here at the Table. But I do know this: Through this Sacrament, Christ is here among us, and the Triune God sustains us. Through this Sacrament, we are connected to the one holy, apostolic, and catholic Church, God’s people in every place and every time. And we are empowered to go forth and build God’s kingdom. Amen.

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My latest article in the Phelps County Focus, published January 10, 2024. Here’s a teaser:

For about a decade, I have gone elk hunting every year with my friend Wayne, who has been hunting elk for probably 30 years.

In his early days, Wayne used a topographical map and a compass. Topo maps are great, at least if you know where you are on them. In the area where we hunt, near Durango, Colorado, the original maps were made about 100 years ago and revised in 1973. Their details are reasonably good, but, of course, they don’t reflect any changes in the last 50 years, and the resolution isn’t super fine.

We all still carry a map and a compass, as backup.

Not long before I started hunting with him, though, Wayne started using a GPS….

Continued at https://www.phelpscountyfocus.com/faith/article_616818ee-aff8-11ee-90dc-afc1e75b9dd3.html

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Homily preached at Presbyterian Manor on January 14, 2024. Based on 1 Samuel 3:1-10.

What does it mean to be “called”? In the story of Samuel’s calling, he is sleeping next to the Ark of the Covenant, the holiest possible place, and God literally called his name. Even with this obvious calling, Samuel did not understand at first, and it took his mentor, Eli, three times to figure out what was going on. Fortunately, God was persistent and kept calling until Samuel answered.

I suppose there are still some people who hear the literal voice of God calling them and telling them what to do. Not to be overly cynical, but a lot of people who claim to hear God are actually schizophrenic and hear something that is a product of a diseased brain. Most people who claim to know what God wants don’t literally hear God speaking to them. Rather, they intuit what God wants from their life experiences, from what they read, and perhaps from what other people say to them.

A former colleague of mine tells this story. At the time it occurred, he was already in academia, but unsure of his future. Two different strangers approached him and told him that he should be a professor. He interpreted that as a divine intervention keeping him on the path he was on, instead of veering off to do something different with his life.

The story of my calling is a little different. I grew up in the church, then fell away in college, as many people do. I came back to the church shortly after I quit drinking and right after moving to Rolla. Ten years later, our pastor, Lou Ellen, got sick one Saturday and asked me to deliver her sermon. Now, I’m an experienced public speaker, so reading a sermon was no big deal. But I took her sermon and added a personal story to it, just to make it a little bit my own.

The next year, Lou Ellen had to travel for some reason and asked me to preach for her. This wasn’t just reading her sermon, but writing my own. I wouldn’t say that it was the best sermon I’ve ever preached, but the process and the result felt right. I just had a feeling that I was doing what God wanted me to do.

So, I kept going down that path. I took some classes from the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. I kept preaching, occasionally at my church and then at First Presbyterian Church of Cuba. My brother-in-law, a retired seminary professor, gave me some tips along the way that helped me to grow into the preacher that I am today. When Lou Ellen left, I stepped up and started preaching even more and growing into a larger leadership role in the congregation.

I think that’s the main way that God calls us. Rarely do we hear a voice calling to us in the night. Rarely do we have a vision, or a dream. More often, we have a feeling, a sense of purpose, a sense that what we are doing is aligned with God’s will. Sometimes, we will get prodded along that path by people who know us well, or sometimes by strangers who see something in us. I also write an article quarterly for the Phelps County Focus, and my last one really resonated with people. That showed me that I was onto something, that I had glimpsed the Truth, God’s Truth, and that I could perhaps illuminate the world for others.

So, what is God asking you to do? I know that you are limited now by age and health. But everyone here is beloved by God and has the capability of sharing God’s love with others. How can you share God’s love and help to build God’s kingdom? May God bless you with insight, courage, and wisdom to participate in God’s work in the world. Amen.

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Sermon on September 3, 2023, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Matthew 16:21-28. Let me back up just a bit. This passage starts with, “From that time on.” What time? Well, Jesus was traveling with his disciples and came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, which is way up north, 25 miles north …

Continue reading "What Are You Prepared To Do?"

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Jonathan Kimball wrote this sermon to be preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on August 13, 2023, using Matthew 14:22-33. Due to illness, he was unable to preach, and Susan Murray preached a modified version. The podcast reflects her changes, which add a different perspective. We’re about in the middle of Matthew and pretty …

Continue reading "Trust in the Lord"

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Preached on August 6, 2023, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Matthew 14:13-21. Let me set the scene. The passage right before this one is about Herod Antipas and John the Baptist. John had been critical of Herod and his wife Herodias, so they both wanted rid of him. Herod arrested him but …

Continue reading "A Miraculous Feast!"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on July 23, 2023. Based on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. In today’s agricultural parable, we hear about “weeds” among the wheat. The Greek word used is “zizanion,” generally understood to be darnel. This is an especially undesirable weed for a couple of reasons. First, it looks very much like …

Continue reading "Let It Grow"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on July 16, 2023. Based on Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23. Who here is a gardener? Rhonda is, and her parents are, but I’m not. My preference is to buy produce at the store, or perhaps at the farmer’s market. If we must grow our own vegetables, then my preference …

Continue reading "Sowing God’s Love"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on July 2, 2023. Based on Romans 6:12-23. Brené Brown is a researcher in the field of social work. She catapulted to fame in 2010 when she gave a TEDx talk called “The Power of Vulnerability.” Her research is primarily in the area of leadership, vulnerability, and shame, …

Continue reading "Freedom for Reconciliation"

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The Phelps County Focus has a Faith page that features a variety of voices from the community. I have joined the rotation, which is now about every four months. Here is my first article, which was inspired by my study of Matthew 9:35-10:23: https://www.phelpscountyfocus.com/faith/article_94def9f4-175f-11ee-9f7d-d3131c9a5ea1.html

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on June 25, 2023. Based on Matthew 10:25-39. Have you all heard of Brother Jed? He was a traveling preacher, at one time based in Columbia and later based in Terre Haute. He traveled around the country, mostly the Midwest, mostly visiting college campuses. He and his followers …

Continue reading "The Vertical and the Horizontal"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on John 14:15-21.

Today’s passage is one of the several that serve as the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity. Looking ahead, John Nipper will be preaching on Trinity Sunday, sparing me from the burden of trying to explain it. Hey, he has a doctorate, so he should be qualified, right? If you’d like a good laugh, there’s a video from Lutheran Satire called “St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies.” Basically, every analogy we can come up with has been declared heretical, so we’re left with these complicated explanations like in this passage. Jesus says, I will send the Spirit, and he will be in you, and you will be in me, and I will come to you, and you will know that I am in my Father and I am in you.

OK, I give up. I’m not going to try to explain the Trinity. But I do feel an obligation to talk about the Holy Spirit. Jesus says he will send the parakletos. What the heck is that? This Greek word has a broader range of meaning than any one English word can really capture. All of our attempts to translate it either overshoot or undershoot the meaning. The King James Version uses “Comforter,” which sounds like a blanket. Other translations include “Helper,” which makes him sound subordinate. The NRSV that I just read uses “Advocate.” Now, that has a bit of a legal connotation, which is maybe overstated relative to the Greek, but let’s see where that can take us.

Are you all familiar with CASA? CASA stands for “court-appointed special advocate.” There is a national organization that covers both CASA volunteers and guardians ad litem, which are just slightly different because every state’s laws are different. But they all follow similar principles. From the National CASA/GAL website,

CASA/GAL volunteers are appointed by judges to advocate for children’s best interests. They stay with each case until it is closed and the child is in a safe, permanent home. We serve children from birth through the age defined by state statute as the limit to youth remaining in care.

Volunteers work with legal and child welfare professionals, educators and service providers to ensure that judges have all the information they need to make the most well-informed decisions for each child.

National CASA/GAL Association for Children

The CASA program grew out of an observation by a Seattle judge that he simply did not know enough to decide what was right for a particular three-year-old in his courtroom. Cases of abuse and neglect are complicated. Rarely is there an obvious villain and an obvious hero. Often, judges need to choose among a bunch of bad alternatives, some of which may appear to be better even though they are actually worse. I mean, it may make sense that a relative who has more financial stability is a better home, but not if their interpersonal dynamics are inappropriate and not conducive to the child’s healing and growth.

Another aspect of these situations is that often, the child is not really aware of what is in their best interest. An attorney assigned to represent the child is obligated to follow the child’s wishes. Well, they may choose a bad situation they know over a good situation they don’t know. This Mother’s Day, we should remember that some mothers are wonderful and provide a safe, loving, stable environment where a child can thrive; some mothers are wonderful but in bad circumstances due to other people in their lives or economic misfortune; some mothers are abusive, or suffer from addiction or mental illness, or are otherwise unable to provide a safe and loving environment for their children. A CASA volunteer helps the justice system work through those issues and find the best outcome for the child.

The website describes a five-point process:

• Learn: Learn all you can about the child and his or her family and life.
• Engage: Engage with the child during regular visits.
• Recommend: Speak up for the child’s best interests in court. Make recommendations regarding the child’s placement and needed services, and monitor the child’s situation until the case is released by the court.
• Collaborate: Collaborate with others to ensure that necessary services are provided and are in the child’s best interest.
• Report: Report what you have learned and observed to the court.

When I read this, I thought, What a great model for the action of the Holy Spirit! She is our Advocate, specially sent by the other two Persons of the Godhead to dwell with us until we are safely home. She learns all she can about us, which is everything. She dwells in us, walks with us, and watches over us. She advocates for our best interests in the world.

Elsewhere, Jesus advised his disciples that when they were in trouble, they shouldn’t make up in their mind ahead of time what they should say. Instead, they should let their hearts, minds, and words be guided by the Spirit. All throughout our lives, we can be sure that the Holy Spirit is there beside us, within us, ensuring that if we let her, she will work for our best interests.

Collaborate: A CASA volunteer collaborates with others to ensure that necessary services are provided. In the same way, the Holy Spirit binds us to each other, so that we can support one another. He knows that none of us can accomplish much on our own, even with God’s help, but we can change the world if we work together. We each have skills and talents. We each have connections in the community and a variety of roles in a variety of organizations. The Holy Spirit knows all of this, and enables us to work together to build God’s kingdom. He knows that we are all differently gifted, but each gift is an important part of God’s work. For example, our nominating committee discerns who would serve well as an elder, who would serve well as a deacon, and who would serve well as a trustee. They’ve done a great job, most recently in nominating Melba, who so obviously has the skills and attitude of a deacon. Our PNC needs to discern which pastoral candidate has the particular gifts that this church needs today. I have confidence that they will do so, as long as they remain connected to and guided by the Holy Spirit.

Yet in a sense, we already have the pastor we need. When John Oerter was here, he clarified that he was an interim pastor rather than an installed pastor. Pastors come and go. Just in my time here, we have had multiple interim pastors and two installed pastors. Remember, everything is temporary; whether installed or interim, none of them were permanent. But we do have a permanent Pastor: the Good Shepherd, the one who makes us lie down in green pastures and guides us beside still waters, the one who is the gate for the sheepfold.

One of the most important principles of the Reformation was the priesthood of all believers. In ancient Judea, before the destruction of the Temple in 66 A.D., only the descendants of Aaron were allowed to make offerings to the Lord. In both the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic traditions, priests serve as intermediaries for the sacraments and for other purposes. One reason Catholics pray to saints is that they don’t think they are allowed direct access to God, but instead need an intermediary. The Reformers looked at passages like today’s and said, No, that’s wrong. Jesus promised to send the Spirit, and then all through the Book of Acts we read about the Spirit descending on many people—not just priests. As long as we have the Holy Spirit, we may directly approach God. As long as we have the Holy Spirit, we are connected to each other and energized for the building of God’s kingdom. As long as we have the Holy Spirit, we are the body of Christ, doing Christ’s work in the world.

We don’t need a pastor to love God. We don’t need a pastor to love our neighbor. Now, I’m not saying that we don’t need a pastor at all, only that God is with us regardless. We can still come together to worship. We can still confess our sins, and we still know that we are forgiven. Rather than a priest giving us absolution, we simply need to be reminded that Jesus Christ already did that. We can still encounter the Word through the reading of scripture and illumination by the Holy Spirit. About the only thing we can’t do ourselves is communion and baptism. Now, I’ve been given special dispensation to serve communion to our congregation and to baptize two of our newest members, but I would argue that the approval I received is necessary to call ourselves Presbyterian, not to call ourselves Christian.

Over the past couple of weeks, we saw our limits, but also our capabilities, when we lost two members who were dear to us. If Carlene and Frank had passed away five years ago, Lou Ellen would have taken the lead on the arrangements. If they had passed away three years ago, there would have been no services because of the pandemic. But when they passed, the church rallied around. Thanks to Katie especially, and Tina, and Ken, and Amy, and Lorie, and Melba, and too many other people to name without leaving someone out, we came together to support the Mays and the Jessops. Some people were stretched thin, and maybe there were some things that could have been done better. But at the end of the day, we achieved the two basic goals: surrounding the families with love, and reminding them—and everyone who loved Carlene and Frank—of the hope that we have through the resurrection of our Lord. We were connected to each other, supported by each other, and strengthened individually and as a church by the action of the Holy Spirit.

So again, I’m not saying that the PNC should stop searching for a new pastor. What I’m saying is that with or without an installed pastor, WE are the church. A pastor might have new ideas for how we can act out our love of God and our love of our neighbors in the community, but the love remains the same. The love we share is the action of the Holy Spirit, flowing through us and among us.

The question before us, today and every day, is, who are the neighbors that we are passionate about serving? On campus, we’re going through an exercise to evaluate new and existing programs against four criteria: mission, demand, passion, and capacity. I would say that every program, every activity, in every organization, needs to be evaluated on these four dimensions. Our mission is to build God’s kingdom, but that’s too broad to be useful. Our community has a lot of needs, a lot of people who need to experience the love of God in their lives, but maybe not an awareness of how they can connect to that love or what role our church might fulfill in their lives. Passion—there are lots of things that we could do, but only if we have a critical mass of people who care deeply about making them a reality. And finally, capacity: the reality is that we cannot be all things to all people. We are empowered by the Holy Spirit who amplifies our efforts. Still, there are only so many hours in the day, and many of us have a lot of other demands on our time or are limited by health challenges. So again, there are lots of things that we could do, but only if we have people who are able to see them through.

I don’t know what the future holds for us. I don’t know what new ministries we should embark upon, or what we should stop doing so that we have the resources to grow in a different direction. What I do know is that as long as we are guided, strengthened, and energized by the Holy Spirit, we have everything we need to play our part in transforming the world. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on May 7, 2023. Based on John 14:1-14.

Today’s passage is the start of John 14, but I’d like to back up to John 13 to set the stage. John 13 opens with Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, as an example that he sets for them. He goes on to say that someone will betray him, and then Judas Iscariot leaves to do just that. Jesus gives them the new commandment that they should love one another, and says that he will be going away where they cannot follow now. Quite an eventful chapter!

So now Jesus is really hitting his stride in his Farewell Discourse. This is his last night with his disciples, his last chance to tell them what they should do when he’s gone. He wants to be sure that they know who he is and what he means to the world. As is typical, the disciples are kind of dense and don’t fully understand what he’s saying, but Jesus tries.

Part of the reason they don’t understand is the same reason we don’t understand. Jesus describes an intimate relationship with God that is so far beyond most people’s experiences that it’s hard to comprehend. We can say the words—the Trinity is three persons who dwell in each other, bound together so strongly by love—but what does that really mean? Few people ever experience that kind of love, a transcendent love that changes the way you see the world. So Jesus does the best he can with the language at his disposal.

He tries with a metaphor. Jesus says, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” Twenty-first century Americans don’t recognize this metaphor, but first-century Judeans would have. This is marriage imagery. Jesus is likening himself to a bridegroom who goes to prepare a place for the bride, where she can live with his family. In that time and place, the convention was for the bride to join the groom’s household, but of course there had to be a place for the new nuclear family to live. The groom would prepare it, and then come take his bride home to live with his family.

So that’s how Jesus describes his heavenly realm. It’s like one big family compound. As we read in so many places throughout the New Testament, the Church is the bride of Christ. He loves us and wants to build a new life with us.

Indeed, Jesus’s death is not the end, but a new beginning. It’s the end of his personal earthly ministry, but the beginning of his new heavenly ministry. In these last hours with his disciples and his last days on earth, he is preparing to join the Church with his heavenly realm and, in that way, establish God’s kin-dom.

Notice that he says that there are “many” dwelling places. He goes on to say, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” This is usually read with an exclusionist perspective: only Christians are allowed in heaven. It’s as if Jesus is ascending to become a bouncer and keep out the riffraff. I think it’s better to read it as if Jesus is ascending to become a greeter. He is preparing many dwelling places, enough for everyone. When we see him, he will welcome us with open arms and show us the way into his heavenly realm.

But wait: I’ve said many times that the kingdom of God isn’t just something that we see when we die. It’s here, right here, right at hand. God isn’t just in some faraway place, but is also here among us. Indeed, God is within us. Just like Jesus, we are bound up with God through the power of love.

So again, let’s remember the story that brought us to today. Jesus knows his time on earth is nearing the end, so he kneels and washes his disciples’ feet. Throughout the Gospel According to John, Jesus performs miracles, signs that grow more and more astounding, from the changing of water into wine to the raising of Lazarus. Jesus is God, Jesus is God, JESUS IS GOD! And then at the peak of the crescendo, what does he do? He serves his friends, as if a slave. Jesus is God, and yet he empties himself and takes on the most degrading task. Then he tells his disciples, This is what you should do. Love one another just like I have loved you. I am the way. If you’re ever wondering how to enter my kingdom, just do what I did, or what I would have done.

Jesus claims that we will do greater things than he did. How can that be? I don’t personally know anyone who has turned water into wine, much less raised the dead. Yet in a way, Christians have indeed been doing great things throughout history. A great historical mystery is how a small sect of a small religion developed into the world’s largest religion, currently claiming more than 30% of the world’s population. Historically, most religions were local or regional. How did Christianity come to be such a powerful global force? Well, one reason was the dedication of early Christians to serve their neighbors. Wherever Christians lived, they pushed the local authorities towards more humane policies, although with varying levels of success. They cared for the sick both within and outside their communities, despite persecution. They created the first hospitals. Maybe they weren’t raising the dead, but they were healing the sick and preventing death.

What else did Jesus teach his disciples? One principle was inclusion. Like I said, most religions in history were local or regional, or at least ethnically isolated. Christianity was the first religion where a gathering might include men and women of widely varied ethnic backgrounds, from all walks of life, from slaves to soldiers to aristocrats. It may have started as a sect within Judaism, but it quickly became dominated by non-Jewish believers. When Paul wrote, “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus,” he was in fact describing the church in Galatia and holding it up as an example of how people should live together and how the church should grow.

Then there was non-violent resistance. First-century Jews were expecting a Messiah who would be a warrior, who would lead the heavenly host to expel the Romans and re-establish a Jewish theocratic kingdom. Jesus came and did not look anything like the Messiah they were expecting. Instead of a violent overthrow, he taught that his kingdom was not of this world and really had no interest in changing the way Judea and Galilee were governed. He focused on teaching people how to live together in the kingdom of God no matter what government claimed authority. That lesson didn’t really take hold in Christianity, though. It wasn’t too long before bishops were arguing with each other, supposedly over theological points but also over power and authority. Once we made a deal with Constantine, we committed ourselves to politics. In the centuries since then, we have struggled to escape the orbit of governmental authority. Even the Reformation, a time when Christians rejected many of the old teachings of the Roman Catholic church, turned into a time when rival denominations could set up local theocracies to enforce their own interpretation of the Bible. That was entirely the opposite of Jesus’s teachings, and yet we still can’t escape the attractiveness of power.

Jesus taught that instead of seeking power, instead of seeking earthly accolades, instead of trying to establish a theocracy by force, we should instead seek to change the world from the bottom up with the power of love. Leaders are not to be rulers who “lord it over” their subjects, but to become as slaves. He taught that we are to love one another as he did, a self-sacrificing love that prioritizes others’ welfare more highly than our own.

You have heard me speak about the Mission a number of times. There is a movement afoot in Rolla—and there has been for some time—to get the Mission shut down. It is led by property owners and business owners who feel that the value of their property or profitability of their business is negatively impacted by the poor and unhoused individuals who make use of the Mission’s services. Homelessness is indeed a problem in Rolla, but it is not unique to Rolla—it’s a problem in every city in the nation, one that eludes easy solutions. The most disappointing aspect of the movement against the Mission is that the leaders of it would consider themselves Christians—and in fact one is a minister. I have not heard any of them propose a solution that would involve showing Christian love to those who are struggling to improve their lives. You know, most people are just a few paychecks away from homelessness. The difference between those who become homeless and those who don’t is the absence or presence of a support network. Jesus taught us that instead of using our wealth and our position in the community for our own benefit, using it to protect ourselves from those we fear, we must value each person of the community and work for their good. We should be that support network that the homeless lack.

I recently listened to a podcast about the bystander effect. Briefly, it’s the phenomenon where you see a need but don’t act on it. You think, Geez, someone should do something. Well, I’m someone, and you’re someone. Jesus taught that we are called to act out our love. Love is not a feeling so much as an action, a calling to serve our neighbor in need.

Jesus knew this would be hard. But he said that we don’t need to do it alone. Jesus said that he is the way. If we follow his path, we will dwell in Him always, and he will dwell in us, and will do whatever we ask in his name. The way to the Father’s house is abiding in the Son, being filled with his love and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. That sounds an awful lot like heaven, right? Christ is defined by paradoxes: transcendent yet immanent, Lamb and Shepherd. Dwelling in Christ and following his example is both the path to heaven and heaven itself. It is the abundant life he promised here, and the eternal glory in the age to come. Let us seek now to follow his example of self-sacrificing love, a love that values others more than ourselves, a love that risks everything, a love that is heaven itself, a love that is both the journey and the destination. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on 1 Peter 1:13-25. This sermon discusses a concept referred to as the “Cosmic Christ.” If you would like to learn more, consult The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr, the meditations on the subject that his Center for Action and Contemplation published, or this blog post by Paul Axton. The concept is well-known in eastern Christianity and is an important part of Franciscan theology.

Last week’s Gospel lesson was about Jesus showing himself to his disciples. It’s remembered as the story of Doubting Thomas, but I have long thought that Thomas gets a raw deal. NOBODY believed that Jesus had risen. Jesus showed himself to ten of his disciples, and after a few moments of disbelief, they realized what had happened. Thomas wasn’t there, so he was left in that pre-revelation state. “Yeah, right, guys, Jesus came back from the dead. Quit kidding around.” As soon as Jesus shows himself to Thomas, he believes, and indeed surpasses the other disciples in his response.

But in a sense, we are all like Thomas. I have not personally seen Jesus. None of us saw him in his human body, though some people I know have had visions like Paul did. For the vast majority of us who have not literally seen Jesus, believing in a risen Christ is really hard. It requires a suspension of all our normal ways of making sense of the world. The only reason I can accept the truthfulness of the Gospel accounts is that so many people risked their lives, and lost their lives, because of a story that is so ridiculous nobody would make it up. Literal bodily resurrection just wasn’t something that people even considered in that era.

We believe that through Christ, we have salvation. Indeed, Jesus’s actual Hebrew name, Yeshua, means “salvation.” A challenging theological discussion is, what about all the people who lived before Jesus did? Did Jesus go down to Sheol and raise them? Or are they just the victims of the bad luck of being born too soon?

We see in today’s text a hint about God’s plan of salvation. With echoes of the opening chapter of the Gospel According to John, we read that Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was manifested in these last times for our sake. This is an incredible insight for the first century. Jesus was a man who was born at a certain time in a certain place, but Christ transcends humanity and was known from before Creation. We see hints of this same understanding in Peter’s affirmation that Jesus is the Christ, and in Paul’s writings to the Ephesians and Colossians.

Irenaeus was a bishop in the second century who wrote Against Heresies. At that time, Christianity had many different understandings about who or what Jesus was. Aside from the mainstream view, there were Gnostics and Marcionites. The Marcionites believed that the God of the Hebrew scriptures was different from God the Father of Jesus Christ. Irenaeus said no, they were one and the same. Christ was known from before the foundation of the world, and God the Father led and taught the Israelites until the world was ready for Christ’s revelation in Jesus of Nazareth. The Gnostics viewed the material world as inherently corrupt, an existence from which we seek to escape into the eternal realm of spirit. Irenaeus taught that what God created is good, and humanity is very good. All creation is ultimately destined for glorification.

Our glory comes through participation in God’s plan for redemption of all creation. Christ was present at the beginning. In fact, the universe was the first incarnation of Christ. Christ was the logos, the Word, the divine ordering principle that structured the creation of the universe. Christ was and is in all things. Whenever the spiritual world and the material world are in contact, Christ is there.

But Christ was hidden. God was revealed to the ancient Israelites, but they weren’t ready yet to understand God’s ultimate plan. They could picture God as a pillar of fire or a pillar of cloud or a burning bush or a still, small voice. They could imagine gods as inhabiting idols. But it took centuries for them to be ready for a God who was united with a human being.

Finally, when they were ready, Christ was incarnated through the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was the fullest revelation of God, as a human who was fully united with the eternal, cosmic Christ. Jesus lived as an example of holiness. He demonstrated God’s love with his deep understanding of each person’s needs and the obstacles that each person erected between themselves and God. He demonstrated complete obedience to God’s will, even unto death.

His death was the end of that phase of God’s revelation, but the start of another. God had tried to teach the Israelites about the ultimate fate of the world and their role in it, but was ultimately unsuccessful. So Christ came to teach them more personally and individually about holy living. Through his death, he taught about self-giving love. Through his resurrection, he taught about the ultimate goodness of the world.

Because resurrection isn’t something that happened just once to Jesus, and isn’t something that only happens when we die. Resurrection is the process of renewal, the restoration of glory, the sanctification of our lives. When Christ was raised from the dead, he revealed this coming of glory into all things, and invited us to participate in glorifying our world.

What is the purpose of salvation? We are saved. What are we saved from, and what are we saved for? There is one way of reading the New Testament that implies that we need to follow Jesus’s teachings closely in order to earn our place in heaven. Strangely, some of the Christian traditions that teach, on the one hand, that our salvation is assured if, and only if, we pray the sinner’s prayer and profess our belief in Jesus ALSO teach that we must purge sin from our lives and quit drinking and dancing and such in order to be “real” Christians. There is another way of reading the New Testament that implies that really, accepting Jesus as our Lord is all that we need to do, and nothing else matters. To that teaching I would say, what’s the point of even living then? Traditions that say that nothing matters in this world are basically reviving the old Gnostic heresy, the belief that our goal should be to escape from the corruption of the material world.

Today’s reading, though, affirms the inherent goodness of this world. We are to become holy people. We are saved so that we may become more holy. We are saved so that we might reveal Christ who is in us. This is not about becoming sinless, which is impossible. We all fall short of the glory of God, try as we might. Becoming a holy people means aligning our lives more with God’s love. It means loving each other as if we were a family, one family that encompasses all people. It means shining forth with God’s love in those dark places of the world.

All around us, we see people in despair. We see people suffering from poverty, from addiction, from natural disasters, from violence and war. We see people suffering from loneliness, from family estrangement, from grief and fear. Homelessness is a serious problem with broad impact and no good solution. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the suffering of the world. How can I say that the material world is fundamentally good when it seems so bad? How do I find the hope that Amy spoke about last week?

In one translation, verse 17 of today’s reading says, “live out the time of your sojourn here in reverence.” This is our temporary home. We are like the Israelites who lived in Egypt, or who wandered in the wilderness, or who were exiled to Babylon. We are living in a broken world so that we may learn how to love more broadly and deeply. Yet just as in Egypt or the wilderness or Babylon, God is with us. And so, as God told Jeremiah, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” The world will one day be fully transformed, but in the meantime, our calling is to make ourselves holy by seeking the welfare of the world we live in and praying to the LORD on its behalf. In this way, we will participate Christ’s work, begun at the foundation of the world, exemplified in the second incarnation that was Jesus of Nazareth, and continuing through the centuries since.

In the season of Easter, we celebrate the reality of Christ’s resurrection. He promised that he would always be with us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Sanctification is not a task for us to do alone. It is a process by which we allow Christ to more fully inhabit us. We surrender control of our lives and let God direct us. We turn from serving ourselves to serving others. It’s a process that is never finished, one that proceeds as two steps forward, one step back. Yet we have been given this assurance, that God will never abandon us. Israel and Judah were exiled because they stopped trying to follow God’s will, but God did not abandon them forever. God was with them in their exile, and God accompanied them as they returned, and God ultimately came to them in the person of Jesus. Like the ancient Israelites, we sometimes need God to shake us and grab our attention, but remember, God’s presence is never lacking, only our awareness.

And as we grow in Christ, we will be more able to see Christ revealed through the power of love. We will become more aware of the inherent goodness of the people we meet and learn to love them as fellow children of God, rather than fearing or hating or shunning them. That creates a positive spiral, where love breeds more love, where compassion breeds more compassion, where small acts of kindness lead to transformative relationships. In that way, we become a more holy people, clothed in Christ, living our sojourn here in reverence of Christ who is all and in all. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on April 2, 2023, Passion Sunday. Based on Matthew 26:57-68.

The lectionary passage for today is actually much longer than this. It’s the whole Passion story, basically all of Matthew 26 and 27. I encourage you to read the whole story sometime this week as you prepare for Easter. It’s a long text, rich in meaning, too much for one sermon. In fact, in some churches, they simply read the whole story in place of the sermon. I chose a piece of the story here instead. Let’s back up and see how we got here.

I looked back through the Gospel According to Matthew to find out the reason he gives for Jesus’s arrest. In large part, we see in Matthew a series of arguments between Jesus and the priests, scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees, that is, the religious establishment. It culminates in Jesus’s preaching against the way they are treating their fellow Israelites. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Jesus says again and again. Then he starts a discourse about being ready for the coming kingdom.

We are a Matthew 25 church in a Matthew 25 presbytery. The two chapters before this passage, after the woes Jesus preaches against the establishment, are an essential discourse that culminates in the separation of the sheep and the goats—the nations who cared for Jesus when he was hungry or naked or in prison, and those who did not. Just as we do or do not do for the last, the least, and the lost, so also we do for Jesus. Once he has delivered this message about caring for our neighbors, he tells his disciples that his time is short, and he is about to be handed over to be crucified.

Jesus has one last supper with his disciples, one that we will remember together shortly. Then, he goes to the garden of Gethsemane to pray, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not what I want but what you want.” He is greatly disturbed in spirit, praying three times that the burden will pass from him, while his disciples sleep. Despite praying for deliverance, he is handed over to the religious authorities by Judas, his betrayer.

So now: Jesus has spent a year or more preaching the coming kingdom, teaching his disciples, and arguing with the religious authorities. He has never once held back. When Sadducees argue with him over the resurrection, he corrects their misunderstanding. When Pharisees try to entrap him with a question about taxes, he turns the tables on them. Oh, and speaking of tables, he flips the tables of the moneychangers and drives the animals out of the Temple.

But here, he is silent. Defenseless. When they come to the garden to arrest him, he goes without a fight, and even rebukes a companion who tries to defend him. When he is brought before Caiaphas, he makes no protests against the false testimony against him, and he doesn’t try to explain the metaphorical meaning of his so-called threat against the Temple. He remains silent until he is forced to speak, and even then, simply quotes scripture, the book of Daniel.

Let’s consider Jesus’s options along the way. He knew what was coming. He told his disciples what was coming. First off, he could have stayed away from Jerusalem altogether. He could have remained in Galilee, preaching to the Galileans and hoping that the message would spread from there. He could have had a much longer preaching career that way. Think of how much more he could have taught us and how many more people he could have healed. Or, having come to Jerusalem, and knowing that Judas was going to betray him, he could have run away. That’s certainly the natural response for someone who is under threat and outnumbered.

Or, Jesus could have embraced his role as a leader of rebellion. The high priest essentially accused him of being a rebel; he could have truly become one, turned his disciples into an army and supplemented them with the heavenly host, twelve legions of angels. He was the Son of God, after all. He could have called down fire from heaven, sent the army of the Lord ahead of him to destroy the Romans, and re-established the reign of David’s lineage. When people talk about the Second Coming, that’s basically what they describe, right? Jesus could have “done it right” the first time.

Fight, flight, or freeze. Jesus chose not to fight. He chose not to flee. So did he freeze? No. When the temple authorities arrested him, he rebuked his companion who tried to defend him, explained that this was all necessary to fulfill the scriptures, and criticized the authorities for arresting him by night in the garden instead of by day in the temple. He was in full command of his faculties and perfectly able to defend himself.

But he didn’t. He chose his path. He knew that once he started his ministry, sooner or later, the day would come when he had to confront the religious establishment. He also knew that nothing he could say would change the outcome. We like to quote Jesus from the Gospel According to John, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Yet the truth has a time and a place. You can speak the truth, but if the other person is not ready to hear it, they won’t listen. Jesus knew that Caiaphas and the others were not ready for the radical truth of his Gospel: that he was initiating the messianic age, that he was overturning the powers and principalities of this world, that he is the resurrection and the life.

So instead of saying all these things, Jesus waited until the time was right, then calmly stated his truth for the record. The effect was just as he expected: rage.

Once when I was going through some difficult times, a pastor reminded me: the only way out is through. There are some trials in our lives that are simply unavoidable. We can perhaps delay them, perhaps soften them, but ultimately, some conflicts and difficulties are inevitable. When Jesus called his first disciples, he set himself on a path that would lead to conflict with the religious authorities. He delayed the inevitable so that he would have time to teach his disciples, and then accepted his fate.

Why was Jesus born? Well, as I said last week, he came to teach us how to live. The Passion story is a vivid example of how to embrace your calling. Jesus was called to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God. He knew what the result of his proclamation would be, so he prepared himself for the time of trial. We read again and again that he withdrew to a quiet place to pray, and on this most fateful night, he went to the garden of Gethsemane to pray earnestly, with his whole being. His prayer was one of ultimate surrender: Not my will, but thy will be done. He sought full unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Then when the trial came, Jesus had the strength to fulfill his mission. He had the strength to resist the urge to fight or to flee. He had the strength and wisdom to hold his tongue until the right time. He had the right words to speak in his defense, once more a proclamation of the coming messianic kingdom. And he had the strength to endure the torture and the agony of crucifixion.

We too can turn to God for strength. I read Psalm 37 last night and it fits here really well. Here are selected verses from this psalm that Jesus surely knew:

The wicked plot against the righteous

and gnash their teeth at them,

but the LORD laughs at the wicked,

for he sees that their day is coming.

The LORD knows the days of the blameless,

and their heritage will abide forever;

they are not put to shame in evil times;

in the days of famine they have abundance.

But the wicked perish,

and the enemies of the LORD are like the glory of the pastures;

they vanish—like smoke they vanish away.

The mouths of the righteous utter wisdom,

and their tongues speak justice.

The law of their God is in their hearts;

their steps do not slip.

The wicked watch for the righteous

and seek to kill them.

The LORD will not abandon them to their power

or let them be condemned when they are brought to trial.

The salvation of the righteous is from the LORD;

he is their refuge in the time of trouble.

The LORD helps them and rescues them;

he rescues them from the wicked and saves them

because they take refuge in him.

Psalm 37 (selected verses)

We too can lean on God for strength. Whatever our calling, we know that we will encounter difficulties. Most of us aren’t called to proclaim the kingdom of God to the masses, but we are all called to show God’s love to everyone. That can be really hard, because not everyone is so loveable. Maybe you’re called to show compassion to the sick, which means helping them to carry the burden of their illness. Maybe you’re called to serve the church as an elder, deacon, or trustee, and the work is draining. Maybe you’re called to serve the community through The Mission or GRACE or Russell House or one of the other worthy organizations, and you’re overwhelmed by the need.

No matter what your calling, you can follow Jesus’s example and rely on God for your strength. As he showed us, our complete surrender to God’s will gives us the strength to continue until we see “the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” The only way out is through, but we know that God will be with us on the journey. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on the Fifth Sunday in Lent. Based on John 11:1-45.

Today is not Easter. Lazarus was just one man who was raised from the dead. In today’s story, Jesus did not usher in the messianic age. So why did Jesus bother raising just one man to just a few more years of life?

For that matter, why was Jesus born? Next week, I’ll talk about why he was killed, and then on Easter we hear about his resurrection. We have lots of theology built around his death and resurrection. But remember: Once Jesus was born, he was destined to die. It was a matter of when, not if. So he must have lived for a reason.

Paul wrote in Philippians,

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he existed in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be grasped,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

assuming human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a human,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

Philippians 2:5-8

Jesus emptied himself so that he could be like one of us. He came down from heaven to experience humanity and everything good and bad about it that we must also experience. In the process, he showed us how to live, and how to deal with the brokenness of the world.

We often talk about and idealize a transcendent God, one who is remote, removed from this world, emotionally distant. Jesus showed us an immanent God, one who is right here among us, in the messiness of real life. One who experiences the full emotional range of the human condition. In this passage, we see Jesus riding a rollercoaster of emotions.

First, when he hears that Lazarus is sick, Jesus seems a bit dispassionate and even cold. “Oh, my dear friend is sick? I’ll just stay here and keep doing what I’m doing for a couple of days.” He doesn’t even seem to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. But then he decides that he needs to do something, that he needs to be present with his grieving friends.

When he encounters Martha, he is a calming influence. He reminds her of the coming messianic age, and also that he himself is the Messiah who will usher it in, someday, just not today. He seems to defuse Martha’s anger, and the story could have ended there. But then when Mary confronts him, he gets it: death is a reason for sadness, and anger, and all of those other emotions.

In verse 33, we read, “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” The two Greek words used here are kind of tricky to translate, but convey a troubled emotional state, maybe indignant, maybe angry. One is the same word used for Jesus’s emotional state when he says that one of his disciples will betray him. Here these two Greek words convey a sense that Jesus is angry at the presence of death in the world, and particularly this specific death. Mary is weeping and wailing, and Jesus is angry that death has that kind of power over us.

As the story continues, we encounter the shortest verse of the Bible: “Jesus wept.” A great sadness came over him, but it’s a quiet grief. Not the wailing grief of Mary, but a quiet weeping. What made him so sad? Was it the loss of his friend Lazarus? Was it the contagious grief of his friends? Was it the thought of his own coming death? Maybe all of those things. He was overcome with the reality of death and its power over us.

I recently listened to a podcast about death. The guest pointed out that in modern Western culture, we try to avoid the topic altogether. In fact, we try not to even say that someone has “died.” Instead, we use euphemisms: They passed away, or they’re in a better place, or they kicked the bucket, or they have entered the Church Triumphant. These are all ways of avoiding the simple fact that life ends in death. Jesus knew this, and was overcome by its reality and its close presence, and he broke down. He was not a distant, dispassionate God, but one who humbled himself and became truly human so he could know what it felt like to lose a friend.

The story doesn’t end there, either, though. Jesus once again becomes indignant over the power Death has to disrupt our lives and relationships. He is compelled to act. He cannot sit idly by while his friends grieve. So, he takes control of the situation, raises Lazarus, and is calm once again.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross broke down grief into five stages. A common misunderstanding is that people think the stages are sequential. In reality, it might be better to call them modes of grief. Each person handles grief differently, and most people jump back and forth between these modes over a period of time that could be days, weeks, months, years, or decades. There is no fixed timetable or sequence. But it’s still useful to think of the different modes: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We see these all in today’s passage. The disciples don’t believe that Lazarus is really dead. Martha is angry at Jesus, and Jesus is angry at Death. Both Mary and Martha seem to be bargaining with Jesus and wanting him to turn back time. Jesus weeps, and the others are also weeping in their own ways.

The only mode that we don’t see is acceptance. Jesus cannot accept that death is the end. He cannot let the story end with Mary and Martha trapped in their grief and suffering the loss of their brother. In fact, on that podcast I mentioned, the guest pointed out that every time Jesus encounters a dead person, he raises them. He is always, always indignant over the power of Death to disrupt relationships.

Yet his miraculous raising of Lazarus is ultimately temporary. Lazarus will die someday, just not now. So will Mary and Martha and everyone else in this story. Everything is temporary. Jesus solves the problem of the day, but doesn’t solve the ultimate problem of death and brokenness in the world.

Or actually, he does, just not in today’s story. As Martha says, Lazarus will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus is proclaiming the coming messianic age, the age that comes after this one, the age in which we are all restored to life and wholeness. This life is temporary, but death is as well. Death is just a waypoint on the journey of our eternal lives.

So, what’s the point? Lazarus is dead; Lazarus will be raised on the last day, along with Mary and Martha and all those who loved him. Someday, they will all be together in Christ’s eternal kingdom. So why does Jesus bother to raise Lazarus from the dead? Why force him to die a second time?

I’m often reminded of a scene from “Moonstruck.” Who has seen that movie? OK, well, if you haven’t, I apologize for a few spoilers here. Cher plays a widow who is dating a man who proposes to her. Foolishly, he doesn’t have an engagement ring. I mean, what man proposes marriage without a ring? Well, Cher calls him on it, and he happens to be wearing a pinky ring. So she makes him give her that one as a temporary measure. She goes home and tells her father that her boyfriend has proposed, and shows him the ring. Her father says, “It’s a pinky ring, it’s stupid, it’s a man’s ring.” She says, “It’s temporary!” He says, “Everything is temporary! That don’t excuse nothin’!”

Everything is temporary, but that’s no excuse. Jesus could have just said, Yeah, sorry your brother is dead, but someday you’ll be dead too, so just suffer without him until you’re raised together on the last day. But he didn’t. He knew that even though this life, and the death that comes with it, is temporary, each one of us must do what we can to resolve the pain and suffering of this world. And later on, he promised that when he departed, he would send a Helper, the Holy Spirit, to be with us as we strive to follow his healing example.

Life is temporary. Life is change. When I look back five years, or ten, or twenty, I can see how much things have changed. Some for the better, some for the worse. Almost exactly three years ago, all our lives changed dramatically, and we all had to live with a succession of temporary measures. Think about the way we have worshipped in that time. We started with Lou Ellen preaching on her iPhone from her camper, then moved to pre-recorded worship services that I pieced together, then came back in person but with pews taped off for social distancing, and eventually got back to where we are today. There is still a sense that what we are doing is temporary, for example, that Susan and I are just placeholders. At any point along the way, we could have just said, Oh well, we can’t worship the way we used to, so we’re done here. After all, God doesn’t take attendance, and we can love God and be loved by God no matter what we do. But no, we chose to deal with the reality of the present—not the past, not the future, but the present—and find ways to continue to worship. We chose to find ways of joining together to show our love of God and our love of our neighbors.

That was the message of Jesus’s life. He knew that his time on earth was short. His active ministry may have been as short as one year or as long as three years—not very long to teach us everything we need to know. He knew the path he was on would lead to conflict with the religious and civil authorities, likely ending in his death on a cross. He didn’t give up, though. He made the most of the time he was given. He healed the sick, raised the dead, and fed the hungry. He took care of the problems of the day. He taught his disciples about the kingdom of God. He showed everyone how to live. And he sent the Holy Spirit to help us all to follow his example.

Everything is temporary. But that doesn’t excuse us from doing all that we can, every day, to serve our neighbors and help them to know God’s presence in their lives. Someday, all will be well as we enter Christ’s eternal kingdom. But in the meantime, we have work to do, today and every day, healing the brokenness of this world. Let’s get to work. Amen.

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The other day, I had coffee with my dear friend Ashley. She is the executive director of The Mission, a position she took just a few months before I started volunteering regularly there. She and I are a mutual admiration society—we both see things in each other that we wish we could be.

She recently started using a Monk Manual, after hearing me talk about it. I’ve been using a Monk Manual for about three years now, I think, and just finished “Find Your Inner Monk.” So we were talking about the process and what we get out of it. The Monk Manual is not a lightweight day planner. It’s a heavy process, built on a plan-act-reflect loop with daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual cycles. The reflection piece is critical. The goal is not to get more done or to be more productive. Rather, the goal is to do the right things and to include both doing and being in your goals.

Ashley commented that I’m the most balanced person she knows. Now, perhaps that’s just because she knows all the things I do because they’re pretty public, but I do feel like I’m a well-balanced person. I run, I hunt, I preach, I volunteer. I started a nonprofit, I teach, I do research, and now I’m department chair. How and why do I do so much?

Part of the answer is that I’m not really that unusual among my peers. As I write this, I’m at the annual conference of the ECE Department Heads Association. Yesterday, there was a panel of deans. Of the five of them, two are also serving as presidents of their technical societies. People like me want to give. Everyone I’ve talked to here seems focused on the success of other people—faculty, staff, students—and wants to make the world a better place. We have all achieved certain things for ourselves, and now we want to see other people achieve great things.

The other main part of the answer is that I enjoy the process. That’s a significant teaching of the Monk Manual. If you are fundamentally driven to achieve some particular goal, your life will not be satisfying. Many junior faculty want to achieve tenure, but once they earn it, they find it to be good but not ultimately satisfying. Every mountain you summit just reveals the next one to climb. Goals are good, but they should be big goals, life goals that you know you won’t achieve but that serve as distant targets.

The reality is that life is lived one day at a time. Earning tenure, or achieving any other specific goal, happens on a specific day, which will be a good day perhaps. But the next day, you still have to get up and go to work. The better approach to life is to use your distant goals to determine which processes to put in your life, and then learn to enjoy the process. Find meaning in the mundane.

Take as an example my passion for running. Well, passion is too strong a word, much too strong. I have goals, but ultimately, I enjoy the process. I enjoy how my body feels after I run. I enjoy running on the roads and trails around my house. I enjoy listening to audiobooks while I run, to nurture my mind and soul while I’m strengthening my body. I find hills to be rewarding once I get up them. I run races (5k, 10k) not to win a prize, but for the joy of running with other people. I just enjoy the process.

The same can be said of my teaching, my research, my preaching, my volunteer work, and now my work as department chair. I find meaning in the day-to-day process, the routine. I have sought a variety of activities to nurture the different parts of my mind, soul, and body.

Where Ashley is different is that she has one big thing that she does. She wants to be more balanced; some days, I want to be more focused. There isn’t a right or wrong answer, as long as you are finding meaning in the process.

One challenge for me is travel. As I said, I am currently at a conference, and will be gone from home for about a week. It’s hard for me to maintain my daily processes while I’m out of my normal environment. So I must go now and do my weekly cycle in my Monk Manual, to keep myself grounded in the present.

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Sermon preached March 5, 2023, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on John 3:1-17. Podcast link below, or check it out on my YouTube channel!

Who was Nicodemus? As far as I know, the only evidence of his existence is the Gospel According to John. His name means “victory of the people.” It’s a Greek name, which is a bit unusual but perhaps indicates that it’s a nickname like Peter or Paul. We learn here that he is a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin. He shows up in three places in John’s Gospel. First, he comes to Jesus by night, seeking illumination. Remember how I said that humans aren’t moths, right? He doesn’t come to Jesus because he wants to stare at the light, but because he wants the light of Jesus’s words to show him the Truth. The Book of John uses light and darkness motifs extensively, so we should pay attention here that he comes by night. Nicodemus may be ashamed to be seen with Jesus in the daylight, or perhaps we are supposed to recognize the darkness of his ignorance that is illuminated by the Word of God.

Then the next time we encounter him, Nicodemus is trying to get the other Pharisees to just hear Jesus out. He says, essentially, let’s not judge Jesus on the basis of what people are saying about him, but on the basis of what Jesus himself says in his defense. Something that Jesus said in this midnight encounter planted a seed and made Nicodemus wonder if perhaps Jesus is the Messiah. Perhaps.

The last time we hear of Nicodemus, he is helping Joseph of Arimathea prepare Jesus for burial. Nicodemus bought a hundred pounds of spices to prepare the body. Curiously, the other three Gospels don’t mention his role at all. Hmm.

I think Nicodemus is an amalgam. That is, he is a stand-in for several people, Pharisees and members of the Sanhedrin, who were on the fence about Jesus. The other Gospels hold up Peter as the bumbling buffoon that we are supposed to see ourselves in. John does some of that, too, but I think he includes Nicodemus for the sake of Jews who were trying to figure out just where they fit in the history of the world. Jews who were trying to determine whether following Jesus was really the right thing to do.

OK, let me ask, who here was born of the flesh? I hope everybody is raising their hand. We are all born of the flesh. That birth situates us in a certain place and a certain culture. Nicodemus was born of the flesh—a Jew, and so an inheritor of the covenant God made with Abraham, and with Jacob, and with Moses. He grew up to be a Pharisee, which was a relatively progressive sect of Judaism. We often speak unkindly about the Pharisees because of the way they are portrayed in the Gospels, but remember, Paul was a Pharisee, too. The Pharisees were progressive in the sense that they believed in the “oral Torah,” and they believed that God was still revealing the Truth to God’s people. This progressivism enabled the Pharisees to survive the destruction of the Temple, while the Sadducees and Essenes and other minor sects did not. Modern Judaism carries on the legacy of the Pharisees, continuing to grow and change.

We ignore our fleshy birth, and the fleshiness of others, at our peril. I recently listened to Prisoners of Geography, a book about the impact of mountains and plains and rivers and seas on the development of cultures and nations. Why is the Middle East so screwed up? Because Britain and France decided to divvy up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, and they drew lines on a map with no regard for the people who lived there. They arbitrarily assembled Iraq from three distinct people groups, arbitrarily split the Kurdish people among three different nations, and smushed together other nations that had no shared history. They thought, “They’re all Arabs and Muslims, right? No problem.” Well, actually, there are Arabs and Turks and Kurds and Syrians, and there are two major branches of Islam, and there are further ethnic and religious divisions that are opaque to outsiders but very clear to the people who live there.

Here in America, we tend to trivialize these inherited relationships. We tend to follow the philosophy of John Locke, who developed social contract theory. The idea of a social contract is that people live together in society in accordance with an agreement that establishes moral and political rules of behavior. The idea is that we each choose to give up certain freedoms in order to have a functioning society. This is clearly false. There are only a few people in our church who chose to live in America. The rest of us were just forced to accept whatever rules our parents, and their parents, and their parents agreed to.

In the same way, Nicodemus was born to the covenant established generations earlier. But Jesus said, being born of the flesh is nothing. The flesh is temporary. Everything we see with our human eyes is temporary. If you think about everything that happened in the twentieth century, you can’t help but recognize the transient nature of human constructs. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the vast majority of travel was by horse-drawn cart or steam-powered train. Electricity and the telephone had been invented but were not universally available in America, let alone around the world. The sun never set on the British Empire, and much of Europe was ruled by a handful of other empires—Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and German. Then came the automobile, airplanes, and space travel. Two world wars and a revolution in Russia redrew all the maps and alliances, and then the end of the Cold War redrew them all again.

Everything is temporary. Now, I don’t mean in the sense that these restrictions caused by the pandemic are temporary and we’ll go back to the way things were. That past was also temporary, and now it’s gone. The present state of the world is temporary like the border between Lebanon and Syria. Everything built by human hands is temporary. This church is just over sixty years old, and its predecessor that served our congregation for ninety years is no longer functioning as a worship space. Those of you who have lived in Rolla for a while can surely drive around town and think, “That’s where such-and-such used to be.” Even in just the fifteen years we have lived here, I’ve seen businesses come and go, new buildings built on campus, a big hole in the ground where the power plant used to be, and so forth.

But Jesus says, what matters is to be born from above. To be born of water and Spirit. How can this be? Like Nicodemus, we wonder how we can be born again. Growing up in the 1980s, I remember “born-again Christian” being a specific belief system, one that didn’t really fit with the beliefs I inherited as a United Methodist. We typically thought of being “born again” as having some sort of profound experience, maybe like Saul had on the road to Damascus. Maybe after a car accident, or someone trying to quit drinking or drugs, or something like that. As someone who was baptized as an infant and grew up in the church, where did that leave me? Is the kin-dom of God only open to those who live a life devoted to sinfulness and then have a dramatic conversion?

No, I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant. I think he meant that God can claim us whether or not we are born under the covenant of Abraham. God can claim us whether or not we choose to follow him. We do not choose to be born of the Spirit any more than we choose to be born of the flesh. In his farewell discourse, Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.” Jesus has claimed us, each one of us, and chosen us to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We have been chosen to be in God’s kin-dom, children of a new covenant.

We do not choose membership in God’s kin-dom, but we can choose how we respond. We can choose to ignore it. We can choose to focus on our birth of the flesh. We can choose to pay the utmost attention to the web of relationships we were born to, the culture and customs we inherited. So often, what we think of as Christian values are actually cultural values with a Christian veneer. The Bible is a thick book, so we can find justification in it for whatever cultural belief we hold. Want to subjugate women? There’s plenty of support in most books of the Old Testament and Paul’s disputed letters. Whatever you believe, you can find a Bible verse to support it.

Or, we can choose instead to embrace our birth of the Spirit. We can choose to see the kingdom of God instead of the kingdom of man. We can choose to see people as Christ sees them. Indeed, we can see Jesus in each person we meet. When we do that, we live out our new birth of the Spirit into the new covenant of love that Jesus instituted.

More than that, we can create a new culture, a new legacy. Instead of perpetuating stereotypes, or the rules that privilege someone because of their birth, or the cultural beliefs that prevent people from seeing God’s love, we can create a new world for the next generation. We can love people because God loves them. Indeed, we can love people as God loves them. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. God gave everything they had. Jesus in turn gave everything he had, laying down his life for the people he loved. He did not condemn the world, but came so that the world could be saved through him.

We have inherited some good things and some bad things. We cannot choose what we receive, but we can choose what we pass down to those who come after us. Let us choose a legacy of love, a legacy of community, of self-sacrifice, of membership in God’s eternal family. Let us choose our birth of the water and Spirit as our highest calling as we enter God’s kin-dom today, right here, right now, and create a place where God’s love can grow. Amen.

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Based on Matthew 5:20-37. Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on February 12, 2023.

The Gospel According to Matthew is structured in such a way to evoke comparisons to Moses. Jesus is portrayed as the new Moses. We are currently in the Sermon on the Mount, which echoes the time Moses went up on Mount Sinai to enter into a covenant with God and receive the Law.

Jesus is the new Moses who delivers a new Law. This section is referred to as the antitheses, meaning a sequence of statements with contrasts. But as Jesus had just said, he came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. His contradictory statements make the Law even more strict. He is saying that the Law that Israel had received was not really complete. The Law of Moses was basically set on a 7 or an 8, and Jesus is turning it up to 11.

When Moses received the Ten Commandments and then all of the other laws captured in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, God was trying to create a new nation. Israel was just a ragtag assembly of tribes wandering in the desert. If they accepted God’s sovereignty and Law, they would become a holy nation, a priestly people set apart to serve God. Jesus comes along and says, That’s not good enough. Yes, it was fine back then, but now it’s time to create a new kind of community.

This new community needs righteousness exceeding the scribes and the Pharisees. The scribes were experts in the Law, and the Pharisees were known for following the Law scrupulously. But Jesus says, I AM the Law, and I will show you the way to fuller living in My kingdom. To be a part of this kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, here are all the things you need to do. And let me warn you, this is tough stuff.

First off, don’t murder. I think I can handle that one. I personally haven’t murdered anyone today. But Jesus goes further, saying, don’t insult anyone. In fact, don’t even be angry with anyone. For anger disrupts relationships, and holy relationships are the foundation of the kingdom of heaven. If you harm your siblings in any way, you are destroying that foundation.

As I mentioned last time, some Christian sects take the Sermon on the Mount very seriously. Most Christians throughout history have not. We started out as a small group living together with everything in common, as described in the Book of Acts, but later on allied ourselves with Empire. We made a deal with Constantine and his successors, sometimes implicitly but often explicitly, that we would condone their violent ways if they would allow us to continue to serve God.

Indeed, the Christian church often went further and actively perpetrated harm in God’s name. There are too many examples to list. The earliest one I can think of is the Crusades, where Christian armies went murdering and pillaging throughout eastern Europe and the Middle East under a Christian banner. Antisemitism has been rampant since the Middle Ages, resulting in the Inquisition, pogroms, and ultimately the Holocaust. The Doctrine of Discovery was used to justify brutal acts as Christians colonized the Americas. Boarding schools were created to destroy Native American culture, no matter the harm done to the children who were forced to attend them. Many churches openly supported slavery. Incidentally, on this date in 1909, the NAACP was founded in Springfield, Illinois, after race riots there. Denominations have continued to splinter over the past fifty years because of a variety of social issues that ultimately revolve around the question of who is to be included in God’s kingdom and who should have the privilege of leading and teaching God’s people.

We are the unfortunate and unwilling inheritors of this legacy. We can say that we’re not like those other Christians who did all of those horrible things, but we are tainted by the sins committed by our predecessors whether we acknowledge them or not.

Last week, I talked about our calling to be the light of the world. We should not be dentists to the world, but we should allow Christ to examine us and to show us our failings. In order to shine Christ’s love on others, we need to make ourselves worthy of carrying His love. We need to examine ourselves individually, as a congregation, as a denomination, and as a part of the universal Christian church to expose the ways in which we have caused or perpetuated harm.

Often, we commit sins of omission rather than commission. We fail to take responsibility for being a force for good in a broken world. Elie Wiesel famously said:

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.

Elie Wiesel

Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor who saw firsthand what happens when good people fail to act. Neutrality helps the oppressor. We who are strong must help those who are weak.

When I think about all the ways Christianity has sinned over the last two millennia, and the legacy of that sinfulness in terms of poverty and oppression, I become overwhelmed. I cannot undo four centuries of white European oppression of people of color in the United States, done either in God’s name or with the church’s consent. I cannot undo the harm that was done by marauding Christians throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. If I spent the entire rest of my life working for peace and reconciliation and restitution of what has been stolen, the most I could hope for is a drop in the bucket, an infinitesimal good among an enormous evil. Even if our congregation or whole denomination decided that was our only objective, we could barely move the needle.

The reality is that the world is broken in ways that I can’t heal, and that we as a group cannot heal. But, we are a people of hope, not hopelessness. We are a people who believe in a God who can overcome sin and even death. We worship a risen Christ who promises eternal life in his kingdom. Reconciliation may be impossible for us, but with God, all things are possible.

Jesus commands us to be reconciled with our siblings in the kingdom. If you’ll notice, he didn’t say, “If someone has wronged you and you are holding a grudge, go and be reconciled to them before offering your gift at the altar.” No. He said, “If you have wronged someone, go and be reconciled to them.” The onus is upon the party who has committed the sin.

Again, you may say that you haven’t broken any relationships that need to be healed. But Jesus sets the bar impossibly high and asks us to broaden our perspective. Think about the people who are not here today and why. At least some of them are people that we know who have been hurt by our actions or inaction. Many more of them are people that we don’t know, but who hold us accountable for the sins of the Church.

Being the light of the world means showing love to those who need it. Jesus says that we should be reconciled to those who have a claim against us. Relationships are healed one-on-one. Relationships are healed when the person who is in the wrong reaches out in humility and asks for forgiveness. Relationships are healed when two people come together and experience God’s presence, the binding power of the Holy Spirit. Relationships are healed when you are willing to own your role in the harm that has been done, or in perpetuating a system that is harmful, or in enabling harm through your silence or inaction.

This is hard. This can be painful. But ultimately, healing comes only when you build something new and beautiful as you work towards a greater good.

Let me tell you about a situation I was in right at the beginning of my tenure as department chair, back in August. There is an endowed professorship that historically was tied to my department. The previous professor who held that position left in summer 2021. The end of the story is that the position is no longer restricted to my department, and there is an active search right now to fill the professorship with a new hire in a different department. This was an extremely painful experience, right after I took over. I was extremely angry at various administrators, which reached its climax with a call to my dean that I regret.

The story has a happy ending of sorts. The dean and I have a pretty good relationship now. He understood where I was coming from, and I eventually understood that there were just miscommunications along the way. Also, the root of the problem wasn’t any evil act on anyone’s part. Rather, the problem came about because of a set of mutually incompatible expectations and a lack of sufficient resources. It resulted not from a personal failure but from a systemic failure.

So often, our interpersonal relationships are damaged by these systemic issues. There isn’t enough time or money or space to satisfy everyone’s needs. Saying yes to one good thing means saying no to another good thing that deserves a yes. What we say is not always the same as what other people hear, and vice versa. Decisions that were made a year or decade or century ago have repercussions that are still felt. The systems are too big for us to change on our own.

But what we can do is to heal relationships one at a time. I cannot resolve the university’s lack of sufficient resources, but I can develop a good relationship with my colleagues so that we can work together towards the greater good of serving our future alumni. I cannot resolve all of the harm done by the Christian church over the centuries, but I can show Christ’s love to those who suffer because of the church’s actions.

Jesus sets the bar impossibly high. He asks us to live in this life just the same as we will live in his eternal kingdom. He asks us to be perfect in an imperfect world. He says all these things knowing that we cannot possibly reach that ideal. But he also promises to fill us with the Holy Spirit who can help us grow in grace and become more Christ-like. He also promises forgiveness when we forgive, new life when we abide in him, and a glorious future that he is preparing for us.

Not every relationship can be salvaged. Not every harm can be remedied. But in baptism, we have each been claimed by Christ and responded by promising to be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his Word and showing his love. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. We embody God’s Word when we bring peace to a violent world, when we heal broken relationships, when we enable the oppressed to go free and flourish. We may fall short—in fact, we will fall short—but Christ will be with us by the Holy Spirit, helping us to do God’s will if we will only try. We are Christ’s body, Christ’s eyes and ears and hands and mouth to everyone we meet as we heal what is broken in this world. Let our yes be yes, as we answer our calling to be vessels of Christ’s reconciling love. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on February 5, 2023. Based on Matthew 5:13-20.

Today, we are continuing the Sermon on the Mount. This is arguably the most important part of the Gospel According to Matthew, and sometimes is treated as the “canon within the canon.” Some Christian sects, such as Anabaptists like Mennonites and the Amish, elevate the Sermon on the Mount above other teachings, basically viewing the Gospel through the lens of this sermon. It contains some of the most famous teachings of Jesus, like the Beatitudes that Susan spoke about a couple of weeks ago.

The passage I just read starts with two of the most popular images to describe the church: salt and light. From a modern perspective, it is sometimes hard to understand the cultural depth of these two images. Let me first speak briefly about salt.

How can salt lose its saltiness? What does it mean to be “salt of the earth”? I’ve read a bunch of different commentaries with different explanations, so I’m not sure which is right. One possibility is that Judean salt was impure and would be kept in a sack. The actual sodium chloride would leach out faster than some of the other constituents, leaving rocks that were of no use but to be trampled under foot. Another possibility that makes more sense to me is that salt was traditionally used as a fertilizer. Too much salt kills plants, but a modest amount helps poor soil, a little bit like adding lime. For me, that squares with being “salt of the earth.” So we are supposed to bring new growth to barren lands, or barren hearts.

What I mostly want to talk about today is light. I would bet that everyone here today is within arm’s reach of a light source. I personally keep one in my pocket. If you look around, you’ll see little lights on the microphones and big lights hanging from the ceiling. Lorie has a light over her head, and I’m looking right into some bright lights. Lights are everywhere.

Indeed, lighting needs have driven technology far more than we appreciate. In ancient times, the primary source of light was lamps filled with animal fat, whether from cows or goats or fish. These lamps would stink. Rich people would use vegetable oils instead, especially olive oil. Eventually, candles were developed, still using animal fat. This was all the state of the art until the nineteenth century. The need for oil to provide light drove people in the north Atlantic to hunt walruses to local extinction. Then it drove the global whale trade.

The first major change was the use of coal, petroleum, and natural gas. In the nineteenth century, coal gas lamps became common in cities. A lamplighter would go along the street each evening and light the gas lamps to brighten the way. Homes were plumbed with gas lines. With the advent of petroleum, many people switched to kerosene lanterns. Think about this: the oil industry was born in 1859 in Titusville, Pennsylvania, but the Ford Model T, which was the first mass-produced automobile, didn’t go on the market until 1908. What were people using the oil for? Primarily, for light.

And what drove Edison’s pursuit of electrical technology? Light. He patented and commercialized the incandescent bulb in 1880 and revolutionized our use of light. Since then, we have developed more sophisticated light sources like fluorescent and LED bulbs.

Light is foundational to society. It allows us to navigate at night and indoors. It enables us to search for what we have lost. It allows us to read and to learn.

In Matthew, Jesus says, “You are the light of the world.” Yet the Gospel According to John opens poetically, saying, “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.” John wrote that Christ was the light of all people. How do we square this with Jesus’s words saying that we are the light of the world? Well, Paul described the Church as Christ’s body. Christ is the light, but we are the vessels of that light. We are the lamps filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit, burning brightly with the love of Christ. We shine, not because of who we are ourselves, but because we carry the light of Christ’s love. Jesus came to teach us how to become vessels of his love, lamps burning brightly in a dark world.

Being the light is a prophetic task. I subscribe to a daily email from the Center for Action and Contemplation, a Franciscan center founded and led by Father Richard Rohr. Their theme in 2023 is The Prophetic Path. So far, the focus has been on Jesus as a prophet. Often, we think of prophets as those who tell the future, but in reality, a prophet is someone who speaks the Truth, with a capital T, about the present. The prophet sees what’s going on in the world and points it out. Father Rohr wrote, “What is a prophet? Let me try this as a definition: one who names the situation truthfully and in its largest context. When we can name the situation truthfully and in its largest context, it cannot get pulled into interest groups and political expediency. … We don’t want the big frame. No one wants the big picture. … The prophet or prophetess speaks truthfully and in the largest context.”

Think about the first prophet, Moses. Yes, he told the Israelites about the Promised Land of Canaan, but more importantly, he denounced the evil of Pharaoh and the might of God to overcome that evil. All throughout the Old Testament, we hear about prophets speaking of the evil being done in Israel or Judah. Prophets like Amos denounce the way that the powerful mistreat the poor. He said:

For three transgressions of Israel,

and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,

because they sell the righteous for silver

and the needy for a pair of sandals—

they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth

and push the afflicted out of the way;

Amos 2:6-7a

Amos goes on to proclaim that destruction is coming, but his primary message is that the present order of things is evil and not aligned with God’s will. That is the prophetic task, and that is what it means to be light. Like a spotlight, the prophet focuses the people’s attention on specific ways in which the world is broken, calling them to repent and fix the broken parts of their lives and their communities and their society.

Sometimes, the situation is so dire that a prophet is needed to proclaim Truth to the masses. Martin Luther King, Jr., was just such a prophet, speaking out against the systems and structures that perpetuated evil dating back centuries. But prophets like him are few and far between. Most often, we are dealing with the mundane, the casual, day-to-day shortcomings in our lives. Growing in God’s love is a process that takes time.

In that sense, we can be like the light of a dentist. Now, I only know one person who enjoys going to the dentist, and that’s Jesse. But most of us go to the dentist regularly to make sure we have good, healthy teeth and gums, or to correct problems that have emerged over the years. When we lived in Arkansas, our dentist was not very good. I think he just wasn’t very thorough. When we moved to Illinois, Rhonda and I went to a new dentist who found all of the things he had overlooked. Both of us needed root canals, in addition to several fillings. Our new dentist had better tools that allowed her to see the problems deep in our teeth and correct them before they got even worse. That was an unpleasant experience that played out over several months, but the alternative would have been even more suffering and eventually lost teeth.

In the same way, when the light of Christ’s love shines on the dark parts of our lives, it can be painful. If you really take Jesus’s teachings seriously, you will see all sorts of unpleasant aspects of your life: ways that you have mistreated your neighbor, ways that you have failed to love God with all your heart, ways that you have sinned by getting your priorities out of whack. Some people fear that experience, just as some people fear the dentist, but the reality is that hiding from God just delays the inevitable. If you do not root out problems when they are small, they fester and grow and ultimately can take over your life.

Now, I’m not advising you to be like a dentist, identifying all of the problems in other people. That’s a path that leads to being judged a hypocrite and alienating the people you care about. Christianity has earned a reputation for hypocrisy because churches so often criticize others while condoning sin among their members and leaders. As Jesus said elsewhere, “Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” What I’m saying is that each person needs to let Christ illuminate themselves to find those sinful parts of their lives and root them out, so that they can become Christ’s light to others.

Because that was Jesus’s commandment in this passage. Be the light! We have been given an amazing gift, the gift of membership in Christ’s family, blanketed with Christ’s love. Jesus says it’s as if we are a lamp. What is the purpose of a lamp? Let me ask it this way: Do you naturally desire to look at a lamp? Probably not. When I run at dusk or after dark, headlights are a real problem. When a light is shining right in my eyes, it becomes all that I can see. When the car passes, I am momentarily blinded until my eyes adjust. We are not drawn to light like moths. Rather, we use light to illuminate our path.

We are not called to be a dentist’s light, rooting out evil in other people no matter how painful. We are not called to be a flashlight shining in people’s eyes and blinding them to the world around them. We should not expect that our light will draw people to us like moths to the flame. Rather, we are called to be a streetlamp, illuminating the path to goodness. We don’t need to be a bright beacon like Martin Luther King, Jr., or Dorothy Day or William Barber or Desmond Tutu. We just need to be a part of the process of life and shine a little bit of light, a little bit of love, when we find someone in a dark place.

Jesus commands us to shine our light on the world to reveal the good and the bad, and to enable people to see a path to God. We are all people on a journey, one that ultimately leads to the eternal light of God’s presence. In the meantime, some people are walking in darkness, frightened of the world around them, unaware of God’s presence in their lives. We who know Christ know God’s love. We walk in the light of that love and can channel it to shine for others.

Let’s not put our light under a bushel. Instead, let’s shine for the world. That means exhibiting God’s love for the world. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” God loves THE WORLD. Not just some people, but the WHOLE WORLD. Unfortunately, many people do not know the loving God that we know. They may have heard of a judgmental God, one who only loves people who act in a certain way or believe a certain thing, or one who condemns people who act in other ways. We know a God who loves everyone, who desires that each person should walk in the light of Her love.

Let us seek to be a church that preaches the true Gospel, the Good News that the kingdom of God is at hand for everyone. Let us be light in the darkness of people’s lives so that they may see the path that leads to God. Let us not be afraid of the dark, but know that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will never overtake it. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on Baptism of the Lord Sunday, January 8, 2023. Based on Matthew 3:13-17.

We often think of baptism as a quintessentially Christian ritual that sets us apart from Jews. In reality, it was a re-imagining of the mikveh. Throughout the Torah, and especially in Leviticus, there are commandments to “wash with water.” For example, Leviticus 17:14-16:

“For the life of every creature—its blood is its life; therefore I have said to the Israelites, ‘You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood; whoever eats it shall be cut off.’ All persons, native-born or alien, who eat what dies of itself or what has been torn by wild animals shall wash their clothes and bathe themselves in water and be unclean until the evening; then they shall be clean. But if they do not wash themselves or bathe their body, they shall bear their guilt.”

Leviticus 17:14-16

Uncleanness is different from sin. There are other parts of Leviticus that talk about sins like murder and stealing. Uncleanness is a ritual status that keeps a person out of the community. Think about Paul’s writings about Jews and Greeks eating together. Mainstream Jewish thought in Paul’s time was that Greeks, or Gentiles, were unclean, and therefore not suitable to eat with or associate with. Jews could become unclean for a variety of reasons spelled out in Leviticus, and in fact, ritual uncleanness was a part of daily life. But all uncleanness could be resolved. Depending on the circumstances, maybe there was a sacrifice needed, or maybe there was a waiting time, or maybe there was an inspection. But in practically all cases, the uncleanness was ended by a ritual bath, or mikveh.

The mikveh was also used to prepare a priest for service. Jews in normal daily life would accumulate some uncleanness, but nothing insurmountable. Priests, though, had to be totally clean, so before being anointed, they needed to ritually bathe.

The mikveh was and still is used to prepare anyone who wants to convert to Judaism. Jews generally don’t proselytize any more, but occasionally someone will want to become Jewish. Men need to be circumcised, of course, but both men and women need to ritually bathe. The mikveh washes away their uncleanness, accrued during a life separated from God, and brings them into the Jewish community.

It was this ritual bath that John the Baptist re-imagined as his baptism. He called people to repentance and a renewed relationship with God. He extended the concept of ritual uncleanness to moral uncleanness, sinfulness that needed to be washed away. Even the Pharisees and Sadducees saw the merit in ritual bathing, so they came to him. John embraced the Law of Moses but not the religious establishment. He was in some sense like the Christian reformers of the sixteenth century. Like Luther or Zwingli or Calvin, who accepted Christianity but rejected the Pope and the Roman Catholic hierarchy and its teachings, John the Baptist accepted the Law as taught in scripture and in the synagogues, but rejected the high priest and the Temple power structures. He was a fundamentalist of sorts. He proclaimed that the Jews of his day were inheritors of an ancient covenant but had fallen short of their obligations. They had become unclean not by eating non-kosher foods but by ignoring the poor, the widow, and the orphan, and by appeasing the Roman authorities. Like many back-to-basics reformers, he attracted a number of followers who could sense that there was something wrong in their lives.

Into this mix, Jesus appears. By submitting to John’s baptism, Jesus implicitly endorses John’s world view. By baptizing Jesus, John implicitly endorses Jesus’s ministry. This scene is a transition of power, a demonstration that John and Jesus acknowledge each other’s legitimacy and Jesus’s superiority.

If we think of baptism solely as washing our sins away, we are left to wonder why Jesus had to do it. We believe that he was the Son of God and therefore incapable of sin. So why did he need to be baptized?

Well, think back to the purpose of the mikveh. Ritual bathing isn’t about sins so much as about community. If you do something to become unclean, you cannot worship God and are separated from the holy gathering. After becoming clean, you are welcomed back into full membership in the community and are able to approach God with confidence. Jesus enters John’s community and literally enters his stream of thought as he is baptized in the waters of the Jordan River.

In the past year, we have welcomed two new members of Christ’s body through the sacrament of baptism. If all goes well, we will welcome another this year. I have been working with Cassie over the past month to teach her about Presbyterianism. One important lesson was about sacraments. Roman Catholicism has seven sacraments, but Protestant churches just have the two that Jesus did: baptism and communion. Baptism is a one-and-done sacrament. It’s a grafting onto Christ’s body, which is the Church. Different denominations and Christian movements have different understandings of its function and requirements, and so some only acknowledge baptism done the “right” way. For example, Catholics only acknowledge Catholic baptisms done by a Catholic priest. Missouri Synod Lutheran churches do not acknowledge baptisms done in our denomination or even in ELCA Lutheran churches, I think because we ordain women. Baptist churches and churches in the Christian Restoration movement like Greentree only acknowledge baptism by full immersion, undertaken by someone who is old enough to make a conscious decision.

We Presbyterians are pretty open-minded. We acknowledge any baptism that satisfies two key requirements: water is involved, and the baptism is trinitarian, done in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We reject baptisms from Mormons and other non-trinitarian sects, but we acknowledge infant baptism, or adult baptism, done by sprinkling or immersion, performed by someone of any gender.

Baptism is a visible sign and seal of God’s invisible grace. Since we cannot control God’s grace, we cannot act as gatekeepers for baptism. The reason I led Bryan through classes, and I’m teaching Cassie now, and the session “inspects” candidates for baptism (or their parents, in the case of infants), is to make sure they know what they’re signing up for. Baptism grafts a person onto Christ’s body. What does that mean? Well, they are supposed to then act as if they were a part of Christ’s body. They are supposed to be Christ’s eyes and ears and hands and mouth in the world. People are baptized into a particular community, so they need to understand the expectations of that community.

Those expectations can sometimes be draining. It can be hard to love people the way God does. It can be hard to trust in God’s providence. That’s why we have the second sacrament, communion. The Lord’s Supper provides sustenance as we grow into the people God intends us to be. It’s like when a farmer grafts a branch onto a tree: it will only grow if the host tree provides nutrients to sustain it. Each month, we partake of Christ’s body to sustain our work in the world and our growth as Christians. To help us to fulfill our baptismal vows.

Let’s review what those vows are. Before being baptized, each candidate needs to answer affirmatively to three questions.

One: Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its power in the world? This should be the easy one, but everyone here knows how hard it really is. I would guess that everyone here commits a sin of some sort every day. I doubt many people here have committed murder, but as Jesus taught, being angry is almost as bad. Early church fathers taught that having two coats is a form of stealing, since the second one should be given to someone who has none. Boy, I’m guilty of that one! Not only do we all sin, but many times, we compromise with the forces of evil in the world. You all can probably guess my political leanings, and I can guess many of yours, but we must all remember that all political parties accommodate some forms of evil. We make compromises so that some good can be achieved, and turn a blind eye to the evils inherent to the systems in which we participate. The world’s political and economic systems are sinful, and that sinfulness infects us all.

Two: Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Lord and Savior, trusting in his grace and love? OK, this really is the easy one. Well, it’s simple, at least. In the Baptist tradition, candidates need to be old enough to make this decision for themselves. In our tradition, parents can make this decision on behalf of their children. The main thing is that you need to acknowledge Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and reject all other gods, including gods like money.

Three: Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his Word and showing his love? This is the flip side of the first vow. It is not enough to turn away from evil. We vow to actively pursue good. We vow to study Jesus’s teachings and then to put them into action. We vow to show his love to everyone he loves, which means everyone.

John taught that people should “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” I’ve talked before about salvation and my belief that everyone is saved. Others believe that a person needs to accept Jesus Christ as their savior in this life in order to be raised to eternal life. That belief drives evangelism, because believers are driven to “save souls.” If you believe in universal salvation like I do, the goal is not to save souls, but to save lives. Jesus extended John’s teachings and, like a new Moses, provided rules for how we are all to live in this world. He taught us to love God and also to love our neighbors, and taught us who our neighbor is and how we should love them. Being a good disciple means studying Jesus’s teachings and then putting them into practice to bear good fruit.

Baptism is a rite of passage, like graduation. Remember that a graduation ceremony is called “commencement,” which means “beginning.” It’s an end to one phase and the beginning of a new phase of life. After completing high school or college or some training program, there is a public acknowledgement of your achievements, a welcome into the new community of finishers, and an exhortation to go put your learning to work. I want to tell you about this new ring I’ve been wearing for about a month. There is an organization called the Order of the Engineer. In 1922, a professor at the University of Toronto convinced his colleagues that engineers needed to take a vow to uphold the standards of their profession, and asked Rudyard Kipling to write the vow for them. The first ceremony was held in 1925 in Montreal. Then in 1970, some American engineers adapted the Canadian ceremony and instituted the Order of the Engineer in Cleveland. It’s not a membership organization. It is simply a vow that engineers make that is signified by a stainless-steel ring on the last finger of their working hand. The vow is a public pronouncement of obligations to the standards of the engineering profession, and the ring is a visible sign and reminder of that vow. I have here the certificate that I received. If you could see it, you would recognize that it is signed not by some representative of the Order, but by me. It is another reminder of the vow that I made.

I had never heard of the Order of the Engineer until this past fall, but I have often said that to me, engineering is more than just a job or career or profession, but an identity. So it made perfect sense for me to acknowledge that identity publicly.

In the same way, baptism is an affirmation of a person’s identity as a child of God and a part of the body of Christ. You are all already beloved by God, whether you have been baptized or not. Baptism is a visible sign and seal of invisible grace. It is an external indication of something that happens internally. It is a declaration that you accept God’s love, and a welcome into one particular community of believers as representatives of all the saints in every time and place. It is a beginning of a new life of following Jesus.

Once you have been baptized, you are commissioned to be a disciple of Christ. You are a part of that body of believers who received the Great Commission to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything” that Jesus commands us. Baptism makes God’s grace visible to the person being baptized, who then makes God’s grace visible to the world. We are instruments of baptism for the whole world. Jesus said that streams of living water would come from the heart of those who believe in him. That living water is the love of Christ channeled through each one of us, flowing out to each person we meet.

God desires that the whole world will be transformed into their holy dwelling. God desires that the whole world will be washed of its uncleanness and brought into holy community. We who have been baptized are part of that community. We have pledged to be Christ’s faithful disciples, obeying his Word and showing his love as conduits of his living water. Let us always remember that pledge and strive to be visible signs of an invisible grace at work in each person we meet, binding us together and birthing a new heavenly earth. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on January 1, 2023. Based on Matthew 2. This combines the First Sunday After Christmas Day with Epiphany Sunday.

The lectionary is a structured way of marching through the Bible each Sunday. Some preachers, like Bob Morrison, don’t like using the lectionary, in part because it leaves stuff out. I figure once I have preached on every text in the lectionary, I might start venturing elsewhere in the Bible. But for now, I’m sticking with it.

The lectionary is a three-year cycle. The Gospel of John is sprinkled through all three years, but each year is primarily organized around one of the three synoptic Gospels: Matthew for year A, Mark for year B, and Luke for year C. The year starts with Advent, so we are just a month into year A. I thought I’d take this opportunity to give you a thumbnail sketch of Matthew since we’ll be in it all year.

The reason we have four Gospels is that they each have a different theme, a different main perspective. The theme of Matthew is that Jesus is like Moses and is leading his people to freedom. The Torah, or Pentateuch, is the first five books of what we call the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. There is a story arc to the Torah that starts with one man, Adam, whose descendants include Jacob, renamed Israel. Jacob and his twelve sons move to Egypt during a famine and are the fathers of twelve tribes. Their relationship with Pharaoh degenerates into slavery, so then Moses is raised up to lead the Israelites to freedom and the Promised Land of Canaan. Along the way, God enters into a covenant relationship with Israel, encapsulated in the Ten Commandments, and also gives them the Law to help them fulfill their end of the covenant. They struggle to follow God’s commands, particularly the prohibition against idolatry, so they are forced to wander in the desert for 40 years. Even Moses is not allowed to enter Canaan, but then the next generation is blessed and told to enter the Promised Land.

Matthew is structured to evoke this same story arc. The parallels are not exact, but are enough to remind the first readers of their origin story. The Gospel is oriented around five discourses, mirroring the five books of the Torah. It starts with a genealogy that situates Jesus in Israel’s history. The discourses include Law-like teachings, particularly the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper, which we will be celebrating today, he calls it a new covenant. Then the very end of the Gospel is the Great Commission: Go into all the world.

So here we are near the beginning, and Matthew is trying to establish those parallels. I’m not saying that he fabricated anything, just that he selected story elements that highlight Jesus’s role as the new Moses. The first aspect he tries to evoke is the sense that he is under threat and always on the move. The book of Genesis is a travelogue of sorts. It tells the story of Abraham’s travels, then his son Isaac’s travels, then his son Jacob’s travels, then the grand story of his son Joseph going to Egypt and asking all of his brothers to join him there. In the same way, we see the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, under threat and on the move. They’re in Bethlehem in Judea, but they have to leave and sojourn in Egypt. When the threat is removed, they return to what was Israel but they can’t quite go home. There is still some danger, so they go to Nazareth instead of Bethlehem.

When Jesus shows up, everything changes, and everyone’s lives are up-ended. Poor Mary was not yet married but became pregnant. Poor Joseph is betrothed to a woman who becomes pregnant but apparently with another man’s child. An angel tells him to go through with the marriage anyway, which probably leaves a cloud hanging over their family throughout their lives. Not only does Joseph need to marry this pregnant woman, but he also needs to flee to Egypt, and then move to a different town. Nothing in his life will ever be the same.

In the same way, Jesus commands that we follow him, knowing that our lives will never be the same, and that we will live under threat from the world around us. In that time and place, the major threat against Jesus and his ministry that became Christianity was from the Roman Empire and their client kings and princes, Herod and his sons, in addition to the religious power structures. When Jesus was born, he was destined to die, just like all people. But he was particularly destined to die young because he posed a threat to the people who benefited from the structure of society as it was: rulers who liked to rule, religious authorities who liked their place of authority, and so forth. Anyone who threatens the structure of society can expect to run into problems in their lives.

The Church, with a capital C, is Christ’s body in the world, and is still under threat today. In some parts of the world, there are physical threats. I just listened to an audiobook by David Platt set in the Himalayas. The local Hindus and Buddhists see Christianity as teaching foreign gods that will anger their local gods, in a way that is reminiscent of many stories in the Bible. He tells a story about local leaders burning down the house and worship structure that belonged to a couple of Christian missionaries. He tells another story of tribal leaders literally stoning a Christian couple to death.

Here in America, though, the major threat against the Church is more mundane: irrelevance. I don’t need to tell you a bunch of statistics for you to realize that church attendance and membership are in decline. They have been since the Sixties. Some individual churches are doing just fine, but the broad trend in all denominations in America and western Europe is downward. Why? Lots of reasons, but I think the pandemic revealed the utter irrelevance of the Church to the majority of people. When things shut down in 2020, a lot of church leaders protested and insisted on continuing to meet. Why? Well, they said it was because that was essential to their worship of God, but I think really they were afraid that people would realize that they don’t need to attend worship. People who had already been just going through the motions would realize that they can find spiritual connections and human community without their churches. Even among those gathered here today, I’m guessing that most find community in other organizations as much as in the church—clubs and sororities, service and professional organizations, political parties and activist groups, and so forth.

Churches are also assailed for their hypocrisy. I want to be clear that I’m not speaking of First Presbyterian Church of Rolla specifically, but churches generally. Outsiders see Christian churches as places where we congratulate ourselves for being such good people, without actually having an impact on the community. During the cold snap right before Christmas, I saw a post on Facebook lamenting the fact that churches weren’t opening their doors to the homeless and those who were in places with inadequate heat. My first reaction was that we support the Mission, which provides that service. My second reaction was that we have our own struggles, and we don’t have the people and systems to manage a ministry like that, even for just a single night. But really, that criticism is fair and just one symptom of a broader disengagement from the problems of the world. We talk about them and give money to support organizations that help people, and many of us are part of those organizations, but is that really enough? It’s not enough for the unchurched people in Rolla to see us as reflections of the Light of the world.

As I said, the Gospel according to Matthew is full of Jesus’s teachings of a new Law. We’re in chapter 2; next week will be chapter 3 when Jesus is baptized; then in chapter 5, we have the Sermon on the Mount, which is the first of five discourses. It’s the most explicit set of teachings where he tells his followers to be salt and light for the world. He expands on Moses’s teachings and moves the locus of the Law from external to internal—not only should people not murder, but also they should not be angry. He says that they should love their neighbor and also that they should love their enemies. He says many other things, then says, “Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.” We are to be not just hearers, but also doers.

The fifth and last discourse ends in Matthew 25. In it, he says that he will sit on the throne of his glory and judge the nations. He will separate the nations between those who cared for the hungry, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner, and those nations who did not. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus teaches that we are supposed to care for one another, not just individually but as a community and society and world. He commands us to transform the world. He is concerned not with personal salvation, but with the salvation of all people.

The task before us in this new year is to be doers of the word, not just hearers. I want to return to that story I read about some missionaries in the Himalayas. This couple moved to a little village and built a house and a separate structure for their ministry. They helped the villagers while also teaching about Jesus. One night, a group of militants knocked on their door, with guns and torches. Pointing a gun at the couple, the leader told them that they needed to leave the village and never return. Once the couple was out, the militants burned both structures to the ground. The couple moved on, but stayed in touch with the villagers who had converted to Christianity.

Sometime later, there was a natural disaster that destroyed many homes in that village. When the missionary couple heard, they gathered up all the people they could and returned to the village to help rebuild. Even though their lives had been threatened and their possessions destroyed, they returned. They continued to love their enemies. Afterwards, the leader of the militants, who had been the conduit for so much hate directed at them, felt the love of Christ through the missionaries and converted to Christianity. He donated land for them to rebuild a worship & ministry center. He himself became an outcast and subject to hatred from his former fellow militants, but God’s love was stronger than their hate.

That’s what it means to follow Jesus’s teachings. That’s what it means to love your enemies. If you believe that Jesus loves you, shouldn’t you share that love with others? We are not saved by our works, but are saved for works. Jesus loves us and redeems us into God’s family so that we can serve others and bring them into God’s family.

The Church is now and has always been counter-cultural. In first-century Judea, that meant conflict with the Roman Empire, King Herod, and Herod’s sons. That meant conflict with the religious authorities who benefited from collusion with those secular rulers. That meant death on a cross for Jesus, death by stoning for Stephen, persecution and jail and floggings and executions for many other followers of The Way. Today, being counter-cultural means taking care of each other in an every-man-for-himself world. It means teaching love instead of judgment. It means seeking out the people who others consider problems to be ignored or eliminated and trying to bring them into community. It means working for a world in which all people are valued and know the love of God in their lives. In so doing, we will enter the Promised Land, a transformed world where God lives and reigns forever. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on the Second Sunday of Advent. Based on Matthew 3:1-12.

Let me start this morning by setting the scene. You may recall that John the Baptist is the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Elizabeth was an old woman and childless, so her pregnancy was a miracle. Zechariah was a priest, so John could have been a priest as well. All priests in the Temple were of the lineage of Aaron, so since his father was in that lineage, John was as well and could have joined the Temple power structure. But he chose a different path.

John is described as wearing clothing of camel’s hair. You may have heard of a “hair shirt.” It’s a coarse garment made of hair that is intentionally irritating to the skin. The point of the hair shirt, or John’s camel’s hair clothing, is mortification of the flesh to help you repent. John’s leather belt would have ensured that his rough clothing was pressed against his skin. The outfit was a way for him to explicitly reject his inheritance, particularly his inherited sins. He verbalizes this rejection by saying, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” He is rejecting the notion that membership in God’s kingdom comes by birth, and is asserting instead that it comes from God’s will.

The Temple was a massive institution. Observant Jews, as well as Gentiles who acknowledged the supremacy of Yahweh, would come from all over the known world. They would bring animals for sacrifice, or if they were coming from too far away, they would bring money. It was a huge operation that enriched the high priests. Over the centuries, they developed a cozy relationship with whoever was in power. At the time of John’s preaching, the high priests were deeply enmeshed in Roman politics so that they could continue to worship God as they had been taught by their forefathers.

John rejected this institution and went to the wilderness. He called all people to join him in that rejection. He proclaimed that the time was at hand to overturn the existing power structures and enter God’s kingdom instead. His message resonated with the poor and marginalized inhabitants of Judea, who were suffering under Roman rule. His message wasn’t really intended for the Pharisees and Sadducees, though. The Sadducees were aristocrats and the quintessential insiders in the Temple hierarchy. They were beneficiaries of the Temple operations and had everything to lose if the Temple were destroyed. The Pharisees were men of the people, but were busy setting up an alternative institution in the synagogues. Perhaps they weren’t wealthy like the Sadducees, but they still supported a rule-based religious structure.

John the Baptist preached that it was time to shed all of those rules and instead turn towards God. The word “repent” is usually taken to mean “confess your sins and stop doing them.” It’s an English translation of the Greek word metanoia, which more literally means to change one’s mind. It’s a spiritual conversion, a transformative change of heart. John was encouraging people to change the way they thought about the world.

The metaphor he used was separating the wheat from the chaff. Now, many times, this is interpreted to mean that some people are wheat and some people are chaff. Conveniently, those who interpret John’s metaphor in this way see themselves as the wheat and other people as chaff. But anyone who heard John would know that wheat and chaff come from the same plant, the same grain on that plant. Wheat is a form of grass whose seeds are edible. While it grows, the seed, or kernel, is surrounded by thin membranes that are like little leaves. These leaves dry out and are inedible. After being harvested, the wheat must be threshed and winnowed to remove this chaff. Threshing basically involves beating the grains to loosen the chaff from the kernels. Now you have a mixture of kernels that you want and chaff that you don’t. Winnowing is where you toss the mixture in the air and let wind blow the chaff away. If there’s no wind, you need to make wind with a big fan. All of this would be well-known to John’s audience. They would know that the chaff was an essential part of the plant while it was growing, but couldn’t be eaten and so it was something to be discarded.

I am reminded of the Solzhenitsyn quote which I have shared many times with you. In his book The Gulag Archipelago, which is a history of the vast system of prisons and labor camps in the Soviet Union, he wrote, “If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Solzhenitsyn knew that there are no “good” people and no “evil” people, but that indeed we are all good and all evil. Rather than the easy work of separating the evil people out and disposing of them, we must do the hard work of separating the evil out of ourselves.

John’s message is first a call to personal repentance. What is the chaff in your own life? When wheat is growing, the chaff serves an important role. It protects the kernel so that it can grow and develop into something useful. The chaff is what you see when you look at a field of wheat. It hides the kernel from animals who might otherwise steal the food that farmers are trying to provide to society. What is the chaff in your life, and what is the wheat kernel?

I would say that the kernel is that part of you that is made in the image of God. It is the part that is all-loving, that seeks the good of all Creation. It is the part that is building God’s kingdom and transforming society. And yet, every one of us is surrounded by chaff, too. I just listened to an audiobook by Brian McLaren titled, Do I Stay Christian? He has an extended discussion of thirteen biases we have that prevent us from perceiving reality, and a prayer for God’s help to overcome them: confirmation bias, complexity bias, community, contact, and complementarity biases, competence, consciousness, comfort, and political biases, confidence, catastrophe, cash, and conspiracy biases. We are who we are, and we cannot really escape seeing reality through the lenses of these biases. Nor can anyone else, and so we present ourselves to the world in ways that will be acceptable to those who have these biases. We just had a holiday when extended families gather. Often, when families gather together, some people wear a shell that hides their true self and shows their family just what is expected of them. Maybe they hide their political opinions, or their understandings of God, or their financial or job status, or their relationship status, or even their true identities. Hiding our true selves is often necessary to get along in this broken world, but it prevents us from truly participating in God’s kingdom. It prevents us from truly experiencing God’s reconciling love, a love that is stronger than any human hatred, a love that transcends our limited understandings.

So John the Baptist said, Come get baptized. Come shed those things that are preventing you from experiencing God’s kingdom. Shine forth your true self, which is an image of God. Join in holy community that is united by the Holy Spirit that flows like a river through us all. Transform yourself, and in the process, transform the systems and institutions that surround you and have formed you.

Because John was not simply calling individuals to repentance. He was also calling for institutional repentance. He was calling for the Temple hierarchy to be up-ended. He was calling for Judaism to shed the chaff that prevented them from truly experiencing God’s loving community.

Well, a few decades later, the Temple was destroyed and two religions sprouted from its rubble: rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. Then both set about building up some chaff, and here we are 2000 years later with a lot of extra stuff hanging around. In a recent podcast about the Eastern Orthodox churches, a scholar pointed out that the Church preceded the Bible. Israel had been worshipping for centuries before anyone wrote down the scriptures that we know as the Old Testament, and the choice of books to include in the canon wasn’t settled until sometime after Jesus’s birth. The earliest books in the New Testament were written decades after Christ’s resurrection. So the Bible itself is a window into God’s reality, but only one window among many, and one that came a little bit late. Over the centuries since the Bible was written, our denomination and its predecessors piled up creeds and confessions on top of it. I would now like to read to you some selections from our Book of Confessions, which since 2016 has included 12 different confessional statements.

From the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made.” Beautiful poetry, right? But what does it mean? We probably couldn’t all agree on what it means that Jesus Christ was begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.

Now from the Scots Confession: “We abandon the teaching of the Roman Church and withdraw from its sacraments; firstly because their ministers are not true ministers of Christ Jesus (indeed they even allow women, whom the Holy Ghost will not permit to preach in the congregation to baptize) and, secondly, because they have so adulterated both the sacraments with their own additions that no part of Christ’s original act remains in its original simplicity.” So here we have both misogynist and anti-Catholic bias in one sentence. The Book of Confessions does have a footnote and discussion that at least partially rejects this section, but it remains in the book.

I’ll spare you the Second Helvetic Confession, but there is a long section where it first elevates Lactantius, Epiphanius, and Jerome, then rejects the Epicureans, Manichaeans, Marcionites, Pelagians, and other heresies. If anyone can explain to me what the Pelagian heresy was, let’s chat after worship!

For a while, the only official creed Presbyterians affirmed was the Westminster Confession. In fact, there are other Presbyterian denominations that still hold to that tradition. However, our Book of Confessions actually has two parallel versions, because two of our parent denominations had diverged in places.

Some would say that the Westminster Confession is what makes us Presbyterian. But what does that really mean? OK, I know the definition of Presbyterian and its Greek root word that means “elder.” But if you asked a random person on the street what a Presbyterian was, they wouldn’t really be able to explain it. It’s just a word. I was at an interfaith dialogue when someone said, “P-Presbyterian, is that like P-Pentecostal?” I explained that no, Presbyterians and Pentecostals are about as different as any two Christian sects could be. Even for us insiders, how would you explain the difference between Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, UCC, and so forth? We are in full communion with the Moravians and the Reformed Church in America, but I don’t really know what either of them are, let alone how they differ from Presbyterians.

This is all chaff. We are supposed to be the body of Christ. We are supposed to be image-bearers who exemplify the unity of God’s eternal kingdom. And yet, we keep finding ways to divide ourselves, to decide who is “in” and who is “out,” to decide which particular interpretations of scripture are correct, and so forth.

Indeed, we even divide ourselves over externalities that have nothing to do with God. I would say that the primary difference between the Episcopal church and PC(USA) is the form of worship. Along with the rest of the World Anglican Communion, they use the Book of Common Prayer, with all the historical liturgical trappings of high church. I would say that we’re not exactly “low church,” but certainly not as liturgical as the Episcopalians. If we look around the sanctuary today, we see a Christmas tree, an Advent wreath, and other indications that Christmas is coming. I would bet that you wouldn’t see any of that in a Baptist church or in a nondenominational church in the Christian Restoration movement, like Greentree or Ridgeview.

Now, I’m not arguing that we throw out the Book of Confessions or the Christmas tree. I’m as committed to the institution of the church as anyone. What I’m saying is that these are tools, and like any tools, they can be used as weapons. They can be used to bring us closer to God, to remind us that we are made in God’s image, to reveal to us the kernel of God’s divine spark within each of us, to create an institution that reveals God’s love for all humanity. OR, they can be used as weapons to divide us from one another, to hide our light from the world, to keep out those who we deem unworthy because they don’t believe or behave or look or act like we do.

That was John’s core message, and Jesus’s core message. Jesus said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” He proclaimed that all of the trappings of religiosity would fall away, leaving only the Holy Spirit to guide us into his eternal kingdom. John said that Jesus would separate the wheat from the chaff and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. As long as we are living in this world, we need the chaff to protect us as we grow into the people God intends. But as much as possible, we should shed those things that are only serving to separate us from one another.

This Advent, we are hopeful that God will do a new thing among us. Last Sunday, we heard an inspiring message from Pastor Greg Emery who has been helping us through this transition period. He gave us encouragement to keep on going and keep on hoping. We pray each Sunday that the Pastor Nominating Committee will find a new spiritual leader who will bring about our rebirth. But God is already at work among us. God is already calling us to shed those things that feel comfortable but no longer serve God’s kingdom. God is already raising up children of Abraham. God is ready for us to let our light shine forth as we bear God’s image to our community and our world. Be ready: Even now, the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Those things we cling to that no longer bear fruit for God’s kingdom are passing away. Let go, and let God lead you, and lead us, into a glorious future where we bear fruit worthy of God’s love for the world. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 21:5-19. Right now, as we speak, sixteen nations are considered to be at war. The two that we hear about in the news are Russia and Ukraine, of course. Looking at the list I found, those are the only nations that fall into the pattern … Continue reading "These Are the End Times"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on All Saints’ Sunday. Based on Luke 20:27-38. To modern ears, this whole notion of a widow marrying her dead husband’s brother is just weird, or perhaps repulsive. Let’s spend a little bit of time trying to understand what’s going on. In that time and place, women were … Continue reading "If You Believe In Forever…"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on October 16, 2022. Based on Jeremiah 31:27-34. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you … Continue reading "God’s Law On Our Hearts"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on October 2, 2022, World Communion Sunday. Based on 2 Timothy 1:1-18. Before I jump into the lesson for the day, I’d like to give a little background on Second Timothy. A good fraction of the New Testament was allegedly written by Paul. Some letters are uncontested—Romans, First … Continue reading "Shameless Love"

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Preached on September 18, 2022, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Amos 8:4-7, Luke 16:1-13. There is a new term sweeping the internet and Twitter and such: quiet quitting. According to techtarget.com, “Quiet quitting doesn’t mean an employee has left their job, but rather has limited their tasks to those strictly within their … Continue reading "The Grace Economy"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on September 4, 2022. Based on Luke 14:25-33 (with a little look back at Luke 14:15-24). Before I begin with this passage, I’d like to back up. The parable immediately before today’s reading is about a man who gave a great dinner and invited many, but they didn’t … Continue reading "Dying to Self"

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Recently, I posted a list of “Edge of the Bed Advice.” One critique from my kids was that yes, they had heard much of it before and knew the stories behind many items, but without that context, they seemed like bromides or proverbs with no real depth. So here’s my first attempt to put some … Continue reading "Making Life Decisions"

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Preached on August 7, 2022, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 12:32-40. I would like to open with a reading from the book of Daniel, chapter 7, verse 13. “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of … Continue reading "Tending Your Spiritual Garden"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on July 17, 2022. Based on Colossians 1:15-29. This is pretty close to a statement of faith for me. It encapsulates the essence of my beliefs, which are also reflected in Romans 8:38-39. After I wrote this sermon, I read an article by Keith Giles that is also … Continue reading "Destined for Glory"

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Recently, I read This Is Day One, by Drew Dudley. One of his exercises for identifying your personal leadership values, drawn from lived experience, is to write a list of advice. If you were sitting on the edge of the bed of your son or daughter the night before they left home for good, what … Continue reading "Edge-of-the-Bed Advice"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on July 3, 2022. Based on Luke 10:1-11, 16-20. Read from NRSV, but Bible Gateway has NRSVue. In the last session meeting, we were talking about editing the MIF and someone, probably Susan, said, “As long as you don’t add anything about handling snakes.” I said, “Obviously you … Continue reading "Wolves or Snakes"

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Last year, LGBTQ+ Rolla held its first big public event. We had held some Zoom events with just a smattering of participation, but were emboldened to hold our first Pride gathering. I had hoped for 20 or 30 people to attend and we planned accordingly. We had music and snacks, but not much else. Over … Continue reading "Phelps Pride 22! Woo!"

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Back before the pandemic, when I was in my campus office all day most days, I would often walk up to the Mobil On the Run for a drink, or sometimes lunch. Nothing makes you feel successful like a gas station hot dog! Anyway, I don’t remember what tipped me off, but I somehow realized … Continue reading "Happy Pride!"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on Trinity Sunday, June 12, 2022. Based on Romans 5:1-5 and John 16:12-15. On this Trinity Sunday, I am going to thoroughly explain the complete theological principle of the Trinity in a way that everyone understands. Oh, sorry, I left out a word in that sentence. I am … Continue reading "The Process of Life"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Acts 2:1-11, Romans 8:14-17, and John 14:8-17, 25-27. In Genesis, we read about God interacting directly with certain individuals. Then in Exodus, God speaks with Moses and, through him, creates the nation of Israel. God must have thought their work was done, that they had set … Continue reading "Practicing the Presence"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Acts 11:1-18 and John 13:31-35. The Old Testament book of Leviticus lays out a number of laws about cleanness and uncleanness. Certain foods are proscribed, like pork and shellfish. There are rules about how you butcher animals. There are rules about leprosy, which was kind of … Continue reading "Whom Do We Love?"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on May 1, 2022. Based on Acts 9:1-20 and John 21:1-19. I’d like to start back in the Old Testament, in the early days of Israel as a nation. They had been slaves in Egypt whom God freed. After Moses died, Joshua led them in their conquest of … Continue reading "Whom Do We Serve?"

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This Holy Saturday, I’m once again thinking about liminal times. This is the day that we recount in the Apostles’ Creed when we say, “He descended into hell.” This is the day we remember the already-but-not-yet nature of salvation. Jesus has died for our sins and will conquer death. In fact, he already has, but … Continue reading "Liminal Times"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on April 3, 2022, the Fifth Sunday in Lent. Based on Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8. A month or two ago, I was told a story by a pastor in our presbytery. To make a long story short, the basic point was that each preacher basically has one sermon. … Continue reading "Anointed By Love"

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I’m on the steering committee for the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference, having served as general chair in 2017. It’s held ever year in March (or possibly late February). It’s a bit unusual in that it has very strong academic participation AND very strong industry participation, including an exposition. At our peak, we had over … Continue reading "APEC: A Homecoming"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 13:31-35. Transcript.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on the Second Sunday in Lent. Based on Luke 13:31-35. Today, we encounter one of the passages that reveals and celebrates the female nature of the divine. In the beginning, God created all people, male and female, in the image of God. So that must mean that God … Continue reading "Gathered Into One Brood"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on the First Sunday in Lent. Based on Luke 4:1-13. Here we are on the first Sunday in Lent. I want to start by sharing a little bit about Lent for those who don’t know, or as reminders for the rest of us. Lent is a time of … Continue reading "Temptation in the Desert"

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Recently, a pastoral colleague shared with me the concept of “one sermon,” that each preacher has basically one sermon that they preach. For example, the late Rob Heberer always preached that Jesus is God, often ending up in the upper room with Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. The message that I generally preach is that … Continue reading "We Belong in God’s … What?"

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In a recent sermon, I mentioned a concept that I picked up from “Find Your Inner Monk.” We don’t learn philosophy and spirituality and ideology in a vacuum. We don’t simply observe our surroundings and make sense of them on our own. Rather, we form our attitudes and beliefs within our communities of belonging. Our … Continue reading "Communities of Belonging"

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Jeremiah 17:5-10 and Luke 6:17-26.

For a little over two years, I have used a planner called a Monk Manual. The motivating principle behind it is that monks are some of the happiest and most productive people. Steven Lawson, the creator of the Monk Manual, studied the monastic life and developed a way to achieve similar results in secular life. His approach encompasses these ten principles:

• Gratitude
• Simplicity
• Intentionality
• Order
• Generosity
• Relationships
• Reflection
• Presence
• Balance
• Transcendence

The question is, how can we incorporate these in our daily lives? Lawson developed the Monk Manual as a way of integrating spiritual practices that lead to living out these principles. Just last week, I started a program he calls, “Find Your Inner Monk,” which delves deeper into these concepts.

I want to focus on just a few today to set the stage for the rest of our time together. The first is simplicity. Simplicity begins with letting go. Monks express this tangibly by paring down to the essentials—both emotionally and physically—liberating themselves from the things that weigh down their mind, body, and spirit. The vows of poverty and chastity are the tangible expressions of a dedication to simplicity. Much easier said than done. If you start making a list of all the things in your life that you “need,” you will find that it includes many things that were unknown a generation ago. Do I “need” a smartphone? Probably not, but getting rid of it is unimaginable to me.

Next, there are relationships. Monks vow chastity, but do not live without love. Instead, they embrace a different kind of love, the chaste love of brotherhood. In the same way, we can have lives filled with loving relationships. In the Monk Manual, there is a spot for daily gratitude. Most of my entries there are people with whom I have a relationship—sometimes family members, but often friends who enrich my life, or even casual acquaintances who reveal God to me. Hospice nurses cite that the biggest regret of the dying has nothing to do with achievements or financial investments—but has everything to do with relationships. I’m an engineer and an introvert, so for much of my life, I’ve focused on developing a few close relationships. Over the past few years, I’ve tried to broaden my social circle. The pandemic has made that difficult—I think everyone’s social circles have been collapsing just because it is SO HARD to get together. Still, I’ve been striving to stay connected with old friends and develop new friendships.

The last principle I want to discuss is presence. Presence means letting go of the past and the future and being fully in the moment. It means really listening to the person you’re talking to, rather than thinking about what you’re going to say next. We are so used to control that it’s hard to let go, and trust that it really is going to be okay, after all. Engaging with what’s right in front of us, which means giving ourselves fully to the present moment, requires vulnerability—which can be terrifying. But if you’re ever with someone who has real presence—like my friend Ashley Brooks—it’s exhilarating. Their openness and presence are contagious and make you more open and present with them.

Simplicity, relationships, and presence—three ways we let go of our attachments to the material world and surrender to God. This week’s Gospel lesson is the opening part of the Sermon on the Plain, which is Luke’s parallel with Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. As in Matthew, Luke opens the sermon with blessings, but unlike Matthew, Luke includes the woes here as well. We see these pairings: Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Basically, if you’re down, you’ll be lifted up; if you’re up, you’ll be brought low.

The blessings are for those who trust in God. The woes are for those who trust in worldly things. If you are rich and you think you can rely on your wealth, you will be reluctant to trust in God. But as the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. One day, you’ll have no choice but to surrender all that you have. If you release your attachments now, you can break free of the cycle of blessing and woe inherent to our world and you’ll be more able to live in God’s realm now. Jesus’s message that the kingdom of God is at hand reminds us that we can live in God’s kingdom now, not later. But living in God’s kingdom means not living in a worldly kingdom.

Jeremiah has similar curses and blessings. Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals, but blessed are those who trust in the LORD. Then Jeremiah follows up with a reminder that, “The heart is devious above all else.” It’s easy to turn your whole life over to God, or rather to say that you’re turning it over, but hard to really let go. Most often, we say that we will put our trust in God alone, but then don’t follow through. On Sunday, we believe that God will provide, but on Monday, we go to work or check our investments. When I was working with Rocco to design our new house, I started out with the intention of downsizing because our family doesn’t need so many attachments—but by the end of the project, we ended up with a bigger house and more storage space for all the stuff we don’t really need. I’d like to let go and trust in God completely, but it’s a struggle every day.

It’s important to remember, though, that these blessings and woes are not commands, but rather are descriptions of reality. If you put your trust in your wealth, you’ll worry about every dip in the stock market. If you are attached to your possessions, they wind up owning you. If instead you let go of your possessions and trust in God, there’s nothing you can lose. I’m reminded of Nino—some of you know him from the Mission. He went through some things, including alcohol addiction and prison, but then found Jesus and turned his life around. He posted once on Facebook, “I don’t have much but I have it all.” He has let go of all his material needs and dedicated himself to serving God, and he’s filled with joy. It’s always great when he stops by the Mission. He lifts people up and makes the community better just by his presence, which reflects the glory of God.

Nino has enough. We live in a society where a scarcity mindset prevails. We worry that we won’t have enough time to do everything we “need” to do. We worry that we won’t have enough money to be secure. So we chase after more money, which uses up the time we don’t have. I was listening to a recording by Father Richard Rohr recently, and he pointed out that our homes and kitchens are full of “time-saving devices,” and yet we have less time than ever. The pursuit of abundance leaves us always feeling scarcity. We think, If I just have X, I’ll be happy. I just need a new car, or a new job, or a bigger TV, or a faster computer. Then we get it, and it’s nice at first, but eventually it leaves us unsatisfied. The more we have, the more we want, and the less it satisfies.

So the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. The opposite of the scarcity-abundance trap is enough. Kurt Vonnegut wrote this poem as an obituary:

True story, Word of Honor: Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?” And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.” And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?” And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.” Not bad! Rest in peace!”

Enough. Instead of striving to have what you want, enough-ness is wanting what you have. The root of this enough-ness is relationships.

Father Rohr reminds his audience that many poor people in Third World countries are much happier than relatively well-off people in America. The reason is that instead of relying on things, they rely on each other. They know that if they are in need, their family or their neighbors will help them out. Instead of putting their time and energy into building up a big bank account, they build up a big social account—wealth in the form of social connections. Elsewhere I have heard this called the gift economy. I give something to you, not as a loan against some future gift you’ll give me, but as an investment in our friendship. And maybe you won’t “pay me back,” but in sharing of myself, I help build up a community of belonging where people support each other. God’s realm is built on something even more powerful: the grace economy. We share not only our time and resources, which are limited, but also God’s grace, which is limitless. God’s grace multiplies our efforts and strengthens our relationships.

I mentioned that I started a program called, “Find Your Inner Monk.” It’s described by Monk Manual founder Steve Lawson as a pilgrimage, but a pilgrimage that takes place in your daily life. In the first lesson, he talks about how we form our ideas, values, and goals, and how we answer life’s big questions. Especially in America, we have this image in our minds of the solitary individual deriving answers from first principles and formulating their own vision of how the world works. That image drives the phenomenon of those who say they are spiritual but not religious, instead seeking answers to life’s questions on their own. But Lawson points out that that’s not a reflection of reality. In reality, the influences on our ideologies and beliefs are first our communities of belonging, then the broader culture, and then our personal experiences. That is, our communities of belonging have the strongest influence, and the more we feel belonging, the more permeable we are, the more open we are to the community’s beliefs.

As we let go of our worldly attachments and invest instead in relationships, we build up those communities of belonging. The more I give to this church, in time, talent, and treasure, the more I feel a part of it, and the more it molds me into its image. We should work towards making our church both a place where people feel complete belonging, and a place where we lift up Jesus Christ and his self-sacrificing love as the ideal that we are all striving to achieve.

I’ve noticed something curious about the human psyche. You would think that receiving a gift would make you value the giver more and make you feel more a part of the giver’s community. But that hasn’t been my experience. In reality, it is in giving that we ascribe more value to the receiver, and in giving that we feel more a part of the receiving community. It’s as if the receiver validates our gift, and therefore validates us as a person and as a member of the community. That’s why so many people volunteer at the Mission and at GRACE and at all of the other charitable organizations in town. That’s why a great way to reconcile with someone is not to give them something, but to ask them for a favor, which shows that you value them.

So to build a true community of belonging, we need to value the gifts each person has to offer. If we want to grow in our impact on our community, we don’t need to raise more money for charity, although that won’t hurt and I would still encourage you to give on this Souper Bowl Sunday. We don’t need to be more entertaining, or to have more programs. What we need is to create spaces where people feel valued, where the gifts they have to offer matter. Some people have financial resources they can share; others have musical or artistic talents, or know how to fix things, or know how to organize and plan, or are good with numbers, or whatever. All of us have life experiences that we can share, things we have learned that can help others see God in a new way. All of us have a yearning to love and be loved.

A community where people truly feel belonging, where they can bring their full selves and all their life experiences and skills and talents, has a name: the kingdom of God. I’m not sure how to build such a community, but Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is at hand. It’s nearby, just waiting for us to enter it. Let us all strive to create spaces where people can give of themselves, their whole selves, and receive in return the grace of God and membership in God’s glorious kingdom.

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Sermon based on Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11. Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla.

Well, here we are, first Sunday of February. How are you all doing on your New Year’s resolutions? I didn’t make any resolutions, per se, but did intend to change my morning and evening routines. I have been somewhat successful in changing my evening routine, but my morning routine is another story. My intention was to go running every morning to stay active. Well, New Year’s weekend was bitterly cold and also deer season, so I didn’t get off to a very good start. Since then, I’ve gone running occasionally, but not regularly.

My dear friend Ashley Brooks recommended a book to me, Resisting Happiness by Matthew Kelly. I finally got around to reading it over winter break. One of its motivating concepts is the idea that we resist things that we know will make us happier. I know that I feel better and have a better day when I run in the morning, and I know that I enjoy the run itself, and yet I struggle to convince myself to get dressed and go when it’s 12° outside or when there’s freezing rain, sleet, and snow on the way, or 6” of snow on the ground. In the same way, I know that praying, reading the Bible, and other spiritual practices will bring me closer to God, yet I resist doing them. We all have this resistance inside of us.

There’s one concept in the book that I take issue with. It’s the idea that we can choose or seek “happiness.” So often, seeking happiness becomes a search for hedonistic pleasures. But that kind of happiness is fleeting. What the author is really talking about is the deep joy that comes from our relationship with God and with God’s people.

It’s hard to know, though, what choices we can make to become happier or more joyful. In a podcast about our relationship with time, I heard a concept that can help: Choose enlargement. It’s hard to know which paths will lead to happiness or joy, but it’s often easier to know which path will enlarge you. For example, playing an instrument well requires hours and hours of practice, much of it drudgery. I wouldn’t say that I enjoy playing scales or arpeggios or chord progressions, but I know that those exercises make me more able to make music. The example in the podcast was parenthood: Nobody will claim that getting up in the middle of the night to change a dirty diaper is “fun,” but parents do it because it’s part and parcel of the parenting journey.

In today’s reading, Simon reacts to the miraculous catch by saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” In what way was he sinful? I mean, we never hear that he was a murderer or thief or anything. Partly, I think he recognized his sinfulness in comparison to the perfection of Jesus. But more than that, he recognized his finitude, his limitations. We all fall short of the glory of God because we are limited. We love some people more than others. We acknowledge that people in our community, state, nation, and world are in need, but we don’t help them all. Compared to the Lord of Creation, we are small people of limited capabilities. But if we each choose a path that leads to enlargement, to making us a more complete person, we will become better versions of ourselves.

One way we can enlarge ourselves is to become a part of something bigger than ourselves. Let me explain. As an individual, if I see someone who is homeless, I can give them a little money or food, but that’s about it. But if I connect to The Mission, I can help that homeless person get meals regularly, have a place to stay, and get other services they need. As an individual, I can teach a few people about a few topics in electrical engineering. As a professor at a university, I can contribute to a large number of students becoming fully-qualified electrical engineers. We all have a desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

And that’s basically why we are here today, right? We want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, and what’s bigger than God’s family? In the sanctuary today, there are a few dozen members of Christ’s body, but we are connected to other Presbyterian churches in our presbytery, synod, and general assembly, and more broadly are connected to all expressions of Christ’s teachings. We are all connected throughout time and space. We are connected to the great cloud of witnesses, the communion of saints who enjoy the abundant heavenly banquet. We are connected to poor Simon who just wanted to catch a few fish, but saw God’s realm breaking through and dropped everything to follow Jesus. Simon saw a glimpse of the heavenly banquet that is to come and chose to be a part of it—chose enlargement.

In following Jesus, Simon was promised that he would be a valued part of Jesus’s efforts to build his kingdom. As we heard in the introit, Jesus promised to make Simon worthy. He promised that Simon would do important work fishing for people.

Jesus asked Simon to leave everything he had, everything he thought was important, and abandon his own earthly desires. Simon’s yes had to be followed by a thousand nos. We are finite. We have limited time and resources. We can only be in one place at a time. So, to say yes, I will do this thing for Jesus, means saying no, I will not do these other things for myself or my family or my job. This is a hard calling. I’ve been listening to a recording of lectures by Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar, wisdom teacher, and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation. Father Rohr reminds us that in the affluence of America, it is hard to obey Jesus’s call. We are bound with golden shackles—unwilling to let go of the things that make our life comfortable, for the sake of following Jesus. This is the part of the sermon when I preach to myself—as much as I’m willing to give to God, I’m very happy living in a nice house and driving a nice car and having a nice life. I struggle to turn away from my career as an engineering professor and spend more time and energy on God’s kin-dom.

But Jesus didn’t ask Simon to set aside his true self. I know it’s a metaphor, but Jesus told Simon he would still be fishing, but for people instead. In the same way, Jesus asks us to bring our true selves, our whole selves, to his service. Jesus doesn’t ask me to cease to be an engineer or a scholar, but instead to bring my skills and talents to bear on his Gospel. Each of us have special gifts that we can use in God’s service. We are all grateful for Jeff and Lorie devoting their musical gifts to God. Nora brings her lifetime of teaching children to her stewardship of the Presbyterian Preschool. I’m glad that Ming brings the skills he developed over an illustrious career as an academic leader to his membership on the PNC. In ways too numerous to mention, we each have skills and talents that we have developed over our lives that we can draw upon and dedicate to God’s service, to building up God’s kin-dom.

Here in Rolla, there are surely thousands of people, maybe more than ten thousand, who are not connected to Christ’s body, which is the church. Jesus is drawing all people to himself, reconciling the whole world and seeking an intimate relationship with each person. He calls us to help in this work, to build up connections person-to-person so that we can experience God’s kin-dom here and now. But the challenge is too big. I cannot personally tell ten thousand people about the love God has for them. Even as a congregation, we can’t possibly reach everyone. But that doesn’t excuse us from trying to reach someone. We need to start somewhere.

Let’s start by thinking about who is not here. Who is not worshipping in the sanctuary this morning? Well, for starters, our homebound members and others for whom worshipping remotely is preferable due to their life situations. Today, that group is probably a bit bigger than usual because of the weather. Some of us, particularly the deacons, are called to help those members stay connected to Christ’s body even if we don’t see them in our sanctuary. Looking beyond our members, let’s think about those vast groups of people who aren’t here. There are the younger generations, by which I mean anyone under the age of 50. For a variety of reasons, many of them have heard the message that they are not welcome in God’s kin-dom. Some have been explicitly told that “their kind,” whatever that means, aren’t welcome in a particular church. Or maybe their friends have been excluded, and so they won’t go anywhere their friends aren’t welcome. Or maybe our inward focus, on the worship style, architecture, music, and programs that matter to people like us, implicitly excludes people who are intimidated by our sanctuary, dislike our music, or whatever. By failing to meet them where they are, we send the message that they aren’t welcome, that they don’t matter to us.

Jesus said, Come, follow me, and I’ll teach you. He knew that Simon would be in challenging situations, dealing with people he had nothing in common with or even people he hated, such as tax collectors and Roman soldiers. In the same way, Jesus knows that if we follow him, we will be challenged. We’ll meet people who have very different life experiences from us. We’ll meet people who are made anxious by the very things that bring us comfort and who need comfort that we don’t know how to provide. We’ll meet people dealing with problems we cannot even conceive of.

We are called to bring our whole selves to those encounters. I will never cease to be an engineer or a professor, no matter what happens in my career. I think like an engineer, solve problems like an engineer, and communicate like a professor. I cannot change my past experiences that have formed me into the person I am today, and that’s OK with God. Like removing chaff from wheat, Jesus removes just those things that hold us back from participating in kin-dom building while retaining that core, that nugget of self, deep inside of us. Jesus promises, though, that he will be with us. When we peel back those layers of worldly attachments that separate us from God and each other, we are left exposed and vulnerable. Yet Christ is always with us, protecting our true selves, loving us completely, and enabling us to share his love with our neighbors.

Serenity is what comes when you stop wishing for a different past. Courage is what we need to build a different future. We all, each one of us individually and our congregation as a whole, can have a future filled with God’s glory if we choose it. If we choose to go where God is calling us, we can experience a taste of the abundant life that is to come when God’s realm is complete.

When Simon saw God’s realm breaking through, he immediately responded, “Go away from me, for I am a sinful man.” He realized that, like all of us, he was limited. He was not ready to participate in the full abundance of God’s realm. Jesus said, It’s OK. We don’t have to change the whole world by ourselves. Jesus is the one doing the work, really, and anyway, the world is a big place. All we can do, and all we are asked to do, is to follow Jesus and change the world for one person. And then another. And then another.

I’m not sure what or where my true calling is. I have some idea, but I’m still groping blindly for the next step. What matters is that I’m trying to follow God’s call. It’s OK to be wrong, but it’s not OK to quit trying. I’d like to close now with a prayer written by Thomas Merton that encapsulates what I’m saying, and that I hope will be helpful to you, each one of you, as you strive to follow where Jesus leads you. Let’s pray:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.

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A Meditation on Luke 4:14-21

A few years ago, our younger child, Jesse (who was in high school at the time), had a friend that I’ll call “Pat” to protect their identity. Pat was assigned female at birth (AFAB) but realized he was transgender male. He definitely did not have accepting parents and greatly feared that he would be homeless if he came out. This was unacceptable to Jesse, so we talked about what we could do to help. We do have resources in Rolla, particularly The Rolla Mission, but living on the streets is dangerous anyway. We had a spare bedroom, so we offered it to Pat as a transitional option until he went to college. Thankfully, when he came out, his home life was unpleasant but not unbearable. He was able to survive the last months of high school and then move on to new horizons.

Not everyone is so lucky. I am aware of another young person who came out and was then subjected to severe emotional abuse until they turned 18 and were able to leave home—thankfully, to live with a supportive friend. Again, not everyone is so lucky. Many LGBTQ youth do not have accepting parents, do not have healthy home environments, and do not have friends who will take them in. According to True Colors United, LGBTQ youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than other youth. Although they comprise about 7% of all youth, up to 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ. In addition to the usual reasons (like family poverty), major reasons for LGBTQ youth homelessness include being forced out or abused because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. (This is actually why I started volunteering at The Mission. I may not be able to help homeless LGBTQ individuals explicitly, but fighting homelessness anywhere helps indirectly.)

Importantly, the two individuals that I know who might have fallen prey to these family issues would not show up in the statistics as “youth” because they were both 18. Our society treats an 18-year-old as an adult, but at the same time expects parents to support them for a few more years. For example, colleges assume that parents’ financial resources are available to their children. A story in Rolling Stone describes a college sophomore, Jackie, who came out and was immediately cut off—her car taken away, her credit cards canceled. Of course her tuition immediately became her own responsibility, regardless of what the college may have expected. In the ensuing years, she experienced intermittent homelessness.

Sadly, the Christian church has had an outsized role in driving division within families. In the Rolling Stone story, Jackie’s parents were devout Catholics. When she called them to tell them she was gay, “After what felt like an eternity, her mom finally responded. ‘I don’t know what we could have done for God to have given us a fag as a child,’ she said before hanging up.”

Somewhere along the line, Jackie’s parents had been told that being gay made her irredeemably sinful and unacceptable to God. Indeed, many churches continue to preach that the Bible clearly states that being gay is inherently evil, based on a handful of “clobber passages.” They ignore the other 99% of the Bible that preaches love for neighbor and equality before God.

This week’s lectionary passage is Luke 4:14-21, which I refer to as Jesus’s mission statement. Up to this point, Jesus was teaching and healing and calling followers, but had not yet clearly stated what kind of Messiah he was. Would he be a warrior and lead a rebellion to expel the Romans? No. He picked up Isaiah’s mantle and said,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18-19

Jesus brought good news to the poor—all of the poor, not just the “worthy” poor. He proclaimed freedom to the oppressed, including those who are abused—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. And no, homelessness is not freedom.

Then he followed his proclamation by saying, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Today. Not tomorrow, not next year. Not when it’s convenient. Not when the world is ready. TODAY.

Last weekend we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. As part of my celebration, I read Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In the best prophetic tradition, his words were right on target for his time and circumstances, while also describing a broader truth about the way the world works. “The time is always right to do what is right.” He went on,

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was “well timed,” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Too many of us are comfortable with the way the world operates. I’m a cisgender, heterosexual, white, middle-class, well-educated man. It’s hard to imagine a more privileged place in American society. Oh, and I have tenure. The world works just fine for me. But there are plenty of people for whom the world does not work so well. Women’s rights have come a long way since the time my mother was forced to quit teaching due to pregnancy, but women are still subject to discrimination that results in lower wages and less economic stability. Explicit discrimination due to race has been outlawed, but systemic racism built over the centuries continues to maintain a gap between White and Black Americans. In my lifetime, I have seen tremendous strides in LGBTQ rights, including marriage equality, but there remains no state or federal law against discrimination over sexual orientation or gender identity.

Unfortunately, as MLK Jr. wrote elsewhere in his letter,

The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the archsupporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.

The Christian church, born as an egalitarian movement, has evolved into a patriarchal, White-centric institution. We have built systems of inequality. We have driven LGBTQ individuals into closets, and when they come out, they have suffered at our hands.

The time is always right to do what is right. Today is the day to work towards reconciliation. There are plenty of sins of which the Church must repent, too many to list. My calling is to work towards reconciliation with the LGBTQ community—not by asking them to change, but by changing the Church from within.

This weekend, I’m attending the virtual Q Christian Fellowship Conference. Their theme this year is Making a Way. How will we enter into full fellowship with our siblings in the LGBTQ community? I don’t know, but I know that God will make a way.

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A meditation on Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Wheat is a grass species with large grains around their seeds. Humans have cultivated wheat for thousands of years. The grain itself has three parts: endosperm (used for white flour), bran, and germ (the part that sprouts). As it grows, though, special leaf-like structures surround the grain. These structures, called chaff, are inedible and must be removed. A major development in agriculture was the cultivation of free-threshing wheat, in which the chaff can be easily removed by beating (threshing) the harvested sheaves. After threshing, the chaff is no longer attached to the grain, but everything is all mixed together. “Winnowing” involves throwing the mixture up in the air with a light wind (possibly provided by a fan). The grain falls while the chaff blows away.

John the Baptist was a firebrand of a preacher. He held nothing back when he was teaching his followers. And yet, he said that worse was to come: “I baptize you with water, but … [the Messiah] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Pretty strong words! Hearing them, I’m not sure I would really look forward to the coming of the Messiah.

What is chaff? One common interpretation of this verse, and many similar verses of judgment, interprets the wheat and chaff as people: righteous people are the wheat, wicked people are the chaff. Yet Solzhenitsyn had a brilliant insight:

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Nobody is perfect. Nobody is righteous in themselves. Everybody falls short of the glory of God. Everybody can point to ways they have hurt other people.

Yet we often feel compelled to hurt people, by action or inaction, as a way to protect ourselves. We know that we should welcome the stranger and help the poor, but when confronted with an actual poor stranger, our fear prevents us from welcoming and helping them. We know that we should put God first in our lives, but spend most of our time chasing money so that we can have a comfortable life.

Plus, we are all connected to various social structures: our family, community, workplace, church, other organizations, state, and nation. I may be willing to follow God’s call in a certain way, but I have to work within the rules of these social structures. When I have to choose between my urge to do the right thing and my desire to belong to a certain organization or community, I may choose belonging as the easier, more comfortable path.

This is the chaff. These are the things that protect us in this world as we grow into the people God desires, but do not serve us in God’s kin-dom. Our fears, our attachments, our covetous yearnings, our anger, our anxiety—they all separate us from each other and from God, yet they are necessary to function in this broken world.

I am currently on my second reading of Resisting Happiness by Matthew Kelly, on the recommendation of my dear friend Ashley Brooks. (It’s one of the things that led her to become the executive director of the Rolla Mission.) It is written from deep in the Roman Catholic tradition, so there are some things that just don’t apply outside of that context. One valuable part of Roman Catholicism, though, is the ritual of confession. Repentance is a critical part of the Christian tradition, one that we include in Presbyterian worship each Sunday. There are three main parts of confession: self-examination to prayerfully consider the ways in which you have failed to meet God’s standard; the actual confession in which you put words to your sins (either speaking to a priest or, in my tradition, directly to God through prayer) and express contrition; and the joyful response in which you celebrate knowing that God has forgiven you, so you share God’s mercy with others.

There is also a need for restitution. As we confess, God forgives us, but that doesn’t necessarily resolve any pain we caused someone else. I’m reminded of the confession scene in Moonstruck. (I can’t find a better video, sorry.) Loretta, Cher’s character, confesses that “once I slept with the brother of my fiancé.” The priest absolves her, but her life is still a mess. She still has to deal with the disruptions in her relationships, but she can do so with the confidence that God loves her.

In the same way, we each need to reflect on the ways in which we have fallen short of God’s calling—the people we have hurt through action or inaction, the barriers we have erected between ourselves and our neighbors or between ourselves and God. Self-examination and confession are essential, but so is the response: work towards restitution and reconciliation.

Jesus’s message throughout the Gospels was, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!” Then he told people what that meant in their lives. For each person, there was a different answer, but in every case, Jesus told them to set aside anything that was preventing them from fully entering fellowship with God and all of God’s people.

John the Baptist taught a baptism of repentance. All four Gospels report, though, that Jesus was baptized. We believe Jesus was the only human who was sinless. So why was he baptized?

In other passages that describe John’s teachings, he emphasized social issues like generosity and fairness. Jesus was not himself sinful, but he was a part of sinful social structures. That’s unavoidable in this world. If Jesus wanted to worship with his fellow Jews, he had to visit the Temple, which excluded people that he would have included (women, Gentiles, lepers, the disabled). He was able to connect with all of these people individually, but could not overcome the sinful exclusionary practices of the religious establishment. He was part of a sinful economic system governed by an occupying army.

So Jesus was baptized to proclaim his participation in the reconciliation of the world. By himself, Jesus of Nazareth could not change the social, political, and religious structures of Judea, but he could start a movement that would. Through his death and resurrection, and through the action of the Holy Spirit, he could continue to work through people everywhere, in every age, to reconcile us to each other and to God. Even today, he is working through me, through you, through each person who hears his message or feels the Holy Spirit’s nudges to create a more connected, inclusive, just, and righteous world.

Our task, then, is to look at the world, see where there are problems that God is trying to solve, and try to be a part of the solution. There are so many problems, though. It can become overwhelming. In five minutes of doomscrolling, you can read about political struggles in the US and abroad, wars, famine, homelessness, climate disruptions, and more. There is too much for anyone to fix, so it’s easy to lose hope and just quit.

I’m taking the other approach. I can’t fix everything, but I CAN fix something. I can’t change the world, but maybe I can change one person’s world. I will continue to work at the Mission as my small contribution to resolving the issue of homelessness in America. But my true calling is to work for the reconciliation of the Christian church with the LGBTQ+ community.

There are some people who read that and think, Right, gay people need to repent of their sinful desires and become Christians. That’s not what I mean. I mean that the CHURCH needs to repent of its sins. For centuries, LGBTQ+ issues were completely in the closet—ignored, not even castigated, as the church pretended that concepts like sexual orientation and gender identity didn’t exist. Over the past century, Christianity at large has turned its attention on first sexual orientation and now gender identity as problems to be eliminated. Instead, we should be treating LGBTQ+ individuals as people to be loved and welcomed. Not to “pray the gay away,” but to learn from their different perspectives and to show them that life is better in Christian community. To teach them that God loves them, and then to show that we love them, too. A person’s sexual orientation and gender identity are deep within them—wheat, not chaff.

That’s my calling. What’s yours? Where do you see God at work? What is the chaff in your life that needs to be removed so that you can be the person God desires? What are the social structures that are preventing you from doing so, that need to be changed? Blessings as you discern your path through this world as a participant in building God’s eternal kin-dom.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on January 2, 2022, in celebration of Epiphany. Based on Isaiah 60: 1-6, Ephesians 3: 1-12, and Matthew 2: 1-12. YouTube archive:

The story of the three wise men is an old one, maybe a little too familiar to us from being retold every year at Christmas. But let’s try to see it with new eyes.

First, imagine yourself as one of the magi. I’m sure you all know this, but there were not necessarily three magi—there were three gifts, so we assume three people. The magi were priests, probably Zoroastrian, and king-makers. Zoroastrianism is an ancient Persian religion that acknowledges one god, Ahura Mazda. The magi were learned men who studied nature, looking for signs of their god working in the world. They found a sign: a star that indicated the birth of a great king, the king of the Jews. Persians knew about Jews but didn’t know all the details, kind of like the way we know about Islam or Buddhism. But they knew that something important was happening. One of their jobs was to choose a king of their own people, so they decided to honor the newborn king of the Jews. They traveled to the region where Jews lived and sought the leaders who should know what was going on and would be able to help them.

Now imagine yourself as one of the scribes. They were scholars, people who studied the Hebrew scriptures. The Torah, which is the first five books of our Bible, contain the law and the deep history, while the prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi, speak to specific events. The scribes would study these scriptures and try to apply them to their contemporary problems. They knew that Micah had foretold the birth of a great king in Bethlehem, but didn’t know when. They were wrapped up in their scholarly studies and didn’t pay attention to signs in nature. They were ready, though—when someone noticed something, they were ready to interpret it, to give it the right scriptural context.

Herod had yet a different perspective. He was a ruler. He wasn’t a scholar, and probably wasn’t a particularly religious man. He didn’t pay much attention to the details of scripture, but he knew that God’s revealed words to the Israelites were important to his subjects. So he kept the chief priests and scribes handy. He knew a problem when he saw one, and boy did he see one when the magi arrived! A new king—a rival to his throne. Whether or not he believed that the words of Micah were relevant, and whether or not he believed that the magi saw a divine sign, he knew that the Jewish people would believe it. So he used his knowledge of human nature to learn the truth and manipulate its revelation.

Epiphany, which we celebrate today, is a synonym for revelation. We celebrate the day when Jesus was revealed as God’s anointed one, which in Hebrew is the Messiah, or in Greek is the Christ. Magi were king-makers, just like the prophet Samuel was, so like Samuel they went to Bethlehem to find out who God favored. When they found Jesus, they anointed him king of the Jews, a title that would stick with him right up to the day of his death on a cross.

In the nativity narratives of Matthew and Luke, we read that God revealed Jesus’s divine nature in many ways to diverse people. First, angels appeared to Jesus’s parents to tell them how Mary would become pregnant and who their son would be. Then on the night when he was born, angels appeared to shepherds to tell them good news of great joy, that a savior had been born for them. Finally, God’s message of a new king and a new kind of kingdom was revealed to foreign, Gentile priests of a different religion, and only through them to the religious insiders and the ruling class of Judea.

One of my core beliefs is that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the path to wholeness in God’s eternal kin-dom, both here and hereafter. But another of my core beliefs is that I cannot control who receives God’s wisdom or in what form. God chooses. God’s revelations come through the study of scripture, and also through experiences in God’s creation and through our interactions with other people whom God loves, which means everyone. God revealed the Truth to the ancient Hebrew people, but also to people around the world and throughout history. God’s ultimate Truth is unknowable from any one perspective.

There is an old parable from India that you have probably heard: A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: “We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable.” So, they sought it out, and when they found it, they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, “This being is like a thick snake.” For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. Another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant is a wall. Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

We are like one of those blind men. We can know God through Jesus, but Jesus was born a Jew in Roman-occupied Judea and raised in Roman-occupied Galilee two thousand years ago. God’s revelation through the person of Jesus of Nazareth was limited by the ability of the Judeans and Galileans to understand. The magi give us another perspective, but still one that is limited. If we want to truly understand God, we need to be open to wisdom from many sources.

One way to do that is to engage in interfaith dialogue. Our campus ministry, Common Call, is part of the Campus Ministries Association. The main event that CMA sponsors each spring is an interfaith dialogue. We strive to get a variety of Christian perspectives as well as people from a broad range of religions. We are often successful in connecting with Muslims, and sometimes with Hindus or Buddhists or atheists. I have found discussions with non-Christians to be more illuminating and satisfying than, say, arguing with Christian fundamentalists about the literal truth of Genesis 1. We are all striving to be who God wants us to be, and to discern how God is working in our lives, whether we revere Jesus Christ or Allah or Buddha or Vishnu. Now, I don’t believe that all religions are equally valid, but I do believe that God’s revelation can come in many forms to many people.

Last Sunday, the world lost Bishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu was an Anglican bishop who was in the center of the anti-apartheid movement that transformed South Africa. He was a devout and committed Christian. Yet he worked closely with Nelson Mandela, who was at best a tepid Christian, sometimes described as a Christian humanist who drew deeply on the indigenous African concept of Ubuntu. Now, Ubuntu is itself pretty well aligned with Christianity—it is the belief that an authentic individual human being is part of a larger and more significant relational, communal, societal, environmental, and spiritual world. Sounds a lot like the Beloved Community described by the Old Testament prophets like Isaiah and lifted up by Christian leaders like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Tutu also worked closely with The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and the world’s most prominent Buddhist leader. Tibetan Buddhism is more of an atheist philosophy than a religion, in the sense that its adherents do not worship any gods. They instead seek enlightenment, which is essentially the elevation of the self into the godly realm. And yet, the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu worked closely for decades, learning from each other about the path to wholeness and holiness. I highly recommend The Book of Joy, which is the product of an extended interview with these two holy men giving different yet congruent perspectives on how a person can attain joy in their life.

Let’s return to the story of Epiphany. The chief priests and scribes thought that they had the whole Truth, the only revealed message from God. Yet they were unable to see God’s revelation through the stars, which the magi correctly interpreted. Herod didn’t know much about either scripture or heavenly bodies, but he did know people. It took all three perspectives to arrive at the Truth of Jesus’s birth. In the same way, we need a variety of perspectives to understand how God continues to work in the world. We cannot, on our own, completely understand God, because we cannot construct a box big enough to contain God. Any time we think we have fully described God, we have simply projected our own prejudices and misunderstandings onto the divine. Any time we think we know who is in and who is out, who is favored and who is not, we have allowed our limited human knowledge to corrupt God’s expansive message of love for all people.

I have it on good authority that a conservative church in town has preached that we are struggling because we allow women in leadership, including ordained Ministers of Word and Sacrament. Well, here’s a little bit of my story as to why I’m a member of this church. My sister is a United Methodist pastor. When we moved to Rolla, we wanted to find a church where my family felt comfortable, and I had one non-negotiable requirement: They must allow women in the pulpit. That immediately eliminated most of the churches in Rolla. I did a little research and determined that this church was of a denomination that ordains women, so we gave it a try. The rest of my story is how we were welcomed when we got here.

We have a message of inclusion, a message of equality, and a message of hope for our community. I would guess that more than half of the city’s residents are unchurched, and that many of those only know about Christianity from the media. They don’t know about churches that welcome everyone, that elevate women, that allow but do not require their members to vote Republican, that allow members to question authority, and that tolerate a wide range of beliefs about and interpretations of the Bible. I am proud to be a part of such a loving community. I believe that there are people in Rolla who need Jesus in their lives, but who have not been able to see Christ’s light because of the clouds of exclusion, judgmentalism, authoritarianism, and patriarchy that fill the media depiction of Christianity. Honestly, if all Christian churches were like the ones described in the media, I wouldn’t be a Christian either.

Like the magi, we have seen the light of Christ. We have been called to worship him. We have been drawn into God’s kin-dom, God’s family. We have been given a message of hope, love, joy, and peace. We have been released from our bondage to sin and death. This is good news! This is the best news! Like Paul, we have been given insight into a great mystery, the mystery that God’s grace is for the Gentile as well as the Jew. The magi were partially right: Jesus was born king of the Jews, but he was also born king of the Gentiles. He was born lord of all creation. He was the eternal Word of God made flesh. We have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

We are called to shine Christ’s light forth so that all people may be drawn to Him. We do not, and cannot, know the whole Truth of God’s grace. We know only in part. In our humility, we should learn from and not denounce others who have a different understanding of God. But we do have a story to share, a story of love, a story of welcome, a story of membership in God’s eternal family, a story of hope and joy. Let us now seek to discern God’s will revealed throughout the world as we shine forth Christ’s light and draw all people into God’s beloved community. Amen.

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I shared this message at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on Christmas Eve, 2021. Based on the nativity story in Luke 2.

I want you to think about where you were last year at this time. I don’t actually remember where I was—possibly visiting my in-laws already instead of waiting until Christmas morning. I know where I wasn’t, and where nobody was: here. Last year at this time, our in-person worship was still shut down. We wanted to be able to welcome everyone, but feared that Christmas Eve especially would become a super-spreader event with all of the out-of-town visitors.

On December 11 of last year, the first COVID vaccine was approved. Soon after, a second vaccine, and then a third, were approved. First, they went to people over 65 and those who were otherwise vulnerable, and eventually they rolled out to everyone, now including children over the age of 5 and boosters for adults.

Easter was our first worship back together after all of that. By then, a good fraction of our congregation was vaccinated, so we felt more comfortable worshipping together. We haven’t shut down since. We thought the pandemic was behind us, that we were on the path back to normal life.

This congregation was dealt another blow in June when Pastor Lou Ellen left us. God was calling her to a new ministry. That left us to figure out what God was calling us to do.

Meanwhile, the pandemic has not really ended. First the delta variant swept the nation, and now the omicron variant. It seems we can never escape COVID-19. We can never escape the brokenness of this world, no matter how hard we try. Yet, we should remember that life today, as hard as it is, is wonderful compared to the grinding misery of life under the Roman Empire in first-century Judea.

Think back to the story we have heard. Mary, a teenager, was pregnant and her time to deliver had come. Still, the power of empire forced her and her husband to make an arduous journey of roughly 90 miles, probably on foot, so that the Romans could more efficiently extract wealth from their subjugated people. On Sunday, we will hear that the Holy Family was soon afterwards forced to flee for their lives to Egypt. Life was hard under the Romans.

That night, while Mary and Joseph comforted their newborn son, there were shepherds hard at work. Shepherds sometimes get a bad rap in modern retellings. There are some ancient sources who describe them as lazy, untrustworthy, and unclean. But the best evidence is that at the time and place of Jesus’s birth, the shepherds were respected. They were hard-working, tough men who protected their sheep from predators and bandits.

See, at night, sheep don’t need to be herded to keep them from wandering off. They’re asleep. So why were the shepherds keeping watch? Because a sheep is like money that walks around. They were making sure no bandits came to steal them. They were protecting their sheep from lions and bears, just as David did as a youth. The shepherds were hard men, tough men who risked their lives to protect the helpless sheep under their charge.

That night, God broke through. An angel appeared, and “the glory of the Lord shone around them.” This is just like what happened to Moses, and just like what will happen at Jesus’s Transfiguration. They were tough men, but they were terrified at first. Sure, a lion or a bear might take a sheep or two, but here was God’s army coming. Was the angel there to destroy them all? Had the Day of the Lord arrived, the prophesied day of God’s terrible judgment?

No. The angel tells them not to fear, that a savior has been born for them. Remember that they were suffering under the weight of the Roman Empire just as Mary and Joseph were. They remembered the glorious past of Israel under David and Solomon, and were waiting expectantly for a Messiah who would save God’s people. Like us, they were waiting for deliverance from the evil of the world around them. Their fear turned to joy at God’s presence. God had finally sent a savior for them.

They didn’t know what kind of savior was born that night, though. They didn’t know that their savior was also our savior, someone to bring God’s eternal kingdom to earth. They were living in the Pax Romana, a sort of “peace through strength” where the Roman Empire was so strong that nobody dared challenge their rule, no matter how burdensome or evil. They didn’t imagine that their Messiah, God’s anointed one, would replace the false peace of empire with the shalom of God’s rule in our hearts. Jesus came to establish a new kind of peace. Instead of the peace of a police state in which everybody is equally degraded, Jesus came to establish a kingdom in which everybody is equally uplifted. He came to establish a kingdom of justice, of righteousness, of wholeness, and of harmony.

Tonight, we gather to remember that Jesus came, and comes again this night, to disrupt our lives just as he disrupted those shepherds’ lives. He came not to rule the world, but to rule our hearts. And of his kingdom, there will be no end.

Our congregation, our families, our nation, and our world have challenges ahead of us. But when it seems that all is lost, we can remember that night, two thousand years ago, when God’s glory shone around the shepherds. God broke through with good news of great joy: a savior who came for them. That same savior came for us and dwells among us. I pray that you will all know the hope, love, joy, and peace that our Messiah brings, the wholeness that comes from Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 1:39-56. YouTube archived video:

During Advent, we talk about people other than Jesus who prepared the way for his coming. Last time, I preached about John the Baptist. He was a great prophet, the last of the prophets who heralded the coming of the Messiah. John’s mother, Elizabeth, was an old woman, thought to be barren. The miracle was that even when she was beyond child-bearing age, she was still able to get pregnant. God blessed Elizabeth with a son.

Today, we talk about Mary. Mary was different. She was young—too young. Not even married yet. Maybe 14 years old, little more than a girl. Yet God chose her for the unimaginably important task of bearing our Savior.

In the verses preceding today’s reading, the angel Gabriel comes and visits Mary. His words to her are the source of the first part of the Hail Mary prayer, which then continues with Elizabeth’s words and then some embellishments. I know it’s a Roman Catholic prayer, but Mary is revered in all traditions. Would you pray with me?

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Such a sweet prayer for such a sweet woman. Right? I read this week that the word translated as “hail” might be better translated “rejoice.” The angel Gabriel rejoices at meeting Mary, just as Elizabeth and her unborn son rejoice and bless her.

Full of grace. That phrase evokes a kind, gentle woman, graciously blessing each person she meets. But perhaps we should understand it more as an indication that God has richly blessed her.

And how has God blessed her? God made her a prophet and the mother of the most important man to ever live. Listen to her proclamation to Elizabeth. This is not a hymn of submission and gentleness. “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.” These are not sweet words. This is a prophetic proclamation of God’s power. A few minutes ago, we sang the Canticle of the Turning, which I think is a fantastic setting for the words. It captures the strength and impact of Mary’s song.

Mary was not some shrinking violet, some meek background character in the Gospels. She was in the middle of the action. She was trusted not only to give birth to Jesus, but also to be his first teacher. God saw a strength within her that would be essential throughout those hard years of Jesus’s childhood.

One thing that struck me as I was preparing this week was Mary’s response. In every other angelic encounter I can think of, the person being visited is terrified. That’s why the angel’s first words are always, “Do not fear.” Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, was a priest in the Temple when an angel appeared, and we read, “he was terrified, and fear overwhelmed him.” On Christmas Eve, we will hear about the shepherds—an angel of the Lord appeared, and they were terrified. But not Mary. She was “perplexed.” Gabriel, being not-so-observant, still told her not to fear. He tells her what God is asking of her. Is she afraid? She should be. Being an unmarried woman who gets pregnant will bring shame upon her. If Joseph so desired, he could break off their engagement, and might even be able to have her stoned. Even if they marry, the shame will linger, and being the mother of such an important boy could bring dangerous attention to her—and indeed it does. Still, her response tells us why she was favored. She simply asks how it will work, then says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” My life is about to be torn apart and I will live in constant danger? Sure, sounds good.

She understood what was coming. She was not just the carrier of God’s words like the other prophets, but of THE Word of God. Her hymn of praise makes it clear that she knew who Jesus would be: Son of God, a revolutionary who would change the world. There is a famous, or perhaps infamous, song that is often played or sung this time of year, “Mary, Did You Know.” Here’s the second verse.

Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy will give sight to a blind man?

Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy will calm the storm with His hand?

Did you know that your Baby Boy has walked where angels trod?

When you kiss your little Baby you kissed the face of God?

Oh, Mary, did you know?

Mary Did You Know?

Clearly, the lyricist didn’t read the Magnificat. Because the answer is emphatically, “YES!” She knew. She knew that God was doing great things in her, world-changing things. The name she was told to give her son, Jesus (or actually Yeshua in Hebrew), means, “The Lord has saved.” She knew that God would save her, and all of us, through her son. She knew that the hierarchies of power and wealth would be overturned. She knew that God’s chosen people would be saved and glorified. She knew.

So what did she do? After saying yes, she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth. I’m thinking that Elizabeth must have been a pretty distant relation. They lived pretty far apart. Mary was betrothed to a man from the tribe of Judah and Elizabeth was from the tribe of Levi. But they were close relations in another way: they were bound together by the abundant grace poured out on them both by God. They both experienced the miracle of pregnancy—Elizabeth in her old age, Mary in her virginal youth. So Mary went to Elizabeth, in the first gathering of Jesus’s followers. Why? For confirmation? For courage? Perhaps. Mary had an encounter with the divine, and she thought she knew what God wanted of her, but it was a little like a dream. You wake up and think, Did that really happen? Mary was sure that she was called to serve God, but maybe not quite 100% sure. She had a long road ahead of her and she knew that Elizabeth was on a similar road. They could walk together for a bit and lean on each other. But also, Mary knew that she shared something else with Elizabeth: joy! Joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness is a surface-level emotion. Joy is deeper. Joy is that warm fire within your soul telling you that life is good. Well, maybe it doesn’t look so good right now, and maybe it’s hard to see what’s so good, but God’s light is shining through and telling you that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

This is a critical message to us this Christmas season. Boy, things have been rough for the last little while. The political climate has been increasingly divisive over the past decade, and shows no signs of getting better—indeed, it seems that every news story adds fuel to the fires of tribal politics. A raging pandemic that has taken lives, disrupted our society, and fundamentally re-made our interactions with each other. This year has seen a huge number of natural disasters, from 120-degree heat in Canada to droughts to floods to tornadoes. I could go on, but this is supposed to be a message of joy!

Through all of the chaos of the world, all of the divisiveness and loss, one constant remains: God’s presence. No matter how bleak things look, we can be confident that God is with us. God came among us as a baby one night two millennia ago, because Mary said yes. Jesus is born again each December, as we remember that amazing gift of his presence and his offer to enter our lives, and say yes. God remains among us by the power of the Holy Spirit, flowing in us and through us all.

And just as Mary’s encounter with an angel led her to visit Elizabeth, we gather together here. It’s common these days for people to say that they don’t need a church to follow God, and I would partially agree. God is no more present here than anywhere else. There are people worshipping remotely with us, and God is as present with them as with us here in this sanctuary. I have encountered God on the sea and on a mountaintop.

But mostly, I have encountered God through other people. We gather together to share those experiences we’ve had. Not just so-called “mountaintop” experiences, vivid encounters with the divine, but the subtle ways God works in us and through us. The ways God is revealed each day through the people we meet and interact with. As you know, I volunteer regularly at the Mission. Each time I go in there, whether to volunteer for a shift or just to check in and prepare for a future shift, I can tell that God is working in the lives of the patrons—and also in the lives of the staff and volunteers. We seldom talk about religion there, but you can feel the Holy Spirit guiding each person to be a little better each day. As you also know, I am a professor and so I interact with students on a regular basis. There’s an energy when students are working together to learn or to solve problems. There’s an openness of their minds that reveals their hearts. One of the best moments I had this semester was at a help session where I was going through a derivation, and at the end, the student I was helping had a sudden moment of understanding that transcended my words.

My office is near the Mobil On the Run station, so I frequently walk up there to get a drink. There’s a woman who works there that I’ve developed a bit of a relationship with—not a friendship exactly, but more than just customer and clerk. Enough that she shares some of the struggles her son is going through, or the joy of visiting with her granddaughter who was born in November. Those moments reveal her humanity, and in turn reveal the way God is working in her life and her family’s lives.

We gather as Christ’s body to share these experiences, just as Mary and Elizabeth gathered to share their experiences. This is a place where there is no taboo about discussing God, where we can let down the barriers that so often keep people from truly understanding one another. Our relationships are stronger because God is at the center of them. We are bound together not by something superficial like a shared hobby, but by the deep and abiding love of God.

Life is hard. The pandemic has made easy things harder and hard things almost impossible. It has kept people apart, disrupted relationships, and taken loved ones away from us. Even before COVID, though, for thousands of years, the people of God have struggled. We struggle to do God’s will and follow the path Jesus laid out for us. We struggle to understand the evil and brokenness of the world around us. We suffer pain, and loss, and grief. And yet, we know that one night two thousand years ago, a young woman was called to give of herself, and because she said yes, God came to dwell among us, fully human and yet fully divine. Jesus became the fulcrum of history, the person that changed all of our lives. With Jesus at the center of our lives together, we can know hope, and love, and joy.

Several of you have commended me for the work I do for the church, and I appreciate being noticed. However, the work I do is no more important than what others are doing—it’s just more visible. I stand up here in a pulpit and preach, and my words go out on the Internet to the far corners of the world, because I have been given the ability to understand God’s Word and to preach about it. The job of a preacher is to encounter God in scripture on behalf of the congregation, and to witness to the encounter. But that job is no more important than, for example, the way the deacons witness to God’s grace as they meet behind closed doors with people who are homebound, or sick, or grieving. In fact, their witness can be even more crucial to building God’s kin-dom than my words because those moments they share live in heart space, rather than head space. I can perhaps convince you to think a certain way and maybe even act a certain way, but it is God’s presence and creative power that softens your heart and forms you into the person God desires. It is Jesus walking beside you who guides you through the hard times. It is the Holy Spirit dwelling within you who strengthens you and brings you joy.

We have received a great gift, the love of God expressed through the person of Jesus, born more than two thousand years ago because Mary said yes. Let us respond just as Mary did. God is calling us all to be witnesses of God’s grace. In all that we do, let us share the hope, the love, the joy, and the peace that Jesus brings as he is once again born in us by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 3:1-6. Podcast linked below. YouTube archive:

Before we talk about John the Baptist, I’d like us to take a whirlwind tour through the history of Israel, as recounted in the Bible. It all started with Abraham. God chose him to be the father of a great nation. His descendants were fruitful and multiplied in Egypt, then God freed them from the pharaoh’s rule and guided them to Canaan. For several generations, the Israelites tried to live up to their end of the covenant, and failed. God established Israel as a kingdom and instituted the Temple under Solomon. Almost immediately, the kingdom split and one half abandoned God. The other half, Judah, swung wildly between obedience and idolatry. Finally, God says, Enough! Judah is conquered and exiled. The great prophets step in, including Ezekiel who says, Do this right, rebuild the Temple, purify yourselves, and worship God properly. For 600 years, the people of Judah tried, with varying degrees of success. We are right now in the midst of Hanukkah, which commemorates the re-dedication of the Temple after the Maccabean revolt. But the Maccabees didn’t last long, and Rome took over.

For most of the time after the end of the exile, there were no prophets, no one to speak on God’s behalf. Malachi, whose words we read this morning, was the last prophet and was active in about 450 BC. For all this time, God’s people were just muddling through, trying to figure out how best to serve God. Some people said that the best way was to be more scrupulous in observing the purity laws, eventually being called Pharisees. Others said that the best way was to be more dedicated to Temple worship, eventually being called Sadducees. There were many other groups, including the Essenes who gathered the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Into this turmoil stepped John the Baptist. Finally, a new prophet! Someone to tell them all what God really wants them to hear. He preached not about the purity laws or Temple worship, but about repentance. He meant that they should follow the basic laws about loving God and neighbor. The examples of his teaching given throughout the Gospels include sharing your wealth and doing your job without cheating or extortion. He preached to observant Jews and to the Gentile occupying soldiers. He said that the kingdom of God was not inherited by Abraham’s descendants, but by those who God favored. And above all, he said that the Day of the Lord was coming, that God was coming.

John was a revolutionary. God’s word did not come to the powerful. Luke situates John in the midst of powerful men: Emperor Tiberius, prefect Pontius Pilate, tetrarchs Herod Antipas, Philip, and Lysanias, and high priests Annas and Caiaphas. These were the men who supposedly controlled the lives of God’s people, the civil and religious authorities. But God’s word came not to one of them, but to John, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.”

John himself could have been a priest. His father, Zechariah, was a priest. At that time, the priesthood was hereditary, for the descendants of Zadok within the tribe of Levi. He could have been a priest, but wasn’t. He walked away from his inheritance and reinvented worship. He proclaimed that the way to God was not through stricter religious observances, whether in daily life or in the Temple. Instead, the way to God was through a changed heart. Repent, he said. Turn towards God. Orient yourself towards God’s love. Do what is right in God’s eyes—share your wealth, do your job honestly. He didn’t go to the Temple, but to the wilderness, to the River Jordan. He knew that we can encounter God anywhere, but especially in those places where we are not distracted by the temptations of the world.

That’s a valuable message to everyone, but especially young people. As you probably know, I’m an advisor to Common Call Campus Ministry, which is co-sponsored with Christ Episcopal Church. The goal of campus ministry is to enable young people to transition from an inherited faith to a personal faith. Most people of college age have some awareness of spirituality or religion. Maybe they have attended church with their family, or maybe not. At a college like ours, they are often away from home and independent for the first time. They are free to grow in their received faith, or in some other faith, or to walk away from God. Our goal as a campus ministry is to help them find their own path. That means engaging with the issues that are meaningful to them in a way that enables them to see God at work in their lives, and to help them find the right language to express their beliefs, and the right practices to continue their growth.

Each new generation faces new challenges and has new formative experiences. I think that the most impactful events happen when you’re between the ages of 10 and 30. That’s when you go through adolescence, become an adult, maybe go to college, maybe start a family. Whatever dominates public discourse at that age affects the way you perceive the world for the rest of your life.

How many of you were in that age range in 1962 and 1963? Think back on that time. 1962 had the Cuban missile crisis and 1963 had John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Now let’s fast-forward to 1974 and 1975. Think a minute. There was Watergate, and then the fall of Saigon. What about 1989? The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. 2001—9/11.

Each of us have different memories that affect what matters to us. I still think of Russia instead as the Soviet Union, the enemy that was defeated when I was in high school, even though it was more than thirty years ago. At the same time, I know the story of the Vietnam War, but I have no visceral reaction to it. Why? I was only two years old when it ended.

Most of you probably remember 9/11 vividly. I do, and Rhonda does, but Sam doesn’t. Rhonda was stranded in Dallas with Sam, but he was only 15 months old. Jesse wasn’t even born yet. Their generation has little to no visceral reaction to Islamic terrorists.

What events do impact their psyche? Sandy Hook. Parkland. Las Vegas. The shooting at a Michigan high school just this week, yet another incident that strengthens the low-grade anxiety that is part of their lives. Unite the Right. January 6, 2021. They don’t fear al-Qaeda or ISIS. They fear groups like the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters.

As a set of institutions, mainline Christianity has been essentially silent for these recent events and more, or at least not a major part of the public conversation. We have failed to live up to our prophetic calling, to speak to the problems of the day, to see God in all things and exhibit God’s kingdom to the world, to prepare the way for Jesus to enter into people’s hearts and lives. I challenge you to have this conversation with a stranger sometime. First, ask them what Christians think about current events, that is, where they think “Christians,” generically, stand on a given topic. You will probably be amazed at how far removed it is from what you personally believe. Then, ask them what they know about Presbyterians in general or our church in particular. If they are under the age of 40, I bet they know us for our preschool or they’ve been in our sanctuary for a concert, but they have NO IDEA where we stand on the Black Lives Matter movement, or gay rights, or white nationalism. For that matter, I’m not sure that we know ourselves.

Last week, Bob said that the problem of mainline Christianity is a lack of discipleship, and instead too much focus on social issues. My immediate response was to think he was dead wrong. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. What is discipleship? Is it spending time in prayer or studying the Bible? Is it sharing our faith with others? Yes, but that’s not all. Discipleship is about connecting God’s Word, Jesus’s message of love and reconciliation, to the world. To do so, you have to know what’s going on in the world and be relevant to the people you meet. If a young person says to you, “I don’t dream of labor,” do you know what they mean? Do you understand how it connects to Jesus’s parables or the instructions given to the Israelites during the Exodus? If not, how can you meaningfully, and without judgment, tell that young person about God’s message to them?

Preparing the way for Jesus to come means being confident in your understanding of Jesus’s teaching and how it connects to the world so that when something happens, you instinctively know how to respond. This congregation didn’t respond in any tangible way to the Black Lives Matter movement. If we had already had serious conversations about systemic racism and police relationships with our community, we would have been prepared. Maybe we would have engaged, maybe not. Maybe we would have been a moderating voice, steering between the “All Lives Matter” crowd and the “Defund the Police” crowd and perhaps building a bridge between them. But as it was, we said nothing because we had nothing to say. The message to young people in our community was that we don’t care.

That moment is past now. What’s next? What other issues are simmering below the surface that we need to engage with NOW, so that we are ready when they blow up? Or what issues have passed us by and become a part of the fabric of life, so that if we don’t know where we stand, if we are not educated about the changing language and cultural landscape, we are simply becoming increasingly irrelevant?

You might be thinking, Yes, but if we talk about political issues, or social issues, or other things going on in the world, won’t that divide us? Well, if you pay attention to the news, you’ll notice that America is divided already. Our calling is to build God’s kingdom so that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” If we cannot talk to people that we love and respect, people who are part of our local church family, about things that matter, how can we possibly talk to strangers about them? As a congregation, we have been through some things together and have forged deep, loving bonds. Even if we disagree with each other, we know that we all are seeking God’s will. We can rely on the strength of those relationships to see where God is moving in the world outside our doors.

Life is usually not very easy for prophets. Jeremiah was thrown in a cistern. John’s reward was his head on a platter. Jesus’s reward was crucifixion. But you know what? They mattered. They spoke to God’s people at critical times and told them where God stood on the topics of the day. First century Judea was suffering under the weight of the Roman Empire, and political revolution was in the air. People were looking for a strong military leader like the Maccabees who would throw off the Roman yoke. John the Baptist wasn’t that leader. Instead, John’s message was, Repent! Get ready! God is coming! Start loving one another, right now! Live into God’s kingdom so that you’ll be ready when the Messiah comes! Jesus’s message was, The kingdom of God is here! It’s not just for Jews, but also for Samaritans and Gentiles. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or who you are. What matters is that you turn towards God NOW. Don’t worry about the Romans. Worry about loving God and loving your neighbor, and by the way, here’s what I mean and how to do it.

I have good news for you all: Jesus’s message is still fresh and new. Maybe we have missed some opportunities. Maybe we have fallen short of our calling. But that’s true of everyone, always. The past doesn’t matter as much as how we respond today. John is still calling us to repent and prepare for the coming of the Messiah. The kingdom of God is still near, already here but not yet in full glory. There is still time to turn our hearts towards God.

Advent is a special time. It’s not just a time to decorate and buy gifts and have parties. It’s also a time to remind ourselves that Jesus is coming. It’s a time to start over, to re-dedicate ourselves to following God, to living into God’s kingdom, to turning away from our past sins of omission as well as our sins of commission. A time to let Jesus be born anew in our hearts.

We have been given a great gift. We are about to celebrate a holy feast, which connects us to Christians throughout the world and through all time. We have been made a part of Christ’s body. We have been shown God’s love in the greatest way possible, through the sacrificial love of God himself. John prepared the way for Jesus in ancient Judea. Let us now prepare ourselves so that we can prepare the way for Jesus in modern America, right here in Rolla, to change hearts and lives and to build God’s kingdom today. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Hebrews 10:11-25. Podcast linked below. YouTube archive:

It’s been a few weeks, so I want to once again remind you about the nature and context of Hebrews. It’s essentially a sermon transcript. In medieval times, it was used to support anti-Semitism and supersessionism, that is, the idea that Christianity had superseded Judaism. But that’s an anachronistic reading of it, since at the time of its authorship, Christianity did not exist apart from Judaism. Rather, Hebrews could perhaps be read as anti-religious. That makes it particularly relevant for today’s prevailing trend of people being “spiritual but not religious.” The anonymous author of Hebrews would probably describe himself as Spirit-led and freed from the religious obligations of his predecessors.

In the first few centuries after Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, various thought leaders now called “church fathers” helped to interpret Jesus’s teachings, and indeed his very essence, to create Christianity as we know it today. Many of these church fathers, including Clement, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Athanasius, believed in universal salvation through Christ. Richard Murray has written extensively on this patristic universalism, distinguished from other forms of universalism because it is based on the beliefs and writings of these early theologians. He wrote:

Simply put, Patristic Universalism believes Jesus will win all people back, come Hell or high-water. God, through Jesus Christ, will ultimately rescue and convince ALL to receive their rebirth, even if it is after (in some cases) much “gnashing of teeth,” prolonged emotional anguish, and stubborn mental resistance. Many will hold out for extended periods of time, but all will eventually see that against an irresistibly virtuous God there is no eternal defense. As the lies are burned away, every soul will come to itself and behold this champion truth– Jesus Christ is God’s rescuing love.

For the first few centuries, this belief was commonplace among both church leaders and Christians broadly. However, there was also a recognition that the sins of the present age must be rectified. The Roman Catholic Church developed the principle of indulgences, which are, in the words of their catechism, “a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and all of the saints.” In essence, eternal guilt has been forgiven, but some action must be taken to rectify guilt in the present age.

I’m on board with that concept in principle. However, as time went by, greed and corruption took over the doctrine of indulgences. Unscrupulous “pardoners” used the sale of indulgences to fund projects like cathedrals. They quantified the indulgences in terms of how many years of purgatory they would buy out. Most of us know that Luther strongly opposed the sale of indulgences, but in 1392, more than a century before the Reformation, Pope Boniface IX wrote a condemnation of the practice of obtaining money from the simple-minded faithful by promising them perpetual happiness in this world and eternal glory in the next.

Into this fray stepped John Calvin. He developed a theological principal that was later called “total depravity.” Basically, he taught that our original sin permeates every aspect of our selves. Calvin’s theological descendants, such as the Puritans, used this principle to guilt and shame church members.

I think I’m old enough now that I’m allowed to be a cynic. Agreed? Well, we have on the one hand a theology that teaches universal salvation and God’s eternal, unconditional love, and on the other hand a theology that teaches us that we have guilt that cannot be removed but must be addressed “day after day.” Which one is more lucrative? Which one gives the church power over people’s lives? I think that explains why the main teaching of many churches is that we are sinful creatures who must make amends. That keeps butts in the seats and money in the plates. There is good money in guilt, and even better money in shame.

Guilt is a response to a particular bad act. You might think, Wow, Friday night was a little wild. I’d better throw an extra $20 in the plate today. Guilt is OK if it provokes action and change. I mean, after throwing in that extra $20, you might change your plans for the next weekend. Shame is different. Shame is believing that not only have you done bad things, but that you are a bad person. How can you ever remove that shame? Well, if you listen to certain preachers, the only way is to come to church every week, or twice a week, or to give the church everything you can or everything you have. But no amount of restitution can ever remove shame.

That’s why the author of Hebrews writes, “every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But Christ … offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins.” Jesus did not come to set up a new system of bookkeeping to replace the old Temple sacrificial system. He came to share God’s grace. And after he offered himself, “he sat down at the right hand of God.” Christ offers us eternal rest. No longer do we need to work “day after day” to earn forgiveness. The work has already been done. We are already forgiven. God’s grace is stronger than any guilt or shame we might feel. We can look forward to our eternal sabbath, our eternal rest from the hard work of living together and loving one another in all the messiness of this life.

The author of Hebrews goes on to say that we can approach God “with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” Here, he’s using language that describes priests. Those priests who offered sacrifices day after day had been sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice and had been ritually bathed. Like them, we have been cleansed so that we can approach God. There is nothing we need to do to earn this access. Jesus has done all the work already. We are already cleansed, already forgiven, already free to come to God. There is nothing we can do to earn God’s love, but also nothing we can do to lose God’s love.

Our shame has been removed. Whatever Calvin may have thought, our total depravity has been overcome by God’s grace. The opposite of shame is honor: we are raised up out of our sinfulness and given a place of honor in God’s eternal family. Through Christ’s reconciling love, we have been adopted into God’s family and are honored for all eternity. No matter what the world might think of us, God loves us.

So what is the appropriate response? We have been given a great gift. There is nothing we can do to lose honor in God’s eyes. We are forgiven so that we may forgive others, loved so that we may love others, honored so that we can honor others. We are called to participate in bringing about God’s reign. All people will be a part of God’s realm in the age to come. We are called to bring them into God’s family now.

So what’s stopping us? Well, there are a lot of social pressures that work against us. For about a century, talking about religion and politics have been taboo in “polite company.” As a result, we are culturally incapable of having polite conversations about these sensitive subjects. It’s hard to have a conversation about what we believe without it turning into an argument about which belief is better. The public conversation—on TV, the radio, and especially the internet—has been taken over by the loudest and most extreme voices. As a result, the public perception of Christianity is not something I want to be associated with. I don’t want to be known as a judgmental homophobe who is against women in leadership. So I mostly stay quiet unless someone brings the subject up, instead focusing on living out my beliefs.

“Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” That’s a nice, pithy quote, usually attributed to Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Orders. The concept behind it is that our practice should be sufficient to spread the Gospel. But here’s the truth: St. Francis never said it. The closest quote that captures this sentiment is:

No brother should preach contrary to the form and regulations of the holy Church nor unless he has been permitted by his minister … All the Friars … should preach by their deeds.

In essence, he was saying that our words and deeds should match. He is saying, Don’t be a hypocrite. If you’re going to preach love, you must show love. If you preach charity, you should be charitable. If you preach welcome and hospitality, you should practice welcome and hospitality. He never said that you should keep quiet about your beliefs. In fact, there is nothing in the Bible that says you shouldn’t talk about the enormous gifts we have received from God through the sacrificial love of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus even said, in Mark 8, “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” You can do what you like, but I personally think we should pay more attention to what Jesus said than to a modern proverb that seems to have been totally made-up.

You might still be afraid to speak out. Let me assure you that God is on our side, on your side. And if God is for us, who can stand against us? As Paul wrote, “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” No matter what we do, no matter how we are perceived by society, we are always, always bound to God’s kingdom through Christ. If we act from that place of love, we will be continually renewed and strengthened by the Holy Spirit acting in and through us.

You are beloved. You are forgiven. You are freed from the brokenness of this world. And yet, we all must live in this broken world. So what to do? We are freed so that we can love dangerously. We are freed so that we can share God’s love with every one of God’s beloved children, which is everyone: people like you, people different from you, people you agree with, people you disagree with, your friends, your enemies. There is no one you will encounter who is not beloved by God.

Let me give you a couple of examples of dangerous love. As you probably know, I volunteer at the Rolla Mission. I cook lunch every Friday and fill in occasionally when there are open slots. These days, there are usually lots of people around to help on Fridays, both staff and other volunteers. However, if I do, say, a warming center on the weekend, or an overnight, I am alone and in charge. Fortunately, I have never had a major emergency, knock on wood. Occasionally a few patrons will have heated discussions, but everyone acknowledges my authority to remove them from the building, so I can get things settled down.

In fact, The Rolla Mission could be described as one great experiment in dangerous love. It started when The Vineyard decided to open their church to people in need around them. From laundry and showers, it has evolved to providing meals, shelter, and case management. As the staff, board, and volunteers have learned more about the needs of the patrons, they have developed connections to services around the city, county, and state to help patrons become full members of our community. They work with patrons to resolve the issues that have created their homelessness. This requires vulnerability on both sides. Someone who is homeless, whether due to mistakes they have made or circumstances beyond their control, can be overwhelmed by shame. They will only trust a case manager who is open and vulnerable enough to have their heart broken. We are blessed as a community to have Ashley and others at the Mission who are willing to open up every day, risking stigma, risking heartbreak, risking everything to show love to people in need.

Last week, Rev. Morrison said that we change the world by our example. That’s true, but what example should we set? Too many Christians keep people who are different from them at arm’s length. They stay within their little social circle of like-minded people who share their demographics. What did Jesus do? He didn’t just surround himself with fellow Galileans who were observant Jews that kept the purity codes. He ate with sinners and tax collectors. He spoke with Samaritans. He performed miracles for Gentiles. He didn’t just preach about love, he showed it. He entered into relationships. He met people where they were and changed their lives with his love.

That’s the example we should set. Not just some surface-level kindness, not just supporting charitable organizations with our money. No, we should embrace people who are different from us, enter into true relationships with them, wrap them in God’s love. Everyone, everyone, will one day encounter God face to face. Today, the only way they can encounter God is through us. Let’s go forth and be the hands and heart of Christ. Let’s take risks, knowing that not even the gates of Hell will prevail against us. Let’s love dangerously. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Hebrews 7:18-28; Mark 10:46-52. Podcast linked below. YouTube archive:

https://youtu.be/iEYINTFTadg?t=1822

A couple weeks ago, I introduced the book of Hebrews. Let me just take a few moments to remind you of some key ideas. Hebrews is not so much a letter to a particular group like the other epistles, but more a rhetorical treatise, perhaps a sermon written out. Its author is unknown. Historically, it was ascribed to Paul, but most scholars now believe it was written by one of Paul’s close associates. In the Middle Ages, it was used to justify anti-Semitism and supersessionism, that is, the idea that Christianity has superseded Judaism. But really, the thrust of the author’s argument is that the heavenly supersedes the earthly. We do what we can to worship God here on earth in the present age, but all the while, Christ worships God in the heavenly Temple and will unify us all into God’s realm in the age to come. Christ is our great high priest, holy and pure, who makes atonement for us so that we may approach the throne of mercy and grace.

Jews have celebrated the Day of Atonement since their escape from Egypt. On the first day of the seventh month, called Rosh Hashana, Jews begin a ten-day time of reflection and repentance. On the tenth day, Yom Kippur, they are reconciled with God. In the Second Temple period, this was the day when the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies. Following the ancient template described in Exodus, the high priest would purify himself. He would then make a sacrifice, and use the blood of the sacrifice to make atonement with God. He would sprinkle the blood on the Ark of the Covenant as a sign and seal of the relationship between God and God’s people.

We have been conditioned to think of the old sacrifices only in terms of sin: to wipe away sin, God demands a blood sacrifice. But in actuality, the old sacrificial system was much more complex and nuanced. There were a number of reasons to offer a sacrifice: sin, guilt, thanksgiving, and fellowship offerings are all described. In some cases, the priest would give a burnt offering, which is to say that the animal or grain would be burned and destroyed completely. That was the case for the Yom Kippur offering, for example. In many cases, though, the offering would be eaten, either by the priest or by the people giving the offering or both.

So what was the point of giving an offering to God, and then taking it back and eating it? Well, the sacrifice was not so much about what was given up, but more about the relationship between God and God’s people. Through the sacrifice, offered to God, the person giving would draw closer to God. I suppose in a sense, it’s like the times when we share a meal together, whether at our old potlucks that have been canceled due to the pandemic or at the First Friday Out gatherings we have resumed. In a sense, we are offering a sacrifice to God, then using it to draw close to God by drawing close to one another. As we enjoy table fellowship together, God is present by the Holy Spirit. The ancient sacrificial system was like one long-running potluck where people would bring the product of their labors in the field, dedicate them to God, and enjoy a closer communion with God and God’s people through the sacrifice.

The sacrificial system was an embodiment of the Law. We know about the Ten Commandments, but by one count, there are 613 commandments in the Torah, that is, the first five books of the Bible. 613—that’s a lot! That’s partly why the author of Hebrews goes on about how the Law could make nothing and nobody perfect. Keeping all 613 commandments perfectly is just about impossible. Jesus said that he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill the Law. Yet even he flouted the purity laws and broke a lot of the rules about the Sabbath. Instead, he gave us the Great Commandment. When someone in the crowd challenged him, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Sure, there are 613 rules that are specific to ancient Israelite culture and often contradictory, but there are two overarching commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. The rest is just details, that is, what does it mean to love God? What does it mean to love our neighbor? Those questions have challenged God’s people from the days of the ancient Israelites wandering in the wilderness down to today.

Our passage today assures us, though, that if we turn towards God, if we seek God with our hearts, Jesus Christ is there to connect with us. No matter what, if we seek God, we are assured that God’s love will flow back to us. Jesus is able to save completely, for all time, because he always lives to intercede for us. We may mess up, we may fall short of God’s glory, but Jesus is always working on our behalf to connect us with God’s love.

But wait—what about the other half of the Great Commandment? Remember the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Or as many of us learned it, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Or perhaps the best word to use in that phrase is “sin.” We ask God’s forgiveness of our sins against the first half of the Great Commandment—our failures to love God as we should—while we offer forgiveness to others who sin against the second half.

The ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are a time of introspection, reflection, and reconciliation. It is a time for each person to reflect on the way they have wronged their neighbor and to seek forgiveness. God forgives us, which is great, but at the end of the day, a large part of the reason for the Law is so that we can live together, in peace and harmony.

I believe in universal reconciliation. That is, I believe that all of us, every person throughout the world and throughout history, have Jesus on our side, interceding on our behalf, so that one day, we will all enjoy God’s grace, mercy, and love. So what’s the point of being here today? What’s the point of being a Christian in the present age, if we will all enjoy God’s heavenly realm in the age to come? Well, it’s so that we can enjoy that unity, a partial vision of God’s realm, in the here-and-now. We make restitution and reconcile with one another so that we can live in peace and harmony now.

Recently, Jon Gruden was in the news. He was, until recently, the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. Before that, he worked for the NFL. Some of his emails from the past decade were leaked. They were full of racist, misogynist, and homophobic language attacking the NFL commissioner, the president of the NFL Players Association, and many others in and around the league. Obviously, he’s an idiot. I mean, how can anyone in the 21st century not know that you shouldn’t put that sort of thing in an email? But more to the point, we are lucky to have a written record, while so often we only have hearsay indicating that someone is racist, misogynist, and homophobic. After the emails came out, Gruden had to step down.

Now, I believe that if he asks God for forgiveness, he will receive it, through the grace of Jesus Christ who intercedes on his behalf. That’s great. But it doesn’t mean that he should get his job back. He cannot lead an organization full of black men while being openly racist. He needs to repent of that sin, and then seek reconciliation with the people he has sinned against.

The author of Hebrews assures us of our ultimate reconciliation. There are two kinds of reconciliation: vertical and horizontal. Jesus assures us of vertical reconciliation. As he intercedes on our behalf, we receive grace and mercy from God. Jesus also assures us of horizontal reconciliation. He said that he would send an Advocate, the Holy Spirit. As the Holy Spirit flows through us, we are connected to each other. God’s love enables us to forgive those who sin against us, so that we can live together as part of God’s family. Our vertical reconciliation, that is, the love flowing down from God, enables our horizontal reconciliation, as that love flows out from us and into each other, this group of worshipers gathered today, the people we serve around the community, and people all around the nation and world who are beloved by God.

In part, the book of Hebrews was written as assurance to people who were shut out of the Temple system. It’s a little unclear whether it was written before or after the destruction of the Temple. If before, then the author was thinking of the people who were too poor or too remote from Jerusalem or too ritually unclean to worship God and enjoy the fellowship of God’s people at the Temple. If after, the author was thinking of everyone, all of God’s people, who had previously turned towards the Temple as the special place where God would dwell on earth, where the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies to achieve reconciliation with God, which was now destroyed. Judaism had entered a time of transition, when it seemed that God’s favor and God’s presence had been removed.

But we are assured that the Temple system, which was finite and exclusionary and doomed to one day end, was merely a reflection of the heavenly worship that continues. What was once bound to a certain group of priests in a particular place is now broken wide open. Jesus is our new high priest who worships continually in the heavenly sanctuary. Jesus welcomes everyone—rich and poor, near and far, every age and race and gender—to his heavenly banquet. While we still put up barriers between ourselves in the present age, all will be welcome at the heavenly banquet in the age to come.

Let’s turn now to Bartimaeus. As Jesus passed out of Jericho, a blind beggar called out to him. Last week, we heard how two of Jesus’s closest friends asked him for power. But Bartimaeus asked simply for mercy. He recognized Jesus as a Son of David, the Messiah, God’s anointed one who had come to share God’s love, and he called out for mercy. Mark writes, “Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’” Bartimaeus gets it. He understands what James and John did not. Jesus came not to achieve or grant power, but to show love and mercy to God’s people. Jesus called Bartimaeus to come to him, and suddenly the crowd changed. They told Bartimaeus that Jesus was calling him, and he responded with joy. He sprang up, abandoned his cloak—probably his only possession—and went to Jesus. Jesus’s only challenge to him was to ask him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus said, “Rabbouni, my teacher, let me see again.” When Jesus heals his sight, Bartimaeus becomes a follower. He is lifted from his old life as an outcast and enjoys the healing, loving, merciful presence of his Messiah.

Let me ask you: When I tell that story, who do you see yourself as? Are you like Bartimaeus, calling on Jesus as your Messiah to heal you and grant you mercy, willing to give up all that you have in order to follow him? Or are you like someone in the crowd, trying to keep everything decent and orderly, shushing those who need to feel God’s saving grace, shutting out those who seem to be unworthy? Or are you like James and John, seeking power and authority in God’s coming reign? I think if we’re honest with ourselves, each one of us has been every character in the story at some point. Susan reminded us last week that we are called not to be served, but to serve. Jesus’s call to Bartimaeus reminds us that when we turn towards God, God responds with love and grace. And it reminds us that those we would seek to exclude as being unworthy are precious to God, loved by God, and welcome in God’s family.

One day, we will all feel God’s eternal loving presence, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us live in that presence now, allowing God’s love to flow through us, to reconcile us with those we have wronged and those who have sinned against us, and welcoming everyone who calls on Jesus to join us in God’s family today. Amen.

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Based on Hebrews 4:12-16. Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Unfortunately, video is not available, but the audio (podcast) is linked below.

I will be preaching three times on the book of Hebrews, so before I begin today, I’d like to give you a little background and perspective on it. It has elements of an epistle, but is structured more like a rhetorical treatise, or perhaps a sermon. Maybe I should just read it straight through as the sermon! Traditionally, it was attributed to Paul, but there are many reasons to doubt that tradition. The early Christian father Origen personally believed that Paul wrote it, but also said, “But who wrote the epistle, in truth God knows.” Most likely, it was written by one of Paul’s close associates, perhaps Apollos, perhaps someone else whose name is lost to history.

The challenge with Hebrews is that it has been used for centuries to support anti-Semitism and supersessionism. The basic argument running through the book is that the temple has been or will be replaced with something better. By the Middle Ages, this was interpreted to mean that Christianity has replaced or superseded Judaism. Our “priest,” who is Jesus, has replaced the former Temple priests. Our covenant has replaced their covenant.

In a recent article in The Christian Century, though, Jesper Svartvik argues that when Hebrews was written, there was no concept of Christianity separate from Judaism. The author, then, could not be arguing that Christianity is better than Judaism. Instead, his argument should be interpreted as one more book written in the stream of apocalyptic messianic eschatology, just like the Gospels, just like Paul’s letters, just like most of the New Testament. I believe I’ve spoken about apocalyptic messianic eschatology before, but briefly, it is the understanding that our Messiah, Jesus, revealed God to us and revealed the new heaven and earth that is to come. The book of Hebrews is not contrasting two different religions, but two different ages. The present age is merely a shadow of the glorious age to come. The temple priests are merely stand-ins for the great high priest that is the Son of God.

So, against that broad perspective, let’s dive in. Today’s reading starts out, “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” What is the word of God? Not a “what,” but a “who”: Jesus. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We often describe scripture as the word of God, but the true Word is Jesus Christ, who is revealed to us through the scripture by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the true Word who searches our hearts.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets up a number of contrasts between thoughts and actions. He preached, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not murder.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Throughout Jesus’s preaching, he spoke of the need to not only act good, but to be good. It is necessary but not sufficient to do good works. One must also have right thoughts, for our external actions reflect the intentions of our hearts.

As I said, the book of Hebrews is a rhetorical treatise in which the author builds an argument. The preceding section, before today’s reading, is about sabbath rest. We are promised a sabbath. We will one day enter into God’s rest. But we must render an account first. Recently, I was talking with my friend Sharon about different worship styles and liturgy and so forth. She is Lutheran and grew up with a traditional service, but then later joined a church with a contemporary service. Contemporary worship is pretty thin on liturgy. I personally like liturgy, but many people my age and younger do not. One piece that is often omitted from a contemporary service is the prayer of confession. The argument is that making people say that they have sinned will make them feel bad, make them feel ashamed. Sharon said that she lobbied hard for her church to include one, and succeeded. In the Reformed tradition, we believe it is essential to confess our sins. The general format that we use in this church follows the Book of Worship. First, we are called to confession. We are reminded that all of us have sinned, all of us fall short of God’s glory. Next, we confess our sins. It is essential that we confess not only our personal sins, but also our corporate sins. We are all connected. We are all part of one body of Christ. If one of us sins, all of us sin. But the third part of the sequence is essential: an assurance of pardon. We confess our sins SO THAT we may be assured that our sins have been forgiven.

There is a psychological aspect to this as well. I remember George talking about that from the perspective of the Roman Catholic confession ritual. There is something freeing about declaring your sins—explicitly naming them, whether aloud or in your heart—and then being told that your sins are forgiven.

Each Sunday, we encounter God’s Word, and it reminds us that we are not perfect. But then we are reminded that we are forgiven, that God’s mercy and grace flows through Jesus and covers us all.

As I said, the preceding section of Hebrews talks about a promised sabbath. The promise will be fulfilled in the age to come. The present age will pass away, and we will be welcomed into God’s eternal sabbath. So why are we here? What’s the point of all of this? Well, one way to think about it is like the original sabbath explanation: God worked for six days, and on the seventh day rested. We have work to do first. This present age is a time of working, testing, and learning. We are weak, but are made strong by the learning of a lifetime.

Jesus, too, was weak. He experienced all of the trials and temptations that we endure, and then some. He was tempted by the possibility of conquering his foes, of embracing violence to establish his earthly kingdom. But he rejected that path. He was made weak like us, but through God’s strength was able to resist temptation. So he knows how hard this life can be. He knows how strong the Adversary is in the present age. He knows that we are all trying to do God’s will, but are so often confronted by no-win situations. He knows the brokenness of this world.

The word in verse 12 that we translate “able to judge” is kritikos, the Greek word from which we get “critic.” Often when we hear the words “judge” and “critic” we have very negative connotations. We think about a judge who sits in a court condemning the guilty. We think about the critic who points out all of our flaws. But maybe we should think of this concept more like discernment. Think about a judge at district or state music festivals—yes, they point out flaws, but also good things, and they give the performer a grade. Or an art critic: their job is not so much to tell us what’s wrong with a piece of art or to rank artistic expressions, but to help us see what the artist intends and to show connections between a particular piece of art and the larger artistic tradition or its commentary on society.

Or perhaps we can think about a teacher. I sit in judgment of my students. At the end of the semester, I give them grades. But I don’t just sit back and let them succeed or fail on their own skills. My job is to teach them. I explain concepts to them, give them opportunities to practice with the concepts, and give them feedback on their performance. The semester is filled with formative assessments. A formative assessment is one that has little or no impact on grades but allows the students to determine how well they understand. I assign homework each week that, in total, amounts to 10% of the semester’s grade, and I give half credit for just completing the work. The other half of the credit is given for accuracy, which is intended to encourage students to actually try. Each week, I have a LEAD session, which is a time when the students are all working on the homework together and I’m present to answer questions, correct misconceptions, and help them understand the material I’m trying to teach. Maybe a quarter or a third of the students come to the LEAD sessions.

In the same way, we encounter God’s Word each week and then spend the week trying to apply it. As we struggle with it, the Holy Spirit is there to nudge us in the right direction, if we are willing to listen. God is ready to teach us, to show us what we have done well and poorly, to grade our progress towards full membership in God’s kingdom. All we need to do is turn towards God to receive that instruction. Sometimes it’s hard, just like getting a low grade on homework is hard, but challenging words from God make us better and stronger people, more able to resist the Adversary, more confident members of Christ’s body.

OK, that’s formative assessment. The other type of assessment is summative. That’s the grade I give my students on an exam or at the end of the course. Throughout the semester, I remind students that I am a kind and generous person, and some of them believe it. My job, though, is to make sure that they have learned enough to be successful in their careers, so I need to give good and bad grades based on their performance. And here’s where the analogy breaks down.

Jesus is indeed the word of God, living and active, able to judge our thoughts and intentions, before whom no creature is hidden but is laid bare, and to whom we must render an account. BUT, he is our great high priest. The job of a priest is to speak to God on behalf of the people and to obtain the people’s forgiveness. Jesus is our great high priest who sits on the throne of grace and mercy.

During this COVID pandemic, there were lots of policies put in place to accommodate students. That first semester, spring 2020, was a mess. Students at many colleges were given the option of changing from a letter grade to pass/fail, as an acknowledgment that the semester was really hard due to circumstances beyond their control. In the same way, Jesus knows that life is hard. He was tested just as we are. So at the end of the day, we are given a grade, but instead of a letter grade, we get a pass/fail grade. And by the mercy and grace of our great high priest, we all pass.

I’m reminded of another test that I witnessed. When a student completes their master’s thesis, a three-person committee sits in judgment of it. The student presents their work, and the committee members probe it. This one student had someone on their committee who started asking questions on about the third slide of the presentation. As the defense went on, the questions became increasingly probing and aggressive. It was brutal. After the presentation, the committee deliberates in private. The professor who had asked all of the probing, aggressive questions simply said, “Great work!” The student passed with no concerns.

Sometimes our life of faith is like that. We are challenged daily, even minute by minute, to live up to our calling. We are confronted by people we struggle to love. We are criticized for our beliefs. We are scared to proclaim the Gospel. We are tempted to break every commandment in the Bible, and give in more often than we would like to admit. We are weak. But we have this assurance: we have Jesus as our great high priest, who was tested as we are, ready to advocate on our behalf. And so, “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Amen.