Fairhaven United Methodist Church: Recent Episodes
Fairhaven United Methodist Church
Summary Rev. Peg Bowman shares that she was requested by her book club to give a sermon on immigration after they read a book about a woman who helped asylum seekers. Rev. Bowman explains her interest in immigration stems from learning about her own family’s immigration history and hearing about the tragic fate of Jewish […]
Separation of Church and StateOkay, and in this country, we separate politics from faith for a lot of good reasons. We learn to worship God and not politicians. We learn that we vote for politicians but not for God, because God is the King of kings and Lord of lords and never needed to be elected.
But today, the sermon is a yes to our book club’s request. The first question that people usually ask me when I talk about immigration is, “Why are you interested? What’s it to you?” And my interest in immigration started when I was a kid, learning the stories of our family who came to America in the 1800s.
My father’s family left the island of Guernsey and moved to Philadelphia. My mother’s family left Switzerland and moved to the suburbs of New York.
What Makes Americans UniqueEvery American knows how to answer the question, “Where are you from originally?”
No one from any other country or continent on this planet has a clue what Americans mean by that question, let alone being able to answer it. We are unique in that way.
SummaryRev. Dylan Parson begins the sermon by describing how he discovered as a child that falling asleep made long car trips go by faster. As a kid, Rev. Parson would try to distract himself on road trips by bringing lots of books, music, etc. However, distraction came at the cost of missing sights along the journey. The sermon then transitions to Moses noticing the burning bush while distracted with the work of shepherding.
God spoke to Moses through the bush because Moses took the time to notice it. Rev. Parson explains that we must believe God still speaks to us and take time to notice the signs God puts in our lives. Though modern technology offers endless distraction, we must cultivate the willingness to notice God’s voice by stopping, breathing, and listening. God promises to be with us when we follow his call. The question is whether we will take the time to notice God speaking to us.
TranscriptIt took me a strangely long time to discover one of the most miraculous travel tricks to make a trip easier, and that is, of course, to fall asleep. While this doesn’t work whenever you’re the driver, it is amazing how much faster a trip can go. I remember the very first time I discovered this, I was probably like 12, 13, I had placed a pillow on my lap and folded myself in half as my grandmother was driving my sister and I to Chicago, across what is quite possibly one of the most boring roads in America, and that is the Ohio Turnpike. There is no worse drive that I have ever experienced.
Before I had this revelation that you could just fall asleep, my preferred method to improve long drives was intense efforts at distraction. More than clothes or toiletries, my bags for vacation when I was a kid were loaded with just hilariously unrealistic numbers of books, of cassette tapes, you know, before the world briefly transitioned to CDs. My bag was always so heavy I could barely carry it because there were like a dozen books in there. My mom would always, You’re never going to read all those.
And I didn’t. And then as we got in the car at three in the morning to head down to the beach, I would I’d build myself an isolation pod in the back of our van. You know, we’d have, I’d have a wall of pillows and blankets separating me from my sister, which was absolutely necessary. I’d have a backpack full of entertainment at my feet.
And the moment we left the driveway for our 12 hour trip to North Carolina, my headphones went on. And immediately, my Walkman was blasting Radio Disney kid jams. Volume one or two, I think they’re at like volume 73 by now. And then I would crack into the first of my half a dozen Nancy Drews, which I inherited from my mom’s collection.
I had like 40 of them. Now, 12 or more hours in the back of a minivan, waiting to smell the ocean, is a really long time no matter what, especially whenever you get about 2/3 of the way there. You’re on I-95 in standstill traffic. The sun’s baking you through the window.
But distraction, I found out, was the best way to cope. Distraction comes with a cost, though. I was constantly missing things. Part of the glory of the trip was all these landmarks that I always look forward to seeing every year.
The route down is just littered with landmarks that I would always be waiting for to know. They were just getting closer and closer. Cool things that you don’t get to see at home, right? I was always thrilled to see the castle in Berkeley Springs. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with this route down south.
The castle in Berkeley Springs, there’s a giant roller skate in Front Royal that’s like 10 feet tall. I was excited to see that. There are apple statues around Winchester. The city is loaded with just these like huge 10 foot apples that are painted in all kinds of different colors.
I’m always look forward to the tunnel that I hated to sleep through in Newport News and then all the aircraft carriers and the warships in Norfolk and then the grave digger monster truck in Curry Tuck, all these big, exciting landmarks. I wanted to see them, But it was extremely difficult for my mom to get my attention over the Backstreet Boys and Christina Aguilera and past whatever mystery I was reading. And by the time she could reach around all the cooler and everything to shake my leg, it was gone. Whatever it was was gone.
And so I’d miss almost everything. I’d usually see one of those things per year. Even if I decided I was going to be ready for the next landmark, I always allowed myself over the next couple hours to just fade into distraction once more. Because that’s what I wanted anyway, right? I wanted to be distracted.
And then once you decide that, there you go. And there is inherent conflict between keeping oneself distracted and on the other hand, noticing. You cannot do both things at once. And distraction now doesn’t take that much effort, maybe now more than ever.
And this feels like such a crotchety old person thing say, but the world we live in is designed to distract us now. I’m not sure my phone ever goes much longer than 15 minutes without a call, a text, some kind of social media notification, an alert that the Dollar General app has a Saturday coupon. And immediately whatever focus that I’ve mustered up on whatever task that I’m working on is just gone. It is so much harder for me to just read a book now than it was when I was a kid because there’s always something.
And social media, news apps the same way, are literally designed to just keep us scrolling and refreshing, reading more stuff, just desiring to keep opening it because that’s how they get money. And we’re almost never bored anymore because there’s always something at hand that we can use to distract ourselves. Whether we’re sitting in traffic, whether we’re waiting on food at a restaurant. Now I have to believe that some kids have never in their lives at this point experienced riding in a car with nothing to do but look out the window.
We cannot stand to just do nothing. And I mean this is me, this is everybody. Literally as I wrote this sermon, I put off going to the mechanic to get my leaking tire repaired because until Stormy got home from work to pick me up, I knew that I had to sit down there and just sit and wait for them to fix my tire with nothing to do than sitting with the old guy, scratched his lottery tickets off across from me. Nothing to do but sit.
And I put it off. And then I went down there and I did it in ten minutes. And so you’re walking down the sidewalk and there is a bush smoldering from within but not burning up. You’re walking down the sidewalk.
Do you notice it right off beside you? If God were trying to get your attention to speak to you as he did to Moses, would you keep on walking or would you notice? The great Jewish Rabbi Rashi says that God’s choice to appear in the form of a bush was completely intentional. He chooses a bush precisely because it’s small, it’s not grand or commanding. Other Middle Eastern gods at that time were often associated with these huge trees or sacred forest, but God chooses to be like his people were in their slavery. Small, flimsy, insignificant, just one among many.
They’re just a bush in the midst of this scrubland. And you know, there’s really no such thing as a beautiful shrub. At best, they’re interesting, I guess. And not really when they’re scattered across desert scrubland where there’s just patches of thorny bushes, that’s just not pretty.
The Lord could have chosen to be this grand cedar tree, the kind that the emperors of the day built their palaces out of. He could have chosen to tear the clouds in two to get Moses’ attention with a voice of thunder, but he doesn’t. So keep in mind that Moses at this point in his life, we’re just kind of jumping into the Moses story so we miss kind of the background here, but Moses at this point in his life is not having a good time. He is a man without a people.
He’s a Hebrew, he’s come to find out recently, but he was raised by Egyptians. He’s a fugitive from the land of Egypt where he grew up because he murdered an Egyptian in a fit of righteous rage. He saw this Egyptian officer mistreat a Hebrew, one of his cousins, and he killed him. And so now he’s fled Egypt entirely He’s living with his wife and his father-in-law in the foreign land of Midian, which is three days journey across the desert from the place he’s known as home.
And he is doing one of the most low skill, unpleasant, boring jobs imaginable. Far away from his new wife. I mean, at least he’d be excited to have a new wife, right? But he’s far away from her most of the time anyway. He’s out being a shepherd.
So conceivably, reasonably, Moses could have been shepherding in complete dismay. I promise you he was not looking forward to each new day at work. He probably could have been out there doing his best to dissociate from the reality where he finds himself. He does not want to be here.
He wants it to be over. Moses, who was once a baby rescued by a princess from the reeds along the Nile. He was once a young man who lived in Pharaoh’s court along this great and mighty river. He has lost everything.
And now he finds himself, and you could literally translate it as the backside of the desert, not just regular desert. This is far into the desert. And he’s on this mountain, Mount Hermon, that means parched. He’s known water, he’s known luxury, he’s known this urban, exciting lifestyle, and now he’s carrying sheep from place to place on this desert mountain.
So you could forgive him if he was just trying to do the stupid job, moving the sheep from place to place, supervising, wandering around in low-grade sorrow, and just waiting till he finally gets to go home to his tent– he’s living in a tent now, I’m sure– with his wife. But when he comes upon this bush, he notices. His eyes aren’t on his feet as he walks. They’re not just zoned out looking at the horizon as he keeps walking.
He sees the bush and he says, Let me check out this amazing site and find out why the bush isn’t burning up. He chooses to drop what he’s doing. He could have just powered through the day, but he chooses to stop, to drop what he’s doing and see what is going on. And notice this, because I think this is very important.
just half a sentence that it’s easy to skim over. Then God calls him. God speaks to him out of the bush but not until he goes to look. God is not in the burning bush and saying, Moses come over here.
That’s not what’s happening. If Moses had not bothered to notice or if he saw the bush out of the corner of his eye and went, Huh, weird, and kept walking, I don’t think that God would have yelled for him to come back. I think it’s very possible that the entire saga of the Exodus here, all that is to come in Moses’s life as he becomes the instrument through which God liberates his people, none of that happens if he doesn’t decide to drop what he’s doing for just a second to go check out that weird thing. He hasn’t enveloped himself in the many distractions he could have And so he hears God’s voice because he’s available to hear it.
And then Moses, Moses cries a voice from the bush. Here I am, Moses replies. Here I am. And history has changed forever.
Now it’s not smooth sailing from that moment forward. The promise is actually kind of difficult that God gives in that moment because God says, you know, you’ll know that this comes true whenever you’re back on this mountain after you free your people. There’s a lot of stuff in between here and there. But God expresses exactly what he’s gonna do.
He’s gonna use Moses to free his people from slavery under Pharaoh and he’s gonna bring them out of Egypt into a broad land flowing with milk and honey. And Moses asks what any reasonable person would. Who am I to go to Pharaoh and to bring the Israelites out of Egypt. Who am I? It’s gonna be the challenge of a lifetime.
There’s nothing that Moses could have done to prepare him for this. You can’t learn some kind of leadership to lead your people out of slavery. You can’t prepare yourself to do these miracles that God is gonna work through you. It’s going to be an impossible challenge for him to do and he knows that.
The author Elie Wiesel, who was a Holocaust survivor, writes of Moses. Moses was the greatest legislator and commander-in-chief of the first liberation army. He was a prophet, God’s representative to the people and the people’s representative to God. And he never had a good day in his life.
But God makes a promise that guarantees it’s going to be worth it. I’ll be with you, God says. And God even tells Moses something that no human being had ever heard before. His name.
I am who I am. Or I will be who I will be. God is the one who stands beyond everything. The world changes, empires rise and fall, people are born and die, continents drift apart and crash together, the years just blow away.
But God is. God will be. God’s promise, the hope that we can build our lives on, is in God’s very name that he gives to Moses. I am what I am.
And all of this happens because Moses noticed this bush. I don’t think we often believe it deep down, but God is still speaking. God is still calling. God is leaving signs for you in your life, waiting for you to see them.
And so the first thing you have to do is to decide to live your life in such a way as if God is still at work and speaking. That the book that we read from every Sunday is not some dead history book, but an account of the God called I will be who I will be. That’s a future, infinite name. The God who was and is and is to come.
Whenever the book gets to the end, it’s not over. That alone is a first step, to really choose to believe that. It’s one thing to believe that in the abstract. It’s another thing to decide to live as if the God that led the Hebrews through the Red Sea just might light a bush on fire in front of you on your way out the door today.
Why not? But the next thing, and I know that I struggle with this one every day, is to cultivate a willingness to notice. And again, we all know this, that we are just smothered in distraction, and we like it that way. It feels a whole lot better not to have to experience silence, whenever you can just turn up the white noise instead, whatever that is. So it doesn’t really matter if God lights that bush on fire, if you’re too wound up in the cares of your day, the stresses of work and family, and the countless distractions that bombard us.
If you’re too busy to even see that, it doesn’t matter if the bush is burning so close it that might light your pant leg on fire. God will let us keep walking and deal with all of our little stuff if we’re not ready to hear God on the big stuff. It’s in our commitment to stop, to breathe, to simply shut up on the inside and the outside that we encounter God’s voice. How many times, and I know this is me too, how many times have you taken a moment to pray and not said anything.
Now it’s constantly words going up. Is there any room for words to come back down? God is speaking to you. God is calling you to something special and crucial to God’s work in the world. It might be easy.
It might be hard. But I am promises to be with you every step of the way. The question is whether you will take the time to notice. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
God Is Still Speaking I don’t think we often believe it deep down, but God is still speaking. God is still calling. God is leaving signs for you in your life, waiting for you to see them. God’s Promise To Moses And God even tells Moses something that no human being had ever heard before. […]
Summary This Fairhaven Sermon by Peg Bowman explores the history and significance of Sabbath from the Old Testament through Jesus’s life. It starts by summarizing the origins of Sabbath in Genesis, where God rested on the 7th day after creating the world. God intended Sabbath to be a time for all people and even animals […]
Jesus Answers Questions About Sabbath Jesus answers the question in the style of a rabbi, by answering from the law and the prophets. Jesus is not troubled by this conversation, by the way, and neither is the rest of the group, because expressing differences of opinion and posing questions to a master were encouraged in […]
Summary In this sermon, the Pastor Dylan Parson discusses Jesus’ interaction with a Canaanite woman in the Gospel of Matthew. The pastor explains that Christians often view themselves as the “hero” or “main character” when reading Bible stories, but in this case, we are not the children of Israel – we are the outsiders, the […]
Main Character Syndrome This story has something to say to you. A friend of mine pointed out that when reading scripture, Christians often have a terrible case of what kids these days call main character syndrome. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with that phrase. But main character syndrome is this– the […]
Summary In this weeks sermon on the Sabbath, Rev. Peg Bowman uses a Star Wars analogy to frame her exploration of how the concept of the Sabbath evolved in the Old Testament period. Just as the second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, connects the beginning and end of the original trilogy while having […]
We also saw that Sabbath is related to freedom, freedom from slavery, freedom to say no to anyone in power over us once every seven days. This week in week two, we saw that God used manna to teach the people to trust in God’s provision and not hoard. Basically, God’s people are told every […]
The sermon explores the theme of spiritual maturity and identity formation through the Biblical story of Jacob wrestling with God. Pastor Dylan describes how Jacob begins his life driven by self-interest, manipulating others and disconnected from God. After encountering God in a vision, Jacob begins a journey of growth, though he still relies on his […]
The Full Sermon will be out tomorrow. Life happens, we grow, we change. Over time, some of us might as well become a new person entirely. And I would argue that’s actually exactly what Jesus calls us to over a lifetime of discipleship and growth. By the end of our lives, by our older years, […]
This week we were not able to record and share a new sermon, so we wanted to highlight some moments from last week’s sermon. We excerpted three shorts under 60 seconds each from Rev. Parson’s sermon. Let us know if these shorts resonate and are worth the extra effort in the polling below.
Summary In this sermon, Rev. Dylan Parson discusses the biblical story of Jacob and his vision of the ladder to heaven. Rev. Parson points out that Jacob was a deceitful person who tricked his brother Esau out of his inheritance. Yet even when Jacob is fleeing his brother’s wrath, his father Isaac blesses him and […]
Summary Rev. Peg Bowman recently returned from a trip to the UK, where she attended a conference at Oxford and did research on John and Charles Wesley. The conference focused on the decline in church attendance and how to reverse it. Historically, upswings in attendance have coincided with increased Christian artistic endeavors that appeal emotionally. […]
Ralph E. Duckworth, from the nonprofit The Nyadire Connection, discusses their work over the past 15 years in Zimbabwe, focusing on improving medical care by refurbishing clinics and providing essential amenities. The organization, operating entirely on a volunteer basis, has successfully refurbished five clinics, with a sixth underway, and aims to complete their "Moonshot" project by year's end.
Summary This Fairhaven Sermon by Rev. Dylan Parson reflects on the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac from Genesis. The speaker highlights the haunting and dark quality of the story, emphasizing the troubling aspects that often go unnoticed. The sermon raises questions about the moral implications of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son and […]
Summary In this weeks sermon, Pastor Dylan’s Parson talks about how Jesus didn’t promise peace but challenges. He compares how early Christian groups faced a lot of pushback, while modern churches are usually pretty comfortable and uncontroversial. Dylan notes that many younger folks aren’t finding a good reason to stick around in these unchallenging churches. […]
Summary In her sermon, Rev. Claire Megles shares her personal journey as a seminary graduate, recounting her experiences of undergoing Clinical Pastoral Education to transition from a teacher to a compassionate listener. Her narration encompasses her struggle to establish trust during hospice assessments amid COVID-19 protocols and a moving anecdote about a man named Jerry, […]
Rev. Peg Bowman, in her sermon, underscores the true meaning of faith in Christianity, emphasizing that it is about trusting God's power, wisdom, and timing. Drawing on Biblical stories of Abram and Matthew, she illustrates faith's transformative power and the audacity required in following God's call. Concluding her sermon, she encourages her audience to embody audacity in their faith, promoting inclusivity and spreading Jesus' mercy and healing universally.
Summary In Pastor Peg Bowman’s sermon on Trinity Sunday, she explores the divine mystery of the Trinity and its significance in Christian belief. She suggests that understanding the Trinity is as unique and individual as we are, drawing from sources such as the Bible and nature, and using her personal lens as a musician to […]
Direct Link To VideoPastor Dylan Parson’s sermon delves into the concept of spiritual gifts. He begins by discussing a spiritual gifts inventory, a tool designed to help individuals identify their unique gifts within the church community. The idea is akin to viewing the church as a puzzle, with each person’s gift being an integral piece. However, Pastor Parson also highlights a concern, the 80/20 rule, indicating that a small proportion of the congregation tends to carry most of the ministry’s responsibilities.
In the second part of his sermon, Pastor Dylan offers a nuanced view on spiritual gifts. According to him, these aren’t merely our natural talents or skills; rather, they are divinely bestowed abilities by the Holy Spirit, intended to further God’s mission on earth. He invokes the story of Pentecost to illustrate that when used for God’s mission, these gifts can have miraculous impacts. He emphasizes that a skill becomes a spiritual gift only when used for the betterment of the world in alignment with God’s work. In his conclusion, Pastor Parson encourages the congregation to remain open to the Holy Spirit’s guidance, allowing their spiritual gifts to fully manifest and make a positive difference.
TranscriptSo how many of you have taken a spiritual gifts inventory? Yes. So it’s fairly frequent, right? I know this is something we looked at about a year back. We did a project with the annual conference on mission and outreach consultation. We did that across the partnership.
But even if you didn’t participate in that, this is something that’s been around for a long time, and you’ve probably maybe seen it before. So you sit down basically and you take a quiz. It can be really abbreviated or it can be a few hundred questions. And you answer how true a bunch of statements feel to you.
So a couple examples, this is pulling from the one that’s on the general board of discipleships webpage. Through prayer, I see God’s miraculous work in my life. You rate that on a one, never, to a seven, always scale. I’m able to organize human and material resources to serve the needs of others.
One to seven scale. I enjoy teaching Bible study to a group, 1 to 7 scale, and so on. So this particular version, which is my usual preference because it’s easy and accessible, it asks 80 questions, which is pretty small as far as these things go. And then it gives you your top gifts in the end.
And there are 20 possibilities, many of which, not all, but many, come from our Corinthians passage today. got wisdom, faith, knowledge, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues, and so on. That’s about half of them. As the Apostle Paul writes here in the seventh verse of 1 Corinthians chapter 12, A demonstration of the Spirit is given to each person for the common good.
Everybody’s got something, some or multiple gifts that makes them a particular part of the body of Christ, invaluable to the way it functions in the world in serving God, you know, no less than an arm or an eye or an ear enables a human being to fully engage with the world around us. And Paul is making a clear argument here and that’s that there is a role for everyone in the church. Not just a place, a spot, an opportunity, but a vital role, something that is a place that you have to be, that you are called to be in. When we are baptized by the Spirit into one body, as Paul says, that means we act like one body.
Your body would have a noticeable problem. You would notice its functioning got a lot more difficult if your ear decided not to hear. That’s happened to me a couple times the past few weeks with sinus stuff, I wake up and I notice there’s something wrong. Things aren’t working the way they’re supposed to.
Or if your foot decided not to walk or stand, you would notice you have a problem. Things wouldn’t work the way they’re supposed to. And so, in the body of Christ, you are needed. And a body is not this loose association of pieces that are off doing their own thing, mostly with what they’re doing independently, a body is one unified unit where every single cell is working in the same direction to keep things alive, to keep it moving forward, to keep everything functioning.
And so is Christ’s body. From many parts, one body, each freely giving everything they have for the good of Jesus’ work here on earth. The body is moving through the world as Jesus’ body. And this is an extremely high expectation, obviously, and yet one that Paul and Jesus are clearly making of the early church.
And it’s an expectation that, you know, as far as I know, has never been rolled back. And yet what’s called the 80/20 rule—I don’t know how many of you have heard this—is a well-known adage both among pastors, among leaders in churches. And this is true in all kinds of organizations, but churches is our relevant one here. And the 80/20 rule is that in the vast majority of congregations, you know, 80% of the ministry is done by 20% of the body.
And you can easily see how this becomes really tremendously unhealthy. First, that 20% tends to burn out really quick. Second, the life-changing message of the gospel and the power of Jesus isn’t all that compelling to the outside world if most Christians don’t really seem all that interested in it, right? When I was serving at a pretty sizable church in suburban Raleigh, I worked with a pastor and a congregation that took this issue pretty seriously. And so in the summertime, the end of summer, as we started moving towards, you know, back to school, the kind of kickoff of the church year that seems to happen in September, we took a couple Sundays in worship to look very closely at spiritual gifts and service, helping everybody recognize what their role in the body might be and then how to live into it.
And so everyone took a spiritual gifts inventory the first Sunday of this thing, and then the following Sunday, tables were set up where all the leaders of various ministries and teams could talk about and answer questions about their ministries. Everybody from the hospitality group to, you know, the music ministries, things like that. And so then in worship, you know where the sermon would normally be, everyone filled out a sheet that included basically every single job in the church, from greeting people in the parking lot, to making the coffee, to teaching Bible study, to running the nursery, to being in the choir or the band. And every person ranked on a three-point scale, whether they would be happy to do it right now, whether they would be willing if they were asked and needed and trained to run the coffee pot, or whether they would never, no matter what, do it.
And then the staff got to work– by staff, I mean me. I was the intern– got to work gathering all that information, plugging it into a spreadsheet here. And we did our best to plug every single person in somewhere where they’d be willing or where we might be able to raise them up to do some particular task. And now this is really important.
So this is what I want to take away here, is that this sort of connection and expectation of service here is crucial, but not because there’s jobs to get done. Like in every church, yes, there’s jobs to get done. Someone’s got to make the coffee, right? But it’s not about frantically recruiting volunteers to fill holes, right, or filling committee slots as it comes around the nomination seasons every year. That’s not the point.
The reason this all matters is because we a body serving Jesus and the world together. And a body needs fingers and an ear and eyes and a nose. This is all for God. You know, every single one of those committee slots, every single person saying hello in the hallway, every folding of the bulletin, this is all for God.
All of this is sacred work. You know, running the PowerPoint, putting all these things together, playing the piano, all these things are sacred work. And all of us, if we’re seeking to faithfully follow Jesus, need to be offering of ourselves in our significant, special, whatever that gift is, way. But I will say something else and push this even further because today’s Pentecost.
Here’s the thing about how we tend to approach spiritual gifts. Even at that particular church where I think we did a really unusually good job with it. It’s still pretty domesticated. It’s almost like in some churches whenever you break out a spiritual gifts inventory, it can function like a churchy version of the Myers-Briggs.
I don’t know how many of you had to take those at work or in school or a personality profile or you know and your senior year in high school you take one of those tests to figure out what jobs are good for you. What makes this different than that? Because that, who cares, right? What about the Holy Spirit? Last Sunday, as we read the story of Jesus’ ascension and his farewell address to the disciples, we heard Jesus tell the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they are clothed with heavenly power. So think about this for a second. If the gifts that are poured out upon us by the Holy Spirit are just things we happen to be good at, whether that’s teaching Sunday school or preaching or working technology, then what Jesus says before he ascends doesn’t make any sense really.
Why would the disciples wait? Presumably those who are good teachers were good teachers then. Those who were good preachers were good preachers then. Those who were good at praying for people were good before the Holy Spirit came. So why should the disciples wait and why should we want the Holy Spirit? I mean I like to think I’m a passively competent preacher and teacher but plenty of Christians who have, non-Christians rather, who have never even heard of the Holy Spirit can also give a great speech, can also teach a mind-blowing class.
There’s people who don’t believe Jesus who can teach the Bible really good. So what does the Spirit have to do with it? What do the tongues of fire that descend upon those gathered at Pentecost make possible that wasn’t possible moments before? The difference here is this inescapable, uncomfortable element of supernatural power. The Holy Spirit activates within us our God-given gifts, yes, but then it empowers us to do something with them. For the body of Christ, for the kingdom of God, those gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost, the Judeans, the Parthians, the Medes, the Elamites, the Romans, the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Cyrenes, Cretans, Arabs, Phrygians, Asians, all those people.
They experienced the Apostles speaking in their own native language, you know, the gift of tongues. And not only was that a wonderful skill or something, like that could be a cool party trick, but the point is that it was a mechanism by which God miraculously grew the church. That God spread the good news of Jesus from Italy in the north to Greece to Egypt to Turkey to Persia all the way to India and China because of what happened in that moment, because of that gift. Like do you see the difference here? Like yes, first God did miraculously give them the power to speak foreign languages by the Holy Spirit, sure.
That’s cool. But what’s important is God’s use of that gift and their cooperation in receiving that gift. Your gift of wisdom or healing or knowledge or prophecy or faith or tongues becomes a spiritual gift, a gift of the Spirit when it’s used in the Spirit. Otherwise, it’s just a talent.
Every one of those gifts that any of the apostles had, that any of us have, can sit dormant. They can be wasted. You can use them for things that don’t build up the kingdom of God. But when you are using them as a part of the body of Christ to make disciples of Jesus Christ to transform the world, only then does a gift become a spiritual gift.
And only then, maybe, will you be miraculously empowered with new gifts. didn’t know you had. Think of the hymn we sang this one a few weeks ago. Break me, melt me, mold me, fill me.
Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me. There is a crucial piece here where receiving the gifts of the Spirit requires cooperation with the Spirit that break me, melt me, mold me, fill me. It’s not just working harder or finding more ways to serve, that’s probably there. It’s not saying, You know, I’m a good speaker.
I should speak in church. It’s, Holy Spirit, use my gifts for the kingdom of God. God, pour out your spirit on me that I can love you and serve your people in the world in the special way you called me to do it in your church. Gifts become spiritual gifts when they’re accompanied with a spiritual commitment and a spiritual vision.
Listen once more to the Apostle Peter as he quotes the Prophet Joel. In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young will see visions, your elders will dream dreams. Even upon my servants, men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy.
God has every intention of including us all in the work of renewal, of transformation, of salvation in the world, but it is so much more than each of us deciding what we’re good at and then taking a stab at it by ourselves. Pentecost reminds us that the Holy Spirit is poured out upon the body, united with Jesus as our head. And Paul says this really beautifully, I think, in 1 Corinthians 12, chapter 13, or verse 13, We are all baptized by one spirit into one body, whether Jew or Greek, slave or free. We are all given one spirit to drink.
I never noticed that little piece there. We’re given one spirit to drink from, to be nourished by. Each and every one of you has gifts, and I suspect there are gifts that are more than you know of that you have, that God is just waiting to open up in you. And there is a magnetism in your soul, in everybody’s soul, that causes you deep down to long to use those gifts in the service and love of God.
Drink this day of Pentecost from that one spirit. Receive the Holy Spirit that you may prophesy, see visions, and dream dreams, and watch your gifts become spiritual gifts. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
SummaryReverend Peg Bowman draws a parallel between the essence of Mother’s Day, as intended by its founder Anna Jarvis, and Ascension Day, urging her congregation to honor Jesus by living the reality of these days rather than merely marking them as holidays. She discusses the significance of awe and how moments of divine intervention, such as Jesus’ miracles and his ascension, left people in awe, stressing that awe and wonder should be an integral part of our spiritual life. Rev. Bowman then explores the path Jesus and his disciples took during the ascension, from Jerusalem, up the Mount of Olives, to Bethany, highlighting that Jesus used this journey to impart the entirety of Old Testament teachings to his disciples, unveiling the connections between the prophetic texts and himself, the Messiah.
She emphasizes Jesus’ approach of teaching disciples gradually, comparing it to learning to cook in school, where simple dishes are taught first before advancing to complex ones. She notes that just before his ascension, Jesus offered a comprehensive review to his disciples, preparing them for his departure. The disciples would require the Holy Spirit’s power to continue Jesus’ mission, an aspect that is emphasized in the context of the Pentecost. This power is likened to a battery needing to be fully charged before use, suggesting the disciples needed to be spiritually ‘charged’ to fulfill God’s plan.
In addition to being a power source, the Holy Spirit is depicted as a source of memory and knowledge, bringing Jesus’ teachings to mind and providing deeper insights. Before leaving, Jesus gives them a mission to be witnesses to God’s truth and love, extending their faith into all aspects of life, ranging from personal interactions to the global community. The sermon concludes with the note that the disciples and all believers never go forward alone, and that Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, can do more in this world than he could alone.
Transcript Well, last week on Mother’s Day, I was talking to the other churches about blessing and about how mothers bless their children and about how children can bless their parents. And I also mentioned the founder of Mother’s Day, whose name was Anna Jarvis. She was a Methodist who lived in West Virginia, not terribly far from here. Anyway, what she really meant to create when she created Mother’s Day was a holiday that would honor women for their sacrifices in much the same way that Veteran’s Day honors the deeds and sacrifices of our servicemen and women.
Anna Jarvis never meant to create a Hallmark holiday. And when she saw people making Mother’s Day into that, she was horrified and tried to put a stop to the holiday that she had created. And I mention this today because today is Ascension Day, which we celebrate. It was actually last Thursday, but we celebrate it today.
And this also is a time of remembrance and blessing. And like Mother’s Day, it’s much more meaningful if we honor Jesus by living its reality rather than simply celebrating a holiday. I’m kind of diving into the deep end, so let me back up and start at the beginning here. So today’s scriptures begin with the psalm that we read responsibly.
The version in the hymnal is a little bit different than the version that I was reading, but one of the first words in the version that I had, one of the first words in the psalm to describe God was the word “awesome.” And I remember back in the 1980s, for those of you who remember back that far, the word “awesome” was spoken so often it was practically worn out, right? It’s like things that were awesome back then included things like doing jazzercise in spandex outfits, or watching Matthew Broderick movies, or fighting over Cabbage Patch Kids at the small, or listening to big hair bands on our boom boxes, or watching Back to the Future. Totally awesome, right? Speaking as a teacher and a lover of the English language, I think it’s a crime to wear out a good word like that. But the word “awesome,” according to the Britannica dictionary, means something along the lines of feelings of fear, respect, and wonder. And I think the shepherds who saw and heard the angels on the night that Jesus was born were filled with awe.
And the people who witnessed Jesus saying to a paralyzed man take up your mat and go home, and then saw it happen, were filled with awe. We know the feeling, but it’s hard to put into words both the feeling and whatever it is that causes the feeling. Awesomeness so often leaves us at a loss for words, but in a good way. So when it comes time to talk about Jesus’ ascension like awesomeness, it’s hard to find the words to describe it.
And for the same reason, the events of that day are filled with awe. On the day that Jesus ascended, He basically led the disciples on the same path that they had traveled on Palm Sunday, only backwards. Instead of coming down into the city, they walked away from Jerusalem, up the Mount of Olives, out to Bethany. And if it hadn’t been made clear yet, it was certainly clear now that Jesus was not going to take on the powers that be in Jerusalem, Jesus had not come to replace the current King of Israel.
Jesus’ kingdom, as he said, is not of this world. Instead, Jesus spent his last day on earth reviewing with the disciples all the teachings of the Old Testament and the writings of Moses and the writings of the prophets that have to do with the Messiah, with himself. And Jesus put it all together for the disciples from beginning to end, probably for the first time for many of them, hearing the entire story from start to finish, from Genesis up until that day, all laid out in a logical order. Because up until now, Jesus had given the truth to disciples in bits and pieces, bite-sized chunks, which is what a good teacher does.
Good teachers know that students can’t master a subject without starting at the beginning and learning one lesson at a time, and practicing what they learn. I remember as an example, when we were in home ec class in high school, learning how to cook. Now they don’t start us off with baking wedding cakes, you know what I’m saying? (laughs) Right? We started out with something very simple. I think the first lesson was how to make scrambled eggs, which was something my mother had taught me years before, and it astounded me that the teacher told us that you had to actually measure the milk and the salt and the pepper.
That’s not how mom showed me. But the point was to learn to be disciplined and consistent in our cooking, and which I have to admit I still am not. But anyway, the teachers start at the beginning for a good reason. And that’s what Jesus had done when he first started teaching the disciples.
He had been with them for three years. And the subject matter was the truth of God, and the love of God, and how to live a life that pleases God. And he started with the basics, like any good teacher, which happened to be things like turning water into wine at a wedding, or teaching fishermen how to fish for people. After three years, the disciples began to understand that miracles are a part of life, or at least they’re meant to be, which is a lesson that I think our culture today has largely forgotten.
And that’s another sermon for another day. On this particular day, though, Jesus was about to go home to God the Father. So he did what any good teacher would do. He had a review.
And he reviewed Moses and the prophets and the Psalms and how Jesus was the fulfillment of them all, how Jesus was the one who would provide forgiveness of sins through his death and resurrection for anyone who wanted to change the direction of their lives. There was just one piece missing. The disciples, after Jesus left, would need God’s power to carry out Jesus’ mission when he was gone. They needed something Jesus had always had, something that Moses had, something that David had, something Elijah had, but something that most people did not have.
And that’s the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And that’s the subject of Pentecost next week. For now, for today, what is it that we and they are seeing here on this mountaintop? Well, first off, I want to show you a couple of photos. You got those up, okay? This is the Chapel of the Ascension in Jerusalem, in Israel.
This is, to the best of our knowledge, I mean, nobody’s absolutely exact after 2,000 years, but to the best of our knowledge, this is somewhere near where Jesus and the disciples were standing when all this took place. And of course, any place that Jesus stood that we’re kind of aware of, people built a chapel on top of it. That’s what they do. So this is the spot.
The chapel, of course, was not there. This was just a mountaintop at that point in time. But if you stand in the door of this chapel and turn around, next photo, this is what you see. Jerusalem at your feet, ready to be prayed for, ministered over.
That’s something. Thanks. That’s good. In this place, all that Jesus taught the disciples began to come together in the minds and hearts of the disciples, sort of, to a point.
One theologian makes this suggestion, just kind of come at it from a different angle. She says, “Think about your cell phones.” She says, “If we don’t charge the phone, it dies.” Now of course it doesn’t actually die because it’s not alive, right? But that’s what we say when the batteries have no more power. So we charge them. And charging is an ongoing process.
Every battery has an optimum charge time, the amount of time it takes to charge up the battery. Most smartphones, it’s about three hours. And you can’t just pull a new smartphone out of the box and start using it right away. It has to be charged first.
And if we use it frequently, before it’s fully charged, eventually it will shorten the lifespan of the battery. So optimal charging, fully charged, is the best way to start. In a sense, the disciples need to be charged. They need power before they can do and fulfill what God has in mind for them.
Jesus needs to essentially charge them, but He can’t do that before He goes home to God. So that’s He’s heading out. He’s heading back to God, back to the right hand of God. So Jesus tells the disciples to go back to the city of Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit.
And in actual fact, the Holy Spirit is far more than just a power source. It is that. But the Holy Spirit is also a source of memory and knowledge. The Spirit brings to our minds the things that Jesus has said.
The Spirit gives us insights deeper and more accurate than we could realize ourselves. And the Holy Spirit picks up where Jesus left off in terms of teaching. So Jesus says, “Wait until you’ve received power from on high.” He wants to make sure the disciples, both back then and now, were 100% taken care of before he went back home. He also gave them and us a mission to be witnesses to God’s truth and love in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
This does not mean going out and doing street corner preaching. Also does not mean that all of us are sent to minister to the entire world. We are not, all of us, called to travel. When Jesus was talking about taking the faith to the world, He is speaking of taking our faith into all aspects of life, into our personal lives, into our homes, into our families, our relationships with our friends, and the people that we work with, and our neighbors, as well as the community around us, as well as the world through the church’s ministries.
The world includes all of these things. The world includes the people who come to dinner for living stones. The people in our neighborhoods who are struggling to learn English. The people in our communities who need food or medical care or even just friendship.
All of this and more is the world that we are called to. Someone once said to me, “Think of Jerusalem, “Judaea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.” Think of it this way. Jerusalem is the neighborhood we live in. And Judea is the region we live in, so Pittsburgh or Western PA.
And Samaria is our next door neighbor nations, that would be Canada and Mexico, and then to the ends of the earth. And each one of us has a part to play in this calling. We are not all called to all four areas. Each one of us probably called to just one, whatever our gifts are.
Back in Jerusalem, after Jesus ascended, after the Holy Spirit came, the disciples broke bread together, faced opposition from the authorities together, healed people together, prayed together, cast out evil spirits and restored the dead to life together. And they learned to forgive together. And all of these things and more in the power of the Holy Spirit. Last thing before he leaves earth, Jesus blesses the disciples.
They do not go forward alone, and neither do we. So why does Jesus leave? Well, because Jesus can do more in this world through us in the power of the Holy Spirit than he can do alone as a single human being. And Jesus also gives us a glimpse of our future, Because resurrection and ascension is where we are all headed. While we wait, we pray, “Thy kingdom come because that’s home.” That’s where our loved ones are who’ve gone before us.
That’s where we are headed. This is, as the Apostle Paul says, “the greatness of His power for us who believe.” We are headed where Jesus is. We will follow in his footsteps, even though we can’t see exactly where they lead right now. But for now, we declare our God an awesome God.
We sing songs of joy and praise to Jesus, who is king over all the earth. Luke says Jesus’ followers are always in the temple blessing God. And this is a good thing for us to do too, while we’re waiting. We don’t just come to church because the building is open on Sundays.
We are here, we come to this place to be in God’s presence, in the presence of God’s Spirit, and to bless God as God has blessed us. We worship with great joy like the disciples did back then. And we look forward to blessing God and being blessed by God in that great and awesome reunion, awesome reunion in God’s kingdom. Amen.
Mother’s Day Sermon 2023SummaryThis Mother’s Day sermon celebrates the invaluable role of mothers in our lives. Mothers are not the idealized, perfect figures we often see on TV, but rather everyday heroes who make countless sacrifices for their children. They come in all shapes, sizes, and genders, and their labor, if quantified, would be valued at $162,581 a year. Despite their tremendous contribution, the most common gifts they receive are cards, phone calls, flowers, or meals. However, the sermon emphasizes that the best gift for a mother is a heartfelt expression of gratitude. It highlights the biblical example of Mary, mother of Jesus, who fully submitted to God’s will and remained devoted despite all hardships.
This sermon invites everyone to recognize the irreplaceable role of mothers, who, like the mythical unicorns, sparkle in their uniqueness and continue to believe in their children. It encourages us to express sincere thanks to our mothers, not just on Mother’s Day but every day, and reminds us that their love and legacy persist even after they are gone. Mothers, like the rare and valuable unicorns, should embrace their uniqueness and know that their sparkle does not go unnoticed. Happy Mother’s Day!
TranscriptWhen I was just a young tot, I remember how television shows portrayed the average mother. She was that person who got dressed up every day in a pretty dress, curled her hair and donned the full face of makeup just to go to the grocery store. She was that mom that looked 100% on point every day. She was so amazing that unicorns had trouble believing she was real.
Oh, how I dream she could be my mom, the perfect mom, a unicorn. To be clear, that was not my mom. My mom did not meet those stringent criteria, not even close. But I envied any child who was lucky enough to have such a mythical creature for a mother.
Being a mom of any age or generation is difficult. A mother is a selfless, loving human being who sacrificed many of her needs and wants for the needs and the wants of her children and her family. She hands out hugs and kisses, helps raise you and loves you unconditionally. She works hard to make sure her children are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to make it as a competent human being in a complicated world.
She is your rock and support system through the good, the bad, and the ugly moments of your life. But being the mom isn’t for the faint of heart. Mothering takes effort, physical, mental, and emotional. It’s tough work, but the rewards are significant.
Mothers come in all shapes and sizes and even genders. There is no perfect mom, nor is there any cookie-cutter diagram of what a mother should be. Moms have a 24/7, 365-day commitment. Interestingly, research shows mothering should be valued at an annual salary of $162,581 a year.
So this one special day, Mother’s Day, gives each of us the special opportunity to show our gratitude to our moms, stop moms, grandmothers, aunts, and other maternal figures in our lives. But instead of that six-figure salary, What do we give mom for her selfless dedication to us? We give her a greeting card. Can you believe this is the most popular gift for Mother’s Day with approximately 152 million cards sent? Big deal. Oh, yeah.
Moms usually get a phone call, too. Reportedly, there are approximately 122 million calls made on the second Sunday of May every year, More calls than any other day of the year. And today, we can celebrate virtually with moms geographically distanced. Boring.
And then there’s those awesome flowers and plants. After Christmas in Hanukkah, more people buy flowers and plants for their moms for Mother’s Day than any other day. You’re killing me. Well, how about eating out? Normally, Mother’s Day is the busiest day of the year for restaurants.
Around 48% of the people make plans to go to a restaurant for Mother’s Day. What a deal. We feed her one day of the year and let her feed us the remaining 364 days. So for her estimated worth of $162,581 a year, She gets a card, a phone call, flowers, or a meal she doesn’t have to cook, or any combination of the above.
That hardly seems fair, doesn’t it? However, the truth be told, material things are nice. But the best gift and the one mum probably values the most of all is a heartfelt thank you and a genuine expression of appreciation for all that she has and continues to do or has done for you. We should celebrate Mother’s Day every day, not just once a year. So take time to thank her often.
I have the highest respect and admiration for anyone God has blessed to be a mother. There are few assignments in the human experience that require an array of skills and wisdom needed by a mom fulfilling her everyday duties. Moms must be a resident psychologist, physician, theologian, educator, nurse, chef, taxi driver, fire marshal, and occasional police officer. And if she succeeds in each of these responsibilities, She gets to do it all again tomorrow.
I’m also one that is amazed at the way God designed mothers. It is said that a unicorn doesn’t stand around and worry about what the other unicorns are saying of it or think of it. It just sparkles. Isn’t that what moms do? Moms just sparkle.
Mothering is a lifelong job. My wife Elaine is an incredible mom. I am in awe of her ability to nurture our children still today as she did when they were young. But you know what? According to the Bible, there is a lot more to being a good mom than simply making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the crust.
There is more than applying a Spider-Man bandage or washing the hair without getting soapy water in the eyes. Yes, these are the physical demands on mothers, but biblically, there are spiritual demands as well. And without question, the spiritual needs of children are even greater than the physical needs. God has called moms to pass on more than a good recipe book or a skill in how to load a dishwasher.
Moms are called on to pass on the things of God. One day, the children of the family circus were discussing where babies come from. One of the young experts, Billy, announced, “Storks don’t bring babies. They come UPS.” Youngest Jeffrey had a different idea, but Dolly, the daughter, spoke the most insightful comment of all.
Babies are connected to their mothers by their biblical cord, which brings me to one remarkable biblical mother. When Mary was just a teenager, she was confronted with a challenge to be completely submitted to God’s will. When Gabriel gave her the angelic message that she was to carry the Christ child, Mary was stunned. The key phrase, I am the Lord’s servant.
May it be. Through the years, Mary never wavered from her complete submission to God’s will. Was she nervous? Certainly. Was she unsure of her own abilities? Who wouldn’t be? Was she anxious about the prophecy that part of her future would include pain? Of course.
Mary was like any other mom in this room who wanted only the best for their child. She understood full well that all of life is not pleasant. And she was completely aware that life happens. She was so committed to God that she had no room for commitment to anything else.
And that makes her a mother worth imitating. Like moms of today, the fact that she was the mother of Jesus, Mary wasn’t perfect. Remember when Jesus performed his first miracle? Mary’s conversation is the most unusual part of this water-to-wine story. Jesus said to Mary, woman, why do you involve me? It’s not my time.
Think of the awkwardness of that situation. Mary’s request and conversation with Jesus appears to be out of line with what Jesus was ready to do. And even though Jesus performed the miracle, there’s a feeling that he did so, in part, because his mother put him on the spot. If Mary understood the task of Jesus, would she have tried to interrupt him, or even agree that his ministry needed to be tempered? Was it Mary’s mistake not to stop the ministry of Jesus, even for a little while? Fast forward.
Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother. Mary did not stand there stoically and passively by at the foot of the cross, as she is usually portrayed in stained glass windows. No, she crumpled at the cross. She fell down to the depths there, moaning and wailing and begging the God of her heaven to stop her hell on earth.
The truth of Simeon’s prophecy at the birth of Jesus suddenly became true. The cross cut deeply in the Mary’s heart. Despite the pain, Mary was there. She was a devoted mother from the beginning and a faithful mother to the end.
A mother called by God never relinquishes her title. You’ll find mothers like that in the halls of Children’s hospitals, in funeral homes, in counselors’ offices, and under the rarest of circumstances, giving up their child for adoption. It is sacrificial. It is painful.
But it is a loving moment of care. Mothers never relinquish the title. Even if the child is rebellious, harsh, or cruel, her heart just won’t allow it. Not when she is called by God.
So when a woman becomes a mother, there is an instant realization that the day will almost certainly come when pain dominates the picture. The crosses are different for every family. But frankly, the crosses usually come. There may be a divorce or disease or death.
There may be harsh words or unacceptable actions. There may be tough love and impossible nights. Through it all, mothers called by God never relinquish the title, never. The mother’s love is as rare as a unicorn.
Mary had a chance to see God’s entire plan play out. She suffered through the crucifixion, celebrated the resurrection, and even was a part of the small group that witness the powerful presentation of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. What a gift from God to live long enough for parodying to make sense. Even more of a blessing is that some parents live long enough to see God’s plan for their children and their grandchildren.
But for others, God reveals his plans only from the halls of heaven. There are so many solid principles for parroting in the Bible no mom or parent can afford not to know them. Sure mom you’ve made motherly mistakes in the past you’ll certainly make a mistake or two today and you’ll probably make more mistakes tomorrow. Through it all God will love you, work with you, and accept you as he did with your mom and her mom before.
Through it all the task of mothering or a grandmothering is accomplished by the grace of God. And even though your mother may be physically gone, she is still here. Your relationship isn’t over. It’s just changed.
A mother called by God never really enclashes her title. What makes your mom different makes her beautiful. As Robert Brault said, “Enjoy the little things in life because someday you’ll realize they were the big things. Unicorns have rare qualities and great value.
So whether your mom is near, geographically distanced, or has gone on to glory, take a moment today to sincerely thank her for what she does for you or has done for you. You may have stopped believing in unicorns, but she has never stopped believing in you. So mom don’t stand around and worry about what others think of you. Just sparkle and know that your sparkle has not gone unnoticed.
You are a child of God. You are a limited edition. You are that unicorn that one in a million. Embrace your uniqueness.
Happy Mother’s Day. Amen.
SummaryThis week’s sermon reflects on the fifth Sunday of Easter and the coronation of King Charles III, discussing the significance of stability and permanence in a world where monarchs may live and die. They mention the crown jewels, particularly the Kulinan diamond, as symbols of the United Kingdom. Rev. Peg Bowman then connects this theme to the scripture readings, which talk about valuable stones and the concept of living stones. In these readings, David seeks refuge in God, Jesus comforts his disciples, and Peter discusses living stones in his letter.
Rev. Peg Bowman suggests that living stones represent God’s people, built together into a spiritual house with God as the foundation. They also discuss the idea of Jesus as the chief cornerstone, or rather, the capstone or keystone, holding the structure together. The coronation of King Charles, with people from different tribes and languages coming together to celebrate, serves as a glimpse of the unity that Jesus envisions for his followers. Christians are honored to be part of the eternal King’s living stones and a royal priesthood in the eternal kingdom.
TranscriptWell, welcome to the fifth Sunday of Easter. We were just talking about that before the service. I might have more… We’re going to be in Easter for a little while longer yet, but this is Sunday. This is week five, and I am sure I am not the only person who was up yesterday at 5 p.m., watching the crowning of King Charles III. This coronation will hopefully be a once-in-a-lifetime experience if the king lives as long as his mother did, which of course we all hope for.
His mother, Queen Elizabeth, was already on the throne when I was born, so she is the only British monarch who has reigned during my lifetime until now. And even though we Americans aren’t British, the fact that she reigned so long gave me and a lot of other people a sense of stability, a sense that somewhere in the world there is something that lasts. And that’s what the coronation ceremony is designed to communicate, that even though monarchs may live and die, the kingdom itself is something that is lasting and is permanent, something that will still be here when our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are our age. One of the other things that the newscasters have been talking about a lot this past week has been the crown jewels, and particularly that world-famous diamond known as the Kulinan diamond, the largest diamond ever found on earth.
The stone is absolutely priceless, and it has been cut very carefully into nine famous stones plus some smaller jewels made out of the chips. And the largest of the diamonds, which is in the king’s scepter, is over 3,000 carats. The second largest piece is over 300 carats, and that’s in the imperial state crown. So you would have seen that in the front of his crown if you watch this, it was right there.
The other seven stones belong to the king and are held in trust for the nation and for future monarchs. And these stones, all these stones are usually kept very well guarded in the Tower of London, where sightseers for a price can view them, but from a distance.
In a very real way, these stones represent the nation of the United Kingdom, much in the same way that our Capitol building and our White House represent America.
And of course, these buildings are also made out of stones, different kinds of stones, but they’re stones. So the scripture readings for today talk a lot about stones, valuable stones. In fact, the readings say way too much to cover in one sermon, so I’m just going to touch on a few of the highlights today. And there actually is a fourth reading assigned to this Sunday, which I’m not going to read, but it doesn’t really fit in with the other three readings, but it also talks about stones.
It happens to be the story in Acts that talks about the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. And as he is dying, filled with the Holy Spirit, Stephen prays for the forgiveness for the people who are stoning him. And I mention this because he also prays the same verse in Psalm 31 that we heard today, we read today, that Jesus prayed from the cross, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” He prays this. Now, this prayer that Jesus prayed was first prayed by King David.
And in Psalm 31, which we saw today, King David talks a lot about stones. And this Psalm, David has gotten himself into a tight spot, and we’re not sure quite what he has done or what’s going on, but it’s some kind of life changing trouble. And he says things like, “My life is spent with sorrow. My strength fails.
I have become like a broken vessel.” And I think most of us could probably relate to those feelings at one time or another in our lives. When we find ourselves in times of trouble, I hear it, we can pray as David prayed. “Oh Lord, in you I seek refuge.
Be to me a rock of refuge and be to me a strong fortress.” David understood the power and the protection and the security of a fortress built out of stone. And in the reading from the Gospel of John, we also come across buildings made with stones. Jesus says, “In my father’s house are many mansions,” which might be built out of stones, I imagine. And Jesus speaks these words to comfort his disciples, because Jesus has just told them that he’s about to die.
And he has told them that where I’m coming, you cannot come. And the disciples are heartbroken. And they don’t understand yet that Jesus must die, and they don’t understand yet that he will come back in three days. And they don’t understand yet that Jesus will ascend into heaven where they can’t come just yet.
But Jesus’ resurrection makes the ascension necessary, both for Jesus and for us. And so Jesus encourages and reassures the disciples by describing a place in the kingdom to come that Jesus is making ready for us. And this is not a fable. It is a reality as indestructible as the Kulinan diamond.
So when you and I get to God’s kingdom, each one of us will have a place, not so much a room as a role to fill, a purpose for being there. And we arrive the same way that David did, by trusting God and by trusting in the Messiah. We live in Jesus, and Jesus lives in us. Okay, we are being knitted together into God’s house.
We are, as one theologian said, a plurality of people with a single heart. In fact, Jesus says, “Let not your heart be troubled.” And the word heart is singular, not plural. We are being built together into one, let not our heart be troubled. The Holy Spirit-directed Church becomes a living part of God’s work in the world.
Wherever we pray or act, in Jesus’ name, we are declaring loyalty and allegiance to Jesus as our King and to God’s kingdom, and the Church becomes a fruitful community alive with the Spirit. The Apostle Peter, in that reading, picks up on the idea in this letter where he talks about living stones in his letter. And I love that our Sunday night dinners are called living stones because that’s exactly what we are, God’s people, living stones, being built together into a house. This idea of living stones, of course, is a metaphor, it’s kind of a parable.
But what does it refer to, what on earth is a living stone? Well, here’s one possibility, something that I’m sure Peter knew about back in the day that might have inspired the thought. Do you have those slides up there? Let me see the first one. Check that out. In Africa, this is where these things come from, there’s a plant that looks like stones.
They’re called lithops, which basically means stones. And before they bloom, they look like this and they could be mistaken for stones. But when they bloom, next one there, check that out. They produce, each stone produces one beautiful flower. And these flowers have no stems, and the part that looks like stones, as are actually the leaves.
But one of these things by itself probably wouldn’t be noticed, in fact, one of the things by itself probably wouldn’t survive. But you put a whole bunch together and they’re beautiful. And with the proper foundational materials, they could be built into something resembling a building of living stones. God is the proper foundation that we living stones need to thrive and to be built together.
God is also the artist who knows exactly where to place each stone in the building, how to place us in the building for maximum beauty and thriving. And we are then taken together, one of the outcomes of God’s creativity. And in a sense, resurrection for all of us can be thought of as repurposing a building, as we are built together into this spiritual house, into this living community. One other thing that’s worth noting about the readings that we had today, and that is that Jesus is referred to as the chief cornerstone.
Again, talking about stones here, a stone that the builders rejected, but a stone that God chose and honored. Now I found out this last week that the word cornerstone in this passage is not really quite the correct translation. A cornerstone is usually low in the building. I mean, we have one in this building, it’s like in the low corner of the building.
But the word in Scripture should actually be translated capstone or keystone. There you go, there it is. Describes the one stone at the top of an arch that holds the structure together. The weight of that stone pushes the others down like this, diffuses the gravity so that the arch doesn’t fall.
This is put together without mortar, and they built these things back in Jesus’ time. In fact, the Romans, I’m not sure the Romans invented it, but the Romans had them and used them a lot. So this again was very common in Peter’s time. So he’s talking about this keystone. Jesus is the keystone who holds the building of living stones together.
This living stone is this building is made up of every person on earth who believes in him, in every church, in every denomination, from every nation around the world. So looking at the congregation, at the coronation of King Charles, have you got a chance to see the people who were there? We saw a little bit of a foretaste of what this building is going to look like, because there’s people from all over the world. People from different tribes and languages coming together to celebrate the King. That is what Jesus has in mind for us.
We as Christians are honored to be among the eternal King’s living stones, a royal priesthood in the eternal kingdom. In Jesus’ name and to his glory.
Amen.
SummaryThis weeks sermon by Pastor Dylan Parson explores the concept of intelligence and obedience in dogs and applies it to the Gospel reading of John, where Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd and his disciples as his sheep. The sermon suggests that obedience and intelligence are often separate qualities in dogs and that the same applies to humans as followers of Jesus.
The sermon emphasizes the importance of dependency and trust in Jesus, as well as the need to listen to his voice and follow him as the shepherd who leads his sheep to green pastures and still waters. The sermon also notes that being called a sheep is often viewed as derogatory, but in the context of the Gospel reading, it is a positive quality that reflects trust, obedience, and reliance on Jesus.
TranscriptI read a few years ago, I remember, about whenever we were adopting beans, that there is this authoritative list of the smartest and, you know, accordingly dumbest breeds of dogs. It was developed by a canine psychologist about 30 years ago who knew there was a profession called canine psychology. As anyone who’s ever had a dog, or more appropriately, more than one dog, so you can compare, as you would know, there’s an extreme variation in dog intelligence. Growing up, my family always had golden retrievers, and that was kind of my baseline, and they tend to be extremely smart.
My dad has always said that whenever you look at them in the eye, you can tell that they’re thinking, that they’re looking back at you. Not all dogs are that way. He’s He’s in the same way, he’s half beagle, he’s half Australian cattle dog, those ones are up there on that list. He is very, very smart. He’s almost certainly the most intelligent dog I’ve ever had.
He learned to roll over in like two minutes, I’ve never had a dog that can roll over before. He was potty trained pretty much instantly. He knows how to let himself out the storm door and into the backyard, he does that all the time, and I’m pretty sure he could learn to reliably operate a doorknob if he wanted to, and that’s really scary to think about. Pretzel, on the other hand, our big, sweet, gentle boy, is simply not very smart.
His mother’s very smart, he’s not very smart. If we have a gate up between rooms, you know, we like to block off the kitchen sometimes, and crack it open for him to come through, and he’s still behind the bars, he cannot figure out how to get around it. He’s fled in fear at the sound of a Dollar General plastic bag, smack-knacking against the fence, he’s unable to figure out what’s going on, and if you sit him down and say “Paw,” he’ll just lick your fingers. He has no idea.
Here’s the thing about smart dogs and dumb dogs, that standardized list that categorizes breeds by their intelligence heavily waits not just their understanding, you know, they’re learning a new word or a command, but their obedience to ranking dogs in large part by how often they obey a command the first time it’s given, not just that they can learn it, but then that they can actually do it. My experience with dogs is that obedience and intelligence are often two completely separate things, maybe even opposite things. Beans is brilliant, but he is not particularly obedient if he knows there’s no treat in your pocket. He’s gonna lay in the sun in the grass until he’s done, unless you physically go and move him inside.
You know, Finn, whenever we had him a few years ago, every single morning I would lose my mind, he would sit at the top of the stairs and look at me, and I would call him to come down to go outside to eat breakfast, and he would just stand up there and look at me as I just slowly got angrier and angrier. And Pretzel on the other hand is dumb, right, but if you walk him into the yard and say “Go pee, immediate, he does it,” call him to come back in, and he does. And if we were to go on a walk through unfamiliar woods without a leash, I would prefer to go with Pretzel any day, because he’s way less likely to get himself into trouble, not because he’s smart, because he’s not, but because he listens to my voice. Beans being smart means that he’s much more likely to put himself in danger, actually, in almost any circumstance, whether that’s by tracking an animal down way out there and running away, or by figuring out how to open a locked garbage can to eat a ball of tinfoil.
He’s smart, and it gets him into trouble. And so you see where I’m going with this, with the Gospel reading today. John describes what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. The sheep belonging to the Good Shepherd know his voice.
He calls them, and they follow him out of the gate wherever he leads. He sets the boundaries, because he is the gate, he’s the shepherd of the sheep and the gate of the sheepfold. And the sheep come and go and graze in peace and then sleep in safety so long as they listen to his voice. Jesus tells of thieves and bandits who have come, seeking to steal the sheep away, but because they know his voice so well, they aren’t led astray.
They know him, they trust him, they love him. And in turn, he leads them to these green pastures to feed their hunger. Besides still waters to quench their thirst, he restores their soul, he leads them in paths of righteousness for his namesake. And this is a vision of what being a follower, a sheep of Jesus should look like.
There’s this real sense of dependency, one that’s really counter-cultural. We don’t like to speak of ourselves as dependent, but that is what sheep are. If you’ve ever spent any time on Facebook or in the comment section of any online news article, you know that calling someone a sheep is like the most derogatory thing you can call them. They don’t have a mind of their own.
They’re a follower. You’re too dumb to chart your own way, right? For Jesus and for Christians, behaving like a sheep is not a bad thing at all. It’s recognizing who we were called to be, who we were created to be. From the very beginning, Adam and Eve first brought harm on themselves when they decided that their judgment was better than what God told them to do.
Don’t eat the fruit. Okay, we’re going to eat the fruit. And if there’s one thing that we’re prone to, it’s being too smart for our own good. It’s devising ways to live out of harmony with God’s justice, love, mercy, and wisdom, while also justifying how we’re doing the right thing.
We move first, and we take God’s leading into account afterwards. That’s not what sheep do. Listen again to verse 4 here of John chapter 10. “Whenever he has gathered all his sheep, he goes before them, and they follow him because they know his voice.” Is that what you do? Does he go first and you follow him? Is that what we do as a church? He goes first and we follow him.
“Whenever we come up with new ideas or continue old ideas or make any sort of decision personally or together, is it because we’re obedient or because we have a good idea?” In today’s Acts reading, we’re given a concrete vision for what a church full of obedient sheep looks like, who hear their shepherd’s voice, who follow his leading. So listen to that Acts reading again. This is from this common English version. “The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the community, to their shared meals and to their prayers.
A sense of awe came over everyone. God performed many wonders and signs for the apostles. All the believers were united and shared everything. They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute the proceeds to everyone who needed them. Every Every day they met together in the temple and ate in their homes.
They shared food with gladness and simplicity. They praised God and demonstrated God’s goodness to everybody. The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved.” It’s a short, sweet, simple way of living that they had. The people trusted God.
They trusted each other and the body of Christ. They trusted one another to the point that they totally gave over their own comfort, their own desires, their own possessions even, to the greater good of building God’s kingdom among them. And how did this come about? How did they get to this point where the church was growing by leaps and bounds? That God was doing miracles among them all the time.
And that’s because they spent time seeking to learn from the apostles God sent them. They devoted themselves to the church and to the world around them. They ate together and they prayed together all the time. And in turn masses of new people were joining them every day.
God added daily to the number of them that were being saved. And they weren’t impressing all these new converts with their wisdom or their power or the cool stuff that they were doing or their knowledge or philosophy. They were just obedient to God and things fell together. The world opened up before them.
And it almost looks too easy as we read about the church in Acts. They let the Holy Spirit roll among them, ready to do whatever God wanted to do with them. And lo and behold God did. God gave them everything they needed to thrive, to survive.
God changed their lives. God did miracles and wonders among them constantly. And let me suggest something to you. And I want you to try it on and see whether I’m right, but see whether this feels right.
Right now in this very moment, as you have heard this story about the Jerusalem church in Acts, you are mentally working out some reason why a mighty act of God, why an outpouring of the Holy Spirit like that can’t happen for you and for me and for us. I strongly suspect that you’re doing that because I know that I do that every time I read this story myself. There’s some rational reason why that happened then, but can’t happen now, right? Maybe the Holy Spirit doesn’t do that anymore. Maybe the early church had a special thing that we don’t have anymore.
Maybe you just don’t fully believe this story happened the way Acts says it did. Maybe you think where you and where we are right now is good enough anyway. You’re as deep as you want to go and following God in a nice comfortable place. And something as radical as what we see in Jerusalem there is just far too much anyway.
And so answer me this too, if that is the way that you’re thinking. Are you, are we too smart to be obedient? Are you Finns at the top of the stairs, carefully ignoring God’s clear command to come down and and get going? Are we beans sitting in the yard remaining right where we want to be until we’re really sure God has a treat for us to make our obedience worthwhile? Are you a sheep who obeys and knows the sound of the shepherd’s voice or do you hear it and know how not to obey? I guess that’s why English and Spanish and so many other languages have two words that superficially seem to mean the same thing but are really quite different. Hear versus listen. Maybe you and I know the shepherd’s voice just fine and we hear him but we’ve got good at tuning it out so we can just carry on our business, just letting that voice blend in with all the others within and around us.
Listening to Jesus’ voice results in this radical transformation of our daily lives as individuals and together. We can see that very clearly in Acts. Look at how those in that church who heard their shepherd’s voice dropped everything to follow him in a way that would have looked bizarre to the people around them. Is that what happens for you when you hear Jesus’ voice? You start making decisions that are completely out of character, that are completely on faith? Is that what happens in this church when we hear Jesus’ voice? It is extremely scary to follow the shepherd out of the sheepfold, out of the gate and into the world.
It’s scary to read about this church in Acts that as inspiring as it is, is so totally devoted to Christ that they shared everything. They spent all their days in community and service and prayer and had to constantly adjust to exploding numbers. They regularly witnessed miraculous signs and wonders. That might throw us off a little bit.
That would really disturb things. And yet Jesus promises in the uncertainty of total obedience to lead us beside still waters, to feed us of green pastures, to restore our souls. He promises to lead us on right paths, to protect us in the darkest valleys, to set up a table of grace for us even in front of our enemies. He promises to overflow our cup with goodness and mercy.
This is something I love about the CEB translation of Psalm 23. It says that God’s goodness and mercy will pursue us all the days of our lives, not just that it will follow gently behind, but it chases us down all the days of our lives. This is what lies on the other side of that sheepfold gate. This is the life that the shepherd calls us to.
He has come that we might have life and have life to the fullest. They hear his voice calling you, calling us, and maybe for the first time let us truly live. The name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
SummaryThis weeks sermon is focusing on the reading from Luke in which Jesus explains the Scriptures to his disciples on the road to Emmaus. The preacher discusses how hearing God’s truth lights a flame in the hearts of people who love God, and the importance of the resurrection being not just an event, but a person.
Pastor Peg also talks about how when hearts are on fire, lives change, and encourages people to approach Jesus with a relationship that involves the heart as well as the mind. The sermon goes on to discuss the events on the road to Emmaus and how Jesus, who was not recognized by his disciples, explained to them all the things in the Old Testament that talked about himself, starting with Moses and moving on through all the prophets.
TranscriptSo today begins week three of Easter. And even though we still have a few more weeks left in the Easter season, this is the last week that our Scripture readings will actually be talking about Easter Sunday in the resurrection. Starting next week we get back into Jesus’ teachings and we’ll continue with that up until Ascension and Pentecost, when we kind of come back to the Easter themes briefly. But today I’d like to focus our reading, focus our attention on the reading from Luke, which we just heard, the story of the disciples’ conversation on the road to Emmaus.
And I particularly want to point out and shine light on what the disciples said about hearing Jesus talk about and explain the Scriptures. And they said in verse 32, “Our hearts were on fire.” Our hearts were on fire. Further on in the book of Acts, we will hear that this feeling of being on fire is related to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. There is something about hearing God’s truth that lights a flame in the hearts of people who love God.
And if we think about it, when have we had this feeling of our hearts being on fire before? I asked Google that question. Got a whole list of love songs. And maybe falling in love is the first experience that we have with our hearts being on fire in a sense. But it’s not quite the same thing that we feel about the Word of God.
I do remember back in the late 1960s, something that set people’s hearts on fire was watching the moon landing. One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. And those words touched millions of hearts. And I knew a number of people, including my own brother, who chose careers in science because their hearts were so moved by these events.
When hearts are on fire, lives change. People get a sense of direction or maybe even a change in direction. You get a passion to live by. So where do we start with Jesus? Well, one contemporary theologian says, well, the resurrection is more than just an event. It’s a person.
And Jesus himself said, I am the resurrection and the life. And so our future in the kingdom of God will be with Jesus, not only because of what Jesus has done, but because of who Jesus is. Therefore, our response to Jesus needs to be in the form of a relationship, one that involves heart as well as mind. We need hearts full of praise.
As we heard in Psalm 116 this morning, I love the Lord because he has heard my voice. I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. So as we approach the events on the road to Emmaus, which is which by the way, this is still Easter day. They’re talking this road to Emmaus story is still that Easter Sunday.
Let this Easter touch our hearts deeply. So early Easter morning, Mary had gone to the tomb and found it empty and she saw an angel and spoke with Jesus briefly. And he sent her to the rest of the disciples to let them know that he was alive. And shortly after that, two disciples, one named Cleopas and the other one whose name we don’t know, decided who had been with the group that morning, decided to walk home to Emmaus, which was about seven miles, about a two hour walk. And these two disciples were probably two of the disciples, two of the seventy that Jesus had sent out to do ministry back in Luke chapter 10.
So these guys were they knew, they knew the disciples, they knew the group. So as they were walking along the road, they were talking about the events of the past three days. And the road that they were on was apparently not heavily traveled, but they were overheard by another traveler who came up and asked, what are you talking about? And the two disciples mistook this man for a visitor. The word in verse 18 says stranger, but it could also be translated visitor, somebody who was not from around here, basically.
And they asked him, are you the only person in Jerusalem who doesn’t know what’s happened? And they went on to tell him all about Jesus, a prophet, mighty indeed, and word before God and all the people. They hoped he was the Messiah. They hoped he would be the Redeemer of Israel.
But he’d been crucified. And now three days later, Mary had come back from his tomb that morning saying he was alive. And the newcomer to the conversation replies with words that sound a bit harsh. How foolish you are and how slow to believe. I don’t remember exactly what the translation was, but all the translations just sound a little bit rough.
But on closer study, I think maybe a better translation into today’s language would be, boy, are you guys slow on the uptake. It wasn’t really meant to be insulting. It’s just kind of pay attention here. And then Jesus, who was still unrecognized at that point, proceeded to explain to them all the things in the Old Testament that talked about himself, starting with Moses and moving on through all the prophets.
Wouldn’t you have loved to listen in on that conversation? I need to do a side note here at this point. These two disciples had spent months with Jesus. So why did they not recognize him? It seems, going by all the stories that we have of Easter Sunday and the post-Easter stories in the New Testament, it seems that Jesus’ resurrected body was somehow different than his original body. In all of the resurrection events in the New Testament, Jesus is not immediately recognized, even by the people who knew him best.
Mary, in the garden on Easter morning, mistook him for the gardener. When the disciples met Jesus in Galilee, they didn’t recognize him right away. There was something about this resurrection body that was different. His body still carried the scars and the nails, and that’s how most of the disciples recognized him. Jesus’ resurrected body, though, was also able to walk through locked doors and into locked rooms without opening the door. So how does this resurrection body, how is this not the same? What is the change here?
Well, as a lifelong science fiction fan, my imagination goes crazy with, “There’s so many things you could do with a body that does this.” Imagine the possibilities, right? But bringing it down to reality, there is definitely something different, something not entirely of earth about Jesus’ resurrection body.
Jesus says in John 12, 24, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” And those of us who are planting gardens right about now understand this. The seed that is planted doesn’t look like the plant that grows. It’s the same thing, but not.
Human bodies that we see and live in, in a lot of ways, are like seeds, I figure. And what Jesus has become is the plant that grows from the seed. And we will share that future someday. But on the road to Emmaus, when the full-grown resurrected plant meets up with a couple of unreserected seeds, so to speak, it’s understandable that they didn’t recognize him.
There is that difference for the time being. End of side note. So at the end of the journey to Emmaus, they went into the home of one of the disciples and invited this visitor to stay because it was getting dark. Middle Eastern hospitality would have required that, that you invite a stranger who is traveling alone to stay with you at night
so they’re not in danger out there alone in the darkness. And so as everybody settles down to dinner, they recline at table, and Jesus takes bread and breaks it, just like he did on Passover three nights before. And then they recognized him. And then he vanished.
Now they didn’t know this, but a few moments later, Jesus actually showed up in Jerusalem. He was meeting with some other people. These resurrection bodies, they have some really cool features, don’t they? See a pop over in Jerusalem? Yeah. Meanwhile, the two disciples look at each other and say, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking on the road, while he was opening the Scriptures to us?”
And they immediately got up and walked back to Jerusalem to tell the disciples that they had seen Jesus. And the others said, “Yeah, we know Simon has seen him too, and there was much rejoicing.” I want to go back to that moment though when they said, “Were not our hearts burning when he opened the Scriptures?” If only they’d written down what Jesus had said. But taking what we have from the Old Testament, here’s a small attempt to reconstruct what might have been said. And I won’t use chapter verse because they didn’t have chapter verse back then, and this certainly is not the comprehensive list that Jesus could have used. But Jesus would have begun at the beginning.
God promises Abraham, “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” And years later, Abraham prophesies, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet.” A few years after that, the prophet named Balaam prophesies over Israel, “I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” In the book of Psalms, we find these words.
“The Lord said to me, ‘You are my son. Today have I begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession.’ The Lord says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.’ The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.” Also in the Psalms, we can find descriptions of the crucifixion, written a thousand years before crucifixion was invented.
For example, the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast. All who see me mock at me. They make mouths at me. They shake their heads. They divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.”
Years after that, the prophet Isaiah writes, “In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way by the sea, the land beyond the Jordan Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them has the light shined. The Lord himself will give you a sign.
Look, a young woman is with child and will bear a son, and will name him Emmanuel. For the child has been born to us, a son given to us, authority rests upon his shoulders, and his name is wonderful, counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
And Isaiah also foresaw a violent death. He wrote, “I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard. I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich.” “The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot with him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he bore the sins of many and made intercession for the transgressors.”
And finally, the end result of all this suffering from the prophet Daniel. As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven, and he came to the ancient one and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship that all peoples and nations and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingdom is one that shall never be destroyed. Who could hear all these words and not be moved?
In our reading from Acts today, the apostle Peter preached a sermon based on these prophecies, and he ended with the words, “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him, both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” And the people who heard Peter believed and were baptized that same day, and around 3,000 were added to the church on that day.
Now, 2,000 years later, this is still our message. This is still the story of Jesus. This is still the word that he has given us. This is our calling to carry these words to all who will listen. May God bless our hearts and our understanding and our sharing. Amen.
SummaryThis weeks sermon discusses the results of a survey measuring the religiosity of Americans, which shows that fewer people consider themselves very, moderately, or even slightly religious. The trend is decreasing across all levels, with a corresponding increase in the number of people who are not religious at all.
The speaker believes that this decrease reveals a positive honesty and could result in a church with a core group of committed believers. The sermon then turns to the story of Thomas in John’s Gospel, who initially refuses to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead.
The sermon argues that doubt and uncertainty are not necessarily bad and are part of faith, but ultimately asks the question of whether someone loves Jesus and believes in Him or not.
TranscriptA new survey came out of the University of Chicago this past week. It actually might have come out before that, but I saw it this past week. And one that I think is really interesting and worth noticing, it’s not surprising, but the survey measures simply how religious Americans consider themselves to be. Not just whether or not you are, but how religious you are.
And I can imagine you can probably guess what the general trajectory is. And that’s that religiosity is falling at all levels. Compared with 2018, the last time it was done, there are now fewer people who consider themselves very religious, fewer people who consider themselves moderately religious, and fewer people who are even slightly religious. So whatever the level of commitment someone had, it’s dropping.
And it’s a pretty steady rate. And to no one’s surprise, the category that is rising is not religious at all. Which has jumped at a steeper rate than any time in the recent past. Like all the other lines are kind of going down like this.
That one’s going up like this. It’s gone up over 10% between 2018 and 2021. 10% more people aren’t religious at all. It’s gone from about 22% to almost 35% of Americans over three years.
It’s been a bad couple years. So I’m not saying this because it’s doom and gloom. I don’t really actually think it is. I think on the other hand, it reveals a kind of honesty that has been needed for a really long time.
And I think we should welcome it to some degree. The rapid falling away of people who are moderately and slightly religious, I hope, means, that the kind of church that we’ll live in in the next few decades is one that is filled with people who want to be there. There’ll be less people, but the people who are around, and this is already the case, want to be there. Who aren’t choosing to be in the church out of tradition, out of obligation, but because they found something there.
They find that it’s good, that it’s right. They met God here. But it makes you wonder, whenever these numbers existed, how many people have been around for decades in the church, in this kind of slightly or moderately religious category, who have needed to be evangelized, who have needed to hear the good news presented to them as like, this is a life-changing thing. Now as we look at this, I want to give the caveat here that doubt, uncertainty, those things aren’t bad necessarily.
Those are a part of faith. There’s a lot of nuance about this. I don’t want to dismiss doubt and uncertainty, but reading over this survey too, I couldn’t help but wonder, how can a Christian be slightly religious or moderately religious? Maybe I’m misunderstanding what the word religious means to a lot of people, but what I understand it to mean is the level of commitment to your belief. And if that’s what it means, I have to ask, do you love Jesus? Is he the Lord or is he not? Do you believe in Jesus or don’t you? And so that brings us to Thomas this morning in John’s Gospel, the apostle known as the twin, or today, he’s often derogatorily called doubting Thomas, which isn’t fair.
But shortly after Jesus saw Mary Magdalene at the tomb on Easter morning, Jesus arrives at the room where the disciples have been hiding. After the crucifixion, the disciples go into hiding because they obviously don’t want to be crucified too. Peter’s denied knowing Jesus. They’re all moving away because they don’t want to get into trouble.
Everybody but Mary Magdalene who went to the tomb of ruin accord. And so somehow he passes right into this locked room, this room that they’ve locked up tight out of fear of their own persecution and he greets them, “Peace be with you.” And maybe they don’t say anything back and he says it again, “Peace be with you.” And with that they rejoice. They’re thrilled to see him. They believe that he has risen again as he promised.
They seem to have forgotten that over the past couple days that he’s been saying this for months, years. He will be killed and rise again, but they rejoice that he has risen again. But one apostle, Thomas, for some reason, for whatever reason is not there with them. The rest of the 11 are there, all 10 of them
But Thomas is somewhere else. John doesn’t say where. Thomas is. He might be hiding somewhere else. Maybe he’s given up. Maybe he’s gone home to Galilee where Jesus found him.
But But whatever the case may be, the apostles, the rest of the apostles, catch up with him shortly and excitedly report that they have seen Jesus risen from the grave. And they invite Thomas to come back with them to stay at that house, that safe house in Jerusalem. And what Thomas says is, “No, I don’t believe you. Jesus is dead.
The Lord that I trusted, that I followed for three years is crucified. Everyone saw it. He was crucified on a cross for everybody to see. I saw that with my own eyes like everybody else in Jerusalem.” And so Thomas says he doesn’t hold back at all.
He has no qualms in declaring that he will not believe until his conditions are met.
Not Not only does he not believe his fellow disciples, he says that even seeing Jesus alive and well, that wouldn’t be good enough either. He needs instead to see him risen with the nail marks in his hands and to physically put his hand in the hole that a Roman spear left in Jesus’ side.
A A moderate faith, one that doesn’t really capture him is not an option for Thomas. He wants to know. If he’s going to follow, he wants to know.
He wants to be sure one way or another because he is living right now in this horror of Jesus’ death breaking his faith and him. This is who he was. He was Thomas the Apostle and now who is he?
So So Jesus passes through the door once more, the locked door. Somehow they’ve talked Thomas at least into coming with them. And he meets Thomas in that doubt. Jesus holds out his hands for Thomas and invites him to touch the wounds on his hand, invites him to put his hand in his side that’s been pierced and broken. And Thomas is breathtaking and he gasps, “My Lord and my God.”
Jesus Jesus says, “No more disbelief, believe.” And Thomas cries out, “My Lord and my God.” And he returns to believe. He returns to worship. But why did Thomas have such an incredibly high standard for truth, for knowing? And why did Jesus understand it as important enough to meet him there? It was good enough for the other disciples.
Because Because there’s this sense of in or out. Are you on board or are you not? Belief in Jesus is not this casual Sunday morning thing that you can put on or take off, pick up or set aside. Thomas is so hesitant and careful, not because he’s careless, not because he’s callous or angry, none of that, but because he knows he’s staking his whole life on Jesus being raised. This is a choice that he knows matters.
This is why his threshold is so high. Thomas, after he meets Jesus having risen from the dead, his ministry continues for decades after that. I mean, this isn’t in scripture, but we know this from history. He followed Jesus’ call to go out into the world.
As Jesus said, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” Thomas listens to that sending. And he follows his call to go preach the good news to the ends of the earth. Thomas goes further than any of the other apostles. Thomas became the apostle to India.
He started a Christian community in South India that still exists today, the St. Thomas Christians. Some hypothesized that he made it to China, that he preached it in the Chinese monarchy out there, but he definitely created a strong Christian community in South India until a few decades later, ironically, he was killed, pierced by a spear. Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
He was a German Lutheran pastor. He was martyred under the Nazis. He famously said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” And Thomas gets it. Thomas gets it, maybe more than any of the other apostles do.
If he’s going to believe in Jesus, he wants to be sure because he knows that the life he’s known without Jesus has to pass away as he embarks on a new one. The same is true for us. Paul says this over and over again throughout the epistles. Your old life is gone.
Your new life is Christ. Every day that you live now is in him, is for him. The whole idea of baptism is we’re drowning the old life and coming out of the waters of the womb and new creation. There’s no halfway.
You don’t get to stick your fingers in Christ’s side, feel the nail holes in his hands and say, “Maybe.” Yeah?
Bonhoeffer’s Bonhoeffer’s most famous book is entitled The Cost of Discipleship. It was written years before he was killed by the Nazis, and it emphasizes throughout that getting caught up with Jesus has consequences for all of us, and he ended up living that. Faith in Christ demands sacrifice, probably not of your life, literally, but sacrifice, full commitment because Christ deserves it. Now, look, I didn’t grow up in the church beyond vacation Bible school.
I don’t know how many of you know that. I didn’t grow up in the church at all. I stumbled upon this for myself when I was a young teenager, and because of that, how things work in the church is still kind of mysterious to me in some ways. I hope I can hold on to that.
It’s nice to have kind of an outsider’s perspective, and I don’t mean the structures and stuff. I get that. Lord knows I know how the committees work, how the general conference works. I know all that.
But the culture sometimes I don’t understand. It was just explained to me relatively recently, for example, and I think it was here, why offering envelopes are important, why they’re better than just dropping a check in the plate. I didn’t know. I never had offering envelopes.
I knew that we’d hand them out, and I’d encourage you to take them, but I didn’t know why. The same way, I emphasize again that it’s puzzling for me that a person can even be slightly or moderately religious. Was Jesus slightly raised from the dead? Was he moderately the son of God? You can’t slightly be a follower of Jesus Christ. Thomas knows that.
You’re moving towards him, deeper in love and service, or you’re moving away. Period. That’s it. And this is, incidentally, I’ve tried to emphasize this over and over again, this is the key point behind trying these small groups now that we’re working on.
We are explicitly choosing in these to help each other move towards Jesus as individuals and together in our day-to-day lives, becoming more and more devoted disciples of Jesus, not learning things, but walking with Jesus better together. Listen to this from Saint Ignatius. He was a bishop who lived in the second century. He wrote, “Now is the moment that I am beginning to be a disciple.
May nothing seen or unseen begrudge me, making my way to Jesus Christ. Come fire, cross, battling with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs, crushing my whole body, the cruel tortures of the devil, only let me get to Jesus Christ. Not the wide bounds of the earth nor the kingdoms of this world will avail me of anything. I would rather die and get to Jesus Christ than reign over the ends of the earth.
This is whom I am looking for, the one who died for us. This is whom I want, the one who rose for us. Let me imitate the passion of my God.” Do you have that? Do you want that? Because this is what that is all about. That’s what Thomas knows.
Something else here I think is important. As we think about this rapid rise of the not religious at all contingent, if there’s one thing that this gospel story shows, when Jesus appears to Thomas, when he reaches out his hands, it’s that God has a special level of love and care for the people who doubt the most fervently, the most harshly, those who have the most trouble believing. Thomas doubts because he’s heartbroken. The Lord he loved is dead and he knows it.
He doesn’t doubt because he doesn’t care. He doesn’t doubt because he’s being difficult. He’s avoiding being wounded by his faith again.
He He needs to see Christ’s wounds so that his wounds can be healed. Many who doubt today, doubt because the body of Christ, the church, has been a place of exclusion, of judgment, and at its very worst abuse of all kinds.
If you think it’s only the Catholic church that’s dealing with that fallout, unfortunately, you are wrong. We’re all dealing with it evenly.
Us Us and faith have been annihilated. In the Christian church, no matter what your denomination is, people outside the church don’t care. We are known for hypocrisy, for greed, and you ask young people, the polls of young people are very clear.
The one thing the church is known for is its opposition to LGBT people. Whether we like it or not, and whether we think that’s us or not, that is how we are viewed. We’ve done our part to create millions and millions of doubting Thomases, and now it’s our job to fix that. The body of Christ to extend wounded hands back out with gentleness, with grace.
It’s a really beautiful moment when Jesus enters back into that hidden room the first time when he greets the disciples, when he breathes on them, tells them to receive the Holy Spirit, fills them with power and grace. Because we inherit that. We now are both those disciples and the risen body of Christ. We’re filled with the Spirit.
We’re sent into the world with the good news of resurrection. Our gift and our obligation is to be his disciples, to be Christ’s body to the world. Our fundamental role in how we walk through this world, the most basic way that we go about evangelism, outreach, is by showing the world who Christ is in his beauty, in his grace, and in his wounds. As we love our neighbors, especially those that most people have the most trouble loving, as we suffer with them, as Jesus suffered for and suffers with us.
When When Jesus rises, as he stands before the ten, and then as he stands before Thomas two, he demonstrates his love, his humanity, his divinity, all of those things all at once come together in that moment.
That Jesus is God who can be touched. This is what we are supposed to be showing to the world. That we and the rest of the world may have life in his name, as John says. Faith Faith in the risen Christ means we strive to know him better and better ourselves as we show him to other people too, inward and an outward journey. And faith in the risen Christ also means that there is no halfway, if you believe in him, this is what your life is about now.
Jesus has, in Bonhoeffer’s words, invited you to come and die, to lay down all that you had for what you have found in him instead. Thomas comes to faith once more and he exclaims, “My Lord and my God.” And from that day he lives every single moment as a lover and a servant of Christ and his church as best as he can. There’s no moderate, there’s no slight faith in Christ. So walk out of your locked room, come out of hiding, be filled with the Holy Spirit and be his disciple, bearing his love and his wounds to a wounded world.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen.
Transcript with timecode00:00:00.000 –> 00:00:10.400
It’s really refreshing in this story to see a mass of people getting it right in the Bible.
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That’s not usually how things go.
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Not then, not now, when a crowd starts to get ideas.
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Moses, in the earlier parts of the Old Testament, in the Exodus, goes up away on Mount Sinai
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for a few days, right, to go talk to God, and in those couple days that he’s gone,
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bam, golden calf. The God that led the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt is
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just abruptly set aside because Moses takes just a little bit too long, they
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get impatient, and they decide instead to make their own God and worship one they
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made out of their own earrings and bracelets. In the Prophet Samuel’s time, a
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a little bit later, the people of Israel have a proposal for Samuel and for God,
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and they beg God to give them a king to rule over them like the other nations.
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They want to be like everybody else. God explicitly explains why this is a bad
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idea. He goes so far as to explain to them why it’s a bad idea, and they do it
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anyway. That’s what they demand. The crowd demands a king. Prophet after prophet,
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meanwhile, speaks to an Israel that has once again turned in mass to oppression,
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to exploitation, to faithlessness. Each and every prophet is encountering a
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different era in Israel’s history where they’ve done the same thing. You know, in
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the modern era, from the 1870s through 60 years ago, 70 years ago, lynch mobs were
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so frequent and accepted across much of America that it was considered a
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wholesome way to spend the afternoon after church.
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Muslims face this kind of persecution in India today.
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Jews have faced it across the world to the present day.
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Crowds, mobs, the masses, they have a pretty bad sense of
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morality.
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They’re extraordinarily fickle.
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They’re extraordinarily dangerous.
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There’s a reason that whenever you picture a crowd or a mob,
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you have the pitchforks and torches idea.
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If one human being can make some morally awful choices,
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which any of us can quite easily,
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what would we expect would happen
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whenever you get hundreds or thousands
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or millions of people together?
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A spark can start a fire.
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And crowds, even societies, can seem to have
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a kind of inertia that leans them towards evil.
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But this morning, for a moment,
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let’s set aside what we know is coming on Thursday.
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Friday and Saturday.
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Let’s pretend we don’t know about Judas and Caiaphas
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and Pontius Pilate.
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Let’s look at this crowd that gets it right,
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that is reading the signs of the times
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and is seeing what God is doing in their world,
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their city, their lives.
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Before Jesus arrives in Jerusalem,
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he’s passing along the suburban village of Bethphage
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on the Mount of Olives.
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And he tells his disciples that it’s time to repair for this entry.
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This is a big deal.
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A big moment is about to come.
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And he says to the two of the disciples, go into that village, go into Bethphage,
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and you’ll find a donkey and her colt.
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Bring them here to me and tell the owners the Lord needs it if anyone asks.
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Matthew helpfully explains what’s going on.
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Matthew loves to do this.
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He likes to link back explicitly to the prophecies that Jesus is fulfilling.
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And here Matthew explains that Jesus is fulfilling
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the words of the prophet Zechariah.
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This is chapter nine, verse nine to be specific.
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And Zechariah says about the Messiah,
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say to daughter Zion, look, your king is coming to you,
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humble and riding on a donkey and on a colt,
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the donkey’s offspring.
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And so they lay their coats and their robes
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over the animals’ backs as sort of like a makeshift saddle.
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and they hoist Jesus up on the donkeys.
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And the clumsiness of this image
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really sticks out to me this time when I’m hearing it.
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So Zechariah in his words,
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when he’s making this prophecy about the Messiah
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on the donkey, is using a really traditional
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and common method in Hebrew writing.
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It’s where they repeat themselves.
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You can see this all through the Old Testament.
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Writers in Hebrew will repeat themselves
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not to like double what they’re saying,
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but just to emphasize what they’re saying.
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And so they’re repeating the line about the donkey,
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Zechariah is to emphasize that it’s a foal or a colt.
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It’s a donkey and it’s a colt.
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It’s not, he’s only talking about one animal.
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Zechariah is only talking about one donkey.
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Your king is coming to you on a donkey and a colt means
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your king is coming to you on a donkey who is a colt.
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But Jesus in Matthew’s telling,
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sends the disciples to go get two animals
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that are waiting for him in Bethphage,
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a donkey and her colt.
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It’s almost like to emphasize just how literally,
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how abundantly Jesus is fulfilling the prophecy.
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You know, Zechariah was only really talking
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about one donkey, but Jesus is going for two.
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And this has the double purpose too
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of making Jesus’ entry even more of a spectacle.
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Just picture what this would have looked like.
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Jesus, maybe he’s switching back and forth, I don’t know,
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but I presume that he is splayed across the back
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of two very stubborn, unruly animals.
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I can’t imagine it’s very easy to get two donkeys
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of two different sizes to walk at the same speed
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down the road.
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And this is the way that he makes his royal debut
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in Jerusalem.
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Just picture that.
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It’s not a dignified image for a king.
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This is the height of what Jesus will experience this week.
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This is the high point, and it’s just not very dignified.
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Any passing Roman, any skeptical Jew,
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would find it nearly impossible
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to view this strange man as a leader,
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let alone some kind of king,
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as he’s just leaning on these two donkeys
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wandering into town.
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And yet, a crowd has gathered,
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leading up to the gate, inside the gate,
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welcoming him to Jerusalem.
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And this is a large crowd, Matthew reports.
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This isn’t just a handful of people.
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Word has gotten out ahead of Jesus.
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It always does, it seems.
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And people have found out that he’s on his way to Jerusalem,
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that he’s coming in for the holy observance of Passover.
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This is a big deal.
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This is a very intentional choice on Jesus’ part.
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He was from Galilee.
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People all the way out there didn’t come into Jerusalem,
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but he was.
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And the people are ready for this moment
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that they know is a big moment.
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They’re ready to cry out, to cheer for him,
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to adore him, to throw down palm branches
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in their coats in front of him.
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They don’t even want the king’s donkeys,
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feet to touch the ground.
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And they shout praises to him.
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It sounds like a king’s coronation.
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Hosanna to the son of David.
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Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
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And so much is woven into those two sentences
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that we also heard in our psalm this morning.
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Hosanna doesn’t just mean hallelujah or something like that,
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even though we kind of use it that way.
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Hosanna means save us.
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So clearly they think that Jesus
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is someone with the power to do that.
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They call him the son of David, which is a big deal too.
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They’re referencing prophecies like in Isaiah
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of a coming Messiah, a coming king
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whom God will send to rule over his people.
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You’ll notice that Israel already has a king,
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so this is a challenge.
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And finally, there’s this acknowledgement
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that Jesus is coming in the name of the Lord.
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There’s no uncertainty here like the Pharisees have had.
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Jesus is not an enemy of God,
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but he’s come in God’s name, in God’s service.
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They get it.
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The people, when these few lines,
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they emphasize that they know what Jesus is here for.
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They know what he is about.
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And what’s more, and maybe just as impressive
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when we consider what we know about human beings
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and how they behave in crowds,
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the people of Jerusalem have gotten over their prejudice
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about this Nazarene.
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You remember towards the beginning of John’s gospel,
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specifically, Nathaniel,
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who’d become one of Jesus’ disciples,
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he said, “What good can come out of Nazareth?”
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There was this perception that Jesus
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was, couldn’t possibly be the Messiah,
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couldn’t possibly be important because of where he’s from.
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Jesus is essentially a hillbilly from a village
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that’s not only insignificant, but one that’s scoffed at.
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It wasn’t just that no one had ever heard of Nazareth.
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People heard of it and they don’t like it.
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And now he’s the son of David, the crowd says.
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The one sent by God, the Messiah,
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the rightful king of Israel.
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They say this right alongside the description
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that he’s Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.
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It’s come together.
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They are expecting action from this Nazarene.
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And now as you start to picture this scene
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of him rolling in on these donkeys in this crowd,
00:09:30.760 –> 00:09:32.860
this is a really revolutionary scene.
00:09:32.860 –> 00:09:34.560
You can start to feel it.
00:09:34.560 –> 00:09:36.700
You can feel the electricity in this moment
00:09:36.700 –> 00:09:39.180
as Jesus, crowned by the crowd,
00:09:39.180 –> 00:09:44.180
clip clops into the great holy city.
00:09:44.180 –> 00:09:46.520
Our hymns, we’ll sing two of them today.
00:09:46.520 –> 00:09:49.520
Glory, Loud and Honor, and then Hosanna, Loud, Hosanna,
00:09:49.520 –> 00:09:52.240
focus on children rejoicing and singing.
00:09:52.240 –> 00:09:54.200
It’s this kind of, it focuses on the children.
00:09:54.200 –> 00:09:56.440
We always focus on the children.
00:09:56.440 –> 00:09:59.280
And yes, there’s kids there, they’re having a good time.
00:09:59.280 –> 00:10:03.920
But this is a Jewish mob in a Roman occupied nation,
00:10:03.920 –> 00:10:07.480
and they’re convinced that they’ve found their liberator.
00:10:07.480 –> 00:10:11.260
This is like Paris before the revolution.
00:10:11.260 –> 00:10:14.160
St. Petersburg, you know, Gaza City and Palestine today,
00:10:14.160 –> 00:10:18.660
This is a crowd that’s riled up for action.
00:10:18.660 –> 00:10:20.760
Revolution is in the air here,
00:10:20.760 –> 00:10:23.440
and that’s amplified when you remember that Passover,
00:10:23.440 –> 00:10:25.000
what we celebrate at Passover,
00:10:25.000 –> 00:10:28.240
what Jews celebrate in Passover,
00:10:28.240 –> 00:10:31.320
is a very political memory.
00:10:31.320 –> 00:10:35.420
They’re there to remember that God overthrew Pharaoh
00:10:35.420 –> 00:10:39.320
and led the Hebrew people out of Egypt into their own land.
00:10:39.320 –> 00:10:41.000
And as the people were gathered,
00:10:41.000 –> 00:10:43.960
hearing this story again of Passover once more,
00:10:43.960 –> 00:10:47.880
that they knew very well, maybe they started to notice,
00:10:47.880 –> 00:10:50.520
especially around the Passover season,
00:10:50.520 –> 00:10:54.800
that Pilate and Herod and Augustus Caesar
00:10:54.800 –> 00:10:59.040
sure look a lot like Pharaoh.
00:10:59.040 –> 00:11:03.560
And Jesus looks a little bit like Moses.
00:11:03.560 –> 00:11:04.940
It wouldn’t take much for things
00:11:04.940 –> 00:11:06.960
to get pretty ugly for Rome.
00:11:06.960 –> 00:11:10.720
There were riots in Jerusalem all the time.
00:11:10.720 –> 00:11:13.680
The whole city was stirred up, John writes.
00:11:13.680 –> 00:11:15.360
Things are getting a little bit dicey.
00:11:15.360 –> 00:11:17.460
He’s using the word stirred up here
00:11:17.460 –> 00:11:19.240
to evoke an image kind of like, you know,
00:11:19.240 –> 00:11:23.000
like a shaken can of pop or a hornet’s nest.
00:11:23.000 –> 00:11:24.440
The city is stirred up.
00:11:24.440 –> 00:11:28.460
Roman forces have brought in extra troops
00:11:28.460 –> 00:11:29.940
for the Passover occasion.
00:11:29.940 –> 00:11:32.680
Rome always brings in extra troops for Passover
00:11:32.680 –> 00:11:34.960
and they station them around the temple,
00:11:34.960 –> 00:11:36.440
you know, like snipers on the White House
00:11:36.440 –> 00:11:38.440
or something like that.
00:11:38.440 –> 00:11:41.560
And this is where our gospel reading ends this morning.
00:11:41.560 –> 00:11:44.960
right at the precipice of something about to happen.
00:11:44.960 –> 00:11:48.960
We, like the Jews who’ve gathered around Jesus,
00:11:48.960 –> 00:11:51.360
processing in on the donkey’s backs,
00:11:51.360 –> 00:11:54.280
are left awaiting this victory as we’ve turned the page.
00:11:54.280 –> 00:11:56.580
This is like the end of the episode,
00:11:56.580 –> 00:11:59.360
and we’re waiting as the screen goes black.
00:11:59.360 –> 00:12:00.840
We, like the Jews there,
00:12:00.840 –> 00:12:05.840
know that this is the guy that we’ve been waiting for.
00:12:05.840 –> 00:12:09.160
Here it comes, the final showdown’s coming right now.
00:12:09.160 –> 00:12:11.920
Jesus is about to roll in on these donkeys.
00:12:11.920 –> 00:12:14.260
Just like Zechariah said, he’s the son of David.
00:12:14.260 –> 00:12:16.520
Just like Isaiah said, he’s gonna fix it all.
00:12:16.520 –> 00:12:17.800
He’s gonna make things right.
00:12:17.800 –> 00:12:19.720
He’s gonna toss out the oppressors.
00:12:19.720 –> 00:12:22.840
Herod’s gone, Pilate’s gone, Caesar’s gone.
00:12:22.840 –> 00:12:26.920
He’s gonna usher in justice, dignity, power for Israel,
00:12:26.920 –> 00:12:30.400
once more justice for the people.
00:12:30.400 –> 00:12:32.440
We’re sure that this is it.
00:12:32.440 –> 00:12:34.840
This is our man, this is our moment.
00:12:34.840 –> 00:12:39.560
All the prophets have been leading to this day
00:12:39.560 –> 00:12:45.760
until when we turn the page, that’s not what happens.
00:12:45.760 –> 00:12:49.520
As we look down the barrel of Holy Week,
00:12:49.520 –> 00:12:52.400
here is the challenge of Palm Sunday.
00:12:52.400 –> 00:12:57.260
It’s not that hard to get it right.
00:12:57.260 –> 00:13:00.200
A stop clock’s right twice a day, right?
00:13:00.200 –> 00:13:01.560
That’s what they say.
00:13:01.560 –> 00:13:03.640
It’s not all that hard to know Jesus,
00:13:03.640 –> 00:13:05.520
to know that he’s the son of God,
00:13:05.520 –> 00:13:09.440
to know that he’s our Lord and Savior.
00:13:09.440 –> 00:13:12.380
The hard part is to hold onto him
00:13:12.380 –> 00:13:15.180
when the walls start closing in.
00:13:15.180 –> 00:13:20.140
I saw it pointed out recently that it’s kind of lazy,
00:13:20.140 –> 00:13:21.440
it’s kind of simplistic of us.
00:13:21.440 –> 00:13:24.560
We always assume that the same people who shouted Hosanna
00:13:24.560 –> 00:13:28.760
were the same people who shouted crucify a few days later.
00:13:28.760 –> 00:13:31.520
And maybe they were, at least some of them.
00:13:31.520 –> 00:13:33.640
But Jerusalem’s a big city.
00:13:33.640 –> 00:13:34.560
It’s a diverse city.
00:13:34.560 –> 00:13:38.200
It’s filled with pilgrims from all over the Jewish world
00:13:38.200 –> 00:13:39.760
who are in there for Passover.
00:13:39.760 –> 00:13:44.000
That said, even if it’s not the same people,
00:13:44.000 –> 00:13:45.840
all these crowds that gathered
00:13:45.840 –> 00:13:49.620
to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem,
00:13:49.620 –> 00:13:52.160
where were they when Jesus got put on trial?
00:13:52.160 –> 00:13:58.400
Where were they when he was led up the hill to the cross?
00:14:00.600 –> 00:14:02.480
This should really haunt us, I think.
00:14:02.480 –> 00:14:05.240
This is something that really should stick with us
00:14:05.240 –> 00:14:06.960
about Palm Sunday.
00:14:06.960 –> 00:14:12.160
It’s more tragic to know better
00:14:12.160 –> 00:14:15.240
and do nothing and say nothing
00:14:15.240 –> 00:14:16.360
than to be one of those people
00:14:16.360 –> 00:14:18.480
who’ve never believed him to begin with.
00:14:18.480 –> 00:14:20.280
It’s one thing to be one in the angry mob
00:14:20.280 –> 00:14:23.200
that yells crucify, it’s another thing to watch that mob
00:14:23.200 –> 00:14:27.400
as someone who recognized your king a few days before.
00:14:28.780 –> 00:14:33.780
It’s way easier for Jesus to march in as king
00:14:33.780 –> 00:14:36.660
to the gates of the great city
00:14:36.660 –> 00:14:39.420
than to penetrate the walls of our hearts.
00:14:39.420 –> 00:14:42.620
It’s way easier for us to shout praise,
00:14:42.620 –> 00:14:44.900
to lay down palms and our coats
00:14:44.900 –> 00:14:47.120
to make a show of our devotion
00:14:47.120 –> 00:14:50.620
than really cast down our crowns, our pride, our sin,
00:14:50.620 –> 00:14:55.340
our control, our security, our comfort at his feet.
00:14:56.340 –> 00:14:59.500
A coat’s one thing, the inside is another thing.
00:14:59.500 –> 00:15:02.980
And our challenge this week, this holy week,
00:15:02.980 –> 00:15:07.540
is to stick by Jesus’ side like no one but his mother did.
00:15:07.540 –> 00:15:12.260
From the Last Supper to Pilate’s court,
00:15:12.260 –> 00:15:14.940
and from Jerusalem’s streets along the way
00:15:14.940 –> 00:15:17.380
that ends in the cross towering over the city.
00:15:17.380 –> 00:15:20.900
Our challenge each day, not just this week,
00:15:20.900 –> 00:15:23.620
but each day is to stick by his side,
00:15:23.620 –> 00:15:27.480
to hold tight to the one who loves us.
00:15:27.480 –> 00:15:30.020
This morning, this Palm Sunday, we celebrate,
00:15:30.020 –> 00:15:32.900
and rightly so with all these masses who see him.
00:15:32.900 –> 00:15:35.640
We wave our palms, we shout our hosannas.
00:15:35.640 –> 00:15:38.500
We’re sure that this Jesus is the one who’s gonna save us,
00:15:38.500 –> 00:15:41.200
and we’re right, we’ve gotten it right.
00:15:41.200 –> 00:15:43.580
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,
00:15:43.580 –> 00:15:44.420
and we see it.
00:15:44.420 –> 00:15:48.920
But will you know him tomorrow?
00:15:48.920 –> 00:15:52.480
Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
00:15:52.480 –> 00:15:57.000
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
00:15:57.000 –> 00:15:57.760
Amen.
00:15:57.760 –> 00:16:07.760
[BLANK_AUDIO]
TranscriptWell, this reading from the Gospel of John is rich in detail and is both at once a sad
story and a very joyful story.
And even though it happened 2,000 years ago, we can kind of relate to what’s happening
here.
I mean, it’s relatable in part because we all know what it’s like to suffer at the hands
of bureaucrats, right?
Some things never change.
The Pharisees, though, they completely miss the point of the man being healed of blindness,
and Jesus, as usual, goes straight to the heart of the matter.
And we see in this story a huge difference between God’s will and human attempts at God’s
will, between God’s mercy and human beliefs about right and wrong.
In this story, the man’s physical blindness in a way represents spiritual blindness.
Every person on this planet is a sinner.
Every person on the planet is imperfect and stands in need of Jesus’ mercy and healing.
And for each one of us, Jesus has come to offer healing.
But before we dig into the story, I wanted to back up and share some of the things that
the Apostle John assumes that we know about the Jewish religious scene.
Through the Gospels, we hear about the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Jews and the high
priests and the scribes and the Sanhedrin, but who were all these people,
and why were they interested in Jesus? So just real briefly, the Sanhedrin, where
they met in Jerusalem, that was a group of 70 judges directly reporting to the
high priest. They were not involved in this particular story. The scribes
started out being people who copied the scriptures by hand. Of course, this was in
the days before the printing press, but over time they got to know God’s law
really well from this work and they became lawyers and teachers. The Jews is
a general term that John uses in his gospel to refer to the leaders of the
nation and he does not mean all Jewish people everywhere. I wanted to be
very clear about that because John sometimes comes off sounding almost
anti-semitic but John himself was Jewish and he loved his people so when he
He speaks of the Jews.
He’s speaking of the hierarchy.
The Pharisees and Sadducees, though,
are the two main parties that we’re looking at today,
the two main parties of priestly teachers
who sparred with each other constantly,
could never get along.
So splits within faith groups is nothing new.
It’s 2,000 years of it, basically, we have.
Anyway, the Sadducees were the progressives of the day.
They rejected the scriptures and prophecies
except for the books of Moses, which
the first five books of the Bible. The Sadducees came from aristocracy. They
were elite. They were well educated. They were usually educated in Greece by
Greek philosophers who looked down on Judaism as being sort of a simple
rustic faith. They were secular in many ways even though they held power in the
temple and they did not believe in resurrection or the afterlife. The
Sadducees, by the way, disappeared after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. They did
not survive the overthrow of the nation of Israel.
The Pharisees, on the other hand, became the foundation for the system of temples and rabbis
that the Jewish people still have today.
The Pharisees were kind of like our modern-day evangelical movement, not in the negative
sense, but along the lines of like Billy Graham or Chuck Swindoll.
They usually came from working-class families.
They were held in high esteem by the people because they were devoted to the faith.
They believed in the oral law, that is the Talmud, not just the written law.
They believed in resurrection.
They believed in the afterlife.
They believed in the coming Messiah.
They believed in prayer.
They believed in regular worship in the synagogue, which, that all sounds pretty good, doesn’t
it?
And some of the Pharisees actually liked Jesus.
I mean, Nicodemus liked him.
Gamaliel, the great teacher we hear in Acts chapter 5, whose star student, Paul, was also
a Pharisee. These Pharisees, like Jesus, looked up to Jesus, listened to Jesus. So the Pharisees
got a lot right. And if they got so much right, why were they always having arguments with
Jesus? There were basically two issues, two sticking points, which then branched out into
other debates and got rather broad. But when you boil it down, basically two issues. Number
One, the Pharisees had an extremely literal and detailed interpretation of the Law of
Moses.
And, secondly, they had an unhealthy need to define and assert authority.
Jesus once commented that the Pharisees strained out gnats and swallowed camels.
That for example, they would tithe 10% of everything they owned right down to the spices
in their kitchens, but they overlooked important things like mercy and compassion.
And on the authority question, the Pharisees once asked Jesus where he got his authority,
and Jesus replied by asking them, “Well, where did John the Baptist get his authority?”
And the Pharisees talked amongst themselves, and they said, “Well, if we say from God,
he’ll say, ‘Why didn’t you believe him?’
But if we say from men, the people will stone us because they believe that John is from
God.”
said to Jesus, “We don’t know,” which of course is a completely bogus answer.
And Jesus said, “I won’t tell you either where I get my authority from.”
Jesus would not play the Pharisees’ games or honor their rules.
In fact, Jesus taught that the faith was about having relationship with God, not memorizing
a rule book.
And the Pharisees couldn’t handle that.
Which brings us to our story for today.
As John begins, we meet a man who was born blind.
We don’t know his name.
I wish we did.
But Jesus and the disciples see this man by the side of the road as they’re walking and
Jesus points out that this man has been blind since birth, which is a miracle in itself.
How did Jesus know that?
So the disciples then ask Jesus, “Whose fault is it that this man was born blind?
It was assumed in ancient Israel that birth defects like blindness were the result of
sin.
But Jesus said no one sinned.
This blindness happened so that God could work through this man and show glory in the
life of this man.
Jesus warns that the disciples and us that we must work while we have the light of day
because there’s a darkness coming when no one will be able to work.
This is both a metaphorical darkness like spiritual darkness and it’s also quite literal
darkness.
We only have so many years on this planet and when those years are gone our work is
over whether we’re done or not.
But Jesus adds, “As long as I’m here, I am the light of the world.”
And then he turns to the blind man and makes mud out of dirt and spit, puts the mixture
on the man’s eyes.
And the Greek word for what Jesus did here, by the way, is epikrisen, which means to christen.
It’s like as in baptism.
Jesus then sends him off to the pool to wash off the mud, kind of like baptism washes the
dirt off of our souls.
And while the blind man is washing, Jesus and the disciples continue on their way.
So the blind man’s friends, they have taken his hands, guided him to the pool, helped
him get in, watched as he washed the mud off of his eyes.
Imagine what it would be like to be this man, having always depended on other people to
guide you to places, to help you find the things that you need every day.
And now he’s standing in the pool, washing his face.
And as he does, he begins to see, first the water in his hands, and then maybe some trees
nearby.
And then he turns and for the first time in his life, he looks into the faces of his friends.
And imagine the joy and the tears and the celebration and guys pounding each other on
the back and crying out to everybody who passes by, “Look at this.”
And they go back to the place where the blind man used to sit, I guess to pick up his things,
You don’t see it, but he had to go back to where he was.
And people start saying, hey, isn’t that the blind man who
used to sit here and beg?
And they start arguing amongst themselves.
Yeah, it’s him.
No, it’s not.
That’s impossible.
And the blind man says to them–
formerly blind man says to them, a man named Jesus made mud,
put it on my eyes, told me to wash, and I washed.
And I received my sight.
And the crowd says, where is this Jesus?
But the man doesn’t know.
And keep in mind as this story moves forward
that this man who was healed has heard Jesus’s voice,
but he has not yet seen him,
doesn’t know what he looks like.
So the crowd takes this man to the Pharisees,
which was not an unusual thing to do.
I mean, the law of Moses said that people
who were cured of certain incurable diseases,
like leprosy, for example,
were to show themselves to the priests
to be declared healed.
And of course, healing someone from blindness
was not something they’d ever heard of before,
but to take them to the priest was sort of the thing to do.
And at this point, it’s at this point in the story
that we discover that this miracle took place on the Sabbath.
The people hadn’t thought anything of it,
but the Pharisees had a problem with it.
First off, this was not the first time
that Jesus had healed someone on the Sabbath.
In fact, he was starting to do it with alarming frequency.
On the previous Sabbath, or a previous Sabbath,
Jesus had confronted some of the Pharisees in the synagogue
about healing on the Sabbath.
And on that day, there had been a man with a withered hand
in the synagogue, and Jesus said to them,
“What is permitted on the Sabbath?
“To do evil or to do good?
“To do harm or to heal?”
And Jesus healed the man right in front of them.
And the Pharisees went out and talked amongst themselves about how to kill Jesus, this conversation
happening on the Sabbath.
One of these days, I keep saying this, one of these days I’m going to do a sermon series
on the Sabbath because it is such an important thing in the life of faith.
The whole point of Sabbath is to rest, to escape the rat race, to get off the treadmill
of life and just enjoy God and God’s creation and our families and friends.
Sabbath is the day we are free to say no to the demands of the world, all of them.
It’s a day that God gave us for our benefit to remind us of what freedom feels like.
But the way the Pharisees practiced it, Sabbath didn’t feel like freedom anymore.
It felt like one more demand from the world that people had to obey.
And Jesus said, “No, Sabbath is made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath.”
But the Pharisees missed the point.
They made the day that was supposed to be about freedom the most oppressive day of the
week.
So Jesus taught that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath, and in this particular case,
The only thing Jesus did that might have been called work was to make mud.
This would have been, of course, forbidden in the eyes of the Pharisees.
So they decided to investigate and to make an example of Jesus.
Notice they did not stop to ask themselves, “Is it lawful to hold an investigation on
the Sabbath?”
But I digress.
So the Pharisees are taking this incredibly joyful occasion and making it a day of pain
and fear for the man and his family.
And they gather together like a court of law and they begin to question the man.
And at first the Pharisees are divided.
Some feel that Jesus had broken the Sabbath, but others feel that no one who was a sinner
could do such a miracle.
And they ask this man to repeat his story yet again.
And we notice the story’s gotten shorter this time.
The man says, “He put clay on my eyes and I washed them, I saw.”
version, of course, eliminating the making of the mud
so it no longer sounds like Jesus did any work.
Pharisees still don’t believe it.
So they call in the man’s parents to question them.
Is this your son?
Was he really born blind?
How is it that he can see?
And they answer, yes, yes, and you’ll have to ask him.
They were afraid to answer the questions
because the Pharisees had said that anyone
who believes in Jesus would be thrown out of the synagogue.
And back then that was worse than being tossed out of your church.
It was essentially being banished from your community.
So they bring in again the man who was born blind and they say,
“Give glory to God,” which was the ancient way of saying,
“Put your hand on a stack of Bibles and swear to tell the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
And they said, “We know this man is a sinner.”
And the formerly blind man who was now beyond exasperated said,
“I don’t know.
All I know is that I was blind and now I see.”
Side note, a little sidebar over here.
I was blind but now I see.
These words inspired the writing of the hymn Amazing Grace.
This hymn was written because of a different kind
of healing, a spiritual healing.
The man who wrote it, John Newton, was an Englishman
and as a young man he was a captain of a slave ship
that carried human cargo across the Atlantic.
And one day in 1748, he was on board ship
off the coast of Ireland when the ship got caught
in a storm and it was about to sink.
And he prayed for God’s mercy and the storm passed
and he was converted to Christianity
and he became an abolitionist.
He knew John Wesley personally.
He worked with John and with other friends
like William Wilberforce to fight against slavery.
And he lived just long enough to see slavery
made illegal in England.
Amazing Grace was written to tell
the story of a man whose heart was completely
changed by Jesus.
I once was lost, but now I’m found.
Was blind, but now I see.
End of sidebar.
So our formerly blind man, who can now see,
stands before the religious leaders and the Pharisees
and speaks the truth,
and it’s a truth they don’t wanna hear.
And the Pharisees want to condemn Jesus,
and this man says, “He opened my eyes,
“and never since the beginning of the world
“has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes
“of a person born blind.
“If this man was not from God, he could do nothing.”
Which by the way is still true today
with all of our medical advancements in technology,
giving sight to someone who was born blind
is something we still can’t do, but Jesus can.
The Pharisees accused this man of a great sin
and throw him out.
Jesus meanwhile has heard what has happened.
Word must have gotten around quick back in those days.
And he goes and looks for the man and finds him
and he says, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
And the man answers, “Who is he?”
And Jesus says, “The person speaking to you now is the one.”
‘Cause of course he’d never seen Jesus before.
And the man’s next word in the Greek is kyrie,
as in kyrie eleison, which means Lord,
Lord I believe, and he worships.
And Jesus shares with him good news.
He says, “For judgment I have come into the world
“so that those who do not see may see
and those who see may become blind.
And the Pharisees overhear this and they say,
“You talking about us?”
And Jesus says, “If you were blind,
“you would be without sin.
“But since you say that you can see, your sin remains.”
And there the story ends.
Lots of things we could pull out of this story,
but just a few things I wanted to
kind of draw out for us today.
First off, doing God’s will.
is not always as clear cut as we think.
People today still quote scripture
to try to tell others what should and shouldn’t be done,
how people should and shouldn’t live.
And yes, it’s important to know God’s word,
and yes, it’s important to follow it,
but we also need to have God’s heart of compassion
because without kindness, truth is a cold sword.
Secondly, as it was back then,
We still have the progressives and the conservatives
battling things out in public, in politics, in the news,
and both sides missed the mark where Jesus is concerned.
Jesus does not violate the Sabbath law.
Jesus says the Sabbath was made for people,
not people for the Sabbath.
God’s word is given for our benefit, not for our harm,
not to cause difficulty, not to lord over other people,
not to decide who belongs and who doesn’t.
God’s law boils down to this.
We are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind,
and strength, and love others as ourselves.
When we look at the issues, when we go to vote,
are we loving others as we love ourselves?
Are we loving the homeless as we love ourselves?
Are we loving veterans as we love ourselves?
Are we loving refugees as we love ourselves?
God loves everyone, not just the people we feel comfortable with.
Faith in God is not and never has been about keeping the rules.
Faith in God makes us generous and caring and compassionate.
And the Christian faith is about a relationship with the living God through
the Holy Spirit, and with the presence of the Holy Spirit,
we are able to share in the joy of the man born blind.
And if we should find ourselves in a jam, like this young man did at one point,
where his story comforts us with the knowledge that Jesus knows where we are,
and what’s going on in our lives, and Jesus cares, and Jesus will come
looking for us, just like he did for that young man.
And Jesus will bring us to a place of worship, a place
of peace and joy and fulfillment and rest, which is the true
definition of Sabbath.
So today we’re going to be doing something a little bit different in a few minutes. We
still have a hymn and an offering going on, but after that, for anyone who would like
it, we’ll be having this healing service. And in light of today’s teaching about the
blind man, I wanted to point out first off that Jesus can heal. Things like this I think
sometimes get feel a little bit awkward, but come knowing that God knows each one of us
and that God will do what God knows is best for us
because he is the most loving parent in the world.
Jesus frequently healed in scripture.
And so today, 2,000 years later,
when we pray for healing, miracles can still happen.
Sometimes God answers with a yes immediately.
Sometimes the healing takes a little longer.
Just out of my own experience,
I have one friend whose wife was healed.
She was going blind and her eyes were healed.
And that was one of those things where they prayed for her
and nothing happened.
And then she went home and her eyes
got a little better and a little better
and a little better each day until her sight was actually
better than it had been before her eyes got sick.
So you never know how God’s going to move,
is what I’m trying to say.
But when we come forward, when we ask for healing,
But come believing that God loves you.
Come knowing that Jesus gave his life for you.
Come knowing that the Holy Spirit is with you.
And if you’re not sure about the Holy Spirit part, tell me that too and we’ll pray about
that.
But bottom line, come believing that God answers prayers, even yours and mine.
If there’s any doubt about that, I just want to give one other testimony.
The online group that we have prayer for every Saturday night on Facebook, we have a prayer
list of about five typed pages right now. We also have a Thanksgiving list of at least
three typed pages since January of prayers that were answered yes. So prayer is answered
and so come with faith, come in joy. And when that time comes, I’ll talk more about the
logistics in a bit. But for today, may God bless each of us here today with heavenly
sight and with heavenly healing. Amen.