Month: October 2024

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on October 20, 2024. Based on Hebrews 5:1-10.

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We call Hebrews an epistle, but it’s more of a theological treatise, or perhaps a sermon transcription. You know, one of these Sundays, maybe I should just read a full epistle as my sermon. That’s what they used to do. Anyway, like any good preacher, the author of Hebrews tried to get his point across with illustrations that the readers or hearers could identify with. Eventually today, we’ll get to his core illustration: Christ as high priest. But before that, I want to go back to Genesis.

Abram was called by God to leave Ur of the Chaldeans, in Mesopotamia, and migrate to Canaan. So he moved there with all his family and possessions. Eventually, his nephew Lot separated from him and settled in Sodom. Around that time, there was a battle between five kings on one side, including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, and four kings on the other side, including King Chedorlaomer of Elam. The group that Chedorlaomer led defeated the five kings and carried off many of their people and possessions, including Lot and his household.

When Abram heard what had happened to his nephew, he set out in pursuit of Chedorlaomer and eventually defeated them, rescuing Lot and retrieving many goods that had been taken. When he returned, the king of Sodom came out to thank him

And here’s where things get strange. Up until now, it’s a typical story of battle and conquest, a story like we read throughout the Bible and other ancient literature. Then an enigmatic figure appears: Melchizedek, king of Salem, also comes out to meet Abram. He gives Abram bread and wine and blesses him, in his role as priest of El Elyon, God Most High. In return, Abram gives him a tithe. Then Melchizedek disappears from the narrative, Abram returns everything that had been taken from Sodom and the other kings, and the narrative arc resumes.

Hmm. Who is this Melchizedek, king of Salem? His name means “king of righteousness” or “righteous king.” Other places in the Bible equate Salem to Jerusalem, but a more literal reading equates it to shalom, or peace. So perhaps he wasn’t just some random king from some random city, but a righteous king of peace. He wasn’t involved in the battle. His only role was to bless Abram by El Elyon, and to proclaim that El Elyon delivered Abram’s victory.

At this point in Israel’s history, they were still figuring a few things out. They would eventually realize that the God they knew as Yahweh was the same as the God that others worshipped as El Elyon, God Most High, or as El Shaddai, God Almighty. Or as many other titles that described God’s different characteristics, the different ways that God appeared to people throughout the Near East. But when Abram was blessed by Melchizedek in the name of El Elyon, he intuitively knew that this was a holy thing, that this was something worthy of his respect.

Melchizedek was both king and priest. He was apparently the king of a city, while also serving as a priest of God Most High. This was nearly universal in the ancient Near East. In Israel’s later history, a priestly class would emerge, the Levites and specifically Aaron and his descendants. But in other cultures, and in the time before Aaron was called to serve, the king was responsible for making sure that there was a place to worship and animals to sacrifice. The king was responsible for ensuring that his people stayed in the good graces of their patron god. This remained true outside of Israel until well after Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. So the original readers of Hebrews would be quite familiar with the role that the political leader played in religion.

In the Second Temple period, there was a clear distinction between priestly tasks and political rule. This was necessary in part because the Jews were no longer a distinct nation, but instead were ruled by foreigners who worshipped different gods. Still, there was an expectation that the political leaders would ensure that there was a place to worship and sacrificial animals with which to worship.

Then Christ came along and changed everything. First, he said that instead of worshipping on a particular holy mountain, we would all worship in Spirit and truth. Then, he made the ultimate sacrifice, once for all. In that way, he satisfied the obligations of a priest-king according to the order of Melchizedek. He provided a place to worship—everywhere we have an awareness of God’s presence—and a sacrifice with which to worship—himself.

And so we have a high priest, Jesus Christ, who was chosen by God. He wasn’t a descendant of Aaron so he couldn’t be a regular Jewish high priest, but instead he transcends those rules. Before the priesthood had to be confined to a smaller group that served the nation of Israel, God chose priests from among the people according to God’s own vision of their qualifications. God saw his own son in Jesus and anointed him high priest.

After his death and resurrection, Christ took on an expanded role. Instead of serving a small group of disciples, he took his place in the heavenly realm to serve all of humanity. Instead of ruling a city or a nation or an empire, Christ rules God’s kingdom, an eternal and all-encompassing existence in God’s presence. Christ is a priest-king who ensures that God is worshipped eternally, as so beautifully recounted in the Book of Revelation. He is a righteous king, that is, a ruler who dispenses justice and mercy to all people, who achieves reconciliation of each of us to each other and to God. He is the king of shalom, of peace, of wholeness, of completion, of universal flourishing. His realm is eternal and perfect.

When he ascended, Christ left behind this temporary and imperfect copy of his heavenly realm. He commissioned his followers to rule as he would rule, not to “lord it over” God’s beloved family, but to serve them and to seek their good. Our rule over God’s creation and God’s people is not one of domination, but one of caretaking, of tending and stewarding and protecting. We are to govern as Jesus would if he had continued his ministry, in which he healed the sick, fed the hungry, forgave the sinner, and brought everyone into a right relationship with God and each other.

This world is passing away, and yet God cares deeply for it. God created the universe and declared it good, then created humanity and declared us very good. God did not create a disposable earth or a useless people, but a place and a people who are destined for greatness, for completeness at the end of the age. That’s why we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We pray that this world will become heaven.

And so our task is Abram’s task: to carry God’s blessing to the world. Abram was selected by God for reasons that only God knows. He was told to take his household on a journey, and that in return, the world would be blessed through him. God created Israel as a priestly nation, that is, a whole nation that would serve as a bridge between God and all humanity. At the end of the story of Abraham’s encounters with God, God declares that by Abraham’s offspring “shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.” Abraham’s descendants will be a great nation who bless all humanity through their fidelity to God and by mediating between God and all the nations.

Unfortunately, things did not go according to plan. The one nation of Israel split into two, both of which forsook God and worshipped other gods. Then came the exile, which was a terrible, traumatic event in the life of God’s people. It did have one positive, though: now Jews were dispersed throughout all of the nations and could spread God’s word. In the New Testament, we read about God-fearers, which were Gentiles who nevertheless worshipped as if they were Jews. Still, a barrier remained due to a lack of understanding God’s plan of reconciliation.

So Christ came to convert us all into a priestly nation, one that could indeed take God’s message to all people. We are all priests, each one of us, and all of us together. We are Christ’s body, and so we together fulfill the role of priest. Together, we mediate between humanity and God. Individually, we may be bold to approach God with our own confessions and petitions and with intercessions for others. Together and individually, we are tasked with communicating God’s blessings to all people. That’s why the first Great End of the Church is “The Proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind.” We are to carry God’s message to all of humanity. And in turn, we are to carry all the cares of the world and lay them on the heavenly altar.

And just how do we do that? Prayer. Through Christ, we know that God hears our prayers. We know that Christ sits at the right hand of God to judge humanity, but we also know that the judgment is good news for all. It is wholeness and reconciliation and flourishing. So we don’t need to fear that when we lay the world’s cares before God that the response will be punishment for our great sins. Instead, we can be sure that Christ, who knows what it is to be human, will look on us with mercy and work through us to transform the world into his kingdom.

Eventually, everything will be made right. Eventually, Christ’s work in the world will transform us into holy people who are in right relationships with God and each other. This may take a while, though. In the meantime, the world looks pretty bleak and is in desperate need of God’s grace.

I’ve been listening to the book that Susan mentioned a few weeks ago, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools. Very good book that I highly recommend. One of the core ideas is that prayer is powerful. Prayer can change the world. The author’s first serious experience with prayer came as a youth, leading a Bible study in his middle school. He would walk in prayer around the school and would pray each day for his classmates. His Bible study flourished despite his lack of knowledge or experience. Through prayer, God changes the person who is praying, that’s certain, and also opens up opportunities to change others.

One of the lessons in our Bible study a few weeks ago was “C is for Cornelius.” In that story, Cornelius is a centurion who has a vision and sends for Peter. Meanwhile, Peter has a vision of unclean animals descending from heaven, and eventually realizes that God is teaching him to welcome Gentiles like Cornelius into Christian fellowship. Peter teaches Cornelius and his household is baptized. Now, Christ could have just directly told Cornelius everything about himself. Instead, Christ chose to work through Peter. Christ got the ball rolling and opened both Cornelius and Peter to learning from each other, and then empowered their relationship.

That, to me, is how prayer works. God nudges us and makes some paths easier than others and arranges “coincidences” that aren’t actually random. As a result, we grow into relationships that have the potential to change lives, and through changed lives, to change organizations and communities and nations.

Prayer is powerful. Throughout the New Testament, we are told to pray in Jesus’s name. Christ is our true high priest, who is waiting in the heavenly temple to act on our every prayer of confession, petition, and intercession. Christ is waiting for the opportunity to change us, to empower us to change others, and through us, to carry his blessing to the world.

Sometimes, we look at all of the challenges we face and don’t know where to start. Well, the very first step is prayer. Let us pray that God will open our hearts and our church to those in our community who need God’s blessing in their lives. Let us pray that God will empower us to reach new people, to meet them where they are and to bring them into God’s family. And let us pray all of this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, our righteous king whose realm is eternal peace, wholeness, and flourishing. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on October 13, 2024. Based on Hebrews 4:12-16.

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This summer, I listened to an audiobook called, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, by Rabbi Alan Lew. In it, he describes the Days of Awe, a season of the Jewish year that centers on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Jewish calendar is a little bit strange in that the first day of the first month is in the spring, but the “head of the year” or Rosh Hashanah occurs in the fall, on the first day of the seventh month. This year, it fell on the evening of October 2. This is the first Day of Awe, one of the high holy days. They sound the shofar, or ram’s horn, and there are special services all day long.

Rosh Hashanah also begins the Days of Repentance. The time is always right to do what is right, which is to repent of your sins against God and neighbor. The Days of Repentance, or teshuvah, are the first ten days of the month of Tishrei and are a particularly auspicious time for repentance. In a sense, this ten-day period is like Lent in our tradition or Ramadan in the Muslim tradition. It’s a time when you specifically focus on making yourself right with God in preparation for Yom Kippur.

The tenth of Tishrei is the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, the highest of holy days in both ancient and modern Judaism. In ancient Israel, from the days of the Tabernacle to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., this was the day when the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies. He would make special sacrifices on behalf of the people, and another on behalf of himself. This was also the day when they did the scapegoat ritual. The high priest would present two goats and cast lots. One goat would be sacrificed to the Lord as a purification offering, while the other goat was set aside. Then the high priest would take incense into the Holy of Holies, make more sacrifices, and ultimately make atonement for all the people. He would present the live goat and lay all of the people’s sins on it, then set it free in the wilderness. In this way, the people would be made pure and clean in God’s eyes.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews needed to reimagine Yom Kippur along with the rest of the Temple sacrificial system. In modern Jewish thought, the gates of heaven open on Rosh Hashanah. They stay open while the people repent and seek renewal. There is a special closeness between God and humanity, but then on Yom Kippur, the gates of heaven close again until the next year. So that has become a special day of fasting and worship to set oneself apart for God.

I should point out that this shouldn’t be taken too literally. It’s a bit like saying that the Holy Spirit comes on Pentecost—the Holy Spirit is always present, but we have a special awareness of that presence on Pentecost. Similarly, the gates of heaven are always opening and always closing, and God is always close to us, but Jews celebrate a special awareness of that closeness during the Days of Awe.

It’s really a beautiful vision of God’s relationship with humanity, and I highly recommend the book. But in the nearly two millennia that Jews have been developing that theology and tradition, we have developed a different understanding of atonement centered on Christ.

The author of Hebrews was steeped in both Jewish thought and Platonic philosophy. In Platonism, the things we see on earth are temporary, imperfect versions of what exists in heaven as permanent and perfect. Take this circle for example:

You would say that it is a “perfect” circle, but you would be wrong. If you zoomed way in, you would see that the outline is jagged. The outline of a true circle has zero width, but this one has a width of a couple millimeters. Still, if you look at this circle, you can imagine what a true circle, a perfect circle, would be like.

In the same way, the Jews built first the Tabernacle, then Solomon’s Temple, then the Second Temple as temporary, imperfect replicas of the heavenly temple. If that weren’t their goal, the Torah wouldn’t have page after page of mind-numbing details on how to construct the Tabernacle. These holy structures were imperfect, but they taught the ancient Israelites what the true heavenly temple is like.

Unfortunately, even the imperfect temple was destroyed, so we don’t have it as a reference. But we do know some broad outlines. There is an outer gathering area, and then an inner place where God dwells. And just as the ancient Jewish temples had high priests, we too have a high priest: Christ, who can enter the Holy of Holies in God’s presence any time he likes. Like the tabernacle and temples, the old high priests were temporary and imperfect—they were sinners just like us, and so they could not enter God’s presence without first purifying themselves. But Christ is perfect, and so he need not make any more sacrifices to purify himself. He can enter God’s presence at any time to purify God’s people—us.

The kingdom of heaven has come near! Through Christ, God’s eternal kingdom is always close at hand. So, we need to be continuously working to purify ourselves and prepare ourselves for entering God’s presence. We need to always be working on our repentance.

Again, let me turn to the Jewish practice of the Days of Repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The rabbinic tradition has a lot of variation in it—the joke is that if you ask ten rabbis their opinions, you’ll get eleven answers. But basically, they see repentance as having five main elements: recognition of one’s sins, remorse, desisting from sin, restitution where possible, and confession.

Recognizing your sins is the first and most important step. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, admitting you have a problem is the first step towards resolving it. Recognition is an intellectual realization that leads to remorse, which is a deep emotion that mirrors the hurt that your actions or inaction have caused. Desisting from sin is an action: it is not sufficient to know that you have sinned, you have to stop doing it.

Restitution is an essential part of healing, and is therefore step 8 of AA’s 12 steps. This is where the rubber meets the road. Through Christ, our sins are forgiven—our sins against God. But God cannot forgive on behalf of the person we have wronged.

Imagine that my kids, Sam and Jesse, are fighting and hurt each other, and in the process, they break my TV. As their father, I can forgive them for breaking the TV. As their father, I can forgive Sam for hurting Jesse and Jesse for hurting Sam. What I can’t do is forgive Sam on behalf of Jesse or forgive Jesse on behalf of Sam. They need to do that themselves. They need to apologize to each other and heal their relationship. In the same way, our heavenly Father can forgive any sin we commit against him, and forgive us for hurting one another, but cannot directly heal our relationship and forgive on behalf of the person we have hurt. We have to work towards that reconciliation. Only after we have tried our best to resolve whatever hurt we caused can we truly feel worthy of God’s forgiveness.

A couple of weeks ago, in Sacred Paths, we talked about confession of sins. Sacred Paths is the campus ministry co-sponsored by this church, Christ Episcopal, and CrossRoads. It’s quite an ecumenical group, but strangely, many of the students are or were Catholic. The Roman Catholic Church recognizes seven sacraments, including the sacrament of reconciliation, commonly called confession. In preparation for confession, you are supposed to reflect on what has happened since your last confession, typically using the Ten Commandments as your guide. Then you go in and tell the priest your sins and discuss how you plan to resist temptation and desist from sinning. It is essential that you have a truly contrite heart and truly intend to turn away from sin, and that you make a thorough confession, holding nothing back. Then the priest offers you forgiveness and perhaps penance. The priest cannot himself forgive sins, but is God’s voice. As in that famous poem Melba read at the opening of the service last week, Christ now has no mouth but ours.

There is a real psychological and sociological value in hearing someone say to you, “I hear what you did, and God forgives you.” This is a powerful moment that unfortunately the Reformation purged from our tradition. We instead approach God directly and confess our sins, and trust in what we have been taught about forgiveness and reconciliation through Christ.

We don’t have the same kind of personal, private confession as Catholics, but we do have corporate, public confession. Every week, a critical part of our worship service is centered on confession. First, we hear the call: a reminder that we may be bold to approach the throne of grace and lay down all our sins. Next, we pray together, acknowledging our sins. Finally, we are reminded that through Christ, we are forgiven.

But what sins do we acknowledge? Jeff assembles our liturgy each week and draws a prayer of confession from one of his various resources. There is a chance that he will include something that you personally did, something that you need to confess. It is more likely, however, that most of what you confess in that prayer are sins that you don’t recognize in your own life. So why confess them at all?

Let’s return to the scapegoat ritual. The high priest lays all the sins of all the people on the scapegoat and sets it free in the wilderness. In that way, the people as a whole are reconciled to God and made clean. There is a strong sense in the ritual that we are all bound together. Each of us is tainted by the sinfulness of the community and indeed by the sinfulness of all humanity.

Here’s a part of what we prayed last week: “We confess that we have defaced your creation and poisoned our environment through our consumerist behavior and for personal gain.” OK, one of the great sins of modern commerce is the prevalence of single-use plastics. We are rapidly consuming our reserves of petroleum, and using it for such ridiculous things as putting peeled oranges in small, plastic containers. So, as a spiritual practice, perhaps you take reusable shopping bags to Kroger or Walmart. In fact, in some states, and at Aldi, you are required to take your own bags. But I defy you to enter a grocery store, even Aldi, buy food for the week, and leave without single-use plastics. I don’t think it can be done. Whether you are buying meat, produce, cereal, or dairy products, single-use plastics are unavoidable.

So even though I don’t personally make plastic and I don’t have any choice about using it, I am part of a society that is turning petroleum into disposable junk. This is just one of a thousand ways that we all participate in sinful systems.

And sometimes, the sinful systems persist long after the original sins were committed. For example, there are hardly any women in electrical and computer engineering. Right now, I think 10% of the faculty in my department are female, and about that same percentage of students. Why? Well, there was a time, decades ago, that women were simply not allowed to study electrical or computer engineering. There are no formal restrictions anymore—indeed, there are programs to encourage female participation—but the inequity persists for reasons that have become embedded in our culture. Similar factors result in racial and ethnic inequities.

So each Sunday, we pray for forgiveness for our participation in these sinful systems. We may not personally commit any of the sins in the prayer of confession, but we are part of a society that is built upon a sinful foundation.

We pray and confess our sins to God boldly, knowing that God forgives them. But what about restitution? What about the people who have been harmed by our actions, our inaction, or our participation in a sinful society? Many of the Old Testament prophets tell us what to do. They teach us that God doesn’t care about our sacrifices or our confessions unless we have changed hearts that change our society. As Amos famously said, “Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

We were made in God’s image. At heart, we are pure and good. Yet we are a part of a broken world, a world shaped by the sinful desires and actions of generations past and present. Our calling, then, is to seek reconciliation and healing, to fix what we can. That is the work of a lifetime, of a thousand or a billion lifetimes. It is a task that we can never complete. But that doesn’t absolve us from our responsibility to get started. I cannot eliminate all of the prejudice and bias in the world, but I can help a few people and maybe change a few hearts and minds.

I know that all of you look around the world and see the problems. Inequities in society due to race, gender, class, age, and wealth. Violence in our community, nation, and around the world. Natural devastation amplified by poverty. Environmental calamities caused by human greed and our desire for convenience. On and on it goes. We can’t fix it all. But we can do something.

So my challenge to you all is this: Identify some sin in our society that you can do something about, and get to work. Maybe you’re already doing all that you can, through GRACE or the Russell House or the Mission or Phelps Connections for Seniors or whatever. But maybe there’s something more that God is calling you to do. And maybe there’s something that others in this church are also called to do, working alongside of you. Let’s help each other as we strive to channel the righteousness that flows from heaven and cleanses our world, washing away our individual sins and those of our broken systems. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on October 6, 2024, World Communion Sunday. Based on Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12.

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Many musicals and large orchestral works begin with an overture. This is more than just an opening piece. Instead, it is composed to familiarize the audience with all of the musical themes that they will encounter throughout the larger work.

Several books of the Bible have what is essentially an overture as well. Perhaps the Gospel of John. Perhaps the Gospel of Luke, with Mary singing the Magnificat and Zechariah singing the Benedictus. In these cases, the overture introduces not musical themes but theological themes that will recur throughout the book.

Today’s reading includes the opening of the Letter to the Hebrews. Now, that title is a total misnomer. It is certainly not a letter in the same way as Paul’s epistles, but more of a sermon transcript or a theological treatise. It was perhaps a circular letter that was passed around to many churches. And it was not addressed to the Hebrews in any real sense. Rather, it was addressed to Greek-speaking Christians, both Jews and Gentiles, who were familiar with both Greek and Jewish philosophical traditions. The readers were struggling to stay strong in their faith.

So to set the stage, the author wrote one long Greek sentence as an overture. In our English Bibles, the one long sentence becomes several sentences in the first four verses of the book. This opening statement lays out the key concepts that we will encounter throughout the book. First, that the story of Christ has been told to the Jews throughout history, but in bits and pieces that the author will try to assemble. Second, that Jesus came to give it to us straight, to proclaim the Truth. Next, that Jesus Christ was the perfect image of God, through whom all things came into being.

Let’s sit with that for a little while. In Genesis, God created humanity to bear God’s image here in the created world. In Psalm 8, we read that we were made just a little lower than the heavenly beings. So we are all made to reflect God’s image and glory. But we are an imperfect reflection. We all try to live up to our calling as God’s representatives here on earth, but we fall short of the glory of this calling. Only Jesus of Nazareth was the exact imprint of God’s very being. In a sense, this is why we say that Jesus was truly human and truly divine. Like all humans, he carried God’s image, but because he carried it perfectly, he was God, and because he was God, he was able to be fully human. This paradox is at the center of the Nicene Creed and is partially explored in Hebrews.

Returning to the opening, we see the next key characteristic of Jesus Christ. When he had ascended in glory, he sat down at the right hand of God to exercise dominion over all things. That sounds familiar, too, from the Nicene and Apostles Creeds. Christ came to show us who God truly is and to explain the Truth directly, to clarify the piecemeal revelation that was made throughout Israel’s history, and then he ascended to rule God’s kingdom.

Why was Jesus born? That’s a deep question that a lot of people have tried to answer. The author of Hebrews lays out part of his argument in the second half of our reading today. Jesus came so that through him, God could truly experience suffering and death. There are things you can learn by watching someone else do them, but then there are things that you can only learn through firsthand experience. God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, knew all things from the beginning of time. All things came into being through Christ. And yet, there was one thing that God could not know directly: death. As an infinite being, as being-ness itself, God could not know what it meant to come to an end. And so, Christ was incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth, who like us was a little lower than a heavenly being for a little while, and who suffered and died. Now God knows firsthand what it means to be truly human, to live and to love, to suffer and to die.

That internal knowledge was part of Christ’s plan to reconcile all things to God. He was the pioneer of our salvation—the firstborn from the dead, who paved the way for the rest of us to suffer, die, and be raised to glory with him. As the firstborn through whom all things were created, all things were placed under his reign. Christ reigns not just over the ancient Judeans nor their descendants. Christ reigns not just over Presbyterians or Americans. In fact, Christ does not just reign over humanity. But Christ reigns over all things. All people, all the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field and the fish in the sea. The sun and the moon and the stars at night. Everything. Everything is a part of Christ’s dominion, the kingdom of God.

Yet Jesus of Nazareth lived only a short time, did not achieve a whole lot of worldly power, and then died and ascended to heaven. Now what? Well, Christ continues to reign in the world through us. We are tasked to rule in his place. Jesus initiated the reconciliation of the world to God. We are tasked with continuing that work.

There are two terms I’d like you to consider that describe who we are. First, we are Christ’s ambassadors to the world. To those who do not know Christ, we are expected to represent Christ faithfully and seek a relationship that will connect them to Christ’s kingdom through us. But second, we are Christ’s regents. A regent is someone who rules in place of the king because of the king’s absence. Christ is not truly absent, but is not visible to those who aren’t looking for him. And so, we are tasked with carrying out his reconciling work and ruling as he would rule—not to “lord it over” our siblings that God also loves, but to serve them and to love them.

So what would Jesus do? Well, what did Jesus do? Jesus demonstrated what God’s reign is like. It is a total self-emptying. It is putting one’s whole self at God’s service. As Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, “Let this cup pass from me, yet not my will but your will be done.” We may pray that things go according to our desires, but in the end, we are called to give our whole selves to God no matter what God asks of us.

I have talked on other occasions about spiritual practices. Things like prayer, reading scripture, fasting, and acts of service and hospitality. Spiritual practices enable us to regularly turn towards God and towards becoming who God wants us to be, both as individuals and as a part of the body of Christ. Practices need to be performed regularly in order to form us. And like learning an instrument or a sport, you need to start small but be persistent in order to allow God to form you through the practices.

Jesus demonstrated the ultimate form that we should strive for: giving our whole selves to God. All that we have and all that we are. Well, Jesus didn’t start his ministry on the cross, even though he was willing to go there. He started with smaller acts of kenosis or self-emptying and worked up to the ultimate gift of his death on the cross.

So, how can we start small and work up to giving our whole selves? By committing ourselves to the promises that many of us made at our baptism or our confirmation or when we joined this church: to support the church with our prayers, our presence, our gifts, and our service. Or sometimes stated as our time, talent, and treasure. There are some people who literally give their whole lives to God—priests, monks, nuns, and friars who have no possessions, no life partners, no jobs outside the church. The rest of us instead give some portion of our lives to God.

Before we moved to Rolla, I occasionally worshipped at a church in Mahomet, but not seriously. After we moved here, we committed to making worship a part of our lives. That was the first step. Then we started giving. I remember not knowing what “per capita” meant and trying to decide whether and how much to give towards it. Then Rhonda became a trustee and I joined the choir. Little by little, we gave more of ourselves to serve God’s kingdom.

A few years ago, I’m not sure when exactly, our giving reached the level of a tithe, a tenth. Now, what does that mean? Well, different people compute it differently. I base it on my giving to the church divided by my after-tax income. Some people divide by their pre-tax income. Others who are in a wealth-distribution phase of life, rather than earning a salary, need to think more about what it means to “lay up treasure” in God’s house. For the numerator, some people include what they give to other benevolent organizations, like the Mission or Russell House or whatever.

The exact math doesn’t matter so much as the basic principle: God is the ruler of all things, everything you have belongs to God, and so you should hold on to it loosely. As a spiritual practice, you should give of your time and money to God’s reconciling work in the world. Generosity is a way of training yourself to value relationships and God’s kingdom more than your own comfort.

The best time to make a change in how you give of your prayers, your presence, your gifts, and your service is when something changes. For example, my life revolves around the academic year. So, each fall, I put together a regular schedule for my week that incorporates my class schedule, regular meetings, and time to serve God, directly and indirectly. I reconsider my giving and see what I can afford. My life is changing a little bit more right now because both of my kids are out of college and “off the payroll,” plus my new position as your CRE. All of that factors in to my decision-making.

Another good time to consider how to change your approach to church is during a particular part of the church year. Perhaps Christmas when we celebrate the Incarnation, perhaps Lent, perhaps Easter or Pentecost. Or perhaps today.

Today is World Communion Sunday. This is not a liturgical holiday like the others I listed, but it is an important day in the church year. The first celebration of World Communion Sunday was in 1933 at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. Since then, it has spread to other denominations around the world. It’s a day when we remember that there is one body of Christ, which is the Church with a capital C. We may identify ourselves as Presbyterians, or Methodists, or Lutherans, or Baptists, or Episcopalians, or Moravians, or whatever. All these labels identify our differences. But what matters to God is our similarities: we are all children of God, united together into Christ’s body. We squabble over different understandings of God, but ultimately, none of us can be certain until we meet our Lord at the end of the age. I have many identities: son, husband, father, engineer, professor, church leader, and so on. But the one identity that matters most is beloved child of God.

Today, as we receive the gift of Christ’s body and blood in these simple gifts of bread and juice, we remember all those who celebrate in their own way in churches across our community and around the world. We remember all those who have gone before us and all those who will come after us. And we remember that Christ asks for our whole selves in service to God’s eternal kingdom, made manifest through Christ’s body, the Church, that strives to transform the world today and every day. Amen.

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