Month: July 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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