Month: November 2025

Preached on November 30, 2025, First Sunday of Advent, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Isaiah 2:1-5.

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Today, we start a new liturgical year with the first Sunday of Advent. My plan this year is to delve into the Hebrew Bible readings. We’ll see how it goes. Lots of preachers pull out the Old Testament to emphasize God’s vengeance against evildoers, but you know me—that’s not what I ever talk about. In Better Ways to Read the Bible, Zach Lambert listed four good lenses to use when we are reading any part of the Bible. The Context lens considers the broader context of any given passage. The Fruitfulness lens reads the text through the fruits of the Spirit and how it fosters them. The Flourishing lens is my main perspective: the kingdom of God is universal human flourishing, so how does the passage inform how we pursue that flourishing? And finally, the Jesus lens: all Scripture points to Jesus, who is the fullest expression of who God is and how God works in the world. So even though I’ll be talking about words written centuries before his birth, I do believe that our understanding of Jesus informs our understanding of the text, and vice versa.

But let’s start with the context. Isaiah is one of the major prophets, along with Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Some would include Daniel. Isaiah prophesied in Judah, the southern kingdom, in the latter half of the eighth century BCE, around the same time as Micah was active in Judah and when Amos and Hosea were active in the northern kingdom of Israel. The Assyrians were the main regional power at the time and were on the warpath. They besieged and ultimately conquered the northern kingdom. Then they marched south to Judah and besieged Jerusalem, but fell short, so Judah survived. Isaiah was active throughout the war.

All four prophets who were active during the Assyrian wars preached against the injustice throughout the two kingdoms. Isaiah laid the blame primarily on the leaders. Social injustice cannot be rectified with acts of worship. As Amos preached, “But let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Isaiah and Micah both famously spoke of the day when the people would beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. This was a bold statement in the midst of war. When a brutal army is at your doorstep threatening annihilation, nobody wants to hear that they should lay down their arms, but everyone wants to believe that a day of peace would someday come. Remember I said that the kingdom of God is universal flourishing, right? Well, flourishing requires peace. So why is there war?

In the ancient world, agriculture was the foundation of a nation’s economy. If you possessed productive farmland, you could grow crops that would feed your people. If you controlled productive pastureland, you could raise sheep, goats, and cattle to feed your people. So ideally, a clan, tribe, or nation would maintain control over good land, work it to get the most productivity out of it, and flourish.

But the other way to obtain the produce of the land was to just take it. Take it by force. For millennia, the purpose of war was to obtain resources. When the Assyrians conquered Israel, they exiled the people so that they could control the land and extract its wealth. Later, the Babylonians did the same to Judah. That’s the reason the Greeks and the Romans conquered Judea as well. The same motivation drove European powers to conquer and colonize the Americas and parts of Africa, Oceania, and Asia. Eventually, competing ideologies became a reason for war, but usually with an economic basis as well.

Let’s think about the major conflicts in the world today. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 to possess Crimea, which is an important gateway for them to access the Black Sea. More recently, they expanded their horizons and are seeking to control the major industrial portions of Ukraine. Sure, there is an ethnic argument they make, that these portions of Ukraine have many ethnic Russians in them, but the real reason is economic. Israel and Palestine have been locked in a struggle for almost 80 years. There are many reasons, but a big one is the economic deprivation of the Palestinians and their lack of freedom to flourish. A world in which swords have been beaten into plowshares is a world in which people focus more on producing wealth through their own efforts than stealing it by force or denying it to their enemies.

But I won’t deny that there are times when war is necessary and appropriate. Someday, when God’s kingdom comes in all its fullness, war will be no more. In the meantime, we need to muddle through and deal with the violence so prevalent in the world. What is the appropriate response of a Christian? Well, in the early days, all Christians were pacifists. St. Martin of Tours was a famous example. He was a Roman soldier who converted to Christianity and became the first recorded conscientious objector. After he left the Roman army, he became a monk, then a priest, then a bishop. His feast day is November 11, which became a traditional day on which to sign peace accords—most famously at the end of World War I.

But avoiding war sometimes amounts to allowing a bully to prey upon a weaker nation. So Christians developed just war theory. There are three parts of it: jus ad bellum, which are principles for going to war, jus in bellum, which are principles for conducting war, and jus post bellum, which are principles for the aftermath of war. Don’t worry, this isn’t a lecture on just war theory. I’ll just highlight a few things.

The most important condition for going to war is possessing just cause. Wars of aggression are never just. Self-defense is almost always just. Things get tricky when we’re talking about a third party. Consider the first Gulf War. Iraq invaded and conquered Kuwait. Clearly, Kuwait had the right to defend itself against the invasion, but they did not have the ability to do so. The US led a coalition to repel Iraq and re-establish Kuwait’s sovereignty. We had the ability, but did we have the right? I would say yes, but some would argue against me. So then fast forward to Ukraine. What really is the difference between Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and Russia’s invasion of Crimea? Not much, except that the US didn’t think it was a good idea to challenge Russia on the field of battle.

The main principles of just conduct of war are discrimination and proportionality. Discrimination means that you only attack enemy combatants, not civilians. Proportionality means that the force you use should not exceed the just goals.

The key to long-term peace, though, lies in jus post bellum, the just way to end and resolve a war. Again, there is discrimination and proportionality: the losing government should be punished, but not necessarily the non-combatant people of the losing nation, and the claims of victory should be proportional to the nature of the war. If the end of the war is not just, then the seeds of future conflict are sown.

In 1871, the Franco-Prussian War ended with Prussia controlling Alsace-Lorraine, a region of France that they had conquered. The Prussian Empire became the German Empire, one of the participants of World War I. In 1919, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France, then in 1940 it was re-taken by Germany. Finally, in 1945, it was returned to France. Which nation should control it? I don’t know, but the fact is that both nations felt that they had a historical right to control its people, its land, and its resources. Leaving the issue poorly resolved presented a reason, or at least an excuse, for future conflict.

In many cases, wars end with a truce rather than a real peace. Consider what’s going on in Israel and Gaza right now. On October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel, starting a hot war in Gaza. On October 10, 2025, just over two years later, both sides ratified a ceasefire deal that had many conditions. Yet 345 Palestinians have died in the conflict since the ceasefire was settled, including in an episode last Wednesday. I don’t think either side is really committed to the ceasefire because it does not really resolve the underlying problems. It is a temporary solution to a long-term problem that has existed for generations and has been prolonged by people who profit from a continuation of hostilities.

We live in a violent world. What are our obligations, as Americans? Well, we have helped to create many of the conditions that have led to war. For example, thirty years ago, the US partnered with other nations to convince Ukraine to divest of its nuclear weapons, in exchange for security guarantees. This was clearly the right thing to do at the time, and yet it left Ukraine defenseless in the face of Russian aggression. We have an ongoing obligation to Ukraine because of our involvement back then. As the leading superpower for decades, our actions have sown the seeds of future conflicts around the world. We cannot simply turn our backs on our allies or on defenseless nations that were destabilized by our actions.

This is not to say that the US did anything wrong, necessarily. The problem is that resources are finite, land is finite, and conflicts are inevitable. Even when we do our best to negotiate just resolutions to any conflicts, someone will end up feeling short-changed. I mean, who has the right to control Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank? Both Israelis and Palestinians have legitimate claims. Who has the right to Alsace-Lorraine? That seems to be settled now, but there was a time when both France and Germany had legitimate claims.

The kingdom of God is universal human flourishing. Yet in this finite world, it is often impossible to achieve flourishing for everyone. And so, we always feel like we don’t have enough. Or maybe you feel like you personally have enough, but others in your family or your community don’t. Or maybe a whole nation feels like they don’t have enough. And so, we want more. Always more.

Since I’m preaching on the Old Testament, let me reach back to the Mosaic covenant that established Israel as a nation, as God’s people. The Ten Commandments spelled out all the ways that people should act so that they would love God and love their neighbor. There are nine commandments that talk about things a person should or should not do, and then the Tenth Commandment is different. It speaks of the heart: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Coveting is an emotional response to seeing that your neighbor has something that you think would make your life better. Coveting is the root of the evil addressed in the rest of the commandments. When you let covetousness take root in your heart, you won’t let anything stand in the way of obtaining the object of your desire. Maybe you will steal it, maybe you will even kill for it.

But Isaiah spoke of a state of being where God’s justice leads to universal flourishing, so that no violence will be necessary. In God’s realm, everyone has what they need. In God’s realm, interpersonal violence is unnecessary. In God’s realm, war is unnecessary. There is no need to fight someone to take their land or resources, nor to defend yourself against aggression, because everyone will have the land or resources they need.

But what should we do in the meantime? In this finite world filled with violence, how can we live into God’s kingdom? Well, the first step is to see, truly see, one another’s needs. Rather than flattening people or nations into stereotypes, see them as fellow children of God who need food, shelter, safety, belonging, and self-actualization. See them through the eyes of their own culture and life experiences, without projecting your own beliefs and social conditions onto them. Then, having seen their true humanity, seek true shalom: peace, wholeness, and well-being. Cornelius Plantinga wrote:

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

Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., President Emeritus, Calvin University

The way things ought to be. God’s realm is the way things ought to be—not the violence and bloodshed and poverty and suffering we see all around us. Our world is so far from shalom it’s sometimes hard to imagine. We may never be able to achieve it. But with God’s help, through our beloved Savior who was born two thousand years ago, we can pursue it, one person, one decision, one relationship at a time. And in doing so, we will truly worship the Prince of Peace, not just with our words and our gatherings, but also with our reconciling actions in our families, community, nation, and world. Amen.

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Sermon on November 9, 2025, Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost. Based on Luke 20:27-38. With apologies to the United Church of Christ, who have used this title as their motto for many years.

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Before we seriously discuss today’s lesson, I’d like to take a quick tour through Israelite history. We often think of the ancient Israelites as always being monotheists, but that’s not quite true. In the time of Abraham, they might be described as henotheistic. That means they acknowledged one God, the God that we worship, as supreme over all other gods, but they also acknowledged that other gods exist and are worthy of worship by other people. Think about it: when Jacob and his 12 sons went down to Egypt, they didn’t proclaim their God to be superior to all of the Egyptian gods. They just kept to themselves. In fact, when Moses encountered the burning bush, a scene that Jesus evokes in today’s reading, he had to ask for God’s name.

Over the following centuries, the Israelites slowly progressed towards monotheism, but frequently slid into pagan practices. Over and over again, we hear about a prophet or a king denouncing Baal, Asherah, Molech, and other gods. There would be no need for denouncing unless the Israelite people were actively worshiping those other gods, right?

In 586 BCE, the single most catastrophic event of the Bible took place: Jerusalem was sacked, the Temple was destroyed, and the leaders of Judah were exiled to Babylon. A century later, the Temple was rebuilt and Judah was re-established, but the trauma of the Babylonian conquest lived on in their collective memory.

In the wake of this destruction and exile, the Jewish leaders had to figure out what had gone wrong. They knew that they worshiped the supreme God, the God who is above all others, El Shaddai, God Almighty, El Elyon, God Most High. They were God’s chosen people. How could they have been savaged by the Babylonians, who worshiped some other, lesser gods? Where had things gone horribly awry?

The best explanation anyone could come up with was that they had failed to follow the First Commandment: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” When the leaders realized that they had broken this covenant with God, they began a series of reforms. They edited their ancient stories and writings into the Hebrew Bible as we know it, making sure to highlight the importance of monotheism and worshiping God alone. They made sure that the Temple stayed “clean,” that is, free of any other gods or idols or unclean practices. They ensured that the people all worshiped God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, by participating in the Temple sacrifices and festivals and observances.

Thus began the Second Temple period, which ended shortly after Jesus’s resurrection. There was just one problem: No matter what the Jews did, they could not regain their previous stature. Under the Maccabees, they did achieve independence, but in 63 BCE, a couple of generations before Jesus, that independence came to an end. So again, religious leaders were left to wonder where things had gone wrong.

There were many factions in late Second Temple Judaism, but the two we hear the most about in the Gospels were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. In truth, Jesus had a lot in common with the Pharisees. Both were reformers who were trying to make Judaism relevant in a changing world. Jesus’s legacy was Christianity; the Pharisees’ legacy was rabbinic Judaism.

The Sadducees, though, were fundamentalists. They went back to the basics. In fact, they rejected most of the Hebrew Bible. They didn’t acknowledge the authority of the historical books, or the wisdom literature, or even the prophetic books. No, they said that the only true revelation of God’s divine will was in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Everything else, they rejected as too “modern.”

In government and military circles, there’s a truism, termed Miles’ Law: Where you stand depends on where you sit. What that means is, your opinion on some policy or budget or other decision depends on your position in the government. If you work for the National Nuclear Security Administration, you’d better believe in the efficacy of nuclear deterrence. If you work for the State Department, you’d better believe in the efficacy of diplomacy. If you work for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, you’d better advocate for solar, wind, and hydro. If you work for the National Energy Technology Laboratory, deep in the coal country of West Virginia, you’d better advocate for clean coal and other improvements to fossil fuel based energy.

Well, the Pharisees led the synagogues in the villages and small towns far from Jerusalem, so they sought ways to be true to God apart from the Temple. They acknowledged prophetic statements like from Amos:

I hate, I despise your festivals,

    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. …

But let justice roll down like water

    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

The Sadducees, though, were aligned with the Temple. They were linked to the Temple hierarchy, so their access to power and status depended on the stature of the Temple in the public consciousness. Therefore, they didn’t want anything to do with a prophet like Amos. Instead, they focused on the Torah with its pages of tedious description of the Tabernacle and the proper sacrificial practices. They rejected any reforms that may cut into their power base.

So when a young rabbi from a backwater village like Nazareth came along, the Sadducees had to squelch any of his attempts to modernize Jewish beliefs and practices. Earlier in this chapter of Luke, the chief priests and scribes challenge Jesus’s authority. Then they try to trick him with a question about taxes. Foiled at every turn, they concoct this ridiculous scenario to try to corner Jesus into admitting that there is no hope of resurrection.

But Jesus outwitted them. Like every great reformer, Jesus proclaimed a new Truth about God, but then tied it back to the texts that his adversaries would accept.

Let’s take a quick look at this ridiculous logic puzzle. The Torah established something called “levirate marriage.” The central problem was that if a man died without a son to inherit, then his line would come to an end. In a sense, inheritance functioned like eternal life. This was an era where the only wealth that really mattered was land. In the book of Ruth, we see a little glimpse into how this worked in practice. Ruth’s husband, brother-in-law, and father-in-law all died. In order that the husband’s and father-in-law’s line should survive, Ruth needed to bear a child, who would ultimately inherit her deceased husband’s property.

Which is to say, the whole point of marriage in ancient Israel was economic. Sure, we hear about loving couples in the Old Testament, but always as a little bonus on what is ultimately a financial transaction that aims to produce heirs. Over and over again, we hear admonitions about caring for widows, because the widow didn’t inherit—her children did.

The Sadducees clung tightly to the Torah, and so they embraced whatever it might say, relevant or not. Under Roman occupation, most of the Jews were dispossessed. There was little to no property to inherit. So even during that era, levirate marriage was mostly irrelevant. Jesus knew that, as did his followers.

And certainly, in the kingdom of God, inheritance is irrelevant. The kingdom of God is universal human flourishing. Eternal flourishing. So as Jesus said, there is no point in maintaining the ancient traditions around marriage. In the resurrection, death has been conquered, so there is no need for an heir. There is certainly need for LOVE, but not for the possessiveness of marriage. Levirate marriage, to ensure an heir for your brother, was essential in an ancient agrarian society. In the age to come, when death has been banished forever, transactional marriage is irrelevant.

Jesus then makes an argument that seems a little specious on its face. He says that God’s message to Moses demonstrated that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive to God. I have to say, that’s a pretty weak argument in favor of the resurrection. Truthfully, throughout the New Testament, the authors use Hebrew Bible texts similarly—re-interpreting, re-contextualizing, and re-framing the old words in new ways to speak to the new circumstances of Jesus’s coming as the Messiah they weren’t expecting.

This is both necessary and possible because the Bible is not the Word of God. Jesus Christ is the Word. The Bible is just a collection of words about an ancient people’s encounters with God. The Bible is God-breathed, meaning that its words speak to us only through the power of the Holy Spirit. Each new generation receives the Torah, the Prophets, the Wisdom literature, the Gospels, the Epistles, everything—we receive it along with the interpretations our forerunners made in their contexts. And then we have the freedom and the obligation to re-interpret it for our modern circumstances.

Consider this: during the Reformation, people like John Knox made biblical arguments against the Roman Catholic Church. Today, Presbyterians, who descend from Knox and include his writings in our Book of Confessions, have positive ecumenical relationships with the Roman Catholic Church. We have our differences, sure, but we no longer treat the Pope like the antichrist. In fact, a lot of us have pretty positive things to say about “our” Pope.

Or consider the unbelievable advances in technology. Consider that Jesus and his disciples mostly traveled on foot, while we travel in planes, trains, and automobiles. Consider that Paul’s epistles had to be hand-delivered by someone who could read them aloud to the illiterate receiving congregation, while we can all read them on our smartphones. Can we really say that the Bible’s teachings to a Bronze Age, agrarian society are relevant to a modern industrialized world without the guidance of the Holy Spirit?

I believe that God reveals Godself to humanity in the way that humanity can understand, given the level of understanding that a society has at the time. Remember ten minutes ago when I said that Abraham was henotheist rather than monotheist? That’s because Abraham was surrounded by other cultures with other gods, and so he was not yet ready to believe that our God is the only god. Then when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness with Moses, they needed the Tabernacle to centralize their worship. But later when they were settled in Canaan, the Israelites needed guidance about maintaining their unique identity. Then when the Temple was destroyed and they were exiled to Babylon, they needed a way to continue worshiping God in a foreign land.

Throughout history, God has revealed God’s nature more and more to each generation, in ways that generation could understand. God’s most complete revelation was the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Even that was limited by Jesus’s context, though. Jesus could not teach his disciples, say, how to vote in a democratic society because such a thing did not exist. Instead, he held up general principles as absolutes, then gave some examples. Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is at hand! And the kingdom of God is universal human flourishing. It is up to us to determine how to pursue that flourishing in this generation, in this community and nation and culture.

But even that is insufficient. Look around: the people in this congregation are mostly of a different generation from, say, the students on campus or young working families. We are one expression of the Church (with a capital C), Christ’s body. But we are not the only valid expression of the Church. We are just one particular expression of it, with one way of being God’s people according to our understanding. As our understanding changes, and as our community and culture change, we must remain open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and pursue new ways of being the Church.

At the little church up the street from me, across from Casey’s, there’s a sign board that usually has something that makes me angry. Well, not this past week. The message read, “Don’t put a period where God puts a comma.” I’m not sure what their pastor means, but here’s what I take away from it. Don’t exclude the possibility that God is still speaking. Don’t hold so tightly to your beliefs, or your way of expressing those beliefs in the choices you make and the actions you take, that God can’t change you. Don’t feel so bound by history that you are afraid to create a beautiful new future. And don’t prevent others from going where God is leading them.

God is still speaking! God speaks through the Bible, yes, but also through the gentle nudges of the Holy Spirit. God speaks through the people you encounter, whether they are strangers that you meet or the people that you love the most. God is still speaking. Let anyone with ears to hear listen! Amen!

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