Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 7, 2025, the Second Sunday of Advent. Based on Isaiah 11:1-10.

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Before we get into today’s text, let’s review a few things I said last week. Isaiah was a prophet in the 8^th century BCE, the same time as Micah, Amos, and Hosea. The Assyrians were on the warpath, ultimately conquering Israel but falling short of conquering Judah. In this tumultuous period, Isaiah preached against the injustice that he saw in the Judean society, while looking forward to a time when they would beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. He spoke of shalom, peace, wholeness—the way things ought to be.

So now on to today’s lesson. We all have an intuitive sense of right and wrong that is based on a deep-seated emotion: disgust. Disgust is basically a sensed violation of our boundaries. The most fundamental level of disgust relates to the things that should be outside our body versus the things that should be inside our body. That’s why sewers are disgusting, open wounds are disgusting, rotten food is disgusting, and so forth. Disgust is the solution to what has been called the omnivore’s dilemma. Humans can eat “everything,” by which I mean we eat both plants and animals. But which plants are good and which are bad? Which animals, or which parts of animals, are good and which are bad? Disgust helps us to choose, and was critical for early proto-humans 100,000 years ago. If you are too sensitive, you might miss out on the only food available and starve to death. If you are not sensitive enough, you might eat contaminated food, get sick, and die. Disgust is fundamentally related to keeping contaminants out.

But humans are adept at converting a literal, practical tool into an abstract idea. If you read the Torah with disgust in mind, you’ll see that it’s lurking behind much of the Law of Moses. Kosher laws are mostly about disgust—which foods are “clean,” and which are not. Many of the laws around sexuality are based on disgust. Then there are rules about who is acceptable in the holy community and who is not—abstract extensions of the disgust principle.

The way disgust works is most obvious in the rules around leprosy. If you came in contact with someone leprous, you “caught” the uncleanness. So too if you touch a dead body or various bodily fluids. A clean person becomes contaminated by contact with someone or something unclean. There is no safe dose of uncleanness—the smallest amount contaminates the whole. We are wired to keep out contaminants, including people who “contaminate” God’s holy people.

It wasn’t until I read about disgust that I really understood the difference between an honor-shame culture, like ancient Israel, and an innocence-guilt culture. Shame is related to disgust. If you experience a boundary violation, you are disgusted, and so you incur shame. That’s why rape victims incur shame in so many cultures—not guilt, because they didn’t do anything wrong, but shame because they were unwilling participants in something disgusting. Shame and disgust are deep-seated emotions. By contrast, guilt is a cerebral notion, which relates to fear rather than shame.

Today’s lesson starts with a discussion of a righteous judge, one who renews the Davidic covenant to rule God’s people with justice. I already read the opening from the NRSVue translation, which is very good and the main translation I use. But I often consult the New English Translation, or NET, which has a slightly different philosophy and copious translator notes. Here are the first few verses from NET:

11 A shoot will grow out of Jesse’s root stock,

a bud will sprout from his roots.

2 The Lord’s Spirit will rest on him—

a Spirit that gives extraordinary wisdom,

a Spirit that provides the ability to execute plans,

a Spirit that produces absolute loyalty to the Lord.

3 He will take delight in obeying the Lord.

These are some very different fruits of the Spirit. Paul wrote that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But Isaiah wrote that some fruits of the Spirit are EXTRAORDINARY wisdom, the ability to execute plans, and absolute loyalty to the LORD. Wow! That’s fantastic! I feel like Paul’s list is more internally focused, dealing with the heart, but Isaiah’s list emphasizes God’s action in the world. Like the ability to execute plans—which plans? Ones that come from extraordinary wisdom and loyalty to the LORD.

Jesus was this tender shoot that sprang from the stump of Jesse, on whom the Spirit of the LORD rested, a Spirit of extraordinary wisdom. Jesus was a doer, not just a talker. He spent his brief ministry traveling far and wide, healing people wherever he went.

But not just healing them—restoring them. Think about the times Jesus healed lepers. Under the Law of Moses, when Jesus touched a leper, Jesus became unclean. The uncleanness of the leper would spread to anyone who came in contact with them. But Jesus operated against disgust, against contamination. A book I’m reading right now calls this eucontamination, where “eu” means “good.” Rather than the disgusting uncleanness contaminating the clean, Jesus’s purity cleansed what was disgusting.

We see this again and again throughout the Gospels. Remember that certain people are considered unclean, too. But Jesus ate with them, with tax collectors and sinners. He let a sinful woman anoint his feet. Again and again, we read about scribes and Pharisees chastising Jesus for violating the boundary between clean and unclean, between pure and disgusting. But in His wisdom, Jesus demonstrated that His purity overcomes all uncleanness. Jesus purified and sanctified anyone who came in contact with him. His goodness and love are like a reverse contaminant, a eucontaminant that pushes out all uncleanness. Just as a small amount of something disgusting can ruin something good, it only takes a little bit of Jesus’s purity to purify those who are touched by Him.

There are plenty of metaphors for disgust, so I thought I should develop one for eucontamination. Consider a group of people all washing their hands. One option is to have a large bowl of water. Now, how many people need to wash their hands before you would question the wisdom of sticking your hands in the bowl? Just thinking about it makes me a little queasy. I guess it depends on the people, but regardless, once someone gets their hands clean in it, the water is dirty, right? Maybe a little bit dirty, maybe a lot, but I don’t really want someone else’s dirt on my hands. That’s the logic of disgust, the logic of contamination and uncleanness.

The other option is a sink with running water. As the clean water flows over your hands, all of the dirt and grime flow down the drain. Your uncleanness does not spread up through the tap to the source. The source remains clean and pure no matter how many people are washed by it. Everything disgusting is washed away.

So too, God’s abundant grace cleanses us all. Justice rolls down like water. Righteousness is an ever-flowing stream. The river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

Nothing we do can pollute the stream. Nothing we do is too disgusting for God’s grace to wash away. Nothing, nobody, is ultimately unclean in God’s holy kingdom. Not because anything or anyone is kept out, but because all who enter God’s kingdom are cleansed by God’s abundant grace.

This is the Peaceful Kingdom that Isaiah described. A righteous, equitable judge—our Lord and Savior—will rule over it. At His command, wickedness will be cast out. What’s left will be complete reconciliation. No longer will there be predator and prey—the wolf shall live with the lamb, and the calf and the lion will feed together. God’s abundant grace will wash away any fear, any violence, any covetousness that would disrupt relationships. True peace, shalom, will hold sway.

But the kingdom of God is at hand! Today is John the Baptist Sunday—happy Advent, you brood of vipers! Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near! John stood in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, preaching that God would separate the good from the bad, the righteous from the evil, the clean from the unclean. He wasn’t wrong, exactly, just a little incomplete. Yes, God will separate the righteous from the evil, but not by casting some people into eternal conscious torment. Rather, the purifying eucontamination of Jesus Christ will purge the evil from everyone and everything, leaving only righteousness. As Solzhenitsyn famously said, the line between good and evil runs down the middle of every human heart. Jesus’s purifying, sanctifying grace is more powerful than any evil in our hearts, able to purge us of all wickedness so that we are made worthy of entering His peaceful kingdom.

But again, the kingdom of heaven has come near! We are already being purified and sanctified. We are already welcome in God’s eternal kingdom. And we are called to bring others into the kingdom by channeling God’s grace and letting it flow through us and over the world.

We, the Church, are Christ’s body. The logic of contamination and disgust say that we need to keep out the “wrong type” of people. The tax collectors and sinners of our age. We see this logic at work in almost every church, only with different boundaries. Some will say that you’re excluded if you believe the wrong thing. Some will exclude you if you are in the wrong kind of romantic relationship. Some will exclude you if you question authority. Some will exclude you if you vote the wrong way. Some will exclude you if you dress the wrong way, or have tattoos or piercings.

But we are Christ’s body. Who does Christ exclude? Nobody. By God’s grace, we are all purified and made worthy of full inclusion in Christ’s body. Nobody can corrupt our holiness. Nobody can make us “unclean” in Christ’s eyes. And so, our task is to seek those who have been excluded from other manifestations of Christ’s body—other churches in our community or around the world that have drawn boundaries where God does not.

We are channels of God’s grace. We are called to seek those who need to be welcomed in from the margins. We are called to seek those who disgust us, for whatever reason, because they are clean in God’s eyes. We are called to share God’s ever-flowing righteousness and let it wash away all of their shame.

The revolution will not be televised. Prophets are not interested in spectators. Jesus came to call us to action, to transformation of ourselves and the world. We are expected to participate in the flourishing of God’s kingdom, here and now, in each of our hearts, in this church, in our community, and throughout the world. We have been made clean and pure, holy parts of Christ’s body, so that we can do Christ’s work in the world, bringing everyone into God’s eternal, already-but-not-yet kingdom that is emerging among us. Let us seek this day, this Advent season, and all through our lives to share the abundant, ever-flowing grace that has washed over us and that promises total transformation and reconciliation of Creation. Amen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bo McGuffee, The Alchemy of Belief

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he will destroy on this mountain

    the shroud that is cast over all peoples,

    the covering that is spread over all nations;

    he will swallow up death forever.

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

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

    for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day,

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

    This is the Lord for whom we have waited;

    let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

Isaiah 25:6-9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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