Author: jonathan.kimball

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on July 21, 2024. Based on Ephesians 2:11-22.

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In this passage of Ephesians, Paul talks about a dividing wall of hostility that separated Gentiles and Jews. Why? What caused this division? Well, it all went back to the Law of Moses as it was understood and practiced. I’m going to assume that you are all aware of kosher laws in some general way but not in the particulars. There are obvious and easy rules like no pork or shellfish. But truly keeping kosher requires a whole lot more effort than that.

For example, there is a verse in Exodus, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” I don’t think anyone knows where that rule really comes from. Maybe it was some pagan ritual that God outlawed through Moses. Whatever the origin, this is an important part of the kosher laws. It’s hard to know what cow provided the milk you drink, or that you used to make a particular block of cheese. So, to be safe, Jews never boil any meat in any milk, or otherwise allow dairy products to contact their meat. OK, fair enough, no cheeseburgers. Well, how clean do you get your pots and plates and silverware? Is it possible that a little bit of meat residue remains, or a little bit of dairy residue remains? Well, we don’t want to take a chance. So, a fully observant orthodox Jew will have completely separate kitchen items, maybe even a completely separate kitchen. They’ll have pots and pans and plates and silverware that they use for meat dishes, and a completely other set that they use for anything that has dairy.

This is just one of the many rules that cover both the letter of the Law as reported in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and the “fence around the Law” that rabbis developed over the centuries. So let’s imagine you’re an observant Jew in Paul’s time who is striving to follow all of the rules in every circumstance. Suppose a Gentile invites you over for dinner in a show of hospitality. You get there, and first you see that there is meat and cheese on the table. Whoa, hold on. We can’t be eating those together. Then you ask your host how the animal was killed. The kosher laws include lots of details on how animals should be butchered. Your host says, Oh, I don’t know, they took care of it down at the Temple of Artemis. Now hold on. You can’t be eating meat that was sacrificed to some other god. It just keeps going from bad to worse.

So what do you do? You don’t eat anything you’re served. You can’t be sure it was prepared properly, so instead of taking a chance, you refuse the hospitality that is offered to you. You think to yourself, These God-forsaken pagans can never know my Lord if they won’t try to learn God’s rules. Now, not every Jew had this reaction, and there were and are a diversity of ways that Jews observe the Torah, but at least some Jews would have reacted this way.

Now imagine you are that Gentile host. You went to a lot of trouble and expense to offer the best you have to a potential new friend. And what do you get in return? They turn up their nose, say that your food isn’t good enough for them, refuse your hospitality. Well fine. Let them keep to themselves and we’ll keep to ourselves.

This scene played out enough times to establish that Jews and Gentiles just aren’t compatible. In addition to not eating together, which of course is kind of a big deal for hospitality, Jews and Gentiles would not mingle in the same social circles. They maintained completely separate cultures. The separation between Jews and other religions persists to today.

But Paul said, “In his flesh [Jesus Christ] has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” How can the dividing wall be broken down? Only by breaking down the Law of Moses. As long as the Law remains, there will always be a reason for Jews and Gentiles to stay separate. There will always be conflict and resentment. So Paul said that through Christ, the Law has been made ineffective, allowing Jews to freely mingle with Gentiles as one people, members of God’s household.

Before Christ, there was an “inside” and an “outside”—Jews were insiders and Gentiles were outsiders. Now that Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, there is only “inside.” Jews and Gentiles alike are part of God’s family with equal access through the Holy Spirit. Easy to say, hard to do. After centuries of living separate lives and developing separate cultures, simply saying, “The distinctions don’t matter anymore,” isn’t sufficient to bring people together. Our natural inclination is to develop factions. We tend to congregate with people who think alike, who look alike, who act alike.

What divides people today? In Paul’s context, the important division was between Jew and Gentile—a religious and cultural difference. Those divisions exist still today. There is hostility between Christians and atheists. There is hostility between different kinds of Christians, whether Presbyterian or Catholic or Baptist or whatever. There is hostility between American Christians and Christians in Africa and the Global South.

But looking beyond the church, there are lots of other ways we divide ourselves. It seems like politics is the strong undercurrent that drives so many disagreements, especially in a presidential election year. Things have gotten particularly heated and even violent last week with the assassination attempt. Violence is never acceptable, but is the natural result of the apocalyptic rhetoric and our culture of glorifying violence. We don’t really know what drove the shooter, but perhaps a desire for fame or notoriety. Regardless, I’m not looking forward to the next six months of campaigns and election aftermath. Whoever wins, it’s going to be ugly, potentially violent, and relationships will certainly be damaged or broken.

What else? What other ways do we find to divide ourselves? Ethnicity. Language. Gender. Age. Class. Wealth. The list goes on and on. In some cases, the formal divisions have ended, but the damage persists because, like the Jews and Gentiles, simply saying “there is no reason for conflict” doesn’t eliminate it. For example, it was IN MY LIFETIME that women were given the right to get loans in their own names. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed in 1974 and prohibited discrimination against a loan or credit applicant for reasons related to sex, marital status or familial status (as well as race, religion, and other reasons). I suspect that there are people here today whose lives would have been different if the rules had changed earlier. I also know that a decade later, probably two or three decades later, probably even today a half-century later, women still had and have trouble getting salesmen to respect them as individuals capable of making independent financial decisions. This is just one of the many ways that artificial divisions exist in our society and persist even after laws change.

We may be Presbyterians, but we are also Americans. We spend an hour or two each week focused on our church family, but the other 160+ hours living in American culture. We cannot help but inject our American attitudes into our church life. We cannot help but develop a church culture that looks an awful lot like American culture, but hopefully with more love of God and love of neighbor than most people.

So the question I would put to you is this: What aspects of our American culture and congregational culture have we imported into God’s kingdom, that inadvertently create barriers that keep people out? I believe that God’s realm is a state of universal human flourishing—universal, not just for a few people, but for everyone. God’s love is on offer to everyone who seeks it. What do we do that creates barriers? Do we actually have “open doors”?

When I look out at this congregation, I mostly see middle-class, educated Baby Boomers. That’s not a value assessment—that’s just a factual statement of who we are. Problems arise when we take our perspectives as the norm and expect others to conform to us. For example, in 2016, we had our Christmas Eve service at 5:00 pm. I didn’t think much about it, because I have never had to work past noon on Christmas Eve. Schools are closed, so teachers and other staff are off. Of course, if you’re retired, then you’re not tied to a work schedule. But there are plenty of jobs for which Christmas DAY is a holiday, but Christmas EVE is not. This was a decision that was made without any malice or exclusionary impulse, but that did in fact exclude certain people from attending worship.

In what other ways do we take our own lifestyles, attitudes, and family situations as normative? On the one hand, we should adapt to the people who show up, but on the other hand, we should meet people where they are. We all have a particular vision of what it means to worship God, and what a sanctuary should look like, and how the liturgy and music should flow, and so forth. For most of us, that vision has been shaped by many years or decades of worshipping in this church, or perhaps in other similar churches. But none of what we do is the One True Way to Worship God. In talking with my family members and friends who attend other churches, there is a ton of diversity, a wide range of ways that people can authentically worship the same God that we do.

Now, you might say that having a worship service that looks like the broader culture is giving in and abandoning our principles. But again I’ll say, none of what we do is the One True Way to Worship God, and we are called to meet people where they are and invite them into God’s family, not to force them to become like us first.

Once we meet people where they are, our goal should be to enable them to connect to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and to live in shalom, just like the banner says. Paul repeatedly uses the word “peace” in this passage: For Christ is our peace, who proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, but it means far more than the absence of violence. In the book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, Christian author Cornelius Plantinga described the biblical concept of shalom:

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.

Think about that: shalom is the way things ought to be. Life in Christ is universal flourishing, wholeness, the way God intended for life to be. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that something you want everyone to experience? The promise of the Gospel is that shalom is available to everyone if they choose to participate. But how can they choose to participate if nobody offers them that choice? If a person thinks that they are unworthy of God, or thinks that all churches are full of hypocrites who can’t possibly point them to God, or wants to participate but doesn’t know how or where to start, then it is incumbent on us to reach out to them, meet them where they are, identify whatever barriers they are encountering, and break them down.

In a recent discussion about spirituality that I attended, we talked about challenges on the spiritual journey. The biggest one that came up was fear. Too many people who were raised in a church were raised to fear God’s wrath, rather than welcoming God’s love. They were raised to fear that if they do something wrong, they’ll burn in Hell in eternal conscious torment. This fear is reinforced by cultural messages that seem to say that all Christian churches preach “fire and brimstone.” But I saw this Justin Buzzard quote circulating on the internet: “Christianity should feel like ‘My chains fell off’ not ‘I better not screw up.’” There is reconciliation through Christ, forgiveness and love and healing and wholeness. We should radiate that love to all who enter our doors.

Another challenge that came up is one that I struggled with for many years. I thought that I was self-sufficient and that I didn’t need God. This whole Christianity thing didn’t make much sense anyway, so why bother? I know there are lots of young people out there, by which I mean people younger than me, who feel the same way. But someday, they may have a life event that shows them that no, they really aren’t self-sufficient and they need something else in their lives. How can we be that something, a hospital for the spiritually sick, a place where people can turn when they have nowhere else to go?

The core of the Gospel is this: The kingdom of God is at hand! Shalom, peace, healing, wholeness, and flourishing are all available to everyone. Let us seek God’s guidance and wisdom to see the barriers that people encounter and then do our part to remove those barriers, to enable them to welcome Christ’s reign in their lives. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on July 7, 2024. Based on Mark 6:1-13.

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Carol Dweck is a psychologist whose 2006 book, called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, brought her work into popular culture. To oversimplify, she categorized people as having one of two mindsets: fixed or growth. With a fixed mindset, you believe that intelligence or abilities are fixed and not worth trying to change. Here are some example statements:

• I believe that people are born smart or dumb and can never change.
• I think it is too late for most people to learn and gain a new perspective.
• I am who I am, and there is nothing I can do to change that.

By contrast, someone with a growth mindset recognizes that nothing is carved in stone. Sure, some people have more ability in some areas than others, but everyone is able to change and grow in some way. Typical statements include:

• I believe that everyone can learn something new and become good at it over time.
• I always try, even if I think I will fail—failure is just another opportunity to learn, which can help me succeed the next time.
• I think that every opportunity is a chance to grow my knowledge; I can always learn something new.

Now, the reality is that everyone has both fixed and growth mindsets in different parts of their lives. For example, I generally believe that I can’t dance and won’t ever be able to dance. Now, is that really true? Probably not. I took dance lessons as a kid and have decent rhythm. Mostly, I don’t want to change, so I convince myself that I can’t change.

This concept has escaped from academic discourse into pop science or even pseudo-science, so I need to be careful here. Just because you believe you can change doesn’t mean that you can do anything you want. I’m pretty sure that I’ll never play in the NBA, no matter how much I believe I can become a better basketball player. But I can say that if you don’t believe that you can change, you almost certainly won’t change. If you don’t believe that you can ever understand the Bible, you won’t take up the practices that would enable you to understand it. If you don’t believe that you can learn how to sing, you won’t try to sing along with the congregation or join the choir or do anything else that would enable you to become a good singer.

A particularly dangerous form of a fixed mindset is one that is applied to other people. You might believe that, say, a homeless person can never become a stable, productive member of the community. You might believe that people of a certain gender or age or race or ethnicity are incapable of achieving some goal. That belief is thankfully less prevalent now than it was a generation or two ago, but it still lurks beneath the surface of discussions about immigration, for example. Every parent has probably closed off one dream or another of their children because they didn’t believe their child was capable of succeeding in that particular field. Many friendships and family relationships are broken and never heal because neither person thinks that the other one can change.

The people of Nazareth suffered from this form of fixed mindset. They knew Jesus when he was a little kid, and when he grew up and apprenticed as a carpenter with his father. They could imagine him as a good carpenter, but they couldn’t imagine him as a prophet, let alone the Messiah.

I think I’ve mentioned before that my sister is a United Methodist pastor. In the United Methodist Church, the bishop assigns pastors to churches, in consultation with the individual churches as well as district superintendents. One basic principle they follow, though, is that pastors are not assigned to the church where they grew up. See, when my sister was ordained, she became Pastor Jennifer, and she has been an acknowledged pastoral leader in every church she has served. But if she had been assigned to the church where she grew up, there would have been at least some people who couldn’t get past seeing her as little Jennie, the six-year-old girl with pigtails, instead of Pastor Jennifer, the dynamic preacher and leader she grew into.

In the same way, those who knew Jesus, the little boy, couldn’t accept Jesus the Messiah. As a result, they missed out on the glorious life that is available through Christ and in Christ. He was unable to do any deeds of power, so the Nazarenes did not get to witness the inbreaking of God’s kingdom.

The apostles, though, embraced Jesus. These were just ordinary men. We know most of them were fishermen, simple folk trying to eke out a living. One was a tax collector, an outcast that nobody would respect. And yet, they all embraced the possibility of growth. They trusted that Jesus could help them become something more, and become a part of something bigger than themselves. Throughout the Gospels, they all seem kind of obtuse, which I suppose makes sense since they were fishermen, not theologians. But they kept trying and eventually learned what Jesus was trying to teach them, and when the Holy Spirit energized them, they were transformed into the leaders of what became a new religion.

In the same way, God can change each one of us, if we are willing to embrace the opportunity. Through Christ, God’s kingdom is available to everyone. God’s realm is a state of being in which everyone can thrive and flourish and grow. Through Christ, everyone can experience God’s power, but not everyone chooses to do so. The people of Nazareth chose not to, and so they did not experience any of Jesus’s deeds of power. The apostles chose to live into Christ, and so they grew into spiritual leaders. I made that choice, too. It was a little trickier for me, given that Jesus was not physically standing there calling to me like he did on the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee. I had to listen a little more closely to hear his voice. Yet I was willing to change and grow. Down deep in my core, I’m the same person that I’ve always been, a beloved child of God. Yet the way my deepest self is expressed has changed dramatically. If you knew me twenty years ago, you would not have ever expected to see me in a pulpit. Even five years ago, I had a lot to learn about leading and interacting with people, and I still do. But compared to where I was before committing to a life in Christ, I have grown tremendously.

You too can change and grow. You might think you’re too old or too set in your ways or what have you, but as long as you have breath, you can grow. In fact, you probably wouldn’t be here today if you didn’t believe that you could still grow in Christ. We will never become perfect in this life, but we can always improve. We can always more nearly approach God’s will and God’s vision for us.

In a lot of ways, an organization is like a person. Just as a person can have a fixed or growth mindset, an organization can have a certain mindset as well. You may think that you can personally change, but that the church never will. But that’s wrong. We CAN change. In fact, if you think about who we were a decade ago, you will realize that we have grown tremendously. From time to time, as our affirmation of faith, we use the Prayer for Listening and Speaking that the session composed while John Oerter was our pastor. It’s easy to forget how urgently we needed that prayer, how urgently we needed to heal the ways we were communicating and interacting with one another. We have healed and grown, and are a much more unified congregation than we were back then.

We can continue to grow and change if we choose to do so. If we simply accept that the church we are today is who we will always be, we will slowly decline. We will cease to represent God’s kingdom. We will prop each other up, but we won’t really have any impact on the community. But if instead, we believe that God is still at work in the world, and specifically that God is still at work among us, we can continue to grow and change. God’s grace will fall like rain, flowing over and through us, empowering us to become the church God intends for us to be.

I believe that God still has a plan for us. I believe that we have a message of love that people in Rolla need to hear. I believe that we have a vision of Christian community that people in Rolla need to participate in. Yet too often, we are held back by our self-image as an unchanging and unchangeable institution.

Jesus encountered plenty of people with a fixed mindset. Besides the people of Nazareth, he had to deal with the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees who all had an understanding of God that they had inherited from their forefathers and that they could not imagine changing. Sometimes, Jesus would verbally spar with his opponents, trying to get them to understand who God is and what God’s kingdom is like. Yet their fixed mindset was a barrier to them accepting this new teaching.

So for the most part, Jesus moved on. Rather than spending all of his time trying to get inflexible people to open their minds to a new teaching, he went where the seeds of his message found fertile soil. He told his apostles to do the same—if they were not welcomed, they were supposed to just move on to the next village. Yet when Jesus was welcomed, and when his apostles were welcomed, the world changed. The blind would receive sight, the lame would walk, the sick would be healed, and the outsider would become a part of the community again.

This same opportunity and this same choice come to us today, and every day. Each day, we can choose to cling to the received wisdom of our forerunners, cling to our old ways of being the church, and accept our current reality as the only reality. OR, we can choose to embrace change, embrace the possibility of new life in Christ, and allow God’s grace to flow down on us and out through us. Let us seek now to choose new life, to embrace the possibilities that are available to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Mark 4:26-34.

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Most of you know that I hunt elk and deer. But that’s not all. I hunt squirrels and doves, too. Doves are an entirely different form of hunting because you shoot them as they are flying by. It’s a very active experience. I’m not a very good shooter, so I average two or three doves per box of 25 shotgun shells. To have any chance at all, you need a reasonably sized field with appropriate food for them, and multiple hunters to keep things moving.

A typical dove field is at least two acres, sometimes five or ten or even larger. Sunflowers are the most common crop, but I’ve seen corn, millet, and buckwheat. The idea is for the crop to mature to the point of producing seeds a couple of weeks before the season opens on September 1, so that the doves have time to find the field. Actually, it takes a couple of years before the doves reliably come back to the field, but they’ll only start coming if you do things right in the first place. Anyway, when the time is right, you bush-hog the field in strips so that there is food on the ground for the doves, then hope for the best.

Several times, I have gone hunting on public land in Missouri. The last couple of years, though, Missouri Department of Conservation hasn’t had funding to plant, so I haven’t been able to go here. Instead, I’ve gone up to my father-in-law’s house near Effingham. Ron has been trying for a few years now to get a dove field going, with little to show for it so far.

First off, his field is just a little too small. It’s more like one-and-a-half acres instead of two. He’s also in the middle of farmland, so his field needs to be extremely attractive to really draw doves in.

Secondly, he has tried different crops and different planting schemes. One year, he used too much seed for the space. The seeds all sprouted, but they didn’t mature and produce a good harvest. Another year, he got the crop planted too late for it to mature in time. Yet another year, his crops matured too early, so the doves had come and gone before the season started.

This year, he’s going to try again one last time to see if he can get it right. As I mentioned, doves actually take a few years to reliably return to a given field. So perhaps he has done enough over the past few years that if he gets a good crop with the right timing, he’ll have success.

I’m not much of a farmer myself. I’m not even much of a gardener, but Rhonda is. It’s too hard for her to get down to plants on the ground, so I built her a couple of containers like the church used to have. We have had varying levels of success with them. Like her dad sowing too much seed in his dove field, Rhonda sometimes plants too many plants in a single container. Also, we have had to experiment with different kinds of plants. Tomatoes seem to do pretty well, as long as you keep them watered. You would think that pepper plants would be about like tomatoes, but you would be wrong. We haven’t had any success growing peppers of any kind in containers, so this year, I planted some down on the ground. Similarly, cucumbers need to be planted in the ground and need a lot of space and the right conditions. Last year, we tried them in a spot that isn’t really sunny enough, and only harvested a few small, misshapen cucumbers. We moved to a different area this year, and so far things look OK, but we have a long way to go.

Jesus was talking to an audience who was intimately familiar with all of this and much, much more. Many of them would have been subsistence farmers, whose life depended on knowing as much as possible about growing crops. They had to know when to plant, what kinds of crops thrived on the land that they could use, how to prepare the soil, how to care for the seedlings, and more. Yet Jesus said, “The seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.” As much as ancient farmers knew, they were still ignorant of many of the most basic agricultural concepts that have enabled modern society to enjoy plentiful food.

If someone mentions a parable about sowing seeds, your first thought is probably a totally different parable that Jesus told about different kinds of soil where the seeds landed—on the path, rocky soil, among weeds, and good soil that produced a hundredfold. In that parable, Jesus was talking about evangelism. If you want to spread the Gospel, your best bet is to sow love as broadly as possible. Love is a limitless resource, and in fact, the more you give, the more you have to give. Especially if you let God’s love channel through you, to continually renew you.

But we have other limits that we need to be aware of. Time, first and foremost. Ming alluded to that last week during our informational meeting—how can I possibly have time to do more? Well, I’ll just need to be efficient. But even at maximum efficiency, there are only so many hours in the day, so there’s only so much that I personally can do. Each one of us has limits on our time, and commitments that we cannot avoid or abandon. Plus, there are only so many people who are available to serve our church right now.

Energy is another one. As we age, we have less and less energy and can’t accomplish everything we used to. Oh, we gain wisdom, so that we can work smarter, but that only partially compensates for the fact that our muscles and joints are declining. Another aspect is that some activities revive us, and some drain us. I am naturally an introvert, so spending time in a crowd is sometimes very draining for me. Other people are extraverts and are energized by spending time with friends. Everyone has tasks in their lives that drain them spiritually or emotionally, much more than just the physical effort. And sometimes it’s not the task itself, but the amount. If I volunteer at the Mission to serve one meal a week, I leave feeling energized from having accomplished a good deed. If I do two meals in a week, or try to serve in some other way, it drains me. It shifts from being a joy to being an obligation. It’s important to be cognizant of those things that bring you joy and energy and those things that drain you, and manage your energy level accordingly.

Money is another limitation. It would be wonderful if we could replace our sanctuary doors, upgrade our sound system, and make many other improvements to our church building. It would be wonderful if we could hire a full-time pastor plus a full-time youth or campus minister. Give me a few minutes and I’ll think of lots of ways we could spend more money. But the reality is that we have limited financial resources that we need to manage and allocate for our operations and for new ministries.

So given all of these limitations, we need to be strategic. We cannot be all things to all people, but we can meet some people where they are and help them enter the kingdom of God. We should never turn anyone away, but if we try to do everything, we’ll accomplish nothing.

For example, Fort Leonard Wood is a substantial mission field for Rolla area churches. I don’t know how many people come through the fort on an annual basis, but I know it’s a lot. Some are only here for a few weeks, others for months or years, and still others retire from the military and stay around for decades, working as civilians. These are people who are hungry for interpersonal connections, since each time they move, their lives are disrupted. We could figure out how to reach them and invite them into our Christian fellowship.

It’s a great idea—not mine, one that came up in a discussion with session. But the question is, how do we make it happen? Who has the burning desire to serve that population, enough so that they will learn their needs, determine the best way to connect with them, and coordinate a group of our members to surround them with love? If we do it half-heartedly, we can do more harm than good. Growing the kingdom of God is not the work of a month or a season, but of a lifetime. If we start some outreach and then fade away, people at the fort who stick around will remember us as a flaky church that can’t be trusted.

So, maybe that’s a great idea that we don’t have the bandwidth for. Or, maybe it’s a great idea that we need to talk about more broadly and find a little group who has the passion to make it happen. The effort needs to grow from a sincere, heartfelt desire.

Assuming that all goes well with my commissioning process, my plan is to start learning all of the great ideas that I know are lingering out there in the congregation, and then try to find some commonalities. I’ll try to find two or three or four people who have a shared vision, and then try to give them the tools and support they need to succeed. That’s something that I think I have learned how to do over the past four years of leadership on campus and in the community—not so much to execute my own vision, but to enable other people to pursue their vision. To provide behind-the-scenes support so that others can do the work that suits their particular skills the best.

As we go, there’s another important agricultural practice we need to keep on our list: pruning. If you are growing grapes or berries, it’s important to prune the vine so that the plant has enough resources to produce good fruit. If you don’t prune it, the plant needs to put too much of its energy into growing the vine and not enough into the fruit. In fact, Rhonda has been doing this with her tomato plants. She prunes off some of the branches so that the remaining branches are stronger and healthier.

Pruning your life or the life of a church or other organization is much harder. Pruning a church’s ministries means ending something that you care deeply about, but that has become more of a drain on your resources than a source of life. My friend Sharon starts Vacation Bible School tomorrow. Her church is part of a coalition that works together on several activities, VBS chief among them. They have struggled just a bit since the pandemic, but they still have the people and the energy to make VBS happen. We stopped doing VBS even before the pandemic because it became just too much work, falling on too few people, for the limited impact that we had. Of course, now, it would be hard to have VBS without severely disrupting the preschool’s operations. None of this means that VBS is a bad thing to do in the abstract; it was just something that we needed to prune so that we could put our time, energy, and other resources to work elsewhere for the good of the kingdom of God. It was something that didn’t work during this season of the church’s life.

Fired Up! falls into that category, too. I dearly loved leading Fired Up! and valued the time we spent in that form of worship with a smaller, more intimate group. But there’s NO WAY that I could lead Fired Up! and be preaching here today, or doing any of the myriad other things I do for the church. So, it had to be pruned.

As we move forward, there will likely be other things that we have to prune away. We may start some things that don’t work out. We may start something that ends up crowding out something else that we’re doing. We may find that some things that we thought were essential, are actually vestiges of a different era that are no longer life-giving.

The promise of the Gospel, though, is that the kingdom of God is at hand! If we follow the Spirit’s leading, if we plant the right seeds, if we commit ourselves to channeling God’s love, Jesus taught that God will give the growth. A spiritual advisor once told me that God does 98% of the work. We have to do our 2%—we have to sow the right seeds in the right soil—but if we do, God will do the rest. We have limited time, energy, money, and people, but our infinite Lord will give us the growth. With that growth will come more resources, more ideas, more love to share, more abundant life. Now may God bless us with the wisdom to choose the right seeds and the energy and courage to do our part in growing God’s kingdom. Amen.

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Sermon preached June 9, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Mark 3:20-35.

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A few times in the Gospel of Mark, and a few other places in the Bible, we encounter a rhetorical figure known as an inclusio. One of the most famous examples is the story about the woman who had a hemorrhage. In that story, Jesus starts off towards the home of Jairus, a leader of the synagogue whose daughter is dying. On the way, a woman with a hemorrhage touches his garment and is healed. Then Jesus gets to Jairus’s home and heals the daughter. So an inclusio is where one story is inserted in the middle of another one, like meat in a sandwich.

In today’s lesson, we start out with Jesus going into a house that was extremely crowded, so much that his family was worried about him. Then we have some interchange between Jesus and the scribes about casting out demons. Finally, we wrap up the story about Jesus and his family.

Whenever you encounter an inclusio, you should ask yourself, what do these two stories have to do with one another? I mean, Mark could have told the story in a totally different way. He could have told the story about Jesus’s family, and then told the story of the exchange with the scribes. You might say, Well, Mark was just telling things in the order that they happened. Wrong. That’s not how ancient authors told stories, or modern authors for that matter. When I’m telling a hunting story or a story about my childhood or college or whatever, the details are mostly correct, but seldom in the right order. I arrange the details to suit the purposes of the moment. In the same way, Mark constructs these inclusios to point us towards the connections between the two interwoven stories.

So first, let’s talk about the meat. The scribes are so incensed at what Jesus is doing that they travel from Jerusalem to wherever Jesus is calling home right now, probably Capernaum. They were upset at what Jesus was preaching, and at the signs he was performing, so they made up a story that he was himself possessed by a demon. Jesus points out the foolishness of this assertion. If he were working by the power of Beelzebul, wouldn’t he want his demons to keep causing mischief and misery? Why would he be casting them out from the people they had possessed?

In our post-Enlightenment way of thinking, we imagine that the people that Jesus healed were epileptic or had schizophrenia or something like that. But to the people that Jesus spoke to, the demons were very real. This was spiritual warfare, and Jesus was winning. The scribes were proposing that Jesus wasn’t on God’s side and defeating evil, but instead was like a general on the devil’s side telling his demonic troops to retreat. How ridiculous! A house divided cannot stand. If Beelzebul is telling his demons to retreat, then he has lost already. But if Jesus was who he said he was, he had Beelzebul on the run.

There is a larger message here, though. Not only is Jesus defending himself against ridiculous accusations, but also, he is telling us how important unity is. A kingdom divided cannot stand, and neither can the Church, which is Christ’s body. If Christ’s body is divided, where is its strength?

The last time the Jesus movement was really unified was probably during the Last Supper. Then Judas slipped out and splintered off from the movement, Jesus and the rest of the disciples went to the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was arrested, and everyone scattered. After his resurrection, the movement lived on and there was apparent unity in the early part of Acts, but we can see signs of disunity later in Acts, in Paul’s letters, and in other New Testament writings. In the two millennia since then, the situation has gotten worse and worse: we have perhaps 200 denominations in America and 45,000 worldwide. At first, the divisions were largely about whether Christians needed to be Jews, too. Then there were a bunch of theological divisions, for example, Marcion’s followers being cast out, and Gnosticism being declared heretical. At some point, the Oriental Orthodox Church split off from the Chalcedonian church, and then later the Roman Catholic Church split from the Eastern Orthodox Church, partly over theological disputes and partly over power and authority.

In the centuries that followed, some of the controversies that led to division were about theology, some were about power, and some were about social issues. Often, all three were at work, such as a theological justification for what was really a power struggle between two groups with different cultural backgrounds. Lately, it seems that most of the splits are related to social issues. There is a great sorting going on, where denominations are becoming increasingly extreme—the liberal churches are getting more liberal while the conservative churches are getting more conservative. Few have managed to maintain a middle position. Most of the time, theological or social moderates simply opt out altogether.

We are all the worse for it. We are all better off when we recognize that each of us is just trying to follow God as best we understand.

Most of the differences among churches come down to orthodoxy: we believe different things about God, salvation, relationships, authority, the Bible, and so forth. Orthodoxy is a great way to sow division, since so much of theology is so difficult to understand anyway and it can be twisted to appear to support almost any position. I think it’s more important to focus on orthopraxy, which is to say, we should focus on how we act, not what we think. CrossRoads is an excellent example of a church built on orthopraxy. That’s the congregation that meets above the Mission, where the Vineyard used to be. CrossRoads is clearly Christian, but they have no faith statement that one member could use against another or that they could use against outsiders. Instead, they have core values: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love, unity. These aren’t exactly the same as Paul’s list of fruits of the spirit, but there is some overlap. What I want to highlight, though, is that while their pastor, Patrick, preaches the Gospel, none of these core values rest on believing in, say, an inerrant Bible or a particular understanding of the Trinity. None of them rest on saying the sinner’s prayer or reciting the Nicene Creed, as we will do shortly. Yet all of them are core attributes of the kingdom of God. All of them are ways that we should treat each other if we desire to live as one big family, God’s family, God’s kin.

Which brings us back to the “bread” of the inclusio sandwich. The passage today starts with people saying that Jesus is out of his mind and asking his family to come talk to him about it. This is classic triangulation. Do you remember John Oerter talking about triangulation? That’s where person A has a problem with person B, but instead of going to person B, they tell person C to “do something.” Here the scribes enlist Jesus’s family to “do something” about this crazy guy who is messing up their plans. What does the family actually think? We don’t know. It appears to me that the family has been manipulated by gossip to serve as tools of the scribes. The scribes couldn’t get to Jesus any other way, so they use his family against him.

We don’t really know much about Jesus’s family or their relationships with him during his ministry. We know that after his resurrection and ascension, his brother James became a central figure in the early church. We know that his mother Mary was around at the start of his ministry, the wedding at Cana, and she appears periodically throughout the story, including at the foot of the cross. But we don’t know if they followed him during his lifetime. In fact, their absence from the narrative speaks volumes. Here he is, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, with a dozen close companions and perhaps thousands of followers, but his own family isn’t among them. In Luke, when Jesus makes his first speech in his hometown of Nazareth, did his family step up to protect him from the crowd? No.

It seems to me that Jesus had kind of a difficult relationship with his family. In that way, he was quintessentially human. Many people have strained relationships with their family of origin. Some of us are blessed to have positive relationships with at least some portion of our family, but there is always a little bit of pain, too. Relationships are hard and people are inflexible at times, so the people who we love the most are the most likely to hurt us in some way. This is no criticism of anyone; this is just the way human relationships work.

We all bear the marks of our families of origin, good or bad. My mom always says, “We are destined to be like our parents,” and I definitely see both of my parents in myself and in my siblings. I definitely see both Rhonda and me in both of our kids. For good or for bad, families leave their marks on us. They form us into who we are, in ways that we can never truly transcend.

But then Jesus closes this scene by saying, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” I will always be a part of the family that raised me, but I can also choose to become part of God’s family. Jesus has given us an invitation. We are already welcome in God’s family, just as we are. All that Jesus asks is that we choose to join it.

In a sense, the traditions that say you must invite Jesus into your heart are right about something: Jesus is ready to enter each person’s life, to transform each person’s heart, but he won’t force his way in. Just as soon as we choose to do the will of God, we become an active part of Christ’s family. We don’t have to change who we are, but we do have to change our actions, our attitudes, our behaviors. We do have to practice compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love, and unity.

In so doing, we become a part of Christ’s family, and more than that, we become a part of Christ’s body, which is the Church. Whether we call ourselves Presbyterian or Episcopalian or Catholic or Christian or none of the above, if we do God’s will, we become a part of Christ’s family. And what is God’s will? To spread the message of love, peace, and reconciliation that is at the heart of the Gospel. To spread this message in words and deeds. To spread this message through healing—healing the sick, healing the brokenhearted, healing the community, healing relationships.

As the Spirit works through us, healing the world, spreading God’s love, we become a part of Christ’s family, the kin-dom of God. We become an exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world. We continue the process of transformation that has been at work for thousands of years and that begins anew as each generation once again seeks the unity of the Holy Spirit that is at the root of a healthy community.

Who is my family? You. Each one of you, who are all striving to do God’s will. We all fall short, and yet Christ’s continual forgiveness enables us to remain connected to Him throughout our spiritual journey. Now may Christ continue to walk with each of us and with all of us together as we strive to build Christ’s family throughout the community and around the world. Amen.

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Sermon preached June 2, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on 2 Corinthians 4:1-12. If you listen to the podcast, the meditation begins at 20:24.

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We have this treasure in jars of clay. Hmmm. What exactly is meant by “jars of clay”? Well, in Paul’s time, clay jars were the most common storage unit. Anything that had to be ceremonially clean, like water for the mikveh, used stone jars since clay jars could have unclean residue. Most of the vessels used at the Temple were gold, silver, or bronze. But for day-to-day use, clay jars were the common choice. Fragile, common, unassuming.

When I read this passage, I thought of this teapot. (bring it out) Rhonda has had this teapot longer than I’ve known her. It originally belonged to her great-grandmother. She said that almost immediately, she broke the lid, but then repaired it. Clay pottery is fragile like that! She started putting coins in it, and eventually, it became a repository for lots of interesting money. (Pull out a few coins/bills/etc.)

Then the other day, I noticed this on the dresser. This is a clay jar that one of our kids made in elementary school. Rhonda uses it to store jewelry. Now, anything really valuable, we keep in a safe or in the bank. But for general storage, for items of curiosity or items we might use regularly, this pot or this jar are perfectly fine.

If Paul were writing to modern Americans, instead of clay jars, he might say that we have this treasure in Tupperware. Can you imagine keeping your most prized possessions in some cheap Walmart Tupperware?

Yet that’s exactly what Paul is likening us to. We are just simple clay jars or Tupperware, or maybe old margarine containers, but we are entrusted with the most valuable treasure in the universe: God’s love. Modern spirituality focuses mainly on self-improvement and connecting with God, which is to say, it focuses mainly on either making ourselves into fancier clay jars or filling ourselves with more treasure.

Each summer—well, I’ve done it twice now, and I’m signed up to go again this year—each summer, I go on retreat at the White House Retreat Center. Over the course of three days of silence, I listen to preaching, I pray, I read, I go on spiritual walks, that sort of thing. It’s a Jesuit center, so of course the worship is Roman Catholic, but that’s OK. We all pray to the same God. Anyway, the purpose of the retreat is spiritual formation. I come home refreshed, renewed, re-connected to God, and with a new perspective. I’m filled with the Spirit. The treasure in my clay jar has been topped off.

Other people meditate, or go on nature walks, or otherwise try to step away from the world. Now, this is great! As far as it goes. In fact, I remember encouraging spiritual practices on several occasions, things like reading the Bible, or prayer, or whatever. All of these practices and experiences help to make us better pottery or fill us with more spiritual treasure. But at the end of the day, we still hold this treasure in jars of clay. Making ourselves better people is a good thing, but is not truly the Gospel.

What is the Gospel? The kingdom of God is at hand! We go forth into the world spreading this good news, not to draw attention to ourselves, but to direct attention to God. Once, Mary properly chastised me for wearing beard ornaments in the pulpit. I like to be festive, but when I’m preaching, the focus should not be on me, not even on the words that I say, but on the Word Made Flesh that my words point to. In the same way, each time we proclaim the Gospel, we should point not to ourselves, but to the kingdom of God.

Evangelism is kind of a dirty word to many people, largely because of the awful ways some people do it. The very worst are the people who come to campus and shout at students about how terrible and sinful they are. But there are plenty of other examples of bad evangelism. Usually, the end goal of the evangelizer is to make you join them. They want you to believe exactly what they believe, pray exactly as they pray, and so forth. I’ve seen memes about “winning souls.” They want to conquer you and make you a part of their team.

Paul’s message here, though, is that we should not be proclaiming ourselves, but Christ. Now, I do appreciate being recognized on the street, and being connected to the message that I strive to proclaim. The other day, when I was running, I passed a guy I’ve never met but who I’ve seen on the street before. We said hello, and then he said, “I really appreciate your articles in the paper!” I take that as a good sign that my words are reaching beyond this congregation and maybe helping people connect with the God I know and love. The fact that he recognizes me and connects me with my writing means that someday, perhaps, we can have a more substantial conversation than a cordial “Good morning!” Perhaps someday, he’ll share his perspective with me as well, and we can learn from each other.

I would love it if he were to also connect my message with this congregation and come worship with us, but that’s not really the point. Our task is not so much to build this congregation as it is to build the kingdom of God. I believe that if we keep our focus on preaching Christ, preaching a loving God, preaching about a world of universal human flourishing, that other people will want to be a part of what we’re doing here. That’s how we will grow—by being a church that is doing something that people want to participate in.

But as Paul said, we proclaim not ourselves, but Christ. If people join us in worship, it won’t be because of who we are, but because this is a place where they can encounter God. In modern America, people are hungry for connection and for being a part of something bigger than themselves. There is nothing bigger than the kingdom of God! We should strive to make our congregation a visible manifestation of God’s realm, just one among many.

In our creeds, especially the Nicene and Apostles Creeds, we confess to one holy, catholic, apostolic Church. Holy: we are set apart to belong to God. Catholic: not in the sense that Jesuits are Roman Catholics, but universal. We are one Church who worship one God. We should pursue unity in the Church, while recognizing diversity.

We are also an apostolic Church. An apostle is one who is sent out into the world. A disciple is a follower of a teacher, such as Jesus of Nazareth. An apostle is one who is sent out to carry the teacher’s message to others. We are like ambassadors of God’s kingdom, striving to establish diplomatic relations with the world and encourage others to join in.

Indeed, being an apostle, or an evangelizer, encompasses roughly half of the Great Ends of the Church, which are: The proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; The shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; The maintenance of divine worship; The preservation of the truth; The promotion of social righteousness; and The exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world. As the Church, we are called to proclaim the gospel, promote social righteousness, and exhibit the kingdom of heaven. These are apostolic callings. We have this treasure from God, and are called to put it to good use in the world.

Being an apostle, or an evangelizer, is hard. Look at Paul: afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed. Why was he able to endure? Because he had Christ to support him. He knew that the treasure he had received only had value if he shared it, and he knew that Christ’s love is an endless fountain of blessing welling up within him.

I’d like to share a couple of practices with you, ways that you can be strengthened and emboldened to continue proclaiming the Gospel and exhibiting the kingdom of heaven. The first comes to me from Lindy Hardwick. Many of you know Lindy; among other things, she has preached here a few times. She has spent a lot of her career as a chaplain. When I mentioned that I struggle sometimes with pastoral care, this is what she told me to do. Imagine that there is a hole in the top of your head and that light from God is flowing down through it into you. Then imagine that there is a hole in your chest that channels that light out to the person you are speaking to, who is hurting and needs to feel God’s love. At the same time, if they are pouring out their pain, their anxiety, their anger, or their fear on you, imagine taking it in through your chest and passing it straight up to God.

In this way, instead of trying to store up the treasure of God’s love and dole it out, you become a conduit for love. Instead of relying on yourself and your own wisdom and strength to care for someone, rely on God through the power of the Holy Spirit flowing in and through you to be their ultimate Comforter.

Now, before we turn to the Lord’s Table for holy spiritual sustenance, I’d like to do an exercise with you. I receive a daily message from the Center for Action and Contemplation, and a couple of months ago, they had this exercise led by Brian McLaren and Carmen Acevedo Butcher, which I have edited just slightly. As a background, this “Peace and Light” meditation came at the conclusion of a week reviewing seven stories. The first six stories are ways that community fails to work for everyone: the domination story, the revolution story, the isolation story, the purification story, the accumulation story, and the victimization story. The seventh story is the story of reconciliation. In the Seventh Story, human beings are not the protagonists of the world. Love is.

So now, the practice. You may be a jar of clay, but you are capable of being a conduit, a vessel, for the glorious treasure of the Light of the World. Take a few deep breaths, and let your body come to rest for a moment. Imagine the seventh story, the story of reconciliation, as a tiny point of light. The story comes through your ears or you see it lived out in someone’s life. It enters who you are. It’s a story of peace, whose hero is love. It’s a story of justice and equity and safety and joy. Imagine that story as a little point of light that comes to rest in the center of your being. Then imagine that little point of light becoming a pool of light and a spring or a fountain of light. Just for the next few moments, picture that point of light growing within you.

Imagine yourself becoming full of that light. Now imagine that light filling you and that light shining out through you. Imagine now that this light coming out from you touches those around you, those in your pew, everyone else in the sanctuary, those in your family, your neighbors, others in your neighborhood, those in your workplace, people throughout Rolla and Phelps County, and all others you meet. Imagine that this light embraces them and also that it fills them.

We all know that there are many other stories at work in the world, stories that are wounding people, stories that maybe wounded each of us. Let’s realize that we can be tempted to respond to those stories that wound in a way that continues that wounding story. For a few moments, let’s hold in our heart a prayer, a request, a plea for help, that our lives would not be sucked into the stories that wound, but that we would live on a steady course of a story that heals.

Holy God, May I live in the story of peace, whose hero is love. May that story live in me. May the story of Your peace bring healing to us and to the world. And may the story of Your love bring healing to us and to the world. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on May 5, 2024. Based on John 15:9-17. I deviated from my script more than usual this week, so you may notice some differences with the podcast or video.

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The first time I went elk hunting, I did what I thought was a lot of preparation to get in shape. It turned out to be woefully inadequate. Over the following few years, I set about getting in better shape, primarily focusing on improving my endurance by running. In addition, I realized that I needed to lose weight. Trimming down the weight you carry in gear is good, but trimming down the weight you carry in fat is much better. So, I joined Weight Watchers. I’m sure there are many other current or former Weight Watchers members among us.

Why is Weight Watchers so successful? To my mind, there are three main aspects. First is awareness and intentionality. The cornerstone of the program is tracking what you eat. Each year, they change the formula a little bit, in part to get you to renew your membership but in part to trigger you to pay attention again for a little while. Truthfully, if all you do is track your points, even if you don’t pay much attention to how many points you’re allowed to consume, you’ll start developing a healthier relationship with food. Instead of mindlessly consuming a whole bag of chips, you’ll start thinking about how many chips you really want to eat. Or perhaps you’ll decide that actually, chips have a lot of points in them, and you would be better off eating carrots or grapes or something.

The second pillar is habits. The foundational habit is tracking, but Weight Watchers helps you to develop other habits, too. Habits like planning your grocery shopping ahead of time, or reading restaurant menus before you go so that you have a plan, or grabbing fruit when you’re hungry. They also encourage you to develop habits related to exercise and mindfulness.

The third pillar is community. Back in the “before” times, I went to meetings every week. At a typical meeting, everyone had to weigh in, and then we had a somewhat freeform discussion about progress and challenges in the past week. We would acknowledge milestones and sometimes talk about stuff coming up in the following week. Finally, there was a lesson of some sort. Often, the lesson would be about habits—either how to develop them or which ones would be good.

Intentionality, habits, and community. Honestly, this is a good model of the church. Community is essential to what we do. It’s possible to read the Bible or pursue other spiritual practices on your own, but a community helps you to learn and grow. The community supports you when you need it, and in return, you support others when they need you. Community is why we worship in person, why we have First Friday Out or game night or other gatherings, and why we have deacons to visit people who are sick or grieving or shut-in. Community is why we attend memorial services.

Habits. Habits control our lives. Now, it’s easy for a habit to become a rut, something you do for no good reason except that it’s what you always do. That’s a risk for an individual, and a serious risk for an organization. So, it’s important to shake up your habits once in a while, just like Weight Watchers changes their program almost every year.

Which is to say, intentionality is important. Habits enable you to act without thinking, and so they make life easier. But periodically, it’s important to bring your habits out to the forefront and decide if they are serving you or if you are serving them. Once in a while, we need to ask, Are we doing XYZ because it’s the right thing to do, or because we’ve always done it? Whatever the answer, just asking the question is important.

I’d like you to think for a moment about your morning routine. Everyone has one. Here’s mine. My first alarm goes off at 5:45, at which point I usually lay in bed and check Facebook and such. At 6:00, I get my daily alert from the Washington Post and read the most critical news stories. By 6:15, I’m up and I’ve made coffee. I check my email and read my daily comics while I bathe my brain in caffeine. When I’m awake enough, I do my daily devotion from Common Prayer that I think I’ve mentioned before. Then I go run, usually three or four miles, at least on days when I have time.

Last weekend, Rhonda and I were gone because Jesse graduated from Pitt. It was a great trip. We got to see Jesse and Sam, and Jesse’s boyfriend Howard, and Howard’s parents. On our way east, we visited my old high school friend Sharon and her family, and then on our way west, we met my mom, sister, and brother. Going both directions, we stayed with Rhonda’s parents. It was great seeing everyone, seeing Jesse and Howard graduate, meeting Howard’s parents, everything.

But you know what wasn’t great? My morning routine. Most days, I didn’t get a chance to just be when I got up, but instead had to get moving right away. If I did my devotion, I was just going through the motions instead of taking it seriously. I didn’t run. I wasn’t able to do the habits that recharge me. They refill my spiritual and emotional reserves so that I have love to give others.

As much as possible, I try to follow the Great Commandment. When Jesus was asked which commandment in the Law was the greatest, he said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” My morning routine, especially my morning devotion, is a way I can love the Lord my God and prepare myself to love my neighbor.

Several years ago, I read Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s a phenomenal book that I highly recommend. Basically, the book teaches you how to harness one of the most powerful forces available: the power of compound interest. Except instead of money, he applies it to life. If you do push-ups on one day, you’ll mostly just tire yourself out, but maybe you’ll become a tiny bit stronger. If you do push-ups every day, you’ll become that little bit stronger every day, and by improving on your improvements, by the end of the year, you’ll be much stronger. Small changes made on their own have small effects, but small changes made in the same direction repeatedly can change your life.

Many times, people say that the key to success is setting goals. In fact, when you sign up for Weight Watchers, one of the first things you do is to set your target weight. Setting goals is a good thing, I suppose, but it is clearly insufficient. When I became department chair, we did some strategic planning and identified some goals. I have been measuring our progress against them, but they aren’t directly tied to actions. For example, one goal is to increase enrollment. But what will we actually do to achieve that goal?

That’s where Atomic Habits come in. The key to success isn’t having a goal, but having a good system. Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results. Every coach has the same goal: to win a championship. Which team wins? The one with the best system to recruit and develop and exploit their talent. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Good systems are composed of good habits. Find a habit that achieves, say, a 1% improvement, and do it every day. Then find another. And another. And eventually, they all add up, and the power of compound interest changes your life.

So, why am I talking about habits and systems and performance improvements? Let me return to today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” He says to abide. He doesn’t say that we should visit his love once in a while. He says we should abide in it. That means being immersed in a loving system. That means having a set of habits that all revolve around doing as Jesus commanded: acting on a self-sacrificing love for everyone that God loves, which is everyone.

A habit has three main components: a cue, a routine, and a reward. For example, let’s say you want to develop a habit of going to the gym every day. As a cue, perhaps you set your gym bag by your car, so that whenever you see it, you remember to drive to the gym and do your workout. The reward, then, isn’t getting a donut afterwards. It’s the feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment you get from the workout itself.

Here’s a habit I’m developing for love. I’m an engineer, which means my natural inclination is to solve problems. That’s great if I’m confronted with a technical problem, but often, that’s the wrong instinct for people problems. So, here’s my habit. The cue is when someone opens up a little and expresses a problem they are having in their life, like something that is causing them sorrow or anxiety. My routine is to attempt to see things through their eyes and seek understanding first, and then affirm the validity of their emotions. If things veer too negative, I gently nudge them back towards the positive, for example, trying to help them avoid comparisons. The reward, then, is a deeper, more meaningful conversation than I might have otherwise had.

As an example, I was talking to someone who said they had seen me on the street while they were going to a grief support group. Rather than take over the conversation and try to “solve” their grief—which is totally impossible—I let them talk about their situation and what’s going on in their heart right now. They started to veer into comparisons with other people’s grief and how their situation is worse, and I gently counseled them that such comparisons are fruitless, because every grief is different. I expressed my opinion on the Kubler-Ross stages of grief—that they are better understood as modes of grief, with no sequence and no timeline—and affirmed that where they are right now is perfectly understandable and a step along the path to healing. When I left them, I prayed for their comfort. Overall, it was a deeply meaningful encounter that I probably wouldn’t have had a few years ago.

So that’s one habit I’m trying to develop. I need to think of another habit to add, something to do with initiating meaningful conversations. I’m not sure how I’ll do that exactly, but a workshop I attended a couple of weeks ago gave me some ideas.

Here’s a habit that we have as a congregation: When someone experiences loss or is in crisis, we feed them. This is great “spiritual first aid.” Everyone needs to eat, and often, preparing food is challenging when you are grieving or under stress. Both the giving and receiving of meals reminds people that we are a loving community, one that will help lift each other up.

My challenge for you all today is this: Find a way to abide in God’s love by adding loving habits to your life and our congregation’s life together. I have seen how much love you all have for one another and for others in the community and the world. Let’s find ways, individually and as a congregation, to put that love into action by developing habits that will let God’s love flow through us and into the community. And I am certain that if we do that, we will experience the flourishing that comes from living into the kingdom of God. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on 1 John 3:16-24.

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Are you familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? It was first proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943 and has undergone some revisions over the years. It describes the things that each human being needs to survive and to thrive. At the bottom-most level are physiological needs: food, water, shelter, warmth, sleep, that sort of thing. Next is safety and security: protection, stability, freedom from fear. Both of those are considered “deficiency” needs. Basically, if you lack one or more of those needs, the drive to fill that lack becomes your primary motivation. Filling your deficiency needs is essential to survival.

Then come higher-level needs, categorized as “growth” needs. These are things that are not necessary to just survive, but allow a person to thrive. The next level is love and belonging: friendship, family, intimacy, and a sense of connection. In Genesis, God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” and so God created Eve. We are made to be in relationships with each other. We are made to be a part of a healthy family, whether by blood or by choice. We are made to be a part of a community. Our lives are defined by expanding circles of relationships: family, close friends, organizations, community, nation, and world. Although Maslow implied that we need to first satisfy our “deficiency” needs before pursuing this growth need, we can actually see many communities around the world that are living in abject poverty, who suffer from hunger and inadequate shelter, whose lives are continually threatened by violence, and yet who live fulfilling lives that are enriched by communal living. It isn’t essential to fulfill all of your physiological needs before pursuing love and building friendships, as humans are driven by this need for connection.

Next up the hierarchy are esteem needs: self-esteem like dignity, independence, and positive self-image, and a need for respect from others in the form of status and prestige. Often, the respect of others is a prerequisite for self-esteem. If you aren’t valued by others, it is difficult to value yourself.

Continuing up the ladder, there is self-actualization. That is the desire to realize your personal potential. Self-actualization needs drive people to pursue a college degree at an advanced age. They drive people to produce artworks that nobody else will ever see and music that nobody else will ever hear. They drive people to join religious orders that are focused on the inner self and spiritual growth.

That’s where Maslow stopped in 1943. Later on, Maslow and others expanded the hierarchy. They added a few needs in the middle of the hierarchy that are not terribly relevant for us. But then they also added a need at the top: transcendence. We all have a yearning to be part of something greater than ourselves. Whereas self-actualization may drive a person to become a solitary monk who studies in private, self-transcendence drives a person to service in God’s name. Jesus modeled the perfect self-transcendence, as captured in the kenosis hymn in Philippians:

⁵ Let the same mind be in you that was^[a] in Christ Jesus,

⁶ who, though he existed in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be grasped,
⁷ but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
⁸     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

⁹ Therefore God exalted him even more highly
    and gave him the name
    that is above every other name,
¹⁰ so that at the name given to Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

This is the self-transcendence referenced in our epistle lesson today, when John wrote, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for each other.” Jesus modeled self-transcendence and calls us to strive for it.

Later in the epistle, John wrote, “Let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.” Love in deed means putting our words into action. Often, this is interpreted as meaning that we should satisfy the deficiency needs of those who are suffering. That’s how The Mission started. Someone recognized a couple of deficiency needs: laundry and showers. When people started taking advantage of the opportunity for clean clothes and bodies, the leaders realized that people had lots of other needs as well, food and shelter being foremost among them.

If that’s where they stopped, then some of the criticisms leveled at the Mission might be justified. But in the past five years that I have been volunteering there, I have seen the scope of their services grow and climb Maslow’s hierarchy. They have mechanisms to supply every deficiency need that the patrons have, including providing a safe place to stay. But beyond that, they provide a sense of community—a place where everyone belongs, no matter what happened in their past. That love and acceptance has enabled many patrons to escape chronic homelessness. Along with love and acceptance has been teaching and other supports so that patrons can move towards self-actualization. They help people cope with addictions and help people develop independent living skills. All in pursuit of satisfying all of the needs that the patrons have.

In the past, whenever someone has mentioned that we should be doing more active missions, the response has usually been some variation on, “I’m not able to work in a kitchen any more like I used to.” As The Mission demonstrates, though, there are lots of other ways to help people satisfy their needs for surviving and thriving. For those who aren’t homeless, there are other organizations in town that provide food and other basic needs, such as GRACE and the Dream Center.

But what about the higher needs on the hierarchy? Let’s look beyond the homeless and the working poor. Our society is wealthier than ever. Between the time Maslow wrote in 1943 and the late 1970s, the average family’s standard of living doubled. If you consider the way we live now compared to, say, the time of the American Revolution, you can see that today’s working poor have material lives that are much better than some of the wealthiest people 250 years ago. Here in the US, more than 80% of people have their deficiency needs fully satisfied.

And yet, we are lonelier than ever. The fraction of US households comprising only a single person has grown from 13% in 1960 to 29% in 2022. Since 2003, the average time spent in social isolation increased by 24 hours per month while time spent in social engagement with family, friends, and others decreased by a total of more than 40 hours per month. And I wouldn’t say that 2003 was necessarily a time when we had healthy social interactions. There was a famous book about social engagement called Bowling Alone that pointed to the stark decline in social structures like bowling leagues, PTA, and other civic organizations. It was published in 2000, before the stark decline over the first part of the 21^st century and before the catastrophic decline due to COVID.

Let me tell you a little personal story about that. From 1998 to 2003, Rhonda and I live in Greenwood, Arkansas, a little town outside of Fort Smith. After five years, we had few enough friends living locally that I can count them: Tony & Becky, Ricky & Cissy, and Jason. That’s it. There were a few people at work that I was friendly with, but the family we really connected with moved in 2001, I think. It was a very closed community. Everybody already had their social networks, so there was no way for us to really break into them. People were friendly enough, but only at the level of being acquaintances.

Here in Rolla, we have a fluid enough community that it’s much easier to make friends. However, if it weren’t for joining this church, we would have struggled to form deep, meaningful relationships. Only in the past five years or so have I really ventured out to form friendships with a broader cross-section of the community.

And yet, forming these relationships is vital to human thriving. I believe that the core message of the Gospel is that the kingdom of God is at hand! The kingdom of God is a state of being where everyone’s needs are fulfilled and where we love one another, in word and in deed. There are many ways we can show love for someone. You’ve probably heard of the Five Love Languages. The book and methodology are basically pseudo-science, but at least it is descriptive of the ways a person can receive love. The five love languages are: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch. I would say that as a congregation, we do pretty well on loving people with the language of gifts, with our financial and material support of The Mission, GRACE, and Russell House and our giving to the four PC(USA) special offerings. We do a much poorer job on the other love languages. We love each other in all of these ways, but we don’t love our community in these ways. We preach the good news. We spend time in fellowship, and deacons spend time with shut-ins. We pass the peace. But we don’t reach out into the community in these ways.

So let me ask you: How can we, as a congregation, show love to our neighbors in the community? How can we help them to satisfy their needs somewhere on Maslow’s hierarchy? How can we speak all of the love languages into their hearts and their lives?

For the moment, let’s set aside the deficiency needs. As I said, we do pretty well as a congregation supplying financial and material support to organizations that seek to provide food, shelter, and security for people in our community. But what are we doing to supply love and belonging?

Over these past five years as I’ve tried to grow my friend circle, I have connected with some people who have deep faith, some who have some vaguely spiritual beliefs, and some who reject organized religion altogether. In some cases, the friendships are kind of thin and just based on one particular shared interest. But in the cases where the friendships have grown deeper, both of us have been willing to share authentically from our hearts. Both of us have been open and honest with each other. And in that openness, Christ has been present by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In my morning devotion recently, I read this quote by Jack Bernard, a co-founder of the Church of the Sojourners in San Francisco.

The key element in beginning to learn to embody the love of God is not heroic faith and determination. It has to do with whether or not we can take hold of the love of God as a power that includes us within it. The difference is between seeing life from the inside of God versus seeing it from within my own sensibilities and capacities. From inside the love of God, suffering becomes not only bearable, but a privilege of participating with Christ in his love for the world. This cannot be rationally explained or justified, but it is the fruit of a life trustingly lived in and for God who is all love.

Jack Bernard, quoted in Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

This is the core of our calling. See life from the inside of God. Let God’s love dwell in you and surround you and empower you to reach out to others. If you do that, you may get hurt. You may be rejected. You may be told things that you don’t want to hear, such as ways in which your actions have been hurtful to someone you were trying to love. You have to be willing to work through that and rely on Christ’s promise to be with you always, even to the end of the age. You have to be willing to be vulnerable while knowing that God protects you.

This is hard, but it’s easier when you are connected to Christ through His body, the church. If you’re strong enough to start a ministry to a new group on your own, that’s great! But if not, know that you are surrounded by a group of people who share God’s love, who love you and who will support you with their prayers. But even better, try to find others who will support you with their presence and their talents. And Christ’s love flowing through you will strengthen you and amplify everything you do.

In my job as department chair, I see my mission as serving future alumni. This is a goal aimed at self-actualization needs. I believe that all students who make it to their sophomore year in electrical or computer engineering are capable of becoming successful alumni of our program. I am trying to also satisfy some of the students’ love and belonging needs that are so essential to persisting through the hard times that inevitably come along as they progress through their studies.

So who do we serve? I suggest that we strive to serve Millennials who are satisfied materially, but yearning for love and belonging. People who came of age in a time of scarcity and have focused all of their energy on establishing successful careers, only to find that a career only fulfills part of their needs. How can we do that? I don’t know, but I’m working on it, and I would ask that everyone think and pray and work together to determine how best we can share our message with the community, the message that this is a place and a community where everyone belongs, everyone is welcome at our Lord’s Table, and everyone can know the love of God. Amen.

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Preached on April 7, 2024, the Second Sunday of Easter, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on John 20:19-31.

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Today, we pick up the story where we left off last week. Let’s review. Friday, Jesus was crucified, and shortly before sunset, he was buried. Saturday, the disciples presumably honored the Sabbath, while hiding from the authorities. Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, intending to care for the body of her Lord. She arrived and saw the tomb opened and empty. So she ran away in fear, thinking that someone had stolen the body, and told the disciples. Two of them listened to her, Peter and “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” which we think was probably John. John got to the tomb first, looked in, and saw nothing. Peter got to the tomb and went in, seeing only the unrolled linen cloths. John also went in, then, and the Gospel writer says that “he saw and believed.” What exactly did he believe? The author also says that they did not yet understand that Jesus had to die and be raised, so I guess John believed that Jesus’s body was really gone. But neither John nor Peter had any idea yet that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Mary Magdalene stayed at the tomb and wept. She had lost hope, but still had faith and love. For her faithfulness, she was rewarded by a visit from her risen Lord. She ran and told the disciples.

But did they believe her? Probably not. After all, Peter and John had just been at the tomb and they didn’t see anyone, so they probably chalked it up to some hysterical woman making things up. They gathered together and locked the doors because of their fears. If they had really believed that Jesus had conquered death, they would no longer have any fear. But they didn’t. Seeing is believing, and they hadn’t seen.

But suddenly, there is Jesus among them! I bet he caused quite a commotion! Whenever God breaks into our daily lives, a natural reaction is fear and astonishment. Angels always say, “Do not be afraid!” So Jesus’s first message is, “Peace be with you.” Christ is the source of divine peace and love, so whenever he shows up, we can cast our fears upon him and be filled with his peace.

He doesn’t stop there, though. He commands his disciples to go and do likewise. That’s why each Sunday, after the declaration of pardon, we share Christ’s peace with one another. The peace comes not from us, but from God. We are just the messengers who can help each other connect to the divine peace that passes understanding.

Jesus tells them, “Just as the Father has sent me, I also send you.” Jesus had a mission: to share the good news of God’s kingdom. He knew where that mission would take him: the cross, and then the grave. Yet in dying, he conquered death, as another step in establishing God’s eternal kingdom where we all live in peace and in right relationships with God and with each other. That reconciliation is a process, not an event, though. We are still striving to live into God’s kingdom, to heal our broken relationships, to bring peace to all of God’s people. And so Jesus sent his disciples to carry on, and by extension, he sends all of us to continue the mission.

The commission Jesus gave in John’s Gospel was first to go: Jesus was sent to Galilee and Judea; his disciples were sent to all the world. And then to forgive: “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you retain anyone’s sins, they are retained.” Some people read this as a command to judge the world, to determine whose sins are worthy of forgiveness. But when you think about it, Jesus hardly ever judged someone unworthy of forgiveness, except possibly people who were self-righteous. No, I read this as commanding the disciples to build God’s kingdom, an existence where everyone is reconciled to God and to each other. He was encouraging them to forgive one another for the sake of the beloved community, and cautioning them that if they failed to forgive one another, the brokenness would remain in the world.

This is hard work. Going forth, preaching the good news, forgiving people who sin against you: that can be very draining. But Jesus had a gift for the disciples: the breath of life. Like the wind that swept over the face of the waters at the dawn of Creation, or the breath of life that turned dust into Adam, or the breath that brought life to the dry bones that Ezekiel prophesied to, Jesus’s breath filled the disciples with new life. They thought their messianic movement had ended and their lives were in peril, but Jesus brought them back to life. He filled them with the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that moves among us today and empowers us to continue the work that the disciples began.

Well, Jesus gave the gift of the Holy Spirit to most of the disciples, anyway. I guess Thomas had stepped out to get dinner or something, and he missed it. Now, Thomas gets a bad rap, but the reality is that nobody believed that Jesus had risen until they saw him. Not Mary—she wept until Jesus spoke her name. Not Peter or John—they saw the empty tomb and ran away, and were only convinced when Jesus came to their room and showed himself. Well, poor Thomas missed out.

Do you ever feel like you’ve missed out on God? I have had some God encounters, but they were very subtle. I have a friend who had a vision that changed his life. We probably all know people who were “saved” at a Pentecostal service, who felt the power of the Holy Spirit move within them. I haven’t had visions or dramatic gifts of the Spirit. But I don’t need those to believe that Christ has risen! (He is risen indeed!) Some people do. Presbyterians are by-and-large process Christians, meaning that we grew up in the faith or we reasoned our way into faith, and that’s fine. Some people can’t access God that way and need a more tangible encounter. Christ meets us where we need him. Thomas needed to touch Jesus’s wounds in order to truly believe.

Jesus says to Thomas, Do not doubt, but believe! That’s a hard teaching, the way most people interpret it. Like many of you, I grew up in the church. Then like so many young people, I started to have my doubts. Have you read the Bible? There’s some strange stuff in there. How could Jesus turn water into wine? How could Elijah call down fire from heaven? How could the Red Sea part for the Israelites? And of course, the biggie: How could a dead man come back to life? I had doubts. I had doubts upon doubts upon doubts. The Gospel seemed like a house of cards. There were a few cards that seemed pretty flimsy, some concepts and events that I couldn’t get behind, and so the whole thing collapsed.

A lot of people’s faiths are something like that. If you subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Bible, you have basically two options. One, you could reject it all, because there are too many internal contradictions and contradictions with science and known historical facts. This is the atheist’s path. Or two, you could embrace it all and close your mind to all possible examples of errors or contradictions, concocting tortuous explanations of why two seemingly opposite statements are both true. This is the path of the fundamentalist, who would deny that it’s even a choice. They would say that of course it’s literally true—how could you think otherwise? They would say that if you doubt any part of it—if you doubt that the heavens and the earth were created in six days, roughly 4000 years ago, and that a man named Moses led 600,000 men out of slavery from Egypt, and everything else in the Old Testament, and everything in the Gospel accounts, then you cannot be a Christian and cannot be welcomed into the kingdom of God.

Well, eventually, I discovered that there is a different path. Doubts are real, and are the natural result of taking the Bible seriously. If you start with a literal reading and use the inherent contradictions to reject it all, then you don’t have to seriously consider its teachings and its insights into the way to live with one another. But if you do take it seriously, you can see that God pervades the text from Genesis right through to Revelation. You can see that God’s messengers taught the people what they needed to know in order to become a priestly nation. You can see that the major and minor prophets had piercing commentaries on their own societies that still ring true today. And you can see that Jesus revealed the best way to live.

You can accept all of that without believing that Jesus was raised from the dead. I’ve heard people say that Jesus was a great prophet, or their role model. But he was more than that. He was the Son of the living God, the Source of our being, the Word made flesh. He showed us how to live, and how to die. He showed us that there is always hope. He showed us that he has conquered sin and death forever, and he invited us to live into his eternal kingdom now.

But still, we doubt. I can proclaim Christ crucified and risen, and yet have reservations about the whole story. There is precious little in the historical record to corroborate the Gospel accounts, which themselves were written decades after the fact. Did John, or whoever wrote in John’s name, really get the story right? Why are there so many differences between the four Gospel accounts? These doubts and many more can nag at me and undermine my beliefs.

But that’s OK. Doubts are natural. They drive us to keep searching for answers, though each answer usually leads to more questions. We see as through a glass darkly, so there is much that we cannot comprehend. Like Thomas on Easter night, we hear the testimony of those whose faith is deep and certain. Yet like Thomas, we can stay in community and wait for Christ to appear. We can keep our eyes open for his presence in our friends, in our enemies, in the needy stranger.

Doubt everything you have been taught. In doubting, we find the flaws in our house of cards, and in seeking answers to our questions, we end up with a more flexible and resilient relationship with our risen Lord.

The Greek word in the Bible we translate as “faith” means something more like faithfulness or fidelity. Jesus doesn’t ask us to abandon our intellect or stop seeking answers. Rather, he asks us to stay faithful to our calling despite our doubts.

And what is that calling? To go. Just as Jesus was sent to ancient Galilee and Judea to proclaim his coming kingdom, we are also sent into all the world. We are sent to proclaim that God is alive, that Christ is alive, that the Holy Spirit flows in and through us all. We are sent to proclaim a coming kingdom where all people are welcome and equal before Christ’s throne. We are sent to build a community of peace and reconciliation where we all share God’s love. We are sent to forgive and to be forgiven.

Doubt your beliefs. Doubt what you’ve been taught. Doubt the Bible, doubt the Book of Confessions, doubt everything. But never doubt that God loves you—you personally, you all collectively, each person. Never doubt that God seeks a future where we can all bask in the glory of his love. And now go and live as if each one of you, all of you together, and everyone you meet are on a path that leads to that glory in Christ’s eternal kingdom. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on March 31, 2024, Easter Sunday. Based on John 20:1-18.

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I want to start by backing up a week. You may recall that last week was Palm Sunday. Jesus borrowed a donkey and rode into Jerusalem triumphantly. What exactly his triumph was at that point, I don’t know. But the people loved him and cheered for him as he rode into town as if he were a conquering hero. They waved palm branches and shouted, “Hosanna!” That’s a Hebrew word that basically means, “Save us!” It’s an expression of praise for a coming savior who is deserving of special respect. They shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” The crowd clearly thought that Jesus was coming to up-end society and save them all in God’s name. This was essentially a political demonstration in support of Jesus and in opposition to Rome.

Next, either Sunday afternoon or Monday, Jesus committed his most openly rebellious act: the cleansing of the Temple. He came into the Court of the Gentiles, which was a big outer courtyard where people of every background could gather. It was a festival season, so there were lots of people from all around the Mediterranean. The Temple leaders had allowed vendors to set up in the Court of the Gentiles to sell sacrificial animals and currency that would be acceptable in the Temple. Jesus said, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” He drove out all the animals and flipped the moneychangers’ tables. Arguably, this was the critical event that set things in motion, leading ultimately to the events at the end of the week.

Over the next couple of days, Jesus and the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and priests sparred verbally. They all tried to trap him into saying something that would either turn the crowd against him or enable them to convince the Romans to kill him. But Jesus foiled their every effort. When they challenged his authority, he lifted up John the Baptist, whose followers filled the crowd, as his forerunner. When they tried to use tax law to force him to choose a side, he chose neither the crowd nor the Romans, but God alone. Stymied at every turn, the chief priests decided to use trickery and bribed Judas Iscariot.

When Thursday came around, Jesus knew that things were getting serious. He knew that he didn’t have much time left with his disciples. He knew that if he had anything important to tell them, now was his last chance. He said a lot that evening, about who he was, where he was going, and what would happen. It all came together, though, in a simple phrase: Remember me. He took bread, broke it, and said, “As often as you do this, remember me.” Not just when we have communion, but each time we eat, we should remember Jesus, our great teacher, the Son of God.

All week, and indeed before they ever came to Jerusalem, Jesus told his disciples that he would die. He told them that “the Son of Man will be lifted up,” a euphemism for the crucifixion that he knew awaited him, just as it awaited everyone that Rome perceived as a rebel and a threat. He kept saying it and saying it, but nobody really believed him. But indeed, on Friday, it happened, just as he predicted. And as he predicted, his followers all fell away.

See, if Jesus was a threat to the Roman occupiers, so were his disciples. So of course they ran and hid. I think there was more to it, though. They had placed all of their hopes and dreams on the movement that Jesus led, and here it was coming to an end. They couldn’t bear to see the ignominious death of their leader, which they knew would lead to the death of the movement, too. Some of them probably held out hope that Jesus would bring himself down from the cross, or call down legions of angels to defeat the Romans.

But that was not to be. Jesus died the death of a rebel, the death of a criminal. All four Gospels report the Roman soldiers and centurion and governor making absolutely sure that Jesus was dead. He wasn’t just comatose or something, but truly dead.

The disciples had all fallen away. They were all in hiding. But one person held true through all of this turmoil: Mary. That was an extremely common name in Jesus’s time, and so there is some confusion about which Mary is which, plus there are some anonymous women in the various stories. But I’ve read and listened to some recent research, and here’s what I think. The one key person who moves from the background to the foreground is Mary Magdalene. I believe that she was the sister of Lazarus, and in gratitude for Jesus’s miraculous restoration of her brother whom she had lost, she anointed Jesus with expensive perfumed ointment. She stayed true to Jesus, her Lord, who she believed to be the Messiah, the Son of the living God. She stood by the cross. When all the disciples fell away, only the women stayed true, and the only woman besides Jesus’s mother that is repeatedly identified among them was Mary Magdalene. She held on through the pain and grief of Jesus’ crucifixion, with the devotion of a sister who would do anything for her spiritual brother and Lord.

Friday evening, all hope had died. The movement that Jesus had started died with him. All that was left was mourning and sorrow. You’ve probably heard of the five stages of grief. I think it’s better to describe them as five modes of grief, five different ways that grief takes hold of you. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We see bargaining in the story of Lazarus: “Jesus, if only you had been here, you could have saved my brother.” Now, after her brother had been raised, her Savior was taken from her. She was perhaps in denial. She was holding on to some thin sliver of hope that maybe this wasn’t real.

But it was real, and Jesus was truly dead. Come Sunday, Mary did the only thing she could think of: she wanted to see and care for the body of her Lord, her brother, her friend, her teacher, the man who meant everything in the world to her. Now it was time for anger: not only was she deprived of the life of her teacher, but now she was also deprived of his body. She went to the garden seeking to show her devotion by caring for the body, and it was gone! Where could it be? Why would someone have unwrapped the graveclothes? What could possibly have happened?

The waves of grief came at her as depression. Deprived of her opportunity to perform funeral rites, she did the only thing she could do: she wept. Just as Jesus had wept when he learned that Lazarus was dead, Mary wept.

What kept her in the garden? Love. The only thing stronger than death is love. When someone passes away, our love for them doesn’t die, it just transforms. Mary stayed to show her love in the only way she knew how, with her simple presence. She stayed true to the end, and even beyond the end.

For her faith, for her love, for her fidelity and commitment to her Lord, Mary in turn was blessed. Though blinded by grief, she continued to seek her Lord. And because of her love, she found Him.

And yet, Jesus appeared at a time of his choosing. He waited until the time was right. How did he know? God knows! Indeed, often God knows exactly the right time to reveal his Truth to us. Sometimes, God comes to us in our joy, in those times of our greatest fulfillment, like at a wedding or the birth of a child or a reunion with someone you love. Often, though, God comes to us when all hope is lost. When we have nothing left, when emptiness seems to reach down to our very soul, there is Christ waiting for us.

Faith, hope, and love, these three remain; and the greatest is love. Mary had only the tiniest sliver of hope, but her faith was strong. Now, we often use “faith” to mean “treating something as if it were true despite the lack of evidence for it.” But that’s a fairly modern meaning of the word. “Faith” as Paul meant it, and as it is meant throughout the New Testament, is more like fidelity and commitment and staying true to your relationship with God. Mary had faith in that sense. She believed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God, and she acted on that understanding. But even more than faith, she acted out of love. She clung to a love that is greater than death, and through that love, she found her risen Lord.

In the same way, we are challenged to love through grief, to love through fear, to love our God who sometimes seems absent. And if we do, we know that Christ will reveal himself when we most need Him. Just as Jesus revealed himself to Mary when he knew she was ready, Christ comes to us when we are ready to receive him. He shows up in the needy, the homeless, and the imprisoned when we have something to give, and he shows up as our comforter, our guide, and our Savior when our pain has opened us to his healing touch.

On that first Easter, nobody really knew what would happen. In retrospect, the disciples understood what Jesus had been saying to them. In the moment, though, his promise seemed too far-fetched. They thought, sure, Jesus will rise in the great resurrection on the Last Day, along with the rest of us. They didn’t understand that Jesus meant that his resurrection would come now, and that he truly is the resurrection. With two thousand years of history, we might think we would have acted more like Mary than Peter. But at the time, Peter was running scared. He had good reasons to fear the Romans and the Temple authorities. Mary may have, too, but her yearning for her Lord overcame her fears. Both of them were trying to do their best in a bad situation.

Maya Angelou once said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” Unlike Peter, unlike Mary, unlike all of Jesus’s followers on that fateful day, we know that Christ has risen. We know that he has conquered death and brought us into a right relationship with God. We know that his love transcends all of the pain and struggles of this world. We know that Christ is in each person we meet, and that actually, we, the Church, are Christ’s body. We are Christ.

So now that we know better, let’s do better. Peter fled in fear, both at the time of Jesus’s arrest and after discovering an empty tomb. Mary did better: she stayed as close as she could to her Lord, with no real hope, only grief. We can do even better than that. We can stay true to our calling, stay true to our role as members of the body of Christ, and watch expectantly for Christ to show up in each other. We can watch for Christ, confident that he will reveal himself to share our greatest joys and our deepest sorrows.

Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed!) We know that Christ’s love transcends pain, and grief, and even death. We know that we have been promised life in His name. Let us demonstrate that knowledge by following Christ, by expecting his presence in our lives, and by participating as a part of His body, the Church universal. Amen.

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