Author: jonathan.kimball

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 10, 2023, Second Sunday of Advent. Based on Mark 1:1-8.

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Repent! That’s the usual word we associate with John the Baptist. He came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. We commonly understand “repentance” to be related to “penitence.” To repent is to confess your sins, to meditate on your wrongdoing, to make amends where possible, and to suffer the guilt you have incurred.

Prisons used to be set up along these lines. First came the Pennsylvania system, advocated by the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, whose most active members were Quakers. In 1829, they founded the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia that applied the principle that solitary confinement fosters penitence and encourages reformation. Prisoners were kept in isolated cells measuring twelve feet by seven-and-a-half feet. They each even had their own exercise yards to prevent contact among prisoners. They were expected to stay separated and think about their crimes and their sinfulness. Eventually, prisoners were also tasked with solitary crafts like shoemaking and weaving. The Pennsylvania system spread across the US and Europe. There were two criticisms: one, that it had terrible effects on the prisoners’ mental health, and two, that it was too expensive. Guess which one was the more compelling argument.

The Pennsylvania system was largely replaced by the Auburn system, which started in Auburn, New York. Instead of living entirely solitary lives, prisoners were kept in solitary confinement at night but worked together during the day. However, they were forced to remain silent at all times, again so that they could think about their crimes and their sinfulness. Both the Pennsylvania and Auburn systems were predicated on the belief that criminal habits were learned from other criminals and spread like a disease. Ultimately, both were found to be both expensive and inhumane, as well as ineffective.

The conventional wisdom is that repentance starts with confession and ends with some form of penance. But the Greek word that we translate “repentance” is metanoia, which has a slightly different connotation. Metanoia means changing your mind. More broadly, it means a turning of your heart and soul towards God. Only later did confession and penance become a prerequisite for repentance.

Now, I’m not saying that confession is a bad thing, or that there is no need for penance. Both are essential spiritual practices. I’m just saying that the order is wrong. The first step is to turn towards God. John called the people out to the Jordan to have a different look at God. In the Temple, they were too distracted by the rituals and the sacrifices to see what matters. Like so many prophets before him, John called the people not to sacrifice more animals, but in the words of Micah, to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with God.

When you really turn towards God, though, the first thing you realize is just how far short you fall of God’s plans for you. You are made in the image of God. You are made to love like God and to serve others like God and to forgive like God. Yet each and every one of us falls far short of God’s glory, so when we see ourselves in the bright light of God’s love, we see our flaws. We see the ways in which we need to seek forgiveness from God, and so we confess our sins. God’s response is always forgiving and merciful, but God’s justice is ultimately restorative. Seeing ourselves in the light of God’s love moves us to restore what we can—to heal relationships, to care for those in need, to fix the broken systems that we are bound up in. This is true penitence, true repentance: turning towards God, and then doing God’s work in the world.

Baptism, then, is not the end, but the beginning. It is a sign and seal of God’s grace, an outward symbol of an inward change. Baptism is a ritual in which we accept God’s unwarranted grace, God’s unearned but infinite love. It is a time when we start our walk with God and begin looking at the world as God does.

I mentioned spiritual practices recently, both in a sermon and a newsletter article. By the way, the sign-up sheet I mentioned is on a clipboard hanging from the easel in the narthex. Anyway, over Thanksgiving, I had the opportunity to chat some with my sister, Jennifer, who is a United Methodist pastor. I asked her about her spiritual practices, some of which are similar to mine, though her Bible study is deep rather than broad. Then she told me about one that I have added to my life over the past few weeks. She said that every day, she tells herself to “be on the lookout for God.”

That’s another form of repentance. We turn towards God by looking for God’s work in the world. Have you ever noticed that you tend to find what you are looking for? A prime example is that when a woman in your life is pregnant—your wife, or sister, or daughter, or a close friend, or whoever—you suddenly notice pregnant women everywhere. It’s not that there are more pregnant women then, just that you notice them because your mind is primed to see them. In the same way, if we prime our minds to look for God, we will see that God is at work every day, everywhere.

Let me give you an example. Last weekend, I was gone because Rhonda and I went to Pittsburgh to visit Jesse and see their bell choir performance. Jesse is a senior, so this was their last performance as director. Now, traveling with Rhonda in our new van is much better than in our SUV with the lift on the back to haul the wheelchair, but it’s still a hassle. Each time we stop, I have to put out the ramp, undo four straps, move things out of the way on the floorboard, let her drive out, close the ramp up, and turn the car off. Then when we’re ready to go again, I do it all in reverse—start the van, put the ramp down, let her drive in and get positioned just right, strap the wheelchair down, move things around in the floorboard, close up the ramp. OK, it’s not hard, it’s just a hassle that takes a few minutes.

Well, one morning, we both needed a restroom break and drinks. We stopped at a McDonald’s and got unloaded. Then we realized that the dining room was closed even though the drive-thru was open, due to staff shortages. Ugh. Wish I had seen the sign before we got unloaded! We turned around to get back in the van to drive over to a gas station instead, when a woman poked her head out. She said that they were short-staffed but we could go in to use the restroom. We did, then went on to a gas station to get drinks so that we wouldn’t add to their burden.

Now, where was God? Well, the woman just happened to look in our direction and see Rhonda in a wheelchair. She was working behind the counter and wouldn’t normally have seen anything happening out in the parking lot in that direction. Not only that, but she also took time out of her extremely busy morning to let us in. I’m thankful for the grace she showed.

Now I could just write it off as a coincidence that she looked in our direction, and you might say that it was just common courtesy that she let Rhonda in. We get a lot of people helping in small ways when we’re out and about. But I would rather see it as a subtle way of God working in the world to foster human connection and a better society.

Let me give you another. I was at a university event earlier this week, and a woman came over to me. She introduced herself and thanked me for something nice I had done for her mother, something I don’t even remember doing. Now, to me, it was just one of a thousand things I had done on some day in the distant past, but to this woman and her mother, it was important. It was important enough to the mother that she mentioned it to her daughter, and important enough to the daughter to remember me for it. It touched them. That wasn’t me—that was God at work through me.

These are just two things that happened in the past week that were big enough to share with you. The more I pay attention, the more I see God at work in big ways and small. This was John’s calling: turn yourself towards God and see that God is coming into your life, today.

Many of my spiritual practices are organized in my Monk Manual, which is a sort of planner. I would be happy to show you my Monk Manual or to tell you more about it, but the important point here is that it is built around cycles of prepare, act, and reflect. There is a daily cycle, a weekly cycle, and monthly, quarterly, annual, and lifetime cycles. Each cycle includes a reflection so that you can see what good things have happened to you, what has made you feel unrest, and what God has been teaching you. By looking back on how God was working, you prepare yourself to look forward to God acting in your life on the next cycle—the next day, the next week, the next month or quarter or year. So often, we don’t notice God in the moment, but we can look back and see that God has been guiding us and accompanying us, and then that awakens us to the possibility of God continuing to guide and accompany us. In the same way, John’s call of repentance must be answered by a turning towards God each day, each week, each season, each year. That’s why I have daily spiritual practices. That’s why I worship here each week. That’s why we have the different liturgical seasons. And that’s why each year in Advent, we once again prepare for Jesus to be born anew in our lives.

Christ is coming. Advent is a time of waiting, of anticipation for the great day of the Lord when Christ enters our lives. Yet Christ has already come. God is already at work through Christ’s body, which is the church. God has been at work in the world from the moment of Creation and will continue to work towards the restoration and re-Creation of all things. Advent is a time to turn towards God, to be Christ’s eyes in the world and, being moved by what we see, to act with Christ’s heart, and hands, and feet.

On this second Sunday of Advent, we anticipate the coming of God’s shalom, which is a peace that transcends the absence of war and includes healing and wholeness, a restoration of what has been lost and broken. Let us turn our eyes towards God so that we can see and join in the hard work of building a world filled with God’s love. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on November 26, 2023, Reign of Christ Sunday. Based on Matthew 25:31-46.

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Much of modern political philosophy is based on the idea that we are individuals who enter a social contract. That is, the natural state of humanity is fully independent with full freedom, but we choose to give up some of our freedoms for the sake of living together in harmony. I say, hogwash. Rene Descartes famously said, “Cogito ergo sum,” which means, “I think, therefore I am.” He was asserting his identity separate from any social constructs. An ethics teacher once said that his response to Descartes is, “Who taught you Latin?”

The truth is that we are naturally oriented towards community. We connect naturally to our family, then our clan, then our tribe. Think about it: throughout the Bible, people are identified as being the son or daughter of someone else. We use surnames now that basically keep track of what clan we are in. I naturally desire to take care of my wife, my children, my siblings, and my parents. Even people who have difficult relationships with their family of origin are in some sense defined by those relationships. Beyond our immediate family, we have a natural affinity for our clan—I am a Kimball, so I always perk up when I see a reference to another Kimball. I care more about my cousins than about some random people.

This is entirely natural. Humanity has succeeded in ways that other species haven’t because we are cultural. We learn from one another and prioritize our relationships with our community. We cannot survive without the cultural knowledge we have inherited or without the support we get from other people, both close at hand and far away. In modern society, we have somewhat transcended the natural ties of blood relatives to include chosen family, those friends and neighbors and church members who make our lives more complete.

Let me share a story with you about the limits of independence. When I go elk hunting, I feel like I’m independent because I carry all of my own supplies—my own tent and clothes and food and water. But where did those all come from? I didn’t make my tent, or my sleeping bag, or my rifle, or any of the hundred other things I carry. I bought basically everything I need. I pump my own water from a stream, but I use a filter pump that I purchased and fill a collapsible jug that I purchased.

On my most recent trip, on the last day of hunting, we were walking out with a couple of older guys that Wayne had met on a previous trip. Ron and Tom are both in their seventies. It was dusk, probably after official sunset, dark enough that we were all using our headlamps. Ron had a little bitty flashlight. He tripped and fell and dislocated his shoulder. The pain was excruciating. Now, if I did that in Rolla, it would be terrible, but I might be able to drive myself to the hospital, or at the least, an ambulance would be five minutes away. Up on the mountain, though, we were half a mile as the crow flies, and a longer walk, to where Ron could get in a pickup truck, then an hour-and-a-half drive to a hospital. All told, I think there were nine guys involved in helping Ron get out to where he could get medical help. Two of us stayed with Ron to help him keep awake and keep moving; one guy called 911; two guys went ahead to find some other guys who had a chainsaw and a UTV and could drive partway to meet us.

When an emergency like that happens, everybody pitches in to help. That’s because we all recognize that we are ultimately not truly individuals, not truly independent. We need our community. We helped Ron because someone once helped us, or we know that someday we will need help, or at a minimum, we recognize our shared humanity. We are fundamentally connected to each other.

Jesus taught his disciples that “the least of these,” those who are in need, are his brothers and sisters. We naturally organize society into family, clan, tribe, and nation, concentric circles of mutual obligation. But Jesus said that actually, we are all in his family.

When I first started preaching, Rhonda would ask me what my sermon was going to be about. I think she finally got tired of my answer always being the same: the kingdom of God is at hand! That was Jesus’s primary message, the coming of his kingdom that we celebrate on this last Sunday of our church year. We have spent the past few weeks studying parables about the kingdom of God, and this week, we reach the climax. But what is Christ’s kingdom? Well, a mujerista theologian named Ada María Isasi-Díaz said that a better word to use is “kin-dom,” without the “g.” That is, Christ’s kingdom is not like the ancient kingdoms where a strong man (always a man) lords his power over his subjects. Instead, it is like a family, where all of us are equal and all of us are loved by our holy brother and holy father. The text we read today is Jesus’s last message before the events that led to his crucifixion, so it is the most important message he had to give his disciples. The kingdom of God is instead a kin-dom, a state of being where everyone is kin, everyone is family, everyone cares for each other, everyone lifts up the downtrodden, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and cares for the prisoner.

This is actually a very simple message. What do you do when you see someone who is hungry? You feed them. Period. It is simple, but extremely difficult. First, there are limited resources. I cannot personally feed everyone who is hungry. Second, Jesus’s calling is counter to our society’s values and our inherent sense of fairness. So, instead of obeying this simple but difficult teaching, we make it complex. We say, well, sure, feed the hungry, but Jesus certainly didn’t mean everyone, did he? What if the hungry person is a criminal? What if the hungry person is from somewhere else far away? What if the hungry person seems like they could work and feed themselves? Surely Jesus didn’t mean for us to sacrifice our limited resources for those people, right? Surely Jesus only meant for us to feed the worthy hungry people. Surely Jesus only meant for us to house the stranger if they are here legally. Surely Jesus only meant for us to care for those imprisoned without cause, not those who are guilty. Right?

I don’t think so. Jesus was pretty clear, actually. He said, “I was hungry, and you gave me food.” He said, “Whatever you do for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you do to me.”

This is a hard teaching. Yes, I know that there is a place for tough love. We probably all know people who have been given second and third and fifth and tenth chances and continue to fall short. Our goal should be that all people become thriving, full members of our community and of God’s family. Sometimes, that means helping people develop some skills, including life management skills, through tough love. But tough love only works if its root is love, not if its root is toughness. It only works if you are in a personal and loving relationship with someone and they know that your actions flow from that love.

There’s a saying, “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Sure. I agree—we should be in the business of helping people become better versions of themselves. But it’s a whole lot easier to learn how to fish if you’re not starving. You can give a man a fish and then teach him how to fish. Another analogy I heard is a fire. If someone’s house is on fire, you don’t focus on finding out what caused it. You put the fire out. You save the people and belongings and prevent further damage. And then you try to find out what caused the fire so you can prevent another one, and also help the people put their lives back together.

Coming back to our friend Ron with the dislocated shoulder, we could have tried to put his shoulder back in the socket. But here’s the thing: We didn’t know what the actual problem was. He couldn’t feel his forearm and couldn’t move his fingers, so we didn’t know if the issue was his shoulder or his elbow. For all we knew, he had broken his humerus and somehow pinched a nerve. At some point a few years ago, he had had surgery on that shoulder, which complicated the situation. We could have tried to solve the problem right then and there, but we didn’t really know what we were doing.

So instead, we found someone who did know what they were doing, and we accompanied Ron until he got help. We didn’t let him suffer alone. We gave him as much comfort and assistance as we could until we were able to get him to a medical professional, whose first act was to give him a shot of something that would enable him to bear the pain. Survival first, long-term solution later.

Just a few days ago, America celebrated Thanksgiving. This is a day we set aside to remember all the good things in our lives and all that we have to be thankful for. It was first celebrated as a national holiday in 1789, our first harvest season as the United States of America under the Constitution. It was celebrated intermittently until 1863, when, at the height of the bloody Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was convinced to proclaim a national day of thanks. No matter the pain and suffering and discord and evil in our nation, we still acknowledge that we have been richly blessed. Human nature is to focus on the negative, so it is essential to have a day that we focus on the positive and expressing gratitude.

One of my spiritual practices is to identify three things each day for which I am thankful. My rule is that I can’t list the same thing two days in a row, so that I take a broad survey of my life. The natural response to identifying these blessings in my life is that I am moved to give more of myself to my family and community. Perhaps we should expand our personal thanksgiving reflections to congregational thanksgiving.

We have much to be thankful for. I know that I complain about the ridiculous layout of the sanctuary, but it is a beautiful worship space. It has great acoustics and a pipe organ. We have great staff—Jeff and Lorie here in worship with us, plus Katie in the office, Tracy to direct the preschool, and many other staff who enable us to serve the children of our community. We have lots of people who have stepped up to provide leadership in all spheres of our operations. And above all, we have each other to provide mutual support on our walks with God.

Our gratitude for the blessings on this congregation should move us to greater acts of service. We have been welcomed into God’s family, and so we should help others thrive as members of God’s family. We see the image of God in each other, so we should seek God’s image in people throughout the community.

In Jesus’s last message to the crowds before the events that led to his arrest and execution, he told them the basis on which all nations would be judged. He didn’t say that they would be judged on their beliefs or their words. He said that they would be judged on their actions to build his kin-dom by caring for all his siblings. Let us respond to the gifts God has bestowed upon us by caring for our community, not asking what people have earned, but providing what they need to thrive as God’s image-bearers. Amen.

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Preached on November 12, 2023. Based on Matthew 25:1-13.

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Have you ever seen those memes titled, “You had one job!”? Things like, at an intersection where there’s a stop sign, the street is painted with “S-O-T-P”? Or an article in a newspaper with a headline, “Add header here before printing”? Or perhaps a billboard or a sign that was hung in parts, and the sign-hangers got the parts mixed up? Or a sign that reads, “School free drug zone”? If you ever have an hour or two to kill, look up those memes.

Here’s another example, a memory that might bring Jeff some pain. A few years ago, when I was still in Men of Song and he was still the director of the high school choirs, he asked Men of Song to perform at the high school choirs’ winter concert over at First Baptist Church. I was there for the rehearsal, where the main choir had a percussion section as part of the accompaniment. One song built up to a climax, and then there was a cymbal crash! Except that the student on the cymbals had trouble counting the dozens of bars of rest. Finally, Jeff said he would give a cue. They ran it once or twice, and the student followed the cue.

Then the performance came. The song built and built to the climax, Jeff gave the cue, and… the student had his nose buried in the music, trying to figure out when to come in. I could see Jeff wince with his whole body. But when the moment passed, it was too late. It’s not like the student could just crash the cymbals some other time and make up for it. Either he crashed them in the moment, or he missed it. Timing is everything.

In today’s story, we hear about some bridesmaids who had a job to do. Their job was to light the way for the groom. They all had their lamps and were ready to go. But as was common at that time, the groom was delayed. See, weddings in Jesus’s day didn’t follow a strict schedule like modern weddings do. They basically happened whenever everything was ready. So, the groom shows up at midnight and catches the bridesmaids off-guard. One reference I read said that was actually part of the game—the groom would try to show up and surprise everyone. Well, it worked!

Some of the bridesmaids had extra oil. Some of them didn’t. The response of the wise ones, the ones who had extra oil, was basically, Tough luck. You forgot, so you need to fix your own problem. That’s a little harsh, isn’t it? Couldn’t they have shared? Well, maybe not. Maybe if they had, then nobody would have had enough oil to get through the ceremony. Would you rather have half the lamps for the whole ceremony, or all the lamps for half the ceremony? I would think that having some lamps is better than none.

So, off they go, the foolish bridesmaids, looking for a place to buy oil. Remember, this was first-century Judea or Galilee, not modern America. I just got back from elk hunting. We had to drive through the night from here to Durango, Colorado, and back. There were many gas stations that we passed in the night that were closed altogether, and some others where you could get gas but only if you paid with a card at the pump. Northern Texas, eastern New Mexico, eastern Colorado, and western Kansas are all pretty lonely. Now, first-century Judea wasn’t quite so empty, but I don’t think they had 24-hour convenience stores or oil pumps with credit card readers. So, where the heck would the foolish bridesmaids get oil at midnight?

The bridesmaids had one job: to give light when the groom appeared. Half of them were ready and the other half screwed it up. They missed their chance to participate.

Let’s think about this parable in its context. Throughout the Gospel According to Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as the new Moses. Just as Moses gave the Law to the ancient Israelites, Jesus gives a new law to his followers. Something I’ve noticed, though, is that the Mosaic law is full of “thou shalt nots”: Thou shalt not make idols, thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not covet. But Jesus’s law is filled with “thou shalts”: You are blessed when you are meek, or merciful, or peacemakers. You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, so let your light shine. Turn the other cheek, walk the second mile, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. Seek first the kingdom of God and all things will be given to you. Jesus’s law is not so much about how not to sin, since he was in the process of forgiving all our sins anyway. Jesus’s law is about how to heal the brokenness of the world and build positive relationships and communities.

You are the light of the world. The bridesmaids were the light of the wedding, and they fell short. They were not prepared to wait and did not have deep enough reserves to continue to light the party while the bridegroom was delayed. We need to do better.

We have four Gospels in our Bibles because each one has a unique perspective. As I said, Matthew portrays Jesus as a new Moses. Also, we think Matthew was writing in the late first century, soon after the destruction of the Temple. The people in Matthew’s community were waiting, and wondering, How long? How long would the present age continue? How long until Jesus came again in glory to right all the wrongs, to heal all the sick and wounded, to overturn the oppressive system that they were living under? How long until their rightful place as the holy people of God would be restored? They were waiting expectantly, hoping that Jesus would return soon.

Well, Jesus will return soon, but in God’s time, not ours. Jesus said that not even he knew when he would return in glory, only the Father knows. God knows the right time and will give us the cue, if we’re watching for it. So, what was Matthew’s community supposed to do in the meantime, and what are we supposed to do?

Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” That is, we who await the coming of God’s kingdom should get to work transforming the world by our love. We are expected to follow all of the “thou shalts” that Jesus taught his disciples.

One of the great mysteries of history is how a small sect of an oddball religion became the official religion of the Roman Empire and the dominant religious force in the world for more than a millennium. One theory is that the consistent efforts of Christians to serve others established their credentials as a force for good that people wanted to join. Christians essentially invented hospitals in their first few centuries of existence. During a great plague in the early fourth century, only Christians stayed behind in the city of Caesarea to care for the sick and dying. Early Christians set an example for their philanthropy and charity, in that they cared for all poor people, not just fellow Christians. As a result, Christians rightfully claimed the moral high ground and drew converts—more a trickle than a flood, but a trickle that lasted centuries.

This is exactly what Matthew was trying to say to his community. Jesus is coming, of that you can be sure, but when exactly? Only God knows. So, in the meantime, BE READY. Be ready by getting to work transforming the world into God’s kingdom, living as if Jesus had returned already, or as if Jesus is present with you right now.

And that is the message to us today. There is a sense about our congregation that we are waiting for something. Some people are holding back until we get a new pastor. Some people are waiting for someone else to tell them what to do. Well, we may not have an ordained and installed pastor, and we may not have anyone telling us what to do, but we are not alone. Jesus is here among us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus’s followers left us his teachings to guide us. A hallmark of the Reformation is the priesthood of all believers: we are all empowered to approach God and to learn God’s will for our lives directly.

We have an important message for the world. We believe in a God of love, of welcome, of inclusion. We believe that all people are made in God’s image and are valued members of God’s family. I know that there are literally thousands of people in Rolla who need to hear that message. Some of them have only been told about a God of judgment or have experienced spiritual, emotional, or even sexual abuse in a church. Some of them have only heard about Christianity from mass media, which gives a highly distorted view. I have noticed that whenever there is news coverage of something that I actually know something about, the news coverage is a little off, a little wrong, perhaps a little biased or one-sided, lacking in nuance and thin on details. But that’s the only source of information some people have about this God we love and who loves us.

If we look around Rolla, we can see needs everywhere. There are people struggling to survive: homeless, or hungry, or struggling with addiction. There are lots of lonely people, people estranged from their families, or far from home for the purposes of their career or education, or far from adult children who have gone off to pursue a career elsewhere. There are parents struggling to raise their families. I’ve heard that the best parenting hack is to have a grandparent living nearby who helps out. Because of the transitory nature of a college town, many parents in Rolla don’t have that luxury, but instead have to figure out a way to do everything themselves.

What is the Christian response? Our one job is to be the light of the world. We are to shine before others with our good works, helping everyone in need. Well, maybe not everyone, but SOMEONE. God doesn’t expect us to solve all of the problems of the world; that’s God’s job. But we are expected to do our part: to see a need and respond to it.

Let’s stop waiting. We know what to do. A couple of times now, I’ve asked you all to consider what your personal calling is and to seek people who might share that calling. I would love to hear from you about how that’s going. Maybe it’s going great, and we need to lift up your successes. Or maybe, like me, you’re struggling a bit to get traction, and we need to pray with and for one another to take the next step. Whatever the case, I want to hear about it. What are you doing, or what do you want to do, to shine the light of God’s love in our broken world? How can we help each other to have plenty of spare oil, so that we can all continue to serve God’s people? Let’s not wait until the moment has passed. Let’s build God’s kingdom now, responding to the needs of our community and our world. Amen.

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Based on Matthew 22:1-14. Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Due to an issue with the heat in the sanctuary, the service was held in the fellowship hall. The choir did not wear robes. So if you listen to the podcast, there is a difference in one illustration.

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Let’s try to put ourselves back in first-century Judea. What was happening during Jesus’s life, and what was happening at the time when the Gospel attributed to Matthew was written? First and foremost, Judea was ruled by the Roman Empire, which impacted all aspects of civic and religious life.

While the Temple still stood, there was a singular focus for sacrificial offerings and festival days. However, there wasn’t a singular perspective on what God expected of the Jews. There were many sects and factions. We only know details about a few of them. In today’s passage, Jesus, who led a group that became one of those sects, is arguing with the chief priests, who believed that the most important aspect of Judaism was Temple worship and the sacrificial system. There were also Pharisees, whose perspective ultimately became rabbinical Judaism with its emphasis on understanding the Bible and applying its teachings. Other sects included the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Zealots, and the Sicarii, who probably instigated the revolt against Rome in 66 CE that led to the destruction of the Temple.

Speaking of the destruction of the Temple, that was the other source of turbulence in Judea and throughout the Jewish Diaspora. The Jews revolted in 66, and by 70 CE, Rome had conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. The only thing left standing was the Western Wall, which is still a site of pilgrimage today.

After the destruction of the Temple, Jews of every sect were trying to figure out why it had happened and what they could do to remain faithful to God. The sacrificial system was defunct, so the chief priests were out of the picture. Two main sects emerged: Jesus’s followers and the Pharisees. So when you read that there was conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, remember that the Gospel writers were probably highlighting and even exaggerating the differences to distinguish their beliefs from the rabbinical Judaism that was developing.

You know what, though? There are still divisions within God’s people. Jews have a diversity of beliefs. Some describe themselves, or are described by others, as orthodox, conservative, or reformed. Within Christianity, there are literally thousands of denominations. Many Christian denominations or congregations believe that they have exclusive ownership of the Truth, with a capital T.

There is a tension within Christianity also between unconditional grace and the call to righteous living. I can’t say for certain how we should resolve that tension. Today’s passage is one that is cited by those who believe in Hell as a place of eternal conscious torment. I believe in universal salvation, so this passage makes me a little bit uncomfortable. I think it’s mainly teaching us that actions have consequences. In Luke’s version of this parable, it ends when everyone comes into the party. But in Matthew’s version, someone found without a wedding robe is thrown out, into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. That sounds pretty bad.

But earlier in the parable, the king was primarily angry at those who would not show up. Remember, Jesus is in the middle of a confrontation with the chief priests and their supporters, so those are probably who he had in mind when he referred to those who would not show up to the wedding banquet. They were the consummate insiders. They spent all day, every day, worshipping God and working around the Temple. Yet Jesus said that they were like the guests who did not respond to the king’s invitation.

The people Jesus criticized were actually people like us. They were committed to worship. They believed that they understood God’s will. They were the establishment. They were the inheritors of God’s covenant with Abraham and with Moses. Yet Jesus said that they were like the guests who would not show up to the party.

So, in what way are we like them? How are we failing to respond to God’s invitation? How do we fall short of God’s expectations of us?

God is present among us today. When we gather together in worship, we know that God is here, too. But God doesn’t live in any one place. God didn’t live exclusively in the Temple in Jerusalem, and doesn’t live in this church alone. God is everywhere. God is at work in the world, binding up the brokenhearted, healing the wounded, comforting the afflicted.

Wherever God is present, the heavenly banquet is just waiting to break through. God’s kingdom is not just a place we go at the end of the age. It’s here, right here, wherever people are in need. Our calling is to see the potential for God’s kingdom to break through, and work towards its realization.

Too often, we see someone in need and fail to respond. Maybe they need financial help. Maybe they need material support—food, shelter, a ride to the store, help escaping an abusive situation, or whatever. Maybe they need emotional support, whether because of grief or anxiety or relationship issues. Or maybe they need help figuring out the next step in life. Or perhaps they are having a spiritual or existential crisis, wondering about their place in the universe, and need some perspective. Or perhaps they don’t need us to fix anything, just to be with them in their suffering.

Yet we often ignore these needs. We are too busy with our own lives and our own problems. Or perhaps we blame someone for being in a bad situation—it’s their own fault, so why should I help? That’s a regrettably common response to those who are homeless or struggling with addiction.

God desires that everyone should flourish and thrive. God’s will is that we would all be united into one people who support each other, who care for each other’s needs, who seek to serve one another. This is where the chief priests fell short, and where we still fall short today.

The chief priests were so focused on serving God through the sacrificial system and Temple activities that they ignored the needs of God’s people. They accommodated Roman rule and its exploitation of the population as long as they could continue governing the Temple. The other Jewish sects also fell short. The Essenes were a separatist community who helped each other but abandoned the rest of the world. The Pharisees erected barriers between “clean” and “unclean,” as a way of excluding those who they deemed unworthy of full inclusion in God’s family. And the Zealots sought a violent revolution that would expel the Roman occupiers, no matter the consequences.

Jesus’s message to these many sects was that all of them were in the wrong. They all missed his core teaching: that God desired unity, not division, in a flourishing community. God desires that we see Christ in each person, whether they are an insider or an outsider. We should see people as God sees them, looking on their heart and not their exterior attributes.

Now, let’s consider the last person we encounter in the parable, the man who is not wearing a wedding robe. Could I please ask the choir to stand up? … Look at them all. Each person is unique—different genders, different ages, different singing abilities, different heights. Yet all of them form one choir. Each person wears a robe that covers their exterior attributes. … OK, you can be seated now.

Just like the choir wears robes, we should each put on Christ. Each of us has some inherent identity deep within, something that makes us unique. But we also have these exterior characteristics. Tall or short, of different races, ethnicities, educational backgrounds, ages, genders, what have you. When we put on Christ, we keep our core identity as a child of God and act with the righteousness that comes as a citizen of God’s kingdom.

Last week, Susan talked about the Ten Commandments. As she reminded us, God delivered the Ten Commandments as a description of the society the Israelites should build in response to God’s grace poured out upon them. They are not a pre-condition of our membership in God’s family. Rather, they are a description of our response to the many gifts we have been given.

Woody Allen once said, “Ninety percent of success in life is just showing up.” God has poured out grace upon each of us, and upon all of us together as a community of believers. God asks in return that we show up wherever the heavenly banquet is taking place. And when we do, we should put on Christ’s righteousness and act to further God’s kingdom. We should seek the flourishing of each person that God loves, which is everyone. We should seek to serve one another. We should seek to support those who are doing God’s work, whether at the Mission or GRACE or the preschool or anywhere else in our community. And we should seek to erase those lines that separate us and prevent us from joining together in one body as God’s family. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Matthew 21:23-32.

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By whose authority do you do these things? That was the question the chief priests and elders put to Jesus. Well, what things? If we back up a bit in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus had just ridden into town triumphantly on a donkey on what we now call Palm Sunday. Then, like a conqueror, he cleansed the Temple, driving out the moneychangers and the animals for sale. The chief priests were what we would now call pastors and presbyters, or in other traditions perhaps bishops. The elders were what we would call ruling elders. This group who challenged Jesus was in charge of the Temple. Who was he to ride into town and disrupt their operations? By whose authority?

But if we zoom out a bit, we can ask, what is our source of authority? In the early days of Christianity, when the Gospels were written down, there was very little hierarchy and very little organization to the Jesus movement. The original apostles held positions of respect if not authority, as did Jesus’s brother James and the apostle Paul, and perhaps a handful of others. Over the next few centuries, more and more hierarchy developed, as did the canon of scripture.

We Presbyterians are bookish people. We come from a tradition that holds to sola scriptura, that is, Scripture alone holds authority. Yet if you probe that just a little, you will find that it is a façade. We may say that only the Bible has authority, but then the first part of our constitution is the Book of Confessions, a pretty thick book of interpretations of the Bible over the centuries of our development. The second part of our constitution is the Book of Order, which states, “These confessional statements are subordinate standards in the church, subject to the authority of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, as the Scriptures bear witness to him. While confessional standards are subordinate to the Scriptures, they are, nonetheless, standards.” In truth, we behave more like the Anglican or Wesleyan traditions that hold to prima scriptura, or scripture first, supplemented by tradition, reason, and experience. I certainly have a Wesleyan worldview, shaped by my first two decades of life as a United Methodist.

Of course, even with the Wesleyan quadrilateral, there are questions about whose tradition, whose reason, and whose experience count. Both Anglican and Wesleyan denominations have bishops and other leaders who are responsible for maintaining tradition. They decide, then, whose experience informs their understanding of God. One of the great advances in theology over the past century has been an explosion in the number of different voices that contribute. Instead of being straight white men like me, we have heard from feminist and womanist and Black and queer and many other scholars, plus liberation theology has grown in the developing world. These new voices have challenged our long-held beliefs, and have also enabled us to see that Scripture was mostly written for people who were oppressed, not for the powerful.

Still, many Christians express some form of the sentiment, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” They hold to some literal or quasi-literal interpretation of the Bible and use it to support whatever worldview they have inherited from their family, community, and culture. They become doctrinaire and assert that if you don’t believe in the way that they believe, then you must be wrong and a heretic and damned to eternal conscious torment in a lake of fire. They erect barriers between themselves and anyone who might change their minds.

On this World Communion Sunday, we should remember that while we practice an open Table, where anyone who wishes to approach Christ is welcome to partake of His body and blood, there are many churches where most or all of us would not be welcome to commune. Certainly, here in Rolla, there is at least one where I would not be allowed, St. Pat’s. Many of us were baptized as infants, so we would not be considered “real” Christians in many churches.

These doctrinal disputes are inherently divisive. Soon after Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of his empire, he wanted all of the Christians to get together and decide just what they believe. The result was what we call the Nicene Creed, which says things like, “We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father.” Wait, what? What does it mean for him to be “eternally begotten”? Later, it says, “true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.” I defy any of you to clearly explain just what exactly that means in a way that everyone here can agree with.

The most controversial line comes later on: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” Originally, it just said, “who proceeds from the Father.” Two centuries later, the Western church added “Filioque,” meaning “and from the Son.” The eventual result, a few centuries afterwards, was a split between Eastern and Western churches. Now, there was other stuff going on, too, but certainly, the Filioque clause was a significant source of conflict that split Christ’s body.

Some of you may be familiar with CrossRoads, which is the church that meets in the same building as the Mission. One of the reasons it exists is that there was a doctrinal dispute in another church. So, as a congregation, CrossRoads has no doctrinal statement. A few weeks ago, their pastor, Patrick Wilson, posted this: “Historically, creeds have been used to evaluate who can be a part of and who can lead in congregations and denominations, which socially divides people and sets up unhealthy, destructive power structures. … So, regardless of your beliefs you are welcome at CrossRoads. Come join us as we learn, grow, and serve together.”

Jesus did not put forth any creeds or doctrinal statements. Jesus never explicitly said who he was, but instead let others come up with a theological explanation of his relationship to the other two persons of the Trinity. Jesus did not even directly claim any authority, although he implied that his authority came from heaven. The authority that he had emerged through the nature of his service to God and his work to build God’s kingdom. The evidence of his service, his allegiance, his beliefs, and his role was simple: LOVE. Jesus claimed only the authority that derives from a self-emptying love of all of God’s people.

Our passage today from Philippians is probably a hymn that circulated in early Christian communities. It is a beautiful expression of Christ’s nature. Not that he was “eternally begotten” or “begotten, not made.” Rather, instead of wondering about where he came from or how he related to the God who had been revealed to Moses, the hymn said, “He did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” This was Jesus’s source of authority: his humility. He did not seek power over others. He did not directly confront Roman authorities. Rather, he emptied himself and served everyone, obedient to God’s will and willing to die for the sake of even those who despised him.

In our parable today, we hear of two brothers. One says the right thing, but does the wrong thing. He doesn’t follow through on his commitment to serve his father. He professes obedience with his mouth, but not with his actions. He is like someone who claims Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, but whose actions are far from Christ-like. Someone who claims that they love their neighbor, but whose actions are far from loving. The other brother, when challenged by his father, rebels and refuses to follow his father’s directive. Yet the father’s words took root in his conscience. As he thought of all that he had been given and all that he owed his father, he realized that he should respond by doing his father’s will.

In the same way, we should each seek not only to say the right things, but also to do the right things. Beliefs matter, but only if they drive actions. I saw a meme recently that said, “You can’t trust an apocalyptic religion to find real world solutions. Their identity is based around the world ending.” That’s why we talk about theology, why I hammer on my belief in universal salvation, why we talk about the horizontal nature of God’s kingdom as well as the vertical nature. We must have a theology that somehow orients us towards building God’s kingdom here and now. But theology is not sufficient. Our beliefs about the inherent value of God’s creation need to drive our actions.

The way we behave is the clearest expression of what we believe. If you say that you care about the welfare of children, you should be doing things to support children’s growth. If you say that you care about the homeless, you should be doing things that help alleviate the suffering of the homeless and work to end homelessness in our community. If you say that you care about hunger, you should be doing things that reduce hunger in our community and around the world.

If you read the Old Testament prophets, you will pick up on a couple of main themes. One was the tendency of the Israelites to worship other gods. Another was the tendency for them to worship God with their mouths and with their sacrifices, but not with their actions in their community and nation. As the Prophet Micah said, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Not only to preach justice, but to do justice. Not only to profess your beliefs, but to walk humbly with God. Doing justice, loving kindness, and walking with God are concrete actions in the world. Concrete acts that bring about God’s reign in your life, in your family, in your community, in your nation, and in the world. Concrete acts of service, of self-emptying, of pursuing right relationships and reconciliation. Concrete acts, not just in worship on Sunday morning, but in the community all 168 hours of the week

As we turn now to the Lord’s Table, let us seek to be spiritually fed. Let us seek to be bound together with all of Christ’s body, which is the Church, communing this World Communion Sunday. And let us seek to use this spiritual renewal to empower us to take concrete steps towards building God’s kingdom today. Amen.

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Based on Matthew 18:21-35. Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla.

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One blessing of living in a university town is that distinguished speakers and entertainers sometimes come in. The Remmers Lecture Series has brought in diverse individuals over the years. In 2008, soon after we moved here, I had the privilege of hearing F. W. de Klerk speak. He was the transition leader when South Africa abolished apartheid. Among other things, he negotiated with incoming president Nelson Mandela to establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC.

The goal of the TRC was to establish the facts of the human rights violations that had happened between 1960 and the end of the era in 1994. They allowed victims to tell their stories, granted amnesty, and drafted a reparations policy. Now, their work was far from complete and had many detractors, in part because not everyone participated. But the motivation was correct. The former apartheid leaders and the new democratically-elected government had to figure out a way to live together. Both sides had committed atrocities, especially the apartheid government and its security forces but also the opposition party led by Nelson Mandela. If the two sides were ever to live together, there had to be a full accounting of the ways that people had hurt each other, restitution of anything that could be restored, and ultimately reconciliation so that they could put the evil of apartheid in their past.

In today’s lesson, we hear about a man who had his own debts forgiven, but still enforces his rights against a debtor. I want to help you understand just how outrageous the story is. A denarius was the typical daily wage in that time and place. To make the math easy, let’s say that a typical hourly wage is $12.50, just over minimum wage, so for eight hours, the daily wage would be $100. The second slave owed the first one 100 denarii, or about $10,000. That’s a lot, right? Three months’ wages. Maybe he was a farmer and borrowed to be able to plant. Maybe he was a fisherman and bought a boat or some equipment. Or maybe he was sick or injured and couldn’t work for some time. It’s easy to imagine three months’ wages worth of debt.

But the first slave owed the lord an ENORMOUS amount. A talent was worth 6000 denarii, or about $600,000. One talent was a lot of money. He owed TEN THOUSAND talents, or six BILLION dollars. How is that even possible? That’s the amount that Galilee paid to Rome as tribute over a period of fifteen years. That’s 50% more than the combined budget of all four University of Missouri campuses, plus its healthcare system. How is it possible that a slave racked up so much debt?

I don’t personally owe anyone six BILLION dollars. If I did, it wouldn’t even seem real. Somewhere around a million dollars, it would start to seem like fake money. Like, it’s so much that I could never, ever re-pay it, so whether it’s one million or ten million or six billion, it just doesn’t matter.

The lord would have been completely within his rights to seize the slave’s possessions and sell off his whole family. Even then, I can’t imagine he would come anywhere near recovering his debt. How could he ever be made whole?

Jesus likens this enormous debt to the debts we owe God on account of our sins. The good news is that our sins have all been forgiven. Each Sunday, we are called to confess our sins together, knowing that they will be followed by a declaration of pardon. We can be confident that whatever we have done, or failed to do, God will forgive us.

Each of us has personally sinned in some way. Maybe we shaded the truth, or coveted our neighbor’s possessions, or were angry with someone. Whatever. We can easily rack up debts like the second slave. But Jesus implies that we have racked up debts like the first slave—government-scale debts.

We are participants in a society, in institutions, and in systems that are inherently sinful. There is nobody here who would say that everything our government does is righteous, and yet we are obligated to support it with our tax dollars. We are living on land that was once inhabited by Osage, Kickapoo, and Kaskaskia tribes of Native Americans. I personally hold a lot of unearned privilege and am the beneficiary of a society that is basically set up to favor people just like me. That’s not to say that I had everything handed to me, but that my life has been easier because I’m a straight white man who grew up in a good school district.

Some people have asked me why I am so committed to the work of LGBTQ+ Rolla. Well, the truth is that the Christian Church has been the perpetrator of many, many crimes against humanity. I am called to do my small part towards righting those wrongs. I know that it’s a hole that I can never fill, but I feel that I need to do something. We have collectively harmed millions of people for many reasons throughout the past 15 centuries of our alliance with empire, through our actions and our failures to act. Coming back to South Africa, we recently added the Belhar Confession to our Book of Confessions as a rebuke against those churches who found justification for the evil apartheid regime.

The South African TRC was created to deal with some of the harm that was done by the apartheid government. One way it fell short, though, was that it focused on the actions of individuals. Say, a soldier who committed some atrocity against a rebel. What the TRC did not investigate, catalog, or provide reparations for was the systematic harms done to the non-white population of South Africa. Individuals were called to account for the collective shame of the government.

And so, in our weekly confessions, we often include confessions of the way our society acts or fails to act. We ask forgiveness for the ways in which we exploit and destroy the Earth. We ask forgiveness for the justice system that keeps us safe but dehumanizes those caught up in it, guilty or innocent. We ask forgiveness for our community’s lack of action to clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, and feed the hungry, and our participation in systems that perpetuate poverty and homelessness.

As we ask forgiveness, we are assured that God will grant us peace. But prayers are not only meant to communicate our needs to God. They are also meant to change our own hearts and align them more with God’s will.

God’s forgiveness is unconditional. But as we pray in the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” As Jesus implies in today’s parable, the only condition for God to forgive us is that we should then forgive others.

Why is forgiveness so important? As long as a debt remains, it creates a barrier between two people. The debt gives one party power over the other. The debt colors all of their interactions. Only when the debt is forgiven can two people build a healthy relationship. Only when we confess our sins, truthfully and with a contrite heart, can we accept being forgiven. We can confess to God openly through prayer. In some ways, that’s easier than confessing to those we have hurt. But stating our shortcomings truthfully, attempting to restore what has been lost, and asking for forgiveness is essential to repairing a damaged relationship.

You might be thinking, OK, I can do that. I know I hurt such-and-such, so I will go and confess and ask forgiveness. Maybe. But what about all of those ways in which you have hurt people unintentionally or even unknowingly? What about all of those ways in which you have participated in a sinful system and been sullied by other people’s actions?

That’s where God’s love comes in. I know that I have hurt people unintentionally, but I don’t know who. Or sometimes, I do know who, but I’ve lost touch with them and can no longer apologize. Or sometimes, I have been hurt in turn, and both sides need to apologize in order for forgiveness to take place. Or as I’ve said, I’m the beneficiary of a system that will keep doing what it does, whether I like it or not.

I cannot untangle all of this myself. I cannot change other people’s hearts. I cannot heal all of the hurt that I have caused, through action or inaction. I certainly cannot heal all of the hurt caused by the society and institutions of which I’m a part. But God can. All things are possible in God’s kingdom. One day, God will make all things right. The kingdom of heaven is that place where all relationships are made whole again, where all hurts are healed, where all are welcome.

One day, we will get to experience God’s eternal glory, God’s love binding us all together, flowing through us all. Wouldn’t it be great if we could experience just a little bit of that now? We can. We can’t heal all of the hurts. We can’t remedy all of the wrongs. But we can work together towards a world where there is no war, no anger, no hatred.

The month of September has been designated as a new liturgical season, first in 1989 by the Eastern Orthodox Churches, then by the World Council of Churches, and then in 2015 by the Roman Catholic Church. It is the Season of Creation. It starts September 1 and ends on October 4, the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, who is the patron saint of the environment and animals. It is a time to renew our relationship with our Creator and all of creation. It is also the time when we collect the Peace & Global Witness special offering. This month is a time to reflect on all that we have done, as a church, a community, and a society, to damage the Earth and also God’s most special Creation: humanity. For thousands of years, we have been taking advantage of what God has given us, exploiting the Earth’s resources, and exploiting one another. Someday, God will make all things new. But in the meantime, if we work together, forgive one another, and seek both truth and reconciliation, we can experience God’s kingdom now through healthy relationships with one another and the world. Amen.

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Sermon on September 3, 2023, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Matthew 16:21-28.

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Let me back up just a bit. This passage starts with, “From that time on.” What time? Well, Jesus was traveling with his disciples and came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, which is way up north, 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. That’s a long way from his home in Nazareth or their base of operations in Capernaum. It was a thoroughly Romanized city, a symbol of Rome’s occupation. Jesus asked his disciples who people said he was, and they had a variety of answers. Simon said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” In response, Jesus gave him the name of Peter, the Rock, the cornerstone of his church. Then he told them all not to say anything.

During the first century, Judea and, especially, Galilee were awash with messianic fervor. Many men stepped forward to claim the mantle of Messiah. Almost all of their movements ended in bloodshed. First-century Jews imagined that the Messiah would re-establish Israel in the mold of David’s kingdom. The Messiah would expel the Romans and re-order society according to God’s commandments. Some Jews expected two Messiahs, one to fulfill the role of king and one to be a new high priest who would cleanse the Temple and ensure purity of worship. Regardless, everyone expected God’s anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ, to overturn society.

Maybe that’s why Jesus told the disciples to keep it quiet. The ruling classes—the Romans, Herod and his supporters, the chief priests and Sadducees—wouldn’t just stand by and watch their world be overturned. As I said, almost every messianic movement ended in bloodshed. Still today, one of the hallmarks of a messianic movement, like the Ghost Dance movement of the Native American tribes across the western plains or the Branch Davidians in Waco, is that it ends in violence and bloodshed. Jesus didn’t want his disciples to rise up as an armed rebellion, because he knew how that would end.

Jesus had something quite different in mind. Yes, he planned to overturn the power structures of the world, but not through armed rebellion. Instead, he likened his kingdom to yeast that makes dough rise, or a mustard seed that grows into a huge bush. Eventually, the whole world will be transformed, but in God’s time, not ours. The transformation is a slow process, one that is almost imperceptible at times, one that is often three steps forward, two steps back.

So in just four verses, Peter goes from cornerstone to stumbling block. Poor Peter. He comes so close to understanding Jesus sometimes, but just doesn’t quite get there. He knows that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, but cannot imagine that Jesus could die and then be raised from the dead.

When Peter rebukes Jesus for speaking such nonsense, Jesus rebukes him back. “Get behind me, Satan!” Peter may be the cornerstone of the church that Jesus’s followers will create, but he doesn’t quite hear God’s calling. He doesn’t quite understand what God wants him to do.

Well, the same goes for me, and for every other church leader across history. We all try to listen to God’s calling. We all try to do what is necessary to build God’s kingdom. But we all fall short in some way. We are Presbyterian and not Catholic because of one great rebuke against the church’s leaders five centuries ago. Whatever you might think of Pope Francis and today’s Catholic church, it is undeniable that the Roman Catholic church of the 1500s had some pretty serious flaws.

Some people have argued that we are going through a similar transition time today. Throughout history, it seems like every five centuries, there is some major change in God’s church. So we’re due for a renewal, a revival, a new awakening. This awakening will bring with it major changes in the church and in society.

Jesus said that his followers would suffer and must be prepared to deny themselves and take up their cross. He didn’t say that they would have to experience some minor inconveniences. He said that they would lose everything, even their lives, because they were following Christ’s teachings and building Christ’s kingdom. In some circles, this gets turned around to say that suffering is a way to measure your righteousness, and if you are suffering, it must be because you are doing good things for God’s kingdom. This is faulty logic. The truth is that people suffer for lots of different reasons, and suffering is not in itself a good thing. Suffering is not something that should be pursued for its own sake. Rather, God’s kingdom is what we should pursue, regardless of consequences. We should be prepared for the possibility of suffering if we challenge the powers and principalities that govern this world.

I am reminded of the movie, The Untouchables, with Kevin Costner and Sean Connery. Costner plays Eliot Ness, the federal agent who ultimately brought down Al Capone. Connery plays Jim Malone, a Chicago policeman who helps him. Now, the movie is almost entirely fiction, but there are some good scenes in it anyway, mostly ones that involve Sean Connery. Anyway, early on, Malone says to Ness, “What are you prepared to do?” Ness wants to take down Capone. Capone wasn’t known for being easygoing or a pushover. Capone would fight to the death to maintain his criminal empire. So Ness had to be willing to go just as far in order to take him down.

Soon after, Ness, Malone, and a couple of colleagues were in an office. Malone grabbed four shotguns and told them it was time to go. They went on a liquor raid. Malone walked them directly to a particular building and said, “Here we are. Liquor raid.” Ness said, “Here?!?” Malone said, “Mr. Ness, everybody knows where the booze is. The problem isn’t finding it. The problem is, Who wants to cross Capone?”

We all know what needs to be fixed in this world. The question is not, What’s broken? The question is, What are you prepared to do to fix it? In The Untouchables, as in real life, Eliot Ness is ultimately successful in bringing down Al Capone. But he and his team paid a heavy price to win that victory.

That’s what Jesus was saying. Knowing what’s broken is not sufficient. Knowing how to fix it is not sufficient. Being willing to act, regardless of the personal cost, is necessary.

If I may digress for a moment, I’d like to talk about atonement theory. The prevailing belief is penal substitutionary atonement: Jesus was killed because God demanded a sacrifice to atone for the sins of the world. Jesus was punished for all of our sins. I’d like to offer an alternative that was popular in the first several centuries of Christianity and has made a bit of a comeback lately: moral exemplar theory. If the only thing Jesus had to accomplish was to die, why not let him be killed by Herod as a baby? Instead, let’s accept that Jesus had some work to do. I believe that the point of the Incarnation was to show us how to live, and how to die. Jesus set an example of how we are to care for each other, and how much we are expected to give for the good of humanity.

So, what are you prepared to do? What are you willing to sacrifice for the good of God’s kingdom? What problem do you see in the world that you want to help fix, but are too afraid to try because of the consequences for you personally? What problem do you see in the world that our church is called to help fix, but we are too afraid to try because of the consequences for our organization?

Almost two months ago, I asked you all to think about what ONE THING you care about, the thread that ties together the ways in which you are called to serve the world. I asked you to find partners in ministry. I hope that is going well for you. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that as a church, we already have something: the preschool. We already have an amazing director who has transformed the space and the programs into something that has incredible impact on the children of our community.

But here’s the thing: We let the preschool use our facilities, and we let them make changes if they can come up with all of the funding. We let the preschool use some of our staff time. The preschool management committee includes both members of the congregation and people who are tied directly to the preschool, either staff or parents. But we have not truly embraced the preschool as our ONE BIG THING. It is entirely possible for someone to attend our worship services and have NO IDEA that we even have a preschool. It is entirely possible for someone to attend our worship services and have NO IDEA how many people in our congregation care deeply for the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual development of young people in our community.

Often, when the subject of the preschool comes up, there are questions about finances, or a desire to recruit preschool families as members. But that is the wrong way to think about it. The preschool is a mission of the church. What are we prepared to do to support the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual growth of children in our community? How can we reorient our discipleship to further that growth? I’m not saying that financial arrangements are irrelevant, only that they are secondary to the goal of supporting children. I’m not saying that evangelism to preschool families is a bad thing, only that the success or failure of that evangelism is not ultimately related to our mission of supporting the growth of the children.

But I think we are afraid to embrace that mission. We’re afraid to let go of who we are, for the sake of who we could be. We’re afraid to let the preschool truly take ownership of our shared future. The thing I struggle with, and maybe some of you struggle with, too, is that the preschool isn’t really my personal calling. I don’t know what I can do to support their work.

But you know what? Jesus didn’t say that building his kingdom would be easy. He didn’t say that everyone could keep doing whatever they personally wanted to do. He said that we should follow him wherever he leads, and be willing to let go of what we thought our future would be for the sake of the glorious future that awaits us in God’s kingdom. He said that we would almost certainly suffer along the way, but he will be with us, even to the end of the age. And he said that it is not the journey that matters, but the destination, and he has a wonderful destination in store for us, as the world is transformed into a place where everyone can flourish. Amen.

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Jonathan Kimball wrote this sermon to be preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on August 13, 2023, using Matthew 14:22-33. Due to illness, he was unable to preach, and Susan Murray preached a modified version. The podcast reflects her changes, which add a different perspective.

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We’re about in the middle of Matthew and pretty far along in Jesus’s ministry. Let me back up to an earlier scene. Matthew 5-7 is the Sermon on the Mount, probably the greatest sermon ever preached. Afterwards, people started following Jesus, and he decided to go across the Sea of Galilee with his disciples. A storm came up while Jesus slept. Finally, the disciples woke Jesus, and in Matthew 8:26, he rebuked the winds and the sea, and all was calm. The disciples said to each other, “What sort of person is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him!”

Fast forward to last week’s lesson. Jesus was preaching and a huge crowd gathered. The disciples want to send everyone away, but Jesus said, “No, you feed them. Here, give me whatever bread and fish you have, and I’ll help you.” They witness a great miracle where 5 loaves and 2 fish feed 5000 men plus some number of women and children. All ate and were satisfied.

Then Jesus sends the disciples away on the boat while he deals with the crowd. This can be read as foreshadowing the days of the early church. We often describe the church as a metaphorical ship. Indeed, look up at the ceiling of this church—it seems to have been designed to evoke the sense that we are inside a great ship. Throughout the first few centuries after Christ’s ascension, boats and ships were used in artwork to represent the nascent church.

So the disciples are all alone in the church, er, I mean, the boat. Have you ever been on the water in a storm? Terrifying, isn’t it? Especially at night. And the disciples didn’t have a radio, or lights, or binoculars, or anything. Dawn is approaching but the sun has not yet risen, and because of the storm, it was probably very dark. The Sea of Galilee isn’t huge, but it’s big enough to build up some good storms, and big enough to drown in. When you’re in a storm like that, you feel totally helpless. You can try to get the boat turned in such a way that the big waves won’t swamp you, but steering is nearly impossible.

The disciples have seen Jesus still a storm like this before. They just saw him feed 5000 men, besides women and children, with a meager offering of food. But Jesus isn’t there. They cannot imagine that Jesus can help them now. Sure, he helped them before, but that was then. This situation is totally different.

So then they see Jesus walking towards them and think it’s a ghost! Surely Jesus can’t just show up here, right? All the miraculous events of their past don’t prepare them for the next miracle. They may be growing, but they are still young in their faith. They haven’t yet figured out just who Jesus is and what he is capable of. I’m not sure what they were thinking exactly when they left Jesus behind. Did they not think that he had some sort of plan to join them later?

Then Jesus says those classic words, “Do not be afraid.” Throughout the Bible, whenever God or God’s messengers show up, people respond with fear and trembling. Yet the message always begins with, “Fear not.” We are scared to encounter the Divine, but God’s message is always one of encouragement, one of hope, one of love.

Peter gets the message—sort of. He is willing to step out in faith, but only if Jesus gives him assurance. Peter is maybe further along in his understanding than the other disciples, but is still struggling to really believe what Jesus is capable of. He wants to believe that Jesus will save them, but he can’t believe with his whole heart. His encounter with the Divine still doesn’t overcome the fear provoked by the chaos swirling around him. He wants to believe, so he steps out in faith that Jesus will protect him. Yet just one little step and his confidence falters. He still feels like he’s all alone and has to rely on his own power, and he knows that he is just a man and so he can’t walk on water.

But Jesus is right there! Jesus told him that it would be OK! Jesus has demonstrated again and again his power over this world! There is a participatory nature to all of Jesus’s miracles, though. He does most of the work, but not all. Peter’s fear blocks the inbreaking of God’s realm. Peter’s fear prevents him from truly encountering the Divine.

Yet Jesus is real. Jesus is present with Peter. Jesus saves Peter, and then saves the rest of the disciples. Finally, they get it. They truly believe that Jesus is not just a teacher, not just a prophet, but indeed the Son of God.

As I said, this story can be read as an allegory for the church. When the New Testament was written, Jesus had ascended to heaven and left the disciples behind to carry on. If you read through Paul’s letters and the other letters and the Book of Acts, you can tell that there is a lot of turmoil in the church. Some of it is internal: there were clearly two factions, one who thought that following Christ meant first being a Jew, and one who thought that Christ’s actions removed all obstacles for Gentiles to join in God’s kingdom. Again and again, Paul fights with enemies about the need for circumcision. But much of the turmoil is external. Paul enters the story in Acts when Stephen, the church’s first martyr, is stoned. Stephen is far from the last martyr, though. Jesus’s brother James, who became the head of the movement after Jesus’s crucifixion, was martyred. Eventually, most of the original twelve disciples were martyred. Jerusalem was ransacked and the Temple was destroyed. Christians, especially Gentile Christians, were outcasts both from Roman society and from Jewish communities.

In those turbulent times, Peter was one of the leaders. As Jesus said, “On this rock I will build my church.” Peter was trying to guide the ragtag movement and help them develop a distinct identity without the central figure of Jesus to rally around. Yet, even though Jesus was crucified and had ascended to heaven, Peter knew that Christ was alive and present to him. Present to all of them. Peter trusted that Christ would guide the church if they would only let him.

This is still God’s message to the church today. In this story, Jesus was not a ghost. He was real. He was present to Peter. He saved the disciples from the storms. In the early days after his resurrection, Jesus was real. He was present with the disciples and guided them on the Way. He gave them a mission, or rather a commission, to go into all the world making disciples and teaching them. He promised that he would always be with them, to the end of the age.

Christ is still here. Not in bodily form, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. Christ is really and truly present among us. Many Christians are functional atheists, meaning that they believe in God in the abstract but not that God is present in any real way. But Christ promised to always be with us until the end of the age. Christ will save us from the storms in our lives.

And not only in our individual lives, but also in our corporate lives. Christ is here in this place, strengthening and guiding the Church. Christ is ready to help us walk on water, if we will only take the first step. Christ is ready to host a great feast, if we will only give Him our meager starting supplies.

Now, as I said, those first few years were turbulent times for the Church, and the storms persist to this day. What can we do to survive the storms that are swirling about us? I’m not sure, but I do know that the Church, with a capital C, will survive. I do know that God is still working through us, individually and as a congregation. I do know that the Holy Spirit binds us together and strengthens us. I do know that we can continue to function as Christ’s body in the world if we will only let Him dwell within us.

When you’re in a storm on the sea, there are two options. One, you can keep heading towards your destination regardless of the wind and the waves. That’s a recipe for disaster. That leaves the boat open to waves coming over the side, or to the wind and waves knocking you over. You may think that the shortest path is the quickest path, which is true in some situations, but not when a storm is raging. There’s another option, though: running before the storm. Whichever way the wind and the waves are heading, that’s where you need to go. Let them push you along instead of fighting against them. In the short term, it feels wrong to go away from your destination, but if the option is being swamped or capsizing, any direction that keeps you upright is better. Your best bet is to run before the storm until it subsides, and then figure out where to go.

We can be confident that Christ will be with us whether the seas are calm or the storm is raging. We can be confident that He will come to us and protect us. We can be confident that He will enable us to do miraculous things, if we only trust in Him. Let us pray not only for Christ’s presence with us, but also for the courage to step out in faith as Peter did, and the faith to believe that Christ will be with us each step of the way. Amen.

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Preached on August 6, 2023, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Matthew 14:13-21.

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Let me set the scene. The passage right before this one is about Herod Antipas and John the Baptist. John had been critical of Herod and his wife Herodias, so they both wanted rid of him. Herod arrested him but was afraid to do anything more. At a lavish banquet, Herodias uses her daughter to force his hand, and as a result, Herod had John the Baptist killed.

Jesus and his disciples hear of this. I think it’s safe to say that all of them were at least peripherally involved with John the Baptist’s movement, and were probably all baptized by him or his followers. Jesus is particularly grieved, so he withdraws to be by himself. Yet he cannot escape the crowds.

Put yourself in the place of a disciple. You are grieving, and you know that Jesus is grieving, too. You thought that being far away from towns and villages, in a wild desert, would give you the space you needed to be with your close friends and commiserate. But here come the crowds. Not a handful of people, not a hundred people, but 5000 men, plus some women and children, who knows how many. We’re talking about the entire student population at Missouri S&T plus all of the faculty and staff. We’re talking about four times the population of Capernaum. Like, can’t you please leave us alone?

So then, the hour starts getting late. You’re hungry, everyone is getting hungry. It’s a big crowd of hungry people. That’s not just unpleasant; it’s dangerous. People are getting grouchy. They’re hot and tired on top of it, and so are you. You’ve just spent hours walking to this deserted place for some solace, then helping people who can’t hear what Jesus is saying or can’t understand his teachings, and you’re hot and tired and hungry and oh LORD can this day just end.

So, you grab a couple of the other disciples and go over to Jesus and say, “Look, it’s been a long day. Everyone is getting hungry. If we let them go now, maybe they’ll be able to scrounge up food in the villages before nightfall. Don’t you want a break? We sure do.” You figure that Jesus has no choice, but you’ve forgotten just who you are talking to.

Jesus responds, “No, don’t send them away—feed them!” What? Feed them with what? We barely have enough food for ourselves. How are we going to feed a whole city’s worth of people? A good-sized city’s worth of people? If we tell them we’re going to feed them, and then we run out, that will be even worse than not promising anything in the first place!

And yet, Jesus convinces the disciples that he has things under control. The disciples go along with it, because they don’t really have a better plan. The people sit down, and Jesus provides for them. The disciples experience the only miracle that is reported in all four Gospels, one so outrageous that everyone remembered it, even though somehow people forgot about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

They all sit down, and Jesus does something totally ordinary. He blesses bread and breaks it. We invoke this same formula when we celebrate the Eucharist, so we treat it as sacred, but in reality, this was just convention. Last weekend, I was at a retreat at a Jesuit retreat center. The Catholic tradition is to genuflect, then say a particular prayer that you would probably recognize, and then start their meal. The formula here is basically the same kind of thing except in the culture and religion of first-century Galilee. Before they ate, the host of the meal would bless the bread and break it.

But in Jesus’s hands, the ordinary becomes sacred. He is given some ordinary bread, and he performs an ordinary act, and suddenly, the veil is lifted. God’s realm peeks through. Instead of a meager meal of crumbs, the crowd has enough. They eat and are satisfied. And there’s some leftover for tomorrow—not a lot, but enough. Enough that the disciples will be able to move on to the next task, the next place, the next miracle.

What is the difference between the sacred and the profane? In Acts, Peter is shown and told, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” In that time and place, certain foods and certain actions and certain places and even certain people were considered unclean, profane. In our time, we have a different understanding and draw different boundaries, but still there’s a sense that some things are unclean, profane. But Jesus demonstrates that it is not the bread, or the person, or the place that is profane or sacred. Rather, it is the presence or absence of God and God’s realm. And wherever Jesus is, God’s realm breaks through. The ordinary and profane suddenly becomes sacred.

Now, let’s imagine the scene from the perspective of someone in the crowd. You were at home, toiling away, and someone said, “Hey, you know that guy we’ve been hearing so much about, Jesus of Nazareth? My buddy said he’s out in the wilderness that direction and a bunch of people are listening to him preach. Let’s go!” You grab your spouse and your kids, and start walking. You’re in a hurry because you don’t want to miss it, since you’re not sure how far you’ll have to walk. You get there and it’s just as amazing as you expected. Jesus is a great orator. The way he says things just cuts you right to the heart sometimes, and other times fills you with joy, and other times inspires you to change your life. You see one of his disciples and ask him to clarify something, some parable that Jesus taught, and the disciple is almost as inspiring as Jesus is. Even your kids are enthralled. This goes on for hours, though, and eventually your kids start nagging you for a snack. You rushed out into the wilderness, so you only have whatever was in your pockets at the time, which wasn’t much. You start thinking, “Uh-oh. It’s getting late, I’m hungry, they’re hungry, and we’re a long way from home. We passed a little village on the way, but there’s an awful lot of people here. If we all went to that village, we would be like a horde of locusts! I should have brought more with me.”

Just as you’re about to give up and tell your family that you all need to hurry home to get something to eat, a disciple comes around again. He says, “Have a seat. Jesus is working on something. I’ll be right back.” Huh, how strange. Well, this Jesus guy seems so wise, so surely he knows that we’re all hungry. Oh look, the disciple is coming back. He hands around a basket that has bread in it—so full! Where did he get all this bread? You grab a hunk of bread, and so does everyone else in your family, and the neighbor who walked out to the wilderness with you. At first, you’re hesitant, because you don’t want to be a glutton, but there seems to be plenty, so you grab a big hunk. Oh, and here comes the fish! You think, I haven’t had fish in a while. I’ll just have a little piece. Wait—that basket is full, too, so I might as well have a big hunk! What a great meal!

So, the meal is over, the disciples circulate around gathering up the leftovers, and then they go get in their boat while Jesus gives a brief after-dinner talk. What an inspiration! Your family leaves for home, filled with joy, filled with anticipation of a glorious future, convinced that the time is coming when God’s kingdom will be established.

Now, what do you think: Who provided the bread and fish? Was it Jesus? Was it the disciples? The disciple said that Jesus was working on something, so maybe Jesus had someone deliver it. But the disciples were the ones gathering up the leftovers and taking it on their boat, so maybe they brought it in their boat and Jesus just had to figure out how much of it they could spare or how he would distribute it to the large crowd.

I don’t know what the original crowd thought. Was it Jesus? Was it the disciples? Was it the other people in the crowd? Who knows? But here’s what I do know: the disciples knew exactly what happened and who was their source of strength. Whatever the crowd thought, the disciples left knowing that Jesus could do almost anything. Jesus could take whatever meager offering they made and multiply it in their hands. His miraculous actions would have inspired the disciples to keep working for the glory of God’s kingdom. They would have known that they could always rely on Jesus to work through them, so they would have been encouraged to rely even more on Jesus.

In the same way, Jesus will multiply our efforts. Whenever we are working for the glory of His kingdom, Jesus will work alongside us, if we only ask. Imagine if the disciples had just tried to feed the crowd on their own without asking Jesus for help. How far would their five loaves and two fishes have gone? Not very. But instead of relying on their own efforts and their own resources, they dedicated all that they had and all that they were to service for God’s kingdom. In return, Jesus transformed them and transformed the gathering from just a random crowd listening to an inspirational speaker into a glimpse of the messianic banquet that will come at the end of the age.

Christ offers us the same help. We are Christ’s body in the world. That means we can rely on Christ’s presence with us, by the Holy Spirit, acting through us and multiplying our efforts. You may think, I can’t do as much as I used to. Or, I don’t have the time and energy to do ONE MORE THING. Or, I don’t know where to start. Well, same here, but almost exactly three years ago, I did SOMETHING. One chapter of my life was over. We were settled into a new house, and my youngest kid had gone off to college, so I was looking for whatever would be next. So I started a social organization in the middle of a pandemic when social gathering was impossible. And yet, because I gave a little bit of myself for the glory of God’s kingdom, God multiplied my efforts, and now the organization has taken on a life of its own.

I don’t know what your personal calling is, or if you have found your partners in ministry yet. I do know, though, that if you seek God’s guidance and commit your work to God’s glory and not your own, God’s kingdom will peek through. Maybe not immediately, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even next year, but someday. And meanwhile, Christ will be right there beside you each step of the way, guiding you and amplifying your voice and multiplying your efforts and impact. When you think there is nothing more to give, Christ invites you to His Table to get replenished. So we turn now towards that Table, where our small offering of bread and juice will transform into a foretaste of the banquet that comes at the end of the age, the bread of life and the cup of salvation that sustain us on our journey. Amen.

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