Author: jonathan.kimball

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on July 2, 2023. Based on Romans 6:12-23.

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Brené Brown is a researcher in the field of social work. She catapulted to fame in 2010 when she gave a TEDx talk called “The Power of Vulnerability.” Her research is primarily in the area of leadership, vulnerability, and shame, and how they are all connected. It’s important to recognize that “guilt” and “shame” are separate concepts that are only loosely related. American culture is primarily built on a guilt-innocence paradigm. If you do something wrong, you are guilty and deserving of a proportional punishment. If not, you are innocent and do not deserve punishment.

Many cultures around the world, including that of Biblical Judea and several regions of the US, are built on an honor-shame paradigm. Brown grew up in such a culture in Texas. Shame is less factual and more emotional. Shame is about whether or not you measure up to your community’s standards. Often, these standards relate to gender and family roles. For example, maybe you are seen as not “manly” enough if you don’t act in a certain way. That doesn’t really incur “guilt,” because you haven’t actually violated any laws, but it does incur shame.

Shame is a powerful force embedded deep in the human psyche. Shame leads to being outcast, and in a primitive society, being outcast is nearly a death sentence. At the least, it’s an exclusion from the continuation of your family line.

Brown has studied the impact of shame on relationships for more than two decades. The challenge we face is that building a loving relationship requires vulnerability, but vulnerability then exposes us to the pain of shame. She wrote, “We desperately don’t want to experience shame, and we’re not willing to talk about it. Yet the only way to resolve shame is to talk about it. Maybe we’re afraid of topics like love and shame. Most of us like safety, certainty, and clarity. Shame and love are grounded in vulnerability and tenderness.” She also said that shame needs three ingredients to grow: secrecy, silence, and judgment. But what kills it is empathy.

Sin is associated with both guilt and shame. In a sense, guilt is easier to deal with. Suppose I steal something and therefore incur guilt. I can deal with the guilt by making restitution to the victim and possibly by being punished by the government, whether I’m fined or imprisoned. Now the guilt is dealt with by a proportional response. Shame is MUCH harder. Forever after, I would be branded as a thief and shunned by society. There are lots of jobs I wouldn’t be eligible for, and many of my friends would abandon me.

I think the best definition of sin is whatever separates us from each other or from God. In a sense, then, shame is sin. Shame causes us to hide from God, like Adam & Eve did in the Garden of Eden. Shame prevents us from confronting our guilt and repairing our relationships. Paul wrote that the “wages of sin is death.” Well, that death takes the form of shame that keeps us from thriving.

As I thought about the way sin and shame control us, I was reminded of some parasites that turn animals into zombies. Have you ever heard of those? They are fascinating. I don’t really understand how they work, except that they somehow take over their host’s brain. The Ophiocordyceps genus of fungi lives in an insect. The fungus controls the host insect’s brain and steers it to a place with the right temperature, humidity, and other conditions for the fungus to grow. When it matures, the fungus sprouts stalks and disperses spores to take over other insects.

Here’s another one. The Euhaplorchis californiensis is a kind of worm that grows in a carpet-like layer atop the brain of a California killifish. They can live and grow there, but they can only reproduce inside the guts of birds. So when they are ready, they force the fish to swim near the surface of the water and otherwise behave erratically so that a bird will see it and eat it. This is a more subtle form of control, in that the fish still basically behaves normally but does a few things that are risky. The worm basically suppresses the fish’s survival instincts.

Sin is like that Euhaplorchis californiensis worm. It burrows down inside of us and makes us do things we wouldn’t otherwise choose to do.  We fail to notice things that might harm us. The first few steps are innocuous enough, but gradually, we ignore the risks inherent to our behavior. Or like the Ophiocordyceps fungi, we let sin and shame steer us towards an environment where they can grow and blossom. We surround ourselves with people who encourage the wrong behaviors, or we hide from those who would help us escape the grip of our bad habits. Eventually, we become fully consumed by our sin and our shame.

But the promise of the Gospel is that we don’t have to stay in those dark places where shame grows. Through grace, we are forgiven of our sins. We don’t need to hide from God, for God knows our inmost heart and loves us anyway. God sees us as image-bearers, reflecting God’s goodness, no matter what the world sees. As we do each Sunday, we may approach God with boldness and confess our sins, assured in advance that God will forgive us and wash away all our shame. Rather than let it grow like a parasite in the darkness of secrecy, silence, and judgment, we may confess it in the light and be made clean and whole.

In some Christian traditions, the message ends there. But I say, what’s the point? Why does God forgive us? Why are we freed from our shame? Well, again, in some traditions, the answer is, “so we can go to heaven.” But as a universalist, that’s unsatisfying to me. And anyway, if that’s the only reason, why not wait until your deathbed, live a long life full of debauchery and get your freedom right at the end?

Paul writes, “Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” He anticipated that argument. The Romans might say, Hey, we’re forgiven, so let’s go wild! Paul says no: that path still leads to separation from God, it still leads to shame, it still leads to death.

We are saved so that we are free from the grip of sin and shame. Instead, we are led to righteousness. Last week, I spoke about the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the kingdom of God. Well, our freedom from sin is what enables us to become aligned on these two axes. We are free to follow God, with no need to worry about God’s judgment on us. We are free to reconcile with one another, with no need to worry about either of us being judged. We are sanctified and we participate in the sanctification of the world.

We are all called individually to the ministry of reconciliation. I have a particular calling that I’ve spoken about, and I know that at least some of you have identified your own particular calling. These are ways that individually we may pursue God’s kingdom. One by one, we go into the world and show God’s love to people we meet. We come here to be spiritually fed, then we go out and proclaim that the kingdom of God is at hand, through our words and actions. We meet people where they are and help them to see God working in their lives.

But the larger question is, what ministry of reconciliation are we called to as a congregation? I can only do so much—I can only be in one place at a time, and I have a job and a family. The same goes for each person—everyone has limitations and obligations. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If we are individually working in lots of different directions, we can affect people at an individual level. But if we all work in the same direction, our efforts reinforce one another and multiply.

On multiple occasions, as recently as last week, I’ve said that our job is not to build a church but to build the kingdom of God. What I mean is that our primary calling is to reconcile the whole world to God and to each other. That’s a huge task, one that is impossible. If we each do a little bit, though, and work in one little corner, God will amplify our efforts and God’s reign will break through. And if we all do a little bit in basically the same corner of God’s kingdom, we will support each other and strengthen each other.

The way that impacts our church, then, is that other people see what we’re doing and want to help, too. They want to be part of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom. They need the support we can give them, and they are willing to give us support when we need it.

I recently read an addendum to Good to Great by Jim Collins. He has mainly studied businesses that far outperformed their rivals, but also did a pilot study of nonprofits and other non-business organizations. An important part of the success of any organization is what he calls the “hedgehog concept.” There is an ancient Greek expression attributed to Archilochus, “A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.” The hedgehog concept is the ONE THING that an organization does well. It’s at the intersection of what our passion is, what we can do better than everyone else, and what drives resources. In business, “resources” means money. In a church, “resources” means money, yes, but also time and energy and ideas and people.

We have been freed from the shame of our sins. Everyone in this room, everyone watching online, everyone who is connected to this church in any way, has been freed of their sins. And so has everyone else. But for those of us connected to this church, this extension of Christ’s body has been called to do ONE BIG THING to reconcile people to God, to take part in the transformation of the world. We will shortly go to the Lord’s Table to receive spiritual nourishment to strengthen us in our pursuit of God’s kingdom. How will we pursue righteousness? What is our calling? What are we prepared to do, as a church, to spread God’s love, to sanctify one little corner of God’s kingdom? Let us listen to the guiding of the Holy Spirit as we lean on each other and work side by side for the renewal of world. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on June 25, 2023. Based on Matthew 10:25-39.

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Have you all heard of Brother Jed? He was a traveling preacher, at one time based in Columbia and later based in Terre Haute. He traveled around the country, mostly the Midwest, mostly visiting college campuses. He and his followers would carry signs telling everyone how evil they are and would yell at them, preaching about the coming judgment. He visited Missouri S&T several times while I’ve lived here. Although he passed away last year, I suspect that his wife and children and other followers are still carrying on his ministry.

Those of us involved in campus ministry would always talk about him when he visited. We unanimously disagreed with his methods. Jason Smith, who is the advisor to Chi Alpha and also the manager of Coffeesmiths, calls it “inoculating people to the Gospel.” If the only way people hear about the good news of God’s love is through such hateful, confrontational people, who just yell at them without trying to know them, they won’t be open to more loving, relational evangelism. We in campus ministry are united in our methods of building those relationships, seeing the needs of college students, and meeting them where they are.

I need to tell you about another experience I had. Two weeks ago, we held Pride in downtown Rolla. There was a small group of protesters. I’m not sure that they all came together, but they all hovered on the edge together. By and large, they were conversational in their approach. But one woman was wearing a shirt that said, in huge letters, “ASK ME WHY YOU DESERVE HELL.” Now, no matter what you believe, no matter whether you are a universalist like me or an annihilationist or infernalist with a Calvinist or Arminian theology, regardless, this is NOT the way to start a conversation! If you approach someone with the attitude that they need to be told how evil they are, they will simply shut down and the conversation will be over before it even begins.

But these aren’t the only bad forms of evangelism. Along Acorn Trail, I will periodically see people set up with a rack of flyers. I think they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I run by too fast and too far away to be sure. When I’m getting my morning exercise or otherwise enjoying God’s Creation, I have no interest in whatever message they might be selling. Of course, Jehovah’s Witnesses are also well-known for door-to-door proselytizing. Like, yes, by all means, interrupt whatever I’m doing to tell me something I didn’t want to know.

What is the common denominator to all of these bad forms of evangelism? They are fundamentally focused on the evangelizer’s perspective. They start from a position of what the evangelizer wants to say and wants others to hear, rather than starting from a position of understanding what people themselves want to hear.

In a sense, these forms of evangelism are easy. They require no real understanding of other people’s perspectives. You can be like Brother Jed and assume all people are basically evil, and craft a message accordingly. You can have pre-printed tracts that have a generic message for all people. You can have your Four Spiritual Laws in hand and go through a rehearsed speech. Basically, all you need is a hammer, because every potential convert is a nail.

That is not at all what Jesus taught his disciples to do. He didn’t send them to stand on street corners and harangue passersby. He didn’t send them with a formulaic message and just-so stories and pat answers. Instead, he told them to go and live with people in their villages. Learn their needs, fulfill their needs, and bring them into community. In so doing, they would build the kingdom of God.

But what is the kingdom of God exactly? In progressive circles, it is more common to speak of the kin-dom of God, without the g, to state that we are all God’s family, God’s kin, and all need to be brought into a familial relationship. That’s good and removes the patriarchal overtones, and also makes it more understandable to those of us who live in a modern democracy rather than historical monarchy. However, I prefer to keep a reference to God’s reign. The kingdom of God is a transformed world in which God is sovereign, where God rules over all people, over a renewed social order.

The kingdom of God comes about when we are aligned with God’s will. This is the vertical dimension. To be ruled by God, we must study God’s Word, God’s message to the world best expressed in the person of Jesus Christ. Every day, every moment, there are forces in society that want to pull us away from God. We are tempted to pursue money, or power, or fame. We are drawn into groups that teach us to hate some other group. We are asked to choose between what we believe to be true and honorable and just, versus what allows us to fit in. Submitting to God’s reign requires a constant effort to turn away from these worldly distractions and towards God’s message of hope and love.

But the kingdom of God has a horizontal dimension as well: how we relate to others. Where things often go awry is that we believe our way of understanding God—the vertical dimension—is the way that others must believe, too. So, we focus our efforts on convincing other people that they are wrong and we are right. We set up a win-lose dichotomy. We point to ourselves as models of faithfulness, of true belief. This of course leaves us open to accusations of hypocrisy, and rightly so. If you consider Christianity as a whole over the past two millennia, hypocrisy is our defining characteristic. From the Crusades to liberate the Holy Land—and pillage and plunder it while we were there—to the Indian boarding schools to the Inquisition and pogroms, we have largely failed to live up to our ideals. As long as we are convinced of the rightness of our beliefs and our responsibility to make others believe as we do, we will continue to transgress the spirit of the Gospel.

Unfortunately, we inherit this legacy, so we have to work extra hard for our message to escape its context. Communication isn’t just what is said, but also what is heard, and what is heard depends on context and experience. Let me give you an example. In 2005, I quit drinking. I didn’t make anyone else quit, and didn’t really talk about it. I would still hang out with my neighbors and friends and family who all drank. I would often drink non-alcoholic beer. No big deal, right? But some of them apparently took my teetotaling as a judgment on their actions. Whether they had a guilty conscience or associated me with rabid temperance preachers, my simple act of not drinking was interpreted as an indictment of their personal choices.

In the same way, we need to take care that our message about our faith is received with a spirit of love. We have to overcome the inoculation others have received from bad theology and bad preachers. This is hard. In fact, it’s impossible for us to do on our own. But Jesus’s training to his disciples was that God would go with them. They wouldn’t need to rely on their own abilities and knowledge. Rather, Jesus gave them authority over unclean spirits—that is, they could heal people by Jesus’s power, not their own. Elsewhere he counseled his disciples that they shouldn’t make up their minds in advance of what they were going to say, but rather to rely on the Holy Spirit to speak through them. Yes, spreading God’s message is hard, but we’re just the instruments of God’s shalom, of God’s reign breaking through. It is God’s strength working through us that will transform hearts and minds.

I’m reminded of something a spiritual advisor once told me. He said that in building God’s kingdom, we do perhaps 2% of the work and God does 98%. The way you burn out is if you try to do, say, 3%, or even worse, try to do 100%. But God does ask that you do your full 2%, not just 1% and certainly not zero. We can’t just sit back and wait for God’s kingdom to emerge, but we can be secure in the knowledge that God will do most of the work, as long as we try.

So, I’ve talked a lot about what not to do, about bad models of evangelism. What are some good models? Let’s turn back to what Jesus taught his disciples. He said, Go into all the villages, healing the sick, casting out demons, and preaching that the kingdom of God is at hand. First, go: It is not sufficient to wait for people to come to you. You must actively seek people out to share God’s love. I consider the patrons at the Mission to be part of my ministry, as well as one of the clerks at the Mobil On the Run and my barber. Remember, our goal is to build God’s kingdom, not to build a church.

Next, serve people and seek their well-being. Any time there are two people involved, there are three realities. There is an objective reality, your own subjective reality, and the other person’s subjective reality. Consider the case of giving a gift. To make it concrete, suppose I give a gift of $200 running shoes, the same model that I use, to one of my elk-hunting friends. The objective reality is that they are shoes intended for running that cost $200. From my perspective, I believe they are great shoes. They’re the kind I use and love, so I think that my friend will love them, too. But let’s see things from his perspective. First, is he a runner? Some of my hunting partners are runners, others are not. Second, are they the right size? Did I ask him what size shoe he wears, or just go buy them? Third, even if he’s a runner and the shoes are the right size, they may not be the right shoes for him. There is more to a shoe than just the length and width. Maybe his feet have some different needs than mine do. Maybe his running style requires support in different places than mine do.

What I’m saying is, even if a particular way of understanding God and understanding Jesus’s teachings fits you well, it may not fit someone else. To be ambassadors for Christ, we need to learn other people’s needs. We need to see the world from their perspective and care for their whole selves, physical, emotional, and spiritual.

Only when we are in right relationship with a person can they hear our message of love and inclusion. Only when we are aligned horizontally can we help them become aligned vertically. Instead of pointing them towards ourselves, instead of telling them what we believe, we point them towards the Source of all goodness and encourage them to find their own path to the Divine. Let us strive to focus always on bringing about God’s reign in this world, not by forcing others to believe and act as we do, but by seeing the world through their eyes and showing them their own path that will lead them to the Truth. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on John 14:15-21.

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Today’s passage is one of the several that serve as the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity. Looking ahead, John Nipper will be preaching on Trinity Sunday, sparing me from the burden of trying to explain it. Hey, he has a doctorate, so he should be qualified, right? If you’d like a good laugh, there’s a video from Lutheran Satire called “St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies.” Basically, every analogy we can come up with has been declared heretical, so we’re left with these complicated explanations like in this passage. Jesus says, I will send the Spirit, and he will be in you, and you will be in me, and I will come to you, and you will know that I am in my Father and I am in you.

OK, I give up. I’m not going to try to explain the Trinity. But I do feel an obligation to talk about the Holy Spirit. Jesus says he will send the parakletos. What the heck is that? This Greek word has a broader range of meaning than any one English word can really capture. All of our attempts to translate it either overshoot or undershoot the meaning. The King James Version uses “Comforter,” which sounds like a blanket. Other translations include “Helper,” which makes him sound subordinate. The NRSV that I just read uses “Advocate.” Now, that has a bit of a legal connotation, which is maybe overstated relative to the Greek, but let’s see where that can take us.

Are you all familiar with CASA? CASA stands for “court-appointed special advocate.” There is a national organization that covers both CASA volunteers and guardians ad litem, which are just slightly different because every state’s laws are different. But they all follow similar principles. From the National CASA/GAL website,

CASA/GAL volunteers are appointed by judges to advocate for children’s best interests. They stay with each case until it is closed and the child is in a safe, permanent home. We serve children from birth through the age defined by state statute as the limit to youth remaining in care.

Volunteers work with legal and child welfare professionals, educators and service providers to ensure that judges have all the information they need to make the most well-informed decisions for each child.

National CASA/GAL Association for Children

The CASA program grew out of an observation by a Seattle judge that he simply did not know enough to decide what was right for a particular three-year-old in his courtroom. Cases of abuse and neglect are complicated. Rarely is there an obvious villain and an obvious hero. Often, judges need to choose among a bunch of bad alternatives, some of which may appear to be better even though they are actually worse. I mean, it may make sense that a relative who has more financial stability is a better home, but not if their interpersonal dynamics are inappropriate and not conducive to the child’s healing and growth.

Another aspect of these situations is that often, the child is not really aware of what is in their best interest. An attorney assigned to represent the child is obligated to follow the child’s wishes. Well, they may choose a bad situation they know over a good situation they don’t know. This Mother’s Day, we should remember that some mothers are wonderful and provide a safe, loving, stable environment where a child can thrive; some mothers are wonderful but in bad circumstances due to other people in their lives or economic misfortune; some mothers are abusive, or suffer from addiction or mental illness, or are otherwise unable to provide a safe and loving environment for their children. A CASA volunteer helps the justice system work through those issues and find the best outcome for the child.

The website describes a five-point process:

• Learn: Learn all you can about the child and his or her family and life.
• Engage: Engage with the child during regular visits.
• Recommend: Speak up for the child’s best interests in court. Make recommendations regarding the child’s placement and needed services, and monitor the child’s situation until the case is released by the court.
• Collaborate: Collaborate with others to ensure that necessary services are provided and are in the child’s best interest.
• Report: Report what you have learned and observed to the court.

When I read this, I thought, What a great model for the action of the Holy Spirit! She is our Advocate, specially sent by the other two Persons of the Godhead to dwell with us until we are safely home. She learns all she can about us, which is everything. She dwells in us, walks with us, and watches over us. She advocates for our best interests in the world.

Elsewhere, Jesus advised his disciples that when they were in trouble, they shouldn’t make up in their mind ahead of time what they should say. Instead, they should let their hearts, minds, and words be guided by the Spirit. All throughout our lives, we can be sure that the Holy Spirit is there beside us, within us, ensuring that if we let her, she will work for our best interests.

Collaborate: A CASA volunteer collaborates with others to ensure that necessary services are provided. In the same way, the Holy Spirit binds us to each other, so that we can support one another. He knows that none of us can accomplish much on our own, even with God’s help, but we can change the world if we work together. We each have skills and talents. We each have connections in the community and a variety of roles in a variety of organizations. The Holy Spirit knows all of this, and enables us to work together to build God’s kingdom. He knows that we are all differently gifted, but each gift is an important part of God’s work. For example, our nominating committee discerns who would serve well as an elder, who would serve well as a deacon, and who would serve well as a trustee. They’ve done a great job, most recently in nominating Melba, who so obviously has the skills and attitude of a deacon. Our PNC needs to discern which pastoral candidate has the particular gifts that this church needs today. I have confidence that they will do so, as long as they remain connected to and guided by the Holy Spirit.

Yet in a sense, we already have the pastor we need. When John Oerter was here, he clarified that he was an interim pastor rather than an installed pastor. Pastors come and go. Just in my time here, we have had multiple interim pastors and two installed pastors. Remember, everything is temporary; whether installed or interim, none of them were permanent. But we do have a permanent Pastor: the Good Shepherd, the one who makes us lie down in green pastures and guides us beside still waters, the one who is the gate for the sheepfold.

One of the most important principles of the Reformation was the priesthood of all believers. In ancient Judea, before the destruction of the Temple in 66 A.D., only the descendants of Aaron were allowed to make offerings to the Lord. In both the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic traditions, priests serve as intermediaries for the sacraments and for other purposes. One reason Catholics pray to saints is that they don’t think they are allowed direct access to God, but instead need an intermediary. The Reformers looked at passages like today’s and said, No, that’s wrong. Jesus promised to send the Spirit, and then all through the Book of Acts we read about the Spirit descending on many people—not just priests. As long as we have the Holy Spirit, we may directly approach God. As long as we have the Holy Spirit, we are connected to each other and energized for the building of God’s kingdom. As long as we have the Holy Spirit, we are the body of Christ, doing Christ’s work in the world.

We don’t need a pastor to love God. We don’t need a pastor to love our neighbor. Now, I’m not saying that we don’t need a pastor at all, only that God is with us regardless. We can still come together to worship. We can still confess our sins, and we still know that we are forgiven. Rather than a priest giving us absolution, we simply need to be reminded that Jesus Christ already did that. We can still encounter the Word through the reading of scripture and illumination by the Holy Spirit. About the only thing we can’t do ourselves is communion and baptism. Now, I’ve been given special dispensation to serve communion to our congregation and to baptize two of our newest members, but I would argue that the approval I received is necessary to call ourselves Presbyterian, not to call ourselves Christian.

Over the past couple of weeks, we saw our limits, but also our capabilities, when we lost two members who were dear to us. If Carlene and Frank had passed away five years ago, Lou Ellen would have taken the lead on the arrangements. If they had passed away three years ago, there would have been no services because of the pandemic. But when they passed, the church rallied around. Thanks to Katie especially, and Tina, and Ken, and Amy, and Lorie, and Melba, and too many other people to name without leaving someone out, we came together to support the Mays and the Jessops. Some people were stretched thin, and maybe there were some things that could have been done better. But at the end of the day, we achieved the two basic goals: surrounding the families with love, and reminding them—and everyone who loved Carlene and Frank—of the hope that we have through the resurrection of our Lord. We were connected to each other, supported by each other, and strengthened individually and as a church by the action of the Holy Spirit.

So again, I’m not saying that the PNC should stop searching for a new pastor. What I’m saying is that with or without an installed pastor, WE are the church. A pastor might have new ideas for how we can act out our love of God and our love of our neighbors in the community, but the love remains the same. The love we share is the action of the Holy Spirit, flowing through us and among us.

The question before us, today and every day, is, who are the neighbors that we are passionate about serving? On campus, we’re going through an exercise to evaluate new and existing programs against four criteria: mission, demand, passion, and capacity. I would say that every program, every activity, in every organization, needs to be evaluated on these four dimensions. Our mission is to build God’s kingdom, but that’s too broad to be useful. Our community has a lot of needs, a lot of people who need to experience the love of God in their lives, but maybe not an awareness of how they can connect to that love or what role our church might fulfill in their lives. Passion—there are lots of things that we could do, but only if we have a critical mass of people who care deeply about making them a reality. And finally, capacity: the reality is that we cannot be all things to all people. We are empowered by the Holy Spirit who amplifies our efforts. Still, there are only so many hours in the day, and many of us have a lot of other demands on our time or are limited by health challenges. So again, there are lots of things that we could do, but only if we have people who are able to see them through.

I don’t know what the future holds for us. I don’t know what new ministries we should embark upon, or what we should stop doing so that we have the resources to grow in a different direction. What I do know is that as long as we are guided, strengthened, and energized by the Holy Spirit, we have everything we need to play our part in transforming the world. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on May 7, 2023. Based on John 14:1-14.

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Today’s passage is the start of John 14, but I’d like to back up to John 13 to set the stage. John 13 opens with Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, as an example that he sets for them. He goes on to say that someone will betray him, and then Judas Iscariot leaves to do just that. Jesus gives them the new commandment that they should love one another, and says that he will be going away where they cannot follow now. Quite an eventful chapter!

So now Jesus is really hitting his stride in his Farewell Discourse. This is his last night with his disciples, his last chance to tell them what they should do when he’s gone. He wants to be sure that they know who he is and what he means to the world. As is typical, the disciples are kind of dense and don’t fully understand what he’s saying, but Jesus tries.

Part of the reason they don’t understand is the same reason we don’t understand. Jesus describes an intimate relationship with God that is so far beyond most people’s experiences that it’s hard to comprehend. We can say the words—the Trinity is three persons who dwell in each other, bound together so strongly by love—but what does that really mean? Few people ever experience that kind of love, a transcendent love that changes the way you see the world. So Jesus does the best he can with the language at his disposal.

He tries with a metaphor. Jesus says, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” Twenty-first century Americans don’t recognize this metaphor, but first-century Judeans would have. This is marriage imagery. Jesus is likening himself to a bridegroom who goes to prepare a place for the bride, where she can live with his family. In that time and place, the convention was for the bride to join the groom’s household, but of course there had to be a place for the new nuclear family to live. The groom would prepare it, and then come take his bride home to live with his family.

So that’s how Jesus describes his heavenly realm. It’s like one big family compound. As we read in so many places throughout the New Testament, the Church is the bride of Christ. He loves us and wants to build a new life with us.

Indeed, Jesus’s death is not the end, but a new beginning. It’s the end of his personal earthly ministry, but the beginning of his new heavenly ministry. In these last hours with his disciples and his last days on earth, he is preparing to join the Church with his heavenly realm and, in that way, establish God’s kin-dom.

Notice that he says that there are “many” dwelling places. He goes on to say, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” This is usually read with an exclusionist perspective: only Christians are allowed in heaven. It’s as if Jesus is ascending to become a bouncer and keep out the riffraff. I think it’s better to read it as if Jesus is ascending to become a greeter. He is preparing many dwelling places, enough for everyone. When we see him, he will welcome us with open arms and show us the way into his heavenly realm.

But wait: I’ve said many times that the kingdom of God isn’t just something that we see when we die. It’s here, right here, right at hand. God isn’t just in some faraway place, but is also here among us. Indeed, God is within us. Just like Jesus, we are bound up with God through the power of love.

So again, let’s remember the story that brought us to today. Jesus knows his time on earth is nearing the end, so he kneels and washes his disciples’ feet. Throughout the Gospel According to John, Jesus performs miracles, signs that grow more and more astounding, from the changing of water into wine to the raising of Lazarus. Jesus is God, Jesus is God, JESUS IS GOD! And then at the peak of the crescendo, what does he do? He serves his friends, as if a slave. Jesus is God, and yet he empties himself and takes on the most degrading task. Then he tells his disciples, This is what you should do. Love one another just like I have loved you. I am the way. If you’re ever wondering how to enter my kingdom, just do what I did, or what I would have done.

Jesus claims that we will do greater things than he did. How can that be? I don’t personally know anyone who has turned water into wine, much less raised the dead. Yet in a way, Christians have indeed been doing great things throughout history. A great historical mystery is how a small sect of a small religion developed into the world’s largest religion, currently claiming more than 30% of the world’s population. Historically, most religions were local or regional. How did Christianity come to be such a powerful global force? Well, one reason was the dedication of early Christians to serve their neighbors. Wherever Christians lived, they pushed the local authorities towards more humane policies, although with varying levels of success. They cared for the sick both within and outside their communities, despite persecution. They created the first hospitals. Maybe they weren’t raising the dead, but they were healing the sick and preventing death.

What else did Jesus teach his disciples? One principle was inclusion. Like I said, most religions in history were local or regional, or at least ethnically isolated. Christianity was the first religion where a gathering might include men and women of widely varied ethnic backgrounds, from all walks of life, from slaves to soldiers to aristocrats. It may have started as a sect within Judaism, but it quickly became dominated by non-Jewish believers. When Paul wrote, “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus,” he was in fact describing the church in Galatia and holding it up as an example of how people should live together and how the church should grow.

Then there was non-violent resistance. First-century Jews were expecting a Messiah who would be a warrior, who would lead the heavenly host to expel the Romans and re-establish a Jewish theocratic kingdom. Jesus came and did not look anything like the Messiah they were expecting. Instead of a violent overthrow, he taught that his kingdom was not of this world and really had no interest in changing the way Judea and Galilee were governed. He focused on teaching people how to live together in the kingdom of God no matter what government claimed authority. That lesson didn’t really take hold in Christianity, though. It wasn’t too long before bishops were arguing with each other, supposedly over theological points but also over power and authority. Once we made a deal with Constantine, we committed ourselves to politics. In the centuries since then, we have struggled to escape the orbit of governmental authority. Even the Reformation, a time when Christians rejected many of the old teachings of the Roman Catholic church, turned into a time when rival denominations could set up local theocracies to enforce their own interpretation of the Bible. That was entirely the opposite of Jesus’s teachings, and yet we still can’t escape the attractiveness of power.

Jesus taught that instead of seeking power, instead of seeking earthly accolades, instead of trying to establish a theocracy by force, we should instead seek to change the world from the bottom up with the power of love. Leaders are not to be rulers who “lord it over” their subjects, but to become as slaves. He taught that we are to love one another as he did, a self-sacrificing love that prioritizes others’ welfare more highly than our own.

You have heard me speak about the Mission a number of times. There is a movement afoot in Rolla—and there has been for some time—to get the Mission shut down. It is led by property owners and business owners who feel that the value of their property or profitability of their business is negatively impacted by the poor and unhoused individuals who make use of the Mission’s services. Homelessness is indeed a problem in Rolla, but it is not unique to Rolla—it’s a problem in every city in the nation, one that eludes easy solutions. The most disappointing aspect of the movement against the Mission is that the leaders of it would consider themselves Christians—and in fact one is a minister. I have not heard any of them propose a solution that would involve showing Christian love to those who are struggling to improve their lives. You know, most people are just a few paychecks away from homelessness. The difference between those who become homeless and those who don’t is the absence or presence of a support network. Jesus taught us that instead of using our wealth and our position in the community for our own benefit, using it to protect ourselves from those we fear, we must value each person of the community and work for their good. We should be that support network that the homeless lack.

I recently listened to a podcast about the bystander effect. Briefly, it’s the phenomenon where you see a need but don’t act on it. You think, Geez, someone should do something. Well, I’m someone, and you’re someone. Jesus taught that we are called to act out our love. Love is not a feeling so much as an action, a calling to serve our neighbor in need.

Jesus knew this would be hard. But he said that we don’t need to do it alone. Jesus said that he is the way. If we follow his path, we will dwell in Him always, and he will dwell in us, and will do whatever we ask in his name. The way to the Father’s house is abiding in the Son, being filled with his love and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. That sounds an awful lot like heaven, right? Christ is defined by paradoxes: transcendent yet immanent, Lamb and Shepherd. Dwelling in Christ and following his example is both the path to heaven and heaven itself. It is the abundant life he promised here, and the eternal glory in the age to come. Let us seek now to follow his example of self-sacrificing love, a love that values others more than ourselves, a love that risks everything, a love that is heaven itself, a love that is both the journey and the destination. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on 1 Peter 1:13-25. This sermon discusses a concept referred to as the “Cosmic Christ.” If you would like to learn more, consult The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr, the meditations on the subject that his Center for Action and Contemplation published, or this blog post by Paul Axton. The concept is well-known in eastern Christianity and is an important part of Franciscan theology.

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Last week’s Gospel lesson was about Jesus showing himself to his disciples. It’s remembered as the story of Doubting Thomas, but I have long thought that Thomas gets a raw deal. NOBODY believed that Jesus had risen. Jesus showed himself to ten of his disciples, and after a few moments of disbelief, they realized what had happened. Thomas wasn’t there, so he was left in that pre-revelation state. “Yeah, right, guys, Jesus came back from the dead. Quit kidding around.” As soon as Jesus shows himself to Thomas, he believes, and indeed surpasses the other disciples in his response.

But in a sense, we are all like Thomas. I have not personally seen Jesus. None of us saw him in his human body, though some people I know have had visions like Paul did. For the vast majority of us who have not literally seen Jesus, believing in a risen Christ is really hard. It requires a suspension of all our normal ways of making sense of the world. The only reason I can accept the truthfulness of the Gospel accounts is that so many people risked their lives, and lost their lives, because of a story that is so ridiculous nobody would make it up. Literal bodily resurrection just wasn’t something that people even considered in that era.

We believe that through Christ, we have salvation. Indeed, Jesus’s actual Hebrew name, Yeshua, means “salvation.” A challenging theological discussion is, what about all the people who lived before Jesus did? Did Jesus go down to Sheol and raise them? Or are they just the victims of the bad luck of being born too soon?

We see in today’s text a hint about God’s plan of salvation. With echoes of the opening chapter of the Gospel According to John, we read that Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was manifested in these last times for our sake. This is an incredible insight for the first century. Jesus was a man who was born at a certain time in a certain place, but Christ transcends humanity and was known from before Creation. We see hints of this same understanding in Peter’s affirmation that Jesus is the Christ, and in Paul’s writings to the Ephesians and Colossians.

Irenaeus was a bishop in the second century who wrote Against Heresies. At that time, Christianity had many different understandings about who or what Jesus was. Aside from the mainstream view, there were Gnostics and Marcionites. The Marcionites believed that the God of the Hebrew scriptures was different from God the Father of Jesus Christ. Irenaeus said no, they were one and the same. Christ was known from before the foundation of the world, and God the Father led and taught the Israelites until the world was ready for Christ’s revelation in Jesus of Nazareth. The Gnostics viewed the material world as inherently corrupt, an existence from which we seek to escape into the eternal realm of spirit. Irenaeus taught that what God created is good, and humanity is very good. All creation is ultimately destined for glorification.

Our glory comes through participation in God’s plan for redemption of all creation. Christ was present at the beginning. In fact, the universe was the first incarnation of Christ. Christ was the logos, the Word, the divine ordering principle that structured the creation of the universe. Christ was and is in all things. Whenever the spiritual world and the material world are in contact, Christ is there.

But Christ was hidden. God was revealed to the ancient Israelites, but they weren’t ready yet to understand God’s ultimate plan. They could picture God as a pillar of fire or a pillar of cloud or a burning bush or a still, small voice. They could imagine gods as inhabiting idols. But it took centuries for them to be ready for a God who was united with a human being.

Finally, when they were ready, Christ was incarnated through the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was the fullest revelation of God, as a human who was fully united with the eternal, cosmic Christ. Jesus lived as an example of holiness. He demonstrated God’s love with his deep understanding of each person’s needs and the obstacles that each person erected between themselves and God. He demonstrated complete obedience to God’s will, even unto death.

His death was the end of that phase of God’s revelation, but the start of another. God had tried to teach the Israelites about the ultimate fate of the world and their role in it, but was ultimately unsuccessful. So Christ came to teach them more personally and individually about holy living. Through his death, he taught about self-giving love. Through his resurrection, he taught about the ultimate goodness of the world.

Because resurrection isn’t something that happened just once to Jesus, and isn’t something that only happens when we die. Resurrection is the process of renewal, the restoration of glory, the sanctification of our lives. When Christ was raised from the dead, he revealed this coming of glory into all things, and invited us to participate in glorifying our world.

What is the purpose of salvation? We are saved. What are we saved from, and what are we saved for? There is one way of reading the New Testament that implies that we need to follow Jesus’s teachings closely in order to earn our place in heaven. Strangely, some of the Christian traditions that teach, on the one hand, that our salvation is assured if, and only if, we pray the sinner’s prayer and profess our belief in Jesus ALSO teach that we must purge sin from our lives and quit drinking and dancing and such in order to be “real” Christians. There is another way of reading the New Testament that implies that really, accepting Jesus as our Lord is all that we need to do, and nothing else matters. To that teaching I would say, what’s the point of even living then? Traditions that say that nothing matters in this world are basically reviving the old Gnostic heresy, the belief that our goal should be to escape from the corruption of the material world.

Today’s reading, though, affirms the inherent goodness of this world. We are to become holy people. We are saved so that we may become more holy. We are saved so that we might reveal Christ who is in us. This is not about becoming sinless, which is impossible. We all fall short of the glory of God, try as we might. Becoming a holy people means aligning our lives more with God’s love. It means loving each other as if we were a family, one family that encompasses all people. It means shining forth with God’s love in those dark places of the world.

All around us, we see people in despair. We see people suffering from poverty, from addiction, from natural disasters, from violence and war. We see people suffering from loneliness, from family estrangement, from grief and fear. Homelessness is a serious problem with broad impact and no good solution. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the suffering of the world. How can I say that the material world is fundamentally good when it seems so bad? How do I find the hope that Amy spoke about last week?

In one translation, verse 17 of today’s reading says, “live out the time of your sojourn here in reverence.” This is our temporary home. We are like the Israelites who lived in Egypt, or who wandered in the wilderness, or who were exiled to Babylon. We are living in a broken world so that we may learn how to love more broadly and deeply. Yet just as in Egypt or the wilderness or Babylon, God is with us. And so, as God told Jeremiah, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” The world will one day be fully transformed, but in the meantime, our calling is to make ourselves holy by seeking the welfare of the world we live in and praying to the LORD on its behalf. In this way, we will participate Christ’s work, begun at the foundation of the world, exemplified in the second incarnation that was Jesus of Nazareth, and continuing through the centuries since.

In the season of Easter, we celebrate the reality of Christ’s resurrection. He promised that he would always be with us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Sanctification is not a task for us to do alone. It is a process by which we allow Christ to more fully inhabit us. We surrender control of our lives and let God direct us. We turn from serving ourselves to serving others. It’s a process that is never finished, one that proceeds as two steps forward, one step back. Yet we have been given this assurance, that God will never abandon us. Israel and Judah were exiled because they stopped trying to follow God’s will, but God did not abandon them forever. God was with them in their exile, and God accompanied them as they returned, and God ultimately came to them in the person of Jesus. Like the ancient Israelites, we sometimes need God to shake us and grab our attention, but remember, God’s presence is never lacking, only our awareness.

And as we grow in Christ, we will be more able to see Christ revealed through the power of love. We will become more aware of the inherent goodness of the people we meet and learn to love them as fellow children of God, rather than fearing or hating or shunning them. That creates a positive spiral, where love breeds more love, where compassion breeds more compassion, where small acts of kindness lead to transformative relationships. In that way, we become a more holy people, clothed in Christ, living our sojourn here in reverence of Christ who is all and in all. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on April 2, 2023, Passion Sunday. Based on Matthew 26:57-68.

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The lectionary passage for today is actually much longer than this. It’s the whole Passion story, basically all of Matthew 26 and 27. I encourage you to read the whole story sometime this week as you prepare for Easter. It’s a long text, rich in meaning, too much for one sermon. In fact, in some churches, they simply read the whole story in place of the sermon. I chose a piece of the story here instead. Let’s back up and see how we got here.

I looked back through the Gospel According to Matthew to find out the reason he gives for Jesus’s arrest. In large part, we see in Matthew a series of arguments between Jesus and the priests, scribes, Sadducees, and Pharisees, that is, the religious establishment. It culminates in Jesus’s preaching against the way they are treating their fellow Israelites. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Jesus says again and again. Then he starts a discourse about being ready for the coming kingdom.

We are a Matthew 25 church in a Matthew 25 presbytery. The two chapters before this passage, after the woes Jesus preaches against the establishment, are an essential discourse that culminates in the separation of the sheep and the goats—the nations who cared for Jesus when he was hungry or naked or in prison, and those who did not. Just as we do or do not do for the last, the least, and the lost, so also we do for Jesus. Once he has delivered this message about caring for our neighbors, he tells his disciples that his time is short, and he is about to be handed over to be crucified.

Jesus has one last supper with his disciples, one that we will remember together shortly. Then, he goes to the garden of Gethsemane to pray, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not what I want but what you want.” He is greatly disturbed in spirit, praying three times that the burden will pass from him, while his disciples sleep. Despite praying for deliverance, he is handed over to the religious authorities by Judas, his betrayer.

So now: Jesus has spent a year or more preaching the coming kingdom, teaching his disciples, and arguing with the religious authorities. He has never once held back. When Sadducees argue with him over the resurrection, he corrects their misunderstanding. When Pharisees try to entrap him with a question about taxes, he turns the tables on them. Oh, and speaking of tables, he flips the tables of the moneychangers and drives the animals out of the Temple.

But here, he is silent. Defenseless. When they come to the garden to arrest him, he goes without a fight, and even rebukes a companion who tries to defend him. When he is brought before Caiaphas, he makes no protests against the false testimony against him, and he doesn’t try to explain the metaphorical meaning of his so-called threat against the Temple. He remains silent until he is forced to speak, and even then, simply quotes scripture, the book of Daniel.

Let’s consider Jesus’s options along the way. He knew what was coming. He told his disciples what was coming. First off, he could have stayed away from Jerusalem altogether. He could have remained in Galilee, preaching to the Galileans and hoping that the message would spread from there. He could have had a much longer preaching career that way. Think of how much more he could have taught us and how many more people he could have healed. Or, having come to Jerusalem, and knowing that Judas was going to betray him, he could have run away. That’s certainly the natural response for someone who is under threat and outnumbered.

Or, Jesus could have embraced his role as a leader of rebellion. The high priest essentially accused him of being a rebel; he could have truly become one, turned his disciples into an army and supplemented them with the heavenly host, twelve legions of angels. He was the Son of God, after all. He could have called down fire from heaven, sent the army of the Lord ahead of him to destroy the Romans, and re-established the reign of David’s lineage. When people talk about the Second Coming, that’s basically what they describe, right? Jesus could have “done it right” the first time.

Fight, flight, or freeze. Jesus chose not to fight. He chose not to flee. So did he freeze? No. When the temple authorities arrested him, he rebuked his companion who tried to defend him, explained that this was all necessary to fulfill the scriptures, and criticized the authorities for arresting him by night in the garden instead of by day in the temple. He was in full command of his faculties and perfectly able to defend himself.

But he didn’t. He chose his path. He knew that once he started his ministry, sooner or later, the day would come when he had to confront the religious establishment. He also knew that nothing he could say would change the outcome. We like to quote Jesus from the Gospel According to John, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Yet the truth has a time and a place. You can speak the truth, but if the other person is not ready to hear it, they won’t listen. Jesus knew that Caiaphas and the others were not ready for the radical truth of his Gospel: that he was initiating the messianic age, that he was overturning the powers and principalities of this world, that he is the resurrection and the life.

So instead of saying all these things, Jesus waited until the time was right, then calmly stated his truth for the record. The effect was just as he expected: rage.

Once when I was going through some difficult times, a pastor reminded me: the only way out is through. There are some trials in our lives that are simply unavoidable. We can perhaps delay them, perhaps soften them, but ultimately, some conflicts and difficulties are inevitable. When Jesus called his first disciples, he set himself on a path that would lead to conflict with the religious authorities. He delayed the inevitable so that he would have time to teach his disciples, and then accepted his fate.

Why was Jesus born? Well, as I said last week, he came to teach us how to live. The Passion story is a vivid example of how to embrace your calling. Jesus was called to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God. He knew what the result of his proclamation would be, so he prepared himself for the time of trial. We read again and again that he withdrew to a quiet place to pray, and on this most fateful night, he went to the garden of Gethsemane to pray earnestly, with his whole being. His prayer was one of ultimate surrender: Not my will, but thy will be done. He sought full unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Then when the trial came, Jesus had the strength to fulfill his mission. He had the strength to resist the urge to fight or to flee. He had the strength and wisdom to hold his tongue until the right time. He had the right words to speak in his defense, once more a proclamation of the coming messianic kingdom. And he had the strength to endure the torture and the agony of crucifixion.

We too can turn to God for strength. I read Psalm 37 last night and it fits here really well. Here are selected verses from this psalm that Jesus surely knew:

The wicked plot against the righteous

    and gnash their teeth at them,

but the LORD laughs at the wicked,

    for he sees that their day is coming.

 The LORD knows the days of the blameless,

    and their heritage will abide forever;

they are not put to shame in evil times;

    in the days of famine they have abundance.

But the wicked perish,

    and the enemies of the LORD are like the glory of the pastures;

    they vanish—like smoke they vanish away.

The mouths of the righteous utter wisdom,

    and their tongues speak justice.

The law of their God is in their hearts;

    their steps do not slip.

The wicked watch for the righteous

    and seek to kill them.

The LORD will not abandon them to their power

    or let them be condemned when they are brought to trial.

The salvation of the righteous is from the LORD;

    he is their refuge in the time of trouble.

The LORD helps them and rescues them;

    he rescues them from the wicked and saves them

    because they take refuge in him.

Psalm 37 (selected verses)

We too can lean on God for strength. Whatever our calling, we know that we will encounter difficulties. Most of us aren’t called to proclaim the kingdom of God to the masses, but we are all called to show God’s love to everyone. That can be really hard, because not everyone is so loveable. Maybe you’re called to show compassion to the sick, which means helping them to carry the burden of their illness. Maybe you’re called to serve the church as an elder, deacon, or trustee, and the work is draining. Maybe you’re called to serve the community through The Mission or GRACE or Russell House or one of the other worthy organizations, and you’re overwhelmed by the need.

No matter what your calling, you can follow Jesus’s example and rely on God for your strength. As he showed us, our complete surrender to God’s will gives us the strength to continue until we see “the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” The only way out is through, but we know that God will be with us on the journey. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on the Fifth Sunday in Lent. Based on John 11:1-45.

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Today is not Easter. Lazarus was just one man who was raised from the dead. In today’s story, Jesus did not usher in the messianic age. So why did Jesus bother raising just one man to just a few more years of life?

For that matter, why was Jesus born? Next week, I’ll talk about why he was killed, and then on Easter we hear about his resurrection. We have lots of theology built around his death and resurrection. But remember: Once Jesus was born, he was destined to die. It was a matter of when, not if. So he must have lived for a reason.

Paul wrote in Philippians,

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he existed in the form of God,

    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.

Philippians 2:5-8

Jesus emptied himself so that he could be like one of us. He came down from heaven to experience humanity and everything good and bad about it that we must also experience. In the process, he showed us how to live, and how to deal with the brokenness of the world.

We often talk about and idealize a transcendent God, one who is remote, removed from this world, emotionally distant. Jesus showed us an immanent God, one who is right here among us, in the messiness of real life. One who experiences the full emotional range of the human condition. In this passage, we see Jesus riding a rollercoaster of emotions.

First, when he hears that Lazarus is sick, Jesus seems a bit dispassionate and even cold. “Oh, my dear friend is sick? I’ll just stay here and keep doing what I’m doing for a couple of days.” He doesn’t even seem to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. But then he decides that he needs to do something, that he needs to be present with his grieving friends.

When he encounters Martha, he is a calming influence. He reminds her of the coming messianic age, and also that he himself is the Messiah who will usher it in, someday, just not today. He seems to defuse Martha’s anger, and the story could have ended there. But then when Mary confronts him, he gets it: death is a reason for sadness, and anger, and all of those other emotions.

In verse 33, we read, “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” The two Greek words used here are kind of tricky to translate, but convey a troubled emotional state, maybe indignant, maybe angry. One is the same word used for Jesus’s emotional state when he says that one of his disciples will betray him. Here these two Greek words convey a sense that Jesus is angry at the presence of death in the world, and particularly this specific death. Mary is weeping and wailing, and Jesus is angry that death has that kind of power over us.

As the story continues, we encounter the shortest verse of the Bible: “Jesus wept.” A great sadness came over him, but it’s a quiet grief. Not the wailing grief of Mary, but a quiet weeping. What made him so sad? Was it the loss of his friend Lazarus? Was it the contagious grief of his friends? Was it the thought of his own coming death? Maybe all of those things. He was overcome with the reality of death and its power over us.

I recently listened to a podcast about death. The guest pointed out that in modern Western culture, we try to avoid the topic altogether. In fact, we try not to even say that someone has “died.” Instead, we use euphemisms: They passed away, or they’re in a better place, or they kicked the bucket, or they have entered the Church Triumphant. These are all ways of avoiding the simple fact that life ends in death. Jesus knew this, and was overcome by its reality and its close presence, and he broke down. He was not a distant, dispassionate God, but one who humbled himself and became truly human so he could know what it felt like to lose a friend.

The story doesn’t end there, either, though. Jesus once again becomes indignant over the power Death has to disrupt our lives and relationships. He is compelled to act. He cannot sit idly by while his friends grieve. So, he takes control of the situation, raises Lazarus, and is calm once again.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross broke down grief into five stages. A common misunderstanding is that people think the stages are sequential. In reality, it might be better to call them modes of grief. Each person handles grief differently, and most people jump back and forth between these modes over a period of time that could be days, weeks, months, years, or decades. There is no fixed timetable or sequence. But it’s still useful to think of the different modes: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We see these all in today’s passage. The disciples don’t believe that Lazarus is really dead. Martha is angry at Jesus, and Jesus is angry at Death. Both Mary and Martha seem to be bargaining with Jesus and wanting him to turn back time. Jesus weeps, and the others are also weeping in their own ways.

The only mode that we don’t see is acceptance. Jesus cannot accept that death is the end. He cannot let the story end with Mary and Martha trapped in their grief and suffering the loss of their brother. In fact, on that podcast I mentioned, the guest pointed out that every time Jesus encounters a dead person, he raises them. He is always, always indignant over the power of Death to disrupt relationships.

Yet his miraculous raising of Lazarus is ultimately temporary. Lazarus will die someday, just not now. So will Mary and Martha and everyone else in this story. Everything is temporary. Jesus solves the problem of the day, but doesn’t solve the ultimate problem of death and brokenness in the world.

Or actually, he does, just not in today’s story. As Martha says, Lazarus will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus is proclaiming the coming messianic age, the age that comes after this one, the age in which we are all restored to life and wholeness. This life is temporary, but death is as well. Death is just a waypoint on the journey of our eternal lives.

So, what’s the point? Lazarus is dead; Lazarus will be raised on the last day, along with Mary and Martha and all those who loved him. Someday, they will all be together in Christ’s eternal kingdom. So why does Jesus bother to raise Lazarus from the dead? Why force him to die a second time?

I’m often reminded of a scene from “Moonstruck.” Who has seen that movie? OK, well, if you haven’t, I apologize for a few spoilers here. Cher plays a widow who is dating a man who proposes to her. Foolishly, he doesn’t have an engagement ring. I mean, what man proposes marriage without a ring? Well, Cher calls him on it, and he happens to be wearing a pinky ring. So she makes him give her that one as a temporary measure. She goes home and tells her father that her boyfriend has proposed, and shows him the ring. Her father says, “It’s a pinky ring, it’s stupid, it’s a man’s ring.” She says, “It’s temporary!” He says, “Everything is temporary! That don’t excuse nothin’!”

Everything is temporary, but that’s no excuse. Jesus could have just said, Yeah, sorry your brother is dead, but someday you’ll be dead too, so just suffer without him until you’re raised together on the last day. But he didn’t. He knew that even though this life, and the death that comes with it, is temporary, each one of us must do what we can to resolve the pain and suffering of this world. And later on, he promised that when he departed, he would send a Helper, the Holy Spirit, to be with us as we strive to follow his healing example.

Life is temporary. Life is change. When I look back five years, or ten, or twenty, I can see how much things have changed. Some for the better, some for the worse. Almost exactly three years ago, all our lives changed dramatically, and we all had to live with a succession of temporary measures. Think about the way we have worshipped in that time. We started with Lou Ellen preaching on her iPhone from her camper, then moved to pre-recorded worship services that I pieced together, then came back in person but with pews taped off for social distancing, and eventually got back to where we are today. There is still a sense that what we are doing is temporary, for example, that Susan and I are just placeholders. At any point along the way, we could have just said, Oh well, we can’t worship the way we used to, so we’re done here. After all, God doesn’t take attendance, and we can love God and be loved by God no matter what we do. But no, we chose to deal with the reality of the present—not the past, not the future, but the present—and find ways to continue to worship. We chose to find ways of joining together to show our love of God and our love of our neighbors.

That was the message of Jesus’s life. He knew that his time on earth was short. His active ministry may have been as short as one year or as long as three years—not very long to teach us everything we need to know. He knew the path he was on would lead to conflict with the religious and civil authorities, likely ending in his death on a cross. He didn’t give up, though. He made the most of the time he was given. He healed the sick, raised the dead, and fed the hungry. He took care of the problems of the day. He taught his disciples about the kingdom of God. He showed everyone how to live. And he sent the Holy Spirit to help us all to follow his example.

Everything is temporary. But that doesn’t excuse us from doing all that we can, every day, to serve our neighbors and help them to know God’s presence in their lives. Someday, all will be well as we enter Christ’s eternal kingdom. But in the meantime, we have work to do, today and every day, healing the brokenness of this world. Let’s get to work. Amen.

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Sermon preached March 5, 2023, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on John 3:1-17. Podcast link below, or check it out on my YouTube channel!

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Who was Nicodemus? As far as I know, the only evidence of his existence is the Gospel According to John. His name means “victory of the people.” It’s a Greek name, which is a bit unusual but perhaps indicates that it’s a nickname like Peter or Paul. We learn here that he is a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin. He shows up in three places in John’s Gospel. First, he comes to Jesus by night, seeking illumination. Remember how I said that humans aren’t moths, right? He doesn’t come to Jesus because he wants to stare at the light, but because he wants the light of Jesus’s words to show him the Truth. The Book of John uses light and darkness motifs extensively, so we should pay attention here that he comes by night. Nicodemus may be ashamed to be seen with Jesus in the daylight, or perhaps we are supposed to recognize the darkness of his ignorance that is illuminated by the Word of God.

Then the next time we encounter him, Nicodemus is trying to get the other Pharisees to just hear Jesus out. He says, essentially, let’s not judge Jesus on the basis of what people are saying about him, but on the basis of what Jesus himself says in his defense. Something that Jesus said in this midnight encounter planted a seed and made Nicodemus wonder if perhaps Jesus is the Messiah. Perhaps.

The last time we hear of Nicodemus, he is helping Joseph of Arimathea prepare Jesus for burial. Nicodemus bought a hundred pounds of spices to prepare the body. Curiously, the other three Gospels don’t mention his role at all. Hmm.

I think Nicodemus is an amalgam. That is, he is a stand-in for several people, Pharisees and members of the Sanhedrin, who were on the fence about Jesus. The other Gospels hold up Peter as the bumbling buffoon that we are supposed to see ourselves in. John does some of that, too, but I think he includes Nicodemus for the sake of Jews who were trying to figure out just where they fit in the history of the world. Jews who were trying to determine whether following Jesus was really the right thing to do.

OK, let me ask, who here was born of the flesh? I hope everybody is raising their hand. We are all born of the flesh. That birth situates us in a certain place and a certain culture. Nicodemus was born of the flesh—a Jew, and so an inheritor of the covenant God made with Abraham, and with Jacob, and with Moses. He grew up to be a Pharisee, which was a relatively progressive sect of Judaism. We often speak unkindly about the Pharisees because of the way they are portrayed in the Gospels, but remember, Paul was a Pharisee, too. The Pharisees were progressive in the sense that they believed in the “oral Torah,” and they believed that God was still revealing the Truth to God’s people. This progressivism enabled the Pharisees to survive the destruction of the Temple, while the Sadducees and Essenes and other minor sects did not. Modern Judaism carries on the legacy of the Pharisees, continuing to grow and change.

We ignore our fleshy birth, and the fleshiness of others, at our peril. I recently listened to Prisoners of Geography, a book about the impact of mountains and plains and rivers and seas on the development of cultures and nations. Why is the Middle East so screwed up? Because Britain and France decided to divvy up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, and they drew lines on a map with no regard for the people who lived there. They arbitrarily assembled Iraq from three distinct people groups, arbitrarily split the Kurdish people among three different nations, and smushed together other nations that had no shared history. They thought, “They’re all Arabs and Muslims, right? No problem.” Well, actually, there are Arabs and Turks and Kurds and Syrians, and there are two major branches of Islam, and there are further ethnic and religious divisions that are opaque to outsiders but very clear to the people who live there.

Here in America, we tend to trivialize these inherited relationships. We tend to follow the philosophy of John Locke, who developed social contract theory. The idea of a social contract is that people live together in society in accordance with an agreement that establishes moral and political rules of behavior. The idea is that we each choose to give up certain freedoms in order to have a functioning society. This is clearly false. There are only a few people in our church who chose to live in America. The rest of us were just forced to accept whatever rules our parents, and their parents, and their parents agreed to.

In the same way, Nicodemus was born to the covenant established generations earlier. But Jesus said, being born of the flesh is nothing. The flesh is temporary. Everything we see with our human eyes is temporary. If you think about everything that happened in the twentieth century, you can’t help but recognize the transient nature of human constructs. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the vast majority of travel was by horse-drawn cart or steam-powered train. Electricity and the telephone had been invented but were not universally available in America, let alone around the world. The sun never set on the British Empire, and much of Europe was ruled by a handful of other empires—Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and German. Then came the automobile, airplanes, and space travel. Two world wars and a revolution in Russia redrew all the maps and alliances, and then the end of the Cold War redrew them all again.

Everything is temporary. Now, I don’t mean in the sense that these restrictions caused by the pandemic are temporary and we’ll go back to the way things were. That past was also temporary, and now it’s gone. The present state of the world is temporary like the border between Lebanon and Syria. Everything built by human hands is temporary. This church is just over sixty years old, and its predecessor that served our congregation for ninety years is no longer functioning as a worship space. Those of you who have lived in Rolla for a while can surely drive around town and think, “That’s where such-and-such used to be.” Even in just the fifteen years we have lived here, I’ve seen businesses come and go, new buildings built on campus, a big hole in the ground where the power plant used to be, and so forth.

But Jesus says, what matters is to be born from above. To be born of water and Spirit. How can this be? Like Nicodemus, we wonder how we can be born again. Growing up in the 1980s, I remember “born-again Christian” being a specific belief system, one that didn’t really fit with the beliefs I inherited as a United Methodist. We typically thought of being “born again” as having some sort of profound experience, maybe like Saul had on the road to Damascus. Maybe after a car accident, or someone trying to quit drinking or drugs, or something like that. As someone who was baptized as an infant and grew up in the church, where did that leave me? Is the kin-dom of God only open to those who live a life devoted to sinfulness and then have a dramatic conversion?

No, I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant. I think he meant that God can claim us whether or not we are born under the covenant of Abraham. God can claim us whether or not we choose to follow him. We do not choose to be born of the Spirit any more than we choose to be born of the flesh. In his farewell discourse, Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.” Jesus has claimed us, each one of us, and chosen us to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We have been chosen to be in God’s kin-dom, children of a new covenant.

We do not choose membership in God’s kin-dom, but we can choose how we respond. We can choose to ignore it. We can choose to focus on our birth of the flesh. We can choose to pay the utmost attention to the web of relationships we were born to, the culture and customs we inherited. So often, what we think of as Christian values are actually cultural values with a Christian veneer. The Bible is a thick book, so we can find justification in it for whatever cultural belief we hold. Want to subjugate women? There’s plenty of support in most books of the Old Testament and Paul’s disputed letters. Whatever you believe, you can find a Bible verse to support it.

Or, we can choose instead to embrace our birth of the Spirit. We can choose to see the kingdom of God instead of the kingdom of man. We can choose to see people as Christ sees them. Indeed, we can see Jesus in each person we meet. When we do that, we live out our new birth of the Spirit into the new covenant of love that Jesus instituted.

More than that, we can create a new culture, a new legacy. Instead of perpetuating stereotypes, or the rules that privilege someone because of their birth, or the cultural beliefs that prevent people from seeing God’s love, we can create a new world for the next generation. We can love people because God loves them. Indeed, we can love people as God loves them. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. God gave everything they had. Jesus in turn gave everything he had, laying down his life for the people he loved. He did not condemn the world, but came so that the world could be saved through him.

We have inherited some good things and some bad things. We cannot choose what we receive, but we can choose what we pass down to those who come after us. Let us choose a legacy of love, a legacy of community, of self-sacrifice, of membership in God’s eternal family. Let us choose our birth of the water and Spirit as our highest calling as we enter God’s kin-dom today, right here, right now, and create a place where God’s love can grow. Amen.

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