Category: Sermons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bo McGuffee, The Alchemy of Belief

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he will destroy on this mountain

    the shroud that is cast over all peoples,

    the covering that is spread over all nations;

    he will swallow up death forever.

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

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

    for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day,

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

    This is the Lord for whom we have waited;

    let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

Isaiah 25:6-9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on August 10, 2025. Based on Luke 12:32-40.

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Last week, Susan talked about being rich towards God. Today’s passage continues the theme. But here, Luke writes that we are to lay up treasure in heaven, which is just a little bit different. Let’s see if we can figure out what Jesus was trying to teach his disciples.

How do we lay up heavenly treasure? One way is to worship God. I mean, that’s kind of why we’re here, right? To earn our Jesus Points™? Oh, but wait a minute, Jesus Points aren’t real! Under the old Temple sacrificial system, people would bring animals and other items to sacrifice as a way of getting in God’s good graces, earning Adonai Points so to speak. In about 760 BCE, during a time of great prosperity for the Israelites, Amos was chosen as a prophet and sent to God’s people with these words (Amos 5:21-24):

 ²¹ I hate, I despise your festivals,
    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
²² Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
    I will not accept them,
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
    I will not look upon.
²³ Take away from me the noise of your songs;
    I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
²⁴ But let justice roll down like water
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Now, Amos isn’t saying that worship is pointless. Rather, he is saying that worship is not the real goal. The real goal is justice and righteousness. We come to worship God so that we are empowered and inspired to pursue justice and righteousness in our daily lives outside these four walls. Here, justice doesn’t mean tit-for-tat punishment and revenge, and righteousness doesn’t mean being completely pure of heart. Justice is restoring wholeness where there has been harm, and righteousness means the pursuit of that which is right in God’s eyes, rather than what seems good to our selfish desires.

Jesus’s guidance to his followers is to allocate our resources in accordance with God’s justice and righteousness, that is, to allocate our resources in the pursuit of God’s kingdom, which is universal flourishing. As we allocate our resources, so also we will believe and behave. This is a reminder that a church budget is a theological statement, and a personal budget reflects a person’s true values.

In preparation for this sermon, I ran a report of my last twelve months of spending. I was pleasantly surprised that the single biggest category was charitable giving. Next was the cost of our accessible van, including both the loan payments and the major repair we did in January. Then comes the mortgage, then vacations including the cruise we just took, then retirement savings, then groceries. I was a little surprised to find that hunting is less than 2% of my annual budget, about half of what we spend on eating out. So then I asked myself: Is this appropriate? Well, let’s see. Putting God first by giving to charity: check. Van and house for the sake of Rhonda’s quality of life: check. Vacations while Rhonda is still capable of enjoying them, and so that I can recharge, and so that we can keep our relationship refreshed: check. Food: check. That all adds up to about 2/3 of the total. I’m less certain about the relative importance of the smaller buckets, but overall, I’m satisfied.

Then I took a look at the church budget. Now I will say that our expenditures do not necessarily track the budget exactly, but the budget gives us a starting point for discussion. Over the past year, I’ve met with most of the people in the congregation, and it seems like everyone’s priority is worship. The total budget allocation to worship, including Jeff, Lorie, Susan, and me, plus things like organ and piano maintenance, is 17.5% of the annual budget. The two larger categories are the building, at 18.2%, and the non-worship personnel, at 37.8%. Our per capita obligation to the presbytery is 1.9%, and what we allocate to ministries other than worship such as fellowship, education, and the deacons’ activities total less than 1%.

So in effect, the largest portion of our annual budget is to maintain the building and our daily operations, not our worship. Hmm. I don’t think this is what we would choose if we were making a conscious allocation of resources based on the congregation that we have today. Rather, it is the result of decades of cutting back anything deemed non-essential, including a full-time pastor, coupled with a building that was constructed for a very different congregation 60 years ago. I am pleased that we still allocate a significant portion to missions, 3.5%.

Another resource that we all have, some would say our most valuable resource, is time. I looked at my “typical” schedule from last spring. In a given week, I spend roughly equal time on teaching my class and leading this church. I spend more than twice that amount in various meetings related to being department chair. In April and May, my daytime calendar was basically filled with meetings and events almost every weekday. I try to allocate half an hour or more to spiritual development every day, and half an hour or more to running every day. I feel reasonably good about the allocation of my calendar even though it can be a real grind sometimes. I’m naturally an introvert, so even though I recognize the value in having meetings both to get things done and to foster relationships, they can be really draining for me.

Am I “laying up treasure in heaven” with the way I spend my time? Well, I spend roughly one-seventh of my waking hours on commitments to God, whether serving the church or working at the Mission or focusing on my own spiritual development. I’d say that’s not bad. I would recommend that everyone does an assessment of how you allocate your time and your money and see if it aligns with your values.

The point is to pay attention to the right things, and to act in pursuit of justice and righteousness. People often comment on how much I do. One way I can do so many different things is that I see everything I do as part of the same goal. What is the core message of the Gospel? The kingdom of God is at hand! God’s kingdom is universal human flourishing. Whether I am preaching, or teaching engineering, or meeting with my colleagues, or working in the community, my goal is to foster human flourishing. When I’m running or studying, I’m working towards my own flourishing.

The second part of today’s lesson is all about being ready. Jesus said, “Be dressed for action…like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet. … You…must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” This is an echo of Matthew 25, which tells us to keep our lamps lit like the maidens at the wedding waiting for the bridegroom, and also to watch for Jesus to show up in the form of the hungry, the naked, the prisoner—the least of these children of God. We stay ready by paying attention to the right things. We stay ready by spending our time and money in ways that are in accord with God’s claim on our lives. We stay ready by keeping informed about world events like wars, famine, and disease. We stay ready by staying engaged with our community and aware of the needs of our neighbors. We stay ready by learning about the lived experiences of those who are different from us, different by age or class or race or gender or education or socioeconomic status. We stay ready by fulfilling our own spiritual needs, as well as our own material and emotional and relational needs, so that we have resources to help others fulfill their needs. And I want to emphasize that word: our needs.

Unfortunately, most of us put our trust in the wrong things. Rather than stepping out in faith and relying on God to provide, we trust on our own ability to provide. We cling to more than we need. We trust in people and systems that claim to offer security in exchange for our obedience. Why? Fear. Walter Brueggemann wrote,

“The truth is that frightened people will never turn the world, because they use too much energy on protection of self. It is the vocation of the baptized, the known and named and unafraid, to make the world whole. The unafraid are open to the neighbor, while the frightened are defending themselves from the neighbor. The unafraid are generous in the community, while the frightened, in their anxiety, must keep and store and accumulate, to make themselves safe. The unafraid commit acts of compassion and mercy, while the frightened do not notice those in need. The unafraid are committed to justice for the weak and the poor, while the frightened see them only as threats. The unafraid pray in the morning, care through the day, and rejoice at night in thanks and praise, while the frightened are endlessly restless and dissatisfied. So dear people, each of you: Do not fear! I have called you by name; you are mine!” says the Lord.

Throughout the Bible, God’s message is clear, as it is in the opening of today’s passage: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Now, that doesn’t mean that you should be irrational and wasteful. It means that you should focus on God’s kingdom, on helping other people to flourish, on building strong relationships. If you are doing God’s work, people will want to be a part of it.

Take The Rolla Mission for example. They are not a Christian organization, although they were started by a church. However, they are clearly following Jesus’s command to care for the least of his siblings. They have done a phenomenal job for many years. Sara Buell gave a great presentation to the city council this past Monday. Some sample statistics over the last year: 92 jobs secured, 136 people into housing, almost 33,000 meals served and more than 16,000 loads of laundry, and furnishing for 208 new homes.

Any time I’ve spoken with Ashley Brooks about the Mission’s funding, she has been unconcerned. In her early days as their only employee, she would worry about it a lot, but she soon realized that all she needed to do was to tell people about the Mission’s good work, and they would want to be a part of it. Now, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t keep working on keeping the funding flowing—far from it. Sara, who gave the presentation, is a full-time staff member dedicated to donor relations. Ashley frequently submits grant applications. The organization is committed to responsible fiscal management; for example, they didn’t replace one staff member who left because of the federal funding uncertainties. But the Mission doesn’t worry about the future. They just keep looking for ways to help the community, knowing that if they are doing good work, the resources will come.

We too are called to live that way, as individuals and as an organization. Rather than hoarding our time and money, being stingy with our resources out of fear, we are called to be generous as God is generous. We are called to build strong relationships and foster the flourishing of our neighbors, our community, and the world. We are called to step out in faith, to proclaim the gospel for the salvation of humankind, to promote social righteousness, and to exhibit the kingdom of heaven to the world, even as we continue to maintain divine worship and to shelter and nurture the children of God in spiritual fellowship. In these ways, we preserve the Truth that is God’s love for us all. We preserve the Truth that God will make a way for us. And we lay up treasure in heaven, God’s eternal provision that will sustain us always. Amen.

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Preached on July 20, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Colossians 1:11-28. Please note that I say “Paul wrote…” even though many scholars believe that Colossians is not an authentic letter. That is not relevant to my main thesis, though, so I didn’t bring it up.

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Today’s epistle lesson is a continuation of the opening of Paul’s letter to Colossae. Here, he is laying out who he is and why he’s writing. Paul did not start the church in Colossae, and as far as we know, he never visited them. He is writing because he has heard good things about them and wants to encourage them.

Near the end of today’s passage, we hear a bit about how Paul sees himself. He says, “I became [the church’s] minister according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages…but has now been revealed to his saints.” Paul was once a persecutor of the church, and then had a divine encounter that revealed the mystery of Christ to him. He interpreted this encounter as a divine commission to spread God’s word.

I see some parallels in my life, and I think every preacher would, too. OK, I’m not Paul, but I do feel like something important about God has been revealed to me and I do feel compelled to share it with you all, and with the world. I’ve been meditating on that calling a bit over the past few weeks and especially last weekend when I was on retreat. You may recall that I was formally commissioned almost a year ago, August 11, 2024. Like Paul, I am trying to live into that commission by sharing my thoughts on the divine mystery with you all. So let’s see what we can glean from Paul’s letter.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

That beautiful poem that opens the Gospel of John teaches us that Christ was there at Creation. Paul echoes this when he says, “In him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible.” In both John’s Gospel and Colossians, we see a vision of Christ that transcends the person of Jesus of Nazareth. As our creeds say, Christ is eternally begotten of the Father. Christ was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, but is something more than just a human being. Christ is God. Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity.

Now don’t worry, I’m not going to try to explain the Trinity again. Suffice it to say that the first Jesus-followers, like Peter, saw him as merely human, but anointed by God to lead the Jewish nation. After his death and resurrection, the more insightful or inspired followers of the Way realized that Jesus was fully human, yes, but also maybe divine. Eventually they realized that he was also fully divine, a part of the Godhead who was present at Creation and will be present at the end of time, the eschaton, the fulfillment of history. Through Christ, all things came into being.

So let’s go back to Genesis. For six days, God created the cosmos through Christ. God created humans in God’s image, breathed life into us, and blessed us. Then God saw everything that had been created and declared it to be VERY GOOD.

Then, the Fall. Through Christ, all things were made perfect, but something terrible happened. The only way humans can truly love is if they are truly free, which means that we are also created with freewill that enables us to choose evil. Despite being created VERY GOOD and having the opportunity to dwell forever in God’s presence, we chose to go our own way and mess things up.

And so, we look around and realize that the world is broken. So very broken. We have terrible diseases like multiple sclerosis—nobody really knows what causes it and nothing can really stop it from progressing. The most we can hope for is to slow it down. And that’s certainly not the only chronic disease that people in this congregation suffer from, just the one that I encounter daily.

Wars continue to rage around the world. One news item this past week is that the US will ramp up its supply of weapons to Ukraine, in an acknowledgement that Russia is the aggressor who illegally seized Crimea and then invaded in an effort to capture more territory, breaking an agreement made back in 1994 during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The people of Ukraine have rallied around their charismatic leader and continue to hold off Russian aggression, but at the expense of perhaps 100,000 lives lost and many more wounded, plus widespread devastation. Russia has paid for its leaders’ ambitions with 1 million casualties. And there’s no end in sight, not really. I don’t see a way out of this where both sides can be satisfied, unless somehow Putin is removed from power.

Meanwhile, war rages across the Middle East. Did you know that there is war in Syria? There was a civil war that resulted in the end of the previous regime, which I thought had then settled down. But this week, I saw that there was a cease-fire between the Sunni and Druze factions in the wake of Israeli airstrikes in Damascus. Meanwhile, Gaza remains a humanitarian catastrophe. On Wednesday, twenty Palestinians were killed at a food distribution center, mostly by being trampled. On the same day, Israeli strikes killed at least 54 others across Gaza. While I’m pretty clear that Russia is the aggressor against Ukraine, the war between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza is far murkier. There has been conflict between Israel and the Palestinians since 1948, conflict that both sides have kept alive for various reasons, mostly related to political power. The latest hot war started because of an incursion by Hamas into Israel, but it is far from clear to me whether Israel’s response has been appropriate—probably not. In both cases, Ukraine and Gaza, the people who really suffer are the powerless, the civilians forced to live in a war zone while great powers fight around them.

Closer to home, we look around and see plenty of poverty and homelessness. Many times, when I learn the back story for a patron at the Mission, I realize that they never had a chance. They didn’t have positive role models in life or a stable home to grow up in. Many of them bear some responsibility for their choices, but others were entirely victims of circumstance. We live in a nation where a serious medical condition can result in debt that leads to homelessness. I mean, if I didn’t have such a good job with such good insurance, Rhonda would be in dire straits.

Even without sickness or poverty, relationships are difficult. In the daily prayer app I use, one of the prompts is to pray for those from whom we are estranged. I have five siblings. I’m close to two of them, have a positive relationship with one, and haven’t actually spoken to the other two in decades. I don’t think that’s too unusual. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of you had similar stories. Maybe not about siblings, but others in your extended family. Things happen, relationships fall apart, and if you’re lucky, you reconcile at someone else’s funeral.

Which of course brings us to the root of all brokenness. Death lingers for us all. Sometimes we know when it is coming, such as when you receive a cancer diagnosis and doctors can predict how long you have. But other times, it comes like a thief in the night. My good friend Wayne had a close encounter two years ago. He had what’s called a widowmaker heart attack in his workshop at home. He was among the fortunate 12% of people who have that kind of heart attack outside a hospital and survive. But if his wife had waited just a few minutes more to check on him, who knows?

Nations can die, just as the Roman Empire did and so many other empires throughout history. I saw this Mark Twain quote recently:

Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.

Institutions can die, too. There’s a forum that I visit where one of the discussion threads chronicles the institutions of higher education that are dying or have closed. Recently, there have been announcements of Siena Heights University, Limestone University, and The King’s College (NYC) all closing, and several others showing signs that the end is near, most of which I’ve never heard of. At the last presbytery meeting, we voted to sell one church building and dissolve another congregation.

But of course, that’s nothing new, really. The New Testament was written in the context of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, which radically transformed Judaism. The church in Colossae to which Paul wrote his letter disappeared after an earthquake hit the city. Everything has a life cycle—birth, life, flourishing, decline, and death.

But death is not the end! Let’s read on: Christ is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. So the correct life cycle is: birth, life, flourishing, decline, death, and resurrection. This life we see is not the end. It is a preparation for the glory that is to come. It is the life we learn with, so that we may fully enter a glorious life in Christ’s eternal kingdom.

We have the hope of ultimate reconciliation in the eschaton. I casually dropped that word in a conversation with my friend Sharon recently and she didn’t recognize it, so maybe you all don’t, either. In ancient thought, there were three basic perspectives on history. One perspective is that everything is random and undirected. The universe just wanders where it will, and chaos reigns. Ugh, what a terrible vision. The second perspective, popular in Greek thought and also in many other civilizations throughout history, is that everything is cyclical. Things get better, then things get worse, but nothing ever really changes. What comes around, goes around. Well, maybe that’s a little more comforting.

But the third perspective is the one that I cling to. It’s the Jewish and Christian belief that history has a purpose. History is going somewhere. As Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And that destination, that ultimate end of history, is the eschaton. Someday, all will be made new. Everything will be reconciled to God.

We have hope that someday, pain and suffering will come to an end. We have hope that someday, wars will end, replaced by shalom—peace, wholeness, and unity. We have hope that someday, we will be reconciled to one another just as we are reconciled to God. And we have hope that someday, this broken world will be refreshed and renewed, transformed into Christ’s eternal kingdom.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds. I do know that I can look back on all the good that I have done, as a husband, father, and engineer, and as a leader in my church, campus, and community. I am proud of what I have accomplished, even if it all comes to an end someday. I also know that I can look forward to a glorious future—if not in this world, then in the next. I can’t promise peace in Europe or the Middle East. I can’t promise that this church will return to the attendance and spiritual energy that it once enjoyed. But I can promise that someday, Christ’s reign will be complete. On that day, peace will triumph over war, love will triumph over hate, and eternal life will triumph over death itself. Amen.

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Preached on July 6, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Galatians 6:1-16.

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Before I get into today’s text, I want to back up and give a little context. Galatians is one of the earliest of Paul’s letters—perhaps his first, perhaps written after Thessalonians. None of Paul’s letters were written to us. They were written for particular communities experiencing particular circumstances. In the case of Galatians, Paul was addressing a church community that he had founded, but that was being led astray by so-called “Judaizers.” These were followers of the Way, what we would now call Christians, who taught that to follow Christ required first becoming Jewish. They told the Galatians that they needed to be circumcised and complete all of the other rituals expected of proselytes to Judaism.

Paul countered this argument by saying, in essence, God is doing a new thing here. Sure, Christ came first to the Jews, but not exclusively. If you are already Jewish, as Paul was, then you should continue observing Jewish practices. But if you are not, then following Christ is sufficient. There is no need for circumcision or any other outer markings of Judaism. This was not a conflict between Jews and Christians. This was a conflict between religious traditionalists insisting on maintaining the old ways and a reformer leading people into a new way of being faithful to God.

This was the context for Paul’s dualistic teachings about the spirit and the flesh. He used “the flesh” as a proxy for all sorts of things that are contrary to God’s will, including concerns about religious rituals and traditions. He used “the spirit” as a proxy for the teachings of Jesus and the new life, the new creation that we can each experience through Christ. As Susan discussed last week, living by the spirit with a new life in Christ bears much fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

So now we’re in chapter 6 and Paul is wrapping things up. Today’s text starts with a self-contradictory teaching. First he says to bear one another’s burdens, and then that each person should carry their own load. Well, which is it, Paul? Make up your mind!

When I read this, I immediately thought of elk hunting. As most of you know, I go to Colorado each fall to hunt elk with a group of guys led by Wayne Huebner. We set up a base camp at the end of the road, then hike in to set up a spike camp. When we’re on the mountain, both of Paul’s teachings are appropriate: bear one another’s burdens, but carry your own load.

See, we spend most of the day on our own, searching for elk sign or tracks. In the late afternoon, everyone finds a good blind to hunt from; the best blind, which we call Bull Meadow, usually has two hunters. After dark, everyone heads back to camp. Well, one year, someone in Bull Meadow got an elk. The two guys in the blind field-dressed it and then headed back to spike camp. It was very late by the time they made it, and one guy, Ryan, was really struggling. We hunt at about 11,000’ and he got altitude sickness, aggravated by all of the exertion. Ultimately, around 2 am, he had to get off the mountain. Wayne and another guy, Greg, helped him break camp and hike down to the truck. They took turns carrying his pack and helping him to make sure he could keep moving. Once they got to the truck, Ryan took off and drove down to a lower elevation, where he recovered.

The point is that we all have to be self-sufficient as much as possible, but when someone is in trouble, we help them out. That’s what Paul is teaching. Everyone should do the best they can, but when someone’s burdens get too heavy, the community should help them out. This church helped our family when Rhonda was going through her medical issues twelve years ago, and many of you can probably attest to the support you have received from the deacons and others in the church.

But medical issues are not the only burdens that can get to be too much. Paul goes on to write, “Do not grow weary in doing good.” Weariness is not tiredness. When I go running, I get tired, and then I rest and recover. No problem. When I work on a research project or other tasks on campus, I get brain-tired, but I feel a sense of accomplishment that feeds my soul once I’ve had a nap or a good night’s sleep. At the end of the semester, I’m tired from the marathon of meetings and grading and whatnot, but by midsummer, I’m feeling refreshed and ready for another academic year.

Weariness is a form of tiredness that can’t be resolved with rest. Weariness comes from discouragement. Weariness comes from hopelessness. Weariness comes when your passion is gone. I had two faculty in my department retire at the end of the semester. One of them said to me that about halfway through the semester, he asked himself, Why am I still doing this? He still enjoyed the time in the classroom, but not the grading or dealing with student problems or any of the myriad other things that go into running a class. He had grown weary.

I grew weary myself a few years ago. I was the director of a research center called CREE starting in September 2019. The main goal of a research center is to foster collaboration, which means bringing people together. Well, soon after I took over, COVID-19 hit and we couldn’t gather. For almost three years, I tried to get people to show up to research showcases or other meetings or events. Out of 70 faculty affiliated with the center, I could only get a dozen to show up at all. It was very discouraging. I grew weary of even trying. Fortunately, along came the opportunity to be department chair. I wouldn’t say that this job is easier—in fact, it’s much more work and much more responsibility. And yet, I also find it to be much more rewarding. I can see the impact of what I do, and being chair doesn’t sap my energy the way directing CREE did.

Paul counsels the Galatians not to grow weary in doing good. I serve lunch once a week at the Mission. I have found that to be my limit so that I won’t grow weary. I started volunteering there in 2018 when Ashley Brooks was their only employee. I’ve seen many staff members come and go. In most cases, they reached the limit of the emotional toll that they could handle. Everyone who works with the homeless needs to find a way to manage the inevitable failures, the second-hand trauma, the interpersonal conflicts, and so much more. Some people do not have an adequate support system or have other challenges in their personal lives that cause them to buckle under the stress.

And yet, the Mission continues. They have a great team now, and great programs. Recently, Ashley told me that this year, Rolla has seen a 75% reduction in drug overdoses, a 40% reduction in the population of encampments, and a 20% reduction in crime. Results like this take time. The staff and volunteers of the Mission have been working for YEARS to build trust with the homeless population of Phelps County so that they can help people deal with substance abuse, cope with unresolved trauma in their past, build healthy relationships, and find a way to function in our community. I am honored to play a small part—a very small part, just one meal a week—in their goal of fostering human flourishing.

How has the Mission succeeded? How has Ashley been able to stay in her leadership role? How do the staff keep up the hard work of helping people who are in dire circumstances? Because they lean on each other. Ashley has assembled a team of staff and volunteers who have great emotional regulation, and who carry their own loads but are willing to bear one another’s burdens when they need to. And above all, everyone cares deeply for the people that they serve, individually and as a community. That deep love and caring feeds each person’s soul so that they can persist in doing good. Together they have built a place where God truly dwells, even if nobody ever discusses it. The Mission is a place where everyone strives to see Jesus in each person they meet, without ever mentioning his name.

And that, my friends, is the essence of our calling to exhibit the kingdom of heaven. As I’ve said so often, God’s realm is universal human flourishing. We seek God’s realm by living out the Matthew 25 principles. When King Jesus comes in his glory, he will say to his sheep, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these siblings of mine, you did for me.” We are all Christ’s siblings, all made in the image of God, all welcome in God’s family. Jesus did what he could to care for His siblings while he walked the earth, and now asks us to carry on the work.

I wish I could feed ALL of the hungry, welcome ALL of the strangers, clothe ALL of the naked, care for ALL of the sick, and visit ALL of the prisoners. But I can’t, and if I tried, I’d be burned out in a week. The fastest way to become weary of doing good is to try to do too much. Fortunately, God doesn’t ask us to solve ALL of the world’s problems, only what we are capable of. We are asked not to be burdened, but only to carry our own load. God asks each one of us to exhibit the kingdom of heaven in our own particular way.

So the question is, Where is your heart? What is God calling YOU to do? I know what my calling is. It culminated last Monday in opening a community center that I would be happy to discuss with you sometime. But what is YOUR calling? Who do YOU want to serve?

Usually, when we talk about missions and serving the community, discussions go one of two ways. The first is to raise money or collect items. This is wonderful, and is the only gift some people have to offer. It will mean so much to the children of our community for them to receive toys or to have crayons when they go Back to School. It means so much when we collect the four PC(USA) special offerings. I don’t want to cast any aspersions on that.

At the same time, giving our money isn’t enough. God asks us to give our whole selves. So the other direction conversations often take is to say, “Well, we could serve a meal, but we don’t have people who can work in a kitchen anymore. We don’t have people who can help build a house. We can’t do XYZ.” And then those conversations fizzle out.

But the reality is that there are a lot of spiritual needs that are going unfulfilled in our community. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs starts with physiological and safety needs, but doesn’t stop there. Everyone needs to experience love and belonging. Everyone needs respect and recognition. Everyone needs to have a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

Let me tell you once again about an amazing organization that is striving to satisfy these needs. A few months ago, ICE signed a contract with Phelps County to house detainees here. Some people heard about the detainees and were moved with compassion, and so they created an organization called Abide in Love. Phelps County Jail has a lot of onerous restrictions, so nobody can actually visit the detainees as Jesus commanded. But Abide in Love is doing the next best thing. They are communicating with the detainees via the app that the jail allows. They are providing basic hygiene items through the jail commissary. They are enabling the detainees to communicate with their families. In most cases, Abide in Love has little to no impact on the ultimate resolution of the detainees’ cases—that’s up to the government and immigration attorneys and the judicial system. But they are having a tremendous impact on the hearts and souls of the detainees. I’ve seen posts of messages that they have received, such as, “Thank you for the good work you are doing for us immigrants. God will help you greatly. There are very few people who offer this support.” Or another one: “With the three dollars you gave me, I was able to call my mom in Honduras. I hadn’t spoken to her in almost 40 days because I didn’t have any funds. Thank you again.” Or: “Thank you, it is appreciated. And if there’s a possibility you could give us underwear, I would be very grateful because I don’t know if you know that here we all enter without underwear because they take it away from us, and they only give us two jumpsuits. Sorry for my boldness, I say this because I am one of many who don’t have money here inside, nor do I have anyone outside who can send me some.”

The point is, the detainees are people who God loves, and so there are people in our community who have been moved with compassion to find out what their actual needs are and to help meet them. It’s not about the money, it’s about human connection and meeting people where they are in their time of need.

Maybe you too are moved by the conditions of the ICE detainees and want to help with the work that Abide in Love is doing. In that case, they have a Facebook Page, or I can get you connected. But my point is that maybe there are other needs in Rolla or Phelps County or rural Missouri, other people who have spiritual needs that you feel called to fulfill. If so, I’m here to help. My role is to facilitate your response to God’s claim on your life. Nothing great can ever be done alone, so I can help you find people with that same calling, whether they are in this church or not.

So let us not become weary in doing good. Let’s help one another find a way to respond to God’s unique call on each of our lives, and support each other so we can all persist until we reap a harvest of spiritual fruits. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on June 15, 2025, Trinity Sunday. Based on John 16:12-15.

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There’s a YouTube video that I love called, “St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies.” In it, St. Patrick attempts to explain the Trinity to a couple of “simple Irish folk,” who turn out to not be so simple after all. The first analogy he uses is water: it can be a liquid, ice, or steam. The simple Irish folk chastise him for promoting modalism, a heretical doctrine that claimed the Trinity were three modes of God rather than three distinct persons.

He says, OK, well, it’s like the sun: it’s a star, that produces heat, and that produces light. Wait a minute, Patrick: that’s Arianism. Arius was a heretic who claimed that the Father was the ground of all being, and that the Son and the Holy Spirit issued from the Father.

Now he gets to his most famous analogy: a shamrock. Like three leaves of a shamrock, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit together comprise God. But wait: that’s partialism! Each person of the Godhead is God, not just part of God. They are all fully divine, and yet together they are One.

So finally St. Patrick falls back to the creed of Athanasius:

we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity,

   neither blending their persons

    nor dividing their essence.

        For the person of the Father is a distinct person,

        the person of the Son is another,

        and that of the Holy Spirit still another.

        But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one,

        their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.

Athanasius’s creed goes on and on, but it’s more of the same. Did you understand what I just said? I sure didn’t.

They say that Trinity Sunday is the day when the most heresy is committed in pulpits around the world. The root of the problem is that ultimately, when we are discussing God, words fail. Human understanding fails. As St. Augustine once said, “If you understand, it is not God.” Our finite human brains cannot comprehend the infinite glory of our triune God. So we do our best to explain things and end up falling short of reality.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m colorblind. What that means is that my eyes do not perceive color the same way most people’s eyes do. So let me ask you: What does green look like? How would you describe it to me? You could say, well, it’s what grass looks like, but that’s not really helpful. That’s telling me what objects display a certain color, but not what the color actually is.

Theology can be roughly divided into cataphatic and apophatic. Cataphatic theology is where I mostly find my home, as do most mainline Protestants. Cataphatic theology is positive theology: it’s based on affirmations of who God is. We have creeds, right? A whole book full of them, the Book of Confessions, that try to explain God. For 1700 years, Christians have been dividing themselves over their understandings of God and the words they use. The Eastern and Western churches split for many reasons, but a big one was a clause that the Roman church added to the Nicene Creed, “the Holy Spirit, …who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” The Eastern churches said that no, the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father. In this and many other ways, we Christians have splintered what should be one Church over words.

Yet in the end, words fail. Then enters apophatic theology, which literally means “unsaying.” It’s sometimes called “negative theology” because it consists of saying what God is not. Here’s an example. “God is love.” Yes, God is loving, and 1 John is an extended meditation on how God is love. But think of all the ways we use that word. I love my family. I love this church. I love pizza. I love hunting. I love working on electronics. Are these all ways that God loves, or that God is love? Yes, but God is so much more!

And then think of all the ways that we show love. You can probably think of many times in your life when you weren’t sure what the most loving choice was, particularly if you are a parent or if you were in a relationship with an addict. Where is the line between loving someone and enabling bad behavior? Where is the line between appropriate discipline and cruelty? It’s hard to know. There are many people who think yelling at people and calling them sinners is in fact loving, because they want to keep them from going to Hell. Are all of these ways that God is love?

So in the end, if what we have and what we do is love, God cannot possibly be love because God is so much MORE than what we could possibly mean by that word. Thus, we say no, God is not love, at least not as we humans understand it. That word, “love,” points us towards God, but God transcends it in every possible way.

What we are left with are analogies and metaphors and stories that help us understand God in some way, but ultimately, we always fall short. The fundamental Trinitarian formula is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Today, on Father’s Day, I’m happy to make an analogy between fathers everywhere and our Eternal Father. The analogy fails in two basic ways. One, God did not literally “father” humanity, but rather fashioned us in God’s image. Two, if God is our Father, He is a perfect Father, one so far exceeding human fathers in every way that we cannot ultimately understand God through that term. A related problem is that we don’t all have good father figures with which to compare God.

Back in 2006, PC(USA) commissioned and endorsed a study on the Trinity, titled “God’s Love Overflowing,” that explored many other ways to understand the mystery of our triune God. So let’s try another trinitarian formula that was in their report: God the compassionate mother, God the beloved child, and God the life-giving womb. Here, the first Person of the Trinity is still a parent, but now we can speak of her feminine attributes. If you have trouble with an authoritarian Father image, perhaps a compassionate, caring, comforting Mother image is better. God the Mother takes responsibility for healing our wounds, teaching us to be loving, and guiding us into healthy relationships. The second Person of the Trinity is a beloved child, our divine sibling who demonstrates how to love God the Parent and how to love one another. We are all beloved children of God, and we can all model our lives on Christ, regardless of gender. The third Person of the Trinity is the source of our lives, the womb from which the Church was born just last week on Pentecost—or, well, 2000 years ago, but you know what I mean.

So if God the Mother, the Child, and the Womb help you to understand our triune God as the source of love and life, that’s great! But in the end, this metaphor fails to capture all of the attributes of God.

Let’s try another one: God the Rainbow of Promise, God the Ark of Salvation, and God the Dove of Peace. In this trinitarian re-telling of Noah’s story, we get another perspective on the ways the three Persons of the Trinity interact with humanity. The First Person sets a rainbow in the sky as a reminder of the promise that humanity is beloved and will never be destroyed. By extension, we can comprehend all of the promises of God given throughout the Bible as expressions of the fundamental promise that God treasures us. God acts in the world as the Second Person of the Trinity, the ark that carries us to salvation. Christ didn’t just proclaim salvation, Christ is the vessel of our salvation, the embodiment of the promise that the First Person makes to us. We know of our salvation because of the Third Person, the dove who brings peace to us all.

I think this is a beautiful way to understand the story of Noah, as an experience of the triune God. But it too fails. Christ was not just a boat made of wood. Christ was actually a human being, Jesus of Nazareth. The Holy Spirit is not just peace, but also power and love and unity. So yes, God is rainbow, ark, and dove, but not really.

In the end, none of our analogies or metaphors really capture the essence of the Trinity, but all of them point in the general direction of who God is and how God interacts with humanity. One common theme through it all is LOVE. The Trinity is three Persons united with so much love that it overflows. There is so much love that the three Persons are fully united into one God. And then God’s love flows out and fills the universe, uniting us all into God, too.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus’s farewell discourse gets very mystical: the Father is in the Son as the Son is in the Father and the Son is in us as we are in Him and he will send an Advocate who tells us all things about the Father and the Son. Wow. I think this was an early attempt, in the limited language that the disciples could comprehend, to approach the divine Truth of the Trinity. I probably haven’t said it any better, but maybe some additional analogies can help us, as Paul wrote in Ephesians, to have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Because in the end, we cannot comprehend the Trinity, we cannot fully comprehend just how much love God has for us, and we cannot comprehend the infinite riches of God’s grace with our finite minds. What we can do, though, is to “unsay” what we think we know about God, all of the limits we try to place on God, and experience God’s overflowing love.

The best way I have ever found to truly experience that love is through other people. I can point to two somewhat mystical God experiences. One was in a worship service with probably a hundred people, and one was sitting on my couch with a friend. Beyond that, the times I have witnessed the kingdom of God were when I was surrounded by people who were experiencing true community, authentically expressing themselves, and affirming and supporting one another. That is the gift of the Trinity, overflowing love that binds us to one another and allows us to embrace our identity as beloved children of God, Christ’s siblings.

So tell me, what does green look like? Words fail. Just as our words about God fail. Our faith should rest not on human wisdom, but on the power of God. Our metaphors, our analogies, and our stories can point us towards God, though, and help us to live together as members of God’s family, loving one another through the overflowing love of the Godhead. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on June 1, 2025. Based on John 17:20-26.

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I’d like to start by situating this passage in the story of Jesus’s life and ministry as related in the Gospel of John. The first half of John’s Gospel is the Book of Signs, in which Jesus performs seven major miracles. This passage comes during the shift to the Book of Glory, which culminates in Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection.

A few chapters earlier, Jesus and his disciples gather for a Passover meal. At the start, Jesus washes his disciples’ feet as a prophetic action to demonstrate what love means and how love acts. Judas departs to betray him, and then Jesus begins his farewell discourse. Today’s passage is the last part of his high priestly prayer that concludes the discourse before they all depart for the garden of Gethsemane. This is one of the major examples of Jesus showing us how to pray. He earnestly asks God the Father to unify all of God’s people. This passage is very mystical—Jesus prays that the Father would be in the Son as the Son is in the Father as both are in the disciples and the disciples are in them. Wow! How do we make sense of that? This can only be true if we are all bound together by the Holy Spirit, the Advocate that Jesus promises at the beginning of his farewell discourse.

The Gospels are stories of Jesus’s life, but they are more than that. They are stories told to specific communities who were trying to figure out how to follow Jesus. The first Christians were Jews who believed that Jesus had come to reform Judaism. Eventually, though, they realized that Jesus’s message of hope, peace, and love was meant for more than just Jews. Peter had a vision that opened his mind and his heart to Gentiles, and subsequently Paul was commissioned specifically to take the Gospel message to Gentiles around the Roman Empire.

One of the hallmarks of the early church was its diversity. Traditionally, religious communities were ethnically segregated. Each community had its patron god or gods and its own worship practices. In a sense, the Jews were no different—they just thought that their God was supreme over all other gods, or that the other people’s gods were not real. So no matter where they lived, they cleaved to the one true God. For this reason, Jews and Christians were sometimes accused of being atheists because they didn’t worship the local idols, the local gods. If something bad happened to a city, it must have been because the Jews hadn’t properly sacrificed to the patron gods. That led to persecution throughout the Greco-Roman world.

Anyway, pre-Christian religions were segregated by ethnicity and, to some extent, by class. Christianity was different. They welcomed people of any ethnicity, any gender, any social class. Take the Ethiopian eunuch for example. Being Ethiopian, he was not fully welcome in the Temple in Jerusalem. Being a eunuch and likely a slave, he was definitely not welcome in the Temple and would not have been welcome in many social and religious settings. Yet when he encountered Philip on the road as he was heading home from Jerusalem, Philip baptized him and welcomed him into the Christian family.

Throughout the Roman Empire, Christian churches sprouted and grew. In almost every case, they were “house churches,” which is to say, they were groups of people who would meet at one person’s house to worship and share a meal together—the meal we will share at the Lord’s Table in a few minutes. Inviting someone into your house is far different from inviting someone to a public place like a church. I mean, if you are out in public and start chatting with a stranger about religion, you would surely feel more comfortable inviting them to worship with you than to come to your house for a cup of coffee. Yet the house churches were very welcoming to people of all different backgrounds. Generally, groups gathered in the homes of the well-to-do so that there would be enough room for everyone, yet even slaves were welcome and treated as equals. Although later church hierarchy would exclude women from leadership, these house churches were frequently led by women, which makes sense when you consider the typical role of women in managing household affairs and offering hospitality.

Not only were the house churches welcoming of a wide range of people, the Christians actively loved their community, those outside their church. One of the primary contributions of the Christian church is the invention of the hospital. Before the fourth century, physicians treated patients in their homes and would stick to their own people. Then Christians began opening hospitals that welcomed anyone, Christian or not, from any class or ethnicity. The open-heartedness of early Christianity goes a long way towards explaining how it grew from a minor sect of a minor religion into the dominant religion in the Greco-Roman world.

Still today, Christians seek to love those who are outside their immediate circle. A few weeks ago, I related a short story about Carol Mayorga, an immigrant who is being detained. Let me expand on that just a bit. Carol, whose legal name is Ming Li Hui, went to St. Louis for what she thought was a routine visa renewal. Instead, she was arrested by ICE and transferred to Phelps County Jail. A group in Rolla called Abide in Love has been tracking the ICE detainees in our jail. My friend Lucy had specifically been in touch with Carol. Presbyterian pastor Kirsten King from Carol’s hometown of Kennett, MO, reached out to our church, so I had a video call with Carol. Since then, Carol has been transferred to Greene County Jail, where she remains. Through it all, Lucy has kept in touch with her and her lawyer. Lucy reached out to NPR, who visited Kennett and wrote a great article about the situation. Subsequently, the New York Times also wrote an article about her. Lucy has regular video calls with Carol to share God’s love and human connection.

Carol is from Hong Kong originally and is Catholic. Why did a Presbyterian pastor contact us? Why is my Episcopalian friend staying in touch with her? Because we are all one humanity. Christ told us to love one another. He didn’t say that we should only love those who love us, or only those who share our values or our community or anything else. He said that we should love our neighbor AND our enemy.

For a couple of months, I was participating in a book study that Patrick Wilson led at his church, CrossRoads. Through that, I learned about two types of churches: a bounded set and a centered set. In a bounded set, there is a clear boundary between who is “in” and who is “out.” For example, in many churches, there are pretty firm rules about who is and is not allowed to take communion. In many churches, there are pretty firm rules about who is allowed to serve in a leadership role. In many churches, there are pretty firm rules about who is considered worthy of membership and who is not. I would say that in the Presbyterian church, the boundary is a little bit porous, but there definitely is a boundary. We allow anyone to take communion, and there are no classifications of people who are disallowed from membership or leadership, but you do have to subscribe to certain beliefs to become a member and then be chosen to be a leader.

In a centered set, there is a clear center, and then there are people who are closer to or further from the center, and either moving towards or away from the center. That’s the kind of church Jesus is describing. The center is LOVE. The center is the mutual love of God the Father and God the Son, who are in one another and whose love flows out and fills the cosmos. Near the center are people like Jesus’s disciples: those who truly know Christ and have given their whole selves to serving God’s kingdom. That’s what God desires for all of us. But most of us aren’t there yet. The most we can hope is that we are moving towards Christ and His love as the source of our being.

Jesus describes an existence of complete unity as another aspect of the kingdom of God. Someday, we will achieve complete unity. In the meantime, as we move deeper into Christ’s love, we move towards fuller inclusion and fuller belonging. Inclusion is an open door: All are welcome. No longer do we have ushers who act like bouncers to keep out certain people. Everyone can come in, sit down, and join us in worship. Belonging takes that to a higher level, though. On a website called Inclusion Geeks, I found this description:

Understanding the difference between inclusion and belonging is crucial because focusing solely on inclusion can create a hollow feeling. Imagine inviting someone to a party but then leaving them standing awkwardly in the corner. They’re technically included, but they don’t truly belong. Focusing only on inclusion might bring diverse individuals into the organization, but without belonging, they may feel isolated, unheard, and ultimately disengaged.

Inclusion is opening the door. Belonging requires building genuine relationships, empowerment, trust, and psychological comfort. Belonging rests on celebrating differences, not minimizing them. We are all beloved children of God, made in God’s image. Yet we all express a different facet of God’s infinite being. Only by celebrating the many faces of humanity can we truly experience God’s presence in and among us.

And that celebration must be active. It isn’t enough to sit quietly in your pew and think positive thoughts about people who are different from you. Instead, we must actively engage with people who are outside our family circle, our friend circle, and our church circle. We must seek out new experiences, new people, different ways of being, and different perspectives.

Our church is a microcosm of the Christian church in America. We are all at a crossroads. For the past 500 years, we have split repeatedly over differences in theology, different ways of understanding God’s calling, different views on who is welcome and who is fit to lead. The process has accelerated in the past fifty years, with the predictable result that succeeding generations are rejecting all of it. If we can’t get our act together and center ourselves on the Truth, God’s Truth, which is LOVE, then why should anyone outside the church care what we have to say? If church is a place where people encounter conflict, or shame, or trauma, why would anyone join? If what we say we believe doesn’t match the truth of our actions, why should anyone trust us?

The only way forward and the only hope for the Christian Church is to live what Jesus commanded his disciples and pray as he prayed: that we may all be one, that we may dwell in God the Father and God the Son and that they may dwell in us. Then empowered by the Holy Spirit, we can exhibit the kingdom of God to the world, the love that unites all of humanity as God’s people.

Jesus described a grand vision for the kingdom of God: complete unity. This unity is based not on sameness, but on the foundation of God’s love in Christ. As we widen the circle of who we call neighbor, who we call friend, who we call sibling in Christ, we move deeper into the infinite love that Christ offers us all. Amen.

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Preached May 18, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Revelation 21:1-8.

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I don’t usually preach from Revelation. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever preached from Revelation. I’m no fire-and-brimstone preacher. But I take what the lectionary gives me. I could have preached about love from the Gospel of John. I could have preached about inclusion from the Acts of the Apostles. But you’ve heard all that from me before, right? So today, you’re getting some apocalyptic preaching. 

Before I get into the reading, let’s try to get the perspective of the original readers of Revelation. John of Patmos was probably not the same John who was an apostle, nor the John who wrote the Gospel that bears that name, nor the John who wrote the epistles that bear that name… Anyway, John the Revelator was exiled to the island of Patmos sometime late in the first century CE, probably around the year 95. This is about 25 years after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. In the 60s, there was a lot of turmoil in Jerusalem, culminating in a revolution that was absolutely squashed by the Romans. In 70 CE, the Temple was destroyed and Jews were all banished from Jerusalem. Without the Temple, all those who followed our God had to figure out what God had in mind for them. 

One group, the Pharisees, determined that the Temple sacrificial system could be replaced by the many traditions that had grown up in the synagogues. Out of that group grew rabbinic Judaism, the Jewish faith that continues today. 

Another group saw an altogether different vision of the future. Of course the Temple had been destroyed—God no longer needed a dwelling place on earth. Jesus Christ had come to show us God’s essential nature, and then through his death and resurrection, he established a new Way to follow God. In fact, they called themselves followers of the Way. They envisioned a God who transcended any particular place, and indeed one who transcended any tribe or nation. Out of this group grew Christianity in all its varied forms. 

But remember, many Christians saw themselves as still Jews who had grown in their understanding of God. John of Patmos was thoroughly Jewish. Throughout the book of Revelation and especially in today’s passage, there are references to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and other books in our canon, plus many extra-biblical books like 1 Enoch. John was immersed in apocalyptic messianic Judaism and wove its themes all through his writing. 

What was John’s ultimate goal in writing? Well, the core message of Revelation is this: In the end, GOD WINS. Things may look dire—God’s people may be subjected to persecution and the Temple may have been destroyed, but God is at work battling evil and transforming the world. There is always reason for hope. 

In today’s passage, we read that a new heaven and a new earth is descending because the old things had passed away. God is transforming the world into God’s eternal kingdom, which as I have so often said is an existence of universal human flourishing. Most days, it’s hard to see a path from where we are to such an existence. There are so many terrible things happening in the world—how could we ever reach universal flourishing? Well, those old things need to pass away. There are lots of good things in the world, too—but the good is bound up with the bad, often inextricably so. We need to be willing to let go of everything, good and bad, for the sake of God’s kingdom. Only then can we achieve the transformative restoration of all things that is needed to achieve God’s original vision for humanity. 

As the new heaven and new earth are descending, so too is a new Jerusalem, a new holy city. In these last chapters of the Bible, we hear echoes of the first chapters of the Bible. Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Christ was there at the beginning, when God spoke all things into being and declared them very good. Christ will be there at the end, too, when all things will be restored to that state of perfection, of wholeness and holiness. 

In the beginning, God placed humanity in a garden. Back then, all we needed was the bare minimum to survive. At first, there was only one human, but God recognized that Adam was incomplete in himself. Being made in the image of God, we are made for relationship. Adam needed a mate, a helper, a companion. Only a loving relationship can really make us complete. 

But no single person can satisfy all of our needs. Many marriages have failed because one person relied too completely on the other and became emotionally unsatisfied. This is no criticism of the other partner—nobody is perfect and therefore nobody can satisfy all of another person’s needs. Similarly, no relationship is pure and untarnished. When you are close to someone, you two can hurt each other because humans are finite, imperfect beings. 

And so a garden is not sufficient for a person to thrive, and a single partner is not sufficient for the pair to thrive. We need a community. We need to be embedded in a complex web of relationships that are individually good, and together provide everything we need to flourish. Metaphorically, we need a city, a Holy City, a place where God dwells and unites us all and ensures the health of every relationship. 

We need a Holy City where everyone we love is there with us. Death will be no more, and neither will there be mourning or crying. This is only possible if absolutely everyone is there with us. If I get to heaven and my Grandma or my Uncle Dick aren’t there, it won’t feel very heavenly. 

The problem is, if everyone I love is there, everyone I hate will be there too. There are people who have hurt me over the years, old pains that sometimes flare up, things that cannot be resolved in the present age. There are surely people that I have hurt. Someday, all of the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain we have inflicted on one another will be healed so that we can be reconciled to one another. Only through that reconciliation will we be able to truly enjoy God’s presence. Only through that reconciliation will the world be truly transformed into God’s kingdom. 

But there are at least two main parts to reconciliation. First, the transgressor needs to be reformed. Here’s where the fire and brimstone come in. In Revelation 21:8, we read, “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” That sounds pretty bad, right? I mean, I’m not a murderer, but who among us has never lied? Who among us has never acted cowardly? This seems to doom everyone, or almost everyone, to eternal conscious torment in a lake of fire. Or the slightly more positive interpretation is annihilation: those who don’t make the cut to enter the Holy City are annihilated and cease to exist. 

But again, if I get to heaven and the people I love aren’t there, what kind of heaven would that be? The third way to interpret this passage harkens back to Malachi 3:2-3: “But who can endure the day of [the Lord’s] coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.” The fire and brimstone are not to destroy or torment us, but to purify us. This vivid metaphor helps us to understand the pain that comes from confronting the many ways we have fallen short of God’s glory and failed to show our love of God or our love of our neighbor. This reckoning will be painful, but is necessary to purify us and to remove from us all of our hatred and all of the ways we hurt one another. Then we can truly repent and, having repented, we can truly reconcile with those whom we have hurt, or those who have hurt us. 

And then, all will be well. Fernando Sabino, a Brazilian writer, once wrote, “In the end, everything will be all right. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end.” Until we have all been purified and reconciled with one another, it is still not the end. God will keep working on us, individually and collectively, until everyone is flourishing. God will keep transforming the world until it truly reflects God’s vision for humanity. 

We might wish that we wouldn’t need to go through all of this. The pain and loss of the present age lead to mourning and tears, but Christ promises that in the end, mourning and crying shall be no more. Julian of Norwich, a famous 14^th-century visionary, wrote this about her 13^th Showing: 

In my folly, before this time I often wondered why, by the great foreseeing wisdom of God, the onset of sin was not prevented: for then, I thought, all should have been well. This impulse [of thought] was much to be avoided, but nevertheless I mourned and sorrowed because of it, without reason and discretion. 

But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that is needed by me, answered with these words and said: ‘It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ 

These words were said most tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any who shall be saved.

Jesus doesn’t blame us for our sinfulness and imperfections. He was one of us and so he knows how hard this life is.  We accumulate pain and sorrow throughout the length of our days, but we know that in the end, all shall be well. 

OK, great—someday, we’ll all be in heaven and all shall be well. You should know me well enough, though, to know that I’m not here to promise you pie in the sky when you die in the sweet by and by.  

The core message of the Gospel is that the kingdom of God is at hand! Yes, in the end, all shall be well, but we can have glimpses of what that will be like as the world is slowly transformed. Because the new heaven and the new earth and the new Jerusalem are coming to us. They come to us each day as we strive to create a world that is more aligned with God’s original intention for universal human flourishing. We are living in the Holy City right now. It’s here. It’s within us and among us. 

Sure, we still hurt one another, and we are still finite and imperfect beings. But we have been made in God’s image, and that means we have the capacity within ourselves to express God’s love. We have the ability to forgive, and to repent, and to reconcile with one another. It doesn’t happen very often, but once in a while, I get a sense that I am living in God’s kingdom, if only for a moment or perhaps an afternoon. Once in a while, I have a feeling that God loves me, and that God has connected me with the people around me. I get a feeling that everyone has what they need to flourish, to live out their true identity as a beloved child of God. That feeling passes quickly, but it’s real, and it assures me that indeed, all shall be well. 

The task God sets before each one of us is to find ways to transform the world into God’s kingdom. God works with us and through us as we strive to purge ourselves of evil and hatred. God works with us and through us as we strive to share God’s love with our community, to love as we are loved. God works with us and through us as we seek to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and bind up the broken-hearted. 

Someday, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Today, let us strive to make Rolla just a little bit more like God’s vision for humanity. Let us seek ways to help everyone flourish and thrive. In that way, we will live in God’s kingdom today and walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called. Amen.  

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