Category: Sermons

Sermon for March 30, 2025, Fourth Sunday in Lent, preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32.

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Today’s story is a familiar one. It’s one of the parables we find in Luke that has entered popular culture, just like last week’s story about the Good Samaritan. We refer to the “Prodigal Son” even though we need to look up what “prodigal” means! (By the way, it means spending money or resources freely and recklessly.) The preacher’s challenge is to make something so familiar to us seem new. No promises, but let’s see if we can glean some fresh insights today.

The story starts with a shameful action. In a patriarchal society, a father’s inheritance would be divided among his male heirs at his death, with a larger share going to the first-born son. The younger son could have stayed in his father’s household and eventually inherited an appropriate portion, but he was impatient, like so many young people. He was ready to strike out on his own, get away from his father’s control, live a little. So he asked for his inheritance. This was essentially like saying to his father, “All you mean to me is a payday. I almost wish you were dead. Gimme gimme gimme.” The father could certainly have refused, but he didn’t. I’m sure it broke his heart to lose his son in this way, but he allowed his son to bear the consequences of his choices.

We sometimes say that America has a guilt-innocence paradigm while cultures like in ancient Judea had an honor-shame paradigm. That is, we supposedly look only at whether someone broke a rule or not. But if you think about the way some people are treated, you’ll realize that shame is alive and well in 21^st-century America.

Shame is a way that society has to determine who is valued more and who is valued less, who has more or less status, or who is included or excluded. There are plenty of ways to incur shame. Losing your job, for example. I spoke recently with a former student whose position was eliminated because his employer didn’t have any projects for him. How was that his fault? Yet many prospective employers find that sort of thing to be shameful and are reluctant to hire someone who doesn’t currently have a job. Similar judgment is passed on someone who is homeless. Look around Rolla—there are surely several people who are homeless now, in the wake of the storm. Yet many other people are homeless because of a personal storm in their lives—unemployment, divorce, being a victim of a crime, and so forth.

I recently read about “healthism.” The term was coined in 1980 by Robert Crawford to describe a belief system where health is a function of personal choices. It’s an attitude that ascribes honor to people who are skinny, fit, and active. It ascribes shame to people who are overweight, or have mobility issues, or have chronic diseases, or who otherwise fall outside the bounds of “healthy.” But health is not entirely in our control. Look at Rhonda, for example. Nobody really knows what causes MS, but it certainly is unrelated to any decisions she has ever made.

Relationships are hard, right? Families are challenging. Yet we are expected to have great relationships with our parents, our siblings, our spouse, our kids. Divorce is seen as a failure, and some people will blame parents if their kids don’t live up to some standard of success, or if they get in trouble with the law, or whatever.

I could go on and on. The simple fact is that modern American culture has just as much of an honor-shame binary as ancient Judea, just with different means of gaining honor or incurring shame.

So some people engage in “covering.” I learned about that from a recent podcast. A prime example of covering was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He had had polio and needed to use a wheelchair. In that era, polio was relatively common and was certainly not his fault. Everyone knew that he had had polio and that he used a wheelchair. Yet, he went out of his way to ensure that no pictures were ever taken that revealed his wheelchair, and that he wasn’t in a wheelchair during important meetings.

Covering is trying to hide those aspects of yourself that make you feel ashamed. FDR believed that he would not be respected if people saw him in a wheelchair, so he hid his need for it. Other people try to hide their race, their national origin, their education or lack thereof, their family relationships, and so forth. We hide what we believe to be shameful so that we can have a higher status in society. Interestingly, the podcast I listened to indicated that 47% of straight white men—arguably the most honored demographic—engage in covering behaviors.

Today’s lesson is usually called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but it is sometimes called the Parable of the Two Brothers. So let’s talk about the older brother. This chapter of Luke opens with an observation that the Pharisees were grumbling over Jesus welcoming “tax collectors and sinners.” The Pharisees were trying to shame Jesus because of the shameful company he kept. At the climax of the chapter, we encounter a man who will not welcome his brother, who will not even acknowledge him as brother but instead as “this son of yours” when he is confronting his father. The modern American church is not so different from the older brother, nor from the Pharisees. I watched a video recently, which I can’t find so I’m trying to reconstruct from memory, about a church in Virginia. I think it was Pentecostal. Anyway, the teenage niece of the pastor got pregnant and was forced to come and be publicly shamed by the congregation during worship.

I would say that we, as a congregation, do better than that, but we are far from perfect. We may not explicitly shun people, but there are definitely behavioral norms that are subtly reinforced by the way we treat each other. I would guess that most of us have some part of our lives that we can’t be fully open about with our church friends. There are some things that we just don’t talk about.

This is actually one of the most critical challenges facing the American church today. One of the top reasons people give for not attending a church is hypocrisy. Outsiders see all the ways that we fall short of what we claim to believe. They see us shaming outsiders while ignoring the sin among ourselves. We must do better, and we must demonstrate to the world that we can do better about welcoming people who are outside of the church.

Because the central message of Luke 15 is the JOY that comes when what was lost is found. First, a shepherd rejoices, not over the 99 sheep he had but over the ONE sheep that was lost but is found. Next, a woman rejoices, not over the 9 coins she has, but over the ONE coin that she had lost but found. Then the father does what nobody in the crowd would expect. His son was lost to him, and indeed had forsaken him. His son treated him as if he were dead and went away. Yet the father was waiting expectantly for his son to return. While his son was still far off—before he could give his prepared speech acknowledging his sin—the father runs out to meet him with open arms.

In the same way, God waits expectantly for us to repent. God waits for us to turn away from sin and towards God’s love. In God’s realm, there is no shame. It doesn’t matter what we have done. What matters is that we turn towards God. What matters is that we choose to receive and dwell in God’s infinite love.

The Presbyterian Church is part of the Reformed branch of theology that is sometimes summarized with the acronym TULIP. The T stands for “total depravity,” the doctrine that all people are inherently sinful and incapable of doing good on their own. I have real trouble believing that. I see too much good in the world to believe that we are all totally depraved. But I can get on board with the I of TULIP: irresistible grace. This is the belief that God’s grace is so powerful that everyone God chooses to receive it cannot ultimately resist it. Instead, the Elect will be eventually, inevitably drawn to Christ.

In God’s realm, there is no shame. There is no shame in admitting that you made a bad decision and choosing to correct it. There is no shame in being a victim of the brokenness of this world. There is no shame in being on the losing end of capitalist competition. There is no shame in terminating unhealthy relationships. There is no shame in falling short of God’s glory, for we all do. There is no shame, only grace.

We have two tasks, then. One is to believe that indeed there is no shame before God, and to approach God through Christ with our whole selves. All the good, the bad, the beauty, and the ugliness within ourselves. We can bring it all to God and let God’s love flow over and through us.

And then, having been empowered by God’s grace, our task is the reconciliation of the world. This is the task that Jesus gave us in the Great Commission, to bring everyone into God’s family. This is the task that runs through the first Great End of the Church: the proclamation of the Gospel for the salvation of humankind. The core of the Gospel is that the kingdom of God is at hand! And the kingdom of God is a state of being where everyone can flourish, which means that everyone is connected to each other. In the kingdom of God, all guilt has been erased, and so has all shame. In the kingdom of God, we love God by loving our neighbor. God’s realm has not arrived in all its fullness, but we get glimpses of it when we welcome the stranger and comfort the broken-hearted. We get glimpses of it when we allow someone to bring their whole selves into our fellowship. We get glimpses of it when we eat with the tax collectors and sinners of our modern society, just as our Lord did two thousand years ago.

So today and every day, I wish you grace upon grace, washing away not only your guilt but also your shame. I pray that you will be confident to approach God’s throne of grace with your whole self. And I encourage you all, each one of you, and our church collectively, to live out God’s grace by honoring everyone who seeks to join us in God’s realm. Amen.

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As a postscript, I would like to share an alternative to TULIP that I read a few years ago: the beautiful Gospel of WHEAT:

• W – Wounded children
• H – Human solidarity
• E – Exhaustive reconciliation
• A – Absolute grace
• T – Transformative love

Reading this series of blog posts solidified my theology and its ideas run through much of my preaching and writing.

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Sermon for March 2, 2025, Transfiguration Sunday. Based on Luke 9:28-36.

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The Transfiguration scene is full of symbolism. I can’t possibly get through all of it, but I want to touch on a few aspects that would have been fairly obvious to a first-century Jew. When Jesus is transfigured, he is joined by Moses and Elijah, so let’s talk about who they were.

Moses was an Israelite who had to flee Egypt after committing murder. While he was in the wilderness, he was chosen by God to lead his people to freedom. During the Exodus, he had many encounters directly with God. In the passage we read earlier, the encounter that Moses had left his face glowing, so bright that he had to wear a veil. This wasn’t Moses’s glory; it was God’s glory reflected from him. Throughout the forty years wandering in the wilderness, Moses would speak to God and then carry God’s words to the Israelites.

Among other things, God gave Moses instructions on building the tabernacle, also called the tent of meeting. Honestly, if you ever try to read the Bible front to back, this section is extremely tedious and repetitive, saying the same thing over and over in excruciating detail. Ugh. But finally, the instructions have been given and the tent of meeting has been built. It is time for God to sanctify it. Exodus 40:34-35 reads,

³⁴ Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. ³⁵ Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 

The cloud was the glory of the Lord, God’s real, physical, tangible presence. Until Jesus came as the incarnation, the Word made flesh, this cloud of the glory of the Lord was the only way the Israelites experienced God in a tangible way.

So Moses led the Israelites out of bondage, guided them to build the tabernacle, made a covenant with God recorded as the Ten Commandments, and approached the Promised Land of Canaan. But God did not allow him to finish the job. Moses was not allowed to enter Canaan, but instead passed the leadership on to Joshua.

A few hundred years later, the Israelites had split into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom, Israel, was ruled by King Ahab and his queen, Jezebel. They worshipped Baal. Elijah was sent to oppose Ahab, Jezebel, and the prophets of Baal. A great battle is recorded in which God decisively demonstrates that Baal is no god and all of Baal’s prophets are killed. Elijah has to flee for his life to Mount Horeb, which we think is the same place where the Ten Commandments were given. There, Elijah encounters God. Refreshed and renewed, he returns to Israel to continue to oppose the kings who are leading the people astray.

Like Moses, though, Elijah was not able to finish the job. He is known as the greatest of the prophets, but his ministry eventually had to end. As he approached the end of his life, he recruited a successor, Elisha. Elijah did not die, but instead was swept up in a whirlwind. There is a tradition that Elijah will return to herald the Messiah.

So here we have Jesus chatting with Moses and Elijah, who we might think of as representing the Law and the Prophets—which is to say, the entirety of the Hebrew Bible. The three of them together represent the revelation of who God is, from the founding of Israel as a nation through to the opening of the messianic age.

Chapter 9 of Luke is the climax of Jesus’s ministry in Galilee. It largely centers around one question: Who is Jesus? Let me give you a thumbnail sketch of this chapter. First, he gave the twelve apostles authority over demons and disease, and then he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God. Next, we hear that Herod is confused because of John the Baptist, who some believe to be the coming of Elijah, which of course would mean that the messianic age is about to begin. After the apostles return, there is an encounter where Jesus feeds 5000 men.

So Jesus has authority that he can delegate, he was preceded by an Elijah figure, and he has power to feed as well as to heal. So when he asks Peter, “Who do YOU say that I am?” Peter gets it right: “You are the Messiah.”

But what kind of Messiah is he? One that will suffer and die. Well that can’t be right. The Messiah is supposed to begin a new age where the nation of Israel will be re-established. All of the other messianic movements in this era took on a militaristic tone and ended in bloodshed—the blood of the supposed messiah and all of his followers. Jesus says yes, there will be bloodshed, but it will be mine alone, and that will be the start of the new age.

This is all quite confusing to the disciples. Nothing that Jesus says makes sense to them. But to be a good leader, show, don’t tell. Jesus had to show them who he really was so maybe they would understand it.

They go up on the mountain, and Jesus is transfigured before them. He is shining forth like Moses. But Moses was glowing in reflection of God’s glory, while Jesus shone forth his own glory. Jesus had to show his chief disciples that yes, he was a good person, and yes, he was the Messiah, but also, he is so much more than that. Fully human, yet fully divine. Jesus was God. JESUS IS GOD. Amen!

Who is Jesus to you? To some, he was a great teacher. Yes, that’s true. He taught many things throughout his life and ministry, and the Sermon on the Mount is possibly the greatest theological statement in any holy book. To some, he was the sinless one whose death sets us free from sin. Yes, that’s true, too. To some in first-century Judea and Galilee, he was a failure. He didn’t expel the Romans or re-establish the kingdom of Israel. I would say that he wasn’t a failure so much as a fulfillment of God’s plans, which were different from human plans. He didn’t meet the people’s expectations, but that’s a criticism of the people, not of Jesus.

Jesus was all of these things. A moral exemplar and a great leader and organizer. But he was more than that. JESUS WAS GOD. JESUS IS GOD. Jesus of Nazareth was the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, one who came to be in solidarity with all humanity.

And so after he was transfigured to demonstrate his divinity, Jehovah, the first person of the Trinity, appeared. Remember the cloud that filled the tabernacle that Moses built? That same cloud overshadowed Peter, James, and John so that they had a real, tangible encounter with God. And God’s message to them was: Jesus is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to him!

So why was Jesus a great teacher and leader? Because he taught with authority, AS GOD. Now the disciples know the Truth, revealed to them in a vision that will sustain them throughout the long, hard journey to Jerusalem and Gethsemane and Golgotha.

But all good things must come to an end. Peter wanted to stay on the mountain with his beloved rabbi and the two greatest men among his ancestors. Jesus says no, we need to get back to work. The messianic age is upon us—the kingdom of God is at hand—but only if we continue to work towards its fulfillment.

They come back down the mountain and find the other disciples struggling. The disciples were trying to exorcise a demon by their own authority, but Jesus says no—you must cast out demons by God’s authority. We can’t do it on our own. We have to be present as channels for God’s power, but that’s all we are—I am not God, you are not God, none of us are God, but all of us can channel God’s love and power to heal the world.

One of the most important tasks of any leader is succession planning. Someday, each one of us must pass the torch to the next generation. I see this on campus. Good department chairs look at their faculty and identify those who have leadership potential, then guide them into experiences that will enable them to grow into the leaders that the university needs. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but if you don’t try, you’ll definitely fail. Anyway, Moses knew that he would not be able to enter the Promised Land, so he kept Joshua close at hand to learn how to be a good leader for the Israelites. Elijah knew his time was growing short, so he recruited Elisha to carry on his battle against Baal and other evil in the land.

Jesus knew that his time was nearing the end. He had done all he could in Galilee and had to go to the heart of Judaism, the Temple in Jerusalem. He knew that when he did, his ministry would end in bloodshed, crucified as a rebel against all that Rome stood for. But he also knew that if that was the end of his movement, all of his work would be for naught. His kingdom had not yet been established.

So, he declared that Peter would be the Rock on which his church would be built. He taught the other disciples so that they could support Peter. He gave them all the vision that they would need to carry on after he departed this earth.

Empowered by the spirit, that’s exactly what they did. Peter eventually became the bishop of Rome. Most of the disciples were martyred, but not before carrying the message of God’s kingdom to the ends of the earth.

Peter was Jesus’s successor, and by extension, so are we all. We have been commissioned to carry on Jesus’s work. We have been commanded to participate in the flourishing of God’s kingdom, which is the transformation of the world into a place where everyone can thrive. We are empowered by the Holy Spirit, who came at Pentecost to encourage the disciples when they felt abandoned and that the future was bleak. That same Spirit encourages us today when we feel like our own future is bleak.

It’s not. The future is filled with Jesus’s radiant presence, if we only look for it. We see Jesus when we open our hearts to one another, when we do as Jesus did—healing the sick, freeing the prisoner, welcoming the stranger, and overturning the hierarchies of this world that treat some people as less worthy of love and respect.

So like Peter, let us be emboldened and strengthened by the knowledge that Jesus is God. Let us remember that Jesus is the kind of God who heals, who feeds, who casts out demons, who nurtures everyone in need. Let us remember that God is always with us to guide us, and that we have been entrusted with the good news that the world is being transformed into God’s kingdom where everyone is loved and nurtured so that they can flourish and thrive. Amen.

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Preached February 9, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based primarily on Luke 5:1-11, with references to Isaiah 6:1-8.

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The American Society of Plastic Surgeons issued a press release in August 2022 stating that there had been a substantial surge in demand after the pandemic. There were lots of reasons. One was that people had money to spend on luxuries that they hadn’t spent on vacations due to travel restrictions. But to me, this quote points to the primary reason: “We’re seeing ourselves on a computer screen a lot more regularly and are much more aware of our appearance. And for a lot of people, that makes them recognize that they may want to look a little younger or to appear less tired, which has led to an increase in facial and neck procedures as well. I think there’s something that’s happened in terms of the cultural values on aesthetics and wellness in this country that we haven’t seen before. And I think people are recognizing that it’s OK to do something for themselves.”

I don’t know about everyone in our congregation, but I spend a LOT of time in front of a computer. During the pandemic shutdowns, much of that time was spent on Zoom. The harsh light in my basement office and the close-up view from my webcam revealed all of my flaws. Fortunately I’m not vain, except maybe about my beard. But many people had this experience of staring at themselves on the computer and seeing every little flaw. They saw themselves as others see them, and didn’t like it.

Today’s readings have two call stories. First, Isaiah is in the Temple and he saw the Lord sitting on a throne, surrounded by seraphim who called out, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The building shook and filled with smoke, and Isaiah was overcome with awe at God’s mighty presence. The bright light of God’s glory revealed to him all of his flaws. He said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Isaiah realized his own brokenness and that of his community and nation. He realized that they had all fallen far short of God’s glory.

Then we have Simon, who will soon be called Peter. He’s in his fishing boat on a normal day, giving Jesus a ride while he preaches. Jesus tells him to go out to deep water and throw out his nets. Simon basically says, “Sure, whatever, we’re not going to catch anything, but I’ll humor you.” When God’s abundant kingdom breaks through, Simon is overcome. Like Isaiah, he sees all of his sinfulness in the bright light of Jesus’s glory. He suddenly sees himself the way God sees him and knows his every failing. He tries to get Jesus to take his bright light away, to let him go back to his normal life.

The thing is, though, once you have encountered God, everything changes. Isaiah couldn’t go back to his mundane duties, but instead needed to become God’s prophet. Simon couldn’t go back to fishing, but instead was compelled to follow Jesus as his disciple.

God has a way of calling some of the most unlikely people, many of whom protest that they are not worthy. Moses tried one argument after another to get God to leave him alone. Last week, we heard Jeremiah protest that he was only a boy who didn’t know what to say. Isaiah protested that he had unclean lips. Simon, now called Peter, declared himself a sinful man. But God sees us differently. Just like when the LORD sent Samuel to anoint David to be king over Israel, the LORD does not see as mortals see, but looks on the heart. Jesus saw something special in Simon, something that would enable him to transform into the rock on which his church would be built.

Keeping track of the sequence of events in the Gospels is sometimes tricky, but let’s give it a try. In Luke’s Gospel, first, Jesus was baptized, then tempted in the wilderness. When he returns, he proclaims the year of the Jubilee in the synagogue in Nazareth. Next, he heals Simon’s mother-in-law, and then we have this story. So Jesus is already becoming known in the area. He has already begun to preach and he attracted a big enough crowd that he needed to preach from a boat. Jesus and Simon know each other well enough that Simon would let him use his boat to preach from, and Simon also trusts him enough to humor Jesus and take his fishing advice. But at this point, people don’t really know who Jesus is exactly.

Then the abundant kingdom of God breaks through, and Simon sees it: Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is God! And yet Simon is thinking, Me? Why did you choose me? I’m not worthy! I’m just a fisherman! I’m not learnèd like the scribes or Pharisees. I’m an uneducated peasant from a dinky little backwater town. And you know what? I’m not even that great a fisherman. I worked ALL NIGHT and didn’t catch anything, and then this Jesus guy comes along and suddenly I catch all these fish. I AM NOT WORTHY.

Yet Jesus saw something in Simon and pushed on. Somehow, Jesus always calls the right person. Ultimately, Simon said yes. That’s all that Jesus asks of us, that when he calls us, we say yes. Not a half-hearted yes, not a “yes but,” but a 100% YES to whatever he asks us to do. Jesus doesn’t promise an easy path, but he does promise to be with us wherever we go, and to give us the courage and wisdom we need to participate in his transformation of the world.

Simon said yes. He left everything behind—his family, his boat, his business, everything. But he gained something along the way. He became part of something bigger than himself. Indeed, he became part of a movement that would transform the world. He felt compelled to follow Jesus. He didn’t know what the future would hold, but he intuitively knew that as long as he was with Jesus, everything would work out for the best.

This is a classic call story. First comes the theophany: God did something amazing in the world, and Simon had a front-row seat. Next comes the assurance: Fear not, your sins are not disqualifying, you will see God and not perish. Then the commission: Follow me and fish for people. Then finally, the response: Simon left everything behind. Simon was assured, Simon heard the call, and Simon gave a 100% YES.

This is also an excellent model of discipleship for us all. Most of us haven’t had such a dramatic theophany as Isaiah or Simon had, but perhaps we had some experience that made us understand that God is real and present with us. I had an experience like that listening to Rabbi Randy at an interfaith service held during Pride STL ten years ago. I had another experience like that sitting next to Mary on my couch twelve years ago while Rhonda was suffering with her face pain. In both cases, I didn’t hear a specific call or have a dramatic vision, but I did have a very real sense of God’s presence.

Those experiences, and other less tangible experiences of God’s presence mediated by other people in my life, led me to a sense of assurance, a sense that God is with me. Not that “God is on my side,” as some might say, but that God is accompanying me on my walk of faith. An assurance that there is no need to fear what’s coming my way.

Here’s where it gets difficult, though. Without Jesus sitting in the boat with me, or the hem of God’s robe filling the temple while seraphim fly around, I don’t have as much clarity around my calling. I have a sense of it, but I am continually seeking feedback to know that I’m on the path God intends for me. When I feel that I’m going the right way, I become more committed to responding YES.

That’s discipleship. Continually watching and listening for the signs that God gives you so that you know you are on the right path. We can’t force God to speak to us plainly. God’s work and signs are subtle.

An interesting quirk of our brains is that we find what we are looking for. Let me explain. Suppose something important is going on in your life, or there’s some problem you’re trying to solve. The classic example is when you or someone close to you is pregnant. Suddenly, you’ll find that you see pregnant women EVERYWHERE. When your mind is attuned to certain clues, they pop up as if by magic.

So if you are dedicated to seeking God’s guidance, you will find it. We can better attune ourselves to the clues that God is giving us if we are diligent in seeking God’s guidance through prayer. That’s why I have encouraged people to develop spiritual practices, and that’s why I have encouraged people to find prayer partners. By praying individually, we each start to see God’s plans for ourselves. By praying in pairs, or as a congregation, we start to see what God has in store for us all collectively.

Let me be clear: I am not just talking about us as individual church members or collectively as First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Each one of us is called to serve God in particular ways, and we work together in groups that are called together by God to further God’s kingdom. I have a lot on my plate: professor, department chair, lay pastor, treasurer of a nonprofit, volunteer at the Mission, father, husband, friend. Yet I see my work in every role as furthering the same goal: universal human flourishing. That is what I believe is the essence of God’s realm, and that is what I seek in all that I do. The challenge is to discern, in each role and in each situation in life, just what God’s desire is for me. How can I best serve God when I’m confronted with a student, staff, or faculty member who is having some difficulty? How can I best serve God when my nonprofit is in conflict with the city?

Each of you have similar challenges. Each of you fills many roles in your life. The primary criticism of Christians or of the church is hypocrisy: we say that we are seeking God’s will, but when we have to choose between God’s will and our finances, we do what’s best for our finances. We say that God loves everybody, but then we try to decide who is actually worthy of that love. The cure for hypocrisy is to see your whole life as being of one piece: one call, one mission, all dedicated to God’s kingdom.

I’ve been thinking lately about the Theological Declaration of Barmen, the confession that came out of Germany in 1934. Its second point is this: “We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords—areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.” Christ does not call us to serve him on Sunday mornings. Christ does not call us to serve him within the church’s dealings only. Christ calls us to follow him all the days of our lives. There is nothing that we do where Christ says, “Yeah, I understand, it would be unreasonable for me to expect you to follow my guidance in this situation.” Christ doesn’t say, “It’s OK to lie, cheat, and steal in business as long as you tithe your ill-gotten gains.” Christ doesn’t say, “Love your neighbor as yourself, but only the neighbors that you like.” Christ doesn’t say, “Follow the government’s laws, not God’s law of love, so you stay out of trouble.” No, Christ expects our 100% YES. Christ expects us to love and serve only Him. Not our stock portfolio, not our government, only God.

Simon encountered God in the flesh. He realized how inadequate he was, and yet Jesus chose him and assured him of his continual presence, guiding him each step of the way. So Simon gave his whole life to serving God, and in return, he was renamed Peter, the rock on which Christ’s church was built. In the same way, each of us has been chosen, each of us has been assured of God’s continual guiding, comforting, strengthening presence. So give God your YES, give your whole life, all that you have and all that you are, to fostering human flourishing, to reconciling all people, to serving the people that God loves here in Rolla and around the nation and world. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on January 12, 2025, Baptism of the Lord. Based on Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22.

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Many times over the past decade or two, I’ve wished that we knew more about John the Baptist. Here’s what I think we know. John was the son of a priest, and so he could also have been a priest. He chose a prophetic path instead. He spoke truth to power, and in the end, ran afoul of Herod Antipas and was beheaded. But before we get there, we read that he led a major movement in the wilderness centered on baptism and repentance. He explicitly rejected the title of Messiah, saying instead that he was sent to prepare the way for the Messiah to come.

How big was John’s movement? We don’t really know. I’ve been told that if John’s movement survived his death and produced any writings, they have been intentionally lost so that he wouldn’t be seen as overshadowing Jesus’s movement.

Here’s something else we know: Jesus was part of John’s movement, at least peripherally. In verse 21, Luke writes, “Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying….” Jesus was part of the crowd. He came to be part of this radical Jewish community that was exploring a new way to be God’s people.

John had prepared the way for Jesus indeed. He had created a movement full of people who were eagerly anticipating something new. He had reminded them that they had failed to live up to God’s expectations of them and that it was time to turn back towards God.

Into this highly-charged atmosphere comes Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth, which is to say, a nobody from nowhere. He wasn’t a priest, he wasn’t a warrior, he wasn’t from Bethlehem, he wasn’t anything that people expected the Messiah to be. And yet when he immersed himself in John’s community and then immersed himself in the waters of baptism, he was ready to take center stage. The heavens opened and the crowd got a peek behind the curtain that separates us from the True Reality of God’s realm. Something like a dove came as an emissary from God’s realm, anointing Jesus with the Holy Spirit as God declared Him to be God’s beloved Son.

Jesus became a part of John’s community, and then grew his own ministry. Jesus was the inheritor of a tradition that stretched back a thousand years, mediated by a charismatic leader and prophet who helped the people interpret that tradition.

We Presbyterians subscribe to Reformed theology, a movement that started with Calvin. Both Lutheran and Reformed theology hold to sola scriptura, that is, only scripture is the ultimate authority. I have a pretty hard time with that, in part because I know how the Bible we have today evolved over the centuries and in part because I do not read Hebrew or Greek. I think also my difficulty stems from my upbringing in the United Methodist Church. Besides Lutheranism and Reformed theology, another major branch of Protestant theology is Anglican. Instead of sola scriptura, the Anglicans have the three-legged stool: scripture, reason, and tradition. The Wesleyan quadrilateral took this three-legged stool and added experience. Basically, the Wesleyan tradition says that yes, scripture is essential, but God gave us rational minds to learn with and put us in this world to experience God anew each generation.

And also, tradition. If all I had was the Bible, in English but without notes, I would quickly get lost. Add in my reason and experience and I might be able to understand some of it. But tradition is essential to bring it all together. When we read passages like this one, we remember all of the theology that has grown around baptism. What actually happens in baptism? I’m not certain, but the Presbyterian tradition teaches that it is an outward sign of an inward grace. Our tradition also says that it is the sign and seal of our incorporation into Jesus Christ. Reformed tradition understands baptism to be a sign of God’s covenant, linked with the waters of creation, the flood, and the exodus. Without the centuries of great thinkers who have pondered the mysteries of the sacraments, I would have no understanding of the riches of God’s grace as demonstrated through the waters of baptism.

Indeed, most people only learn about the Bible through our traditions. Until fairly recently, most Catholics didn’t read the Bible. Even among those traditions who interpret the Bible literally and believe it to be inerrant, Biblical literacy is pretty poor among modern Christians. And as I’ve said before, the Bible is a thick book that has almost everything in it. Through our traditions, we learn what’s important and what’s not, how to interpret these ancient writings in a modern context, and how to apply the Bible to our lives.

Traditions are the product of a religious community. “Religion” gets a bad rap these days. Many people claim to be “spiritual but not religious,” whatever that might mean. They reject formal religious structures, essentially rejecting tradition, accepting some scripture but not all of it, and elevating reason and experience. Organized religion has done a lot of things that are wrong or even evil, so I understand why some people would reject it. We have collectively done much to lose trust.

Yet let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. Religion has a place in the modern world, just as it did in the ancient world. The root of the word is ligare, which means to bind. It’s the same root as for “ligament.” Religion binds us to one another and to God. I think of it like tomato cages or plant stakes. Religion supports us when we’re weak and guides our growth. Not just religion, but a religious community. The community lifts you up when you’ve fallen, challenges you when you’ve become complacent, and comforts you when you’re hurting. The community enables you to do more than you could on your own, as everyone’s efforts add together. The community enables you to understand more than you could on your own, as everyone’s perspectives enrich the conversation.

Even Jesus needed to be a part of a community. When he was ready to start his ministry, he immersed himself in a religion that connected back many generations, through the exile, through the monarchy, through the exodus, to the time when one man and his family walked with God. He immersed himself in a community that was a part of this great tradition but was reimagining it in a radical way, to rediscover a way to be God’s people and participate in God’s transformation of the world. Jesus was the Word made flesh, the Son of God, the Messiah, and yet he needed a community to support him. Man does not live by bread alone, but bread is a necessity, and it was provided to him by the community he surrounded himself with.

Not only that, but Jesus was a finite human being, just like all of us, so he couldn’t be everywhere at once. Sure, he did some miraculous things, from turning water into wine to feeding the 5000, but he could only work one miracle at a time and preach to one crowd at a time. Twice in the Gospels we read of him sending his disciples out in pairs to help spread the good news throughout Galilee and Judea. At the end of Matthew, he charges his disciples to go even to the ends of the earth, because he couldn’t go himself as a finite human being. Indeed, we would not be Christians today if Jesus didn’t lead a community that carried on his movement.

One of the many things we find in a community is our identity. It’s paradoxical, I know. You would think that because your identity is so core to your individuality, you would find it best through self-reflection and isolation. I used to think that. But in a community, other people bring out aspects of your identity that you never would realize yourself. I’m up here today because Lou Ellen saw something in me that I didn’t see. I bet all of you see yourselves differently because of something you learned through this community.

I also often say that I most readily experience God through other people. God is everywhere, but invisible. As human beings, we can just barely perceive the actor behind the action. It’s easier for me, though, to see God acting through other people.

This need to make the invisible visible is the essence of the sacraments. Through bread and juice, we encounter the body and blood of Christ. Through the waters of baptism, we experience the outflow of God’s grace and our anointing by the Holy Spirit.

At Jesus’s baptism, the invisible was made quite visible. The Holy Spirit descended in bodily form, like a dove. Through this encounter, he knew, and the whole crowd knew, just who he was in God’s realm. Jesus was anointed, designated for his role in God’s mission to transform the world—on earth as it is in heaven. Once his identity was established, Jesus was empowered to embrace his role and proclaim the year of God’s favor.

We too are designated for a special role in God’s transformative work. Today, Steve and Cheryl were designated to serve as a ruling elder and a deacon, respectively. Back in August, I was designated to serve as a commissioned lay pastor. Most of you have been similarly designated for church offices now or in the past. But more than our place in the church’s polity, we all have a part to play in the body of Christ. We are eyes or ears or hands or mouths or feet. All of us have a job to do to transform the world, starting in Rolla. All of us are here today and each Sunday to receive this commission and to be empowered by both the Holy Spirit and this community of believers. We are here to encounter God, through worship and through each other, and then to carry that encounter out into the community.

I want to return briefly to verse 21. Luke wrote, “When Jesus also had been baptized and was praying….” A recurring theme in Luke is the centrality of prayer in Jesus’s life and ministry. Again, if the Son of God, the Word made flesh, needed prayer, how much more do the rest of us! So, who here watched my recorded sermon last week? And don’t lie just to make me feel better. OK, in my sermon last week, I laid out a plan for us to have prayer partners. I want everyone to have at least one and no more than three partners. They need to be from this congregation and not in your family. They shouldn’t be holding the same office as you hold right now, so if you’re on session, don’t pick another installed elder and if you’re a deacon, don’t pick another deacon.

What I want you to do is to get together, in person, once a week. Could be five minutes, could be an hour. You can follow up by email or phone or text, but spend at least a little time together in person. Talk about whatever is true and on your heart, then pray together and pray for one another.

The point of this spiritual exercise is to reveal your identity to yourself and to one another. Who are you in Christ’s body? What is weighing you down? What lifts you up? What are your hopes and fears? How do they define you, or how can you transcend them to live out your truth in Christ?

I don’t expect the heavens to open and the Holy Spirit to descend in bodily form upon you, but if she does, I want to hear about it. What I do expect is that as you talk to each other and pray for each other, you will be progressively more open and more able to hear God’s voice. Perhaps you will encounter God through one another. You will better know where you fit in God’s plan. And then together, we all can live out our calling to be Christ’s body, doing God’s work in the world. Amen.

Merry Christmas! A homily preached at First Presbyterian Church on December 24, 2024. Loosely based on Luke 2 and John 1.

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I recently listened to an audiobook called The Happiness Hypothesis. In it, Jonathan Haidt examines various theories about what produces human happiness.

To set the stage, he explores the nature of our mind. We are only partially in control of our own minds. The analogy he uses is a rider on an elephant. The rider is our conscious mind. It’s our reasoning, our logic, our explicit beliefs, that sort of thing. But the far larger part of our mind is unconscious. It’s the elephant. Sure, the rider can guide the elephant, but it’s not like driving a car. Our subconscious or unconscious mind is the seat of our emotions. It quickly evaluates our experiences and responds far quicker than our conscious mind ever could. We feel emotions, or we make decisions, and then afterwards, we come up with an explanation for why. Basically, the elephant goes where it will, and then the rider decides that’s what they wanted to do anyway.

So in order to be happy, we need to train the elephant. We can guide and nudge it, but we cannot just say to ourselves, “Be happy!” We are not computers to be fixed, but more like a plant that needs the right environment to thrive.

In one section of the book, he talks about the theory that virtues produce happiness. Ancient Greeks talked a lot about virtue. They held that the goal of each citizen is to attain the highest possible virtue, and in so doing, they would serve their community as well as becoming their best self.

Until the modern age, great thinkers realized that there are many virtues that support one another. Starting in the 18^th century, philosophers sought instead to reduce everything to a single principle. Kind of like applying the scientific method. Two schools of thought emerged. One started from the categorical imperative, which basically says that if you wouldn’t want a certain rule to apply universally, then you shouldn’t follow it. The other was utilitarianism, which is the principle that actions should pursue the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

The problem with these two principles is that they are logical and rational. I guess that’s good for philosophers who are trying to write books and articles, but not terribly useful in daily life. I mean, I can’t sit around trying to decide whether each action I take will achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. I usually don’t have enough information to even try. Instead, like everyone else, I make decisions based on my gut instinct, then try to rationalize the decision I’ve already made. No amount of logic can help with those gut instincts.

I believe that the philosophers were right to pursue a single, unifying principle, but they found the wrong ones. They found logical ones that in our analogy would help the rider, but do nothing for the elephant. We need something that can affect us deep down, that can change the way we react to the circumstances around us.

So, what universal principle can we pursue? Some of the ancient virtues are personal, like humility. Some are communal, like justice. Ah, justice—let’s pull on that thread.

True justice is about reconciliation and restoration. Putting a thief in jail does nothing for the person who was robbed. It is only by restoring what was stolen that the thief can re-enter society and be reconciled to their victim.

Reconciliation is about healing relationships. And what is the root of every relationship? LOVE. That is the grand unifying principle. Love of God, love of neighbor, love of self. Love of all things. Love is what guides us towards restoration and reconciliation. Love is what enables us to sacrifice our own well-being for the sake of our family, our friends, our community, or our world. Love empowers us and brings us hope when all seems lost.

In a few minutes, I will read a few verses from the opening of the Gospel of John. He wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Word, or Logos, refers to the divine ordering principle of the universe. And just what is that principle? LOVE. The universe is created from love and for love. We are created to love. Jesus was born this night so many years ago to demonstrate just what it means to love one another, because God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.

So tonight, let us all commit to living a life of LOVE. Let us celebrate love made flesh in the child of Jesus. And let us always remember the essential power of love to conquer evil in ourselves and in our world. Amen.

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 22, 2024, the Fourth Sunday in Advent. Based on Luke 1:39-55.

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The reading this morning starts with Mary getting up and taking a trip. I want to back up a few verses, though, to talk about why she’s doing that. Our reading today is called “the Visitation,” but it was preceded by “the Annunciation.” In the sixth month, Adar, which on our calendar is February or March, the angel Gabriel visits Mary in Nazareth. We read that Mary was a virgin engaged to Joseph. Gabriel says, “Greetings, favored one!” Or, as it reads in an old translation of the Bible, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee!” You might recognize that as the start of the Hail Mary prayer. Anyway, after greeting her, Gabriel tells Mary that she has found favor with God and will conceive a son, Jesus, Son of the Most High and inheritor of the throne of David.

Mary was probably a teenager. Probably not twelve, like some sources say. More like high school age, old enough for her body to handle pregnancy. This proposal from Gabriel must have seemed ridiculous. She would become pregnant? Of course her response is, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Gabriel basically says, God will take care of it.

So here she is, engaged to be married, and an angel asks her to do this ridiculous thing that will totally disrupt her life. She doesn’t know how Joseph will respond. She doesn’t know how her parents will respond. She probably will need to endure a lifetime of people giving a wink and a chuckle when they say she conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit when still a virgin. Or worse, a lifetime of being shunned.

What would you do? How would you respond if Gabriel showed up and offered you the option of throwing away the life you were expecting in exchange for the uncertainty of birthing the Messiah? Well, what Mary did was say, “Sure. Let it be with me according to your word.” What? I couldn’t do that. I bet most people here today wouldn’t be able to do that.

In Catholic circles, Mary is treated as this supreme person, just one step removed from God. She is the theotokos, the God-bearer. One of her titles is Queen of Heaven, with a corresponding feast day. Mary is held up as this impossible standard for women, the perfect mother and yet forever a virgin. Many people pray the rosary every day, which includes praying the Hail Mary fifty times. Mary has appeared in many places around the world, and virtually every Catholic church has a Lady chapel. Catholics take Mary seriously.

In reaction against this glorification, Protestants tend to treat Mary like any other character in the Bible. Sure, she’s important, but probably less important than Peter or Paul. Yeah, yeah, miraculous birth, whatever. She was just a convenient womb to incubate our Lord.

The truth is somewhere in-between. Since Jesus had brothers, I reject the doctrine of perpetual virginity out of hand. But still, Mary was special. She did what almost nobody else would have done: she allowed God to take complete control of her life. As we sang in our cantata last week, “No one but she true homage paid, none was like her for lowlihead.” Mary was willing to endure the snide comments about her supposed virginity, the pain and suffering of childbirth, the burden of raising the Messiah, and the knowledge that messianic movements almost always end the same way: bloodshed. When she presented Jesus at the Temple, Simeon confirmed what she must have already known. He said to her, “A sword will pierce your own soul, too.” She agreed to bear the Son of the Most High knowing that she would have to witness both the glory of his movement and his death at the hands of the Romans.

But she was willing. Why? Because God asked her. She said yes, and then she got to work. She knew that it would be hard. Motherhood is hard under the best circumstances, let alone as an oppressed and impoverished peasant in the rural village of Nazareth. What could she do to help overcome this challenge? Gabriel gave her a hint when he mentioned that she had a cousin who just got pregnant miraculously as well. Putting two and two together, Mary gets up and travels a hundred miles to visit Elizabeth. She went in search of comfort, companionship, wisdom, and mutual support.

So let’s talk a little bit about Elizabeth. We met her earlier in the book of Luke. Her husband, Zechariah, was a priest who was also visited by Gabriel. Zechariah and Elizabeth were “getting on in years” and were childless. Gabriel promised that Elizabeth would conceive a son who would be filled with the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare the way of the Lord. Zechariah didn’t believe him and was punished by being made mute until the birth of his son, John the Baptist. So he was no help.

Elizabeth, though, was a wise, older woman. She was childless so she couldn’t speak to Mary about childbirth, but she was several months pregnant when Mary conceived and could guide her through the morning sickness and whatnot. She could also make sure that Mary knew all of the rituals and traditions surrounding pregnancy and motherhood and help to connect her with the long line of Jewish mothers.

When Zechariah heard the promise of the Lord, he doubted that it could be fulfilled. So when Elizabeth greeted Mary, she was overjoyed that Mary believed in the message from God. Today is the fourth Sunday of Advent, which is the Love candle, but I feel like this lesson should have been last week with the Joy candle. The whole episode of the Visitation is filled with JOY. Elizabeth is joyful, her baby is joyful in her womb, and Mary’s song is joyful.

A prophet is someone who is empowered to speak on behalf of God. The Old Testament prophets speak a lot of wrath. I’ve been reading through the twelve Minor Prophets lately, and geez, there’s some wrathful stuff in there. John the Baptist, as the last of the pre-Christian prophets, preached against the scribes and the Pharisees, calling them, “You brood of vipers! Who taught you to flee from the coming wrath?”

Mary and Elizabeth were prophets, too. Yet their message was not one of wrath, but one of JOY. Elizabeth is filled with the Spirit and speaks a word of hope, a word of love, and a word of joy to Mary. Mary is filled with the Spirit and sings her glorious Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior …” Mary finds herself in a challenging situation, but she rises to the challenge with joy. She goes on to rehearse all the great things that God has done, as a way of reminding herself, and us, that God will do them all again. God has done great things for Mary—and will do great things for us. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly—and will do so again. God has come to the aid of his child Israel—and will do so again and again.

In the time since Christ’s death and resurrection, Christ has come to many people throughout the ages. We hear the most about mystics who had dramatic encounters with God through Christ. People like Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and more recently Thomas Merton. Every mystic who has had a deep encounter with Christ has spoken of Christ’s deep love. They speak of a union of their soul with God and the overwhelming power of God’s love filling them. And they speak of a hope that transcends everything they know in this world. Julian of Norwich is most famous for writing, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Mary and Elizabeth experienced some of this love and joy and hope. They experienced the power of the Holy Spirit filling them and showing them the glorious future that would come, first through John the Baptist and then through Jesus the Messiah. They had what is sometimes called a “mountaintop experience,” a transcendent encounter with the fullness of God.

The thing about mountaintop experiences, though, is that they are not enough on their own. Take Julian of Norwich, for example. She had a mystical encounter when she was thirty years old, and then spent the entire remainder of her life ruminating over it. She wrote a short book that had just the facts of the encounter, and then worked and reworked and expanded on it to create a long text titled Revelations of Divine Love. She voluntarily sealed herself off from normal life so that she could focus on this contemplation. Yet she was not truly isolated. She lived in a cell that was attached to St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, whose members, staff, and clergy cared for her. She was visited by many who were seeking enlightenment, including the mystic Margery Kempe.

In the same way, throughout the Gospel of Luke, we read that Mary “treasured these things in her heart.” She contemplated all of the events of her life that related to her miraculous son. But she remained in community with others who could guide her. She realized that birthing and raising the Son of the Most High was a task too hard for any one person to undertake. She needed a village, a community. We call this koinonia, a communion and fellowship of God’s people united in Christ by the Holy Spirit. Mary needed koinonia, and so do we all. Mystical experiences can profoundly impact your life, but they truly flourish when they are shared with a community of believers. We support one another in both practical and spiritual ways so that we can draw closer to God and more faithfully follow God’s calling to us.

Because remember, Mary had a mystical encounter, but also had a job to do. Gabriel said, Something wonderful is going to happen to you! Mary said, OK, let it be as you say. But she wasn’t just an empty vessel to be filled. She was a living, breathing human being, who gave birth to a living, breathing human being who was totally helpless and totally dependent on her for sustenance, for protection, and for teaching. As Jesus leaned on Mary, so Mary leaned on her extended family and her community. Without Mary, there would be no Jesus, but without Elizabeth, Mary may not have been able to go through with her promise to God through Gabriel.

Mary took a risk. She knew that what Gabriel asked of her was a huge challenge, one that might break her body and her spirit. She stepped out in faith to give her “yes” to God, and then did what it took to make that “yes” a reality.

What is God asking you to do? What risk do you feel called to take? How is Christ asking you to participate in the blossoming of his kingdom? I believe we all have a part to play in Christ’s coming kingdom. Some of us are called to preach or lead in other public ways, while others are called to care for people who are suffering in mind, body, or spirit. Ask yourself, what is God calling you to do, and what support will you need from your community, this church, to do it?

Sometimes I wish an angel would come and announce to me just what God has in store. That hasn’t happened yet. God comes to me in subtle nudges, feelings of comfort and discomfort, and times of joy that transcend happiness. May we all have the awareness and discernment to hear God’s voice speaking quietly through the experiences of our lives, the courage to follow where God is leading us, and a supportive community that enables us to take big risks for God’s glory. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 1, 2024, First Sunday of Advent. Based on Luke 21:25-36.

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Each year, Advent begins with some variation on today’s lesson. We read the same story in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus proclaiming that the Temple will be destroyed and then giving an apocalyptic vision of how it will be. So this is our annual reminder that Christianity was born in the stream of thought called apocalyptic messianic eschatology.

Those are some big words, so let’s break it down. Eschatology relates to the eschaton, which is the end of the age or, more broadly, the end times. Just how will history come to an end? There are lots of possible answers, which are all forms of eschatology. “Apocalyptic” means the same as a “revelation.” It refers to a revealing of the hidden plans of God. It reflects a belief that God knows how the age will end and reveals parts of the plan to chosen individuals. “Messianic” is a particular eschatology that believes an anointed son of David will usher in the new age. Jesus of Nazareth was not the only man who claimed to be the Messiah—which in Greek is the Christ. There were many messianic figures in the century before and the century after Jesus lived, and indeed there have been a couple of messianic figures in later Judaism, most recently Menachem Mendel Schneerson who died in 1994. Jesus was not the only man who claimed to be or was called the Messiah, but he was the only one whose movement survived long after his death.

Jesus lived during a particularly active period of apocalyptic literature. Much of the New Testament shows signs of apocalyptic thought. It’s most obvious in the book of Revelation but also pops up in letters like Jude and Thessalonians. The early Christians were immersed in this stream of thought and recognized that Jesus was the Messiah they had been waiting for.

There were three main eras when apocalyptic prophecy emerged. The first era, often called proto-apocalyptic because it wasn’t fully developed, came during the time period around the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the exile to Babylon. The ancient Israelites believed that God lived in the Temple, so its destruction truly felt like the end of the world, or at least the end of the age. Prophets like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Daniel reassured the people that yes, the destruction of the Temple is bad, but no worries—it will be rebuilt.

They were right; the exile ended, and a new Temple was built. But Israel never attained its former glory. Judah was a province within the Persian empire, and then was governed by Greeks. They had a short period of independence that came to an end when Rome conquered them. Thus began the second major period of apocalyptic literature, a time when it really flourished and developed. From the second century BC through Jesus’s lifetime, several messianic movements grew and flamed out and many apocalyptic books were written. Rome was the evil empire that stood for everything the Jews were against. They could not reconcile Roman rule with divine sovereignty.

Then the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. and the third major era of apocalyptic writing began, much of it ending up in our New Testament. Jews thought they had witnessed the end of the age and were trying to make sense of the new world they were living in. Eventually, some of them, our progenitors, realized that the destruction of the Temple freed God from its confines and that God was now present everywhere, through the body of Christ, which is the Church.

I don’t take any of the apocalyptic writings literally. I’m not a fire and brimstone preacher threatening you all with a lake of fire or anything like that. But I do take it all seriously, and try to understand how it applies to today. Once in a while, I get discouraged and start to wonder if we are in the end times now. I wonder, when historians reflect on the 21^st century, when will they say that World War III began? Will they say it began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel? Will they say it began on February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine? I don’t know. What I do know for sure is that we are going through a great realignment and a great revolution in the world order.

Recently, I listened to a Freakonomics podcast with Fareed Zakaria, a political commentator who was trying to explain what happened in the presidential election and what has been happening around the world. He argued that we are going through a realignment where the two main schools of thought are “open” versus “closed.” The old notions of political right and left are no longer relevant, and are being replaced with different perspectives on how open each nation should be to trade, immigration, technological and cultural change, etc. One of the early examples was Brexit, when the UK decided that they wanted less openness with the rest of Europe. Another podcaster said that really, the story of global politics in 2024 has been one of turning out the incumbents—a vote for change. Among those who are voting for change, some want to reform institutions and some want to “burn it all down,” replace the failing institutions with something better. I can’t say that either “open” or “closed” is the right answer, and I can’t say what needs to change and what needs to remain the same, but I can say that new coalitions are forming and new understandings of how the world works are developing. I expect that the transition will be very painful for many people, for whom this will indeed feel like the end of an age.

But I think that really, these end time prophecies speak to each person, each institution, each community, and each nation, all the time. Every day, the things we thought would last forever are fading away, dying, changing, transforming into something new. A metaphor used elsewhere for the end of one age and the start of the next is “birth pangs.” Something good comes after the turning of the age, but the process sure is painful. Relationships are broken and re-made. People face poverty, violence, sickness, and death. Institutions and nations go through cycles of growth and decline, sometimes ending in collapse before something else is built on their rubble.

This is the reality that Jesus witnessed, and that so many other prophets have witnessed as well. They all saw that the world was on the wrong path, a path that leads to destruction. Maybe soon, maybe later, but eventually. John the Baptist came proclaiming, “Repent! For the kingdom of God has come near!” Repent! Turn from your ways! Turn towards the plan that God has in mind for you and your community. If you choose not to follow God’s plan, you can expect awful results. But if you choose to follow where Christ leads, you may experience those birth pangs from the creation of a new era, but Christ will be with you the whole time, and the destination is worth the journey.

Because in the end, God wins. That is the persistent message of the whole Bible, and especially the apocalyptic literature. Things may look bad now. The wicked may profit while the righteous suffer. Bad things may happen to good people. Organizations who seek to improve the world may be stymied at every turn. But eventually, righteousness and lovingkindness will win. Eventually, God’s justice will prevail and the righteous will be rewarded with God’s eternal presence. And eventually, God’s mercy will prevail and reconcile all things. God will purge the wicked of their wickedness and the sinners of their sinfulness, and God’s love will conquer hatred and anger. Eventually.

We are on a winning team. I know that sometimes you can’t tell. If you read any studies about the state of mainline Protestant churches, it seems like we’re losing badly. The membership of PC(USA) declined by nearly 62% from 1983 when it was formed as a merger of two denominations to 2021. I would guess that it has declined more since then, especially due to the aftermath of the pandemic. That sure feels like losing. But you know what? Jesus didn’t say to his disciples, “Go therefore and build a bunch of church buildings with organs and pews and worship me on Sunday mornings.” He said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Not that what we’re doing here today is wrong, but that it is far from the only way to participate in God’s work in the world.

We are on a winning team. The forces of evil and death are hard at work. They are at work in the Middle East, in Europe, and in places like Myanmar and South Sudan. They are at work everywhere desperate people give in to their worst instincts. They are working through the meth dealers and the fentanyl makers. And yet, God is also hard at work. God is present and empowering the work of the Rolla Mission, GRACE, Russell House, and many other organizations in Rolla. God is at work in a million homes that are filled with love, homes where families were able to reconnect and reconcile this Thanksgiving. Bad news sells more and travels faster than good news, but I know that God is working hard to counteract the forces of evil in the world.

We are on a winning team. We may not have the flashiest worship services, though we do have the best choir director in town. We may not have the newest or fanciest building. We may not have the resources that we once did. But we have something more important and more valuable and more powerful: love. We have God’s love flowing through us and connecting us to each other and the community. We just have to tap into that flow and ride with it to experience God’s transformative work in the world.

We are on a winning team. So act like it! So many churchgoers are functional atheists. They say they believe that God is powerful and can change lives, but then they act like God is irrelevant. They—we—act like we need marketing slogans and advertising and glitz and glamour, when all we need is to let God work through us.

To continue the sports metaphor, you can imagine the church as a football team. Perhaps I’m the quarterback, but I’m not the coach. God is the coach, and God has a game plan that will be successful if we all buy into it. God as the coach speaks to all of us to help us become the best we can be, the best contributors to the plan. God speaks to all of us, if we will only listen and follow.

Today, the first Sunday of Advent, we lit the Hope candle. We have been entrusted with the message of hope that Jesus brought to Judea some 2000 years ago. Jesus said that the Temple would be destroyed, but everything would be OK. He said that people would faint from fear and foreboding, but that we should instead stand tall and raise our heads because our redemption is drawing near. He said that when you see the forces of evil and death seemingly victorious, that’s actually the dark before the dawn of God’s grace.

So keep alert. Don’t worry about tomorrow, but do work for a better tomorrow. Watch for opportunities to share God’s love, ways that you can participate in God’s work, ways that you can be a part of God’s winning team. Listen for God’s coaching as God transforms you into the person God knows you can be. Like the prophets before us, speak truth in a world full of lies, the truth that love will conquer all. And be confident that Christ will walk with you each day, strengthening you, encouraging you, and shining light on the path that you must walk to serve his kingdom. Amen.

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Preached on November 10, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Mark 12:38-44.

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Tomorrow is Veterans Day. As we saw earlier, there are many people in our congregation who are veterans or their close family members. Thank you all for your service.

In the history of our nation, going back to 1775 when the Revolutionary War began, there have been roughly 1.2 million US military fatalities. Nearly half occurred in the Civil War, 620,000. The next largest was World War II, when we lost 405,399. These were people—mostly men—who gave their lives for something bigger than themselves. Sure, some were there voluntarily and some were drafted, but in the end, nobody dies in battle just because someone told them to go. They give their lives for love: love of country, love of an ideal, love of the people left behind that they’re trying to protect, or maybe love of the soldier fighting next to them.

In the 20^th century, wars became more politicized and more criticized by the civilians back home. There are many legitimate criticisms of the policies, objectives, and practices of the US leadership in Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War. But that doesn’t negate the honor of all the men and women who served our country. That doesn’t negate the honor of their self-sacrificial love.

We are all soldiers in Christ’s army. I remember when my church growing up had a “Crusade for Christ.” There are several hymns with that theme, and a whole denomination that calls itself the Salvation Army, whose clergy have military titles. Military imagery abounds in some segments of Christianity. But the thing is, the only weapon that Christ allows is love.

In certain corners of Christianity, people do “sword drills,” in which they search through the Bible for verses. This is based on verses like Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” But listen to what it really says: the word of God is like a sword. Not the Bible. We believe that Jesus Christ was the Word made flesh. It is his love that exposes the hatred that lies in every human heart, and his love that we should emulate. Whenever Jesus cited scripture, it was to expose the hypocrisy of the self-righteous, not to chastise so-called “sinners” who were on the margins of society. More often, instead of citing scripture, Jesus spoke with authority about his vision of a society built on love and mutual service.

Then when Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane, one disciple used a sword, but Jesus chastised him. Jesus could have called down 12 legions of angels, but he chose to go willingly with his captors. His so-called triumphant entry, riding a donkey on Palm Sunday, could have actually been triumphant in worldly terms, destroying the Roman garrison and establishing Christ’s kingdom through force. But that’s not what happened. Jesus chose humility. Jesus chose service. Jesus chose love.

The early Christians followed in his footsteps. They gained a reputation for welcoming everyone, regardless of ethnicity or slave status. They gained a reputation for serving everyone, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Little by little, their love for their neighbors, powered by their love of God, grew the church from a minor sect of a minor religion into a major movement.

Then Constantine converted, the Christian church made a deal with the Roman Empire, and things have been all downhill since then. Throughout history, whenever Christians have chosen the love of power over the power of love, they ended up serving neither God nor neighbor and ended up far from the kingdom of God.

We see that still today. About a year ago, I wrote a column for the Phelps County Focus that went somewhat viral, by Rolla standards, called, “The World’s Most Dangerous Person.” In it, I wrote, “There is no one more dangerous than someone who believes they have exclusive knowledge of the Truth and the duty to impose it on others. If you hold your beliefs with absolute certainty, there is no limit to the evil you can commit in service to them. Each action can be justified by an appeal to the higher good of serving God, no matter how it may hurt other people.”

Too many Christians fall into this trap. They start out with good intentions, but their self-righteousness convinces them that their only choice is to force their beliefs on others. But the only person in all of history who actually did know the Truth, who actually did have the authority to demand obedience, chose instead to lay down his life as a model of the way to God’s kingdom.

As part of my effort to revitalize the church, I received a report from MissionInsite. Altogether, it’s about 60 pages and includes demographic information, both current and projected, and opinion survey data. One section asked people who do not attend church why they don’t. The top reason is that they think it’s boring, old-fashioned, uninteresting, or irrelevant. Then the next several reasons are interrelated. People are disillusioned with religion. People don’t trust organized religion—perhaps related to a general distrust of all institutions. They don’t trust religious leaders. They think religion is too focused on money, and that religious people have strict and inflexible beliefs and are too judgmental in applying them.

These are all attributes that we see Jesus apply to the priests and scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees throughout the Gospels. In today’s passage, Jesus is specifically criticizing the scribes for desiring places of honor and for stealing money from the vulnerable.

I know you’re thinking something like what I think: I’m trustworthy. I’m flexible. I’m not judgmental. But I’m here to tell you: that doesn’t matter. Jim Drewniak used to tell me that it takes ten attaboys to overcome one “oh shoot.” That is, gaining trust is ten times harder, maybe a hundred times harder, than losing it. The reality is that we are a Christian church, and so we inherit all of the positive and negative attitudes that people have towards Christians. PC(USA) hasn’t had a major scandal around child abuse, but there have been a few cases, and regardless, we’re tarred with the same brush as those institutions that have done truly evil things to cover up abuse.

Another thing we’ve seen over the past few decades is an increasing willingness of pastors to stray into the political arena. Now, I know you can all guess how I voted, but I won’t tell you how to vote because as Martin Luther King said, the church is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. Many of my colleagues in churches across the country don’t feel that way. As a result, people outside the church just assume that all pastors are like the ones they see on TV. Or like the ones I’ve seen at city council meetings. The problem is that when you go down that road, the messiness of politics will inevitably force you to choose between your faith and your party. And every time the church chooses power, we always compromise the Gospel.

So even though I trust me, and you trust me, and I trust you, and we all trust one another, what have we done, as an institution, to earn the trust of those outside the church? Why would the average Rolla resident think we are any different from any other church?

And it’s not sufficient to just tell them. I frequently remind the students in my class that I am kind and generous and brilliant and inspiring. Oh, humble, too. I say it all tongue-in-cheek, because I know I’m no more brilliant and inspiring than any other instructor, and although I like to think that I’m kind, they may not see it that way. Anyway, just telling them that I care about their personal and academic success doesn’t matter. I can tell them all sorts of things about myself, but until I show them that I care, none of it matters.

And you know, I sometimes find myself acting like the scribes in this story. I have titles: professor and department chair. Those titles come with a certain level of respect, especially from people raised in certain cultures. If I spend too much time around students from India, I can start thinking that I really do deserve special treatment. But in the end, I have to remind myself that they aren’t respecting me, Jonathan Kimball, but the title, professor and chair. It’s just surface stuff, and in the end, I am no better than anyone else. I am better at a few things than other people are, but worse at many things. In the end, I am just a beloved child of God, like you are, like they are. The only honor that I should seek is the reflection of Christ’s glory.

Speaking of honor, one of the Ten Commandments is to honor your parents. In a patriarchal society, this rule was foundational to maintaining basic order and property rights. Being a parent is a simple act of biology. But parenting a child is hard. Parenting takes many forms. For example, my secretary is a foster parent who has adopted some of the kids that have been placed with her while others just pass through as their biological families get their act together. I overhear her dealing with a lot of really unpleasant things. That’s parenting, even if she is only the temporary mom. More broadly, many of us have people in our lives we might consider to have guided us like a parent would, and many of us have people in our lives that we consider to be our bonus children.

I’d like you to think of this as analogous to our place in God’s kingdom. Being a Christian is easy. All you have to do is say that you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Done. But being Christian, that is, behaving the way Christ commanded, following Christ’s guidance, and emulating Christ’s example, is supremely difficult. Not always enjoyable, either, but rewarding.

Last weekend, I was at a workshop in Wichita, so I missed the presbytery meeting in Iola. I decided to stop and worship at First Presbyterian Church of Iola on my way back—it was a good way to break up the trip and foster a little bit of connection with my larger Presbyterian family. A visitor from the Presbyterian Mission Agency, Rev. Lemuel Garcia-Arroyo, preached on the story in Mark 10 about the rich man who asked, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus reminded him of the Ten Commandments, which he claimed to have kept since his youth. So Jesus loved him and said, “One thing you lack. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

This is Jesus’s recurring command: give up everything you have for the sake of His kingdom. If you want to enter God’s kingdom in the here and now, you must be willing to forego all of the riches and honors of the present age. If you wish to be first, you must instead be last and servant of all.

Which brings us to the widow. While the scribes liked the honors that came with their social status, the widow truly gave her whole self. Widows at that time were on the very margins of society. Usually, they had no means of supporting themselves, no social status, nothing. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures there are instructions to care for the widows and orphans, as stand-ins for all those who are in need. So here’s a person who has almost nothing and yet chooses to give the little she has for the glory of God. Now, the fact that she gave it to a corrupt Temple that would be destroyed a few decades later by the Romans does not negate the value of her gift of self. Giving to the church is a spiritual practice, a way to more nearly approach God’s kingdom by loosening your grip on the possessions that get in your way.

In the same way, we are called to give our whole selves for God’s glory. No matter who you are, you have a gift to offer for the glory of God’s kingdom. You are a beloved child of God, a perfect vessel for God’s love. You may not be able to change the world, but you can change one person’s world.

We have been given a task: to proclaim the good news of God’s coming kingdom of love. We are not called to glorify ourselves or to enjoy riches and honor that lead to pride. We are called to reflect God’s glory, to empty ourselves and give our whole selves as servants of all. Let us go now and be Christian, be Christ-like, in our community, demonstrating the power of love to heal, to reconcile, and to transform. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on October 20, 2024. Based on Hebrews 5:1-10.

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We call Hebrews an epistle, but it’s more of a theological treatise, or perhaps a sermon transcription. You know, one of these Sundays, maybe I should just read a full epistle as my sermon. That’s what they used to do. Anyway, like any good preacher, the author of Hebrews tried to get his point across with illustrations that the readers or hearers could identify with. Eventually today, we’ll get to his core illustration: Christ as high priest. But before that, I want to go back to Genesis.

Abram was called by God to leave Ur of the Chaldeans, in Mesopotamia, and migrate to Canaan. So he moved there with all his family and possessions. Eventually, his nephew Lot separated from him and settled in Sodom. Around that time, there was a battle between five kings on one side, including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, and four kings on the other side, including King Chedorlaomer of Elam. The group that Chedorlaomer led defeated the five kings and carried off many of their people and possessions, including Lot and his household.

When Abram heard what had happened to his nephew, he set out in pursuit of Chedorlaomer and eventually defeated them, rescuing Lot and retrieving many goods that had been taken. When he returned, the king of Sodom came out to thank him

And here’s where things get strange. Up until now, it’s a typical story of battle and conquest, a story like we read throughout the Bible and other ancient literature. Then an enigmatic figure appears: Melchizedek, king of Salem, also comes out to meet Abram. He gives Abram bread and wine and blesses him, in his role as priest of El Elyon, God Most High. In return, Abram gives him a tithe. Then Melchizedek disappears from the narrative, Abram returns everything that had been taken from Sodom and the other kings, and the narrative arc resumes.

Hmm. Who is this Melchizedek, king of Salem? His name means “king of righteousness” or “righteous king.” Other places in the Bible equate Salem to Jerusalem, but a more literal reading equates it to shalom, or peace. So perhaps he wasn’t just some random king from some random city, but a righteous king of peace. He wasn’t involved in the battle. His only role was to bless Abram by El Elyon, and to proclaim that El Elyon delivered Abram’s victory.

At this point in Israel’s history, they were still figuring a few things out. They would eventually realize that the God they knew as Yahweh was the same as the God that others worshipped as El Elyon, God Most High, or as El Shaddai, God Almighty. Or as many other titles that described God’s different characteristics, the different ways that God appeared to people throughout the Near East. But when Abram was blessed by Melchizedek in the name of El Elyon, he intuitively knew that this was a holy thing, that this was something worthy of his respect.

Melchizedek was both king and priest. He was apparently the king of a city, while also serving as a priest of God Most High. This was nearly universal in the ancient Near East. In Israel’s later history, a priestly class would emerge, the Levites and specifically Aaron and his descendants. But in other cultures, and in the time before Aaron was called to serve, the king was responsible for making sure that there was a place to worship and animals to sacrifice. The king was responsible for ensuring that his people stayed in the good graces of their patron god. This remained true outside of Israel until well after Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. So the original readers of Hebrews would be quite familiar with the role that the political leader played in religion.

In the Second Temple period, there was a clear distinction between priestly tasks and political rule. This was necessary in part because the Jews were no longer a distinct nation, but instead were ruled by foreigners who worshipped different gods. Still, there was an expectation that the political leaders would ensure that there was a place to worship and sacrificial animals with which to worship.

Then Christ came along and changed everything. First, he said that instead of worshipping on a particular holy mountain, we would all worship in Spirit and truth. Then, he made the ultimate sacrifice, once for all. In that way, he satisfied the obligations of a priest-king according to the order of Melchizedek. He provided a place to worship—everywhere we have an awareness of God’s presence—and a sacrifice with which to worship—himself.

And so we have a high priest, Jesus Christ, who was chosen by God. He wasn’t a descendant of Aaron so he couldn’t be a regular Jewish high priest, but instead he transcends those rules. Before the priesthood had to be confined to a smaller group that served the nation of Israel, God chose priests from among the people according to God’s own vision of their qualifications. God saw his own son in Jesus and anointed him high priest.

After his death and resurrection, Christ took on an expanded role. Instead of serving a small group of disciples, he took his place in the heavenly realm to serve all of humanity. Instead of ruling a city or a nation or an empire, Christ rules God’s kingdom, an eternal and all-encompassing existence in God’s presence. Christ is a priest-king who ensures that God is worshipped eternally, as so beautifully recounted in the Book of Revelation. He is a righteous king, that is, a ruler who dispenses justice and mercy to all people, who achieves reconciliation of each of us to each other and to God. He is the king of shalom, of peace, of wholeness, of completion, of universal flourishing. His realm is eternal and perfect.

When he ascended, Christ left behind this temporary and imperfect copy of his heavenly realm. He commissioned his followers to rule as he would rule, not to “lord it over” God’s beloved family, but to serve them and to seek their good. Our rule over God’s creation and God’s people is not one of domination, but one of caretaking, of tending and stewarding and protecting. We are to govern as Jesus would if he had continued his ministry, in which he healed the sick, fed the hungry, forgave the sinner, and brought everyone into a right relationship with God and each other.

This world is passing away, and yet God cares deeply for it. God created the universe and declared it good, then created humanity and declared us very good. God did not create a disposable earth or a useless people, but a place and a people who are destined for greatness, for completeness at the end of the age. That’s why we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We pray that this world will become heaven.

And so our task is Abram’s task: to carry God’s blessing to the world. Abram was selected by God for reasons that only God knows. He was told to take his household on a journey, and that in return, the world would be blessed through him. God created Israel as a priestly nation, that is, a whole nation that would serve as a bridge between God and all humanity. At the end of the story of Abraham’s encounters with God, God declares that by Abraham’s offspring “shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.” Abraham’s descendants will be a great nation who bless all humanity through their fidelity to God and by mediating between God and all the nations.

Unfortunately, things did not go according to plan. The one nation of Israel split into two, both of which forsook God and worshipped other gods. Then came the exile, which was a terrible, traumatic event in the life of God’s people. It did have one positive, though: now Jews were dispersed throughout all of the nations and could spread God’s word. In the New Testament, we read about God-fearers, which were Gentiles who nevertheless worshipped as if they were Jews. Still, a barrier remained due to a lack of understanding God’s plan of reconciliation.

So Christ came to convert us all into a priestly nation, one that could indeed take God’s message to all people. We are all priests, each one of us, and all of us together. We are Christ’s body, and so we together fulfill the role of priest. Together, we mediate between humanity and God. Individually, we may be bold to approach God with our own confessions and petitions and with intercessions for others. Together and individually, we are tasked with communicating God’s blessings to all people. That’s why the first Great End of the Church is “The Proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind.” We are to carry God’s message to all of humanity. And in turn, we are to carry all the cares of the world and lay them on the heavenly altar.

And just how do we do that? Prayer. Through Christ, we know that God hears our prayers. We know that Christ sits at the right hand of God to judge humanity, but we also know that the judgment is good news for all. It is wholeness and reconciliation and flourishing. So we don’t need to fear that when we lay the world’s cares before God that the response will be punishment for our great sins. Instead, we can be sure that Christ, who knows what it is to be human, will look on us with mercy and work through us to transform the world into his kingdom.

Eventually, everything will be made right. Eventually, Christ’s work in the world will transform us into holy people who are in right relationships with God and each other. This may take a while, though. In the meantime, the world looks pretty bleak and is in desperate need of God’s grace.

I’ve been listening to the book that Susan mentioned a few weeks ago, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools. Very good book that I highly recommend. One of the core ideas is that prayer is powerful. Prayer can change the world. The author’s first serious experience with prayer came as a youth, leading a Bible study in his middle school. He would walk in prayer around the school and would pray each day for his classmates. His Bible study flourished despite his lack of knowledge or experience. Through prayer, God changes the person who is praying, that’s certain, and also opens up opportunities to change others.

One of the lessons in our Bible study a few weeks ago was “C is for Cornelius.” In that story, Cornelius is a centurion who has a vision and sends for Peter. Meanwhile, Peter has a vision of unclean animals descending from heaven, and eventually realizes that God is teaching him to welcome Gentiles like Cornelius into Christian fellowship. Peter teaches Cornelius and his household is baptized. Now, Christ could have just directly told Cornelius everything about himself. Instead, Christ chose to work through Peter. Christ got the ball rolling and opened both Cornelius and Peter to learning from each other, and then empowered their relationship.

That, to me, is how prayer works. God nudges us and makes some paths easier than others and arranges “coincidences” that aren’t actually random. As a result, we grow into relationships that have the potential to change lives, and through changed lives, to change organizations and communities and nations.

Prayer is powerful. Throughout the New Testament, we are told to pray in Jesus’s name. Christ is our true high priest, who is waiting in the heavenly temple to act on our every prayer of confession, petition, and intercession. Christ is waiting for the opportunity to change us, to empower us to change others, and through us, to carry his blessing to the world.

Sometimes, we look at all of the challenges we face and don’t know where to start. Well, the very first step is prayer. Let us pray that God will open our hearts and our church to those in our community who need God’s blessing in their lives. Let us pray that God will empower us to reach new people, to meet them where they are and to bring them into God’s family. And let us pray all of this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, our righteous king whose realm is eternal peace, wholeness, and flourishing. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on October 13, 2024. Based on Hebrews 4:12-16.

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This summer, I listened to an audiobook called, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, by Rabbi Alan Lew. In it, he describes the Days of Awe, a season of the Jewish year that centers on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Jewish calendar is a little bit strange in that the first day of the first month is in the spring, but the “head of the year” or Rosh Hashanah occurs in the fall, on the first day of the seventh month. This year, it fell on the evening of October 2. This is the first Day of Awe, one of the high holy days. They sound the shofar, or ram’s horn, and there are special services all day long.

Rosh Hashanah also begins the Days of Repentance. The time is always right to do what is right, which is to repent of your sins against God and neighbor. The Days of Repentance, or teshuvah, are the first ten days of the month of Tishrei and are a particularly auspicious time for repentance. In a sense, this ten-day period is like Lent in our tradition or Ramadan in the Muslim tradition. It’s a time when you specifically focus on making yourself right with God in preparation for Yom Kippur.

The tenth of Tishrei is the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, the highest of holy days in both ancient and modern Judaism. In ancient Israel, from the days of the Tabernacle to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., this was the day when the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies. He would make special sacrifices on behalf of the people, and another on behalf of himself. This was also the day when they did the scapegoat ritual. The high priest would present two goats and cast lots. One goat would be sacrificed to the Lord as a purification offering, while the other goat was set aside. Then the high priest would take incense into the Holy of Holies, make more sacrifices, and ultimately make atonement for all the people. He would present the live goat and lay all of the people’s sins on it, then set it free in the wilderness. In this way, the people would be made pure and clean in God’s eyes.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews needed to reimagine Yom Kippur along with the rest of the Temple sacrificial system. In modern Jewish thought, the gates of heaven open on Rosh Hashanah. They stay open while the people repent and seek renewal. There is a special closeness between God and humanity, but then on Yom Kippur, the gates of heaven close again until the next year. So that has become a special day of fasting and worship to set oneself apart for God.

I should point out that this shouldn’t be taken too literally. It’s a bit like saying that the Holy Spirit comes on Pentecost—the Holy Spirit is always present, but we have a special awareness of that presence on Pentecost. Similarly, the gates of heaven are always opening and always closing, and God is always close to us, but Jews celebrate a special awareness of that closeness during the Days of Awe.

It’s really a beautiful vision of God’s relationship with humanity, and I highly recommend the book. But in the nearly two millennia that Jews have been developing that theology and tradition, we have developed a different understanding of atonement centered on Christ.

The author of Hebrews was steeped in both Jewish thought and Platonic philosophy. In Platonism, the things we see on earth are temporary, imperfect versions of what exists in heaven as permanent and perfect. Take this circle for example:

You would say that it is a “perfect” circle, but you would be wrong. If you zoomed way in, you would see that the outline is jagged. The outline of a true circle has zero width, but this one has a width of a couple millimeters. Still, if you look at this circle, you can imagine what a true circle, a perfect circle, would be like.

In the same way, the Jews built first the Tabernacle, then Solomon’s Temple, then the Second Temple as temporary, imperfect replicas of the heavenly temple. If that weren’t their goal, the Torah wouldn’t have page after page of mind-numbing details on how to construct the Tabernacle. These holy structures were imperfect, but they taught the ancient Israelites what the true heavenly temple is like.

Unfortunately, even the imperfect temple was destroyed, so we don’t have it as a reference. But we do know some broad outlines. There is an outer gathering area, and then an inner place where God dwells. And just as the ancient Jewish temples had high priests, we too have a high priest: Christ, who can enter the Holy of Holies in God’s presence any time he likes. Like the tabernacle and temples, the old high priests were temporary and imperfect—they were sinners just like us, and so they could not enter God’s presence without first purifying themselves. But Christ is perfect, and so he need not make any more sacrifices to purify himself. He can enter God’s presence at any time to purify God’s people—us.

The kingdom of heaven has come near! Through Christ, God’s eternal kingdom is always close at hand. So, we need to be continuously working to purify ourselves and prepare ourselves for entering God’s presence. We need to always be working on our repentance.

Again, let me turn to the Jewish practice of the Days of Repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The rabbinic tradition has a lot of variation in it—the joke is that if you ask ten rabbis their opinions, you’ll get eleven answers. But basically, they see repentance as having five main elements: recognition of one’s sins, remorse, desisting from sin, restitution where possible, and confession.

Recognizing your sins is the first and most important step. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, admitting you have a problem is the first step towards resolving it. Recognition is an intellectual realization that leads to remorse, which is a deep emotion that mirrors the hurt that your actions or inaction have caused. Desisting from sin is an action: it is not sufficient to know that you have sinned, you have to stop doing it.

Restitution is an essential part of healing, and is therefore step 8 of AA’s 12 steps. This is where the rubber meets the road. Through Christ, our sins are forgiven—our sins against God. But God cannot forgive on behalf of the person we have wronged.

Imagine that my kids, Sam and Jesse, are fighting and hurt each other, and in the process, they break my TV. As their father, I can forgive them for breaking the TV. As their father, I can forgive Sam for hurting Jesse and Jesse for hurting Sam. What I can’t do is forgive Sam on behalf of Jesse or forgive Jesse on behalf of Sam. They need to do that themselves. They need to apologize to each other and heal their relationship. In the same way, our heavenly Father can forgive any sin we commit against him, and forgive us for hurting one another, but cannot directly heal our relationship and forgive on behalf of the person we have hurt. We have to work towards that reconciliation. Only after we have tried our best to resolve whatever hurt we caused can we truly feel worthy of God’s forgiveness.

A couple of weeks ago, in Sacred Paths, we talked about confession of sins. Sacred Paths is the campus ministry co-sponsored by this church, Christ Episcopal, and CrossRoads. It’s quite an ecumenical group, but strangely, many of the students are or were Catholic. The Roman Catholic Church recognizes seven sacraments, including the sacrament of reconciliation, commonly called confession. In preparation for confession, you are supposed to reflect on what has happened since your last confession, typically using the Ten Commandments as your guide. Then you go in and tell the priest your sins and discuss how you plan to resist temptation and desist from sinning. It is essential that you have a truly contrite heart and truly intend to turn away from sin, and that you make a thorough confession, holding nothing back. Then the priest offers you forgiveness and perhaps penance. The priest cannot himself forgive sins, but is God’s voice. As in that famous poem Melba read at the opening of the service last week, Christ now has no mouth but ours.

There is a real psychological and sociological value in hearing someone say to you, “I hear what you did, and God forgives you.” This is a powerful moment that unfortunately the Reformation purged from our tradition. We instead approach God directly and confess our sins, and trust in what we have been taught about forgiveness and reconciliation through Christ.

We don’t have the same kind of personal, private confession as Catholics, but we do have corporate, public confession. Every week, a critical part of our worship service is centered on confession. First, we hear the call: a reminder that we may be bold to approach the throne of grace and lay down all our sins. Next, we pray together, acknowledging our sins. Finally, we are reminded that through Christ, we are forgiven.

But what sins do we acknowledge? Jeff assembles our liturgy each week and draws a prayer of confession from one of his various resources. There is a chance that he will include something that you personally did, something that you need to confess. It is more likely, however, that most of what you confess in that prayer are sins that you don’t recognize in your own life. So why confess them at all?

Let’s return to the scapegoat ritual. The high priest lays all the sins of all the people on the scapegoat and sets it free in the wilderness. In that way, the people as a whole are reconciled to God and made clean. There is a strong sense in the ritual that we are all bound together. Each of us is tainted by the sinfulness of the community and indeed by the sinfulness of all humanity.

Here’s a part of what we prayed last week: “We confess that we have defaced your creation and poisoned our environment through our consumerist behavior and for personal gain.” OK, one of the great sins of modern commerce is the prevalence of single-use plastics. We are rapidly consuming our reserves of petroleum, and using it for such ridiculous things as putting peeled oranges in small, plastic containers. So, as a spiritual practice, perhaps you take reusable shopping bags to Kroger or Walmart. In fact, in some states, and at Aldi, you are required to take your own bags. But I defy you to enter a grocery store, even Aldi, buy food for the week, and leave without single-use plastics. I don’t think it can be done. Whether you are buying meat, produce, cereal, or dairy products, single-use plastics are unavoidable.

So even though I don’t personally make plastic and I don’t have any choice about using it, I am part of a society that is turning petroleum into disposable junk. This is just one of a thousand ways that we all participate in sinful systems.

And sometimes, the sinful systems persist long after the original sins were committed. For example, there are hardly any women in electrical and computer engineering. Right now, I think 10% of the faculty in my department are female, and about that same percentage of students. Why? Well, there was a time, decades ago, that women were simply not allowed to study electrical or computer engineering. There are no formal restrictions anymore—indeed, there are programs to encourage female participation—but the inequity persists for reasons that have become embedded in our culture. Similar factors result in racial and ethnic inequities.

So each Sunday, we pray for forgiveness for our participation in these sinful systems. We may not personally commit any of the sins in the prayer of confession, but we are part of a society that is built upon a sinful foundation.

We pray and confess our sins to God boldly, knowing that God forgives them. But what about restitution? What about the people who have been harmed by our actions, our inaction, or our participation in a sinful society? Many of the Old Testament prophets tell us what to do. They teach us that God doesn’t care about our sacrifices or our confessions unless we have changed hearts that change our society. As Amos famously said, “Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

We were made in God’s image. At heart, we are pure and good. Yet we are a part of a broken world, a world shaped by the sinful desires and actions of generations past and present. Our calling, then, is to seek reconciliation and healing, to fix what we can. That is the work of a lifetime, of a thousand or a billion lifetimes. It is a task that we can never complete. But that doesn’t absolve us from our responsibility to get started. I cannot eliminate all of the prejudice and bias in the world, but I can help a few people and maybe change a few hearts and minds.

I know that all of you look around the world and see the problems. Inequities in society due to race, gender, class, age, and wealth. Violence in our community, nation, and around the world. Natural devastation amplified by poverty. Environmental calamities caused by human greed and our desire for convenience. On and on it goes. We can’t fix it all. But we can do something.

So my challenge to you all is this: Identify some sin in our society that you can do something about, and get to work. Maybe you’re already doing all that you can, through GRACE or the Russell House or the Mission or Phelps Connections for Seniors or whatever. But maybe there’s something more that God is calling you to do. And maybe there’s something that others in this church are also called to do, working alongside of you. Let’s help each other as we strive to channel the righteousness that flows from heaven and cleanses our world, washing away our individual sins and those of our broken systems. Amen.

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