Category: FPC Rolla

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on the Second Sunday in Lent. Based on Luke 13:31-35.

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Today, we encounter one of the passages that reveals and celebrates the female nature of the divine. In the beginning, God created all people, male and female, in the image of God. So that must mean that God has both male and female aspects. In the Old Testament, there are two clear images of God’s female nature. First, ruach, the Hebrew word used for the Holy Spirit, is feminine. That’s why in The Shack, both the book and the movie, the character who represents the Holy Spirit is named Sarayu and is portrayed as a woman, but one that you can’t really look at directly because the Holy Spirit is always on the move. Second, Wisdom is personified in several places and portrayed as a woman. In Greek, Wisdom’s name is Sophia. Who exactly is Sophia? Well, if Jesus is the Word, the Logos as in the opening of the Gospel of John, then I suppose Jesus is Sophia.

In today’s passage, we see Jesus exhibiting that feminine nature. Although in a male body, he taps into his feminine side and likens himself to a mother hen. I’m going to try to use both male and female pronouns today. Usually, when I talk about God, I just avoid pronouns altogether. The problem with that is that we have been conditioned for centuries to think of God the Father as male, so if I don’t use a pronoun, most people will mentally insert a “he.” But God is both male and female—we are all made in God’s image, regardless of our gender. So we need to get comfortable talking about God as “she” to enable us to see the divine spark in not just men, but also women and people who are nonbinary.

OK, turning now to the text, we see Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. At that time, Jerusalem was the central focus of both the religious and political establishments. In modern America, there is no good equivalent, but perhaps it was something like London in the 17^th century, where both the King of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury resided. Or like Moscow today, where the Kremlin is located and where the seat of the Russian Orthodox Church is located—also called the Moscow Patriarchate. As an aside, I read a compelling argument from Diana Butler Bass that one of the driving factors of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a desire to assert Moscow’s primacy as the seat of Eastern Orthodoxy in the region. Putin is looking to re-establish Moscow as both the political and the cultural center of eastern Europe.

The seats of both religious and political power are stereotypically masculine. Historically, most monarchs have been kings, not queens, and most dictators are certainly men. Returning again to Putin, he really leans into stereotypical masculinity—the shirtless horse rides, his dominance in hockey games and as a judo black belt. The Roman Empire had male emperors and governors and client kings. There were female Judges in ancient Israel, but the monarchy rule was all male. Similarly, until the last half-century, the religious establishment has been exclusively male. In fact, if you read the history of the church—not theology, but about the organization—it’s sometimes hard to remember that you’re reading about spiritual leaders, rather than power-hungry politicians.

Jesus gives us a different image of God, though. Some of his followers wanted Jesus to replace Roman rule with Messianic rule, trading out a brutal dictator for the true Son of God. But what kind of rule would Jesus have imposed if he had chosen to do so? Not another dictatorship, but the gentle care of a hen for her chicks.

We used to raise chickens. Occasionally, one of them would get the urge to nest and would hatch out a brood. Interestingly, the brooding hen would sit on all of the eggs, not just her own. I’ve been told that hens will sit on any egg, even fake ones, because that maternal drive is so strong. Anyway, once they hatch out, the brood hen will protect them and care for them. I’ve also been told that in other nesting situations where each hen needs to sit on her own eggs, once they hatch, one hen will take over and raise all of the chicks.

This is a great vision of church unity. We are all God’s brood. Whether we come to her by being raised in a church or by turning to God later in life, we are recipients of her love and protection. God desires us all to be in her family. Even if we are children of a different religious tradition, God will gather us all in.

Jerusalem was the seat of power, so Jesus’s followers expected him to co-opt that power for his own divine purposes. But that was not Jesus’s way. He proclaimed that the kin-dom of God is at hand, and he proclaimed that in the wilderness near the Jordan, and in Galilee, and in the Gentile Decapolis, and everywhere else he went. In today’s passage, he said he had to leave Jerusalem because he had work to do elsewhere. His message was not just for the establishment, but for everyone. And what was his message? In Luke, everything centers on Jesus’s proclamation of the Jubilee. It was a time when the world’s power structures would be turned upside down. As the great Israeli human-rights activist Uri Avnery is fond of saying, “When you are on the top, you love stability. When you are on the bottom, you want change!” Jesus had to leave Jerusalem to reach those who were on the bottom, those who were far from the seat of power but desperate for change in their lives.

The passage opens with, “At that very hour.” So let’s talk a little bit about the context. In the passages preceding today’s lesson, Jesus was teaching about the kingdom of God using parables. There was also a time when he healed on the sabbath. Then we have this interlude, and then he goes on to do more healing on the sabbath and more teaching about the kingdom of God. Well, Luke doesn’t jump around in the storytelling just for fun or just because he was a bad editor. He situated this story on purpose. So clearly he intended that this story would also tell us something about the kingdom of God or about healing on the sabbath. I think Luke perceived Jesus’s description of the triune God as our divine mother as another parable about God’s kingdom.

What is the kingdom of God like? It’s like being gathered as a hen gathers her chicks. God embraces us all, gathering us into her care and protection. Just like a hen with her chicks, God gently nudges us into safety. Chicks will wander around the coop and get themselves into all sorts of trouble. The brood hen can’t prevent that altogether, but certainly tries to protect the chicks from themselves. She helps them find food and water. She helps them grow into adult chickens. In the same way, God guides us to keep us out of trouble. She helps us find the spiritual food and living water that we need. She helps us fulfill our promise as images of God.

As I was working on this sermon, I kept thinking about mothers and how we describe them. A Google search will find you many, many poems about the love and care that a mother shows. Now, I have been blessed with a wonderful mother, but I recognize that not everyone has. Mothers are human, and so they are subject to all of the same limits and weaknesses as every other human being. We all fail to love as we should, some in subtle ways, others in dramatic ways. Jesus was holding up the ideal mother as an image of God, just as God is our perfect father and our perfect sibling. If you take any of the warm-hearted Mother’s Day poems and put “God” in place of “Mom” or “mother,” you will get an understanding of God’s true nature. God’s love is like a mother’s love—made of deep devotion and of sacrifice and pain, endless and unselfish, patient and forgiving. God, like the perfect mother, tells us all the things we need to hear before we know we need to hear them, and teaches us to be unafraid. God’s love is like moonlight turning harsh things to beauty. God’s motherly love and protection is the example that we should all aspire to.

The brood hen will also protect her chicks from predators. Sometimes the predator is too strong—like Herod, that fox, who ultimately has a role in Jesus’s death. But the hen does her best to protect her chicks. In the same way, God is our perfect mother—nurturing us while also protecting us from the predators of this world. Perhaps like a mother bear. Bears usually won’t attack people, but the most dangerous thing you can do is to get between a mother bear and her cub. Bears won’t go out of their way to pick a fight with a person, but will definitely defend their children. In the same way, Jesus was not a warrior who attacked the establishment, but laid down his life to defend and protect his people.

Throughout this passage, we hear echoes of Holy Week, the time when Jesus would finish his work. He says that he has to leave Jerusalem because that’s where prophets are killed, but he implies that he will return when the time is right. He says that he won’t be seen again in Jerusalem until the time when people say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’ Hosanna! the people shout, as their victorious king enters the city on a donkey. He is indeed coming to triumph over the establishment, but not in the way everyone expected. His entry was triumphant, but humble. His victory was not over the Roman government, but instead over sin and death, achieved by taking them on himself. He will protect all of God’s people as only he can: by sacrificing his own life.

I’ve also been thinking this week about martyrs. We normally associate martyrdom with the great turning points in Christian history. First at our founding—the martyrdoms of Stephen and James that we read about in the book of Acts, the Christians sent out to fight lions, and so forth through the first centuries before Christianity became the Roman state religion. Then the Reformation—Luther was almost martyred but was rescued; other reformers weren’t so lucky. Well, if martyrdom is associated with turning points, we must be in another turning-point age. The 20^th century had more Christian martyrs than the entire previous nineteen centuries. As in the first few centuries, they were killed because they proclaimed God’s supremacy over the political powers of the world. They were killed by autocratic regimes around the world—Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and many lesser states who sought to enforce their rule over all aspects of their citizens’ lives. Christians proclaimed that they were part of God’s eternal kin-dom, and that God held ultimate sway in their lives, not some worldly power or principality. As it is stated so clearly in the Theological Declaration of Barmen, “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.” Or as I read in an article about the topic,

Perhaps the most important witness the new martyrs gave in their heroic fidelity—inexplicable apart from their simple love and trust in God—is the witness to the truth that the politics of power is not all there is. They demonstrated that human beings are not what the totalitarian project said they were: merely machines to be manipulated, for whom faith was an opiate and scientific materialism would be liberation. That human dignity could be preserved by the death of human beings is a paradox of the highest order. It is also, not coincidentally, a paradox at the heart of the Christian religion.

“Martyr” means “witness.” The martyrs of the 20^th century were witnesses to the ultimate truth of God’s reign, first demonstrated by Jesus’s death at the hands of the Roman Empire. Jesus triumphed not as a warrior, but by laying down his life as a sacrifice. Like a hen protecting her chicks from a fox, Jesus did the only thing he could do to conquer all of the evil of this world for all time: he gave himself to save us all.

The Pharisees were Jesus’s sparring partners, but not really his enemies. Like Jesus, they were seeking the best way to follow God. They knew that Jesus was on a path that put him in conflict with the worldly powers. They wanted him to hide, to run away and save himself, to take the easy path. But he knew a better way. He kept working to show his love, God’s motherly love for all her children, knowing that God’s love was the only thing powerful enough to defeat the powers of sin and death. Let us now live into that love, embracing God as our perfect mother as well as our perfect brother and perfect father, and sharing that love with all of God’s children. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on the First Sunday in Lent. Based on Luke 4:1-13.

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Here we are on the first Sunday in Lent. I want to start by sharing a little bit about Lent for those who don’t know, or as reminders for the rest of us. Lent is a time of preparation for the glory of Easter. Just as the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, and Moses fasted for 40 days before receiving the covenant from God in the Ten Commandments, and Jesus fasted for 40 days as we heard in today’s reading, the church decided long ago that every Christian should fast for 40 days in preparation for receiving the gift of Jesus’s resurrection.

If you count back 40 days from Easter, the way you get to Ash Wednesday, when Lent begins, is by skipping Sundays. Theologically, Sunday is called the Lord’s Day, and is a “baby Easter.” Each week, we break our fast and remember that at the end of this time of trial, resurrection and salvation await. I guess also, since we are not Moses or Jesus, 40 consecutive days of fasting would be too much for us, so we get a break each week.

There are lots of ways to observe the Lenten fast. A characteristically Catholic way is to not eat meat on Fridays. That’s why Catholic churches have fish fries on Fridays in Lent. Of course, if you’ve ever been to one, you probably didn’t really feel like you were fasting! Sure, they don’t eat meat, but they eat plenty of other stuff.

Some people approach the Lenten fast as a form of self-improvement, basically as if it were a diet. But we should remember that the goal of Lent is not to improve ourselves, but to turn our lives over to God. We fast in solidarity with Jesus. Fasting is a way of removing obstacles between ourselves and God. We don’t just remove something, like meat or chocolate or whatever, but we also add something in its place, some way of connecting with God. It’s not a time of self-improvement, but of God-improvement.

Right before today’s lesson, Jesus was baptized. In all three Synoptic Gospels, we read that he was led or driven by the Holy Spirit out into the desert. Later on, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” But here, God does exactly that to him. God the Holy Spirit leads God the Son into the desert so that he can be tested. In the same way, church leaders and all spiritual leaders are tested. Jesus was unique in that he was able to resist all of the devil’s temptations. Maybe he included that line in the Lord’s Prayer because he knew how hard it was to resist.

Some of you may know a little bit about what’s going on with Salem Avenue Baptist Church. My elk-hunting friend Wayne used to attend there. In December, their pastor, Patrick, had to resign. I don’t want to get into all of the reasons, but I will say that Wayne was in alignment with Patrick and decided to leave that church. Wayne told me that he immediately felt the devil working on him. See, he was a very active part of that congregation, serving in a capacity similar to our session, leading a Bible study, and so forth. He thought, Gee, now I have my Sunday mornings free. Now I don’t need to do all of that preparation for leading the Bible study. No more meetings.

But wait—that’s not God’s will. God desires us all to participate in God’s work in the world, bringing ourselves and others closer to God. Ultimately, Wayne took up the challenge of gathering others who were disaffected and rallying them around their pastor. They have been meeting regularly on Saturday evenings and are on a path towards forming a new church. Wayne resisted the temptation to turn away from God.

The devil has other ways to work on church leaders. Scandal has wracked every denomination throughout history. Regrettably, there’s an active case in our denomination that I’ve read about, an allegation of emotional abuse. The root of that case and so many others is the substitution of a person’s will for God’s will. Church leaders are tempted to believe that they are acting on behalf of God, so they can do whatever they want. I will admit that I have fallen prey to this temptation as well. As you know, I’ve been preaching here regularly since Lou Ellen left, but really, I have no more spiritual authority than any other elder. Heck, most members of the congregation have been ordained as ruling elders at some point in their lives, so they have just as much right to preach as I do. The only difference is that I’ve done some training and have committed to sharing God’s word in this way. I need to remind myself, and to be reminded, that I am called to preach God’s word, not my word. This is God’s pulpit and God’s church, not mine.

Jesus was tempted, and Jesus actually WAS God. He could have been a warrior Messiah if he had chosen to do so. But he didn’t. He chose a different path. He rejected the devil’s temptations by citing Deuteronomy, which was Moses’s teaching to the Israelites late in life as they were approaching the Promised Land. Let’s look at those three responses. Whenever the New Testament cites the Old Testament, we should read not only the specific verse cited, but also the whole context of that verse.

The first temptation was for Jesus to turn stones to bread. Jesus responded by citing Deuteronomy 8:3, which reads, “God humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Jesus is teaching us that we should take God’s message seriously about how to live in this world. Food is important, yes, but so is reconciliation and community. That’s something I love about The Rolla Mission. Not only do they care for their patrons’ material needs, including food, but also, they care for their patrons’ emotional and spiritual needs. They foster a sense of community, of connection. They strive to help the patrons move from the margins into full membership in our local society. I was reminded recently about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Food and shelter are at the bottom, and are clearly necessary to live, but they are not sufficient for flourishing. As a person’s physiological needs and safety needs are satisfied, they next need love and belonging in order to continue to grow into the person God wants them to be. Jesus reminds us that God’s word helps us to build a community that satisfies those needs for love and belonging.

Next, the devil promised Jesus power and authority over all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worshipping him. Jesus responded by quoting Deuteronomy 10:20, which reads, “You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear.” That section of Moses’s speech addresses idolatry and foreign gods. To the extent that you think of the Lenten fast as self-improvement, you should think of ways to reject the idols in your life. What do you value more than your relationship with God? What has become an idol to you that you need to remove so that you can love God with your whole heart? That section of Deuteronomy also teaches that God is mighty and awesome, executes justice for the widow and orphan, and loves the strangers—so we also should love the stranger. We are called not to rule the world in power, but to share God’s love with the marginalized and neglected.

The final temptation was for Jesus to demonstrate God’s power by flinging himself from the pinnacle of the temple. Here, the devil revealed himself to be an excellent proof-texter. The Bible is a thick book, and you can find a verse in it to support just about any argument, which is what the devil did. Jesus responded to the devil by citing Deuteronomy 6:16: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” Now, there’s a back story there about what it means to love God. The Israelites were wandering in the desert and had no water. They were complaining to Moses and rejecting God. They didn’t trust in God’s providence. At Massah, God provided water from a rock. The message is that if we trust in God and follow God’s commandments, God will take care of us. We do our part and God does God’s part.

So in essence, all three temptations were about loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jesus resisted all of the devil’s temptations by remembering how God had cared for Israel. Jesus was full of the Spirit and empowered to preach the good news that the kin-dom of God is at hand. He returned from his testing in the desert to start his ministry. He taught in the synagogues and then went to his hometown to proclaim his mission statement, the central theme of the Gospel of Luke:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because he has anointed me

        to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

    and recovery of sight to the blind,

        to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18-19

Jesus trusted in God’s message of love and reconciliation. He trusted in God’s providence. He rejected worldly power in favor of equality with all people. Filled with love for his lost sheep, he returned to his community to proclaim the Jubilee. He proclaimed that the kin-dom of God was at hand, and that God’s realm is a place of freedom, of healing, and of divine rest.

There are two halves of the Great Commandment. Later in Jesus’s ministry, he was asked, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The ultimate answer was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. The testing in the desert was centered on the first half. In the same way, we all encounter temptations that lead us away from loving God with our whole being. Instead, we start limiting the parts of our lives in which we let God hold supreme authority. We make compromises in our jobs and our investments, supposing that God’s reign doesn’t extend to the way we make a living. We believe in the myth of redemptive violence, the idea that retribution is more practical than the reconciliation that Jesus preached.

When we limit the dominion of God in our lives, we end up limiting our commitment to the second half of the Great Commandment. We don’t truly believe that God will provide for our every need, so we adopt a scarcity mentality, a zero-sum attitude that emphasizes getting what we can by any means necessary rather than sharing with our neighbors out of our abundance. We read Jesus’s message about welcoming and caring for the stranger, but when we are confronted with an actual needy stranger, we choose our own comfort and safety over the welfare of another of God’s children.

For we are all God’s children. Luke gives Jesus’s genealogy in between his baptism and his temptations. Luke traces Jesus’s lineage all the way back to “the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” We all trace our lineage back to our divine Creator. We are all made in the image of God. So loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength means loving our neighbor as ourselves. In rejecting a person as unworthy of our love, we are rejecting God. As Jesus taught in Matthew 25, whatever we do to “the least of these” we do to Jesus himself.

But boy, is that hard. We are constantly tempted to see God in ourselves but not in others and to elevate our own will above God’s will. Jesus resisted that temptation, but we constantly fall prey to it. As a congregation, a local expression of the one holy catholic church, we are right now wandering in the desert. Like sheep without a shepherd, we will be tempted to stray from the path God has chosen for us. We will be tempted to disengage from spreading the good news of God’s love for all people. We will be tempted to seek our own material wealth or political power. Above all, we will be tempted to believe that God has abandoned us, that we cannot rely on God to provide for us. We will be tempted to substitute our own will and our own desires for God’s desires. We will be tempted to treat this church as if it were a social club instead of a God-centered, worshipping community.

During this Lenten season, let us remember that Jesus too was tempted. He could have stepped away from the path laid out before him, the path that he knew would lead to his death. But he didn’t. He knew that he was the Son of God, who would conquer death and reconcile all people to God, creating a new heavenly nation where everyone belongs. We too are children of God, Jesus’s siblings, bound for glorious citizenship in God’s holy realm. We will be tested, tempted to abandon our calling, tempted to turn away from the path that leads to eternal life. With God’s help, we can resist that temptation and live as people of God today, loving God by loving our neighbors and believing that God loves each one of us and will never abandon us. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Jeremiah 17:5-10 and Luke 6:17-26.

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For a little over two years, I have used a planner called a Monk Manual. The motivating principle behind it is that monks are some of the happiest and most productive people. Steven Lawson, the creator of the Monk Manual, studied the monastic life and developed a way to achieve similar results in secular life. His approach encompasses these ten principles:

• Gratitude
• Simplicity
• Intentionality
• Order
• Generosity
• Relationships
• Reflection
• Presence
• Balance
• Transcendence

The question is, how can we incorporate these in our daily lives? Lawson developed the Monk Manual as a way of integrating spiritual practices that lead to living out these principles. Just last week, I started a program he calls, “Find Your Inner Monk,” which delves deeper into these concepts.

I want to focus on just a few today to set the stage for the rest of our time together. The first is simplicity. Simplicity begins with letting go. Monks express this tangibly by paring down to the essentials—both emotionally and physically—liberating themselves from the things that weigh down their mind, body, and spirit. The vows of poverty and chastity are the tangible expressions of a dedication to simplicity. Much easier said than done. If you start making a list of all the things in your life that you “need,” you will find that it includes many things that were unknown a generation ago. Do I “need” a smartphone? Probably not, but getting rid of it is unimaginable to me.

Next, there are relationships. Monks vow chastity, but do not live without love. Instead, they embrace a different kind of love, the chaste love of brotherhood. In the same way, we can have lives filled with loving relationships. In the Monk Manual, there is a spot for daily gratitude. Most of my entries there are people with whom I have a relationship—sometimes family members, but often friends who enrich my life, or even casual acquaintances who reveal God to me. Hospice nurses cite that the biggest regret of the dying has nothing to do with achievements or financial investments—but has everything to do with relationships. I’m an engineer and an introvert, so for much of my life, I’ve focused on developing a few close relationships. Over the past few years, I’ve tried to broaden my social circle. The pandemic has made that difficult—I think everyone’s social circles have been collapsing just because it is SO HARD to get together. Still, I’ve been striving to stay connected with old friends and develop new friendships.

The last principle I want to discuss is presence. Presence means letting go of the past and the future and being fully in the moment. It means really listening to the person you’re talking to, rather than thinking about what you’re going to say next. We are so used to control that it’s hard to let go, and trust that it really is going to be okay, after all. Engaging with what’s right in front of us, which means giving ourselves fully to the present moment, requires vulnerability—which can be terrifying. But if you’re ever with someone who has real presence—like my friend Ashley Brooks—it’s exhilarating. Their openness and presence are contagious and make you more open and present with them.

Simplicity, relationships, and presence—three ways we let go of our attachments to the material world and surrender to God. This week’s Gospel lesson is the opening part of the Sermon on the Plain, which is Luke’s parallel with Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. As in Matthew, Luke opens the sermon with blessings, but unlike Matthew, Luke includes the woes here as well. We see these pairings: Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Basically, if you’re down, you’ll be lifted up; if you’re up, you’ll be brought low.

The blessings are for those who trust in God. The woes are for those who trust in worldly things. If you are rich and you think you can rely on your wealth, you will be reluctant to trust in God. But as the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. One day, you’ll have no choice but to surrender all that you have. If you release your attachments now, you can break free of the cycle of blessing and woe inherent to our world and you’ll be more able to live in God’s realm now. Jesus’s message that the kingdom of God is at hand reminds us that we can live in God’s kingdom now, not later. But living in God’s kingdom means not living in a worldly kingdom.

Jeremiah has similar curses and blessings. Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals, but blessed are those who trust in the LORD. Then Jeremiah follows up with a reminder that, “The heart is devious above all else.” It’s easy to turn your whole life over to God, or rather to say that you’re turning it over, but hard to really let go. Most often, we say that we will put our trust in God alone, but then don’t follow through. On Sunday, we believe that God will provide, but on Monday, we go to work or check our investments. When I was working with Rocco to design our new house, I started out with the intention of downsizing because our family doesn’t need so many attachments—but by the end of the project, we ended up with a bigger house and more storage space for all the stuff we don’t really need. I’d like to let go and trust in God completely, but it’s a struggle every day.

 It’s important to remember, though, that these blessings and woes are not commands, but rather are descriptions of reality. If you put your trust in your wealth, you’ll worry about every dip in the stock market. If you are attached to your possessions, they wind up owning you. If instead you let go of your possessions and trust in God, there’s nothing you can lose. I’m reminded of Nino—some of you know him from the Mission. He went through some things, including alcohol addiction and prison, but then found Jesus and turned his life around. He posted once on Facebook, “I don’t have much but I have it all.” He has let go of all his material needs and dedicated himself to serving God, and he’s filled with joy. It’s always great when he stops by the Mission. He lifts people up and makes the community better just by his presence, which reflects the glory of God.

Nino has enough. We live in a society where a scarcity mindset prevails. We worry that we won’t have enough time to do everything we “need” to do. We worry that we won’t have enough money to be secure. So we chase after more money, which uses up the time we don’t have. I was listening to a recording by Father Richard Rohr recently, and he pointed out that our homes and kitchens are full of “time-saving devices,” and yet we have less time than ever. The pursuit of abundance leaves us always feeling scarcity. We think, If I just have X, I’ll be happy. I just need a new car, or a new job, or a bigger TV, or a faster computer. Then we get it, and it’s nice at first, but eventually it leaves us unsatisfied. The more we have, the more we want, and the less it satisfies.

So the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. The opposite of the scarcity-abundance trap is enough. Kurt Vonnegut wrote this poem as an obituary:

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!”

Enough. Instead of striving to have what you want, enough-ness is wanting what you have. The root of this enough-ness is relationships.

Father Rohr reminds his audience that many poor people in Third World countries are much happier than relatively well-off people in America. The reason is that instead of relying on things, they rely on each other. They know that if they are in need, their family or their neighbors will help them out. Instead of putting their time and energy into building up a big bank account, they build up a big social account—wealth in the form of social connections. Elsewhere I have heard this called the gift economy. I give something to you, not as a loan against some future gift you’ll give me, but as an investment in our friendship. And maybe you won’t “pay me back,” but in sharing of myself, I help build up a community of belonging where people support each other. God’s realm is built on something even more powerful: the grace economy. We share not only our time and resources, which are limited, but also God’s grace, which is limitless. God’s grace multiplies our efforts and strengthens our relationships.

I mentioned that I started a program called, “Find Your Inner Monk.” It’s described by Monk Manual founder Steve Lawson as a pilgrimage, but a pilgrimage that takes place in your daily life. In the first lesson, he talks about how we form our ideas, values, and goals, and how we answer life’s big questions. Especially in America, we have this image in our minds of the solitary individual deriving answers from first principles and formulating their own vision of how the world works. That image drives the phenomenon of those who say they are spiritual but not religious, instead seeking answers to life’s questions on their own. But Lawson points out that that’s not a reflection of reality. In reality, the influences on our ideologies and beliefs are first our communities of belonging, then the broader culture, and then our personal experiences. That is, our communities of belonging have the strongest influence, and the more we feel belonging, the more permeable we are, the more open we are to the community’s beliefs.

As we let go of our worldly attachments and invest instead in relationships, we build up those communities of belonging. The more I give to this church, in time, talent, and treasure, the more I feel a part of it, and the more it molds me into its image. We should work towards making our church both a place where people feel complete belonging, and a place where we lift up Jesus Christ and his self-sacrificing love as the ideal that we are all striving to achieve.

I’ve noticed something curious about the human psyche. You would think that receiving a gift would make you value the giver more and make you feel more a part of the giver’s community. But that hasn’t been my experience. In reality, it is in giving that we ascribe more value to the receiver, and in giving that we feel more a part of the receiving community. It’s as if the receiver validates our gift, and therefore validates us as a person and as a member of the community. That’s why so many people volunteer at the Mission and at GRACE and at all of the other charitable organizations in town. That’s why a great way to reconcile with someone is not to give them something, but to ask them for a favor, which shows that you value them.

So to build a true community of belonging, we need to value the gifts each person has to offer. If we want to grow in our impact on our community, we don’t need to raise more money for charity, although that won’t hurt and I would still encourage you to give on this Souper Bowl Sunday. We don’t need to be more entertaining, or to have more programs. What we need is to create spaces where people feel valued, where the gifts they have to offer matter. Some people have financial resources they can share; others have musical or artistic talents, or know how to fix things, or know how to organize and plan, or are good with numbers, or whatever. All of us have life experiences that we can share, things we have learned that can help others see God in a new way. All of us have a yearning to love and be loved.

A community where people truly feel belonging, where they can bring their full selves and all their life experiences and skills and talents, has a name: the kingdom of God. I’m not sure how to build such a community, but Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is at hand. It’s nearby, just waiting for us to enter it. Let us all strive to create spaces where people can give of themselves, their whole selves, and receive in return the grace of God and membership in God’s glorious kingdom.

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Sermon based on Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11. Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla.

Well, here we are, first Sunday of February. How are you all doing on your New Year’s resolutions? I didn’t make any resolutions, per se, but did intend to change my morning and evening routines. I have been somewhat successful in changing my evening routine, but my morning routine is another story. My intention was to go running every morning to stay active. Well, New Year’s weekend was bitterly cold and also deer season, so I didn’t get off to a very good start. Since then, I’ve gone running occasionally, but not regularly.

My dear friend Ashley Brooks recommended a book to me, Resisting Happiness by Matthew Kelly. I finally got around to reading it over winter break. One of its motivating concepts is the idea that we resist things that we know will make us happier. I know that I feel better and have a better day when I run in the morning, and I know that I enjoy the run itself, and yet I struggle to convince myself to get dressed and go when it’s 12° outside or when there’s freezing rain, sleet, and snow on the way, or 6” of snow on the ground. In the same way, I know that praying, reading the Bible, and other spiritual practices will bring me closer to God, yet I resist doing them. We all have this resistance inside of us.

There’s one concept in the book that I take issue with. It’s the idea that we can choose or seek “happiness.” So often, seeking happiness becomes a search for hedonistic pleasures. But that kind of happiness is fleeting. What the author is really talking about is the deep joy that comes from our relationship with God and with God’s people.

It’s hard to know, though, what choices we can make to become happier or more joyful. In a podcast about our relationship with time, I heard a concept that can help: Choose enlargement. It’s hard to know which paths will lead to happiness or joy, but it’s often easier to know which path will enlarge you. For example, playing an instrument well requires hours and hours of practice, much of it drudgery. I wouldn’t say that I enjoy playing scales or arpeggios or chord progressions, but I know that those exercises make me more able to make music. The example in the podcast was parenthood: Nobody will claim that getting up in the middle of the night to change a dirty diaper is “fun,” but parents do it because it’s part and parcel of the parenting journey.

In today’s reading, Simon reacts to the miraculous catch by saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” In what way was he sinful? I mean, we never hear that he was a murderer or thief or anything. Partly, I think he recognized his sinfulness in comparison to the perfection of Jesus. But more than that, he recognized his finitude, his limitations. We all fall short of the glory of God because we are limited. We love some people more than others. We acknowledge that people in our community, state, nation, and world are in need, but we don’t help them all. Compared to the Lord of Creation, we are small people of limited capabilities. But if we each choose a path that leads to enlargement, to making us a more complete person, we will become better versions of ourselves.

One way we can enlarge ourselves is to become a part of something bigger than ourselves. Let me explain. As an individual, if I see someone who is homeless, I can give them a little money or food, but that’s about it. But if I connect to The Mission, I can help that homeless person get meals regularly, have a place to stay, and get other services they need. As an individual, I can teach a few people about a few topics in electrical engineering. As a professor at a university, I can contribute to a large number of students becoming fully-qualified electrical engineers. We all have a desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

And that’s basically why we are here today, right? We want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, and what’s bigger than God’s family? In the sanctuary today, there are a few dozen members of Christ’s body, but we are connected to other Presbyterian churches in our presbytery, synod, and general assembly, and more broadly are connected to all expressions of Christ’s teachings. We are all connected throughout time and space. We are connected to the great cloud of witnesses, the communion of saints who enjoy the abundant heavenly banquet. We are connected to poor Simon who just wanted to catch a few fish, but saw God’s realm breaking through and dropped everything to follow Jesus. Simon saw a glimpse of the heavenly banquet that is to come and chose to be a part of it—chose enlargement.

In following Jesus, Simon was promised that he would be a valued part of Jesus’s efforts to build his kingdom. As we heard in the introit, Jesus promised to make Simon worthy. He promised that Simon would do important work fishing for people.

Jesus asked Simon to leave everything he had, everything he thought was important, and abandon his own earthly desires. Simon’s yes had to be followed by a thousand nos. We are finite. We have limited time and resources. We can only be in one place at a time. So, to say yes, I will do this thing for Jesus, means saying no, I will not do these other things for myself or my family or my job. This is a hard calling. I’ve been listening to a recording of lectures by Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar, wisdom teacher, and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation. Father Rohr reminds us that in the affluence of America, it is hard to obey Jesus’s call. We are bound with golden shackles—unwilling to let go of the things that make our life comfortable, for the sake of following Jesus. This is the part of the sermon when I preach to myself—as much as I’m willing to give to God, I’m very happy living in a nice house and driving a nice car and having a nice life. I struggle to turn away from my career as an engineering professor and spend more time and energy on God’s kin-dom.

But Jesus didn’t ask Simon to set aside his true self. I know it’s a metaphor, but Jesus told Simon he would still be fishing, but for people instead. In the same way, Jesus asks us to bring our true selves, our whole selves, to his service. Jesus doesn’t ask me to cease to be an engineer or a scholar, but instead to bring my skills and talents to bear on his Gospel. Each of us have special gifts that we can use in God’s service. We are all grateful for Jeff and Lorie devoting their musical gifts to God. Nora brings her lifetime of teaching children to her stewardship of the Presbyterian Preschool. I’m glad that Ming brings the skills he developed over an illustrious career as an academic leader to his membership on the PNC. In ways too numerous to mention, we each have skills and talents that we have developed over our lives that we can draw upon and dedicate to God’s service, to building up God’s kin-dom.

Here in Rolla, there are surely thousands of people, maybe more than ten thousand, who are not connected to Christ’s body, which is the church. Jesus is drawing all people to himself, reconciling the whole world and seeking an intimate relationship with each person. He calls us to help in this work, to build up connections person-to-person so that we can experience God’s kin-dom here and now. But the challenge is too big. I cannot personally tell ten thousand people about the love God has for them. Even as a congregation, we can’t possibly reach everyone. But that doesn’t excuse us from trying to reach someone. We need to start somewhere.

Let’s start by thinking about who is not here. Who is not worshipping in the sanctuary this morning? Well, for starters, our homebound members and others for whom worshipping remotely is preferable due to their life situations. Today, that group is probably a bit bigger than usual because of the weather. Some of us, particularly the deacons, are called to help those members stay connected to Christ’s body even if we don’t see them in our sanctuary. Looking beyond our members, let’s think about those vast groups of people who aren’t here. There are the younger generations, by which I mean anyone under the age of 50. For a variety of reasons, many of them have heard the message that they are not welcome in God’s kin-dom. Some have been explicitly told that “their kind,” whatever that means, aren’t welcome in a particular church. Or maybe their friends have been excluded, and so they won’t go anywhere their friends aren’t welcome. Or maybe our inward focus, on the worship style, architecture, music, and programs that matter to people like us, implicitly excludes people who are intimidated by our sanctuary, dislike our music, or whatever. By failing to meet them where they are, we send the message that they aren’t welcome, that they don’t matter to us.

Jesus said, Come, follow me, and I’ll teach you. He knew that Simon would be in challenging situations, dealing with people he had nothing in common with or even people he hated, such as tax collectors and Roman soldiers. In the same way, Jesus knows that if we follow him, we will be challenged. We’ll meet people who have very different life experiences from us. We’ll meet people who are made anxious by the very things that bring us comfort and who need comfort that we don’t know how to provide. We’ll meet people dealing with problems we cannot even conceive of.

We are called to bring our whole selves to those encounters. I will never cease to be an engineer or a professor, no matter what happens in my career. I think like an engineer, solve problems like an engineer, and communicate like a professor. I cannot change my past experiences that have formed me into the person I am today, and that’s OK with God. Like removing chaff from wheat, Jesus removes just those things that hold us back from participating in kin-dom building while retaining that core, that nugget of self, deep inside of us. Jesus promises, though, that he will be with us. When we peel back those layers of worldly attachments that separate us from God and each other, we are left exposed and vulnerable. Yet Christ is always with us, protecting our true selves, loving us completely, and enabling us to share his love with our neighbors.

Serenity is what comes when you stop wishing for a different past. Courage is what we need to build a different future. We all, each one of us individually and our congregation as a whole, can have a future filled with God’s glory if we choose it. If we choose to go where God is calling us, we can experience a taste of the abundant life that is to come when God’s realm is complete.

When Simon saw God’s realm breaking through, he immediately responded, “Go away from me, for I am a sinful man.” He realized that, like all of us, he was limited. He was not ready to participate in the full abundance of God’s realm. Jesus said, It’s OK. We don’t have to change the whole world by ourselves. Jesus is the one doing the work, really, and anyway, the world is a big place. All we can do, and all we are asked to do, is to follow Jesus and change the world for one person. And then another. And then another.

I’m not sure what or where my true calling is. I have some idea, but I’m still groping blindly for the next step. What matters is that I’m trying to follow God’s call. It’s OK to be wrong, but it’s not OK to quit trying. I’d like to close now with a prayer written by Thomas Merton that encapsulates what I’m saying, and that I hope will be helpful to you, each one of you, as you strive to follow where Jesus leads you. Let’s pray:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on January 2, 2022, in celebration of Epiphany. Based on Isaiah 60: 1-6, Ephesians 3: 1-12, and Matthew 2: 1-12. YouTube archive:

The story of the three wise men is an old one, maybe a little too familiar to us from being retold every year at Christmas. But let’s try to see it with new eyes.

First, imagine yourself as one of the magi. I’m sure you all know this, but there were not necessarily three magi—there were three gifts, so we assume three people. The magi were priests, probably Zoroastrian, and king-makers. Zoroastrianism is an ancient Persian religion that acknowledges one god, Ahura Mazda. The magi were learned men who studied nature, looking for signs of their god working in the world. They found a sign: a star that indicated the birth of a great king, the king of the Jews. Persians knew about Jews but didn’t know all the details, kind of like the way we know about Islam or Buddhism. But they knew that something important was happening. One of their jobs was to choose a king of their own people, so they decided to honor the newborn king of the Jews. They traveled to the region where Jews lived and sought the leaders who should know what was going on and would be able to help them.

Now imagine yourself as one of the scribes. They were scholars, people who studied the Hebrew scriptures. The Torah, which is the first five books of our Bible, contain the law and the deep history, while the prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi, speak to specific events. The scribes would study these scriptures and try to apply them to their contemporary problems. They knew that Micah had foretold the birth of a great king in Bethlehem, but didn’t know when. They were wrapped up in their scholarly studies and didn’t pay attention to signs in nature. They were ready, though—when someone noticed something, they were ready to interpret it, to give it the right scriptural context.

Herod had yet a different perspective. He was a ruler. He wasn’t a scholar, and probably wasn’t a particularly religious man. He didn’t pay much attention to the details of scripture, but he knew that God’s revealed words to the Israelites were important to his subjects. So he kept the chief priests and scribes handy. He knew a problem when he saw one, and boy did he see one when the magi arrived! A new king—a rival to his throne. Whether or not he believed that the words of Micah were relevant, and whether or not he believed that the magi saw a divine sign, he knew that the Jewish people would believe it. So he used his knowledge of human nature to learn the truth and manipulate its revelation.

Epiphany, which we celebrate today, is a synonym for revelation. We celebrate the day when Jesus was revealed as God’s anointed one, which in Hebrew is the Messiah, or in Greek is the Christ. Magi were king-makers, just like the prophet Samuel was, so like Samuel they went to Bethlehem to find out who God favored. When they found Jesus, they anointed him king of the Jews, a title that would stick with him right up to the day of his death on a cross.

In the nativity narratives of Matthew and Luke, we read that God revealed Jesus’s divine nature in many ways to diverse people. First, angels appeared to Jesus’s parents to tell them how Mary would become pregnant and who their son would be. Then on the night when he was born, angels appeared to shepherds to tell them good news of great joy, that a savior had been born for them. Finally, God’s message of a new king and a new kind of kingdom was revealed to foreign, Gentile priests of a different religion, and only through them to the religious insiders and the ruling class of Judea.

One of my core beliefs is that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the path to wholeness in God’s eternal kin-dom, both here and hereafter. But another of my core beliefs is that I cannot control who receives God’s wisdom or in what form. God chooses. God’s revelations come through the study of scripture, and also through experiences in God’s creation and through our interactions with other people whom God loves, which means everyone. God revealed the Truth to the ancient Hebrew people, but also to people around the world and throughout history. God’s ultimate Truth is unknowable from any one perspective.

There is an old parable from India that you have probably heard: A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: “We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable.” So, they sought it out, and when they found it, they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, “This being is like a thick snake.” For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. Another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant is a wall. Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

We are like one of those blind men. We can know God through Jesus, but Jesus was born a Jew in Roman-occupied Judea and raised in Roman-occupied Galilee two thousand years ago. God’s revelation through the person of Jesus of Nazareth was limited by the ability of the Judeans and Galileans to understand. The magi give us another perspective, but still one that is limited. If we want to truly understand God, we need to be open to wisdom from many sources.

One way to do that is to engage in interfaith dialogue. Our campus ministry, Common Call, is part of the Campus Ministries Association. The main event that CMA sponsors each spring is an interfaith dialogue. We strive to get a variety of Christian perspectives as well as people from a broad range of religions. We are often successful in connecting with Muslims, and sometimes with Hindus or Buddhists or atheists. I have found discussions with non-Christians to be more illuminating and satisfying than, say, arguing with Christian fundamentalists about the literal truth of Genesis 1. We are all striving to be who God wants us to be, and to discern how God is working in our lives, whether we revere Jesus Christ or Allah or Buddha or Vishnu. Now, I don’t believe that all religions are equally valid, but I do believe that God’s revelation can come in many forms to many people.

Last Sunday, the world lost Bishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu was an Anglican bishop who was in the center of the anti-apartheid movement that transformed South Africa. He was a devout and committed Christian. Yet he worked closely with Nelson Mandela, who was at best a tepid Christian, sometimes described as a Christian humanist who drew deeply on the indigenous African concept of Ubuntu. Now, Ubuntu is itself pretty well aligned with Christianity—it is the belief that an authentic individual human being is part of a larger and more significant relational, communal, societal, environmental, and spiritual world. Sounds a lot like the Beloved Community described by the Old Testament prophets like Isaiah and lifted up by Christian leaders like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Tutu also worked closely with The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and the world’s most prominent Buddhist leader. Tibetan Buddhism is more of an atheist philosophy than a religion, in the sense that its adherents do not worship any gods. They instead seek enlightenment, which is essentially the elevation of the self into the godly realm. And yet, the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu worked closely for decades, learning from each other about the path to wholeness and holiness. I highly recommend The Book of Joy, which is the product of an extended interview with these two holy men giving different yet congruent perspectives on how a person can attain joy in their life.

Let’s return to the story of Epiphany. The chief priests and scribes thought that they had the whole Truth, the only revealed message from God. Yet they were unable to see God’s revelation through the stars, which the magi correctly interpreted. Herod didn’t know much about either scripture or heavenly bodies, but he did know people. It took all three perspectives to arrive at the Truth of Jesus’s birth. In the same way, we need a variety of perspectives to understand how God continues to work in the world. We cannot, on our own, completely understand God, because we cannot construct a box big enough to contain God. Any time we think we have fully described God, we have simply projected our own prejudices and misunderstandings onto the divine. Any time we think we know who is in and who is out, who is favored and who is not, we have allowed our limited human knowledge to corrupt God’s expansive message of love for all people.

I have it on good authority that a conservative church in town has preached that we are struggling because we allow women in leadership, including ordained Ministers of Word and Sacrament. Well, here’s a little bit of my story as to why I’m a member of this church. My sister is a United Methodist pastor. When we moved to Rolla, we wanted to find a church where my family felt comfortable, and I had one non-negotiable requirement: They must allow women in the pulpit. That immediately eliminated most of the churches in Rolla. I did a little research and determined that this church was of a denomination that ordains women, so we gave it a try. The rest of my story is how we were welcomed when we got here.

We have a message of inclusion, a message of equality, and a message of hope for our community. I would guess that more than half of the city’s residents are unchurched, and that many of those only know about Christianity from the media. They don’t know about churches that welcome everyone, that elevate women, that allow but do not require their members to vote Republican, that allow members to question authority, and that tolerate a wide range of beliefs about and interpretations of the Bible. I am proud to be a part of such a loving community. I believe that there are people in Rolla who need Jesus in their lives, but who have not been able to see Christ’s light because of the clouds of exclusion, judgmentalism, authoritarianism, and patriarchy that fill the media depiction of Christianity. Honestly, if all Christian churches were like the ones described in the media, I wouldn’t be a Christian either.

Like the magi, we have seen the light of Christ. We have been called to worship him. We have been drawn into God’s kin-dom, God’s family. We have been given a message of hope, love, joy, and peace. We have been released from our bondage to sin and death. This is good news! This is the best news! Like Paul, we have been given insight into a great mystery, the mystery that God’s grace is for the Gentile as well as the Jew. The magi were partially right: Jesus was born king of the Jews, but he was also born king of the Gentiles. He was born lord of all creation. He was the eternal Word of God made flesh. We have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

We are called to shine Christ’s light forth so that all people may be drawn to Him. We do not, and cannot, know the whole Truth of God’s grace. We know only in part. In our humility, we should learn from and not denounce others who have a different understanding of God. But we do have a story to share, a story of love, a story of welcome, a story of membership in God’s eternal family, a story of hope and joy. Let us now seek to discern God’s will revealed throughout the world as we shine forth Christ’s light and draw all people into God’s beloved community. Amen.

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I shared this message at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on Christmas Eve, 2021. Based on the nativity story in Luke 2.

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I want you to think about where you were last year at this time. I don’t actually remember where I was—possibly visiting my in-laws already instead of waiting until Christmas morning. I know where I wasn’t, and where nobody was: here. Last year at this time, our in-person worship was still shut down. We wanted to be able to welcome everyone, but feared that Christmas Eve especially would become a super-spreader event with all of the out-of-town visitors.

On December 11 of last year, the first COVID vaccine was approved. Soon after, a second vaccine, and then a third, were approved. First, they went to people over 65 and those who were otherwise vulnerable, and eventually they rolled out to everyone, now including children over the age of 5 and boosters for adults.

Easter was our first worship back together after all of that. By then, a good fraction of our congregation was vaccinated, so we felt more comfortable worshipping together. We haven’t shut down since. We thought the pandemic was behind us, that we were on the path back to normal life.

This congregation was dealt another blow in June when Pastor Lou Ellen left us. God was calling her to a new ministry. That left us to figure out what God was calling us to do.

Meanwhile, the pandemic has not really ended. First the delta variant swept the nation, and now the omicron variant. It seems we can never escape COVID-19. We can never escape the brokenness of this world, no matter how hard we try. Yet, we should remember that life today, as hard as it is, is wonderful compared to the grinding misery of life under the Roman Empire in first-century Judea.

Think back to the story we have heard. Mary, a teenager, was pregnant and her time to deliver had come. Still, the power of empire forced her and her husband to make an arduous journey of roughly 90 miles, probably on foot, so that the Romans could more efficiently extract wealth from their subjugated people. On Sunday, we will hear that the Holy Family was soon afterwards forced to flee for their lives to Egypt. Life was hard under the Romans.

That night, while Mary and Joseph comforted their newborn son, there were shepherds hard at work. Shepherds sometimes get a bad rap in modern retellings. There are some ancient sources who describe them as lazy, untrustworthy, and unclean. But the best evidence is that at the time and place of Jesus’s birth, the shepherds were respected. They were hard-working, tough men who protected their sheep from predators and bandits.

See, at night, sheep don’t need to be herded to keep them from wandering off. They’re asleep. So why were the shepherds keeping watch? Because a sheep is like money that walks around. They were making sure no bandits came to steal them. They were protecting their sheep from lions and bears, just as David did as a youth. The shepherds were hard men, tough men who risked their lives to protect the helpless sheep under their charge.

That night, God broke through. An angel appeared, and “the glory of the Lord shone around them.” This is just like what happened to Moses, and just like what will happen at Jesus’s Transfiguration. They were tough men, but they were terrified at first. Sure, a lion or a bear might take a sheep or two, but here was God’s army coming. Was the angel there to destroy them all? Had the Day of the Lord arrived, the prophesied day of God’s terrible judgment?

No. The angel tells them not to fear, that a savior has been born for them. Remember that they were suffering under the weight of the Roman Empire just as Mary and Joseph were. They remembered the glorious past of Israel under David and Solomon, and were waiting expectantly for a Messiah who would save God’s people. Like us, they were waiting for deliverance from the evil of the world around them. Their fear turned to joy at God’s presence. God had finally sent a savior for them.

They didn’t know what kind of savior was born that night, though. They didn’t know that their savior was also our savior, someone to bring God’s eternal kingdom to earth. They were living in the Pax Romana, a sort of “peace through strength” where the Roman Empire was so strong that nobody dared challenge their rule, no matter how burdensome or evil. They didn’t imagine that their Messiah, God’s anointed one, would replace the false peace of empire with the shalom of God’s rule in our hearts. Jesus came to establish a new kind of peace. Instead of the peace of a police state in which everybody is equally degraded, Jesus came to establish a kingdom in which everybody is equally uplifted. He came to establish a kingdom of justice, of righteousness, of wholeness, and of harmony.

Tonight, we gather to remember that Jesus came, and comes again this night, to disrupt our lives just as he disrupted those shepherds’ lives. He came not to rule the world, but to rule our hearts. And of his kingdom, there will be no end.

Our congregation, our families, our nation, and our world have challenges ahead of us. But when it seems that all is lost, we can remember that night, two thousand years ago, when God’s glory shone around the shepherds. God broke through with good news of great joy: a savior who came for them. That same savior came for us and dwells among us. I pray that you will all know the hope, love, joy, and peace that our Messiah brings, the wholeness that comes from Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 1:39-56. YouTube archived video:

During Advent, we talk about people other than Jesus who prepared the way for his coming. Last time, I preached about John the Baptist. He was a great prophet, the last of the prophets who heralded the coming of the Messiah. John’s mother, Elizabeth, was an old woman, thought to be barren. The miracle was that even when she was beyond child-bearing age, she was still able to get pregnant. God blessed Elizabeth with a son.

Today, we talk about Mary. Mary was different. She was young—too young. Not even married yet. Maybe 14 years old, little more than a girl. Yet God chose her for the unimaginably important task of bearing our Savior.

In the verses preceding today’s reading, the angel Gabriel comes and visits Mary. His words to her are the source of the first part of the Hail Mary prayer, which then continues with Elizabeth’s words and then some embellishments. I know it’s a Roman Catholic prayer, but Mary is revered in all traditions. Would you pray with me?

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Such a sweet prayer for such a sweet woman. Right? I read this week that the word translated as “hail” might be better translated “rejoice.” The angel Gabriel rejoices at meeting Mary, just as Elizabeth and her unborn son rejoice and bless her.

Full of grace. That phrase evokes a kind, gentle woman, graciously blessing each person she meets. But perhaps we should understand it more as an indication that God has richly blessed her.

And how has God blessed her? God made her a prophet and the mother of the most important man to ever live. Listen to her proclamation to Elizabeth. This is not a hymn of submission and gentleness. “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.” These are not sweet words. This is a prophetic proclamation of God’s power. A few minutes ago, we sang the Canticle of the Turning, which I think is a fantastic setting for the words. It captures the strength and impact of Mary’s song.

Mary was not some shrinking violet, some meek background character in the Gospels. She was in the middle of the action. She was trusted not only to give birth to Jesus, but also to be his first teacher. God saw a strength within her that would be essential throughout those hard years of Jesus’s childhood.

One thing that struck me as I was preparing this week was Mary’s response. In every other angelic encounter I can think of, the person being visited is terrified. That’s why the angel’s first words are always, “Do not fear.” Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, was a priest in the Temple when an angel appeared, and we read, “he was terrified, and fear overwhelmed him.” On Christmas Eve, we will hear about the shepherds—an angel of the Lord appeared, and they were terrified. But not Mary. She was “perplexed.” Gabriel, being not-so-observant, still told her not to fear. He tells her what God is asking of her. Is she afraid? She should be. Being an unmarried woman who gets pregnant will bring shame upon her. If Joseph so desired, he could break off their engagement, and might even be able to have her stoned. Even if they marry, the shame will linger, and being the mother of such an important boy could bring dangerous attention to her—and indeed it does. Still, her response tells us why she was favored. She simply asks how it will work, then says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” My life is about to be torn apart and I will live in constant danger? Sure, sounds good.

She understood what was coming. She was not just the carrier of God’s words like the other prophets, but of THE Word of God. Her hymn of praise makes it clear that she knew who Jesus would be: Son of God, a revolutionary who would change the world. There is a famous, or perhaps infamous, song that is often played or sung this time of year, “Mary, Did You Know.” Here’s the second verse.

Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy will give sight to a blind man?

Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy will calm the storm with His hand?

Did you know that your Baby Boy has walked where angels trod?

When you kiss your little Baby you kissed the face of God?

Oh, Mary, did you know?

Mary Did You Know?

Clearly, the lyricist didn’t read the Magnificat. Because the answer is emphatically, “YES!” She knew. She knew that God was doing great things in her, world-changing things. The name she was told to give her son, Jesus (or actually Yeshua in Hebrew), means, “The Lord has saved.” She knew that God would save her, and all of us, through her son. She knew that the hierarchies of power and wealth would be overturned. She knew that God’s chosen people would be saved and glorified. She knew.

So what did she do? After saying yes, she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth. I’m thinking that Elizabeth must have been a pretty distant relation. They lived pretty far apart. Mary was betrothed to a man from the tribe of Judah and Elizabeth was from the tribe of Levi. But they were close relations in another way: they were bound together by the abundant grace poured out on them both by God. They both experienced the miracle of pregnancy—Elizabeth in her old age, Mary in her virginal youth. So Mary went to Elizabeth, in the first gathering of Jesus’s followers. Why? For confirmation? For courage? Perhaps. Mary had an encounter with the divine, and she thought she knew what God wanted of her, but it was a little like a dream. You wake up and think, Did that really happen? Mary was sure that she was called to serve God, but maybe not quite 100% sure. She had a long road ahead of her and she knew that Elizabeth was on a similar road. They could walk together for a bit and lean on each other. But also, Mary knew that she shared something else with Elizabeth: joy! Joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness is a surface-level emotion. Joy is deeper. Joy is that warm fire within your soul telling you that life is good. Well, maybe it doesn’t look so good right now, and maybe it’s hard to see what’s so good, but God’s light is shining through and telling you that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

This is a critical message to us this Christmas season. Boy, things have been rough for the last little while. The political climate has been increasingly divisive over the past decade, and shows no signs of getting better—indeed, it seems that every news story adds fuel to the fires of tribal politics. A raging pandemic that has taken lives, disrupted our society, and fundamentally re-made our interactions with each other. This year has seen a huge number of natural disasters, from 120-degree heat in Canada to droughts to floods to tornadoes. I could go on, but this is supposed to be a message of joy!

Through all of the chaos of the world, all of the divisiveness and loss, one constant remains: God’s presence. No matter how bleak things look, we can be confident that God is with us. God came among us as a baby one night two millennia ago, because Mary said yes. Jesus is born again each December, as we remember that amazing gift of his presence and his offer to enter our lives, and say yes. God remains among us by the power of the Holy Spirit, flowing in us and through us all.

And just as Mary’s encounter with an angel led her to visit Elizabeth, we gather together here. It’s common these days for people to say that they don’t need a church to follow God, and I would partially agree. God is no more present here than anywhere else. There are people worshipping remotely with us, and God is as present with them as with us here in this sanctuary. I have encountered God on the sea and on a mountaintop.

But mostly, I have encountered God through other people. We gather together to share those experiences we’ve had. Not just so-called “mountaintop” experiences, vivid encounters with the divine, but the subtle ways God works in us and through us. The ways God is revealed each day through the people we meet and interact with. As you know, I volunteer regularly at the Mission. Each time I go in there, whether to volunteer for a shift or just to check in and prepare for a future shift, I can tell that God is working in the lives of the patrons—and also in the lives of the staff and volunteers. We seldom talk about religion there, but you can feel the Holy Spirit guiding each person to be a little better each day. As you also know, I am a professor and so I interact with students on a regular basis. There’s an energy when students are working together to learn or to solve problems. There’s an openness of their minds that reveals their hearts. One of the best moments I had this semester was at a help session where I was going through a derivation, and at the end, the student I was helping had a sudden moment of understanding that transcended my words.

My office is near the Mobil On the Run station, so I frequently walk up there to get a drink. There’s a woman who works there that I’ve developed a bit of a relationship with—not a friendship exactly, but more than just customer and clerk. Enough that she shares some of the struggles her son is going through, or the joy of visiting with her granddaughter who was born in November. Those moments reveal her humanity, and in turn reveal the way God is working in her life and her family’s lives.

We gather as Christ’s body to share these experiences, just as Mary and Elizabeth gathered to share their experiences. This is a place where there is no taboo about discussing God, where we can let down the barriers that so often keep people from truly understanding one another. Our relationships are stronger because God is at the center of them. We are bound together not by something superficial like a shared hobby, but by the deep and abiding love of God.

Life is hard. The pandemic has made easy things harder and hard things almost impossible. It has kept people apart, disrupted relationships, and taken loved ones away from us. Even before COVID, though, for thousands of years, the people of God have struggled. We struggle to do God’s will and follow the path Jesus laid out for us. We struggle to understand the evil and brokenness of the world around us. We suffer pain, and loss, and grief. And yet, we know that one night two thousand years ago, a young woman was called to give of herself, and because she said yes, God came to dwell among us, fully human and yet fully divine. Jesus became the fulcrum of history, the person that changed all of our lives. With Jesus at the center of our lives together, we can know hope, and love, and joy.

Several of you have commended me for the work I do for the church, and I appreciate being noticed. However, the work I do is no more important than what others are doing—it’s just more visible. I stand up here in a pulpit and preach, and my words go out on the Internet to the far corners of the world, because I have been given the ability to understand God’s Word and to preach about it. The job of a preacher is to encounter God in scripture on behalf of the congregation, and to witness to the encounter. But that job is no more important than, for example, the way the deacons witness to God’s grace as they meet behind closed doors with people who are homebound, or sick, or grieving. In fact, their witness can be even more crucial to building God’s kin-dom than my words because those moments they share live in heart space, rather than head space. I can perhaps convince you to think a certain way and maybe even act a certain way, but it is God’s presence and creative power that softens your heart and forms you into the person God desires. It is Jesus walking beside you who guides you through the hard times. It is the Holy Spirit dwelling within you who strengthens you and brings you joy.

We have received a great gift, the love of God expressed through the person of Jesus, born more than two thousand years ago because Mary said yes. Let us respond just as Mary did. God is calling us all to be witnesses of God’s grace. In all that we do, let us share the hope, the love, the joy, and the peace that Jesus brings as he is once again born in us by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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