Category: FPC Rolla

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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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 3:1-6. Podcast linked below. YouTube archive:

Before we talk about John the Baptist, I’d like us to take a whirlwind tour through the history of Israel, as recounted in the Bible. It all started with Abraham. God chose him to be the father of a great nation. His descendants were fruitful and multiplied in Egypt, then God freed them from the pharaoh’s rule and guided them to Canaan. For several generations, the Israelites tried to live up to their end of the covenant, and failed. God established Israel as a kingdom and instituted the Temple under Solomon. Almost immediately, the kingdom split and one half abandoned God. The other half, Judah, swung wildly between obedience and idolatry. Finally, God says, Enough! Judah is conquered and exiled. The great prophets step in, including Ezekiel who says, Do this right, rebuild the Temple, purify yourselves, and worship God properly. For 600 years, the people of Judah tried, with varying degrees of success. We are right now in the midst of Hanukkah, which commemorates the re-dedication of the Temple after the Maccabean revolt. But the Maccabees didn’t last long, and Rome took over.

For most of the time after the end of the exile, there were no prophets, no one to speak on God’s behalf. Malachi, whose words we read this morning, was the last prophet and was active in about 450 BC. For all this time, God’s people were just muddling through, trying to figure out how best to serve God. Some people said that the best way was to be more scrupulous in observing the purity laws, eventually being called Pharisees. Others said that the best way was to be more dedicated to Temple worship, eventually being called Sadducees. There were many other groups, including the Essenes who gathered the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Into this turmoil stepped John the Baptist. Finally, a new prophet! Someone to tell them all what God really wants them to hear. He preached not about the purity laws or Temple worship, but about repentance. He meant that they should follow the basic laws about loving God and neighbor. The examples of his teaching given throughout the Gospels include sharing your wealth and doing your job without cheating or extortion. He preached to observant Jews and to the Gentile occupying soldiers. He said that the kingdom of God was not inherited by Abraham’s descendants, but by those who God favored. And above all, he said that the Day of the Lord was coming, that God was coming.

John was a revolutionary. God’s word did not come to the powerful. Luke situates John in the midst of powerful men: Emperor Tiberius, prefect Pontius Pilate, tetrarchs Herod Antipas, Philip, and Lysanias, and high priests Annas and Caiaphas. These were the men who supposedly controlled the lives of God’s people, the civil and religious authorities. But God’s word came not to one of them, but to John, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.”

John himself could have been a priest. His father, Zechariah, was a priest. At that time, the priesthood was hereditary, for the descendants of Zadok within the tribe of Levi. He could have been a priest, but wasn’t. He walked away from his inheritance and reinvented worship. He proclaimed that the way to God was not through stricter religious observances, whether in daily life or in the Temple. Instead, the way to God was through a changed heart. Repent, he said. Turn towards God. Orient yourself towards God’s love. Do what is right in God’s eyes—share your wealth, do your job honestly. He didn’t go to the Temple, but to the wilderness, to the River Jordan. He knew that we can encounter God anywhere, but especially in those places where we are not distracted by the temptations of the world.

That’s a valuable message to everyone, but especially young people. As you probably know, I’m an advisor to Common Call Campus Ministry, which is co-sponsored with Christ Episcopal Church. The goal of campus ministry is to enable young people to transition from an inherited faith to a personal faith. Most people of college age have some awareness of spirituality or religion. Maybe they have attended church with their family, or maybe not. At a college like ours, they are often away from home and independent for the first time. They are free to grow in their received faith, or in some other faith, or to walk away from God. Our goal as a campus ministry is to help them find their own path. That means engaging with the issues that are meaningful to them in a way that enables them to see God at work in their lives, and to help them find the right language to express their beliefs, and the right practices to continue their growth.

Each new generation faces new challenges and has new formative experiences. I think that the most impactful events happen when you’re between the ages of 10 and 30. That’s when you go through adolescence, become an adult, maybe go to college, maybe start a family. Whatever dominates public discourse at that age affects the way you perceive the world for the rest of your life.

How many of you were in that age range in 1962 and 1963? Think back on that time. 1962 had the Cuban missile crisis and 1963 had John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Now let’s fast-forward to 1974 and 1975. Think a minute. There was Watergate, and then the fall of Saigon. What about 1989? The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. 2001—9/11.

Each of us have different memories that affect what matters to us. I still think of Russia instead as the Soviet Union, the enemy that was defeated when I was in high school, even though it was more than thirty years ago. At the same time, I know the story of the Vietnam War, but I have no visceral reaction to it. Why? I was only two years old when it ended.

Most of you probably remember 9/11 vividly. I do, and Rhonda does, but Sam doesn’t. Rhonda was stranded in Dallas with Sam, but he was only 15 months old. Jesse wasn’t even born yet. Their generation has little to no visceral reaction to Islamic terrorists.

What events do impact their psyche? Sandy Hook. Parkland. Las Vegas. The shooting at a Michigan high school just this week, yet another incident that strengthens the low-grade anxiety that is part of their lives. Unite the Right. January 6, 2021. They don’t fear al-Qaeda or ISIS. They fear groups like the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters.

As a set of institutions, mainline Christianity has been essentially silent for these recent events and more, or at least not a major part of the public conversation. We have failed to live up to our prophetic calling, to speak to the problems of the day, to see God in all things and exhibit God’s kingdom to the world, to prepare the way for Jesus to enter into people’s hearts and lives. I challenge you to have this conversation with a stranger sometime. First, ask them what Christians think about current events, that is, where they think “Christians,” generically, stand on a given topic. You will probably be amazed at how far removed it is from what you personally believe. Then, ask them what they know about Presbyterians in general or our church in particular. If they are under the age of 40, I bet they know us for our preschool or they’ve been in our sanctuary for a concert, but they have NO IDEA where we stand on the Black Lives Matter movement, or gay rights, or white nationalism. For that matter, I’m not sure that we know ourselves.

Last week, Bob said that the problem of mainline Christianity is a lack of discipleship, and instead too much focus on social issues. My immediate response was to think he was dead wrong. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. What is discipleship? Is it spending time in prayer or studying the Bible? Is it sharing our faith with others? Yes, but that’s not all. Discipleship is about connecting God’s Word, Jesus’s message of love and reconciliation, to the world. To do so, you have to know what’s going on in the world and be relevant to the people you meet. If a young person says to you, “I don’t dream of labor,” do you know what they mean? Do you understand how it connects to Jesus’s parables or the instructions given to the Israelites during the Exodus? If not, how can you meaningfully, and without judgment, tell that young person about God’s message to them?

Preparing the way for Jesus to come means being confident in your understanding of Jesus’s teaching and how it connects to the world so that when something happens, you instinctively know how to respond. This congregation didn’t respond in any tangible way to the Black Lives Matter movement. If we had already had serious conversations about systemic racism and police relationships with our community, we would have been prepared. Maybe we would have engaged, maybe not. Maybe we would have been a moderating voice, steering between the “All Lives Matter” crowd and the “Defund the Police” crowd and perhaps building a bridge between them. But as it was, we said nothing because we had nothing to say. The message to young people in our community was that we don’t care.

That moment is past now. What’s next? What other issues are simmering below the surface that we need to engage with NOW, so that we are ready when they blow up? Or what issues have passed us by and become a part of the fabric of life, so that if we don’t know where we stand, if we are not educated about the changing language and cultural landscape, we are simply becoming increasingly irrelevant?

You might be thinking, Yes, but if we talk about political issues, or social issues, or other things going on in the world, won’t that divide us? Well, if you pay attention to the news, you’ll notice that America is divided already. Our calling is to build God’s kingdom so that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” If we cannot talk to people that we love and respect, people who are part of our local church family, about things that matter, how can we possibly talk to strangers about them? As a congregation, we have been through some things together and have forged deep, loving bonds. Even if we disagree with each other, we know that we all are seeking God’s will. We can rely on the strength of those relationships to see where God is moving in the world outside our doors.

Life is usually not very easy for prophets. Jeremiah was thrown in a cistern. John’s reward was his head on a platter. Jesus’s reward was crucifixion. But you know what? They mattered. They spoke to God’s people at critical times and told them where God stood on the topics of the day. First century Judea was suffering under the weight of the Roman Empire, and political revolution was in the air. People were looking for a strong military leader like the Maccabees who would throw off the Roman yoke. John the Baptist wasn’t that leader. Instead, John’s message was, Repent! Get ready! God is coming! Start loving one another, right now! Live into God’s kingdom so that you’ll be ready when the Messiah comes! Jesus’s message was, The kingdom of God is here! It’s not just for Jews, but also for Samaritans and Gentiles. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or who you are. What matters is that you turn towards God NOW. Don’t worry about the Romans. Worry about loving God and loving your neighbor, and by the way, here’s what I mean and how to do it.

I have good news for you all: Jesus’s message is still fresh and new. Maybe we have missed some opportunities. Maybe we have fallen short of our calling. But that’s true of everyone, always. The past doesn’t matter as much as how we respond today. John is still calling us to repent and prepare for the coming of the Messiah. The kingdom of God is still near, already here but not yet in full glory. There is still time to turn our hearts towards God.

Advent is a special time. It’s not just a time to decorate and buy gifts and have parties. It’s also a time to remind ourselves that Jesus is coming. It’s a time to start over, to re-dedicate ourselves to following God, to living into God’s kingdom, to turning away from our past sins of omission as well as our sins of commission. A time to let Jesus be born anew in our hearts.

We have been given a great gift. We are about to celebrate a holy feast, which connects us to Christians throughout the world and through all time. We have been made a part of Christ’s body. We have been shown God’s love in the greatest way possible, through the sacrificial love of God himself. John prepared the way for Jesus in ancient Judea. Let us now prepare ourselves so that we can prepare the way for Jesus in modern America, right here in Rolla, to change hearts and lives and to build God’s kingdom today. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Hebrews 10:11-25. Podcast linked below. YouTube archive:

It’s been a few weeks, so I want to once again remind you about the nature and context of Hebrews. It’s essentially a sermon transcript. In medieval times, it was used to support anti-Semitism and supersessionism, that is, the idea that Christianity had superseded Judaism. But that’s an anachronistic reading of it, since at the time of its authorship, Christianity did not exist apart from Judaism. Rather, Hebrews could perhaps be read as anti-religious. That makes it particularly relevant for today’s prevailing trend of people being “spiritual but not religious.” The anonymous author of Hebrews would probably describe himself as Spirit-led and freed from the religious obligations of his predecessors.

In the first few centuries after Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, various thought leaders now called “church fathers” helped to interpret Jesus’s teachings, and indeed his very essence, to create Christianity as we know it today. Many of these church fathers, including Clement, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Athanasius, believed in universal salvation through Christ. Richard Murray has written extensively on this patristic universalism, distinguished from other forms of universalism because it is based on the beliefs and writings of these early theologians. He wrote:

Simply put, Patristic Universalism believes Jesus will win all people back, come Hell or high-water. God, through Jesus Christ, will ultimately rescue and convince ALL to receive their rebirth, even if it is after (in some cases) much “gnashing of teeth,” prolonged emotional anguish, and stubborn mental resistance. Many will hold out for extended periods of time, but all will eventually see that against an irresistibly virtuous God there is no eternal defense. As the lies are burned away, every soul will come to itself and behold this champion truth– Jesus Christ is God’s rescuing love.

For the first few centuries, this belief was commonplace among both church leaders and Christians broadly. However, there was also a recognition that the sins of the present age must be rectified. The Roman Catholic Church developed the principle of indulgences, which are, in the words of their catechism, “a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and all of the saints.” In essence, eternal guilt has been forgiven, but some action must be taken to rectify guilt in the present age.

I’m on board with that concept in principle. However, as time went by, greed and corruption took over the doctrine of indulgences. Unscrupulous “pardoners” used the sale of indulgences to fund projects like cathedrals. They quantified the indulgences in terms of how many years of purgatory they would buy out. Most of us know that Luther strongly opposed the sale of indulgences, but in 1392, more than a century before the Reformation, Pope Boniface IX wrote a condemnation of the practice of obtaining money from the simple-minded faithful by promising them perpetual happiness in this world and eternal glory in the next.

Into this fray stepped John Calvin. He developed a theological principal that was later called “total depravity.” Basically, he taught that our original sin permeates every aspect of our selves. Calvin’s theological descendants, such as the Puritans, used this principle to guilt and shame church members.

I think I’m old enough now that I’m allowed to be a cynic. Agreed? Well, we have on the one hand a theology that teaches universal salvation and God’s eternal, unconditional love, and on the other hand a theology that teaches us that we have guilt that cannot be removed but must be addressed “day after day.” Which one is more lucrative? Which one gives the church power over people’s lives? I think that explains why the main teaching of many churches is that we are sinful creatures who must make amends. That keeps butts in the seats and money in the plates. There is good money in guilt, and even better money in shame.

Guilt is a response to a particular bad act. You might think, Wow, Friday night was a little wild. I’d better throw an extra $20 in the plate today. Guilt is OK if it provokes action and change. I mean, after throwing in that extra $20, you might change your plans for the next weekend. Shame is different. Shame is believing that not only have you done bad things, but that you are a bad person. How can you ever remove that shame? Well, if you listen to certain preachers, the only way is to come to church every week, or twice a week, or to give the church everything you can or everything you have. But no amount of restitution can ever remove shame.

That’s why the author of Hebrews writes, “every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But Christ … offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins.” Jesus did not come to set up a new system of bookkeeping to replace the old Temple sacrificial system. He came to share God’s grace. And after he offered himself, “he sat down at the right hand of God.” Christ offers us eternal rest. No longer do we need to work “day after day” to earn forgiveness. The work has already been done. We are already forgiven. God’s grace is stronger than any guilt or shame we might feel. We can look forward to our eternal sabbath, our eternal rest from the hard work of living together and loving one another in all the messiness of this life.

The author of Hebrews goes on to say that we can approach God “with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” Here, he’s using language that describes priests. Those priests who offered sacrifices day after day had been sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice and had been ritually bathed. Like them, we have been cleansed so that we can approach God. There is nothing we need to do to earn this access. Jesus has done all the work already. We are already cleansed, already forgiven, already free to come to God. There is nothing we can do to earn God’s love, but also nothing we can do to lose God’s love.

Our shame has been removed. Whatever Calvin may have thought, our total depravity has been overcome by God’s grace. The opposite of shame is honor: we are raised up out of our sinfulness and given a place of honor in God’s eternal family. Through Christ’s reconciling love, we have been adopted into God’s family and are honored for all eternity. No matter what the world might think of us, God loves us.

So what is the appropriate response? We have been given a great gift. There is nothing we can do to lose honor in God’s eyes. We are forgiven so that we may forgive others, loved so that we may love others, honored so that we can honor others. We are called to participate in bringing about God’s reign. All people will be a part of God’s realm in the age to come. We are called to bring them into God’s family now.

So what’s stopping us? Well, there are a lot of social pressures that work against us. For about a century, talking about religion and politics have been taboo in “polite company.” As a result, we are culturally incapable of having polite conversations about these sensitive subjects. It’s hard to have a conversation about what we believe without it turning into an argument about which belief is better. The public conversation—on TV, the radio, and especially the internet—has been taken over by the loudest and most extreme voices. As a result, the public perception of Christianity is not something I want to be associated with. I don’t want to be known as a judgmental homophobe who is against women in leadership. So I mostly stay quiet unless someone brings the subject up, instead focusing on living out my beliefs.

“Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” That’s a nice, pithy quote, usually attributed to Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Orders. The concept behind it is that our practice should be sufficient to spread the Gospel. But here’s the truth: St. Francis never said it. The closest quote that captures this sentiment is:

No brother should preach contrary to the form and regulations of the holy Church nor unless he has been permitted by his minister … All the Friars … should preach by their deeds.

In essence, he was saying that our words and deeds should match. He is saying, Don’t be a hypocrite. If you’re going to preach love, you must show love. If you preach charity, you should be charitable. If you preach welcome and hospitality, you should practice welcome and hospitality. He never said that you should keep quiet about your beliefs. In fact, there is nothing in the Bible that says you shouldn’t talk about the enormous gifts we have received from God through the sacrificial love of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus even said, in Mark 8, “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” You can do what you like, but I personally think we should pay more attention to what Jesus said than to a modern proverb that seems to have been totally made-up.

You might still be afraid to speak out. Let me assure you that God is on our side, on your side. And if God is for us, who can stand against us? As Paul wrote, “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” No matter what we do, no matter how we are perceived by society, we are always, always bound to God’s kingdom through Christ. If we act from that place of love, we will be continually renewed and strengthened by the Holy Spirit acting in and through us.

You are beloved. You are forgiven. You are freed from the brokenness of this world. And yet, we all must live in this broken world. So what to do? We are freed so that we can love dangerously. We are freed so that we can share God’s love with every one of God’s beloved children, which is everyone: people like you, people different from you, people you agree with, people you disagree with, your friends, your enemies. There is no one you will encounter who is not beloved by God.

Let me give you a couple of examples of dangerous love. As you probably know, I volunteer at the Rolla Mission. I cook lunch every Friday and fill in occasionally when there are open slots. These days, there are usually lots of people around to help on Fridays, both staff and other volunteers. However, if I do, say, a warming center on the weekend, or an overnight, I am alone and in charge. Fortunately, I have never had a major emergency, knock on wood. Occasionally a few patrons will have heated discussions, but everyone acknowledges my authority to remove them from the building, so I can get things settled down.

In fact, The Rolla Mission could be described as one great experiment in dangerous love. It started when The Vineyard decided to open their church to people in need around them. From laundry and showers, it has evolved to providing meals, shelter, and case management. As the staff, board, and volunteers have learned more about the needs of the patrons, they have developed connections to services around the city, county, and state to help patrons become full members of our community. They work with patrons to resolve the issues that have created their homelessness. This requires vulnerability on both sides. Someone who is homeless, whether due to mistakes they have made or circumstances beyond their control, can be overwhelmed by shame. They will only trust a case manager who is open and vulnerable enough to have their heart broken. We are blessed as a community to have Ashley and others at the Mission who are willing to open up every day, risking stigma, risking heartbreak, risking everything to show love to people in need.

Last week, Rev. Morrison said that we change the world by our example. That’s true, but what example should we set? Too many Christians keep people who are different from them at arm’s length. They stay within their little social circle of like-minded people who share their demographics. What did Jesus do? He didn’t just surround himself with fellow Galileans who were observant Jews that kept the purity codes. He ate with sinners and tax collectors. He spoke with Samaritans. He performed miracles for Gentiles. He didn’t just preach about love, he showed it. He entered into relationships. He met people where they were and changed their lives with his love.

That’s the example we should set. Not just some surface-level kindness, not just supporting charitable organizations with our money. No, we should embrace people who are different from us, enter into true relationships with them, wrap them in God’s love. Everyone, everyone, will one day encounter God face to face. Today, the only way they can encounter God is through us. Let’s go forth and be the hands and heart of Christ. Let’s take risks, knowing that not even the gates of Hell will prevail against us. Let’s love dangerously. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Hebrews 7:18-28; Mark 10:46-52. Podcast linked below. YouTube archive:

https://youtu.be/iEYINTFTadg?t=1822

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A couple weeks ago, I introduced the book of Hebrews. Let me just take a few moments to remind you of some key ideas. Hebrews is not so much a letter to a particular group like the other epistles, but more a rhetorical treatise, perhaps a sermon written out. Its author is unknown. Historically, it was ascribed to Paul, but most scholars now believe it was written by one of Paul’s close associates. In the Middle Ages, it was used to justify anti-Semitism and supersessionism, that is, the idea that Christianity has superseded Judaism. But really, the thrust of the author’s argument is that the heavenly supersedes the earthly. We do what we can to worship God here on earth in the present age, but all the while, Christ worships God in the heavenly Temple and will unify us all into God’s realm in the age to come. Christ is our great high priest, holy and pure, who makes atonement for us so that we may approach the throne of mercy and grace.

Jews have celebrated the Day of Atonement since their escape from Egypt. On the first day of the seventh month, called Rosh Hashana, Jews begin a ten-day time of reflection and repentance. On the tenth day, Yom Kippur, they are reconciled with God. In the Second Temple period, this was the day when the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies. Following the ancient template described in Exodus, the high priest would purify himself. He would then make a sacrifice, and use the blood of the sacrifice to make atonement with God. He would sprinkle the blood on the Ark of the Covenant as a sign and seal of the relationship between God and God’s people.

We have been conditioned to think of the old sacrifices only in terms of sin: to wipe away sin, God demands a blood sacrifice. But in actuality, the old sacrificial system was much more complex and nuanced. There were a number of reasons to offer a sacrifice: sin, guilt, thanksgiving, and fellowship offerings are all described. In some cases, the priest would give a burnt offering, which is to say that the animal or grain would be burned and destroyed completely. That was the case for the Yom Kippur offering, for example. In many cases, though, the offering would be eaten, either by the priest or by the people giving the offering or both.

So what was the point of giving an offering to God, and then taking it back and eating it? Well, the sacrifice was not so much about what was given up, but more about the relationship between God and God’s people. Through the sacrifice, offered to God, the person giving would draw closer to God. I suppose in a sense, it’s like the times when we share a meal together, whether at our old potlucks that have been canceled due to the pandemic or at the First Friday Out gatherings we have resumed. In a sense, we are offering a sacrifice to God, then using it to draw close to God by drawing close to one another. As we enjoy table fellowship together, God is present by the Holy Spirit. The ancient sacrificial system was like one long-running potluck where people would bring the product of their labors in the field, dedicate them to God, and enjoy a closer communion with God and God’s people through the sacrifice.

The sacrificial system was an embodiment of the Law. We know about the Ten Commandments, but by one count, there are 613 commandments in the Torah, that is, the first five books of the Bible. 613—that’s a lot! That’s partly why the author of Hebrews goes on about how the Law could make nothing and nobody perfect. Keeping all 613 commandments perfectly is just about impossible. Jesus said that he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill the Law. Yet even he flouted the purity laws and broke a lot of the rules about the Sabbath. Instead, he gave us the Great Commandment. When someone in the crowd challenged him, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Sure, there are 613 rules that are specific to ancient Israelite culture and often contradictory, but there are two overarching commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. The rest is just details, that is, what does it mean to love God? What does it mean to love our neighbor? Those questions have challenged God’s people from the days of the ancient Israelites wandering in the wilderness down to today.

Our passage today assures us, though, that if we turn towards God, if we seek God with our hearts, Jesus Christ is there to connect with us. No matter what, if we seek God, we are assured that God’s love will flow back to us. Jesus is able to save completely, for all time, because he always lives to intercede for us. We may mess up, we may fall short of God’s glory, but Jesus is always working on our behalf to connect us with God’s love.

But wait—what about the other half of the Great Commandment? Remember the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Or as many of us learned it, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Or perhaps the best word to use in that phrase is “sin.” We ask God’s forgiveness of our sins against the first half of the Great Commandment—our failures to love God as we should—while we offer forgiveness to others who sin against the second half.

The ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are a time of introspection, reflection, and reconciliation. It is a time for each person to reflect on the way they have wronged their neighbor and to seek forgiveness. God forgives us, which is great, but at the end of the day, a large part of the reason for the Law is so that we can live together, in peace and harmony.

I believe in universal reconciliation. That is, I believe that all of us, every person throughout the world and throughout history, have Jesus on our side, interceding on our behalf, so that one day, we will all enjoy God’s grace, mercy, and love. So what’s the point of being here today? What’s the point of being a Christian in the present age, if we will all enjoy God’s heavenly realm in the age to come? Well, it’s so that we can enjoy that unity, a partial vision of God’s realm, in the here-and-now. We make restitution and reconcile with one another so that we can live in peace and harmony now.

Recently, Jon Gruden was in the news. He was, until recently, the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. Before that, he worked for the NFL. Some of his emails from the past decade were leaked. They were full of racist, misogynist, and homophobic language attacking the NFL commissioner, the president of the NFL Players Association, and many others in and around the league. Obviously, he’s an idiot. I mean, how can anyone in the 21^st century not know that you shouldn’t put that sort of thing in an email? But more to the point, we are lucky to have a written record, while so often we only have hearsay indicating that someone is racist, misogynist, and homophobic. After the emails came out, Gruden had to step down.

Now, I believe that if he asks God for forgiveness, he will receive it, through the grace of Jesus Christ who intercedes on his behalf. That’s great. But it doesn’t mean that he should get his job back. He cannot lead an organization full of black men while being openly racist. He needs to repent of that sin, and then seek reconciliation with the people he has sinned against.

The author of Hebrews assures us of our ultimate reconciliation. There are two kinds of reconciliation: vertical and horizontal. Jesus assures us of vertical reconciliation. As he intercedes on our behalf, we receive grace and mercy from God. Jesus also assures us of horizontal reconciliation. He said that he would send an Advocate, the Holy Spirit. As the Holy Spirit flows through us, we are connected to each other. God’s love enables us to forgive those who sin against us, so that we can live together as part of God’s family. Our vertical reconciliation, that is, the love flowing down from God, enables our horizontal reconciliation, as that love flows out from us and into each other, this group of worshipers gathered today, the people we serve around the community, and people all around the nation and world who are beloved by God.

In part, the book of Hebrews was written as assurance to people who were shut out of the Temple system. It’s a little unclear whether it was written before or after the destruction of the Temple. If before, then the author was thinking of the people who were too poor or too remote from Jerusalem or too ritually unclean to worship God and enjoy the fellowship of God’s people at the Temple. If after, the author was thinking of everyone, all of God’s people, who had previously turned towards the Temple as the special place where God would dwell on earth, where the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies to achieve reconciliation with God, which was now destroyed. Judaism had entered a time of transition, when it seemed that God’s favor and God’s presence had been removed.

But we are assured that the Temple system, which was finite and exclusionary and doomed to one day end, was merely a reflection of the heavenly worship that continues. What was once bound to a certain group of priests in a particular place is now broken wide open. Jesus is our new high priest who worships continually in the heavenly sanctuary. Jesus welcomes everyone—rich and poor, near and far, every age and race and gender—to his heavenly banquet. While we still put up barriers between ourselves in the present age, all will be welcome at the heavenly banquet in the age to come.

Let’s turn now to Bartimaeus. As Jesus passed out of Jericho, a blind beggar called out to him. Last week, we heard how two of Jesus’s closest friends asked him for power. But Bartimaeus asked simply for mercy. He recognized Jesus as a Son of David, the Messiah, God’s anointed one who had come to share God’s love, and he called out for mercy. Mark writes, “Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’” Bartimaeus gets it. He understands what James and John did not. Jesus came not to achieve or grant power, but to show love and mercy to God’s people. Jesus called Bartimaeus to come to him, and suddenly the crowd changed. They told Bartimaeus that Jesus was calling him, and he responded with joy. He sprang up, abandoned his cloak—probably his only possession—and went to Jesus. Jesus’s only challenge to him was to ask him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus said, “Rabbouni, my teacher, let me see again.” When Jesus heals his sight, Bartimaeus becomes a follower. He is lifted from his old life as an outcast and enjoys the healing, loving, merciful presence of his Messiah.

Let me ask you: When I tell that story, who do you see yourself as? Are you like Bartimaeus, calling on Jesus as your Messiah to heal you and grant you mercy, willing to give up all that you have in order to follow him? Or are you like someone in the crowd, trying to keep everything decent and orderly, shushing those who need to feel God’s saving grace, shutting out those who seem to be unworthy? Or are you like James and John, seeking power and authority in God’s coming reign? I think if we’re honest with ourselves, each one of us has been every character in the story at some point. Susan reminded us last week that we are called not to be served, but to serve. Jesus’s call to Bartimaeus reminds us that when we turn towards God, God responds with love and grace. And it reminds us that those we would seek to exclude as being unworthy are precious to God, loved by God, and welcome in God’s family.

One day, we will all feel God’s eternal loving presence, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us live in that presence now, allowing God’s love to flow through us, to reconcile us with those we have wronged and those who have sinned against us, and welcoming everyone who calls on Jesus to join us in God’s family today. Amen.

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Based on Hebrews 4:12-16. Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Unfortunately, video is not available, but the audio (podcast) is linked below.

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I will be preaching three times on the book of Hebrews, so before I begin today, I’d like to give you a little background and perspective on it. It has elements of an epistle, but is structured more like a rhetorical treatise, or perhaps a sermon. Maybe I should just read it straight through as the sermon! Traditionally, it was attributed to Paul, but there are many reasons to doubt that tradition. The early Christian father Origen personally believed that Paul wrote it, but also said, “But who wrote the epistle, in truth God knows.” Most likely, it was written by one of Paul’s close associates, perhaps Apollos, perhaps someone else whose name is lost to history.

The challenge with Hebrews is that it has been used for centuries to support anti-Semitism and supersessionism. The basic argument running through the book is that the temple has been or will be replaced with something better. By the Middle Ages, this was interpreted to mean that Christianity has replaced or superseded Judaism. Our “priest,” who is Jesus, has replaced the former Temple priests. Our covenant has replaced their covenant.

In a recent article in The Christian Century, though, Jesper Svartvik argues that when Hebrews was written, there was no concept of Christianity separate from Judaism. The author, then, could not be arguing that Christianity is better than Judaism. Instead, his argument should be interpreted as one more book written in the stream of apocalyptic messianic eschatology, just like the Gospels, just like Paul’s letters, just like most of the New Testament. I believe I’ve spoken about apocalyptic messianic eschatology before, but briefly, it is the understanding that our Messiah, Jesus, revealed God to us and revealed the new heaven and earth that is to come. The book of Hebrews is not contrasting two different religions, but two different ages. The present age is merely a shadow of the glorious age to come. The temple priests are merely stand-ins for the great high priest that is the Son of God.

So, against that broad perspective, let’s dive in. Today’s reading starts out, “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” What is the word of God? Not a “what,” but a “who”: Jesus. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We often describe scripture as the word of God, but the true Word is Jesus Christ, who is revealed to us through the scripture by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the true Word who searches our hearts.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sets up a number of contrasts between thoughts and actions. He preached, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not murder.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Throughout Jesus’s preaching, he spoke of the need to not only act good, but to be good. It is necessary but not sufficient to do good works. One must also have right thoughts, for our external actions reflect the intentions of our hearts.

As I said, the book of Hebrews is a rhetorical treatise in which the author builds an argument. The preceding section, before today’s reading, is about sabbath rest. We are promised a sabbath. We will one day enter into God’s rest. But we must render an account first. Recently, I was talking with my friend Sharon about different worship styles and liturgy and so forth. She is Lutheran and grew up with a traditional service, but then later joined a church with a contemporary service. Contemporary worship is pretty thin on liturgy. I personally like liturgy, but many people my age and younger do not. One piece that is often omitted from a contemporary service is the prayer of confession. The argument is that making people say that they have sinned will make them feel bad, make them feel ashamed. Sharon said that she lobbied hard for her church to include one, and succeeded. In the Reformed tradition, we believe it is essential to confess our sins. The general format that we use in this church follows the Book of Worship. First, we are called to confession. We are reminded that all of us have sinned, all of us fall short of God’s glory. Next, we confess our sins. It is essential that we confess not only our personal sins, but also our corporate sins. We are all connected. We are all part of one body of Christ. If one of us sins, all of us sin. But the third part of the sequence is essential: an assurance of pardon. We confess our sins SO THAT we may be assured that our sins have been forgiven.

There is a psychological aspect to this as well. I remember George talking about that from the perspective of the Roman Catholic confession ritual. There is something freeing about declaring your sins—explicitly naming them, whether aloud or in your heart—and then being told that your sins are forgiven.

Each Sunday, we encounter God’s Word, and it reminds us that we are not perfect. But then we are reminded that we are forgiven, that God’s mercy and grace flows through Jesus and covers us all.

As I said, the preceding section of Hebrews talks about a promised sabbath. The promise will be fulfilled in the age to come. The present age will pass away, and we will be welcomed into God’s eternal sabbath. So why are we here? What’s the point of all of this? Well, one way to think about it is like the original sabbath explanation: God worked for six days, and on the seventh day rested. We have work to do first. This present age is a time of working, testing, and learning. We are weak, but are made strong by the learning of a lifetime.

Jesus, too, was weak. He experienced all of the trials and temptations that we endure, and then some. He was tempted by the possibility of conquering his foes, of embracing violence to establish his earthly kingdom. But he rejected that path. He was made weak like us, but through God’s strength was able to resist temptation. So he knows how hard this life can be. He knows how strong the Adversary is in the present age. He knows that we are all trying to do God’s will, but are so often confronted by no-win situations. He knows the brokenness of this world.

The word in verse 12 that we translate “able to judge” is kritikos, the Greek word from which we get “critic.” Often when we hear the words “judge” and “critic” we have very negative connotations. We think about a judge who sits in a court condemning the guilty. We think about the critic who points out all of our flaws. But maybe we should think of this concept more like discernment. Think about a judge at district or state music festivals—yes, they point out flaws, but also good things, and they give the performer a grade. Or an art critic: their job is not so much to tell us what’s wrong with a piece of art or to rank artistic expressions, but to help us see what the artist intends and to show connections between a particular piece of art and the larger artistic tradition or its commentary on society.

Or perhaps we can think about a teacher. I sit in judgment of my students. At the end of the semester, I give them grades. But I don’t just sit back and let them succeed or fail on their own skills. My job is to teach them. I explain concepts to them, give them opportunities to practice with the concepts, and give them feedback on their performance. The semester is filled with formative assessments. A formative assessment is one that has little or no impact on grades but allows the students to determine how well they understand. I assign homework each week that, in total, amounts to 10% of the semester’s grade, and I give half credit for just completing the work. The other half of the credit is given for accuracy, which is intended to encourage students to actually try. Each week, I have a LEAD session, which is a time when the students are all working on the homework together and I’m present to answer questions, correct misconceptions, and help them understand the material I’m trying to teach. Maybe a quarter or a third of the students come to the LEAD sessions.

In the same way, we encounter God’s Word each week and then spend the week trying to apply it. As we struggle with it, the Holy Spirit is there to nudge us in the right direction, if we are willing to listen. God is ready to teach us, to show us what we have done well and poorly, to grade our progress towards full membership in God’s kingdom. All we need to do is turn towards God to receive that instruction. Sometimes it’s hard, just like getting a low grade on homework is hard, but challenging words from God make us better and stronger people, more able to resist the Adversary, more confident members of Christ’s body.

OK, that’s formative assessment. The other type of assessment is summative. That’s the grade I give my students on an exam or at the end of the course. Throughout the semester, I remind students that I am a kind and generous person, and some of them believe it. My job, though, is to make sure that they have learned enough to be successful in their careers, so I need to give good and bad grades based on their performance. And here’s where the analogy breaks down.

Jesus is indeed the word of God, living and active, able to judge our thoughts and intentions, before whom no creature is hidden but is laid bare, and to whom we must render an account. BUT, he is our great high priest. The job of a priest is to speak to God on behalf of the people and to obtain the people’s forgiveness. Jesus is our great high priest who sits on the throne of grace and mercy.

During this COVID pandemic, there were lots of policies put in place to accommodate students. That first semester, spring 2020, was a mess. Students at many colleges were given the option of changing from a letter grade to pass/fail, as an acknowledgment that the semester was really hard due to circumstances beyond their control. In the same way, Jesus knows that life is hard. He was tested just as we are. So at the end of the day, we are given a grade, but instead of a letter grade, we get a pass/fail grade. And by the mercy and grace of our great high priest, we all pass.

I’m reminded of another test that I witnessed. When a student completes their master’s thesis, a three-person committee sits in judgment of it. The student presents their work, and the committee members probe it. This one student had someone on their committee who started asking questions on about the third slide of the presentation. As the defense went on, the questions became increasingly probing and aggressive. It was brutal. After the presentation, the committee deliberates in private. The professor who had asked all of the probing, aggressive questions simply said, “Great work!” The student passed with no concerns.

Sometimes our life of faith is like that. We are challenged daily, even minute by minute, to live up to our calling. We are confronted by people we struggle to love. We are criticized for our beliefs. We are scared to proclaim the Gospel. We are tempted to break every commandment in the Bible, and give in more often than we would like to admit. We are weak. But we have this assurance: we have Jesus as our great high priest, who was tested as we are, ready to advocate on our behalf. And so, “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Mark 9:38-50. The YouTube link (click on the image) should take you directly to the sermon.

Why do we make the choices we make? Seems like a simple enough question, right? Since the Enlightenment, we have thought of ourselves as rational creatures who mentally tally up the pros and cons of a given set of options, then choose the one that’s best. The reality is, most of the time, we don’t really know why we make a given choice. We may tell ourselves that we do, but the truth is, we often make a choice and THEN compose the rational justification.

A couple weeks ago, I told you the story about when I moved from Baldor to the University of Illinois. As I tell it, we analyzed our situation in Arkansas, evaluated our options, calculated the possibilities for advancement, and made a rational choice. It’s more accurate, though, to say that we had an emotional and spiritual yearning to be closer to family, and that when I was on campus for the interview, it just felt right. I essentially decided to take the job before it was offered, and then analyzed the offer in a way that would justify that choice.

In a recent column by David Brooks, he wrote, “One of the most unsettling findings of modern psychology is that we often don’t know why we do what we do.” There is on the one hand our conscious self, that part of us that talks and acts and interacts with other people, that we think of as our true self, that we think is in control. But I’ve read other authors describe our conscious self as a rider on an elephant. The rider can give nudges, but the elephant, which is our vast subconscious self, does most of the work and makes most of the choices. Brooks doesn’t like this conclusion. Like most of us, he feels like his conscious self is in control.

So he went looking for psychologists that could confirm this belief. That alone is a little problematic, but maybe a topic for another sermon on confirmation bias. Anyway, much of what he learned is that what we can actually control is our stories. Some stories are better than others, in the sense of being more accurate. Some stories are better than others, in the sense of being more useful for our future selves.

Here’s an example from the column. Suppose a man has a string of failed romantic relationships. One story he could tell himself is that he never got over someone who dumped him back in college. Another story he could tell himself is that he has a high level of neuroticism—a tendency to anxiety and self-doubt—that is disrupting his relationships. Both stories may have elements of truth to them, but they call for different solutions.

We are a story-telling species. What stories do we tell ourselves about this congregation? What story do you tell yourself about why you are here, and not somewhere else? Let me tell you a little bit of mine, and then we’ll see where it might take us in the future.

When we moved to Rolla, we decided it was time to make space in our lives for weekly worship. Sam was 7 and Jesse was 5. New town, new job, growing kids—time for a new approach to God. I had a few criteria, things I wouldn’t compromise on. My sister is a United Methodist pastor, and I grew up Methodist, so any church we attended would have to be accepting of women in the pulpit and be more-or-less in the same theological tradition as the Methodists. I had always attended a traditional worship service, so that’s what I was looking for—but not “high church.” I short-listed this church and First UMC. Our first visit was the Sunday after Christmas, figuring it wouldn’t be too crowded and overwhelming.

The greeter at the door was Rob Heberer. We had already met him—he lived three doors down from us and had come over to welcome us to the neighborhood. So that’s one plus. At some point, I think during the passing of the peace, Lowell Crow asked if I knew his daughter, Mariesa—well yeah, she was the chair of the search committee that hired me. So that’s two. At some point, perhaps during fellowship, we met Bob and Carlene May. We had just moved here from Mahomet, where we lived while I attended the University of Illinois, which is where Carlene grew up and Bob attended college. So that’s three.

There are lots of churches in Rolla. We differ dramatically in many ways: size, demographics, theology, worship style, schedule, programs. I think that’s great. Everyone needs to have a way to connect to God and to be a part of God’s family. Some people like pipe organs while other people like a rock band. Some people need certainty—to be told what to think and believe—while other people need freedom to question. Some people would never attend a church that allows a woman to preach, while others would never attend a church that excludes women from full participation in God’s ministry.

We all have our stumbling blocks, those things that stand between us and God. Often, the root of the obstacle lies deep within the elephant of our subconscious, and we build a story that satisfies us. For example, maybe you grew up with a rigid boundary between the secular and the sacred, and anything that makes that boundary a little squishy makes you feel a little squishy.

As you may recall, I was the chair of the Way Forward Committee for a while. We floated several different proposals, many of which related to restructuring the sanctuary. I’ll try not to get riled up here, but I have often called whoever designed this sanctuary a sadistic madman. Everything is crooked. There are no right angles, but instead things meet at 30 or 60 or 120 degrees. The pews are too long to really use completely, so everyone sits right on the aisle.

The other issue we have with the building is that the fellowship hall is the furthest point imaginable from the sanctuary. Getting to fellowship time after worship is a real chore, especially for the increasing number of congregants with mobility issues. Our fellowship time under the portico has been going OK, but I don’t know what we’ll do in November.

So we proposed to replace the pews with chairs and use the back half of the space for fellowship. Now, I expected there to be pushback over the pews vs. chairs. What I didn’t expect was the objection to the idea of fellowship in the sanctuary space. People would say, “What if someone takes coffee with them into the service?” And I thought, “Uh, then they’ll stay awake?” It took me a long time, and I still don’t completely understand, but it has to do with a certain understanding of proper decorum. It’s probably generational.

What I’m starting to grasp is that the people who objected weren’t making some rational evaluation, but instead had a deep reaction. To them, the only food that is appropriate in a sacred space is the communion elements. Anything else just feels wrong.

A few years ago, a group of us read through Christianity After Religion by Diana Butler Bass. At least I think that’s the book where I picked up this concept, which I also heard her give a talk about this past spring. She talks about the three B’s: belief, behavior, and belonging. Historically, that was the order: a person would come to a set of beliefs that were aligned with a particular church, start attending, start following its rules of behavior, and ultimately become a member. In her books, Bass writes that the order is reversed: first a person finds a church where they belong, then they adopt its written and unwritten rules of behavior, and then they gradually adopt its beliefs. More recently, Bass has said that it’s more of a triangle with multiple entry points and directions of development. Whatever. The point is, belief, behavior, and belonging are all important components of entering God’s realm through its expression in a particular congregation.

What I want to highlight is the importance of belonging. A podcast I listened to recently discussed the difference between belonging and fitting in. Fitting in is like wearing a mask. Not the kind of mask we’re all wearing to protect each other, but a mask like you would wear on Halloween. We all do that in different situations. I mean, I interact with Rhonda’s family much differently than with my own. When I go elk hunting, I’m careful to avoid politics, knowing that most of the guys would disagree with me on practically every topic. When I’m at the Mission, I’m a cook, not a professor, and actually I’ve been asked if I work as a cook somewhere.

Belonging, though, is bringing your whole self, and being accepted for who you are. When I’m here, I know that I’m valued as a beloved sibling in Christ. We may disagree about a lot of things, and there may be things that we just don’t discuss, but I know that you love me for who I am, for all of who I am. At the same time, I hope you all know that I love you, too, for all of who you are, including the parts I don’t know about. That is belonging. That is being a part of the body of Christ.

When we came that December Sunday so many years ago, we immediately felt that sense of belonging. But I think we all need to be aware that there are other people who would not feel that same sense. People who haven’t grown up in the church, and so they are unfamiliar with the music and the liturgy. People who don’t know what to wear, where to sit, or what to expect. People who have been hurt by other churches, for whatever reason, and need to heal in order to truly experience God’s love.

When Jesus told his disciples not to place stumbling blocks, he was talking about anything that creates an obstacle between us and God. Sin is ultimately about separation from God. The things we let come between us and God become idols. Anything that does not enable us to express our love for BOTH God AND neighbor blocks both relationships. What value does it have if it makes us comfortable while preventing us from fully embracing another beloved child of God?

Now, I’m not saying that we’re going to tear out the pews, put in chairs, and have fellowship in the back. I’ve set that aside in favor of other priorities, because that vision was becoming an obstacle between my congregational siblings and me. As long as I was thinking of people as pro-pew or pro-chair, I wasn’t thinking of them as pro-Christ. And that’s who we are, or at least who we need to be. Nothing should matter more than loving God and loving our neighbors. Everything we do should be an exhibition of God’s reign in our lives, and God’s love available to everyone. If anything—anything—is causing me to love someone else less, I need to set it aside. If anything—anything—is preventing people from encountering God through our congregation, we need to set it aside.

The question before us, individually and as a congregation, is this: What is blocking our ability to exhibit God’s reign to the people of Rolla and beyond? Or from another perspective, what is blocking our ability to see God in each person we meet? Those are two sides of the same coin. As members of Christ’s body, we need to enter fully into relationships with all other parts of Christ’s body. We must bring our full selves, and allow others to bring their full selves—even those parts we don’t like.

So, what are the stumbling blocks in your life? What parts of your life are you keeping God out of? What is preventing you from seeing the image of God in each person you meet? And how do you see those stumbling blocks reflected in the life of this congregation? Let us all seek to make our church more welcoming, and the path to God more clear, for all of God’s children in Rolla and beyond. Amen.

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Preached on September 12, 2021, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Podcast linked below. Archived recording of live stream available:

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Yesterday was the 20^th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Do you remember where you were? I sure do. At the time, I was working for Baldor and living in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The day before, Rhonda’s 6-year-old nephew, Zach, stopped breathing when he went in for a tonsillectomy. It turned out he had non-Hodgkins lymphoma. So the morning of 9/11, I took Rhonda and Sam, who was just over a year old, to the airport. Their plan was to fly to St. Louis via Dallas. On the way to Baldor from the airport, I heard the news about the attack. Rhonda didn’t hear until she went to the gate for her connecting flight and found everything shut down.

That was a turning point for my family. I wasn’t terribly happy with my work; we had few friends in Arkansas; and we were an 8-hour drive from the nearest family. I started looking for opportunities to move closer to family. What I found was a job at the University of Illinois as a research engineer. On paper, it made no sense to take the job. As I recall, it was about a 15% pay cut, with little hope of direct advancement. However, Champaign is much closer to where Rhonda’s family lives, and there were other opportunities for me. I went on to get my Ph.D. and wound up here. If I hadn’t taken that chance on the job at Illinois, who knows where life might have taken me?

Professors are generally pretty conservative. Not politically or socially, but in the sense that we don’t like change. I think the reason is that we are expected to take a lot of risks in our research, and so we “use up” all of our risk tolerance. We become reluctant to make any changes to the curriculum because there may be unforeseen side effects. We become hoarders, keeping old papers and journals and equipment that have long outlived their usefulness. We’re even reluctant to move to a better office or lab because it would mean changing our routines.

At some level, I think everyone is a bit like that. Everyone finds the things that make their life comfortable, and hold onto them long after they should. Eventually, though, life circumstances force a change. This pandemic has certainly caused a lot of people to consider changes that they wouldn’t consider otherwise.

Sometimes, our desire for change is brought on by an awareness of injustice, an awareness of the general brokenness of the world becoming particularly acute in a way that touches us personally. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a promising German academic and theologian. He studied in America at Union Theological Seminary under Reinhold Niebuhr, then returned to Germany in 1931 to become a lecturer at the University of Berlin. His career took a dramatic turn after Hitler was installed as Chancellor in 1933. He could not keep silent: he gave a radio address that warned against Germany become an idolatrous Nazi cult. Over the following decade, he worked with other leaders of the Confessing Church, which resisted Nazi efforts to impose their will on the Christian church in Germany. He traveled internationally and developed connections with the German resistance movement. He wrote The Cost of Discipleship, a meditation on the Sermon on the Mount that teaches the difference between “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” Eventually, he was arrested, sentenced to death, and hanged at a concentration camp.

Bonhoeffer’s life was changed because of his faith in God. He began his career as a theologian, an academic, someone like me who lived his faith in head space. After encountering the Social Gospel in his studies and starting ecumenical work to connect with other Christians, his faith moved to heart space. Rather than talking about God in the abstract, he was moved to live out Jesus’s calling to help the poor, the oppressed, the victims of our sinful world power structures.

In today’s passage, Jesus teaches his disciples that they must be willing to take risks for the sake of the gospel. What is the gospel, the good news that he taught? “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” Jesus taught that it was time for the power structures of the world to be overturned so that everyone would live as part of God’s family. In God’s realm, nobody has power over anyone else. Only God’s authority matters.

Jesus knew that this was a dangerous path, though. Throughout the Gospel of Mark, a key theme is the “Messianic secret.” Jesus confirms that he is the Messiah, but then tells everyone to keep it a secret. He knows that openly challenging the secular and religious power structures of his day would lead to the “prophet’s reward”—that is, they will suffer as Jesus did, as Isaiah did, as so many of God’s messengers have throughout history. Like Bonhoeffer, challenging the authorities led most of the apostles to martyrdom.

History is filled with examples of people who took risks on behalf of the oppressed. Gandhi worked his whole life for the freedom of India, eventually succeeding at the age of 78. Martin Luther King, Jr., led the Black civil rights movement until he was assassinated at the age of 39. The 14^th Dalai Lama has been working for the independence of Tibet throughout seven decades of exile. Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela worked for years to end the apartheid regime in South Africa, succeeding in 1990.

But rarely are there single events that change the world. The reality is that India’s independence was followed by years of struggle, the partition into India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and strife between religious and ethnic groups that continues today. The civil rights movement of the 1960s ended legal segregation, but the struggle for equality continues today, as evidenced by the Black Lives Matter protests of the past few years.

As you know, my personal calling is to reconciliation with and ministry to the LGBTQ+ community. The major turning point in the fight for gay rights was the Stonewall Uprising, a response to police harassment at gay bars in New York City. On June 27, 1969, there was a police raid at the Stonewall Inn. After midnight, tensions boiled over and a riot began. This wasn’t the beginning of the gay rights movement, and certainly wasn’t the end, but it was a turning point: a time when LGBTQ+ individuals refused to submit to persecution. Over the next several nights, there were continuing skirmishes between gay activists and the police. A year later, the first Pride parade was held in New York. Gay activists had decided that the risks brought on by open demonstration were preferable to the risks of living in the shadows.

It was another 45 years, though, before gay marriage became legal, and there are still ongoing legal battles over gay and transgender rights. For example, did you know that it is still legal in Missouri to refuse employment or housing because of a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity? Every year, the Missouri legislature considers the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to Missouri’s Human Rights Act. MONA, as it is known, was first introduced in 1998, and every year it inches a little closer to passing but has never broken through.

Some people that I deeply respect have commended me for the little that I do to support the LGBTQ+ community. As a middle-class, cisgender, heterosexual, white man, I have choices. Should I work for women’s rights, or do anti-racism work, or work for gay and transgender rights? Or help the poor or homeless? Or none of the above? America’s systems and power structures have been built by and for people like me, so I could just live my life and let someone else worry about all of the injustices in the world. But the Holy Spirit is nudging me to act.

My decision to help the LGBTQ+ community wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, though. Susan started laying groundwork almost ten years ago. Then I educated myself. I went to Pride STL. I read books and articles. I met with gay individuals to learn about their experiences. I attended lobbying days with PROMO to work towards passage of MONA. Eventually, I took a leap and created LGBTQ+ Rolla as a nonprofit organization and attracted some others who had similar interests to get things going.

Now, I have a vision of what this organization could become, but I am trying to stay aware of two basic facts. One, it’s not for me, it’s for the queer community, and they probably don’t need what I think they need. Two, it will only succeed if we grow in the way God intends. The Holy Spirit blows where it will, and like sailboats on the sea, we reach our destination faster if we let the wind take us than if we fight against it to go our own way.

There are risks to creating and helping to lead an LGBTQ+ organization in a town like Rolla. Before our Pride event, I worried a lot about hecklers or protesters or worse. I would like to see us have an LGBTQ+ center, that is, a place where people can go for resources and a sense of community, but such a place could also become a target of hate. I don’t have any serious risk of losing my job, but there is a risk to my reputation. I suppose someday, you all could tell me to stop talking and preaching about it, which would be unfortunate but not the end of the world. One thing I do encounter is people assuming that I’m gay because I wear rainbow jewelry. Well, that just gives me the tiniest glimpse into the world of discrimination that gay and transgender individuals face.

Life is full of risks, though. Our choice, as individuals and as a congregation, is which risks we are willing to take for the sake of growth. John A. Shedd once said, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” We can stay safe where we are—physically and spiritually—or live into God’s call.

You know what, though? A ship in harbor is not necessarily safe. One danger is that when the storms come, the wind and the surge will drive it into the docks and pilings. Boats are made to survive their encounters with water, not land. Another danger is slow decay. When I was sailing with my dad, each time we came into a harbor, we would see boats tied to moorings that had clearly been there a long time—too long, long enough that they probably couldn’t ever leave.

As individuals and as a church, we can stay safely where we are. We can choose to ignore the needs of the world. We can slowly rot away on our moorings, waiting for the next storm to destroy us. Or, we can invest time and energy into maintaining our spiritual lives, making sure we are ship shape. We can study God’s word, and then put it to work in the world. We can go where the wind of the Holy Spirit takes us. When the storms of life come along, we will find ourselves tested, but ready.

No reward comes without some risk. We may be uncomfortable with necessary changes. We may lose friends who aren’t willing to grow along with us. We may need to let go of ideas, attitudes, activities, and commitments that we thought were serving us well but that are blocking us from going where God is leading. But in exchange, we will experience deeper connections to each other and to all of God’s people. We will become fuller participants in God’s family. We will exchange contentment and comfort for a deep joy in doing God’s will.

Are you ready? The challenge before us is to embrace God’s call, to let go of our past and even our present in order to fully live into the future that God has in mind for us. May we all work together towards that future where this church is a place of renewal and refueling to go do God’s work, to go out into our community showing our love of God by our love of our neighbors, enabling each person to see that they are a beloved child of a God who cares about their whole being: mind, body, and spirit.

We turn now to the Table of our Lord. Work requires energy, and spiritual work requires spiritual energy. At our Lord’s Table, we are renewed and refueled. As we have been nourished by the reading and preaching of God’s Word, let’s now be nourished by a greater awareness of God’s presence, strengthened and energized to follow where the Holy Spirit is leading us, to put the Word to work in the world.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:47-58; Proverbs 9:1-6.

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Dan Brown wrote a series of books about Robert Langdon, a fictional Harvard University professor of religious iconology and symbology. In The Lost Symbol, Langdon tells his class, “Don’t tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh.” Of course the students are horrified. He continues, “And if any of you care to join me, come to the Harvard chapel on Sunday, kneel beneath the crucifix, and take Holy Communion.”

I imagine that Jesus’s audience responded something like those students. We can connect this passage to communion, where the bread symbolizes Jesus’s flesh and the wine or juice symbolizes Jesus’s blood—just symbols. But if we imagine ourselves as Jesus’s followers, we would probably be disgusted at the thought of eating our leader. It’s just a strange passage.

The Gospel of John is heavy on symbolism, though. So let’s go ahead and make that connection to communion. In John’s rendering of the Last Supper, there is no explicit Eucharistic verse, so this is it.

Communion is a time when we eat bread and drink wine or juice as a way of becoming more Christ-like. That is, it allows us to connect to God in a more tangible and tactile way. It allows us to get out of our heads and into our hearts and our bodies. It reminds us that our spiritual lives need nourishment just as our bodies need nourishment.

By consuming the elements, we get a little more Christ in us. We become a little more aligned with God’s purpose and will. It’s a little bit like the way my friend Wayne prepares for elk season. In these last few months before the hunt, he makes sure to eat some of the elk meat in his freezer, so he has more elk molecules in him. That way he’s more elk-like, so he can think like an elk. As we consume the communion elements, we become more Christ-like. And we are reminded that Jesus was not only God, but also human, flesh and blood just like us.

The Gospel of John, or at least parts of it, were popular with the Gnostics. Gnosticism asserted a dualism in which things of the spirit were superior to things of the flesh. They believed that human beings contain a divine spark within themselves, but that all physical matter is subject to decay, rotting, and death. The material world was created by an inferior being and is evil. Here, though, Jesus is elevating the status of his body, and by extension the material world. He is affirming the importance of the material world, our life in the present age, as a way of becoming more Christ-like and more aligned with God’s will for us.

Last week, we heard from Tonya Johnson about the ways Presbyterian Children’s Homes and Services is impacting broken families. As she said, research shows that children of abuse have the best lives when their past is acknowledged honestly, rather than pushed down and “forgotten.” Jesus’s body mattered. Our bodies matter. Each of us has a story that brought us to where we are today, and that affects our relationships with each other and with God. Jesus’s message of love and reconciliation was about healing the brokenness of our world, not abandoning the material world in favor of a purely spiritual existence.

There was a recent column in The Christian Century titled, “Where is my love to go?” It relates the author’s interaction with a Christian ed class in which he shared the “big reveal” about Christianity: When God settled on the single most significant thing of all, it turned out that thing was being with us as a human being just like us. Not to change us, but simply to be with us. This teaches us that relationship is not just the way God does or communicates something more important, but is what God is. This didn’t sit well with one group member. He became increasingly agitated as he described a life of broken relationships. He had lost his partner, his family, even his dog. “Where is my love to go?” The author took a chance and responded:

Imagine eternity from God’s point of view. Imagine God having all that love pent up like you have right now. But the difference is, God’s got that love all pent up potentially forever. God’s like you. God’s thinking, ‘Where’s my love to go?’ So God creates the universe. But God’s got still more love to give. So God creates life, and makes humanity, and calls a special people. But that’s still not enough. God’s got yet more love to give. So God comes among us as a tiny baby. God’s question ‘Where is my love to go?’ is perhaps the most important one of all time. Half the answer is the creation of the universe. The other half is the incarnation. On Christmas Day we find out why the universe was created. It was created for us to be the place where God’s love could go. So when you ask yourself, ‘Where’s my love to go?’ you’re getting an insight into the very heart of God.

Samuel Wells

Jesus came to dwell among us so that he could truly experience that loving relationship with humanity. God does not just dwell in the highest heavens, removed from the messiness of life. God is here, among us by the Holy Spirit. God came down as a human to love us in a personal way, so that we could all learn just what it is to love God and love one another.

Paul describes the church as the body of Christ. That is, Jesus was killed, then rose and ascended, leaving his disciples behind to continue his work. We are the inheritors of that legacy, charged with continuing to be Christ’s body in the world. Jesus circulated throughout Galilee, Judea, and adjacent regions, meeting people of varying backgrounds, preaching a message of reconciliation, forgiveness of sins, and social transformation. So also we are called to be like Jesus, going forth to share this same message. Two millennia have not achieved the social transformation set forth in the Gospels, because every step forward towards equality before God has been met with resistance by those who are perfectly happy with the status quo. So we must continue to learn from Jesus and work towards the peaceable kingdom he described. We must continue to spread the good news of God’s kin-dom and work towards uniting all of God’s people. I read a great quote from Kat Armas on Clergy Coaching Network:

Jesus didn’t ask to be let into people’s hearts; he told them to follow him—dedicating his life to the most vulnerable in society. Following Jesus wasn’t a call to a private piety disconnected from society. Following Jesus was relational, social, and it involved justice.

Kat Armas on Clergy Coaching Network

This is incarnational ministry. That’s kind of a buzzword these days. The goal of incarnational ministry is to live as Christ’s body. This is a part of the PC(USA) Vital Congregations initiative. The core of incarnational ministry is an outward focus: understanding that we live in a world where people are hurting, due to poverty, racism, discrimination, and isolation. The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t create disparities in society, but it exacerbated them. The world is hurting. The time we have together is an opportunity to be fed by Christ, so that we have the spiritual energy, wisdom, and love that are needed to go out and help in the work God is doing.

One danger in incarnational ministry is to rely too much on our own ideas. I think that’s a particular danger for me, personally, thinking back on some of the ministries I have tried that didn’t work out. Perhaps they were good ideas, but they weren’t God’s ideas. It is essential that Christ is in us, but also that we are in Christ. That means going where God is leading us, not where we imagine that God would probably want us to go. We are right now working through a process that may lead to new ministries or new ways to be the church. Many of us are reading a book that was recommended by Greg Emery called Neighborhood Church, which contains many examples of churches deciding to do something new as they adopted an outward, incarnational focus. But it’s not an instruction book. We cannot simply read about something another church is doing, then say, “Hey, we can do that. Let’s go!”

Truly incarnational ministry is relational. It involves getting out and meeting people where they are, learning about their challenges, and seeing where God is at work. I had an excellent conversation the other day with a colleague who is doing anti-racism work. Like me, he is a straight, white, middle-class, educated man. He commented that his perspective has really changed by spending time with people who are not like him. Part of his challenge, though, is to get people in his circle to also get out and spend time with people who are different. If your only knowledge of Black people, or Hispanics or Muslims or Chinese nationals, is what you see on the news or on the internet, it’s easy to put up walls and stay within your little bubble, imagining that everything would be better if “they” would be more like “us.”

Truly incarnational ministry involves spending time with those outsiders so that we can see the world through their eyes. We are all beloved children of God, members of one family, but that doesn’t mean we all need the same things or have the same challenges. Our goal should not be to convince people that they should dress and act like us and come spend an hour on Sunday morning singing our hymns and reading our liturgy. Our goal should be to walk with people on their unique paths towards God, so that they can enter God’s kin-dom as equals, members of Christ’s body who add new perspectives and new ways of being Christ-like. In doing so, we will see ourselves through their eyes as well. We will see where we need to grow and change and become more of the people that God wants us to be. We will see what obstacles we are putting in our own way, walls we are building between ourselves and God.

Let me return to the Gospel text: Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.” How can we eat and drink Jesus? The Gospel of John opens with, “In the beginning was the Word.” Jesus embodied God’s wisdom, the bread of heaven revealed partially in the Hebrew scriptures. We “consume” Jesus by learning God’s wisdom. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, wisdom is personified as a woman calling to us, sometimes known by the Greek name of Sophia. In Proverbs, we read:

Wisdom has built her house,
she has hewn her seven pillars.
She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine,
she has also set her table.
She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls
from the highest places in the town,
“You that are simple, turn in here!”
To those without sense she says,
“Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Lay aside immaturity, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.”

Proverbs 9:1-6

To become more Christ-like, we need to ingest God’s wisdom. Jesus came to teach us God’s wisdom by example. He was supremely dedicated to obeying God’s will, but not always in the way that his peers understood it. He showed us that the Law and the Prophets, indeed the whole teaching of God to humanity, hangs on two principles: love of God and love of neighbor. Often, though, it is hard to see how those principles apply. It is especially hard to see how they apply in the abstract. That’s why Jesus did not simply expound on philosophical principles. No, he lived with God’s people and saw first-hand the challenges they confronted, so that he could viscerally feel and understand the ways in which they were not being loved and the ways in which he could show love to them.

Incarnational ministry is not just another program. It is a renewed way of being Christ’s body. Jesus taught those early disciples just as he teaches us today. Abide in Christ as Christ abides in us. Ingest God’s wisdom, the teachings of the whole Bible that reveals God’s relationship with humanity and the lessons the ancient Israelites and first-century Christians learned from their encounters with God. See the world through Christ’s eyes, filled with love. Go out and encounter God in the people we meet. Learn how we can enable each person to see God’s presence, to experience God’s love, and to experience our love for them. Go where God is at work and join in. And as we do, we too will know God’s love and will be transformed into citizens of God’s realm and members of God’s family. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19; Ephesians 1:3-14.

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For as long as humans have owned material goods, we have been concerned about passing them on to our children. We see the next generation as a continuation of the work we have done in the world and hope that what we have accomplished, what we have built, and what we have gathered will continue on.

Laws about inheritance are complicated. Each culture has its own practices and rules. Under Roman law, the priority was given to family continuity as a foundation for stability. When a man died, his children would inherit both his property and his debts. Although women required a legal guardian to perform legal transactions, they could own and inherit property if there was a will designating them for inheritance. Slaves, too, could be heirs, but that was a little tricky. If the will also gave them their freedom, then the slaves could take possession. If not, then the actual possession of the inheritance would go to the slave’s master.

This was the legal environment in which Paul and his readers were living. They understood inheritance as an essential building block for a stable society. That stability also permeates the Old Testament laws, where land was designated for a particular family. That is, if someone was poor and sold their land, the purchaser was obligated to allow them to redeem it later. The rules around redemption are hard for us to understand from a modern perspective, but if you read the story of Ruth the Moabite and her mother-in-law Naomi, you will see that property redemption and inheritance was an essential part of the story that ultimately led to David’s birth.

The Bible can be read as a collection of individual perspectives, but also as a single unified story of humanity’s relationship with God. In Genesis, God promises to bless the world through Abraham. In Exodus, God enters a covenant with Israel that blesses them so that they might be a blessing to the world. As the story progresses, though, through the peak of David and Solomon to the nadir of the exile, we see that the Israelites forsake their inheritance. At the peak, they enjoyed the blessings of God, the divine favor that made David & Solomon’s Israel a wealthy and respected regional power. They inherited God’s special blessing specifically so that they can bless one another and the world, but they turn their backs on the covenant. Inheritance comes with both blessings and obligations, but Israel failed to meet those obligations. As a result, God rescinds their inheritance. Throughout the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, the message is clear: “Observe and search out all the commandments of the LORD your God; that you may possess this good land, and leave it for an inheritance to your children after you forever.” But in 2 Kings 21, which is near the end of Judah’s existence as an independent kingdom, God says, “I will cast off the remnant of my heritage, and give them into the hand of their enemies.”

Paul knew this story, knew all about the heritage that Israel had forsaken. This story of lost greatness was an essential part of Jewish identity. But as Paul encountered God through Christ, he realized that their spiritual exile was over. The inheritance was given to us all once again because we have been redeemed. But this inheritance was not about the land of ancient Canaan that was promised to Abraham. It was about the spiritual blessing that God promised to the whole world through Abraham and his children.

In the early days of the covenant, the inheritance was understood in material terms. Even today, the so-called prosperity Gospel promises that people who follow Jesus, who “accept Him into their heart,” will be blessed with health and wealth. If you are not healthy and wealthy, well, I guess you don’t believe strongly enough. This way of thinking also arose in the context of predestination. This particular passage is pretty strongly in support of Calvinist predestination: in the New International Version of the Bible, verse 5 is translated, “In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” The Puritans and other strong Calvinists of that era looked for outward signs of their predestination. If you were among those chosen for salvation, then obviously God would bless you with material abundance in this life.

But I don’t think that’s what Paul meant at all. In antiquity, people generally believed that wealth was finite. The only way for one person to be rich was for other people to be poor. Rather than teaching that God would transfer wealth from the powerful to the weak, Paul seems to be teaching instead that God would honor the lowly. Everyone would receive spiritual abundance.

Elsewhere, Paul writes that the fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” These are perhaps English translations of Greek words that circle around the meaning of hesed, a Hebrew word often translated as lovingkindness. Hesed is the special love that God has for humanity and the way in which we respond to that love. When we receive God’s grace, we respond with love, joy, and peace. As God works through us, we share that lovingkindness with our family, our friends, our community, and the world. These are riches that know no bounds. Love is not finite. Anyone who has truly loved one person—a parent, a spouse, a child, or a sibling—knows the joy that love can bring, and the way that one loving relationship fuels our ability to love others. I am able to serve my church and my community in part because the love Rhonda and I share renews me, refreshes me, and empowers me to keep on going. But the root, the source of that love is God. As we tap into God’s love, we may all be continually refreshed, renewed, and empowered to love our community.

The church is working through a process that includes reading Neighborhood Church, by Krin van Tatenhove and Rob Mueller. One of the first concepts is transforming your perspective from one of scarcity to one of abundance. We read this passage in Ephesians and hear of spiritual abundance, but what does that really mean? How does that translate into this congregation, this collection of individuals in this community?

In Lou Ellen’s farewell sermon, she described her time here as a time of healing, a concept echoed in Brett’s remarks during the reception afterwards. Our church has been through some stuff in the time I have been a member. Ten years ago, we were not healthy. Relationships were fraying or contentious, and worship was not always a time to encounter God. John Oerter came to us and helped us on the path to healing. He helped us to see the good in each other and to recognize the gifts we have within us, individually and as a group. He left before the work was complete, in truth because the work is never complete. The nature of sanctification is that we are always approaching God, always approaching wholeness and holiness, but we can never get there until we meet God face to face. Bob Morrison also helped us to see that we can do God’s work, individually and together. By the time Lou Ellen joined us, we were ready to share God’s love with her. We had learned the power of God’s grace to connect us with each other, to support one another, to become a part of God’s family.

We are once again in a time of transition, but stronger and healthier now. We have been abundantly blessed by God through Lou Ellen’s leadership over the past six years, but perhaps have become complacent about doing God’s work.

Paul writes of the “fullness of time.” The word we translate as “time” is kairos, which is more like “timely” or “opportune time.” It is the responsibility of each person who calls on Christ to recognize this kairos, this timeliness.

We have been blessed with spiritual abundance. We are devoted to God. We are generous with our time, talent, and treasure. We are loving towards each other and take care of each other when someone is suffering, whether due to illness, grief, or spiritual pain. We are accepting of differences and welcoming of all people. We are one of the few churches in town where someone who is gay, transgender, or of any other sexual orientation or gender identity can be welcomed into full membership. We have become a place of healing and wholeness, a place where those who have been hurt, those who feel far from God, can come to encounter God’s love and enter into full communion with Christ’s body.

It is time. Time to share our spiritual riches with our community. As we do so, we will be continually renewed by the infinite depth of God’s grace. You know, growing up in Pittsburgh, I always assumed that communities everywhere got their drinking water from rivers. Years later, I learned that most communities in this part of the country get their drinking water from municipal wells. The aquifer is recharged by the rain that falls. In the same way, God rains grace down upon us to recharge our spiritual reserves, which we can then draw upon to share with the community. But while the water on Earth is finite, God’s grace is infinite. In spending our spiritual riches, we are replenished.

There’s another place of healing in Rolla that I encounter weekly: The Mission. The patrons at The Mission are all hurting in some way and are striving to improve their lives, to become full participants in the community, and to achieve independence and wholeness. Why do I keep going back? Because in serving them, I am served. I encounter God through each person I meet. In the same way, I encounter God each Sunday, not only through our worship service, but also through the people in this congregation.

We are the family of God. In the Gospels, there are frequent references to the “Kingdom of God.” There are two problems with that metaphor. First, living in a democracy means that we no longer have direct experience with a monarchy in the way that the original New Testament audience did. Second, “kingdom” is a patriarchal term that has a lot of baggage from the centuries of oppression, destruction, and exploitation throughout the world. A few decades ago, Georgene Wilson, a Catholic nun, introduced a new term that her friend Ada Maria Isasí-Díaz popularized: the “kin-dom of God.” This is a new term that brings the original concept into the modern age. Ancient society was based on family, clan, and tribe. Kingdoms were built upon this kinship structure, basically putting the king’s family above all others and, in a sense, uniting all of the tribes into the king’s family. In the same way, we have been predestined for membership in God’s family, through Christ our king, or rather, our kin—our brother. With Christ as our brother, we become part of the Christian family, the Christian tribe. Paul says God is gathering all things into Christ’s family. Let us live into our inheritance, receiving the abundant spiritual gifts God rains down upon us, and sharing God’s grace so that all people, everyone in our community, can join us in the kin-dom of God. Amen.

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Watch a video of the worship service:

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on John 15:26-16:15, Acts 2:1-21.

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When I was in grad school, I took a course one semester titled, “A Differential Geometric Approach to Nonlinear Control.” The course started with a discussion of manifolds, diffeomorphisms, Lie brackets and Lie derivatives, and so forth. For about six weeks, I sat in the class and listened as if it were a foreign language. One day, it suddenly all made sense. Unfortunately, that experience didn’t stick with me, and when I’ve looked in that textbook, I can only read about a page before my eyes roll back in my head.

Many people have that same experience if they study theology. Probably even most people here today. If we were in a Sunday School class and I told you that I use a hermeneutic of love, you would probably miss the word “love” and get hung up on “hermeneutic.” Calvin taught us about predestination, but theologians have been untangling that concept ever since. Salvation, justification, sanctification—what do we mean? What does it mean to “be saved”? Saved from what? Justification—isn’t that something to do with typing and margins?

Then there are some more common words you might hear around a congregation—like the word “congregation,” instead of “crowd” or “audience.” Only church people use “fellowship” as a verb. We use the word “mission” to mean something different than in the corporate world, and for that matter, many congregations use it to mean something more like “charity.” Before I was asked to serve on it, I had never heard of a “session” as being a committee.

I am in the business of using precise language. I know how important it is to distinguish between, say, energy and power. But I also know that jargon and insider language have a way of erecting barriers. Language becomes a way to signal that “we,” whoever that “we” might be, are distinct from “they,” or from “you.” It’s a way to send a subtle signal of tribal membership. Like, we’re church people and if you can’t understand us, then you don’t belong here.

But how do these words and concepts bring us closer to God? More importantly, how do they speak to the world at large? If you read or watch the news, you will see endless stories of the troubles in our community, state, nation, and world. Poverty, homelessness, and crime. A raging pandemic that has resulted in millions of hospitalizations and deaths, and has led to loneliness and isolation for millions more. Political conflict that even creates barriers between friends and within families. Oppression based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Uneven wealth, both within our nation and among the nations of the world, where 9% of the world’s population survives on less than $2 per day. If you are homeless, what does salvation mean? If you have been marginalized because of who you are, rather than what you have done, what does justification mean?

Ancient Judea was also such a world. The once-mighty nation of Israel was an occupied province of the Roman empire. The Jews were oppressed because of their religion. There was continuous political unrest, with divisions between the zealots and those who worked to appease the Roman occupiers. The Holy Spirit was poured out upon this turmoil to erase these divisions. The disciples were empowered to preach “God’s deeds of power,” a message the gathered crowd was ready to hear. They spoke of God’s ability to change the world and to heal their nation. To unite everyone and welcome everyone into God’s family.

On the day of Pentecost, the disciples were all together. This was the birth of the Christian church, a single body of Christ. Ever since then, we have been finding reasons to split up. The most recent divisions have emerged over issues of social justice, women’s roles, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Some people respond by saying, “Teach tolerance.” That is grossly insufficient. Tolerance is to say that a person is wrong, but you will overlook their wrongness. Can you imagine saying to a close family member—a spouse, parent, or child—that you “tolerate” them? I hope I never reach that point. The next level up is “acceptance.” Acceptance is an acknowledgement of difference with just a hint of judgment. Kind of like saying, “I love you anyway.” There is still division and distinction. How about “welcome”? It has become somewhat common for churches to say, “All are welcome.” First of all, saying it doesn’t make it true. Secondly, what does that mean? “Welcome” to what? Welcome to sit in the sanctuary? I’m glad churches are saying that their ushers aren’t acting as bouncers. Welcome—but looked at as guests and outsiders? And who is “all”? For centuries, “all” has had an asterisk: all people who fit a certain demographic, who look and act a certain way. In modern churches, the usual distinctions are related to sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as age and class.

The Holy Spirit led the disciples to be not only welcoming, but also inclusive. The gathered crowd was divided by language, so the Holy Spirit enabled the disciples to speak to each person in the language they could understand. Peter quotes the prophet Joel’s apocalyptic vision of inclusion. The spirit would be poured out upon everyone, regardless of age, gender, or social class. In the same way, the Holy Spirit calls us to spread the Gospel to everyone and include them—truly include them—in Christ’s body, which is the church.

What does it mean to be inclusive? I found a good definition on a site called “Humor That Works.”

An organization is inclusive when everyone has a sense of belonging; feels respected, valued and seen for who they are as individuals; and feels a level of supportive energy and commitment from leaders, colleagues, and others so that all people–individually and collectively–can do their best work.

Humor That Works

Although describing a business or non-profit, this definition works pretty well for a church, too. An inclusive church values each person for who they are as an individual. People are not pigeonholed according to their demographic category, but are valued for the particular ways they have been blessed by God and the particular ways they are blessings to others. This is not to imply that their gender, ethnicity, age, or sexual orientation is meaningless. It is to acknowledge that those characteristics have influenced the experiences that person has had, but do not define their gifts or the ways they can be a part of Christ’s body.

Every church struggles with inclusion in some way. The evangelical movement is still struggling with the roles that women may take. Beth Moore has, for decades, led large-scale Bible studies, speaking at stadium-style events. As a Southern Baptist, though, she could never be called a preacher. Over the past few years, she has been pushing back against the culture within her denomination that treats women with disrespect. Finally in March, she broke ties with both her publisher, Lifeway, and the Southern Baptist Convention. She could no longer participate in a denomination and organization that seemed to value misogyny, nationalism, and partisan politics over the Gospel.

It’s easy for us, though, to say we’re not like that. We have a female pastor, right? Not only that, but our denomination officially allows for the ordination of gay pastors, elders, and deacons and for blessing gay marriages. Problem solved, right? Well, no. Remember, there is a spectrum from tolerance to acceptance to welcome to inclusion. Rules in the Book of Order are ultimately only the beginning. Those rules indicate tolerance or perhaps acceptance. There are plenty of PC(USA) churches out there that would struggle with calling a female pastor, and even more that wouldn’t call a gay pastor, no matter what their other gifts. I think our congregation does better than most, but there’s plenty of work to be done. There are plenty of people in our community who need to feel the love of God, who need a connection to Christ’s body, who need to hear the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand, and is available to them right here, right now.

Let me return to that day of Pentecost. In the passage, the gathered crowd lists all the places they came from. The list includes modern-day Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Italy, and Turkey. Considering that most people traveled by foot, that’s a pretty broad swath of land. I think that answers in part the question, “Why was Jesus born 2000 years ago?” I mean, I understand why Jesus was born, but why then? Well, between the Pax Romana, the expanding shipping industry, and the vast network of Roman roads, moving around the Near East was easier than ever. It had become possible, for example, for Parthians to move from modern-day Iran to Jerusalem. By the same token, it had become possible for the first apostles to travel throughout Syria, Turkey, Greece, and North Africa.

We live in an even more connected world today. Thanks to the Internet, people can access the Gospel all around the world. I recently heard an American speaker talking about her 80-year-old Catholic mother listening to homilies from parishes around the nation and even from far-away places like India. Every week, I post both a podcast of the sermon and a video of the worship service. While we were shut down, the videos regularly received 40 or more views. Since re-opening, the number has dropped to the teens. Still, that’s a dozen people who would not otherwise be able to worship God.

Of course, that raises an obvious question: Are the people who watch the videos online truly worshipping God with us? What “counts”? I was talking recently with a dear friend of mine who lives in Ohio. She had a falling out with her local church a few years ago. Since then, her family has been essentially unchurched. But an amazing thing happened. Her brother and sister attend a church in Baltimore that started livestreaming worship last summer. She started “attending” worship because of that connection. She has since joined in a monthly faith formation group that her sister leads. Now, she wouldn’t have been connected with that particular church without the family connection, but still, the pandemic enabled a church in Baltimore to reach someone in Ohio. I assert that she is no longer unchurched, that she is just as much a part of that worshipping community as if she lived in Baltimore.

What defines a church? What defines OUR church? The Great Ends of the Church in our Book of Order are:

1. The proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind.
2. The shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God.
3. The maintenance of divine worship.
4. The preservation of the truth.
5. The promotion of social righteousness.
6. The exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.

The closest this list comes to requiring us to gather in a sanctuary on a Sunday morning is “the maintenance of divine worship.” However, I have been in truly wonderful worship services in the chapel, in the fellowship hall, in a city park, and in the woods. This in-person gathering is helpful for “the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God,” but there are other ways for us to connect to one another. This gathering is certainly not essential to the promotion of social righteousness or the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world. Yes, we are, right here, right now, living in the Kingdom of Heaven, but I also experience God’s kingdom when I work at The Mission, or when I talk with a student about something in their personal life. I experienced it when I hosted a parents’ panel for LGBTQ+ Rolla, even though there was at least one atheist among us. I experience it when my family is gathered together. I experience it when I go elk hunting each year.

There are many ways to be Christ’s body, to pursue the six Great Ends of the Church. So long as we are proclaiming the gospel, preserving the truth, and promoting social righteousness, we are exhibiting God’s kingdom.

On that first Pentecost, Peter remembered the words of Joel: “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” Today as we once again celebrate that ancient outpouring of the Holy Spirit, let us all dream dreams. Together let’s pursue a vision where all people are included in Christ’s body, whether they are with us physically or online or in our hearts. Let’s pursue a vision where all people are included in Christ’s body, whether or not they look or dress or think or act like us. Let’s pursue a vision where all people are included in Christ’s body, knowing the good news of unity and reconciliation that we know by the power of the Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit! Amen.

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