Category: Sermons

Sermon preached on February 4, 2024, Fifth Sunday After Epiphany, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 and Mark 1:29-39.

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Richard Bach is the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which was incidentally the source of my name. It was his first novel and a breakout hit. He is a pilot by nature and training, though, so after its success, Bach turned back to flying as a career. Eventually, he wrote another novel, Illusions. In its preface, he wrote, “I do not enjoy writing at all. If I can turn my back on an idea, out there in the dark, if I can avoid opening the door to it, I won’t even reach for a pencil. But once in a while there’s a great dynamite-burst of flying glass and brick and splinters through the front wall and somebody stalks over the rubble, seizes me by the throat and gently says, ‘I will not let you go until you set me, in words, on paper.’ That’s how I met Illusions.”

When we speak about a calling, that’s usually what we have in mind. God calls you to do something in particular and won’t let you go. You feel a sense of urgency about it, and it becomes all-consuming. Maybe, like Jonah, you try to avoid your calling, and life falls apart. You find yourself metaphorically swallowed by a great fish, and decide, OK, I’ll do it, I’ll follow my calling.

That’s not the only type of calling, though. A more common form is where you have just a subtle feeling of being on the right path. You feel a little urge to do something, and it feels right. So you do it some more, and it feels even more right. Eventually, you find yourself on a path that is just so natural, you can’t imagine your life any differently. That’s more or less the way I would describe my calling to church leadership. I didn’t have a great vision or anything like that. I just started doing things, and they felt right, so I did some more, and now here I am.

There is a third form of calling, too, similar to what we read in Mark this morning. Jesus did some amazing things, healing Simon’s mother-in-law and many other people. So, people wanted to follow him. Simon and the others who sought Jesus didn’t really know what they were getting themselves into. All they knew was that they wanted to be a part of whatever Jesus was doing.

Whatever form your calling takes, the important thing is to act on it. Grow into it. If you don’t know what God is asking you to do, perhaps a little time encountering the scripture together this morning could help.

Paul’s calling was of the first type. He had a dramatic encounter on the road to Damascus. It took him a little while to decipher its meaning, but once he did, he knew he had to act on it. He was called to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles around the Greek-speaking Roman Empire. This was a transformational message in many ways. First, he had to transform Judaism itself. In Judea, the dominant schools of thought within Judaism were fundamentally nationalistic to varying degrees. Most Jews in Judea thought that Jerusalem was the very center of the cosmos, that historical Israel was the essential homeland, and that “real” Jews were descendants of Abraham. Out in the Diaspora, though, Hellenized Jews had a more flexible understanding. Jerusalem and historical Israel still figured largely in their belief system, but so did the local synagogue. Proselytes, that is, Gentiles who converted to Judaism, were somewhat common.

Paul was born in that Hellenized Jewish environment. His encounter with our risen Lord transformed his beliefs even further. Now, he realized that proselytes did not need to become Jewish to become a part of God’s family. Greeks did not need to be circumcised and initiated into Judaism. They just needed to be baptized and welcomed into Christ’s family, which transcends Abraham’s earthly descendants.

So, as Paul wrote in today’s passage, he lived as a Jew among Jews and as a Greek among Greeks. Between his encounter on the road to Damascus and his travels to Corinth and Ephesus and other cities around the Roman Empire, he spent years in study to determine what was essential to participating in God’s kingdom and what was only culturally relevant to being a Jew.

We could read this passage and think, Paul just goes along with whatever people want to do. He’s just some easygoing, you-do-you kind of guy, right? WRONG! Paul never held back when people were violating some important tenet of this newly-developing religion. I would not characterize any of his writings as “gentle.” He was more of a firebrand, never afraid of a confrontation.

Instead, we should see this as encouraging relational evangelism, rather than colonial evangelism. Pastor Dennis talked about relational evangelism a couple of weeks ago. Colonial evangelism is what a lot of Christians did over the past few centuries. Colonial evangelism emerges from a belief that our God is the True God, and the way we understand God is the only way to understand God, and the way we live is the only right way to live in God’s kingdom. There were some great successes over the centuries. One article I read concluded that there was a positive correlation between Christian missionary activity and the strength of democracy among colonized peoples in the Pacific. Missionaries also brought medicine and hygiene practices and many other benefits to primitive societies, and dismantled evil practices like cannibalism and human sacrifice. But along the way, some of them also destroyed local cultures that were supremely life-giving. They destroyed inherited knowledge about the best way to live in that place and ecosystem. They disrupted and destroyed the lives of children. And they paved the way for military conquest that ultimately led to the loss of freedom for millions of people.

Many forms of evangelism in America today are colonial in some sense. They imagine that there is only one right way to live and only one right way to believe and only one right way to follow God, and they insist that everyone join in. This is a major election year, so I feel compelled to remind everyone that Jesus was not a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or anything else. No political party can claim to follow God’s law perfectly. No nation has been specially chosen by God—not the modern state of Israel, not America, none. We have all been chosen to be a part of God’s kingdom. We all have different ways of doing God’s will.

The task before us, then, is to determine what is essential and what is not. Many of the members of this congregation have at some time been ordained an elder or deacon and pledged to be guided by the Book of Confessions and Book of Order. Well, the first chapter of the Book of Order states that “Human beings have no higher goal in life than to glorify and enjoy God now and forever, living in covenant fellowship with God and participating in God’s mission.” It goes on to say that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church, who calls the Church into Being. This is essential. The portion of the Book of Order that relates to worship lays out a fourfold ordo, saying that our worship should be structured as Gathering, the Word, the Sacraments, and Sending.

But elsewhere it says, “We acknowledge that all forms of worship are provisional and subject to reformation according to the Word of God.” What that means is, we don’t have to worship in a sanctuary on Sunday mornings at 9:45 am with a piano and organ. We don’t have to center the worship on a sermon where one person talks and everyone else just sits and listens. We don’t need to have a choir. We don’t have to wear robes, or use liturgical colors for our vestments and paraments, or anything else. These are all choices that we have made. They are good choices, and they are meaningful to me as they probably are to most of you gathered here today, but they are not essential.

You know what else is not essential? “Christianese.” That’s the special language we use that marks us as insiders. I just used a bunch of it. What is a sanctuary? Well, the name means someplace holy, but we have taken it to mean a large room marked with symbols of our faith where we gather to worship. What really is the difference between a sanctuary and a chapel? We could use other words, like auditorium. What are paraments and liturgical colors? Paraments are these cloths that we put on the pulpit and table. Oh, a pulpit could just as well be called a podium, I suppose. Liturgy is literally the work of the people, but it has come to mean the words we say in our worship and the seasons of the church and things like that.

OK, those are all churchy words that you probably wouldn’t use in casual conversation. But there are others that have slippery meanings and can push people away from church. Next Monday, a campus group is having a sort of interfaith dialogue. We were trying to decide what topics would be meaningful to people from a wide range of faith traditions—Christian, Muslim, Hindu, secular humanist. One guy suggested “salvation.” I pushed back against that because there are a LOT of assumptions built into the word. “Salvation” means being saved—but from what? If a person doesn’t come from a specifically Christian background, or doesn’t accept the doctrine of Hell, then “salvation” becomes meaningless. What about “grace”? It’s hard enough to explain what grace is to another Christian, let alone someone outside of a Christian context.

Again in the Book of Order, we find that, “The Church is to be a community of witness, pointing beyond itself through word and work to the good news of God’s transforming grace in Christ Jesus its Lord.” If we want to witness to and transform THE WORLD, then we need to meet people where they are. We cannot simply serve people who are just like us. We need to serve people who need to know the God of love that we know. That means learning to see life from their perspective and speaking to their needs.

I’m a professor, so I’m going to give you homework, but I won’t be collecting it or grading it. I still want you to do it, and yes, it will be on the test, the test that our Lord will give you when the race is run. If you have a specific calling—specific people that you want to serve and with whom you want to share the Gospel—your task this week is to learn as much as you can about their perspective. If you do NOT have a specific calling in mind and you’re still searching for one, choose Millennials in central Missouri. Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996, so they are right now between 28 and 43 years old. Probably beyond college and into raising families, if they followed the traditional path. Learn all that you can about what they’ve been through in the past decade and what their needs are today. Do not assume that their life at age 40 is like your life was at age 40. If you have kids or grandkids in this age group, do not assume that everyone in that group is like your family. Read articles online. If there’s a good book that you find, tell people about it. Learn all that you can.

And then there’s a second part of your homework. Once you see life through their eyes, the task before you, and the task before all of us, is to show them a path to the God that we know. The path should start where they are, and lead to a life of love and community. Just as you need to know where they are coming from, you need to know what you believe so you know where to lead them. So the second task I’m giving you is to read the Brief Statement of Faith that you should have received on the way in. This was added to our Book of Confessions when the historically northern and southern halves of what is now PC(USA) merged in 1983. It has some great stuff in it. You might not 100% agree with it all, or even understand it all. But I want you to spend some time with it and internalize those tenets of our faith that really resonate with you, the things that reflect your understanding of God, of Christ, of the Church, and of our place in the world. Maybe three or four things that are really, truly meaningful to you.

It’s time now to turn to the Lord’s Table to celebrate the Eucharist. That’s some more Christianese. If you really think about what it is we are about to do, it’s hard to understand, and even harder to explain to an outsider. I’m not sure that anyone really knows what happens here at the Table. But I do know this: Through this Sacrament, Christ is here among us, and the Triune God sustains us. Through this Sacrament, we are connected to the one holy, apostolic, and catholic Church, God’s people in every place and every time. And we are empowered to go forth and build God’s kingdom. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on January 7, 2024, which combined Epiphany and Baptism of the Lord. Based on Matthew 2:1-12 and Mark 1:4-11.

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Last month, Rhonda and I took a trip to Pittsburgh to see Jesse direct the Pitt bell choir in their Christmas concert. On the way, we visited an old high school friend of mine, Sharon. She has three kids and the youngest is now in high school. We started talking about what comes next. She has a mechanical engineering degree but hasn’t worked as an engineer for more than a decade. Right now, she still has home commitments that limit her career options, but she has been substitute teaching and also teaching an enrichment program for middle school students that is focused on engineering. My comment was that it’s good that she is thinking about the future now, because whatever path she chooses may require a credential of some sort that would take some time to acquire.

I went through something similar a few years ago. In 2017, Lou Ellen got sick one Saturday and asked me to deliver her sermon. Then in 2018, she asked me to fill the pulpit when she was traveling. I was also doing a bunch of other things for the church and wondering what was next in my life. I didn’t know what God had in store for me, but I knew that whatever it was would require some education. So, I started down the path to become a commissioned ruling elder, which meant completing a certificate in congregational leadership through the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary.

Little did I know that I would be called upon to use my skills and talents to help lead this church. Fortunately, I was prepared. I had the knowledge I needed when the time was right. The process towards being commissioned kind of stalled out, but I have started working in that direction again, depending on what the congregation decides to do.

We live in the information age. We are awash in information, some of it good, some of it useless, some of it erroneous, some of it intentionally misleading. Information everywhere, on the radio and TV, on our phones, from legitimate news sources and social media, from experts and from charlatans. In the ancient world, information was hard to come by. That’s why Herod was so desperate to get information from the visiting magi and from the scribes, and to control who knew what and when.

These days, we suffer not from too little information, but from too much. Still, our task is to turn information into knowledge. We need to sift through the information, keep what is good and useful, reject what is irrelevant or misleading, and apply it to the task at hand. This task requires curiosity and, more importantly, focus. I get a weekly email from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. Recently, he wrote,

Curiosity can empower you or impede you.

Being curious and focused is a powerful combination. I define this combination as unleashing your curiosity within the domain of a particular task: asking questions about how things work, exploring different lines of attack for solving the problem, reading ideas from outside domains while always looking for ways to transfer the knowledge back to your main task, and so on. Even though you’re exploring widely, you’re generally moving the ball forward on the main thing. You start something and you keep searching until you find an effective way to finish it.

Meanwhile, when your curiosity sends you off in a dozen different directions and fractures your attention, then it can prevent you from focusing on one thing long enough to see it through to completion. Curious, but unfocused. You’re jumping from one topic to the next, they aren’t necessarily related, your efforts don’t accumulate, you’re simply exploring. You start many things and finish few.

How is your curiosity being directed? Is it rocket fuel or a roadblock?

James Clear

Clear makes an excellent point. Gathering information doesn’t necessarily lead to the knowledge you need to solve a problem. At heart, I am an engineer, which means that I’m a problem solver. Once I latch onto a technical problem, I am skilled at finding out all of the different possible paths to solve it. If that’s all I did, though, I would not be successful in academia. Research is less about problem solving, and more about problem finding. Sometimes, that means peeling back the layers of a problem to find the root of it, and sometimes that means developing something even more important than knowledge: wisdom.

Thomas Merton once wrote, “People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.” Knowledge is the ability to climb the ladder, but wisdom is knowing which wall to lean it against.

Let’s take an example: our preschool. Tracy is a wonderful director who has the skills and talents needed to solve a wide range of problems. More importantly, though, she has identified the right problems to solve. She could have been content to keep serving the same number of kids in the same age groups with the same basic services. Instead, she recognized some additional needs for the kids—such as nutritious meals—and an additional age group that was severely under-served: infants. Once she identified that problem, she set about solving it. Now we have a renovated upstairs classroom with a fire escape so that we can serve that new demographic.

If you look around the sanctuary today, you probably see another problem: a congregation that is smaller and older than when I first joined fifteen years ago. It’s tempting to say that we need more people and younger people to worship with us. But that is the wrong problem to solve. That is perhaps a symptom, but not the root cause.

The fundamental problem is that there are people in our community who have a deep longing for connection, community, belonging, and love, but don’t know where to find it, and certainly are not looking here. According to a Pew Research Center study, about 40% of Missouri adults do not experience a sense of peace and well-being at least once a week. That’s perhaps 10,000 adults in Phelps County who are surviving more than thriving. We have just celebrated the birth of the Prince of Peace. Susan spoke last week about the coming of Christ’s kingdom, in which Christ judges the nations based on how they cared for those who are in need. Perhaps we have a message for our community. Perhaps we can be a source of love, of peace, of connection, of belonging for those who are struggling to find their place in the world.

The danger, though, is that we would expect their problems to be like our problems, and their desires to be like our desires. The majority of adults in Phelps County are younger than me. Many of them either did not grow up in a church, or grew up knowing church as a place of discomfort and exclusion and guilt, not a place of acceptance and joy. Those who grew up unchurched surely assume that all Christian churches are the same as what they see in the media: judgmental, greedy organizations that protect abusers and only really value straight white men. They don’t know who we are. They aren’t staying away because of our worship style, or our building architecture, or whatever. We aren’t even on their radar screen as a place where they might want to go.

So what do we do? Well, the first step is to really identify the problem, and narrow it down to a problem that we can solve together. Paul Shane Spear said, “As one person I cannot change the world, but I can change the world of one person.” I don’t really think that all 10,000 adults in Phelps County who need to experience peace and well-being should show up here next Sunday. If nothing else, that would make me very anxious, that many people trying to mob their way into our sanctuary! This is why I’ve been asking you to think about your calling. What is one small part of the problems in our community that you think you can solve, or that you think we can solve as a congregation?

The next step, after identifying the problem, is to seek the knowledge you need to solve it. A lot of people in the congregation are Baby Boomers, and a few of us are Gen X. Roughly a third of the population of Phelps County is either Millennials or Gen Z. I would wager that very few of us really know the problems facing those generations or what sort of community they are looking for. Sure, you might have kids or grandkids who can clue you in, but that’s a pretty narrow data set. If they grew up in your household, they probably have already heard the message we have to share anyway. I spend a lot of time around college students, but I wouldn’t say that I really understand their perspective, their desires, or their spiritual needs.

Once you have the knowledge you need, it’s time to act on it. We have heard two stories today about being timely. First, we have the magi and the scribes. The scribes spent their time studying the Law, which is what we call the Old Testament plus the interpretations that were accumulated over the centuries. They knew what to expect, but they didn’t know when. The magi studied the natural world. They knew when something important was happening, but didn’t know what exactly. The two groups together found the Anointed One, a baby who was born to be king. Next, we have the story of Jesus’s baptism. John the Baptist was preparing the way. He was working to make sure the conditions would be favorable when the time came for the Messiah to appear. When Jesus came to the Jordan to be baptized, the skies were opened and God announced that it was time. The years and centuries of waiting for the Messiah were at an end, and the world was ready to receive the Incarnation, God With Us.

But how can you know that it’s time? My first nudge came from Lou Ellen, prodding me towards the pulpit and then towards the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. My second nudge came when she left our pulpit, and it was time for me to get to work.

Sometimes it’s not so obvious, though. Most of you know that I’m also involved with LGBTQ+ Rolla. For several years, I was thinking about ways to serve LGBTQ+ individuals in our community. Then the pandemic hit. I would not say that the summer of 2020 was a good time to start a social organization. We couldn’t really gather, except in very small groups outside or else online. Building a community online is very difficult, much more difficult than building one in person. It would have been better if I had started the group earlier, say in 2018. Or I could have waited until all of the conditions were just right, and I would probably still be waiting.

I should have started earlier, but there’s a proverb that goes, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is right now.” It’s easy to look back and regret failing to act, just like it’s easy to say that the time is not quite right yet and we need to wait for…something. Perhaps we will be visited by some wise men who saw a star, or perhaps the sky will open and we will see the Holy Spirit descending like a dove, or perhaps tongues of fire will rest on us like on that first Pentecost. But if none of that happens, we still need to watch for the little signs that God is at work, and join in.

So my charge to you this Epiphany is to seek first the wisdom to know which problem God wants you to solve, and then the knowledge you need to solve it. My charge to you this Baptism of the Lord Sunday is to remember your own baptism, your own promise or one made in your name to be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his word and showing his love. Let us together find ways to participate in God’s work. We cannot solve all of the problems in the world, but with God’s help, we can continue the world’s transformation into the peaceable kingdom. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 24, 2023, Fourth Sunday of Advent. Based on Luke 1:26-38, 46-55.

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The event we hear today is memorialized by Roman Catholics in their prayer called the Angelus. When I go to the White House Retreat Center, we pray the Angelus three times daily. Each time through includes three Hail Marys. You know, Roman Catholics kind of have a “thing” for Mary. The Rosary is the most obvious example. The complete Rosary has five decades, each of which has ten Hail Marys. That’s fifty times praying, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” And so on. I think the reason they focus so much on Mary is that Jesus seems too intimidating. Yes, Catholics pray to and through Jesus, but more often, they pray to a saint like Mary and ask the saint to intercede on their behalf. Mary seems so close to Jesus, and yet approachable.

Yet along the way, Mary has been elevated to this ethereal woman, almost otherworldly. She seems so serene, so meek, an obedient handmaid of God. She is a source of peace and a role model for women. Sinless, placid, humble, obedient. OK, I can accept that she is a saint in the sense that she has joined the heavenly choirs, but the earthly Mary that we read about in the Gospels is nothing like that.

Protestants have rebelled against this elevation of Mary and instead have degraded her. They treat her almost like an empty vessel. She was just a convenient womb to incubate the Incarnation. This attitude gave rise to the popular song, “Mary Did You Know.” It’s a beautiful song that talks about the man that Mary’s baby would grow up to be. I love the melody, and I love the image of a baby growing into our Lord and Savior. But the song is all wrong. Listen to the last verse:

Mary, did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is heaven’s perfect Lamb?
That sleeping child you’re holding is the great, I Am.

Mary, Did You Know? Words & Music by Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene

This is a beautiful vision of the man that Jesus would become, and the potential within the infant that we will be celebrating tonight, but the answer to every line is a resounding “YES!” Mary knew, because Gabriel told her.

Mary was neither some perfect model of obedience and submission nor an empty vessel who had no idea what was going on. Mary was tough. When Gabriel gave her his message, she didn’t hesitate to ask what she needed to know: how will it happen? She needed to know what she was getting into.

Motherhood is a blessing, but it’s not easy. It certainly wasn’t easy in first-century Galilee. They had midwives but medical care was, shall we say, meager. Death in childbirth was common—I read somewhere that as many as 1 in 3 mothers died giving birth. Not only that, but infant mortality rates were pretty high, so she would be charged with caring for a very fragile young life. The serene image in Christmas cards or on display in nativity scenes doesn’t reflect the reality of childbirth: noisy, messy, and painful. Nor does it reflect the sleepless nights and utter misery of being a new mother. Compounding Mary’s situation was the fact that she would be pregnant out of wedlock. She was betrothed to a man who was not the biological father, so she didn’t know whether he would follow through with the wedding or not. She didn’t know if the rest of her family, and his, would accept her. And being the mother of the Messiah meant that the birth would be just the beginning. Almost every messianic movement ends in bloodshed. Next week, we will hear Simeon, a prophet in the Temple, tell her, “A sword will pierce your own soul, too.”

And yet, Mary said yes. This was not an act of submission and subservience, but a commitment to take on the challenge. Like so many prophets before her, when God called to her, she said, Here I am, Lord. Choose me.

And like so many prophets before her, she responded with a bold prophetic announcement that we call the Magnificat. This is not a hymn of joy so much as the start of a revolution. “God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” And on it goes, declaring that the order of society will be overturned. Mary celebrates her role in the revolution. She rejoices that God has done this great thing for her, allowing her to birth the Messiah. She rejoices at being Jesus’s first disciple.

Catholics pray, “Hail Mary, full of grace,” a phrase taken from the Latin Vulgate. The NRSV translation is, “Greetings, favored one!” This more accurately captures the sentiment that Mary was the recipient of grace, not the source of it. God chose her to give birth to and raise the Messiah. Why? We don’t know. Nowhere does it say that she was particularly devout, or extra kind, or anything else. She was chosen just as other prophets were chosen: for no obvious reason except that God saw great promise in her heart. Her prophetic song helps us to understand the kind of mother that Jesus had. She was convinced that God was doing a great thing for her and for the world through her. She recognized God’s strength and mercy. She was prepared for a revolution that would raise the lowly and bring down the powerful. As we sang earlier, the world is about to turn.

 But wait: in the Bible verses, Mary says that God has done great things—past tense. The hymn says that the world is about to turn—in the near future. Which is it? Well, just as Christ was born and will be born anew in our hearts, the revolution is still going on. The complete transformation of the world takes a while. Yet Mary knew that something important was happening. She knew that without the coming of the Messiah, God’s plan for the salvation of the world could not come to pass. She knew that she had been chosen for a critical role in that plan. God had been hard at work throughout the history of Israel, and had already done a lot, but now the transformation process would go into hyperdrive. She was willing to do whatever God asked of her so that Jesus’s mission could be accomplished.

But again, why was Mary chosen, and what was special about her? Well, nothing, really. She was just an unmarried young woman of unknown lineage from a small village in a backwater. She wasn’t a priest like Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist who received his calling in the Temple. She wasn’t like Simeon and Anna, prophets we will hear about next week who were righteous and devout and spent all their time in the Temple, worshipping with fasting and prayer. She certainly wasn’t one of the rich and powerful. Just an ordinary woman in an ordinary place.

In that way, she wasn’t much different from us. We are pretty far from the seats of power, whether political or economic or cultural. That doesn’t change the fact that God is calling each one of us to take part in the transformation of the world into God’s kingdom. Each of us has a role to play. None of us have as big a job as Mary did, but even small roles are important. I will again remind you to consider how God is calling you personally to work towards the reconciliation of the world. How can you take part in God’s work, and how can this church and its members help to further your calling? What seemingly impossible task has God set before you, and how can you say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord”?

Tonight, we will gather again to worship and remember that Jesus was born more than 2000 years ago. He took on flesh and came to demonstrate what true love looks like, to help us to turn towards God and participate in God’s work, to re-orient our priorities. Yet that would not have happened if Mary hadn’t said “yes.” May God show you what task has been laid out for you, and give you also the courage to say “yes.” Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 10, 2023, Second Sunday of Advent. Based on Mark 1:1-8.

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Repent! That’s the usual word we associate with John the Baptist. He came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. We commonly understand “repentance” to be related to “penitence.” To repent is to confess your sins, to meditate on your wrongdoing, to make amends where possible, and to suffer the guilt you have incurred.

Prisons used to be set up along these lines. First came the Pennsylvania system, advocated by the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, whose most active members were Quakers. In 1829, they founded the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia that applied the principle that solitary confinement fosters penitence and encourages reformation. Prisoners were kept in isolated cells measuring twelve feet by seven-and-a-half feet. They each even had their own exercise yards to prevent contact among prisoners. They were expected to stay separated and think about their crimes and their sinfulness. Eventually, prisoners were also tasked with solitary crafts like shoemaking and weaving. The Pennsylvania system spread across the US and Europe. There were two criticisms: one, that it had terrible effects on the prisoners’ mental health, and two, that it was too expensive. Guess which one was the more compelling argument.

The Pennsylvania system was largely replaced by the Auburn system, which started in Auburn, New York. Instead of living entirely solitary lives, prisoners were kept in solitary confinement at night but worked together during the day. However, they were forced to remain silent at all times, again so that they could think about their crimes and their sinfulness. Both the Pennsylvania and Auburn systems were predicated on the belief that criminal habits were learned from other criminals and spread like a disease. Ultimately, both were found to be both expensive and inhumane, as well as ineffective.

The conventional wisdom is that repentance starts with confession and ends with some form of penance. But the Greek word that we translate “repentance” is metanoia, which has a slightly different connotation. Metanoia means changing your mind. More broadly, it means a turning of your heart and soul towards God. Only later did confession and penance become a prerequisite for repentance.

Now, I’m not saying that confession is a bad thing, or that there is no need for penance. Both are essential spiritual practices. I’m just saying that the order is wrong. The first step is to turn towards God. John called the people out to the Jordan to have a different look at God. In the Temple, they were too distracted by the rituals and the sacrifices to see what matters. Like so many prophets before him, John called the people not to sacrifice more animals, but in the words of Micah, to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with God.

When you really turn towards God, though, the first thing you realize is just how far short you fall of God’s plans for you. You are made in the image of God. You are made to love like God and to serve others like God and to forgive like God. Yet each and every one of us falls far short of God’s glory, so when we see ourselves in the bright light of God’s love, we see our flaws. We see the ways in which we need to seek forgiveness from God, and so we confess our sins. God’s response is always forgiving and merciful, but God’s justice is ultimately restorative. Seeing ourselves in the light of God’s love moves us to restore what we can—to heal relationships, to care for those in need, to fix the broken systems that we are bound up in. This is true penitence, true repentance: turning towards God, and then doing God’s work in the world.

Baptism, then, is not the end, but the beginning. It is a sign and seal of God’s grace, an outward symbol of an inward change. Baptism is a ritual in which we accept God’s unwarranted grace, God’s unearned but infinite love. It is a time when we start our walk with God and begin looking at the world as God does.

I mentioned spiritual practices recently, both in a sermon and a newsletter article. By the way, the sign-up sheet I mentioned is on a clipboard hanging from the easel in the narthex. Anyway, over Thanksgiving, I had the opportunity to chat some with my sister, Jennifer, who is a United Methodist pastor. I asked her about her spiritual practices, some of which are similar to mine, though her Bible study is deep rather than broad. Then she told me about one that I have added to my life over the past few weeks. She said that every day, she tells herself to “be on the lookout for God.”

That’s another form of repentance. We turn towards God by looking for God’s work in the world. Have you ever noticed that you tend to find what you are looking for? A prime example is that when a woman in your life is pregnant—your wife, or sister, or daughter, or a close friend, or whoever—you suddenly notice pregnant women everywhere. It’s not that there are more pregnant women then, just that you notice them because your mind is primed to see them. In the same way, if we prime our minds to look for God, we will see that God is at work every day, everywhere.

Let me give you an example. Last weekend, I was gone because Rhonda and I went to Pittsburgh to visit Jesse and see their bell choir performance. Jesse is a senior, so this was their last performance as director. Now, traveling with Rhonda in our new van is much better than in our SUV with the lift on the back to haul the wheelchair, but it’s still a hassle. Each time we stop, I have to put out the ramp, undo four straps, move things out of the way on the floorboard, let her drive out, close the ramp up, and turn the car off. Then when we’re ready to go again, I do it all in reverse—start the van, put the ramp down, let her drive in and get positioned just right, strap the wheelchair down, move things around in the floorboard, close up the ramp. OK, it’s not hard, it’s just a hassle that takes a few minutes.

Well, one morning, we both needed a restroom break and drinks. We stopped at a McDonald’s and got unloaded. Then we realized that the dining room was closed even though the drive-thru was open, due to staff shortages. Ugh. Wish I had seen the sign before we got unloaded! We turned around to get back in the van to drive over to a gas station instead, when a woman poked her head out. She said that they were short-staffed but we could go in to use the restroom. We did, then went on to a gas station to get drinks so that we wouldn’t add to their burden.

Now, where was God? Well, the woman just happened to look in our direction and see Rhonda in a wheelchair. She was working behind the counter and wouldn’t normally have seen anything happening out in the parking lot in that direction. Not only that, but she also took time out of her extremely busy morning to let us in. I’m thankful for the grace she showed.

Now I could just write it off as a coincidence that she looked in our direction, and you might say that it was just common courtesy that she let Rhonda in. We get a lot of people helping in small ways when we’re out and about. But I would rather see it as a subtle way of God working in the world to foster human connection and a better society.

Let me give you another. I was at a university event earlier this week, and a woman came over to me. She introduced herself and thanked me for something nice I had done for her mother, something I don’t even remember doing. Now, to me, it was just one of a thousand things I had done on some day in the distant past, but to this woman and her mother, it was important. It was important enough to the mother that she mentioned it to her daughter, and important enough to the daughter to remember me for it. It touched them. That wasn’t me—that was God at work through me.

These are just two things that happened in the past week that were big enough to share with you. The more I pay attention, the more I see God at work in big ways and small. This was John’s calling: turn yourself towards God and see that God is coming into your life, today.

Many of my spiritual practices are organized in my Monk Manual, which is a sort of planner. I would be happy to show you my Monk Manual or to tell you more about it, but the important point here is that it is built around cycles of prepare, act, and reflect. There is a daily cycle, a weekly cycle, and monthly, quarterly, annual, and lifetime cycles. Each cycle includes a reflection so that you can see what good things have happened to you, what has made you feel unrest, and what God has been teaching you. By looking back on how God was working, you prepare yourself to look forward to God acting in your life on the next cycle—the next day, the next week, the next month or quarter or year. So often, we don’t notice God in the moment, but we can look back and see that God has been guiding us and accompanying us, and then that awakens us to the possibility of God continuing to guide and accompany us. In the same way, John’s call of repentance must be answered by a turning towards God each day, each week, each season, each year. That’s why I have daily spiritual practices. That’s why I worship here each week. That’s why we have the different liturgical seasons. And that’s why each year in Advent, we once again prepare for Jesus to be born anew in our lives.

Christ is coming. Advent is a time of waiting, of anticipation for the great day of the Lord when Christ enters our lives. Yet Christ has already come. God is already at work through Christ’s body, which is the church. God has been at work in the world from the moment of Creation and will continue to work towards the restoration and re-Creation of all things. Advent is a time to turn towards God, to be Christ’s eyes in the world and, being moved by what we see, to act with Christ’s heart, and hands, and feet.

On this second Sunday of Advent, we anticipate the coming of God’s shalom, which is a peace that transcends the absence of war and includes healing and wholeness, a restoration of what has been lost and broken. Let us turn our eyes towards God so that we can see and join in the hard work of building a world filled with God’s love. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on November 26, 2023, Reign of Christ Sunday. Based on Matthew 25:31-46.

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Much of modern political philosophy is based on the idea that we are individuals who enter a social contract. That is, the natural state of humanity is fully independent with full freedom, but we choose to give up some of our freedoms for the sake of living together in harmony. I say, hogwash. Rene Descartes famously said, “Cogito ergo sum,” which means, “I think, therefore I am.” He was asserting his identity separate from any social constructs. An ethics teacher once said that his response to Descartes is, “Who taught you Latin?”

The truth is that we are naturally oriented towards community. We connect naturally to our family, then our clan, then our tribe. Think about it: throughout the Bible, people are identified as being the son or daughter of someone else. We use surnames now that basically keep track of what clan we are in. I naturally desire to take care of my wife, my children, my siblings, and my parents. Even people who have difficult relationships with their family of origin are in some sense defined by those relationships. Beyond our immediate family, we have a natural affinity for our clan—I am a Kimball, so I always perk up when I see a reference to another Kimball. I care more about my cousins than about some random people.

This is entirely natural. Humanity has succeeded in ways that other species haven’t because we are cultural. We learn from one another and prioritize our relationships with our community. We cannot survive without the cultural knowledge we have inherited or without the support we get from other people, both close at hand and far away. In modern society, we have somewhat transcended the natural ties of blood relatives to include chosen family, those friends and neighbors and church members who make our lives more complete.

Let me share a story with you about the limits of independence. When I go elk hunting, I feel like I’m independent because I carry all of my own supplies—my own tent and clothes and food and water. But where did those all come from? I didn’t make my tent, or my sleeping bag, or my rifle, or any of the hundred other things I carry. I bought basically everything I need. I pump my own water from a stream, but I use a filter pump that I purchased and fill a collapsible jug that I purchased.

On my most recent trip, on the last day of hunting, we were walking out with a couple of older guys that Wayne had met on a previous trip. Ron and Tom are both in their seventies. It was dusk, probably after official sunset, dark enough that we were all using our headlamps. Ron had a little bitty flashlight. He tripped and fell and dislocated his shoulder. The pain was excruciating. Now, if I did that in Rolla, it would be terrible, but I might be able to drive myself to the hospital, or at the least, an ambulance would be five minutes away. Up on the mountain, though, we were half a mile as the crow flies, and a longer walk, to where Ron could get in a pickup truck, then an hour-and-a-half drive to a hospital. All told, I think there were nine guys involved in helping Ron get out to where he could get medical help. Two of us stayed with Ron to help him keep awake and keep moving; one guy called 911; two guys went ahead to find some other guys who had a chainsaw and a UTV and could drive partway to meet us.

When an emergency like that happens, everybody pitches in to help. That’s because we all recognize that we are ultimately not truly individuals, not truly independent. We need our community. We helped Ron because someone once helped us, or we know that someday we will need help, or at a minimum, we recognize our shared humanity. We are fundamentally connected to each other.

Jesus taught his disciples that “the least of these,” those who are in need, are his brothers and sisters. We naturally organize society into family, clan, tribe, and nation, concentric circles of mutual obligation. But Jesus said that actually, we are all in his family.

When I first started preaching, Rhonda would ask me what my sermon was going to be about. I think she finally got tired of my answer always being the same: the kingdom of God is at hand! That was Jesus’s primary message, the coming of his kingdom that we celebrate on this last Sunday of our church year. We have spent the past few weeks studying parables about the kingdom of God, and this week, we reach the climax. But what is Christ’s kingdom? Well, a mujerista theologian named Ada María Isasi-Díaz said that a better word to use is “kin-dom,” without the “g.” That is, Christ’s kingdom is not like the ancient kingdoms where a strong man (always a man) lords his power over his subjects. Instead, it is like a family, where all of us are equal and all of us are loved by our holy brother and holy father. The text we read today is Jesus’s last message before the events that led to his crucifixion, so it is the most important message he had to give his disciples. The kingdom of God is instead a kin-dom, a state of being where everyone is kin, everyone is family, everyone cares for each other, everyone lifts up the downtrodden, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and cares for the prisoner.

This is actually a very simple message. What do you do when you see someone who is hungry? You feed them. Period. It is simple, but extremely difficult. First, there are limited resources. I cannot personally feed everyone who is hungry. Second, Jesus’s calling is counter to our society’s values and our inherent sense of fairness. So, instead of obeying this simple but difficult teaching, we make it complex. We say, well, sure, feed the hungry, but Jesus certainly didn’t mean everyone, did he? What if the hungry person is a criminal? What if the hungry person is from somewhere else far away? What if the hungry person seems like they could work and feed themselves? Surely Jesus didn’t mean for us to sacrifice our limited resources for those people, right? Surely Jesus only meant for us to feed the worthy hungry people. Surely Jesus only meant for us to house the stranger if they are here legally. Surely Jesus only meant for us to care for those imprisoned without cause, not those who are guilty. Right?

I don’t think so. Jesus was pretty clear, actually. He said, “I was hungry, and you gave me food.” He said, “Whatever you do for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you do to me.”

This is a hard teaching. Yes, I know that there is a place for tough love. We probably all know people who have been given second and third and fifth and tenth chances and continue to fall short. Our goal should be that all people become thriving, full members of our community and of God’s family. Sometimes, that means helping people develop some skills, including life management skills, through tough love. But tough love only works if its root is love, not if its root is toughness. It only works if you are in a personal and loving relationship with someone and they know that your actions flow from that love.

There’s a saying, “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Sure. I agree—we should be in the business of helping people become better versions of themselves. But it’s a whole lot easier to learn how to fish if you’re not starving. You can give a man a fish and then teach him how to fish. Another analogy I heard is a fire. If someone’s house is on fire, you don’t focus on finding out what caused it. You put the fire out. You save the people and belongings and prevent further damage. And then you try to find out what caused the fire so you can prevent another one, and also help the people put their lives back together.

Coming back to our friend Ron with the dislocated shoulder, we could have tried to put his shoulder back in the socket. But here’s the thing: We didn’t know what the actual problem was. He couldn’t feel his forearm and couldn’t move his fingers, so we didn’t know if the issue was his shoulder or his elbow. For all we knew, he had broken his humerus and somehow pinched a nerve. At some point a few years ago, he had had surgery on that shoulder, which complicated the situation. We could have tried to solve the problem right then and there, but we didn’t really know what we were doing.

So instead, we found someone who did know what they were doing, and we accompanied Ron until he got help. We didn’t let him suffer alone. We gave him as much comfort and assistance as we could until we were able to get him to a medical professional, whose first act was to give him a shot of something that would enable him to bear the pain. Survival first, long-term solution later.

Just a few days ago, America celebrated Thanksgiving. This is a day we set aside to remember all the good things in our lives and all that we have to be thankful for. It was first celebrated as a national holiday in 1789, our first harvest season as the United States of America under the Constitution. It was celebrated intermittently until 1863, when, at the height of the bloody Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was convinced to proclaim a national day of thanks. No matter the pain and suffering and discord and evil in our nation, we still acknowledge that we have been richly blessed. Human nature is to focus on the negative, so it is essential to have a day that we focus on the positive and expressing gratitude.

One of my spiritual practices is to identify three things each day for which I am thankful. My rule is that I can’t list the same thing two days in a row, so that I take a broad survey of my life. The natural response to identifying these blessings in my life is that I am moved to give more of myself to my family and community. Perhaps we should expand our personal thanksgiving reflections to congregational thanksgiving.

We have much to be thankful for. I know that I complain about the ridiculous layout of the sanctuary, but it is a beautiful worship space. It has great acoustics and a pipe organ. We have great staff—Jeff and Lorie here in worship with us, plus Katie in the office, Tracy to direct the preschool, and many other staff who enable us to serve the children of our community. We have lots of people who have stepped up to provide leadership in all spheres of our operations. And above all, we have each other to provide mutual support on our walks with God.

Our gratitude for the blessings on this congregation should move us to greater acts of service. We have been welcomed into God’s family, and so we should help others thrive as members of God’s family. We see the image of God in each other, so we should seek God’s image in people throughout the community.

In Jesus’s last message to the crowds before the events that led to his arrest and execution, he told them the basis on which all nations would be judged. He didn’t say that they would be judged on their beliefs or their words. He said that they would be judged on their actions to build his kin-dom by caring for all his siblings. Let us respond to the gifts God has bestowed upon us by caring for our community, not asking what people have earned, but providing what they need to thrive as God’s image-bearers. Amen.

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Preached on November 12, 2023. Based on Matthew 25:1-13.

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Have you ever seen those memes titled, “You had one job!”? Things like, at an intersection where there’s a stop sign, the street is painted with “S-O-T-P”? Or an article in a newspaper with a headline, “Add header here before printing”? Or perhaps a billboard or a sign that was hung in parts, and the sign-hangers got the parts mixed up? Or a sign that reads, “School free drug zone”? If you ever have an hour or two to kill, look up those memes.

Here’s another example, a memory that might bring Jeff some pain. A few years ago, when I was still in Men of Song and he was still the director of the high school choirs, he asked Men of Song to perform at the high school choirs’ winter concert over at First Baptist Church. I was there for the rehearsal, where the main choir had a percussion section as part of the accompaniment. One song built up to a climax, and then there was a cymbal crash! Except that the student on the cymbals had trouble counting the dozens of bars of rest. Finally, Jeff said he would give a cue. They ran it once or twice, and the student followed the cue.

Then the performance came. The song built and built to the climax, Jeff gave the cue, and… the student had his nose buried in the music, trying to figure out when to come in. I could see Jeff wince with his whole body. But when the moment passed, it was too late. It’s not like the student could just crash the cymbals some other time and make up for it. Either he crashed them in the moment, or he missed it. Timing is everything.

In today’s story, we hear about some bridesmaids who had a job to do. Their job was to light the way for the groom. They all had their lamps and were ready to go. But as was common at that time, the groom was delayed. See, weddings in Jesus’s day didn’t follow a strict schedule like modern weddings do. They basically happened whenever everything was ready. So, the groom shows up at midnight and catches the bridesmaids off-guard. One reference I read said that was actually part of the game—the groom would try to show up and surprise everyone. Well, it worked!

Some of the bridesmaids had extra oil. Some of them didn’t. The response of the wise ones, the ones who had extra oil, was basically, Tough luck. You forgot, so you need to fix your own problem. That’s a little harsh, isn’t it? Couldn’t they have shared? Well, maybe not. Maybe if they had, then nobody would have had enough oil to get through the ceremony. Would you rather have half the lamps for the whole ceremony, or all the lamps for half the ceremony? I would think that having some lamps is better than none.

So, off they go, the foolish bridesmaids, looking for a place to buy oil. Remember, this was first-century Judea or Galilee, not modern America. I just got back from elk hunting. We had to drive through the night from here to Durango, Colorado, and back. There were many gas stations that we passed in the night that were closed altogether, and some others where you could get gas but only if you paid with a card at the pump. Northern Texas, eastern New Mexico, eastern Colorado, and western Kansas are all pretty lonely. Now, first-century Judea wasn’t quite so empty, but I don’t think they had 24-hour convenience stores or oil pumps with credit card readers. So, where the heck would the foolish bridesmaids get oil at midnight?

The bridesmaids had one job: to give light when the groom appeared. Half of them were ready and the other half screwed it up. They missed their chance to participate.

Let’s think about this parable in its context. Throughout the Gospel According to Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as the new Moses. Just as Moses gave the Law to the ancient Israelites, Jesus gives a new law to his followers. Something I’ve noticed, though, is that the Mosaic law is full of “thou shalt nots”: Thou shalt not make idols, thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not covet. But Jesus’s law is filled with “thou shalts”: You are blessed when you are meek, or merciful, or peacemakers. You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, so let your light shine. Turn the other cheek, walk the second mile, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. Seek first the kingdom of God and all things will be given to you. Jesus’s law is not so much about how not to sin, since he was in the process of forgiving all our sins anyway. Jesus’s law is about how to heal the brokenness of the world and build positive relationships and communities.

You are the light of the world. The bridesmaids were the light of the wedding, and they fell short. They were not prepared to wait and did not have deep enough reserves to continue to light the party while the bridegroom was delayed. We need to do better.

We have four Gospels in our Bibles because each one has a unique perspective. As I said, Matthew portrays Jesus as a new Moses. Also, we think Matthew was writing in the late first century, soon after the destruction of the Temple. The people in Matthew’s community were waiting, and wondering, How long? How long would the present age continue? How long until Jesus came again in glory to right all the wrongs, to heal all the sick and wounded, to overturn the oppressive system that they were living under? How long until their rightful place as the holy people of God would be restored? They were waiting expectantly, hoping that Jesus would return soon.

Well, Jesus will return soon, but in God’s time, not ours. Jesus said that not even he knew when he would return in glory, only the Father knows. God knows the right time and will give us the cue, if we’re watching for it. So, what was Matthew’s community supposed to do in the meantime, and what are we supposed to do?

Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” That is, we who await the coming of God’s kingdom should get to work transforming the world by our love. We are expected to follow all of the “thou shalts” that Jesus taught his disciples.

One of the great mysteries of history is how a small sect of an oddball religion became the official religion of the Roman Empire and the dominant religious force in the world for more than a millennium. One theory is that the consistent efforts of Christians to serve others established their credentials as a force for good that people wanted to join. Christians essentially invented hospitals in their first few centuries of existence. During a great plague in the early fourth century, only Christians stayed behind in the city of Caesarea to care for the sick and dying. Early Christians set an example for their philanthropy and charity, in that they cared for all poor people, not just fellow Christians. As a result, Christians rightfully claimed the moral high ground and drew converts—more a trickle than a flood, but a trickle that lasted centuries.

This is exactly what Matthew was trying to say to his community. Jesus is coming, of that you can be sure, but when exactly? Only God knows. So, in the meantime, BE READY. Be ready by getting to work transforming the world into God’s kingdom, living as if Jesus had returned already, or as if Jesus is present with you right now.

And that is the message to us today. There is a sense about our congregation that we are waiting for something. Some people are holding back until we get a new pastor. Some people are waiting for someone else to tell them what to do. Well, we may not have an ordained and installed pastor, and we may not have anyone telling us what to do, but we are not alone. Jesus is here among us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus’s followers left us his teachings to guide us. A hallmark of the Reformation is the priesthood of all believers: we are all empowered to approach God and to learn God’s will for our lives directly.

We have an important message for the world. We believe in a God of love, of welcome, of inclusion. We believe that all people are made in God’s image and are valued members of God’s family. I know that there are literally thousands of people in Rolla who need to hear that message. Some of them have only been told about a God of judgment or have experienced spiritual, emotional, or even sexual abuse in a church. Some of them have only heard about Christianity from mass media, which gives a highly distorted view. I have noticed that whenever there is news coverage of something that I actually know something about, the news coverage is a little off, a little wrong, perhaps a little biased or one-sided, lacking in nuance and thin on details. But that’s the only source of information some people have about this God we love and who loves us.

If we look around Rolla, we can see needs everywhere. There are people struggling to survive: homeless, or hungry, or struggling with addiction. There are lots of lonely people, people estranged from their families, or far from home for the purposes of their career or education, or far from adult children who have gone off to pursue a career elsewhere. There are parents struggling to raise their families. I’ve heard that the best parenting hack is to have a grandparent living nearby who helps out. Because of the transitory nature of a college town, many parents in Rolla don’t have that luxury, but instead have to figure out a way to do everything themselves.

What is the Christian response? Our one job is to be the light of the world. We are to shine before others with our good works, helping everyone in need. Well, maybe not everyone, but SOMEONE. God doesn’t expect us to solve all of the problems of the world; that’s God’s job. But we are expected to do our part: to see a need and respond to it.

Let’s stop waiting. We know what to do. A couple of times now, I’ve asked you all to consider what your personal calling is and to seek people who might share that calling. I would love to hear from you about how that’s going. Maybe it’s going great, and we need to lift up your successes. Or maybe, like me, you’re struggling a bit to get traction, and we need to pray with and for one another to take the next step. Whatever the case, I want to hear about it. What are you doing, or what do you want to do, to shine the light of God’s love in our broken world? How can we help each other to have plenty of spare oil, so that we can all continue to serve God’s people? Let’s not wait until the moment has passed. Let’s build God’s kingdom now, responding to the needs of our community and our world. Amen.

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Based on Matthew 22:1-14. Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Due to an issue with the heat in the sanctuary, the service was held in the fellowship hall. The choir did not wear robes. So if you listen to the podcast, there is a difference in one illustration.

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Let’s try to put ourselves back in first-century Judea. What was happening during Jesus’s life, and what was happening at the time when the Gospel attributed to Matthew was written? First and foremost, Judea was ruled by the Roman Empire, which impacted all aspects of civic and religious life.

While the Temple still stood, there was a singular focus for sacrificial offerings and festival days. However, there wasn’t a singular perspective on what God expected of the Jews. There were many sects and factions. We only know details about a few of them. In today’s passage, Jesus, who led a group that became one of those sects, is arguing with the chief priests, who believed that the most important aspect of Judaism was Temple worship and the sacrificial system. There were also Pharisees, whose perspective ultimately became rabbinical Judaism with its emphasis on understanding the Bible and applying its teachings. Other sects included the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Zealots, and the Sicarii, who probably instigated the revolt against Rome in 66 CE that led to the destruction of the Temple.

Speaking of the destruction of the Temple, that was the other source of turbulence in Judea and throughout the Jewish Diaspora. The Jews revolted in 66, and by 70 CE, Rome had conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple. The only thing left standing was the Western Wall, which is still a site of pilgrimage today.

After the destruction of the Temple, Jews of every sect were trying to figure out why it had happened and what they could do to remain faithful to God. The sacrificial system was defunct, so the chief priests were out of the picture. Two main sects emerged: Jesus’s followers and the Pharisees. So when you read that there was conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, remember that the Gospel writers were probably highlighting and even exaggerating the differences to distinguish their beliefs from the rabbinical Judaism that was developing.

You know what, though? There are still divisions within God’s people. Jews have a diversity of beliefs. Some describe themselves, or are described by others, as orthodox, conservative, or reformed. Within Christianity, there are literally thousands of denominations. Many Christian denominations or congregations believe that they have exclusive ownership of the Truth, with a capital T.

There is a tension within Christianity also between unconditional grace and the call to righteous living. I can’t say for certain how we should resolve that tension. Today’s passage is one that is cited by those who believe in Hell as a place of eternal conscious torment. I believe in universal salvation, so this passage makes me a little bit uncomfortable. I think it’s mainly teaching us that actions have consequences. In Luke’s version of this parable, it ends when everyone comes into the party. But in Matthew’s version, someone found without a wedding robe is thrown out, into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. That sounds pretty bad.

But earlier in the parable, the king was primarily angry at those who would not show up. Remember, Jesus is in the middle of a confrontation with the chief priests and their supporters, so those are probably who he had in mind when he referred to those who would not show up to the wedding banquet. They were the consummate insiders. They spent all day, every day, worshipping God and working around the Temple. Yet Jesus said that they were like the guests who did not respond to the king’s invitation.

The people Jesus criticized were actually people like us. They were committed to worship. They believed that they understood God’s will. They were the establishment. They were the inheritors of God’s covenant with Abraham and with Moses. Yet Jesus said that they were like the guests who would not show up to the party.

So, in what way are we like them? How are we failing to respond to God’s invitation? How do we fall short of God’s expectations of us?

God is present among us today. When we gather together in worship, we know that God is here, too. But God doesn’t live in any one place. God didn’t live exclusively in the Temple in Jerusalem, and doesn’t live in this church alone. God is everywhere. God is at work in the world, binding up the brokenhearted, healing the wounded, comforting the afflicted.

Wherever God is present, the heavenly banquet is just waiting to break through. God’s kingdom is not just a place we go at the end of the age. It’s here, right here, wherever people are in need. Our calling is to see the potential for God’s kingdom to break through, and work towards its realization.

Too often, we see someone in need and fail to respond. Maybe they need financial help. Maybe they need material support—food, shelter, a ride to the store, help escaping an abusive situation, or whatever. Maybe they need emotional support, whether because of grief or anxiety or relationship issues. Or maybe they need help figuring out the next step in life. Or perhaps they are having a spiritual or existential crisis, wondering about their place in the universe, and need some perspective. Or perhaps they don’t need us to fix anything, just to be with them in their suffering.

Yet we often ignore these needs. We are too busy with our own lives and our own problems. Or perhaps we blame someone for being in a bad situation—it’s their own fault, so why should I help? That’s a regrettably common response to those who are homeless or struggling with addiction.

God desires that everyone should flourish and thrive. God’s will is that we would all be united into one people who support each other, who care for each other’s needs, who seek to serve one another. This is where the chief priests fell short, and where we still fall short today.

The chief priests were so focused on serving God through the sacrificial system and Temple activities that they ignored the needs of God’s people. They accommodated Roman rule and its exploitation of the population as long as they could continue governing the Temple. The other Jewish sects also fell short. The Essenes were a separatist community who helped each other but abandoned the rest of the world. The Pharisees erected barriers between “clean” and “unclean,” as a way of excluding those who they deemed unworthy of full inclusion in God’s family. And the Zealots sought a violent revolution that would expel the Roman occupiers, no matter the consequences.

Jesus’s message to these many sects was that all of them were in the wrong. They all missed his core teaching: that God desired unity, not division, in a flourishing community. God desires that we see Christ in each person, whether they are an insider or an outsider. We should see people as God sees them, looking on their heart and not their exterior attributes.

Now, let’s consider the last person we encounter in the parable, the man who is not wearing a wedding robe. Could I please ask the choir to stand up? … Look at them all. Each person is unique—different genders, different ages, different singing abilities, different heights. Yet all of them form one choir. Each person wears a robe that covers their exterior attributes. … OK, you can be seated now.

Just like the choir wears robes, we should each put on Christ. Each of us has some inherent identity deep within, something that makes us unique. But we also have these exterior characteristics. Tall or short, of different races, ethnicities, educational backgrounds, ages, genders, what have you. When we put on Christ, we keep our core identity as a child of God and act with the righteousness that comes as a citizen of God’s kingdom.

Last week, Susan talked about the Ten Commandments. As she reminded us, God delivered the Ten Commandments as a description of the society the Israelites should build in response to God’s grace poured out upon them. They are not a pre-condition of our membership in God’s family. Rather, they are a description of our response to the many gifts we have been given.

Woody Allen once said, “Ninety percent of success in life is just showing up.” God has poured out grace upon each of us, and upon all of us together as a community of believers. God asks in return that we show up wherever the heavenly banquet is taking place. And when we do, we should put on Christ’s righteousness and act to further God’s kingdom. We should seek the flourishing of each person that God loves, which is everyone. We should seek to serve one another. We should seek to support those who are doing God’s work, whether at the Mission or GRACE or the preschool or anywhere else in our community. And we should seek to erase those lines that separate us and prevent us from joining together in one body as God’s family. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Matthew 21:23-32.

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By whose authority do you do these things? That was the question the chief priests and elders put to Jesus. Well, what things? If we back up a bit in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus had just ridden into town triumphantly on a donkey on what we now call Palm Sunday. Then, like a conqueror, he cleansed the Temple, driving out the moneychangers and the animals for sale. The chief priests were what we would now call pastors and presbyters, or in other traditions perhaps bishops. The elders were what we would call ruling elders. This group who challenged Jesus was in charge of the Temple. Who was he to ride into town and disrupt their operations? By whose authority?

But if we zoom out a bit, we can ask, what is our source of authority? In the early days of Christianity, when the Gospels were written down, there was very little hierarchy and very little organization to the Jesus movement. The original apostles held positions of respect if not authority, as did Jesus’s brother James and the apostle Paul, and perhaps a handful of others. Over the next few centuries, more and more hierarchy developed, as did the canon of scripture.

We Presbyterians are bookish people. We come from a tradition that holds to sola scriptura, that is, Scripture alone holds authority. Yet if you probe that just a little, you will find that it is a façade. We may say that only the Bible has authority, but then the first part of our constitution is the Book of Confessions, a pretty thick book of interpretations of the Bible over the centuries of our development. The second part of our constitution is the Book of Order, which states, “These confessional statements are subordinate standards in the church, subject to the authority of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, as the Scriptures bear witness to him. While confessional standards are subordinate to the Scriptures, they are, nonetheless, standards.” In truth, we behave more like the Anglican or Wesleyan traditions that hold to prima scriptura, or scripture first, supplemented by tradition, reason, and experience. I certainly have a Wesleyan worldview, shaped by my first two decades of life as a United Methodist.

Of course, even with the Wesleyan quadrilateral, there are questions about whose tradition, whose reason, and whose experience count. Both Anglican and Wesleyan denominations have bishops and other leaders who are responsible for maintaining tradition. They decide, then, whose experience informs their understanding of God. One of the great advances in theology over the past century has been an explosion in the number of different voices that contribute. Instead of being straight white men like me, we have heard from feminist and womanist and Black and queer and many other scholars, plus liberation theology has grown in the developing world. These new voices have challenged our long-held beliefs, and have also enabled us to see that Scripture was mostly written for people who were oppressed, not for the powerful.

Still, many Christians express some form of the sentiment, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” They hold to some literal or quasi-literal interpretation of the Bible and use it to support whatever worldview they have inherited from their family, community, and culture. They become doctrinaire and assert that if you don’t believe in the way that they believe, then you must be wrong and a heretic and damned to eternal conscious torment in a lake of fire. They erect barriers between themselves and anyone who might change their minds.

On this World Communion Sunday, we should remember that while we practice an open Table, where anyone who wishes to approach Christ is welcome to partake of His body and blood, there are many churches where most or all of us would not be welcome to commune. Certainly, here in Rolla, there is at least one where I would not be allowed, St. Pat’s. Many of us were baptized as infants, so we would not be considered “real” Christians in many churches.

These doctrinal disputes are inherently divisive. Soon after Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of his empire, he wanted all of the Christians to get together and decide just what they believe. The result was what we call the Nicene Creed, which says things like, “We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father.” Wait, what? What does it mean for him to be “eternally begotten”? Later, it says, “true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.” I defy any of you to clearly explain just what exactly that means in a way that everyone here can agree with.

The most controversial line comes later on: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” Originally, it just said, “who proceeds from the Father.” Two centuries later, the Western church added “Filioque,” meaning “and from the Son.” The eventual result, a few centuries afterwards, was a split between Eastern and Western churches. Now, there was other stuff going on, too, but certainly, the Filioque clause was a significant source of conflict that split Christ’s body.

Some of you may be familiar with CrossRoads, which is the church that meets in the same building as the Mission. One of the reasons it exists is that there was a doctrinal dispute in another church. So, as a congregation, CrossRoads has no doctrinal statement. A few weeks ago, their pastor, Patrick Wilson, posted this: “Historically, creeds have been used to evaluate who can be a part of and who can lead in congregations and denominations, which socially divides people and sets up unhealthy, destructive power structures. … So, regardless of your beliefs you are welcome at CrossRoads. Come join us as we learn, grow, and serve together.”

Jesus did not put forth any creeds or doctrinal statements. Jesus never explicitly said who he was, but instead let others come up with a theological explanation of his relationship to the other two persons of the Trinity. Jesus did not even directly claim any authority, although he implied that his authority came from heaven. The authority that he had emerged through the nature of his service to God and his work to build God’s kingdom. The evidence of his service, his allegiance, his beliefs, and his role was simple: LOVE. Jesus claimed only the authority that derives from a self-emptying love of all of God’s people.

Our passage today from Philippians is probably a hymn that circulated in early Christian communities. It is a beautiful expression of Christ’s nature. Not that he was “eternally begotten” or “begotten, not made.” Rather, instead of wondering about where he came from or how he related to the God who had been revealed to Moses, the hymn said, “He did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” This was Jesus’s source of authority: his humility. He did not seek power over others. He did not directly confront Roman authorities. Rather, he emptied himself and served everyone, obedient to God’s will and willing to die for the sake of even those who despised him.

In our parable today, we hear of two brothers. One says the right thing, but does the wrong thing. He doesn’t follow through on his commitment to serve his father. He professes obedience with his mouth, but not with his actions. He is like someone who claims Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, but whose actions are far from Christ-like. Someone who claims that they love their neighbor, but whose actions are far from loving. The other brother, when challenged by his father, rebels and refuses to follow his father’s directive. Yet the father’s words took root in his conscience. As he thought of all that he had been given and all that he owed his father, he realized that he should respond by doing his father’s will.

In the same way, we should each seek not only to say the right things, but also to do the right things. Beliefs matter, but only if they drive actions. I saw a meme recently that said, “You can’t trust an apocalyptic religion to find real world solutions. Their identity is based around the world ending.” That’s why we talk about theology, why I hammer on my belief in universal salvation, why we talk about the horizontal nature of God’s kingdom as well as the vertical nature. We must have a theology that somehow orients us towards building God’s kingdom here and now. But theology is not sufficient. Our beliefs about the inherent value of God’s creation need to drive our actions.

The way we behave is the clearest expression of what we believe. If you say that you care about the welfare of children, you should be doing things to support children’s growth. If you say that you care about the homeless, you should be doing things that help alleviate the suffering of the homeless and work to end homelessness in our community. If you say that you care about hunger, you should be doing things that reduce hunger in our community and around the world.

If you read the Old Testament prophets, you will pick up on a couple of main themes. One was the tendency of the Israelites to worship other gods. Another was the tendency for them to worship God with their mouths and with their sacrifices, but not with their actions in their community and nation. As the Prophet Micah said, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Not only to preach justice, but to do justice. Not only to profess your beliefs, but to walk humbly with God. Doing justice, loving kindness, and walking with God are concrete actions in the world. Concrete acts that bring about God’s reign in your life, in your family, in your community, in your nation, and in the world. Concrete acts of service, of self-emptying, of pursuing right relationships and reconciliation. Concrete acts, not just in worship on Sunday morning, but in the community all 168 hours of the week

As we turn now to the Lord’s Table, let us seek to be spiritually fed. Let us seek to be bound together with all of Christ’s body, which is the Church, communing this World Communion Sunday. And let us seek to use this spiritual renewal to empower us to take concrete steps towards building God’s kingdom today. Amen.

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Based on Matthew 18:21-35. Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla.

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One blessing of living in a university town is that distinguished speakers and entertainers sometimes come in. The Remmers Lecture Series has brought in diverse individuals over the years. In 2008, soon after we moved here, I had the privilege of hearing F. W. de Klerk speak. He was the transition leader when South Africa abolished apartheid. Among other things, he negotiated with incoming president Nelson Mandela to establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC.

The goal of the TRC was to establish the facts of the human rights violations that had happened between 1960 and the end of the era in 1994. They allowed victims to tell their stories, granted amnesty, and drafted a reparations policy. Now, their work was far from complete and had many detractors, in part because not everyone participated. But the motivation was correct. The former apartheid leaders and the new democratically-elected government had to figure out a way to live together. Both sides had committed atrocities, especially the apartheid government and its security forces but also the opposition party led by Nelson Mandela. If the two sides were ever to live together, there had to be a full accounting of the ways that people had hurt each other, restitution of anything that could be restored, and ultimately reconciliation so that they could put the evil of apartheid in their past.

In today’s lesson, we hear about a man who had his own debts forgiven, but still enforces his rights against a debtor. I want to help you understand just how outrageous the story is. A denarius was the typical daily wage in that time and place. To make the math easy, let’s say that a typical hourly wage is $12.50, just over minimum wage, so for eight hours, the daily wage would be $100. The second slave owed the first one 100 denarii, or about $10,000. That’s a lot, right? Three months’ wages. Maybe he was a farmer and borrowed to be able to plant. Maybe he was a fisherman and bought a boat or some equipment. Or maybe he was sick or injured and couldn’t work for some time. It’s easy to imagine three months’ wages worth of debt.

But the first slave owed the lord an ENORMOUS amount. A talent was worth 6000 denarii, or about $600,000. One talent was a lot of money. He owed TEN THOUSAND talents, or six BILLION dollars. How is that even possible? That’s the amount that Galilee paid to Rome as tribute over a period of fifteen years. That’s 50% more than the combined budget of all four University of Missouri campuses, plus its healthcare system. How is it possible that a slave racked up so much debt?

I don’t personally owe anyone six BILLION dollars. If I did, it wouldn’t even seem real. Somewhere around a million dollars, it would start to seem like fake money. Like, it’s so much that I could never, ever re-pay it, so whether it’s one million or ten million or six billion, it just doesn’t matter.

The lord would have been completely within his rights to seize the slave’s possessions and sell off his whole family. Even then, I can’t imagine he would come anywhere near recovering his debt. How could he ever be made whole?

Jesus likens this enormous debt to the debts we owe God on account of our sins. The good news is that our sins have all been forgiven. Each Sunday, we are called to confess our sins together, knowing that they will be followed by a declaration of pardon. We can be confident that whatever we have done, or failed to do, God will forgive us.

Each of us has personally sinned in some way. Maybe we shaded the truth, or coveted our neighbor’s possessions, or were angry with someone. Whatever. We can easily rack up debts like the second slave. But Jesus implies that we have racked up debts like the first slave—government-scale debts.

We are participants in a society, in institutions, and in systems that are inherently sinful. There is nobody here who would say that everything our government does is righteous, and yet we are obligated to support it with our tax dollars. We are living on land that was once inhabited by Osage, Kickapoo, and Kaskaskia tribes of Native Americans. I personally hold a lot of unearned privilege and am the beneficiary of a society that is basically set up to favor people just like me. That’s not to say that I had everything handed to me, but that my life has been easier because I’m a straight white man who grew up in a good school district.

Some people have asked me why I am so committed to the work of LGBTQ+ Rolla. Well, the truth is that the Christian Church has been the perpetrator of many, many crimes against humanity. I am called to do my small part towards righting those wrongs. I know that it’s a hole that I can never fill, but I feel that I need to do something. We have collectively harmed millions of people for many reasons throughout the past 15 centuries of our alliance with empire, through our actions and our failures to act. Coming back to South Africa, we recently added the Belhar Confession to our Book of Confessions as a rebuke against those churches who found justification for the evil apartheid regime.

The South African TRC was created to deal with some of the harm that was done by the apartheid government. One way it fell short, though, was that it focused on the actions of individuals. Say, a soldier who committed some atrocity against a rebel. What the TRC did not investigate, catalog, or provide reparations for was the systematic harms done to the non-white population of South Africa. Individuals were called to account for the collective shame of the government.

And so, in our weekly confessions, we often include confessions of the way our society acts or fails to act. We ask forgiveness for the ways in which we exploit and destroy the Earth. We ask forgiveness for the justice system that keeps us safe but dehumanizes those caught up in it, guilty or innocent. We ask forgiveness for our community’s lack of action to clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, and feed the hungry, and our participation in systems that perpetuate poverty and homelessness.

As we ask forgiveness, we are assured that God will grant us peace. But prayers are not only meant to communicate our needs to God. They are also meant to change our own hearts and align them more with God’s will.

God’s forgiveness is unconditional. But as we pray in the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” As Jesus implies in today’s parable, the only condition for God to forgive us is that we should then forgive others.

Why is forgiveness so important? As long as a debt remains, it creates a barrier between two people. The debt gives one party power over the other. The debt colors all of their interactions. Only when the debt is forgiven can two people build a healthy relationship. Only when we confess our sins, truthfully and with a contrite heart, can we accept being forgiven. We can confess to God openly through prayer. In some ways, that’s easier than confessing to those we have hurt. But stating our shortcomings truthfully, attempting to restore what has been lost, and asking for forgiveness is essential to repairing a damaged relationship.

You might be thinking, OK, I can do that. I know I hurt such-and-such, so I will go and confess and ask forgiveness. Maybe. But what about all of those ways in which you have hurt people unintentionally or even unknowingly? What about all of those ways in which you have participated in a sinful system and been sullied by other people’s actions?

That’s where God’s love comes in. I know that I have hurt people unintentionally, but I don’t know who. Or sometimes, I do know who, but I’ve lost touch with them and can no longer apologize. Or sometimes, I have been hurt in turn, and both sides need to apologize in order for forgiveness to take place. Or as I’ve said, I’m the beneficiary of a system that will keep doing what it does, whether I like it or not.

I cannot untangle all of this myself. I cannot change other people’s hearts. I cannot heal all of the hurt that I have caused, through action or inaction. I certainly cannot heal all of the hurt caused by the society and institutions of which I’m a part. But God can. All things are possible in God’s kingdom. One day, God will make all things right. The kingdom of heaven is that place where all relationships are made whole again, where all hurts are healed, where all are welcome.

One day, we will get to experience God’s eternal glory, God’s love binding us all together, flowing through us all. Wouldn’t it be great if we could experience just a little bit of that now? We can. We can’t heal all of the hurts. We can’t remedy all of the wrongs. But we can work together towards a world where there is no war, no anger, no hatred.

The month of September has been designated as a new liturgical season, first in 1989 by the Eastern Orthodox Churches, then by the World Council of Churches, and then in 2015 by the Roman Catholic Church. It is the Season of Creation. It starts September 1 and ends on October 4, the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, who is the patron saint of the environment and animals. It is a time to renew our relationship with our Creator and all of creation. It is also the time when we collect the Peace & Global Witness special offering. This month is a time to reflect on all that we have done, as a church, a community, and a society, to damage the Earth and also God’s most special Creation: humanity. For thousands of years, we have been taking advantage of what God has given us, exploiting the Earth’s resources, and exploiting one another. Someday, God will make all things new. But in the meantime, if we work together, forgive one another, and seek both truth and reconciliation, we can experience God’s kingdom now through healthy relationships with one another and the world. Amen.

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